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[16 Jul 2009|02:42pm] |
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mood |
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 nerdy |
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Ocean City, as always, was awesome. I think I even got something vaguely resembling a tan this time around.
Somehow, the tradition has evolved that every time I go to Ocean City, I read a Ravenloft novel. They're perfect mindless beach reads, most used bookstores have one or two, and I can always either pump my fist in the air at the canon shout-outs or snicker over how the book fails at continuity forever.
The Enemy Within, the big Malken origin-story novel, is in the latter category. Oh, dear heaven, is it ever in the latter category. It was mostly minor, garden variety continuity errors to begin with--horrifically mangling the system of government in Nova Vaasa in ways that weren't terribly plot-important, messing up the way Tristan Hiregaard's first wife died, giving characters magic powers that they don't have, that kind of thing. Then came the spit-take line:
"The gods had long since become 'unfashionable' in Nova Vaasa. A few country folk still worshiped various deities, but the majority of citizens had ceased to search for the sacred in their daily lives."
Nova Vaasa. The most religiously fanatical domain in the Core. One of the domains that has a freaking Inquisition. Uh-huh.
And that's not even getting into how they mangle Malken's origin story. I can't say too much because my current RL party is in Nova Vaasa right now and it may come up, but let's just say that ( Vague spoilers for current players )
Oh, well. It was a perfect beach read, and Tom got to laugh at all the horrified faces I was making.
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[10 Jul 2009|02:29pm] |
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My summer school teaching is DONE, and we're to the beach--huzzah! Back Wednesday.
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| I just failed my saving throw vs. fangirl |
[25 Jun 2009|10:39pm] |
Tom and I met Mark Shea today! AUUUUUUGH!
If you're wondering who the heck Mark Shea is, I could say he's my favorite blogger, but that really doesn't do him justice. He's this ridiculously brilliant Catholic apologist. Whenever I read something and go, "Huh, I know that's really good/really bad/kind of fishy/whatever, but I can only vaguely articulate why," I can usually count on Mark Shea to be able to articulate exactly why. The man's a genius.
And he spoke at the John Paul II Cultural Center today! And Tom and I not only heard him speak, we had a pretty lengthy conversation with him beforehand at his book table! And got our pictures taken with him! AUUUUGH! I think that was about as tongue-tied fangirl as I've ever been in my life, and that includes the time George R. R. Martin autographed my copy of Storm of Swords, so that's pretty darn tongue-tied fangirl.
At another point, Tom got his picture taken with another blogger/writer he really liked, and Mark Shea was the main person around to take it. I joined up with him afterwards and asked what happened, and he said, "Mark Shea took my picture with Dawn Eden. I feel like I'm describing some weird dream I just had."
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[06 Jun 2009|11:19am] |
Tom's Mage game has officially invaded my subconscious, because I had a surprisingly coherent dream about it last night. ( Read more... )
Tom's reaction: "Yeah, I can see it."
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| Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show |
[05 Jun 2009|06:20pm] |
There's a carnival set up in the parking lot of the mall across the street from us. If I look out the window, I can watch the Ferris wheel and see all of the lights spinning around on all the rides. In a few hours, when more people get there, Tom tells me I'll be able to hear the very clear sound of people on the more adventurous rides screaming.
This is both awesome and really damn creepy.
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| Star Trekkin' across the universe |
[23 May 2009|11:24am] |
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mood |
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 geeky |
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Finally saw Star Trek and it was awesome! WOOO! :D I'm Trekking out. I haven't Trekked out since high school. It's pretty fantastic.
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[17 May 2009|03:20pm] |
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mood |
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 frustrated |
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So after spending about an hour and a half on Writer's Market and coming upon dead literary magazine after dead literary magazine, it looks like the economy is also cheerfully killing off every market for new dark fantasy/horror writers. The only exceptions are:
A) The A-listers that I have no chance of getting into (we're talking mags like The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy that regularly run Ursula K. Leguin and Ray Bradbury, here);
B) A few remaining B-listers, most of which are now so glutted with submissions from the closing of the other B- and C-listers that they aren't taking any new manuscripts for at least a year;
C) C-listers that were Q-listers until the other mags shut down and look to be about three days away from shutting down themselves, especially because some of them are so amateurish that they're physically painful to read (glaring grammatical errors in the first sentence, anyone?);
D) Christian and Mormon magazines, which would undoubtedly love to publish the lesbian horror story I'm currently shopping around*; or
E) 133+ EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEMEXXORS HORROR MAGAZINES ZOMG, for which the problem isn't that my story has lesbians in it, but that they don't have graphic onscreen sex before dying in gruesome ways, and then their reanimated zombie corpses have more graphic onscreen sex, possibly with Great Cthulhu.
I'm going to try the remaining B-listers that are still taking submissions, and hopefully by then the others will have cleared their queues, but damn, this is frustrating. Even more frustrating is the fact that the search function on Writer's Market has been being tweaked for the past six months or so, so I can only find markets by typing "horror" into the search engine. Which sounds fine, except that it means I get a lot of literary agents, book publishers, and my personal favorite, magazines that say in their guidelines: "We do not accept genre fiction (fantasy, Western, horror, mystery, etc.)" Most. Useless. Search. EVER.
OK, rant over.
*Don't get me wrong; a couple of the Christian mags look like good fits for my other stories that are close to ready. But NOT THIS ONE. O_o
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[28 Apr 2009|03:50pm] |
Happy birthday, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ms_meghatron! Unfortunately, I couldn't find a Peebly-booyah to send you, so this will have to do:
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[11 Apr 2009|11:26pm] |
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mood |
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 jubilant |
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Because I freaking love this hymn, and we didn't sing it at the vigil mass:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Let the holy anthem rise,
And the choirs of heaven chant it
In the temple of the skies;
Let the mountains skip with gladness,
And the joyful valleys ring
With Hosannas in the highest
To our Savior and our King.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Like the sun from out the wave,
Christ has risen up in triumph
From the darkness of the grave,
Glorious splendor of the nations,
And the lamp of endless day;
Christ the very Lord of glory
Who is risen up today.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Christ has burst our prison bars;
And has lifted up the portals
Of our home beyond the stars;
Now is won for us our freedom,
Wounded feet our foes have trod;
Now is purchased back our birthright
To the kingdom of our God.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Blessed Jesus, make us rise
From the life of this corruption
To the life that never dies.
May your glory be our portion,
When the days of time are past.
And the dead shall be awakened
By the trumpet's mighty blast.
Happy Easter, everybody!
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| BSG finale |
[22 Mar 2009|07:18pm] |
Like the rest of the Internet, I should post about the BSG finale.
Spoiler-free: I liked it a lot. There were a few areas where I had to suspend my disbelief a bit, but Ron Moore has built up enough credit in the Rachel Bank to allow that. Other than those areas, AWESOME. ( Spoilers )
In other geeky TV show news, the 6th episode of Dollhouse was everything everyone promised it would be. Too bad that all the geeks of the world, including Joss Whedon, were watching the BSG finale instead. Oh, well, that's what Hulu's for . . .
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[17 Mar 2009|06:52pm] |
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mood |
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 silly |
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Tom and I opened the sack of potatoes we'd bought for St. Patrick's Day dinner, only to be greeted by the stench of rotting veggies.
That's right! We celebrated St. Patrick's day by being struck down with the POTATO BLIGHT!
Fortunately, only one of them was actually bad, but wow, was it stinkily bad. That smell alone would have been enough to power mass emigration without any silly "famine" nonsense.
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[16 Mar 2009|08:36pm] |
I just reread A Game of Thrones and found the following line in "About the Author":
"George R.R. Martin is currently working on Dances with Dragons, the third book in his Song of Ice and Fire series."
Oh, well . . .
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| Oy |
[25 Feb 2009|09:11pm] |
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mood |
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 cranky |
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music |
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"Take My Revolution" |
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First attempt at Ash Wednesday dinner: black bean soup from allrecipes.com. Turns out that when they said to cook the beans for an hour or until soft, they meant three hours.
Second attempt at Ash Wednesday dinner: order veggie pizza (since we haven't made a vegetarian kitchen-stocking run yet). Receive pizza. Open box to find it covered in pepperoni.
God's testing my conviction to give up swearing for Lent early this year.
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[14 Feb 2009|11:49pm] |
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mood |
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 Underwhelmed |
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I just watched the premier of Dollhouse on Hulu, and I really hope the second episode is better. It isn't that it was bad, just that I expect better of Joss, and if he weren't the creative mind behind it, I'm honestly not sure if I would tune in for the next episode. I'm really hoping that this is another case of Fox forcing him to make a non-pilot episode the pilot. ( Minor spoilers ) And even if it turns out that this wasn't the intended pilot, the dialogue was still disappointingly clunky. It wouldn't have been bad on another show, I guess, but the bar is higher for Joss Whedon. This is easily his weakest pilot to date, and that includes "The Train Job," which had one hell of an extenuating circumstance.
At least yesterday's BSG was unspeakably awesome.
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| Toasterrific! |
[10 Feb 2009|06:48pm] |
The Battlestar Galactica board game is the best frakking thing ever.
That is all.
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| Hee! |
[25 Jan 2009|01:44pm] |
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mood |
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 amused |
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Best. Utena video. Ever.
100% spoiler-free, but I don't think it'll be half as funny if you haven't seen at least a couple episodes of the show.
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