Saturday, July 14, 2001

RK Doujinshi!
Posted by: Shannon M.: 4:33 PM |

*Blinkle* Am I misremembering, or haven't we seen Hiei in this pose?
Posted by: Shannon M.: 4:36 PM |

Oh. My. Word.

Or rather: Oh. Microsoft. Word.

I just ran a spell-check on this funky little Maus-bit that I started, and the damn grammar-checker wanted me to use 'there' for 'their' in the sentence 'Not 'til their backs were healed, but after, yes.' and 'its' for 'it's' in ' I guess it's 'cause he wants to learn more than how to look pretty and fuck people.'

It also questioned the subject-verb agreement in the sentence 'People were okay, in a general sort of way.' If it had wanted me to fix 'People was', I could understand that, but it was asking me to change what I'd written from 'were' to 'was'. Which I wouldn't object to, in dialogue... "Back when people was okay, y'all know what I'm sayin'? I tell you what..." Gah.

This is why I will never have that piece of software on my Mac. AppleWorks may not have a grammar checker, but really. My -dog- knows that those sentences were all right.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 8:25 PM |

Maus likes doujinshis. Hee. *Pats her weird little mute and gets glared at*
Posted by: Shannon M.: 8:29 PM |

*Needs to make dinner* *Wants to write* *Notes that she writes oddly under the influence of rereading Luck In The Shadows and Stalking Darkness* *Is not at all surprised*
Posted by: Shannon M.: 8:34 PM |

Bwahaha... Excuse me, dear grammar-checker people, since when does "Well, I doesn't like you!" constitute -proper- grammar? If I'm writing dialogue, the Cs are speaking in present tense about themselves. Therefore, we need 'I don't' rather than 'I doesn't'. Unless, of course, we are denying something, in which case it would be 'I didn't'.

I doesn't like the grammar checker. Its so smart, their should be a law. It hated fragments of sentences.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 9:49 PM |

*Ahem* Maus Out Of Time... This is an AU, set in some strange time and place that seems to be an amalgam of Rhiminee and the City from Swordspoint, with God only knows what else thrown in. This work is completely original and does not contain any specific references from either city (mostly what I used was the atmosphere/-feeling- the cities have for me, in their respective books); nor does it contain any characters from them. It is not a crossover, nor is it fanfic. And I think I'm done repeating myself, for now.

Linked off this page because it's 11 pages long (in Word, anyhow). There are a few bad words, and guys wanting guys. In this bit, Maus is about fifteen or sixteen, or maybe he only -looks- fifteen/sixteen and is older? I don't actually know. And Silver is older than Maus, but not by much, even if he does his best to -act- much older than he is. Other than that...? Well, it's...uh...kinda dumb, in places. But I thought it was funny.

Enjoy, Or Something.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 9:57 PM |

Er...please excuse the crappy formatting of the .txt file. *Grump* I wrote it in Wordpad with textwrap on, so it's my fault. I'll fix it after I eat.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 10:02 PM |

Friday, July 13, 2001

"He wants to marry us. All of us. Even the guy." "Let's go. Now." -- Strange Candy, proving that once again, Tokyo Tower is the most dangerous spot in the most flammable city in the world.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:13 AM |

"Hi. I'm Tim. I'm a Loyal Minion." Bwahaha! I'm loving the dialogue for Strange Candy...
Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:40 AM |

Huh. Today would have been my parent's 28th wedding anniversary. Oh well. It was better this way, trust me.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 1:33 AM |

Updated Unecessary Character Deaths after having finished U571.

Is 'he can't die 'cause I wanna slash him with so-and-so!' a valid reason for being upset with the writer(s)? *Snerk*
Posted by: Shannon M.: 6:34 PM |

Who says you can't find anything good on FF.net? a sensible perception of reality is...-different-, and I'm no big Squall/Rinoa fan.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 6:48 PM |

Esse...
Posted by: Shannon M.: 7:23 PM |

Nakiko.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 7:46 PM |

Pitch Black fic... The odd thing about that movie is, from a slash standpoint anyhow, is that the only plausible pairing (canon-based, anyhow) is also the impossible one... I've got an idea of how to make it work, but it's a little...eh. Ridiculous, I guess. (And I disliked Johns enough that I don't want to use -him-.)
Posted by: Shannon M.: 9:26 PM |

The Faithful...
Posted by: Shannon M.: 9:46 PM |

Thursday, July 12, 2001

Hmm... Dare I go look for Poirot/Hastings slash, or should I just sit upstairs and watch far more semi-formulaic murder mysteries than is good for anyone?

I'm housesitting for my grandparents. They have pretty much every Poirot episode committed to media in the last ten years. I have a fair fondness for the odd little man and his leeetle grey cells myself... So I've been watching the eps I haven't yet seen. This has had two profound effects: 1) I have been looking at the places I go with a murderer's eye (ferinstance, the back side of the Fireweed Theater would be an excellent place to dump a body) and 2) the more I watch, the more I say 'Aww!' whenever Hastings shows up.

Yes, I am a dork. Lemme 'lone.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:28 PM |

I went to see Final Fantasy with Mme. Jean yesterday! It was good, for the most part... And I pegged two of the voices right off. (I -did- mistake Donald Sutherland for Jeff Goldblum, however... *Blink*) It was a really -fascinating- blend of FFs seven and eight, with a bunch of original elements thrown in. Aki Ross wasn't overly busty or stupid; the Obligitory Love Story wasn't -too- gag-inducing; and the animation was...well... Mindblowing, for the most part. There were a few places where there was no doubt about the fact that you're looking at something computer-generated, and sometimes the scenery looked like something out of an anime (not that that was a -bad- point in my mind, I was sitting there thinking 'they -drew- that!?')...

I -do- have to agree with some of the Technomancy reveiw points -- I was under the impression that 'Gaia' was pronounced 'gah-ee-ah', to rhyme with Baia, in Brazil. (See The Three Caballeros). I have no idea how many geeks were in our audience, aside from me (on the gaming side) and Mme. Jean (on the animation side). There were a surprising number of little kids, including the twits behind us that A) kicked the seats randomly and B) speculated loudly as to who was gonna die next.

Slight Spoiler: This Movie Contains Unecessary Character Death. Bleah.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:41 PM |

Speaking of the Fireweed, dumping bodies, and annoyances...

I'd like to say a little something about going to the movies. I love going to the movies, because there are some things that you simply -have- to see on the big screen. Mononoke Hime. Final Fantasy. The Matrix. Gladiator. The Toy Stories were fun, and it helped to go to the theater to get that sense of toy-scale. I now deeply regret not ever having seen Titan A.E. or The Fifth Element at the movie theater.

However... There are some things that I'd -really- rather NOT pay money to go see. Commercials, for instance. I'm not talking about the Will Rogers Foundation spot; that's a charity and I honestly couldn't have told you -what- the WRF -did- with its money until yesterday. Unfortunately, the Regal Cinemas do not feel the same way. I don't know if they're not generating the same revenue as they were when I was little or what, but yesterday we were shown no less than -7- (seven) advertisments. BEFORE the previews, of which we recieved -5- (five).

They were: A 'be nice to other people' spot that will never work, the WRF with Anthony Hopkins, Jeep*, Pepsi**, and three others that have completely escaped my mind (probably due to the Pepsi ad).

* The Jeep ad was for the Liberty. It's the one that starts out like a Save The Earth spot, then goes on to try to sell you something with which to destroy it. If I hadn't been so annoyed with the marketers, I'd have shouted out my favorite Tom Servo line: 'It's swell for tearing up fragile ecosystems!'

** This was the -long- version of that utterly reprehensible Britney Spears spot. I can't even tell you why I hate it, other than the fact that she -can't- sing and she dresses like a slut. I wanted to cry when it came on. (Er, okay, so it does have one tiny redeeming feature, but it's kind of like B.J. Surhoff Vs. John Rocker -- a mere drop in the bucket. The camera cuts back to Horomone-Slave Diner Boy and shows a bunch of firefighters putting out whatever's burning on the stove behind him.)

I'd write to all of the companies involved -- Regal, Pepsi, Jeep -- if I thought it'd do any good. At least Jeep doesn't own any food companies, yet, so they're easy enough to boycott, as are the theaters. Pepsi kind of owns everything (they're the MS of the comestible world!), so... Oh well.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:58 PM |

Hee... I should send this link to Gail. Find your birthdate in Pi. Link found at Memepool.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 1:02 PM |

OH! I completely forgot -- I made a mistake in my calculations about the number of pages in the Assassin's trilogy. Six hundred and six hundred do NOT equal twelve thousand, they equal twelve -hundred-. So my complaint about being 5000 pages shorter needs to lose a zero.

It should have had 500 pages cut, or devoted to Fool and Nighteyes. Or Fool's love of Fitz, even though Fitz was a jerk and probably would have beaten Fool up for such affrontery...
Posted by: Shannon M.: 1:38 PM |

*Soft snicker* I watched You've Got Mail again, last night. I'd forgotten about the bit where Bertie tells Kathleen and...ack...the other woman that she'd been in Spain and had fallen in love with the man that -ran- Spain. "That was his job, he ran Spain." And then the following scene where Frank tries to convince Kathleen that Bertie had been in love with Generalissimo Franco.

All of -that- led me back to thinking about The Basques. Off to do researach!

But first... I had a friend that claimed his mother gave him the middle name of Franco after the General. I still can't decide if I believe that or not.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 1:48 PM |

BURN! -- A look at the art of the SCW. (I think I snagged the poster I used on the Basque page from this site, but I can't remember. Bad me.)
Posted by: Shannon M.: 1:51 PM |

I think this guy is a practicing Marxist. *Blinkle*
Posted by: Shannon M.: 1:55 PM |

Look! I have a continuity mistake! (Big surprise, right?) Actually, I only think I have one. Just because this rather helpful timeline doesn't mention the town of Bermeo beng destroyed doesn't mean it didn't happen. And I didn't know that the bombing of Guernica wasn't as complete as I thought it was -- they missed the railroad and a couple of sites deeply important to the Basque people.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:01 PM |

I think that, at one time, this page was home to something about the SCW. Now, it's home to a beautiful-looking restaurant and teeny hostel outside of Bilbao.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:06 PM |

General-purpose Basque page...
Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:09 PM |

SCW history links, from the Anarchist Archives. I really need to look up the definition of 'anarchy'...
Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:16 PM |

*Blink* I thought Guernica had been rebuilt...? MapQuest doesn't think so... Either that, or Guernica isn't big enough to show up.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:25 PM |

Hey... *Blink* Thanks to the Junior High history class, I realized that Lt. Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen's name was awfully similar to Baron Manfred von Richthofen... The Red Baron. They were cousins, and Wolfram was the guy that decided Guernica should be obliterated. Sigh.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:28 PM |

I've -got- to get my library card situation straightened out.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:37 PM |

Old Soldiers -- International Brigades Remembered. This research is giving me goosebumps.

Apparently, Franco's troops moved into and occupied Guernica after the bombing. *Frown* But aside from one mention of it on the PBS site, I haven't been able to acertain the truth of that statement.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 3:21 PM |

Bernard Knox, Premature Anti-Fascist.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 4:22 PM |

And now I'm off to have dinner and watch a Mets game with my mom.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 4:23 PM |

Anime links and blogs:

AnimeJump

Ochiba Anime

Pixbell's blog

Aine.

I'm looking forward to Samurai Jack, even though I won't be home to watch it... That's what little brothers (and friends) are for!
Posted by: Shannon M.: 11:14 PM |

Hey, Foster's books weren't -all- "movie and game tie-ins". In fact, 'Slipt' is about the only Foster book I can think of that has a movie counterpart. And you guys -shoooould- have mentioned StarBeast, or The Rolling stones, or (my favorite, I think) Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.

And Gene Wolfe didn't make -my- list of Sci-Fi classics, either. I'm -still- trying desperately to work up an interest in continuing the first half of the first book of The Long Sun.

But I'm waiting for Keith Hartman's next book with bated breath.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 11:25 PM |

SciFi IGN
Posted by: Shannon M.: 11:28 PM |