Cloned Realities

Here's some music for you: three songs each from four bands and singers I love. The files are at Box.net, which means (for those unfamiliar with it) that you can listen to the songs as well as download them.

Mylene Farmer. I can't help loving her songs even when they are kitchy 'cos the woman is so artistic. I love her videos too!

California
Je te rends ton amour
L'ame-stram-gram

My beloved Rammstein released a new album. I can't say I loved all of it (I never do though) but I liked half of the songs.

Fruhling in Paris -- this one is the best, as for me, from this album. Also, Till singing in foreign languages is sexy :) Here he sings in French.
Rammlied -- the opening song of the album and yet another version of Rammstein including their own name in their song. Fun! And quite strong.
Pussy -- the notorious Pussy, the one of the NC-17 video, with which R+ came back after their years of silence.

My beloved Pulp. I know you know and like some songs of theirs. Do you like their Separations though? It's one of their first albums and still my favourite of theirs. Actually, this was the album that turned me from classical music to pop and rock :) I don't like what Jarvis Cocker does now and didn't like even their last album with Pulp. IMO it lost all their earlier vitality. But still, they hold a very special place in my heart :)

Separations, the title song.
Don't You Want Me Anymore -- a bit morbid, more than a bit ironic and role-playing, and all-in-all wonderful melodically.
Acryllic Afternoons, from His'n'Hers.

And my beloved The Cranberries. I swear, I listen to Dolores O'Riordan mewl and scream while trying not to hear the lyrics. She's, to put it mildly, not a good poet. But her energy! Her voice! I love it :)

I Just Shot John Lennon
Electric Blue
Hollywood

And here's the link to the entire folder. Enjoy! :)

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This is not drawing. This is also not laundry. Today was decompression time though, so laundry has been pushed to tomorrow. In the process of compiling this I realised the creative niche that vidding fills for me, which is being able to sort all my squeeful thoughts and say here are all the things I love about ____. With music attached. I always feel slightly weird about vidding since I don't approach it with any intention to learn the finer details of editing or crafting a strong visual narrative, but coming to understand why I vid makes me feel more comfortable sharing what I've made.

I also feel like all the classic and contemporary big band/crooners I've been listening to while working in the lab this semester was just preparing me to fall in love with this show. Also, OT3 much? Purr.

( White Collar Vid - Neal/Peter/Elizabeth - Peroxide Swing )

Or right-click and download.

Guess who is done with finals, omfg.

Tomorrow I am going to celebrate by doing laundry. Which doesn't seem exciting, but I am down to the Clothes I Never Wear. Which is also a good indication of what needs to go in the donate pile.

ALSO I AM GOING TO DRAW. My god, am I going to draw. Later when I am a little less DONESQUEE, I will post some shots of my projects. I am pretty damn happy with them.

sga_santa is off and running, and posting fics.

Already.

We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas....

Hung out with wolfshark yesterday. In RL she's a solid, reliable sort with a healthy dose of sardonic humor. Just the type of person you'd want to run comms and see projects through to the end. *tips hat to Sharkie*

And I've now been informed that Victoria Bitter of "Bit Of Earth" donation scam infamy (who absconded with tens of thousands of dollars and tricked Sean Astin into supporting the not-actually-a-charity) has joined the HP fandom. Bitter is refusing all donations -- unless you insist. In which case there's a PayPal link.

*head scratch*

Do I have a PayPal link? Should I have a PayPal link? I mean, if you absolutely insist....

When the muse falls silent ... edit.

For the first time in years, I'm doing as much beta reading as writing.

A friend gave me a newspaper article. The time spent actually writing equals the amount that gets written.

I can take a hint. *gets back to work on that comic McFluff*

Opening Move, by Ravenna C Tan #
Ogata/Touya, NC-17, under 1000 words. Summary: Touya receives an unexpected lesson from his senpai.

Ravenna wrote this ficlet for me and it's designed to hit all my HikaGo rare pairing kinks :) Paraphrasing my comment to the author, awwwwww! It's Ogata/Touya! It's so lovely! And it's for meeee! I do wonder how Ravenna manages to combine detached with hot and make lovely things without shmoop.

If you like Ogata, go try it!

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Last night I picked up pasta for dinner from the cafe around the corner, and instead of working on our finals, J and I watched 5 episodes of White Collar.

In our defense, we were both too exhausted from work to do anything productive.

Also in our defense, we are addicted.

We will be saving the last ep for /after/ finals. I... I'm probably going to need icons. :x

Doodled today because my renders in mental ray were choking my computer and taking forever.

( Sketchy kiss thing. )

I'm ridiculously behind on my lighting final. I'd been struggling with a specific hurdle, and I got past that this last weekend, but since I was working so hard on figuring out wtf my problem was in only that one area, I'm now behind on all the other parts. Oops. I console myself with the fact that it's not part of my major, I just wanted to know how to do it and now I do, so I'm good so long as I pass.

My modeling finals, while running into a few issues that are mostly hardware related are going fairly peachy. I'm not going to get them as polished as I'd like, but considering that I was spreading my time between four classes and work, I'm pretty damn happy with what I've come up with.

Wednesday... zomg. Wednesday and I'll be done for six weeks with mostly online classes in the upcoming semester. I might be working full time, but omg that I can handle. This semester has been one long steady crush of too much to freaking do. I'm mostly caught up on all my CSI TV at least (we shall not speak of SPN). J and I are one episode of Fringe behind, but we might be able to sit down for that tonight.

And now I have sipped at my tea and my fingers are warm and I should get back to rendering. Cue flaily arms.

I'm really not sure my recipient is going to like the story I've written her. I've, er, sort of gone off topic with her choices.

I think I'd better give her two stories, just in case she hates this one.

Oops.

9 [] Rated PG-13 for violence and scary images. Runtime: 79 minutes. Director: Shane Acker Summary: When 9 first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world where all humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they'll soon come to learn, the very future of civilization may depend on them.

My notes: BFF ordered me to watch this film 'cos she had seen a couple of scenes from it and fell in love with the visuals. So I did.

I liked it fine, especially the visual side, yes. Landscapes, the dolls, those factories and machines. If you like steampunk, go for it! I did find it very, very pleasant for the eyes. Not quite an eye candy 'cos it's all greyish-brownish and raw and dusty but it looks really nice.

I even liked the story for the most part. It's quite charming, and the story of a small individual becoming a hero in order to save the world, figuring things out, gathering courage and strength, well, it's cliché of course but it's a sure win as far as modern action/adventure goes. But at the same time, I found it annoying. I mean, if you have such a well-established heroic cliché, there's no need to make it even more cliché by making the villain a Hitler in such a non-metaphorical way. I mean, sometimes it's OK to believe that your spectators aren't completely stupid, so there's no need to put things in their mouth and chew for them. Sometimes you can create a more far-fetched metaphor, say, as Tolkien did in LotR or as Hiromu Arakawa does in Fullmetal Alchemist, and your audience will get it. Or on the contrary: make him Hitler, no a Hitler-like something. Don't dance around trying to side-step every dangerous thing.

Another thing that annoyed me was 7 at the very end of it. The dolls are more or less sexless, more boy/men-like than girl/woman-like but whatever. I liked it that the story wasn't about love, that it wasn't about how family saves everything -- which, let's be frank, Hollywood feeds us so much as to make one want to stay single forever. But then [spoiler]7 acquired some distinctly lady-like expressions, nearly batting eyelashes. WTF? Will they now hold hand and knit baby dolls or something?[/end spoiler]

And this leads me to the following. I liked Dragon Hunters much better (my review). They are seemingly nothing alike, Dragon Hunters and 9. It's just that they both are about small people saving the world and that something in the animation looks similar to me. So, while I'm ready to rave about Dragon Hunters for ages, this review is about 9 and regretfully, I'm not prepared to squeal about it. Yes, I enjoyed it. Yes, it's a real pleasure for the eyes. But I expected more. The animation made me expect more originality from the plot, and it might be completely my fault that I was so ready to fall in love but in the end, merely liked it. But like it I did. Give it a try!

Just watched the latest Merlin.

Oh, the dragon is not as patient as I expected.

( If only Merlin had read the Lord of the Rings. )

Bring on the fanfic bunnies.

Choooooocolate.

Completely wheat-free.



Flourless Chocolate Cake
(Recipe source The Gourmet Cookbook)

Ingredients:

8 ounces good quality bittersweet (not semi-sweet) chocolate, roughly chopped
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 1/2 cups sugar
6 eggs
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease a 9 or 10 inch springform pan and line the bottom with wax or parchment paper (cut into a circle to fit bottom of pan). Make sure to grease the liner as well.

In a double broiler or in a large bowl over a pan of simmering water, add chocolate and butter. Stir constantly until melted. Remove bowl from heat and whisk in sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Last, sift cocoa powder into mixture and whisk until just combined.

Pour batter into prepared springform pan and bake for 35-40 minutes. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out with moist crumbs and top should have a thin crust. Cool cake in pan on a rack for 10 minutes and then remove sides of pan. Invert cake on a plate and then back onto the rack to fully cool before serving.

Yield: 10-12 servings

Ah. My transcripts finally arrived from Seattle Central.

I've dug my SAT scores out of the boxes.

I have the transcripts from UW.

Time to wave it all in front of the state of Maryland Dept of Education to see what I need next to teach.

Listening to the soundtrack from Out Of Bounds.

And snow has frosted all the trees. I think this is going to be a snowy Christmas.