Holy shit.

Jan. 7th, 2011 01:06 am
stillonmystring: (Default)
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.

stillonmystring: (Default)
Sadly, I didn't read that many last year compared to other years. This list says 25. Shelfari says I read 30 but that includes a few re-reads. I'm going to try to read a lot more this year, at least 50. Only a few of these have comments because... I'm weird like that, okay?

1. Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake ★★★★★
2. Jonathan Lethem - Motherless Brooklyn ★★★
3. Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood ★★★★¾
4. Flannery O'Connor - The Complete Stories ★★★★½
5. Bret Easton Ellis - American Psycho ★★★½
6. Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay ★★★★½
7. Milan Kundera - The Book of Laughter and Forgetting ★★★¾
8. Ken Kesey - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ★★★★★
9. Francesca Lia Block - How to (Un)cage a Girl ★★★
10. Elizabeth Bowen - The Last September ★★★
11. Siri Hustvedt - The Sorrows of an American ★★★★★
12. Dirk Wittenborn - Fierce People ★★★★
13. Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here ★★★★
14. Michael Cunningham - The Hours ★★★★★
15. Virginia Woolf - The Waves ★★★★★ (I just have to say about this, I absolutely hated To the Lighthouse when I read it last year, so much that I couldn't bring myself to read anything else of hers for a long time. But The Hours inspired me to try her out again and I was very surprised, and pleasantly so, to adore this book right from the beginning. The language was almost painfully beautiful and at the same time so effortless-seeming. To me, it read very differently than To the Lighthouse but, who knows, maybe I was just in the wrong place to read that at the time and might love it if I try it again.)16. Nicole Krauss - The History of Love ★★★★
17. A.L. Kennedy - Everything You Need ★★¾
18. John Connolly - The Book of Lost Things ★★★¾
19. Tove Jansson - The True Deceiver ★★★½
20. Francesca Lia Block - The Waters and the Wild ★★★★ (Best book FLB has written since Ruby though it was way too short. However, I see that two of her latest novels are about vampires and werewolves. And apparently they're not very good. Ugh, bandwagon-jumping much? I expect better from her.)
21. Jane Green - Bookends ★★ (I know this is chick lit and it's not meant to be a piece of literary genius or anything but I thought it was horribly written, even by those standards. The prose style was so unappealing and messy. A shame because I actually rather liked a few of the characters - though I detested the main character by the end - and the story could have been really interesting if in more capable hands.)
22. Poppy Z. Brite - Exquisite Corpse ★★★★½ (OMG, so sick and disturbing but so oddly addictive. I couldn't put it down. I'm not sure what that says about how twisted my own mind is but... yeah. Also, I was surprised how eloquently written this was for a horror/gore/whatever-exactly-it-is novel. The descriptions were so grisly yet so strangely beautiful at the same time.)
23. Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games ★★★
24. John Connolly - The Gates ★★½
25. Suzanne Collins - Catching Fire ★★★★★ (So I thought the first book was good but not great enough to live up to the hype but now I have to take that back because holy hell, I loved this one! I read it in record time because I literally could not put it down. Now I'm excited/nervous to see how it all wraps up. I've heard some not so favorable opinions of the end so we shall see...)
stillonmystring: (bright star)
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. )
stillonmystring: (Default)
So, the Doctor Who Christmas special. It was pretty good. Fluffy and non-sensical but fun. My biggest complaint about it: not enough Amy and Rory. But mostly not enough Rory.

In more exciting news, however...


OMG THE NEW SERIES LOOKS EPIC AND AMAZING AND AWESOME AND... AAAAHHHHH!!!!!

"I'm going to need... a pot of coffee, twelve jammy dodgers, and a FEZ!"
"I wear a Stetson now. Stetsons are cool." *River shoots Stetson off Doctor's head*

ASHGLSKHSGHLSGHLJGEIWGHSDGKHGKS!!!!!!!!!!!!11111!!!!!!!!

I am loving all of the references to the fez because that was obviously, like, the most awesome DW moment EVER.

WHY ISN"T IT APRIL YET?!??!?!?
stillonmystring: (Default)
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. )
stillonmystring: (speak my name and i appear)
stillonmystring: (faster and faster i should run)
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!

stillonmystring: (six inches forward five inches back)
OMG, I really want to see Rabbit Hole. Basically because, hello, John Cameron Mitchell is awesome but it just looks really good in general. It doesn't get a wide release until January, apparently, and I don't even know if it will make it all the way over here but I hope it does. Also, I need to watch Hedwig and the Angry Inch again sometime soon. "The Origin of Love" came up on shuffle the other day after I hadn't heard it for awhile and I had to listen to it three more times because, holy crap, so awesome. <3 <3 <3

Anyway, I feel like a massive dork because all I post about here lately is the Sims. But. It's a good thing to distract me when I'm feeling stressed out which I have been lately. Between finishing NaNo (I made it about 500 words past 50k. I could have gotten more but I didn't want to force it if I didn't have to and it wasn't coming very naturally anymore. I'm still nowhere near done with the story and I do intend to work on it more and hopefully finish it someday but I need to take a long break first.), trying to study and memorize math concepts that I haven't had to use in years (I'm taking the ACT next weekend which I should have done a long time ago but, alas, I didn't so I'm doing it now.) and hitting a bit of a plateau with my weight loss (I really need to stop eating so much crap but stress also makes me eat which sucks because eating too much makes me stressed too so it's an endless vicious cycle.), I've got a lot of stressful things I need to be distracted from. Just for a little while. So that I don't go completely crazy by trying to focus on them 24/7. Anyway. The point is, yes, I'm going to post about Sims again. And it's even lamer than usual. You were warned.

CUT FOR MASSIVE LAMENESS. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR ME TALK ABOUT THE SIMS LIKE REAL LIFE GET OUT NOW! )
stillonmystring: (faster and faster i should run)
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.

stillonmystring: (Default)
I need to catch up to where I'm at in the game right now because I feel like this all happened centuries ago. For that very reason, this update isn't very humorous or even entertaining at all. Sorry about that. Hopefully they will get better as I get closer to my current place. (Also, holy crap, I feel like it's taking me forever to get through generations. I feel like generation three has been never-ending, arrrgh. Not that I don't like this generation. I'm just ready for some new faces.)


P.S. So I installed the Sims 3. For no other reason than I just figured I should and some of the features actually sounded kind of cool and a couple of the expansion packs sound neat. I haven't got any of those yet. So far I've just played a bit with the basegame and I'm not too terribly impressed. Of course I haven't been able to do much yet either. I like the idea of the seamless neighborhood with no loading times to get to community lots but the way it's implemented... eh, I don't know. It's not all that exciting so far. And I'm still not in love with the way the Sims look though I'm hoping to fix that a bit with default replacements and the like. Really, I'd just like to keep the look and feel of the Sims 2 and smush it together with a few of the features of the Sims 3, mainly the traits system and the ability to repattern and recolor everything to your freaking heart's content (seriously, I spent so long in CAS perfecting my Sim's outfits/hair it was ridiculous) and the way it seems to be less focused on obsessive-compulsively keeping your Sims' needs filled. Another thing I dislike about it though is that the days seem unbelievably short which I think is because it takes a ridiculous amount of time for a Sim to complete a task. Seriously, half of my Sim's days are just spent standing around thinking about doing something but not actually doing it until she's good and ready. Argh. This might be because she's insane and neurotic (and a vegetarian! I do really love the whole traits thing) but I think it's a broader issue too. Anyway. It'll probably grow on me. One thing that most certainly entertained me was watching my insane Sim talk to herself. The faces are hilarious. So hilarious I took way too many pictures of them.

Because this post needs more picspam, right? )

P.P.S. Ugh. I am so burnt out on writing right now. There are six days left in the month and I've got less than 3000 words to write to get to 50k but I'm feeling so uninspired at the moment. I probably will be able to crank a few thousand more out to reach the goal but the story will still be far from finished and I think I need to take a break from it for awhile because I'm starting to have trouble figuring out my characters completely. I know I shouldn't be disappointed but I am just because I look at what I have done and I look at where I plan to finish eventually and it still seems impossibly far off. Bleh.
stillonmystring: (brittany bats her pretty eyelashes)
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.
stillonmystring: (Default)

I am trying to post these all at once so I don't have an urge to procrastinate with the Sims next month because in two days, I've kind of decided I want to attempt NaNoWriMo for real. I know I said earlier I was going to use it instead to work on my current "novel" (which I have worked on a bit in the last few days so it's not like I've forgotten about it!) but I've been thinking about trying to write something brand new because the whole concept of the month is so totally opposite to my usual approach to writing (aka laboriously editing each and every sentence ten times before I move on to the next, leaving a story half-finished for months on end, etc.) that I think it will be a good exercise for me. So over about two days I've come up with a kind of partially-realized plot (I've got lots of characters, I'm good at those, I'm not as good at giving them interesting things to do for an extended length of time) and summarized some ideas that should at least give me a good start. We'll see how well it all turns out in the end. And I really don't want to say too much about it until I've finished or come close to finishing because I don't want to embarrass myself by spilling all the details and then failing. And I probably won't actually share it with the world until I've had much time to edit it after November is over because that's just how I roll and I don't think I can change that. Also, I've kind of chosen a setting which I have rather limited knowledge on so considering I can't adequately research that kind of thing in a couple of days, I imagine I'll be plugging a lot of that stuff in later too. I'm just trying to write the basics for now and worry about specifics later. Wish me luck!
stillonmystring: (jenny taking down fernando)

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.
stillonmystring: (Default)
Last time: More sibling rivalry, lots of teenage sex, Tally as a *gasp* old person, RIP Piggy, Amelia pwned basically everyone and oh yeah, Adrian and Ambrose grew up and moved out while August grew up and got to stay in the house for a little extra fun, mostly due to his super-cute girlfriend, Dollie, and also to make up for all of those years of torture at his sister's hands.

A note: I think my abuse of all caps and profanity becomes more of a problem with each post. Just saying.

stillonmystring: (speak my name and i appear)
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.
stillonmystring: (faster and faster i should run)
Hello. So. Sorry about the squee-fest last night. Sometimes, I just need to get that sort of thing out and I like to do it here so that when I get around to posting to my music blog it actually sounds semi-professional and not like I'm five years old. I also apologize for this because I'm about to do it again, just for a moment. But this:

When I try to move my arms sometimes,
they weigh too much to lift.
I think you buried me awake
(my one and only parting gift).


KILLS ME.

And this:

When your helicopter came and tried to lift me out,
I put its rope around my neck
and after that, you didn't bother with the airlift or the rescue;
you knew just what to expect.


TOTALLY KILLS ME. KILLS ME COMPLETELY DEAD. MY GOD. HOW MUCH MORE DEPRESSING CAN YOU GET?!?

Ahem.

Anyway. The actual point of this post is to talk about my latest writing endeavors. Which have been few and far between because the creative portion of my brain seems to be half-dead right now. But I'm trying to work past it. Last night and this morning, I managed to finish the next chapter of my longish-though-I-don't-really-know-how-long story which is here. Granted, it didn't really involve a lot of actual writing, just lots of word-switching and phrase-changing and maybe a few brand new sentences here and there, but I need to ease myself back into the process slowly. Now that I've got that done I'm going to try to do something more substantial. There are a lot of options right now. I still have about three half-finished short stories, along with one I've recently sort of halfheartedly started (I'm not feeling halfhearted about the story itself, just the trying to get down on paper what works so well in my head), not to mention the many ideas I still have sitting around that haven't progressed past a couple sentences. I also have, of course, the major story, which I have lots of bits and pieces of finished but a lot to fill in between those bits. So I've been thinking: next month is National Novel Writing Month and, while I'm not going to promise myself I'll write a whole freaking novel in that time (because I know me and it probably won't happen, especially if I'm forcing it), I think it might be a good idea to use it to progress as far as possible with that story as I can in that time. So, until then, I'm going to try to wrap up some of my less ambitious pieces. Honestly, they really don't need that much more work to be finished; it's just that I get stuck on one particular section and can't seem to get back into the groove again. But I am going to try. Because I hate when I go through these periods of never being able to write. And if I ever want to achieve the pipe dream of being a legitimate, published author someday I definitely have to learn how to force myself to be more disciplined and consistent. So, yes. I should probably wrap this up and go write something proper, shouldn't I?

P.S. HOW DO YOU LIKE THIS FIERCE JANELLE MONAE USERPIC?!? FABULOUS, I KNOW.
stillonmystring: (Default)
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.
stillonmystring: (speak my name and i appear)
Last time: Amelia became a fabulous and fierce and, okay, maybe slightly full of herself teenager who promptly took to terrorizing her brother, Adrian, to show him just how much more awesome than him she truly is. Ambrose also was so overtaken with sibling rivalry towards Adrian that he punched clean through a door to get to him. I'm not sure what they've got against the poor kid, apart from the fact that he is, sadly, much more boring than the two of them. In the meantime, Adam became an adult and moved out, August tried and failed to skip school and pissed off the ever-cranky Piggy by trying to clean up her literal pigsty of a living area and Tally and Royce, unsurprisingly, pretty much just acted like children and pretended like their actual children didn't exist. And, did I mention, Amelia is fucking awesome? Because she totally is.

stillonmystring: (Default)
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.
stillonmystring: (out in the club and i'm sipping that bub)
Last time: Stuff happened. I posted the last installment over a month ago, give me a break if I can't remember much of it, alright? Just go and see for yourself if you need refreshing.


Well, sadly, I'm in a bit of a Sims rut right now so I don't know how frequent these updates will continue to be. The thing is, I haven't played the Alphas in several weeks but I'm actually much farther in-game than I am in these pictures. So, obviously, I still have a lot I can post without playing but we all know how lazy I can be at times. I'll probably get back into playing them eventually. It's not that I'm bored with them, I'm just bored with the game in general right now. I've even started another household with the intention of doing a random challenge but gave up on that in about five minutes too. Now I'm trying to make it fun again by working on another project. A couple days ago, I randomly decided I wanted to make new Sims to fit my story characters because I don't really like how the old versions look anymore, too cartoony (even though that's kind of the point of the Sims) and my custom content style and the like has just changed quite a bit since then. So I've started that. I've got Eliza finished and I'm pretty happy with the new version. I'll wait to post pictures until I've finished the rest. I'm also thinking about making Sims to match the two main characters of my other long story (though what I should really be doing with my time is actually working on that story, I know). I kind of feel lame doing it but it's also, I think, a good way for me to picture them better in my head, you know? It's almost like having real-life versions of them to go off of. So that's what I'm doing right now. Also, I'm going to put basically all of my Sims besides the Alphas in their neighborhood as townies because I miss them. So that should be fun. Random Newbury sightings galore! Who knows, maybe one of them will actually end up being married in. That would be interesting. Anyway. I'm rambling now. Goodbye.

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Shannon

January 2020

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