Shannon

Dude. I am writing this epic short story right now. I actually didn't set out meaning to either. See, I'm trying to either work with or officially discard all of my ideas I've had kicking around for ages now and one of those is what this story started out as. Initially, it was a poem but I realized that I just had way too many ideas to cram into a poem. So then I started a story which I got about three pages into before completely overhauling. Right now it's sitting at five pages and I'd say I'm maybe halfway done with it though I feel like I could possibly go way longer. See, I realized that I've actually had these characters in my head for ages now and it just took me vomiting out a few lines onto a page to remember every single thing about them. And now I've got a ridiculously fleshed-out main character, with an entire detailed back story, from two half-assed stanzas of a poem. It is craziness. But it also makes sense. I think I've been wanting to write this story for a long time. I was just afraid to tackle it because, well, I'll say this much about it: the main character is deaf. And I have next to no first hand experience with what it is like to be deaf so I'm kind of winging it and hoping it rings true. It's also in the present tense which I very rarely do these days (okay, that's a lie, a lot of my recent poems and short stories are in present tense but, somehow, this feels different though I can't pinpoint how), especially at such length, but it's working really, really well. It's giving it an interesting vibe. I am excited. But I think I have to stop for now because I am exhausted. Hopefully, though, I can get the rest of it out before I run out of steam.

Also, speaking of writing, I've been working on my NaNo novel a lot recently after leaving it alone for awhile and that's going pretty well too. Of course, at the moment, it's been pushed to the side for this current story but not for lack of ideas or drive. I think I'll be able to jump right back into it when the time comes. The only problem is that, at this point, I'm pretty much writing it back to front. As in, I have a very solid beginning that I wrote in November and a nearly solid ending that I've been writing over the past few weeks but a practically non-existent middle. So we shall see how that all resolves itself. Right now, I have to go to bed or something. Though I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep. I feel all jittery and exhilarated now.

Here's a little something to thank you for your time. I dunno. I watched this episode the other day and died laughing at this bit, though I didn't remember it from my first viewings at all. It probably works better if, you know, you actually understand what's going on. It's just the Doctor being his usual nerdy, over-analyzing, awkward self.

Here we are, the rest of the movies I watched this year, to go along with the ones already posted here. And also the television series/documentaries/whatever the hell else I watched. Woo! I clearly have too much time on my hands.

( I watched less movies in the second half of the year. )

( TV shows can be cool too. )

So. Let's talk weight loss for a moment. I've been trying to lose weight since April (I'm not going to say I'm on a diet because I'm trying to change the way I eat/exercise for life, not just until I lose all the weight I want to). I've posted about it a couple times here but not much. Mostly because the Internet is my way to escape from what's going on in real life for awhile so I don't like to talk about stuff like that here. But it's almost the end of the year so I figured this was a good time to take a look at my progress.

( Ohai, I will share pictures even though I don't want to. )

I'm working on prepping my albums of the year list for my music blog right now and it's proving to be a rather tiring task. I finally just got my top twenty ordered how I want to and I think I'm happy with all of the albums I decided to put there. At least I hope I am because I refuse to change it any more; otherwise I'll never be finished. Though I keep discovering albums I should have listened to that I'm just now getting around to checking out. Ugh. But I have to draw the line somewhere. I made one last-minute inclusion that I just fell in love with a week or so ago and it's pretty hard to compare how I feel about an album I just heard versus one I've had for months so I'll just have to deal with it and accept that a year from now, there will be albums I wish I would have put in there that I didn't. So. Yeah. Right now, I am writing all of the little reviews which, I swear, every year I say, "Oh, I'm not going to bother writing long reviews this year. Just a few sentences." But then I start writing and just can't fucking stop! No matter how I try! So I think I'm writing more this year than ever. Even for the fucking honorable mentions! I just can't seem to shut up! Anyway. Hopefully, that will be done before 2010 is too far gone or maybe before it's even ended. But don't count on that, I'll probably procrastinate for at least a couple more weeks.

As I am doing right now by posting another Alpha update, woo! But there hasn't been one in awhile and I'm still impossibly behind (seriously, as soon as I start to catch up to where I am in the game here I get re-obsessed with playing and end up way ahead again) so it's a reasonable form of procrastination. Besides, I already had this stuff all written, I just had to copy and paste all the text and image links in and voila! Finished! I've still got another ready after this too so I might post that in a bit as well. Anyway. Right now, I seriously still have no clue who I'm going to pick for heir! Gah! SPOILER ALERT: I've already decided it will probably be one of the twins but choosing which one is the hard part! I was leaning towards Bree because she's awesome. Then I was leaning towards both of them because Brendan is also awesome. Then I was leaning towards Brendan because Bree found herself a super-boring boyfriend. Now I'm leaning towards both of them again because I found her a better boyfriend. AAAAAHHHH! IT'S SO DIFFICULT!!!

Also, as you can see, I've kind of given up on the "last time" intros because I figure it's just as easy to go back and look at the previous entries. And, besides, no one reads this anyway so it doesn't really matter!

Oh my God, you have no idea how excited I am to get to the more recent updates because the twins that are born in this one are seriously unbelievably freaking amazing, guys. I thought Bianca was my chosen one after she grew up into a child and though she is adorable, she kind of looks a lot like Amelia with red hair at times and the twins have a more balanced combination of Amelia and Alessa's features and FUCK THEY'RE JUST SO AWESOME. Okay. Anyway. I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's take a step a bit further back first.


I've still been exploring the Sims 3 a bit and though there are things about it that amuse/entertain me, I think it's kind of deathly boring. First of all, one of my favorite things to do in Sims 2 is spy on townies at community lots and see what antics they get up to so I thought it would be even more awesome with the whole open neighborhood thing. Wrong. Basically, all they do is stand around like idiots or complain about how they're starving to death without doing anything to remedy it and so because of these two things, they never actually socialize at all. Which brings me to my second annoyance. IT TAKES SO FREAKING LONG FOR THEM TO DO ANYTHING! Seriously, it takes hours to have a conversation that should take minutes because the Sims stand around for ages before actually starting to talk. It's like this with any kind of action and it is so aggravating. Thirdly, it's just tedious. I feel like all of my Sim's time is spent working or sleeping and she has hardly any time to do anything extra. Okay, so obviously judging from these pictures, she does have time for some other things. But still. Everything takes so incredibly long and they day seems so short. So I don't think I'm going to be switching permanently anytime soon. Maybe I'll still play a bit when I get bored with the legacy but I can't see myself getting really invested in it or anything. Anyway, the following mostly consists of Felicity's quest to hook a man. Enjoy.

So... I bought a laptop! Really, the thing I wanted it for most was just so that I could work on my writing while away from our desktop computer (because I have officially become too lazy to actually write things out by hand... isn't that so sad?). But I spent quite a bit of time comparing a few different ones before deciding which to buy because I was hoping I might be able to use it to play Sims too. So I was very careful to get one with what I hoped was a compatible video card. Anyway, I got the laptop yesterday and installed the base game last night and it works! And the graphics actually seem just about as good as they are on our desktop which makes me really happy! Since it was only the base game I couldn't transfer over my current Sims yet so I played around in Veronaville and gave a few of the Maxis Sims there makeovers. The guys were all mostly pretty blah, even after making them over. The girls turned out better because makeup can do wonders (especially since it seemed the Maxis idiots decided every female in that neighborhood should have practically non-existent lips, WTF?!?). So here are a couple pictures just to prove that Sims does in fact run on my laptop! Sorry for the somewhat crunchy quality. I had to use the in-game camera.

Juliette Capp:


Hermia Capp:


Tybalt Capp (Okay, at first I looked at him thought, Holy crap, this poor guy has the most unfortunate facial structure EVER. But then I made him over and he suddenly got hot. Like really hot. Hotter than a pixel person should ever be allowed to be. I kind of love him now and want someone to have his babies RIGHT NOW!):



Titania Summerdream (who I think is adorable - that tiny nose!):


Anyway, God, I haven't played the base game in so long that I forgot some of its annoyances: custom content can't be subfoldered (though apparently default replacements can so it took me forever to figure out why they showed up and everything else didn't), when the Sim changes clothes with the closet it just shows one outfit at a time instead of thumbnails of them all, either the Sim calling the taxi or the entire household must leave for a community lot - you can't pick and choose who stays and goes, you go to the neighborhood screen once you leave the family's lot and pick a community lot from there (I remembered this was how it was in the first Sims but I didn't think it ever was in Sims 2)... and many more things I'm sure I can't remember right now.

So now that it works I have to go through a lot of hassle to get everything running perfectly. If I want to play the Alphas on there (which I think I do since I don't want to start even more new families and forget about them) I first have to go through the tedious process of installing every expansion/stuff pack then installing all the patches then transferring all my custom content/Sim information over from this computer. And then hoping that it all works still. My laptop has 2GB of memory and our desktop has 3 so the thing I'm most concerned about is how smoothly it will run. It works fine with just the base game but each expansion makes it more and more of a memory hog, I do believe. But I think it'll be easy enough to add more memory if I need it. It's just the money that's the difficult part.

Speaking of money, what the fuck, this laptop is going to bankrupt me. Seriously. First of all, the laptop itself was a little over $400 which is a really, really good price considering my sister's cost somewhere around twice that. Granted, mine's not the newest, shiniest model and doesn't have all the extras like a webcam and so forth but it's good enough for me. But then there's all the things I want now to go with the laptop. I just bought a new USB flash drive because mine looks like it's going to break soon and only holds like 500MB worth of stuff. I also just bought a cheap little mouse because I cannot seem to get the hang of using the touch pad the way I want to in the Sims. See, since I take so many pictures, I have to be able to get very precise, perfect angles which is very, very difficult with the touch pad. Maybe I'm just missing something obvious but it's easier for me with a mouse. And it was like ten bucks (on sale + promotion code, woohoo!) so no biggie. So I've spent like $450 altogether so far. But then I kind of want a new external hard drive because I think I actually bought mine a few years ago that holds 70GB for the same price or maybe more than you can get a 500GB one for now and I'm getting close to running out of a room. That's not a very necessary purchase right now but I would like to do it at some point. Then there's the memory if I need that. Then... it's really uncomfortable to sit on my bed with a laptop for an extended period of time so I want a desk. GAH. WHEN WILL IT EVER END?!?

Anyway, I'm rambling. I should go. I'm going to go distract myself with getting together all the things I need to install Sims instead of working on my novel. But that's okay. I'm up to 35000-some words now so I think I can slack off a little bit.

P.S. This is the most adorable/awesome thing in the entire world, I swear. I love that this part of the song is like an epic indie rock dance party.




Also, these lyrics are not in the part of that song featured in the video but I am so in love with them right now. <3 <3 <3

It seems I got it wrong.
I was chasing after something that was gone
to the black of night.
Now I know it's not what I wanted at all.

And you said something like
All you want is all the world for yourself
But all I want is the perfect love,
Though I know it's small,
I want love for us all.

And not just the lyrics but Sufjan + Shara Worden singing together there, oh my goodness, totally amazing. And also the very end of that song breaks my heart. And "Futile Devices". And the "Oh bathing boy/Amazing you" bit in "All for Myself". And this part in "Vesuvius" - "Sufjan, follow the path, it leads to an article of imminent death/Sufjan, follow your heart, follow the flames or fall on the floor/Sufjan, the panic inside, the murdering ghost that you cannot ignore" - gives me major chills. And also "I'm not fucking around" in "I Want to Be Well". And the "I love you a lot/I love you from the top of my heart" section of "All Delighted People". And and and. And I'm just totally crushing on Sufjan in general right now. Kbai.

NEW STORY ALERT: ON LIVING, LOVING AND LETTING GO

You may remember these two stories that I wrote several months ago. At the same time, I started a third story to follow after them but then either got uninspired or distracted by something else newer and shinier (both equally likely) and gave it up for awhile. Over the past week or so, I've finally been able to force myself to finish what I started. Now don't be fooled by the length of this; the week hasn't been quite as productive as it may seem considering I wrote probably 60% of this in some form all those months ago. True, much of that 60% was mangled, outright deleted or given a major face lift and the whole thing grew into a much larger piece than I anticipated it would but it's not like I cranked the entire thing out from scratch in seven days. I'm not quite that good - not now anyway; there probably have been times in the past where I could have accomplished that.

Anyway, a few notes on the story's contents. I realized after I was almost completely done that it seemed to split naturally into a few distinct sections, probably for several reasons: the fact that I've been working on it over such a long period of time and therefore some sections have a very different tone and style than others, the fact that one section is written in a deliberately different style and tone, the subject matter itself and the way the main character changes with each major transition. Because of these splits, I was having trouble deciding how to lay out the story stylistically. While I was contemplating this, I began thinking of song lyrics that would fit different parts and decided that would be a good idea. So the story is not meant to specifically follow the songs or the entire songs the story; just those small pieces seemed to fit perfectly in and also served as a good way to bridge each transition. The songs used are Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life, The Antlers - Epilogue, Joanna Newsom - Does Not Suffice, Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous, and Maria Taylor - Orchids. I also used one line from Good Things by Sleater-Kinney in the second part. So all credit where credit is due there.

As for my own personal opinion of how the story turned out, I'm mostly happy with it but not entirely. It had been so long since I wrote most of it that I had trouble getting back inside the character's head again and there might be some slight inconsistencies because of that. I really tried to avoid them but I'm not sure I succeeded. Also, if you look back at the other stories, there are certain ideas here that kind of unintentionally mirror those. Of course there are the more obvious references and elaborations carried over from the other two but I also realized partway through that a lot of what the female character here says about feeling like the male character has become a completely different person and has started pushing her away is very similar to what he feels about her. I thought this ended up working out rather nicely because it makes sense that they would both be feeling similarly but can't tell this to each other or figure out how to resolve these feelings. As far as things I don't like go, I do like the train station scenario seen again from her perspective but I also feel like it's slightly out-of-place style-wise. I wrote it in more of the style of the first two stories and then continued to write this one in a less sparse, more detailed style and so I'm not sure how I feel about it in context of everything else. But the one thing I'm mostly unhappy with is the final part, the phone conversation, which I didn't quite manage to do what I wanted to with. But I've re-read it several times and can't really think of how to change it for the better without drastically overhauling it and at this point, I'm not invested enough in the story to do that, so it'll have to be alright as is. I don't think it's terrible, I just... wanted it to go somewhere else though I can't really say exactly where that was. But I wanted to give both the characters a reasonably happy and complete-feeling ending because I most likely won't be coming back to them again.

So, one unfinished project down... still several more left. I'm going to keep working at them and see if I can get some more finished up, preferably in the near future.

OMG, I just read this review of a Sufjan Stevens show from a couple nights ago and was like HOLY CRAP I NEED TO SEE HIM LIVE so I go look at his tour dates and it turns out he was in Michigan FUCKING TONIGHT. WTFFFFFF?!?!?!? I hope he tours more in support of this album because it sounds like it is fucking phenomenal live. And it's basically all I've been listening to with any consistency lately. That and various other Sufjan songs, because I'm still trying to get into his back catalog and really loving some songs, but I'm just not feeling any other album as much as I do the stuff he's released this year. Oh, also, I've been listening a lot to Hospice by the Antlers these past few days. I listened to this last year around when it was released and thought it was insanely boring and couldn't even remember five minutes later what any of it sounded like. But since it seems so universally loved, I decided to check it out again and I had it sitting on my mp3 player and "Sylvia" came up on shuffle and I loved it so I listened to the whole album and now I'm kind of obsessed. Strangely enough, it's not nearly as quiet and reserved and simplistic overall as I remembered it being. And it's ridiculously emotional and devastating. I didn't know that it was all supposed to tell a story before but now that I do, guh, it's so much more depressing. The whole album kind of makes me hurt inside in a really good way. Back to Sufjan, "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." is a song that does that to me as well. It like... actually makes my stomach feel strange and queasy because it's just so upsetting and chilling but it's so damn good that I can't help but subject myself to the horror over and over again. Those last few lines kill me: "And in my best behavior/I am really just like him/Look beneath the floorboards/For the secrets I have hid." HOLY SHIT SO CREEPY. And his falsetto on the "oh my god" and "on the mouth" bits, asdkjfdgklweutgjskldgja, IT KILLS ME, KILLS ME! SUFJAN, HOW ARE YOU SUCH A FUCKING MUSICAL GENIUS?!? Seriously, he is so damn brilliant that he actually makes me love and sing along shamelessly to a song that tells me to "get real, get right with the Lord." I don't agree with it but, fuck it, it's just so ridiculously catchy. Damn, I even love "Djohariah" to death now and the first time I heard it I'm like, "No way am I sitting through about twelve minutes of guitar noodling every time I listen to this EP." But now that looooooong build-up to the part of the song with actual real lyrics seems so epic and cathartic to me that it's like as close to a fucking religious experience that a non-religious person can get. IT'S AMAZING, OKAY?!?

Alrighty then... I am clearly past the point of no return with this obsession because I am using excessive curse words to get across my point and I can't even say one bad thing about any of his music anymore. But I don't even care. IT IS SO GLORIOUS. SUFJAN IS LIKE A MUSICAL GOD AND I DON'T EVEN CARE IF HE WOULD TAKE OFFENSE TO 
THAT DESCRIPTION, OKAY.

Bye now.

SMH right now at this. I'm ashamed such idiocy is taking place in my home state. It's just sad. There are no more words beyond that to describe it.





Grr. Now I am going to try to go to bed and not focus on being angry at humanity.