OMG, people.

I don't have much in the way of steampunk gear because almost no one makes anything in my size. One of the things I noticeably lack is a coat. In fact, when I went into town yesterday, I did so without a jacket of any kind because it would have ruined the look, and it should be noted that the shirt I had on was sleeveless. In Scotland in the fall. (Though this probably contributed to the nice comments I got.) At any rate...

coats! Coats that are so incredibly awesome and I could only afford as a christmas present!

cgi.ebay.com/UNIQUE-STEAMPUNK-GOTHIC-LONG-LEATHER-GREEN-COAT_W0QQitemZ130340270904QQcmdZViewItemQQptZWomen_s_Clothing

cgi.ebay.com/STEAMPUNK-GOTHIC-IMPERO-FINE-LEATHER-PURPLE-COAT-NEW_W0QQitemZ130340833266QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_CSA_WC_Outerwear

Look at this coat. It's leather and yet ruffled like a dress would be. It looks like a freaking dress on its own!

cgi.ebay.com/IMPERO-LONDON-ARISTOCRAT-STEAMPUNK-LEATHER-TAIL-COAT_W0QQitemZ130340782810QQcmdZViewItemQQptZWomen_s_Clothing

And this is just too perfect for words. The most versatile one they have. If I got one steampunk coat only ever, that'd be the one.

*swoon*

Pretty much, I watch this show because of Oliver Queen/Green Arrow. Hotter than Clark and ten times more interesting.

Unfortunately for the showmakers, Lois and Oliver have considerably more chemistry than Lois and Clark. But given the obvious constraints, the writers can't just follow where the actors are leading them. Which ends up meaning that Ollie gets kicked in the teeth.

Very sad. :(

I do, however, much appreciate the rule they apparently have in place wherein Oliver must appear without a shirt once an episode.

Find your name!

( Meme Results )

Go the The Royal Bank of Scotland for my appointment to open an account.
Add 10 sterling to my cell phone so it works

Be here when FedEx tries to deliver my stuff (whenever that is)
Write up notes or something for Thursday, find book quotations.

Attend first Gaelic class

Miss Peatbog Faeries concert because I am attending Gaelic class

Write part or all of chapter 4 (which is already outlined, so this should not be difficult, me! get with it.)

Work on Nationalism.

Why is it that people ask me for directions, regardless of what city I am in and how long I've been there?

I'd almost like to track someone who's asked down and ask them. Is it how I walk? The way I glance around while walking? Is there something about my face that translates as nonthreatening? Am I somewhere just right on the ugly<->pretty scale that people don't feel the need to avoid me, but I'm not pretty enough to be intimidating?

Clearly it's me, though. Because it happens all the time and everywhere.

I wonder if it's at all related to how from the first day I got here my roommates decided that I was responsible for fixing things and making the appliances work. I mean, really? All they knew was my name, and yet it's my job to keep the flat in working order?

What do people do with the hours at school in which they are not working?

Because I only have 4 classes, and 3 of them are on Wed and Thu. That's a whole lot of unused week!

The flights over were actually quite nice. I flew SAS. They gave me gluten-free food for a more pleasant flight experience. For dinner, this meant baked salmon on long grain and wild rice with rice flour bread and some fruit. And a gluten-free raisin cake. Also had soda and wine, both free. After a lights out period where I was expected to sleep, they came around with hot towels to help you wake up.

Movies viewed: Wolverine, Star Trek, Night at the Museum 2

( Read more... )

The fic wins.

2k words.

Wonder how long this one will end up being. I imagine chapter 1 will come in at around 5k.

I don't have much time to read nowadays, but I've been reading Rebecca Solnit'sA Field Guide to Getting Lost, if for no other reason than that it seems fitting.

That is, after all, what I am about in the next short while. Getting lost. Meandering into unknown territory with only vague optimism and a set of tools that resemble a map to chart a course.

Part of the point is to get lost. Actions and encounters are random. Life progresses on a truly unpredictable course. Even as someone who hasn't done many unpredictable things, the chains of events I've been a part of make it clear that there is only chaos. Not a malicious chaos. Just chaos. And if you want something new, turn up the heat, make the molecules move, and everything will jostle around faster, and there's no choice BUT to start a new and unpredictable chain of events.

You can't choose the outcome. You can only choose to flip a coin, knowing that any result is different from none at all.


So...A Field Guide to Getting Lost. The most amazing thing to me is that Solnit speaks of place, of geography, as a part of the Self in a way that I understand, even if I don't often feel able to articulate. I think people often experience the phenomenon without really noticing it. Or without thinking much about it.

They go away on vacation, and they act a little different. Maybe a little freer. Maybe a little sillier. Maybe a little more romantic. But different. Not the same self who goes to the same job, stops at the same place for coffee, shops in the same stores.

Or they go to visit family, back to the old house, and maybe feel a little less like an adult. Maybe a little more apt to do what they're told. Less likely to be loud. Less likely to speak their mind. Somehow more cowed and controlled being back in the house of someone else rules.

I noticed it at college. I was a little different, walking my streets in my new town. Passing by the tree outside my row house. Being someone who could walk to a 7-Eleven. Or the supermarket. Because geography made it so.

Solnit's essay blends the feelings that a place evokes by virtue of its physicality to the emotions that linger in a location charged with specific memory in a way that I think best puts this geopsychological self in terms that others can understand. It's somewhat comforting to see someone else have this notion. Relieving to be able to show it to others and say "this is what I mean."

Pages 113-126

Got an email today from my professor at Aberdeen with course listings and a form to choose electives.

It looks like I'm going to make my master's concentration on Scottish lit. One class on Walter Scott for historical and then second semester on modern Scottish lit. Hopefully I can have something interesting to say about that. At least what I'm hoping is that there's something distinctive in Scottish literature that I can spin out into a broader discussion of the purpose of storytelling, the psychological impact of being represented in stories, and the kind of collective beliefs that stories impart.

I know the Irish are pretty peculiar, which makes them interesting to talk about. So we'll see.

My professor also told me that I can, indeed, take classes in Scottish Gaelic. The Language Center offers night courses to anyone willing to pay the fee. So I can give that a go without it affecting my GPA.

What's another 120GBP when I'm already spending so  much?

The elevator pitch for this show sounds like the setup for a joke. A vampire, and werewolf, and ghost share a flat somewhere in the UK.

But the interesting thing of it is that this is a show with a clearly supernatural basis that isn't, strictly speaking, -about- the supernatural. It's not a case-based show. There's no detecting going on. There's no monster of the week. Most supernatural shows follow that pattern. MoW is causing trouble somewhere. Heroes set out in search of MoW and destroy/stop it, with some myth-arc happenings along the way. See: Supernatural, The X-Files, Buffy, Angel.

But in this instance, the main characters basically ARE the monsters of the week. And the plots aren't about finding or stopping some threat. It's smaller scale than that and more intimate than that. The plots are about the ghost finding out how she died. Or the werewolf trying to deal with the fact that once a month he becomes a deadly murderous thing that he has no control over. And that he wants a girlfriend but is afraid that he'll hurt her. Or how the vampire tries to get on with regular people without drinking blood or being driven to murder. How all he wants is to be normal and accepted, but that simple goal is fraught with problems.

I'm not sure what other show to compare it to, really. Because it's mostly a character drama. And I don't watch any/many shows that don't revolve around the MoW premise.

I think it's even possible that people who don't like scifi could like this show. Because here the fantasy aspect is just a method for giving the main characters obstacles to overcome. It's a way to make them different and other in a way that in the past might have been done with race or class.

Also, they don't shy away from the tough stuff. And I have to give them credit for that.

So... Being Human. Give it a shot. Cause it's different.

Now this is just cool.

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/index.html

They have recordings of people from all over Britain and helpful explanations of what the unique aspects of the accent are.

Useful resource! :D

 I have seen precisely one episode of this show. But follow me on this:

The main character is Geoffrey Tennant. He is played by Paul Gross.

Paul Gross once did a production of Hamlet in Stratford Festival, Canada that was supposed to be incandescent. (This is the exact phrase I used in talking to my aunt.) (There are no recordings of this performance. I did not find out that it existed until after the run was over, and I lament not being to see what was a revolutionary interpretation for the people whose reports I read.)

The character Geoffrey Tennant once did a production of Hamlet that was, as said in the show not five minutes after my comment, incandescent. (There were only 3 performances.)

Ok, so then there's the OTHER production of Hamlet that I wasn't able to see. Who did that star? David Tennant. Which was also supposed to be amazingly life-altering. 


Next I'll find out that David's middle name is Geoffrey and my world will be completely self-referential.

The loan officers from my credit union called to inform me that I was approved for a student loan for not enough money to cover the cost of school. By $10k not enough.

What, pray tell, is the point of that?

Why would you approve a sum not high enough to actually do me any good? If my Dad didn't have money he could dip in to, I wouldn't be able to go.

So apparently I can't get a student loan without having someone cosign for it.

In a way, this makes sense. I haven't had a job in a year. How could I ever hope to pay that kind of money back? Except that I have great credit and have been paying my car loan on time during that time, so I should have a pretty trustworthy record.

I guess I just don't like making this someone else's problem. I don't want someone else to be responsible for what may be a very ill-conceived plan on my part.

So, I applied to grad school. It was always something I vaguely wanted to do. I never got to go to study abroad in college, because my own school was offering a bunch of courses that I really wanted to take the only semester I could have done it.

And I always thought... you know, I could still do that in the future... someday, I could apply and have this overseas adventure and do something scary and crazy.

Given how unemployed I've been lately, it seemed like a good time to give it a try.

So I applied to the University of Aberdeen (which I have visited) and the University of Stirling (which I have not). I wasn't going to apply to two, originally, but one of my professors advised not betting on just one school.

I have been accepted to both!

Found out about Aberdeen today. A professor from Stirling wrote to me a week and a half ago to let me know that she had approved me.

I'm going to be accepting the offer to study The Novel at Aberdeen. Sort of wish I could do both, because the Gothic stuff sounds interesting. But when it comes down to it, I'm a bit of a snob. :-P

So tomorrow... student loan application...

This is the review I got this morning for the SPN fanfic I posted on fanfiction.net:

Oh my god. This was as beautiful~ Seriously, I read yaoi and stuff like this
all the time but never, ever have I read an author write anything this
captivating. Even in normal books I can never quite get a picture in my head
of whats actually happening but your writing plays out like a movie, every
detail perfect and flowing like stories ought to be.

I read the story before this, "Look in My Tormented Eye" and was in love with
the idea of Gabriel and Sam being together from the instant Sam touched
Gabriel's hand. I actually was a big RubyXSam fan till the last episode of the
fourth season but I must compliment you on how you dealed with Sam and Ruby's
relationship. Most authors would have left her out or slandered her character
to the point where it was completely ridicous or came up with some way of
killing of her character. I also appreciate how you kept the characters in
character, not simply having them ooc and bang in the bathroom like wild
animals. I was considering not reading anymore fanfiction because of ooc but
your stories have made me reconsider.

Lastly I would like to thank you for creating a character of your own that
was not only easy to like but for giving him reasonable limitations and
keeping his skills and abilites that of the same as Castiel. Please continue
to write.


My favorite parts? That the stories read like movies (because I see them as movies). And that apparently I have single-handedly redeemed an entire area of human endeavor.

My work here is done!

I gotta say, these chocolates look pretty awesome.

It's a bit sad to see all the people on LJ going: OMG I have no money! and asking for sales boosts so they don't get booted from their homes. Even more so because OMG *I* have no money and cannot boost their sales. But I can pass along links, and maybe someone who does have a job can buy things.

Polidori Chocolates

Notably:

Gothic Weekend Truffle Collection:

• Percy Shelley: Our Shelley truffle is an effete blend of white chocolate, lemon oil and almonds, dipped in dark chocolate for a bit of masculine bite.
• Lord Byron: The flavor of decadence is evoked in the Byron truffle, with tawny port and a hint of smoke infusing super-dark chocolate.
• Dr. John Polidori: We note Polidori's ancestry by lacing dark ganache with Amaretto and pistachios, for a more uplifting experience.
• Mary Godwin: We attempt a more delicious experiment, taking our combination dark/milk ganache and adding currants, pecans and candied orange peel, then bringing it to life with a bracing bolt of white rum.

Shocking, I know. But after a strange but otherwise generally positive interview in which I was basically told I'd be getting a call for a second interview, I did not, in fact, get a call. And after sending an email to get some kind of response, was told "we hired someone whose experience fit better", which frankly is what they all say. Maybe it's even true. Haven't even gotten anything from the efforts I made at BEA, so I have basically nothing to show for work-finding efforts.

Rock on. I won't make $10k this year.