This is more to do with my livejournal blog (the journal I more faithfully update), Book of the Black Rabbit.
1. my username is________ because ________.
Masquedbunny -- My sororiname is Bunny, and I have a thing for (and collect) Venetian masks and masquerade dress.
2. my name is ________ because _______.
Maria -- My mother wanted to name me after the Holy Mother in such a way that was compatible with my German last name and her own Italian heritage.
3. my journal is titled ______ because __________.
"Book of the Black Rabbit" -- I respect Watership Down's version of Death, a shade-bunny, and have a tendency to address morbid subject matter.
4. my friends page is called ______ because ___________.
"meine merkwürdige Lieblinge" -- I studied German, and liked the idea of calling my friends "my freaky darlings" in another language. Let's face it, some of you are odd ducks, too; and I love you.
5. my default userpic is _______ because _________.
"Masqued" -- It's just another play on the masquerade theme and masks.
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
16 April 2008
the why's
17 December 2007
in response to: another American psycho
Names changed to protect the innocent decent (because nobody's really innocent, if we're being honest, but I consider my readership to be a decent sort).
The last entry was cross-posted to Book of the Black Rabbit.
This comment from a reader followed:
If done at all it should be done well.
Get in; save lots; get out.
Write the book afterwards (unless you get published first).
To which I replied:
Which makes me think of a few choice lines of Metric's "Handshakes":
Buy this car to drive to work,
Drive to work to pay for this car ...
Say you wanna get in,
And you're gonna get out;
But you won't,
'Cause it's a trap.
I think I might fear all manner of [traditionally reasonable] commitment.
05 December 2007
really???
I just noticed that I got a "Best of..." from Holidailies for my 3. December entry. Thanks, guys!
Another [real] entry later ...
02 January 2007
onward and upward
That’s mean and devious and sick. ... We should totally hang out more.
Holidailies has come to a close, and while I didn't complete the 30 entries they would have liked, I did complete at lest 20 entries they expected. Actually, I had 27 for the month, so I fell nicely into a "Satisfactory" category.
Still, I don't think I'm going to kill this journal now that December is over. I will never post everything here that I post in my LiveJournal, but that's for the best.
The quote is from fan fiction. Strife fan fiction. I joined a Yahoo group dedicated to Joel Tobeck's characters, because I love Joel-sama (his IMDb page now has pictures). The members of this group occasionally e-mail their written work to the list. I know it's old hat, but it's kind of awesome to be able to read fan fiction through e-mail.
I also read that my mom is sending me an AV kit for my iPod--a dock and cables that will allow me to hook the iPod to the television and watch iPod videos on a larger screen. She gave my dad one for Christmas (along with a new 80GB iPod), and we used the TV feature to watch Torchwood on the living room's big-screen television. Yes, it's a wee bit pixilated, but not in any way that makes it an unbearable experience. And besides, I rather like being able to watch Torchwood on something besides my computer or my iPod.
Speaking of Torchwood, I'm in the midst of downloading the final episodes of the season. They're going much slower than the last ones, but hopefully they'll get faster as more people obtain them. I also think that having two episodes released on the same evening didn't help this problem. I think it's much easier for people to seed smaller files released a few days apart. Still, I suppose I'll be happy once they're complete.
Yesterday was fairly relaxing (after I finally got home from traveling, that is). I spent the afternoon watching Forever Knight and Arrested Development. The last episode of Forever Knight is fairly disappointing, I have to say; and the second to last episode is also disappointing--they killed Vachon! How could they kill Vachon?! Yes, he has terrible hair (or, at any rate, a terrible wig); but with a decent hair-cut he would have been so handsome. Ben Bass is damned handsome in his own right.
I'd still like to talk more about my vacation and the kinks of travel ("kinks," here, meaning: "annoying" rather than "unexpectedly bizarre and fun"), but that might need to come later in the day, as I'm rather busy this morning.
For those of you in the same boat, welcome back to work, and Happy New Year!
21 December 2006
binging on life
Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.Unknown
"Participants must promise that they will try really really hard to update their web sites every day from December 1, 2006, to January 1, 2007. With holiday obligations, this realistically means you might post a minimum of 20 entries for the month." - Holidailies
So, counting this as the twenty-first post of the month, I can at least be proud that I've reached the minimum for Holidailies. Excellent. Though I'll probably end up dropping off the blog-map once I get to North Carolina.
And I'm leaving tomorrow night. I still haven't really packed anything, though most of what I intend to pack is sitting on top of my suitcase on the floor by my bed.
I think I might splurge for a cab from work tomorrow afternoon. It's not that I won't have enough time if I go by T; I just don't feel like dealing with the crowds of people, which are likely to be akin to the ones I encountered at Thanksgiving. It took me two tries to get on the red line, and another two tries to get on the silver line. A maddening human sardine experience. No, thank you. Not again. Not right now.
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There was another box from Amazon waiting for me in the vestibule when I came home yesterday evening. It was a Christmas present from my friend Sue, the third and final set of DVDs from Forever Knight.
After opening it, I decided to follow my own plan and take pictures around the apartment--of the presents I've received, our decked-out Christmas tree, the weird little ornaments I bought at Target. I was uploading the pictures to my Flickr account when Michelle came home from work.
She went on a hunt in her room for the final episodes of Witch Hunter Robin; because I've had two copies of the final disc sent to me from Netflix, and neither of them has worked (the first was cracked down the center and completely unplayable, and the second could only play the first two episodes on the disc because the remainder was damaged too much). So Michelle burned those to CD for me (remarkably good quality, too), and I watched half of the first episode on the disc--until I decided that I would be clever and save the rest for tomorrow night when I'm sitting around Logan.
I also watched the first three episodes of Forever Knight Season Three, but fell asleep during the fourth one, waking up around 3 A.M. to the glow of the main menu screen. Turning off the television, I went to my laptop and checked my mail.
Arkaidy had posted an additional chapter to "Across Time"--one of the links I have in my "Favourite Fanfiction" in the sidebar--which I then proceeded to read until about 3:45 A.M. It was an interlude to explain the survival of Ares, Hercules, Zeus, and a few of the other gods into the present (because, if we follow a certain element of canon, the gods should fade out and die--but they don't, and Arkaidy has a decent explanation for their continuation).
Actually, the godly come-back makes sense to me because of "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Hercules"--a modern day episode where Ares and Strife show up at the end. So, surely, Ares has to survive in some way; and Strife has to be resurrected after his death-by-hind's-blood ... somehow.
But I shouldn't have read it last night. After I finished reading, getting back to sleep was nearly impossible. And when I did go to sleep, my dreams were vivid and strange and all too real. Actually, I sort of wish one of them had been real. I was enjoying it until my consciousness went, You know this is a dream. This would never happen. Being a conscious dreamer sucks sometimes.
When my alarm went off I didn't really hear it until forty minutes later.
20 December 2006
not a moment too soon
Yesterday morning I was writing about my issues with Beta Blogger; and, ironically enough, yesterday night Blogger suddenly announced the end of calling this new version "Beta." It doesn't really change any of the complaints I have with the system, just the name--but they're making it out to be a very big deal, kind of forcing people into making the transition.
I'm just as happy I decided to go ahead with it beforehand; I'd feel very irritated if I hadn't done so of my own volition, and were now being coerced into the change.
Among other changes (because, while I'm at it, why not?), I added new things to the sidebar--a task which swallowed up the better part of last night. There's a short list of some of my favourite fanfiction (the ones I could track down, anyway), and a rather long list of most recent music artists heard on my iPod and iTunes (an idea I borrowed from Geoff's sidebar, a list which he calls "Playing On Myne Ipod"). More will be added to each list as whatever it is occurs to me; and, potentially, more kinds of lists will be added to the sidebar as they occur to me.
In terms of music, I found that Wikipedia was the most useful source for locating official musician and band websites. Google helped, too.
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"Movies you enjoy watching most this month" is today's Holidaily prompt, but I feel like I've already gone into this before.
Though I make fun of them to no end, I enjoy the classic Rankin & Bass Christmas productions (and I've definitely addressed them before).
A Garfield Christmas Special
A Charlie Brown Christmas
The Santa Clause ... Yes, it's Tim Allen. Yes, he's kind of awful. No, I just don't care (though, I refuse to watch any of the sequels).
I also used to love Benji's Very Own Christmas Story, but I haven't been able to find it in my parents' video collection after the several moves they've made in the past six years.
There are probably others that I'm not thinking of right now, but I might edit this post later to include them. Oh, yeah. And I'll probably sit down to The Nightmare Before Christmas at some point this holiday season, as well.
The one movie that is always brought up as a Christmas classic, and that I've never watched from beginning to end, is It's a Wonderful Life--a fact that makes me feel like one of the dopey officers from The Ref who accidentally records the film over the police evidence. But it's so damn long, and I've seen the "never-been-born" premise done in so many other shows and films, that I don't think I'm missing too much.
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I think tonight will be a digicam night--of Christmas-y picture-taking. Our tree, the freaky penguin ornaments that don't make sense, and my holiday acquisitions (of which I have a fair few already).
19 December 2006
only partially founded fears
I had been toying with the idea of switching entirely over to Beta Blogger. I had messed around with the click-drag design before, and I just wasn't fond of the "fixed" elements on the page--the boring banner, for one thing. Also, the click-drag method is very archaic and giving me flashbacks of the ever awkward Geocities.
But I really liked the expandable/collapsible archives in the side-bar, and I couldn't get that with the older template. So this morning, with much trepidation, I saved my original template and made the switch. And after doing some web-searching for hacks and code, I've finally managed to make my journal look (sort of) the way it originally was--only with the excellent archiving.
The header was a bit more of a finagle, and I was on the right track in my touch-and-go trial-and-error editing, but I became impatient with myself and found some excellent directions for tweaking the code in another blog.
I still haven't got the widths of the post section and the side bar where I want them, but they're close enough to satisfy me for now.
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When I was shuffling through some papers in one of my desk drawers yesterday, I finally located my invitation to the BU Holiday Party "Evergreen Dream." One of my coworkers has been urging me to come along since last week; and I had wanted to say that I would, but I thought that I had accidentally thrown the postcard in the bin. Actually, this coworker suggested that I had accidentally tossed it away, but I thought that was rather out of character for me. I never throw anything away, and my desk stands as a monument to this fact--or, at any rate, the clutter piled a foot high on a back corner of my desk should be evidence enough.
So I'll be going the party after work for food and beverages. I'm looking forward to shameless noshing ... and to not having to make my own dinner tonight.
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Torchwood's "Out of Time" was, as predicted, finished downloading when I arrived home last night. It has to be one of the funnier, and also one of the sadder, episodes to date. I think my favourite segment is when Ianto takes the time-travelers shopping. He's in the middle of explaining the magic of the automatically opening door when one of the ladies exclaims, "Bananas!" in sheer delight. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, bananas completely out-rank the technological advances of mankind.
I totally approve of the plot and character development with the Gwen/Rhys relationship. They just can't stay together, in my opinion--not when Gwen can never tell him anything. Judging by the sneak-peek, next Sunday's episode looks like it's going to up that drama quotient.
My only grudge against this episode was that the writers didn't really let us find out anything new about Captain Jack Harkness. Jack was sitting in a carbon monoxide-filled automobile, and he couldn't share anything about himself with a man who's about to die? I don't know if it's due to something truly complex about the character, or if the writers just don't know what they want his entire back story to be yet. Either way, it was kind of frustrating. He's such a lonely character, and his expression was downright heart-breaking as John Ellis was dying.
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