Below are the most recent 19 friends' journal entries.

Sunday, December 20th, 2009
sister_bluebird	2:25p	Being Kind To Future Grace I'll want this information next year: ( Depression charting around winter solstice ) Current Mood: exhausted Current Music: Clannad - Teidhir Abhaile Riu (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
sister_bluebird	12:42a	Sleep is for the weak. The happy, well rested weak. So, apparently I'm just a little insomniac tonight. Eyes are tired, body isn't (probably because I sat at a desk all day and didn't take daily walkies. Since samadi in in Peoria with her familials, I have to get my own momentum) and brain is going. Whee! And I have heartburn. So I'm going to bleach the bathroom now. That should make me tired. Also, it's not like it doesn't need it. My apartment is just shy of developing city states. Current Mood: overly awake Current Music: rats eating leftover kheer with much delight (Comment on this)
Friday, December 18th, 2009
sister_bluebird	10:14p	Livejournal, the culling Today, I tried to look at an entry someone else made and was forced to watch a moving, talking ad that wouldn't close. Anyone who knows me in real life is aware that nonconsensual multi-media experiences are big no-nos. Now, I'm not having a fit and leaving LJ (yet), but I thought about it real hard for a bit. And I wrote a grumpy note to feedback. And I realized that my friends list was in real need of a cleaning. Communities that haven't been active since 2006, people who rushed en masse to facebook six months ago, folks who aren't speaking to me, communities that have devolved into a pile of ads for badly made goggles. All of these must go. There's no malice in removal (okay, sometimes glee for the ad-communities), and the criteria are based on whether or not I use the community or the user posts/comments at all. If I strip you and you want to be readded, just ask. I'm being pretty zealous on this one. Am also considering killing the art journal. There's not a huge difference between it and here anymore (I post less personal stuff here and am less terrified that some grandma's going to find out I'm a poly freak and refuse to buy my stuff now) and I suspect most of the people who only watch it are ghost accounts anyhow. Weigh in as you please. If LJ continues to tick me off, I may flee for other waters and crosspost/syndicate here instead, as well. Also, sunset before 4 (Not technically, but effectively, as gray as it was) is not ok! Stupid sun. Come the 21st, I'm gonna set something on fire. Current Mood: enlightened Current Music: Pink Floyd - Careful with That Axe, Eugene (8 Comments |Comment on this)
shadefell	2:40p	Beta Readers Requested I am working on some short horror fiction. Is anyone interested in reading rough drafts and giving feedback? If so, respond here with an email (or email me at brigidkeely @ gmail.com). (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
shadefell	2:25p	036 Black Cat Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress. There’s a small elementary school not far from Balmoral Race Track, in the distant South Suburbs of Chicago, not far from Indiana. Near that school was an abandoned church, which was torn down in the late 1990s after a series of disturbing events. During the late 1980s and very early 1990s, locals were very disturbed to find cats nailed to the door of the church on what seemed to be random dates. Concerned parents set themselves up in deer blinds to try and catch the perpetrator or perpetrators, however no one was ever caught in the act. Further, nobody in the vicinity ever reported their pets going missing, leading some to deduce that the perpetrators were either using barn cats or feral cats (tricky animals to catch), or else importing cats from miles away. Parents and teachers admonished local children about witchcraft and satanism, warned them to stay away from grave yards and strangers, and chalked the proceedings up as an unsolved mystery. One bright autumn morning in 1991, two teens walking through the woods found a wallet. Opening it, they found no ID or credit cards, but they did find money and condom still in its wrapper. One of the pair took out the money and then pocketed the wallet, resolving to turn it in to the cops after their walk– a walk that was interrupted by them tripping over what turned out to be the nude, half-eaten corpse of a young man. Most of his face was gone, as were his hands, making indentifcation difficult. The forensic examiner determined that the majority of bite marks on him were feline in nature, but was unable to determine cause of death. No more cats were found nailed to the church door, and it stood abandoned until it began listing to one side, under the effects of winter and neglect. It took a while to resolve ownership of the building, but it was condemned and torn down. The small cemetery attached to it remains, and continues to be a local hang out for teens escaping parental supervision. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
shadefell	9:52p	I've been making icons. Here. Have some icons. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
sage_takeido	2:38p	cold *whine* Is it Spring yet? Current Mood: cold (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
lex_of_green	7:25p	Living situatuon: BATS. We have bats. Arabian Flatbread says he saw two of them when he went down to the basement for some laundry. I love living in Mirkwood. Personhood progress report: I have finally learned to tell left from right without touching my earlobe. Granted, I still have to look at the tattoo on my left wrist, but a quick glance is way less disruptive to most activities than a full-on ear fondle. This... this is huge. It means maybe I'll learn to drive one day. I've needed manual confirmation of my left/right suspicions for years. I wish I'd only needed visual confirmation back when I took the Stupidest Driver's Ed Class Ever. It might not've helped much, though. Because. Um. Here is a brief summary of the lecture portion of driver's ed: Don't drink and drive, kids! Also don't do LSD and drive or snort cleaning solution and drive. Hallucinogenic mushrooms + driving = unfortunate combination! Lets watch an episode of Oprah where drunk drivers apologize to the people they accidentally dismembered. Then we'll all sit in the corner and weep. P.S. Don't steal stop signs it is bad. Then on the last day of class we got into some cars. Everyone else magically knew how to drive even though it was never covered in the class and I was all “you want me to WHAT? But all I know about driving is how to not do drugs. You mean the act of being sober will not magically teleport me to... oh. Damn. Okay, does this thing have an on button?” The look of sheer terror on my instructor's face was kinda priceless. It only got worse when we encountered an intersection. INSTRUCTOR: Okay, now turn left. LEX: What. INSTRUCTOR: Left. Turn left now. LEX: Um, which way is... INSTRUCTOR: Left! LEX: Is that toward the tree or...? INSTRUCTOR: Oh my god. LEX: *reaches up to grab earlobe* INSTRUCTOR: HANDS ON THE WHEEL HANDS ON THE WHEEL PAY ATTENTION WHAT ARE YOU DOING. Needless to say, I didn't come out of that class with a license. But maybe one day I'll have one. I don't want to own a car and the idea of driving still terrifies me, but this whole right/left thing brings me a definite step closer to functional personhood. Groanworthy thing that happened just now: I needed a fuzzy hat that would cover my ears, so I bought the cheapest black one I could find. It had a ridiculous giant pom-pom on top. I cut the pom-pom off and threw it at Arabian Flatbread's head and ran back to my room. Arabian Flatbread tracked me down and stood in my doorway, glaring at the offending orb of fuzz. LEX: It's okay, you're not a klingon. I just had to check. ARABIAN FLATBREAD: You, my friend, are in deep tribble. Then he threw the pom-pom at my face the end. (25 Comments |Comment on this)
shadefell	3:56p	Webcomics not about White, underachieving 20 year olds. Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress. One of the big, huge, MAJOR themes in webcomics is “White 20-something hipsters working surprisingly enjoyable service industry jobs/generally underachieving, and saying witty things.” You know the kind. The main character works at a record shop/music store, book store, coffee shop, etc and despite making barely over minimum wage never has any money problems and has lots of free times. Also, these comics are frequently a Eugenics paradise. There are no or very few non-White characters. I thought I’d put together a list of comics I read or know of that buck that trend. I’ve noted race in a few instances not because I think it’s usually important to catalog race/ethnicity, and not in a “collect them all!” kind of way, but because the complaint/requests I’ve heard have involved looking for comics that feature a not exclusively white cast. Achewood, by Chris Onstad, is a frequently surreal ongoing comic about “alive stuffed animals” and small real animals (mostly cats and a squirrel). It has both long storylines as well as stand alone one-off strips, and has been running for years. It features virtually no humans, and the characters’ personalities are extremely well defined– to the point where Onstad maintained blogs for characters, for awhile. Their voices were exceptionally distinct. Bad Machinery, (formerly Scary Go Round) by John Allison, has massively shifted gears recently. It now appears to be about school children in England who solve mysteries. The relaunch is still very new and there’s just enough to be interesting and intriguing without being a swampy morass of backstory. As usual, Allison writes pithy, realistic dialogue and his characters are eccentric but also very grounded in reality. One of the characters is a young Black boy. karnythia, I think he might be younger than your oldest, but he still might be interested. I remember you’ve been looking for characters, in general, he can identify with. Kate Beaton draws comics about books, history, and tiny ponies. Also, herself as a child interacting with he present day self. They’re really cool, witty, well done comics. BobWhite by Magnolia Porter, follows the adventures/lives of 3 (female) college students. Ivy is Iranian, Marlene is Jewish (and dresses like Frank Sinatra’s Grandmother) and Cleo… has issues. Actually, they’re all kind of petty jerks, but they get called on their jerkdom instead of it being celebrated as cool and hip. They are very flawed and realistic feeling, and Porter draws on her own experiences in art school to inject a little more truthiness to the strip. Dicebox, by Jenn Manley Lee, has had an erratic update schedule for a while (life happens) but has a VAST archive to go through. One of the main characters is Black. Additionally, the world of Dicebox has a linguistic system set in place to cope with non-gendered pronouns: “Peh” is used to indicate neither male nor female; “Note: used as a formality when assuming or noting the gender or sex of the antecedent is considered irrelevant to the subject at hand, i.e. government documentation, news reports, etc.” Gunnerkrigg Court, by Tom Siddell, is about a freaky technomagic boarding school that houses mysteries. Gods and ghosts pop in and out. Katerina “Kat” Dolan, the main character’s best friend (and totally awesome character in her own right) is half Romany. Her mom is apparently full blood Romany, and if I remember correctly, the only reason we readers know this is because of an off-hand comment. There’s none of the ~~OMG GYPSY PRINCESS~~ stereotype crap that so frequently is attached to Romany characters. Loxie and Zoot is a long-running niche strip about naturists (also known as nudists). It has a lot of nude people. They are very comfortable in their nudity. They are also all sorts of different ages, shapes, and ethnicities. There’s a VERY multicultural cast, although there’s also a sort of iffy “Magical Negro” Aboriginal Australian (it’s an Australian comic) who literally has magic, and acts wacky sometimes. A lot of the plots are kind of corny, of the sort you’d see on TV, but they’re handled well. There’s a bit of preachiness about the wonders of being unclothed, but frankly, that’s kind of the point of the strip. The art’s pretty decent, too. Necessary Monsters, by Sean Azzopardi & Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, is a long-form comic that has recently entirely completed a story arc, which makes it a good time to dive in at the first comic and read it all the way through. In tone, it reminds me of Hellblazer when Hellblazer is firing on all cylinders. A secret agency exists, which has for some time now been essentially enslaving monsters and binding them to service. This is explored to a very good effect via the “recruitment” of Creeping Tuesday, the daughter of a Freddy-Krueger-esque dream monster who was recently killed. She has inherited his abilities, and is forced to don the shackle and keep the world safe from her kind. Tuesday is African-American, with natural (dreadlocked) hair. Other non-white characters include Knife Mother (Japanese) and a man named Levi Gibbs “The Ju-Ju Man” who I’m assuming is West African, or else from Louisiana or something (he looks kind of voodoo-y, but not in a Fail Way.), but his face is skull like so it’s hard to tell. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about Necessary Monsters is that even though most of the characters are male, and it’s a violent horror comic, the main character (and the one who has to Make A Fateful Choice And Resolve Things) is female. (I just read this one, and need to write a real review of it.) Octopus Pie, by Meredith Gran, switched formats recently from updating regularly to updating when a storyline is finished. It also comes thisclose to being about underachieving 20-somethings, but the underemployed are mostly underemployed through idealism (working at an organic grocery store MEANS SOMETHING, dammit) and money issues exist. The main character, Eve, is Chinese-American. Over Compensating, by Jeffrey Rowland, is a pseudo-diary comic that was originally about Rowland’s life, but now is about politics and the web comics industry. Which makes sense, because politics are important and Rowland runs Topatoco, which sells T-Shirts and other merch for webcomickers. Also he has some other long running webcomics. You may recognize Rowland, or the giant scar on his leg, from when he got bit by a giant brown recluse spider and it started rotting off. You may also have been linked to the Thanksgiving strips he does every year, about the hypocrisy and hate of Thanksgiving. Pictures for Sad Children, by John Campbell, is done in stick figures, and done very well. It can be depressing/futile but also very poignant. Skin Deep, by Kory Bing, is a long-form comic about mythical creatures that interact with humans. As she draws from mythology all over the world, her characters also all come from all over the world (although she’s focusing, right now, on some English characters in England, one of her protagonists is Egyptian-American). There’s a lot of issues about identity, both cultural and personal. It’s simply lovely art and fantastic story telling as well. A Softer World, by Emily Horne and Joey Cameau, has been imitated, just about always poorly. It’s a 3-panel piece of art made up of photographs and lines of text that convey a vignette, emotion, or bit of story. It’s much more awesome than it sounds. Templar, AZ, by Charlie Spike Trotman, is a long-form character-driven comic about an alternate universe city and its inhabitants. The main character (other than the city) is Ben, who is Korean-American, and who was adopted (from Korea) as an infant. One of his friends, Scipio, is a very large Black man with long dreadlocks, who habitually wears a kilt. He is Buddhist. He has a pet chicken. (another friend is Reagan, who is female and who ISN’T hot, or well dressed, or interested in any of the characters romantically. Carnally? Yes. Romantically? No. It’s… refreshing.) Wapsi Square, by Paul Taylor, started out as a gag strip that has since moved to long form drama. I used to check it frequently, now I wait for long chunks to go by so I can try to get most/all of a story arc. One of the character is Hispanic-American (and does big brainy work at a museum) and one is Native American (and is a mechanic and a musician), two less central characters appear to be Black and Japanese (they are non-humans taking human form). Both central characters are female, and do a pretty good job in general in not falling into sexist tropes. In fact, most of the cast is female. There’s some boob fanservice where Monica is concerned, which is a bit jarring in contrast to how female positive the comic is otherwise, but w/ev. I’m sure there’s more, but this is what I’ve come up with more or less off the top of my head. Please feel free to add comments, links, etc. (14 Comments |Comment on this)
shadefell	10:11a	035 Organ Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress. The stretch of houses on St. Louis between Lawrence and the River is primarily brick two and three flats. One of these, a dark red brick two flat with the front porch converted to an enclosed sun room, and blown roses leaning limply against the iron fence, is frequently host to odd music. Passers by notice this music at random hours of the day and early evening, rarely at night. It sounds like a polka played one and a half times normal speed, on an organ. Nobody in the neighborhood plays the organ, and although pedestrians and neighbors pinpoint the music’s location consistently as being this particular house, those within the house claim never to hear it while indoors. (Comment on this)
shadefell	10:11a	Secret Chicago/Fiction updates Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress. I’m cutting back Secret Chicago updates to twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I just couldn’t maintain an every day schedule… the ideas clogged up in my brain arteries. The habit of writing at least 100 words every day was a good one, though, and one that I need to continue. Does anyone have suggestions for short story publications, especially horror, that I can submit actual short stories to? I’ve been doing research on my own, but do you have a favorite magazine or webzine that you read or submit to? If so, please comment with links/info. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
shadefell	2:42p	I love you, firefox. Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress. I just tried using IE 7, thinking it might be a workaround for a problem I’m having, and I wanted to tear my hair out. No matter how I changed the settings, it kept opening links in a new window instead of a new tab. When I told it to accept pop-ups, it refused to open any pop-ups, and I had to tell it to block all pop-ups so it would let pop-ups pop up. Even though I told it to remember log in information, it didn’t. At one point, it was blocking pop-ups even though I had turned off (allegedly) the pop up blocker. Which means I’d click on a link that was supposed to open a pop up window for me to log in to a site, but instead of the pop up popping up there was a “clunk” sound effect and no pop up… and no way to say “Yes, allow this pop up,” because the part of IE that lets you do THAT was turned off. Also my tool bar was filled with extraneous crap. I don’t use yahoo for ANYTHING, yet there was a giant button right where a back button would have made sense, that I couldn’t easily (in a few seconds) figure out how to get rid of. Urgh. Firefox is gold compared to that. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, December 11th, 2009
samadi	1:37a	The first Alice bravely entered Wonderland, sword in hand. Past midnight with a rough case of the hacks. For those who don't talk to me on a day to day basis, this means that I'm convinced that I'm fighting a losing battle and that the gamble that I'm taking on my ability to write is perhaps the stupidest thing I have ever done. It's the time of night, maybe its the time of year, when I start wondering maybe, maybe I should pack it all in and do something else. Happily enough, Rationality Monster chimes in and usually sets things straight. Rationality Monster: Get the hell over it. TheHacks: But...but I suck! Rationality Monster: Like that makes a bit of difference. Go back to work. TheHacks: I'll never get good at what I'm doing. Rationality Monster: You'll get better than you are right now. Edit that story. TheHacks: Too much effort, not enough payoff! Rationality Monster: You'd be doing this anyway, whether anyone paid you or not. Go work on your characterization. TheHacks: Waaaaaah! Rationality Monster: Cry harder, maybe Boundless Optimism will show up and eat you. TheHacks: So many people try this and fail! What makes me so special? Rationality Monster: ... Boundless Optimism: Hi, sorry I'm late. Bastard old winter, innit? Anyway, where were we? TheHacks: ...I was...just leaving Boundless Optimism: No, you're just... delicious... Boundless Optimism: CHOMP Sort of like that. I'm making a list of everything I've finished this year. Not everything published, but everything finished. If you're interested, you can find it under the cut, complete with elevator pitch. ( Read more... ) Still no novel, but not for want of trying. There are plenty of false starts, some of which are quite lengthy, and some of them do bear returning to. My saving grace this year was that I have sold a novella that was written to spec, and that I am trying to write stories that I think are more interesting, even if they are more difficult as well. Similarly, I have also outlined a novel from beginning to end that I get to work on once the novella is out the door. Okay, goals before I get to sleep: -Send Pinion off to Circlet -Figure out what Circlet is currently looking for -Make up a list of things I want to add to On the Edge of Something Sharp (2 Comments |Comment on this)
lex_of_green	1:10a	You never realize just how much space the dead chipmunks take up in your freezer until they go away. Seriously guys, the freezer looks so huge now. We could make a snowman and preserve him in there all winter if we wanted. We'll most likely do something boring with the space instead though, like fill it with food. It's probably a good thing. I mean, it's not like there's any room in the fridge, what with it being full of half-thawed dead chipmunks and all. In other news, SNOW DAY SNOW DAY SNOW DAY. Oh man yesterday was full of win. All the Mirkwood residents had off from work and school so we made a huge pancake breakfast when we got up and then we went out for a snowball fight. Oh, except I took the most ill-advised shower in the world between these two things. Here is a picture of my hair demonstrating why it's probably a good idea to not spend a lot of time outside in freezing weather when you're soaking wet. Well, at least not unless you're all out of reasonable weapons and you need to stab people with icicles attached to your head. ( Here are some more pictures, mostly of stuff covered in white stuff. ) (16 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
sage_takeido	12:08p	JOB I need a job. A good job. That pays well. With benefits. In my field. Dammit. Current Mood: frustrated (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
lex_of_green	10:37p	Oh hey, you know those RenFaire people sleeping on my couch? One of them (the ever-fabulous oarlock_queen) made me AWESOME. It's a watchmaker's magnifying glass. Man, if only I had two fully functioning eyes I'd wear this thing all the time. P.S. She also gave me a dead fish to stick in my ear. <3 Laura, please feel free to crash at Mirkwood anytime. I promise it wasn't some kind of passive-aggressive stunt when I drove you out of the house with the fire alarm that made a horrible noise for half an hour or when I allowed my drunk neighbor to almost puke on your coat. I am just somewhat incompetent when it comes to being a host. But that should improve with practice, right? And I had someone else sleeping over last night and I didn't maim or poison him or anything. Coooome baaaack! Current Music: Yellow - Vitamin String Quartet (YES ZIM I'M WATCHING IT AGAIN) (22 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 7th, 2009
shadefell	9:45p	Well. This has been a fun day. ONLY NOT. I have this problem where I'll reach for something and pick up something else. For instance, I was at the grocery store today and reached for a can of pasta sauce. I meant to pick up roasted garlic. I reached for roasted garlic. I was certain I picked up roasted garlic. I got home, unpacked the groceries, and found I'd actually grabbed the pasta sauce right next to roasted garlic: tomato basil. I am not a huge fan of basil and much prefer roasted garlic, but tomato basil is what my hand grabbed. If I have an array of pens or markers or crayons or pencils in different colors, and I pick one up, I have to double check before I use it that I picked up the correct color. Because even though I aimed for, say, the blue one? I might have grabbed the red one that was next to it. I realized today that when I thought I was replying to a bunch of original posts in a community, I was actually replying to comments other people had made. I thought I was clicking one button, but I was clicking something else entirely. I frequently do this with games online. It's frustrating and I feel dumb when I do it. I don't know if it's a vision thing... I do need new glasses, but this has been going on basically forever... or a brain thing or what. But it's confusing and obnoxious. PS secret chicago entries are forthcoming. We were super busy all weekend (Saturday we left the house at 9am and got home at 11pm; Sunday I cleaned and unpacked and moved furniture and babywrangled while Nesko helped his dad repair a roof and lay bricks all day) and I got a bit behind. I have two stories begun and some other ideas percolating. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
samadi	5:20p	This year's for me and you Hi everyone! So the sun's going down sooner and sooner, and I think we all need a pick me up. I would also like to do something nice for everyone on my friends list, so here goes. In this post, give me a prompt, and I'll write you a drabble/flash fiction on it. If you like, it can be sent straight to your email, but otherwise, I'll post it to share. If you've been on this journal for a bit, you know what I can write and what I like to write, but don't let it stop you from asking for something that you would really like. I'll be hesitant to write fanfiction for fandoms that I'm not familiar with, but I'll probably give it a shot. If you have any friends that would like a ficlet from me, please let them know too. ^_^ Hang in there, everyone; the light is going to come back any day now. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
shadefell	4:01p	Writer's Block: 2012 If the world were going to end on December 21, 2012, how would you spend the last of your days on earth and why? Submitted By rainwizard View 710 Answers Dear people who believe that the world will end on December 21st 2012: Do you freak out when you reach the end of your page-a-day calendar? Are you convinced that apocalypse is imminent when you get to the last day on your kitten-a-month wall calendar? Do you panic and head for the hills when it's time to buy new inserts for your day planner? No? So why all the fuss? (9 Comments |Comment on this)