It's just an ordinary day - Recent Entries

Say what you will about the Doctor Who finale, it's triggered off a boatload of plotbunnies in my brain. Way more than I have time to write! I'll have to see if I can whip up at least a few drabbles for some of these, though...

( Don't look back here if you haven't seen Journey's End yet... )

This doesn't happen to me often; I don't write songs nearly as much as I write fiction. However, I've been known to generate a filk or two.

This one, however, appears to be storming up out of nowhere in my brain. Well, not nowhere--part of this is because of solarbird and I being at the Tall Ships festival in Tacoma yesterday. While we were there, I saw both magnificent tall sailing ships on the water, and military planes screaming by overhead. The contrast between archaic sailing vessels and modern aircraft was a potent one; it made me think of timelines colliding. I had the lyric "tall ships on the water, swift planes in the sky" pop into my head pretty much right then and there.

And on the way home, I thought, yeah, this is a Doctor filk. As of tonight I have a chorus, and I know what it's supposed to be about. It's from Rose's point of view, and if you haven't been keeping up with the current season, it'll be quite spoilery. I know it'll be in a minor key, though I don't have a melody line yet.

( Here's the first bit... )

Whoa! Whoa, I tell you! Also: mizkit called it!

( Spoilers crossing between the worlds... )

( Massive, massive spoilers... )

To echo some of the sentiments I've seen going around about this weekend's episode, "Russell T. Davies, you bastard!"

Also, I must now also admit that the first words out of my mouth after the intro were, "The Earth has been STOLEN, GIR!" (Okay, surely I couldn't have been the only person flashing on Invader Zim while watching this?)

( What? What?! WHAT?! )

Dear gods, what a fabulous episode to get my wind back for review posts. Clearly, Russell T. Davies went in for his Awesome Shots for his last hurrah on the show--because I mean, DAMN! Russell T. Davies, sir, I salute you!

( Turn left to the spoilers... )

Just to pay appropriate note to the various and sundry other things that have been going on in my life:

Jam Reports. There have not been Jam Reports for the last couple of Jams, and I apologize in advance, but there will probably not be. I just haven't been focused enough to get proper Jam Reports written. However, it is worth noting that there is much promise with GBS' "Chemical Worker's Song" with the current set of voices. cflute in particular has some very impressive harmonies coming together for that, and kendaer is feeling some potential for rumbling out the lead on this on days when mamishka isn't available.

On a related note, solarbird and I went to go visit stealthcello this past Friday night, which was made entirely of Win. She and her family have a lovely home full of lovely large Maine Coon cats as well as six two-week-old kittens, with whom we visited as well and ZOMG TINY KITTENS. Dara shared some of the music she's been working on, and Betsy answered with some of hers, and me, I was impressed by Betsy's shiny new black carbon-body guitar.

One giggleworthy moment of the evening: Dara hitting a chord on the mandolin and announcing that that sounded like "ass minor". Betsy's daughter lost it laughing, and Betsy herself pondered the question of what precisely "ass" sounds like. Dara's response, entirely inevitably: "Here, pull my finger!"

I will also not be doing review posts for the most recent BSG and Doctor, again because short on general levels of cope. I will however say that the most recent BSG was quite solid. We actually haven't watched the most recent Doctor yet, but will hopefully be getting that in soon.

Current book on the queue: desperance's Bridge of Dreams, which I have scarcely begun, but already I am impressed by the liquid rhythm of the prose.

And because I could, I went and got RAM upgrades for both my MacBook and Dara's. Now Winnowill and Kiliandra both are at 2 GB, though I have observed that I'm still taxing the CPU a bit if I try to do too many things at once. Less so than before, granted, but the problem hasn't entirely gone away.

Working on listening to s00j's Sirens, to be followed up by vixyish and tfabris's Thirteen. I have however also squeezed in Capercaillie's shiny brand new album Roses and Tears, as well as Nickel Creek's first album, since I've been meaning to listen to them for ages. This marks the first official time I have ever purchased an album calling itself country. However, listening to it, I find it definitely upholds the Alexander James Adams Principle of Celtic and Country Music, to wit: same music, different whiskey. ;)

Dara and I are planning our assault on Folklife this weekend and we are for once actually looking at doing three of the four days. We definitely want to hit the Celtic Band Scramble on Saturday, but there are things that interest us quite a bit on Sunday and Monday as well. I'm thinkin', a great big (not to be confused with Great Big) glorious burst of Folklife just before surgery should be a good way to get ready.

And, it has occurred to me that as I am about to be lying flat on my ass for two weeks, I can finally read Deathly Hallows.

And have another Movie Suckoff. Because there will be another Movie Suckoff, oh my yes.

Last but most definitely not least: tomorrow night, JONES. Meeting casirafics and mamishka for the midnight show at the Cinerama, and there will be much fangirling. What can I say. There are only a few people in the world that can really get me to fangirl, but Harrison Ford is one of them.

And, just because I haven't done this in ages, here's an exercise update as well. I am now on my way back to Hobbiton!

Miles since April 5th: 107.6
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2863.8
Miles out of Minas Tirith: 26.8
Miles to Hobbiton: 1598.2

ETA 10:42pm: Oh yes, I forgot to mention: my Ubuntu VM problem has been solved thanks to help from blargh. The issue seemed to be that VMWare was confused by my machine's having both a CD-ROM and DVD drive, and when I changed the VM settings to tell it not to auto-detect a drive, it started behaving. So now I have a functional Ubuntu VM to use as a test platform at work. Go me! And thanks, Traest. :)

Well now, that was fun, and isn't this a new and interesting wrinkle thrown into the universe, eh?

( Spoiler samples in the machine... )

Okay! Not quite as awesome as part 1, but part 2 held up pretty well nonetheless. And, extra bonus WTF-ery in the teaser for next week!

( Spoilers in the transmat... )

Dude! So far, hands down, best episode this season. Excellent Donna mileage, some truly superb lines from the Doctor, the return of yet another classic Who alien race and the first serious appearance of UNIT in the entire New Who series--and Martha! Yay, Martha!

( Turn right for your spoiler destination... )

Yeah, I know I'm a week late getting this one posted, but hey, it's been a busy week, what can I say? And I want to get this one posted before we watch this week's, with the return of Martha!

Picoreview: so far the weakest of the season; its primary virtues are some pretty stunning scenery, a nice bit of character development from Donna, and a little bit of character development for the Doctor, for that matter. But ooh ow the ending...

( Beware the red-eyed spoilers... )

We actually watched this on Sunday evening, but the review post is late due to yesterday's little bit of news joy. Still, though, there are few things that are not improved by the presence of the Doctor.

Unfortunately, Pompeii is one of them. ;) (ETA 4/16/08 9:37am: Removed a "not" here, because ravyngyngvar caught me out on an accidental double negative. Oops. I plead writing this post just before bedtime!)

( Spoilers under the grate... )

Well now, that was just chock full of fun and interesting, now wasn't it?

( I'm from the Health and Spoilers Department... )

Last night spazzkat and I opted to watch The Mist instead of BSG. That was at least at the time the Wrong Decision, given that The Mist's ending absolutely blows.

However, it meant that we also got to watch BSG and the Doctor back to back tonight. Separate posts are forthcoming on both of these. However, this one is for the following Doctor-related PSAs:

1) The Sarah Jane Adventures will be airing starting next week on the Sci-Fi channel!

2) And, apparently the new Doctor season is airing in the States a lot sooner than I'd anticipated. During BSG, I noted an ad for the season premiere on April 18th. So if you don't want to go the Bittorrent route, turns out you don't have to wait too much longer after all.

Yay all around!

It is raining like a crazy raining thing in the Puget Sound area tonight. This is kind of appropriate weather, as I got another rejection on Lament of the Dove today--so this leaves me with one active query still in the air. And that means in turn that I need to get a couple more queries out this weekend. At minimum, I need to hit the next two agents on my list of agents I'm interested in; if I get really ambitious, I'll fling out a couple of paper queries as well. (But I'm not sure I'm going to get that ambitious.)

On a related note, though, I am told by mizkit that the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold contest is absolutely worth the time and money, so I will be preparing Lament to head in that direction over this weekend as well. I figure at minimum, I'm willing to put down the entry fee if it'll get me an interesting critique. More than that would, of course, be cake.

On the good side, though, I had lunch with casirafics today, and we writer-geeked, and fandom-geeked, and expressed our mutual pleasure over the resumption of Battlestar Galactica tonight and Doctor Who tomorrow. Tasty truffles were purchased from the Dilettante Cafe after. Mine were eaten on the way back to work. Yum. ;)

Meanwhile, I will be making a pilgrimage to Dusty Strings tomorrow to finally get a replacement D string for my bouzouki, and hopefully also, replacement tuning pegs for the guitar. And solarbird and I want to practice some on the Meg Davis song "Elf Glade" we've been playing in Jam, which should be fun.

And there will be BSG, and the Doctor, and spazzkat has The Mist in on the Netflix queue, and that should be fun to watch tomorrow night. There are also rumors of a musical outing on Sunday afternoon; more on this on Sunday.

Tonight, though, I'll be enjoying my reunion with my and Dara's TV girlfriend, Starbuck!

Miles since (holy crap, has it really been this long since I did an exercise update?) January 13th: 171.7
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2756.2
Miles out of the Morannon: 39.2
Miles to Minas Tirith: 80.8

First up: someone does a LOLCutter on elfquest, and lo, it is the Win.

Second: the 2008 Hugo nominations are out! I haven't actually read any of the contenders for Best Novel this year, though I am eying the Scalzi and the Stross, to be sure. And I must also admit that I looked at the blurb on Rollback in the store, and the concept sounded interesting. I may well indeed have to check out the reviews going around on these books.

However, I'd like to call your all's attention to the delightful list of contenders for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form:

Battlestar Galactica "Razor" Written by Michael Taylor Directed by Félix Enríquez Alcalá and Wayne Rose (Sci Fi Channel) (televised version, not DVD)

Doctor Who "Blink" Written by Stephen Moffat Directed by Hettie Macdonald (BBC)

Doctor Who "Human Nature" / "Family of Blood" Written by Paul Cornell Directed by Charles Palmer (BBC)

Star Trek New Voyages "World Enough and Time" Written by Michael Reaves & Marc Scott Zicree Directed by Marc Scott Zicree (Cawley Entertainment Co. and The Magic Time Co.)

Torchwood "Captain Jack Harkness" Written by Catherine Tregenna Directed by Ashley Way (BBC Wales)

I am particularly delighted by the Doctor Who squareoff, and am hopeful that paulcornell2 will score the win despite the excellent competition from Mr. Moffat--just because a) Mr. Cornell is awesome, and b) as I gushed before, David Tennant's performance in that two-parter was incredible.

However, I am genuinely unsure whether either of these will pull ahead of the competition!

And last but not least, Juno says no on Faerie Blood, but this was another favorable rejection, purely a "not to my taste" thing. I can deal with that. Now I'll just have to figure out where else I have left to send this one while I'm querying Lament of the Dove; DAW's most likely. We'll see.

I finally remembered, since I have a few moments, to check the official BSG site for when Season 4 premieres. And in nice large red letters, it says up there that Season 4 commences on April 4th!

That's two weeks from now, folks--and, as it happens, the exact same weekend that Doctor Who kicks back in as well. The Doctor will be IN on April 5th.

That weekend should, accordingly, rock.

Watching Fourth Doctor episodes with Leela for the first time since I started paying active attention to Doctor Who put me quite in the mood to pick up my housemate's copy of Psi-ence Fiction, by Chris Boucher, a Fourth Doctor and Leela adventure. I am not, however, entirely sure of what I got for my reading effort.

The dialogue and interaction between most of the characters, I have to admit--threw me. This includes the interactions between the Doctor and Leela, too. There is an overall sense of disconnectedness to it, for reasons which are actually pertinent to the plot; yet, something about Mr. Boucher's writing style didn't quite make it work for me. At least, during the first half of the book. I'll grant that towards the end, it started coming together better and feeling more like a Doctor Who story.

I was further hampered by not liking most of the cast members du jour very much. Most of the characters are students who clearly don't like each other very much, and who, as a consequence, are always sniping at one another. As a reader, then, I had very little opportunity to find anything to like about any of them. Hands down, the strongest character in the plot is Leela--and then mostly in the contrast between her primitive view of the universe and the modern-day university setting she and the Doctor visit. There's something delightfully surreal about primitive Leela trying to interact with a parapsychology professor and his students, and there are moments in an otherwise erratically paced plot where that works quite well.

The last issue I had with the story is the biggest, though: I felt it was a cop-out, since the Doctor doesn't actually get to be the one to resolve the problem at all. To have that just when the book was finally coming together for me threw it off the rails at the last minute. So ultimately, I'm giving this one two stars.

Snurched off of the Fandom Lounge community over on JournalFen, I bring you tw_babiez. As the JF poster asserted, this is indeed better than the actual program. ;>

The first book of my 2008 book log (note the shift in icons to designate these posts!) is another Doctor Who novel: The Last Dodo, by Jacqueline Rayner. I'd previously read and enjoyed her The Stone Rose, so I wanted to give her another shot. This one's a Ten-Martha--but I have to halfway wonder whether Rayner just has a preference for Ten-Rose, or perhaps just a better grasp of Rose, because she didn't seem to get Martha quite right at all for me.

Which is a shame, because there's a big chunk of this book that's from Martha's point of view, so there was plenty of opportunity to delve into her as a character. Thing is, much of Martha's sections were actually in first person--and Rayner gives her a voice that comes across as a bit too ditzy and teenager-y for the young woman we see on the show, especially given that Martha's supposed to be a medical student after all. And this is related to the book's other major issue: it really needed another edit pass or two. The Martha sections alternated between first and third person for no apparent reason, and to have a first person Martha section immediately followed by a third person was quite jarring. So was the one occurrence I found where two short paragraphs were repeated one right after the other on a page.

This is not to say it wasn't a fun read, though. The concept was pretty basic; SF/F has certainly seen the concept of a mad collector trying to get the last one of every extinct species into a zoo before. This time around, the collector in question trying to corner the last Time Lord certainly has some potential for interest--though this wasn't explored nearly as deeply as I'd hoped. Still, the Doctor reacting to and sympathizing with all the trapped creatures rings true for him as a character, and even if Rayner's grasp on Martha is kind of shaky, she's good and solid on the Doctor. Two and a half stars.