Any and all fans of both Firefly and Harry Potter should go read musesfool's A Million Light Years From Home, wherein the crew of our favorite smuggling ship meets up with a certain animagus. Takes place post-Order of the Phoenix and post-Serenity.

And now I present, what will hopefully not become a regular column, ( Adventures in Online Dating: (a.k.a. Psycho or Spam?) )

It just occurred to me, after hearing of various friends' relationship woes, that someone should come up with some form of relationship outplacement service.

Sure, right now, there's places like Dump Monkey, which will do all the breakup, but for more friendly breakups, relationship outplacement might help people get over these things faster.

Just think--if the breakee chooses to, he can go to a followup counselor specifically catered to his faults. He can get that thin blue binder filled with all sorts of paperwork and exercises to help him cope with this change.

Counselor: She said your oral sex skills were lacking. Here are a few videos to help. She's willing to provide a few weeks "severance" to make sure you get up to speed. Should you find a new partner, however, any severance benefits will cease.

And stop picking your nose.

*shrugs*

In other news, I wrote a couple of smutty drabbles for the open_on_sunday "Unconventional" challenge. Given that these are my first real attempts at smut, I'm not really sure how they turned out. "Shades" is a Fred piece, while "Unsettled" (a.k.a. "Why She Was Bad") is Buffy-centric.

This week's theme for open_on_sunday is a dual "Winter" or "Steam," which just makes me think of Ed O'Neill in Wayne's World:

You know, if you stab a man in the dead of winter, steam will rise up from the wounds. Indians believed it was his soul escaping from his body.

Either way, here's this week's entry:

When it gets cold in Westbury, Willow thinks of Khan.

She remembers the weekend afternoons she spent watching a well-worn copy of Wrath of Khan. Long before the vampires and the magic and Tara's blood staining her hands, she laughed while Xander perfected his Ricardo Montalban--"Eet is very cold in space...wheethout Cor-eenth-eean Leather!"

She'd had her cold dish months before, trussed up between two trees. She recalls her slight horrific glee when the skin came off, a slight steam rising from the meat in the semi-desert chill.

When she remembers the look on Xander's face, however, Willow shivers.

This week's open_on_sunday challenge is "a sunset, during the summertime." So, of course, I went back to the beginning.

"Beaten again! It's like you're reading my mind, Will"

"Xander, you should try something other than scissors."

When she notices the silence between them lacks any sort of anticipation, Willow starts the merry-go-round turning with a push of her foot.

"We should get going..."

"A bit longer, Xander. We haven't seen a vampire since the Spring Fling..."

Her head leaned against the railing, Willow watches Xander when she passes him. As the carousel turns, she catches the sunset in the same spot as his face. Soon, all she sees is an orange streak where he is.

It hurts to look.

In a strange serendipitous moment, I went to TV Writer Rob Thomas' website and downloaded an unfilmed script for the show Cupid at the same time Sam Cooke came up on the playlist.

Weird.

In other news, here are last week's and this week's entries for open_on_sunday, where the challenges were creation and success/failure, respectively.
Current Music: Cupid - Sam Cooke

Have you been in the Apple stores?

You know in the kids' section, at the short table where the iMacs are, you know those little chairs that just look like cushiony, black spheres?

I want some of those. They wouldn't necessarily go with my decor, but they're rather comfy and fun.

I found spiralingmoon a few months ago linked off of the friendsfriends, and I forgot about it until a bit ago. She paints using her own menstrual blood. I think the average person probably finds this rather squick-worthy, but honestly, it doesn't bother me so much (Hell, I wrote a short LOTR-Buffy crossover drabble where it plays a significant role).

I will say, however, that I tend to prefer the figurative/iconic work that she was creating around this time last year--the abstract pieces aren't nearly as compelling.

Finally, I created this icon this morning in honor of xopherg's new TiVo. I, myself, bought a third one yesterday.

1. I'm unconvinced that Michael Rosenbaum is as good an actor as everyone says he is.
   
2. The whole Tom Bombadil section of FOTR was utterly boring and was rightly excised from the movie.
   
3. The only time Sarah Michelle Gellar might have deserved an Emmy nod for her Buffy work was in the first season.
   
4. Season 3 is the most overrated Buffy season for two reasons: horrible Faith characterization and an agonizingly bad metaphor driving the season finale.
   
5. Joss Whedon might have deserved an Emmy award for his Buffy work, but only for the work he did well before the voters/critics actually noticed.
   
6. "The Body" is the most overrated and overwrought episode of Buffy.
   
7. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone was a pretty lousy movie.
   
8. After Season 2, Buffy's character turned to a self-involved, slightly-power-mad child with less maturity than Season 5 Dawn. In fact, most of the Scoobies, with the exceptions of Giles, Tara, and Xander, are now petulant twits.
   
9. As well-plotted as it might have been, Babylon 5 had some of the worst dialogue I'd ever seen in any show.
   
10. Between Seasons 4 to 7 (after the departure of Dan Vebber), no one on the Buffy writing staff had any inkling of how to write Xander, even Joss, who made him the scapegoat of "Once More, With Feeling" when he wrote himself into a corner.

And here's my slightly different take on Shanshu for the open_on_sunday Prophecy/AU challenge.

My entry for this week's open_on_sunday (formerly the sunday100)


"Even with the stupid 'shooting first' scene, it's still the best one." Willow hands Xander the large bowl.

"Nuh-uh," Xander mumbles through a handful of popcorn. "Empire's the best. It has the best story and no cutesy animals saving the day."

"But I like the Ewoks..." Buffy starts.

"I like it at the end when they get slaughtered," Xander counters with a grin. Buffy pouts at him.

"Lucas does have a thing for midgets."

"It's 'little people,' Will," Xander corrects. "At least they're not long-tongued reptiles..."

"But I like Jar Jar!" Dawn echoes.

"You would, Dawn," Buffy sighs. "You would."

So, where the hell have I been for the past few weeks?

Well, aside from the usual goings-on (pool league, etc). About three weekends ago, I took a set of coupons that I got in the mail to Best Buy to see what sort of stuff I could pick up. Imagine my surprise when I saw that they were selling DirecTV DVRs (a.k.a. TiVo) for 93 dollars. Given that I was at the Perimeter store, and they had already sold out of all their units, I had them call around to the other stores in the Metro Atlanta area, and eventually drove like a madman over to the store in near Cumberland Mall to pick one up (for 84 dollars with a coupon :). I went straight home that night (completely bypassing the stop at Target I had intended to make to pick up some more socks) and tried to hook it up...

Unfortunately, since I live in a condo serviced with two or three DirecTV dishes for the whole complex, just connecting the thing wouldn't work. I did a search on tivocommunity.com, and found out that I've got a stacked and diplexed setup (ask me if you need to know more) and I would need about a hundred dollars worth of additional equipment to get it running smoothly (i.e. with two tuners so I can record two things simultaneously). I bought everything online (at about a 60% discount than your usual brick-and-mortar stores), and it all arrived last monday (the 20th). From there, I had to wrangle a bunch of RG6 cable to connect everything correctly as well as get a signal amplifier so as not to lose about half my channels.

After Thursday of last week, I got things hooked up clearly. So now I can grab Angel, Jake 2.0, and The O.C. all at the same time, and not have to worry about re-setting a VCR if the power goes out.

Of course, every silver lining has a dark cloud...

Tuesday of last week, I learned that our main client wants to cut down on our billable hours. I suspect that this has something to do with budget crunches and missed forecasts, but what it ultimately means is that where my company could bill x hours of work is now chopped to x/4 hours.

This doesn't bode well for the company's future. As well as seeking new business, we're also looking at different ways of trying to squeeze more money/productivity out of the situation we're currently in.

In the meantime, however, my mom and brother have this trip to China planned, and since we don't have enough hours to cover a single person working for a full-time week, everyone concerned, from my supervisor to my boss, thought it was a great idea for me to join them on their trip. Towards the end of last week, I had to send a bunch of money and express mail my passport to someplace in Houston, so I could get a visa approved to visit China (I'll tell you more about this after my trip). I received my passport with the visa and everything last night.

I've got mixed feeling about going to China, however--firstly, my father says it's heavily polluted over there, and it'll wreak havoc with my allergies. I've already got two boxes of Claritin ready for my daily consumption. The plane ride, as well, I figure will be anywhere between 14-18 hours long. I hate flying.

But I will get to see the Great Wall, as well as the buried Terracotta warriors, and that's pretty exciting.

In other arenas, I wrote this CrazyGoNuts Drabble for the sunday100 Masks challenge.

I played poker on Friday night with Tom, my boss' husband. He worked his way down to losing everything, then we let him deal for a 50 cent rake. He made enough raking to start playing again, and four-handed, he got back to about $38.00 (he started with $40). I was down $7.50 on the night, luckily taking the $20 final pot with a straight.

Everyone's been doing the "Five things about me which are true, except one which is a lie" thing, but I can't decide what to tell people and what I haven't already told people.

And here's this week's drabble for the sunday100
Current Mood: apathetic

The theme this week was music.

Title: Bones
Doc is mildly disappointed when he's finally finished.

Building it was nothing particularly difficult, but gathering the materials... A few coffins would serve as a fitting frame and soundboard, but the joy of collecting eighty-eight individual bones! He fondly remembers every individual strand of man-gut, now sun-dried and stretched taut, carefully drawn forth amidst blood and spleen and liver, his hands shaking in nervousness and anticipation.

But some afternoons, he'll sit for hours on the bench, his fingers delighting over the lacquered radii, singing aloud to songs from Cabaret.

Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome...

It's the simple pleasures that make life worthwhile.

( A/N )

I can't decide which is tastier--a bun with dried pork on it, or a bun with roast bbq pork in it.

Here's yet another drabble for the sunday100.

From bill_maher's blog:

Here’s a real morale builder: it turns out that American soldiers wounded in Iraq are being billed for their hospital meals. Talk about adding insult to injury. Perhaps the next time President Bush holds one of those $5,000 a plate fundraisers, he could slide a little of that cash over to the Pentagon so legless soldiers don’t have to pay for their own pudding cups.

In other news, I wrote a drabble for the sunday100, which I've been too lazy to mention until now.

Here's my entry for this week's sunday100

One week after the funeral, Xander finds it.

Hidden away amongst the assorted herbs and candles, it almost makes him drop a bottle of unlabeled leaves. He invents some excuse for Dawn, who is sorting through things in the living room, and drives to the construction site.

As he mixes the concrete, Xander wonders why Tara of all people would have something like this in her nightstand.

Two weeks from now, he realizes, patrolling with Buffy on an especially bright evening, why the bullets do not match the dull grey ones he finds in Anya's gun.

He never tells Willow.

Yeah, I know I haven't updated in a few days. I'm mad at Livejournal. Actually, I'm mad at Linux Opera for crashing for no apparent reason after I typed up my massive Saturday-Sunday Vegas journal entry on Friday afternoon. I was all, "Screw you guys! Ah'm going home!"

I went to see Blue Man Group this past Saturday with batnandu and Lillania. Tracey Bonham and Venus Hum opened for them. Not quite sure about Bonham, but Venus Hum kicked my ass. I picked up their CD direct from their merchy hands (take that RIAA!), but it turns out that the CD has that crappy copy protection shit on it--I can't listen to the CD on my work computer. I hear you're supposed to be able to use a felt-tip pen to defeat this, but I don't want to screw-up the audio.

For those of you who have seen the show, fight the power!

I made this!

BMG themselves were pretty amazing. I tried to remember all the Rock Concert Movements, but the only one I remember the exact number (that isn't on The Complex) for is #10: The Blackout. And everyone has the wrong timing on Rock Concert Movement #6, and Please Yell if You're Paying Attention.

On Monday, I managed to post two drabbles for sunday100.
Current Mood: tired

tieg, if you're reading this, you should set up Digressed.net with an RSS feed, so skander and I (as well as batnandu) can just add your feed to our friends lists...

I completely forgot about this--my entry into the sunday100 "Caught in the Act" Challenge:

( Post-Bargaining )

It's been a while since I paged through the CISE web server logs, but I found that Emily Nussbaum of Slate posted an article about being a Spoiler Whore in which she mentions the bronzearchives, linking to the original site.

I also noticed that the BBC also linked to my Buffy site, calling it "Amazing." Cool.

Then I saw that a search for pinpricks fetish pictures on Google Germany lists my story "Faculties Intact" fourth on the list of appropriate links.

Of those three things, I'm not sure which I'm most proud of... :)

Like I mentioned yesterday, I wrote some stuff for sunday100. I've since revised one of them, but here they are.

( Glass Houses )

( Following the Countess Kakosy incident )

( Nightmares )

Last night, after writing a drabble for sunday100, the hinge that holds the screen on my laptop finally gave way. It's been deteriorating for a while, and after spewing a few sharp bits of dark grey, distressed plastic, it came apart.

Now of course, it didn't come apart in any way that's convenient to fix. No, the plastic which is pretty much essential to the hinge is gone. Granted, after it failed, I just ripped more of the plastic off, to see if I could get at some of the metal innards, but the screws that comprise the tightenable part of the hinges are apparently stripped, as well...

So the laptop looks like one of the following diagrams:

1. = when closed,
2. |_ when precariously balanced, or
3. __ when open. Gee.

I went to OfficeMax today to pick up some bookends to see if I can't just prop the screen up. If this fails, I'm hoping there's some way of completely removing the screen and propping that up on some platform. Otherwise, I might want a new LCD monitor or one of those fancy web-pad computers.

But that's only after I win first place at the poker tournament next month... :)

Yeah, I did finish Enter the Matrix, which was shorter than I'd like, but it was still pretty kick ass. I played both characters, Niobe and Ghost, and there's some cool insights into Ghost's character, as well as Niobe's. I got to see the new Oracle, as well as a preview of sorts for Revolutions.

Some highlights:

• Fighting Seraph
• Fighting Trinity
• Fighting Vampires
• Actually managing to kill one Agent Smith
• Sniper Rifling my way through the Matrix (what exactly does this say about me??)

And while it's cool and all that I finished the game (I actually finished it over the weekend), more importantly, I finished my Xander/Willow post-Chosen fic...

Title: Faculties Intact
Author: tmhsiao
Spoilers: Spoilers for the latter half of Season 7
Rating: R for adult situations
Disclaimer: All characters are Mutant Enemy's
Feedback: Always welcome.
Notes: Thanks to the folks at ficletsupport for suggestions.
Here's an early birthday present, musesfool, although, I don't know if it'll fulfill all of your X/W desires.
Link: A far more readably-formatted version.

LJ's being tetchy, so I'm just going to post the link...

Not much by way of spoilers, but this just occured to me as a funny way of ending the Harry Potter series. It would probably never happen, considering these are children's books, but it would be somewhat poetic.

( The Final Battle )

ETA: There's a spoiler for OOTP in the comments, now...
Current Mood: weird

Horrendously tired at the moment. I have no clue why, because I got (an above-average) seven hours of sleep last night.

The Xander-Willow thing is largely done, but I'm still not satisfied with some parts of it. Unfortunately, most of the people I'd ask to read the story haven't seen "Chosen," so I'm a bit SOL.

How's this for disconcerting: there's a large (bigger than a half-dollar) spider hanging out in the corner above my computer monitor. It's a good three to four feet away from me. It's just been stationary there since I got into work this morning. I don't really want to kill it, because it'll probably eat the ants and roaches that get into the building. But it's still kinda wigging me out.

In case anybody really wanted to know, Windows CE is stupid, stupid, stupid.
Current Music: "I'm so glad The Cheat is not dead" - Strong Bad

What's the protocol on this? I need a beta for a Post-"Chosen"-with-spoilers Xander fic.

( Pink? What's up with pink?? )

I didn't really need a great interview to know that Alton Brown is cool. In this week's episode of Good Eats, he constructs a smoker out of two terra cotta pots, a hot plate, and a grill to make some pulled pork (crucial) barbeque. Mmmm...boy.

Ron Perlman, aside from having a pretty cool name, gets to dress up as your favorite son-of-a-devil paranormal detective. Some part of me has always wanted to write a Buffyverse-Hellboy crossover (only without the clichéd "two heroes meet and fight until they realize they're on the same side" thing).