blue skins, brown skies, alien sex
WitchQueen's Random Edicts

discussed via blogvoices

random edicts de vendredi

Wish Jane happy birthday!
Or, more accurately, wish Jane's journal a happy birthday. I've been reading Jane Duvall's online diary for two or three weeks, and today (or rather yesterday) was the one year anniversary of her writing the journal online.

It gives me hope that I might be able to keep up this blogger that long, or even longer. I have this horrible habit of letting things go, just not doing them anymore. It kind of makes me sad.

Anyway, today's big adventure was getting out to Towson Town Center by myself and turning in my VCR to Circuit City. It occurred to me suddenly at noon that if I had no job lined up today, I was free to go and turn in the VCR, and that they would repair it since I had my receipt which said Extended Service Contract on it and everything.

So, I looked up Circuit City on Yahoo! Yellow Pages, called the Maryland Transit Assocation to find out what buses I needed to take, and watched only about 10 minutes of a very painful Highlander episode. (It was one of the Dark Quickening eps, and even though Peter Wingfield was in it, I couldn't keep watching.) Then I packed up the VCR and the service agreement, and hopped out the door. The part I am really proud of is that I didn't panic when, one, the buses seemed to be turning off the streets I needed to be on, or, two, I couldn't find Circuit City or a way into the mall I thought it might be located in. I kept calm, and eventually all was revealed. And I found out the location of a movie theatre, a Borders, a Barnes & Noble, and the Towson Public Library, which is in a highly impressive building, although I did not enter it.

I am oddly unangered about the VCR. I just got it repaired last week (the tracking never worked) and yesterday morning, I awoke to discover that there had been a power failure and the VCR would not power on. None of my other electrical equipment had been damaged, as far as I could tell. Just the VCR.

The thing which is most distressing about the VCR being damaged is that Farscape is starting up new episodes this weekend. I am sorely tempted to go to Rent A Center and rent a VCR. (there is one across the street, and this summer scifi is doing no repeats.)

This is not to imply that I have anything like all of the Farscape episodes on tape. Sadly, this is not the case. Taping accidents have eaten some, lack of VCR has gotten to others, and when I had a VCR, it all too often had to be shared with those where not fans of Farscape. (too involved, they said. the characters change too much, they said. isn't that the good part?)

Another fannish thing that I feel the need to share (boy, this entry is all over the place, isn't it?) is my complete lack of understanding about Doyle. If you're a slasher and you watch Angel (or perhaps even if you are just a television reviewer who watches Angel) you bemoan (or at least bemoaned) the passing of Doyle and the introduction of Wesley.

I freely admit that I did not watch Angel in the beginning of its season, although I watched quite a bit of Buffy. Instead, I was either watching a wonderful comedy called Sports Night or four hour blocks of Sentinel reruns on the Scifi channel. (i missed it the first time around; i thought it sounded silly and stupid. it is silly, but it's not nearly as stupid as i thought.)

But when they yanked Sentinel and SN, I tuned into Angel. And by that time, Doyle was a goner. So, my formative Angel experiences were with Wesley. And I thought he was pretty good at what he did, research and assistance. And I saw how he dealt with Faith and the guys from the Watchers' hit squad, and I thought that was pretty outstanding.

And, I've watched a couple of Doyle episodes, and I'm not seeing the loyalty-inducing qualities. I don't hate him or anything, I'm just not seeing what there is that's so wonderful.

Hmm, well, I think I've blathered on enough, and I'm hungry and tired, so goodnight, children. Sleep well.

Tuesday, June 13, 2000, 10:36 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:48:57 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Don't put long strings in the garbage disposal!
If you do, it will break the garbage disposal.

If you find you simply cannot keep from putting long, stringy things (like unbroken celery stalks and the fat trimmed from meat) down your sink, then make sure to take all of the organic detritus out of the sink when the disposal breaks down.

If you've forgotten to take out the organic detritus, for god's sake don't let the apartment get hot. Say, hot enough to sleep naked and with no blankets. For two days in a row. Nothing like that.

And if you must sleep warmly at night, for god's sake don't wake up in the morning of the second day and try to cover the stinky smell with even stinkier incense. Patchouli is nice by itself in small doses, but when combined with rotting sewer sludge, it might give you a pounding head ache.

But if you somehow you forget to obey all of these edicts, you might want to move to a different apartment. Because summer in Baltimore will probably just get hotter. And if you keep putting stringy things down the kitchen sink, it will also just get stinkier.

Why, no, I'm not talking about myself. Not at all, whatever gave you the idea that I was rambling on about my own experiences?

Monday, June 12, 2000, 10:20 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:48:24 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Take your own advice!
I did, and, boy, do I feel better!

Friday night, I didn't get much more sleep than I had the rest of the week, but on Saturday, I woke up about 6:40, and rolled over and went back to sleep. Then I got up in time to watch Batman Forever, called to cancel on the Blake's 7 pimping party, and then read e-mail (the backlog ... I have a 600k novel sitting in my e-mail, this is what happens when you joing multiple fanfiction mailing list) for two hours, then went to sleep. Then I got up to pee and went back to sleep for another two hours. I got up and read some more e-mail for another couple of hours, and then I cooked for four hours while listening to the World Cafe, which I had never heard of before. People in Philadelphia are lucky because they get to hear this wonderful show every day if they want to.

Then, instead of staying up to watch WiseGuys, I set my trusty videotape recorder and went to bed (with a book in my hand, but I'm reforming slowly).

Now, I am off to Thing2's (the younger cousin from my maternal aunt) post-Confirmation lunch thingy.

SLEEP IS GOOD!

Sunday, June 11, 2000, 08:07 a.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:15:02 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Go to fucking sleep already!
I've been having this odd, hallucinatory relationship to sleep lately. I haven't actually been doing it. Well, not in sufficient quantities.

Whenever I spend significant periods of time (more than a week) without regular morning obligations, I stop going to bed before two a.m. I don't try to behave in this fashion, it just happens. And besides, there's no harm in it when I don't have to get up before noon.

The problem always comes when I have to rejoin normal people in normal schedules that require me to wake up at hideous hours, like 6:30. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I begrudge all lifestyles which require me to wake up before 8 AM. It is the only major problem with temping, the fact that very few jobs start at 10 am, thus allowing me to get up at 8.

Anyway, this week I started a job, it makes me get up at 6:40, and I haven't been able to go to bed and turn off the lights before 1 AM. I wonder if there's something wrong with me. I'm not an insomniac. Once I get in a bed in a drakened room, I can sleep. It's just that whole get in bed, put book down, turn lights off, close eyes bit that gets to me.

So, in case you thought that there was a change in quality of journal entries as the week progressed, exhaustion was indeed the major cause.

Thursday, June 8, 2000, 11:01 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:13:45 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Write neatly!
I decided that I needed a clear, easy-to-read handwriting font. And since I'd downloaded several fonts a few days ago over that total font disaster, I thought I'd just go looking at type foundries on the web (downloading only the freeware fonts of course!) and pick up a few.

The problem with fonts is that they are insidious. And it's ridiculous to own a multitude of them if, at best, you use them to spruce up report covers (that would be me, in case you're wondering) but they're easy to download, they're relatively small, they look so cool, and having a choice of fonts gives me a weird sense of power. And they're pretty, at least the kind I like to use.

I must pull myself away from the pretty letters and work on my webpage ... or my stories ... or dinner ...

Wednesday, June 7, 2000, 09:37 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:12:43 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Marvel at life's little jokes!
Toni wrote an absolutely marvelous Jay/Silent Bob piece. I wrote her to say I loved it and I hated her for writing so effortlessly and I felt ashamed because my major accomplishment for the day was washing the damn dishes. She wrote back that she was underwhelmed by her own fiction and she wished she had been able to get up off her butt and clean something.

Why is life like that? Why do we always want what we haven't got? I keep feeling like I don't measure up to my friends, and those days when I feel brave enough to mention, "You're so cool; you've got [direction, an SO, a web award, a ten-year supply of Godiva's chocolates]!" I find out that they kind of wish they had something else.

Two theories leap to mind. Either it is very rare to be content with one's lot in life, or all of my friends are losers.

I'm gonna bet on the general anti-contentment theory.

Wednesday, June 7, 2000, 08:35 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:12:01 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Keep it clean!
Two happy developments. One, I washed the dirty dishes. There were lots of them. They were threatening to take over my kitchen. And I didn't have any spoons or forks. It was time. Now, I just have to rinse them, dry them, and put them away. It is after washing dishes that I most wish for a housemate.

But, the stuff I washed included my housewarming present from The Girl I'm Not Dating and the Topless Tuner. (The GIND and the Tuner are housemates.) They gave me a marvelous grater. It has six sides and a neat base thing onto which one grates. If I rinsed it off, I could grate some cheese and make something.

The second happy development is the return of the VCR. My VCR has always been broken for as long as I've owned it. (The tracking simply did not track.) But, just after I moved, I made my mom take it to Circuit City so they could fix it. And they did, and my mom brought it back to me. And I programmed my VCR to record the Sentinel, and it did, one and a half-times. (Damn tape ran out during the second episode.) Anyway, this makes me a happy little camper.

Tuesday, June 6, 2000, 08:43 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:08:30 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Go ahead and cry!
My font files have been corrupted. All of them. Not even Times New Roman, Courier New, or Arial (the three stand bys) have been spared. How could this happen to me? I haven't downloaded any new programs lately. I am sad, sad, sad and mad, mad, mad. I'm going to go to the Microsoft homepage and see if I can get at least some of my font files back, but this sucks about forty million eggs.

Sunday, June 4, 2000, 04:22 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:07:38 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Show your colors!
I did end up going to Baltimore's Pride Parade. It was a good deal of fun. I got to ride in the truck for DC's Different Drummers. (i know one of the women who plays trombone.) I'm really glad I met up with them, because the block party afterwards probably would not have been much fun by myself. On the other hand, I did not see much of the parade.

But I was able to enjoy the block party. There were some lovely drag queens (and some who were more enthusiastic than put together), and the 2000 Miss Leather was selling beer at the Baltimore Eagle in a scrumptious bit of almost nothing. She is cute and a pleasure to watch!

Unfortunately, I got home and I was exhausted. I went straight to bed, and wasn't able to finish cleaning my room in preparation for Mother's impending arrival. So, I have to scamper off and do that now.

Sunday, June 4, 2000, 07:46 a.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:07:07 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Tell me about yourself!
I am really curious if anyone besides me and Toni reads this weblog, so I was going to post a quizlet on the page which would just have been the question, "Is my name neither Toni, nor Aiobheann, nor WitchQueen?" but then I had the horrid thought that perhaps no one else was reading the journal. And while I don't really mind if no one is reading, I don't particularly want to know no one is reading. Do you see the difference?

All of this is to say that I am asking anyone who does read this blog to drop me a line, nothing fancy, just say you do read the random edicts. And if noone does, then I'll just assume it's the apathy afflicts people in the face of requests for e-mail correspondence. And I will be happy, and you'll be happy.

I expect some of you will wonder why I don't just get a counter. The answer is that I look at my own blog fairly frequently, and it would be really depressing to watch my stats grow only through my own visits. I couldn't handle the depression.

Sunday, June 4, 2000, 07:30 a.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:06:13 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Be cool, baby baby, just be cool!
Aiobheann invited me to be a part of the newly-redesigned slashslut, which is now a group weblog for FarScape authors. I feel extremely cool. This is an unusual sensation for me, who was always somewhat estranged from my peers in school, and thrilled to be that way. Cliques and the assorted jazz that goes with were never my thing.

At the same time, I feel oddly dorky about feeling so pleased to be invited and feeling cool. I mean, I would normally snerk at someone who wanted so desperately to be part of an in-crowd, except that this is me. And it's an in-crowd composed of people I like and respect, not to mention one of whom I lust after. Is it so dorky to want the people you like to like you?

I don't think so. And it's not like I get excited about every organization I'm asked to join. I didn't go absolutely gaga over the breast webring invite. I was a little flattered, but just a little.

Okay, that's enough soul-searching for the moment. I'm apparently okay.

Saturday, June 3, 2000, 12:07 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:05:33 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Re-invent yourself!
I feel like it's time to give my slash story site a bit of a makeover. My first impulse is to just make it look like my blogs, but I don't really want to do that.

Oh, that's a lie. I do want my blogs and my slash site to look alike. I want them all to have some themed graphics. But I'm afraid to make them. I've never felt like I was very good at pictures. My best art thing is collage, where I'm just rearranging pre-existing art. But I don't cut and paste very well, I color poorly, and my free-hand drawing isn't even worth discussing.

It's because I'm not a very picture-oriented person. I'm extremely word-oriented. I mean, I'm word oriented to the point where I have difficulty reading comics, graphic novels, and picture books, where half (or more) of the story is in the visuals. I end up reading all the dialogue and missing the point completely.

But really, this is a dumb fear. I don't need much. I need titles for each page. A symbol that says 'new' and another that says 'revised' (that's for the slash story page). And one little square that says 'pitas.com' and another that says 'powered by blogger'. Maybe title graphics that say X Files, FarScape and Essays. (that would be for the slash story page, again.) Ah, well, I'm thinking about it. If I do actually get over this, I'll let y'all know.

Friday, June 2, 2000, 10:50 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:04:50 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Consider carefully!
I'm having a bit of a debate with myself. I've been invited to join the breasts webring.

On the one hand, I do, generally speaking like my breasts. And they can be an important part of my life. My mother and I have had fights about them (or, perhaps more accurately, about bras). I, too, was tormented by evil, small children about my breast size until middle school.

On the other hand, I don't know that I want to define myself by my breasts. I'm not saying that I find the webring to be objectifying or belittling women. I don't particularly, or at least, it's no more doing so than having a webring devoted to any monofocus.

It's just that I don't identify myself as a person with big tits, in the way that I might identify myself as a slasher or a lesbian. Having big tits isn't really part of my identity, it's just a characteristic. And this webring seems to be for women who, in part, identify themselves by their tits, large or small.

I probably won't join the webring. It's just not my thing. But I do wish them great success with it.

Friday, June 2, 2000, 10:33 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 04:04:21 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Don't look back!
I thought I would do a public service for y'all and see what's lurking on the previous side of those webring lists. At the moment:

• blog girls - the webring homepage. boring, but good for traffic.
• everyday stories - i'm still in the queue. you get a list of all the sites.
• linksluts - see above.
• webloggers - scatterbrained (lady eclectic from the realm of readheads. she's okay. i dunno that i would read her. i find that i prefer the blogs of somewhat older people.
• pitas - whole wheat pitas. i knew people in high school like this. i ran away whenever they approached.

On the whole, you're probably better off looking for a random link. I'll check on the next link situation one of these days, but probably not today.

Friday, June 2, 2000, 11:51 a.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:59:12 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Make your choice!
Who planned this? Baltimore and D.C. have their pride celebrations the same week. So, I'm sitting here asking myself if I want to see the parade in Baltimore, or watch Queer as Folk all afternoon with a bunch of gay people. My heart is voting for QAF. My pocketbook says $41 for ticket and transportation is a big ouchie. Any suggestions?

Thursday, June 1, 2000, 05:20 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:58:36 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Write; don't procrastinate!
I gave the May challenge for the slash-writers mailing list. Basically, it was to write a male pregnancy story. I even plotted out a whole story to write. But I forgot to actually do so, and now it's June 1st and I'm trying to scribble out enough scraps so that I can send it and not feel quite so personally embarrassed.

Lesson learned: don't offer challenges until after I've written a good portion of the story. Unfortunately, I've already given the June challenge.

While distracting myself from the objective, I went looking at Toni's site. She redesigned again. I don't know what I think about this one. It does seem more in keeping with her personality, but on the other hand, I think the previous design was a trifle easier to read. If she went with a sort of grey mettallic background with black lettering, it might be sort of the same idea, but easier to read. Or not. (toni, please don't take these comments personally. i'm just trying to avoid my story. john and d'argo are about to have a fight because d'argo just laid an egg.)

Speaking of Toni, I think she's the only person who answered my challenge on slash-writers. And she used the same triad I did, namely John/D'Argo/Aeryn. I was a bit surprised when she did. I don't think she likes Aeryn very much.

I do like Aeryn. I think she's cool. I kind of miss how kick-ass and brash she was at the beginning of the series. She was quietly amused by John all the time. Now, she more appreciates the sentence, "He's only human." She's gentle with him, often.

Back to the salt mines for me, I must finish this story and go to bed.

Thursday, June 1, 2000, 02:30 a.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:57:34 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Cook!
Yesterday, when I was home for my brother's graduation, my father outdid himself cooking on the grill. He made a very good mixture of roasted vegetables. And he did a particularly nice job cooking some steak. He marinated it in apple juice, Coca-Cola ®, and cheap strawberry wine. It was delicious, even though normally I avoid fruity wines.

Today, I successfully fried french fries. Normally, I just put frozen french fries on a baking sheet and put them in the oven, but my oven is broken right now. So, I overcame my fear of panfrying and those french fries were pretty good. They were crisp and not super oily. (i didn't want to fry french fries in the pan because the first time i did it, they were soggy, and i broke and mushed half of them, and it was complete disaster and my mom yelled.) So, I had some very good french fries for breakfast.

For dinner, I stewed together beans and bananas. I used bananas because I haven't opened a package of sugar and I don't have any molasses. It worked all right, except that the flavors didn't really penetrate the beans. The beans tasted like beans, and the bananas tasted like spiced bananas. The weird thing is, this dish has given me a yen for blue cheese. Maybe my body wants to complete a protein?

Wednesday, May 31, 2000, 08:32 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:56:52 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Join the Herd!
Spent about an hour looking for webrings to join. Only qualified for (and wanted to join) five. Two others I might I have qualified for, but I didn't like their attitude.

There's something excruciatingly painful about looking for a webring to join. It's almost enough to drive a girl to drink. Or at least me to drink. (lucky for me, i don't tend to keep alcohol in the house. too expensive.)

Also tried the archiving thing for the first time. I was hoping to make it a week, but I thought the page was just too long. Maybe next time it will work out better.

Wednesday, May 31, 2000, 05:45 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:56:11 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Graduation Time
I went to my brother's graduation today. It was an all day affair as I had to travel about two hours to get there, catch up with the rest of my family, sit through the interminable ceremony (two and a half hours), find my brother (another good forty-five minutes) and eat and catch up with the fam (another four hours, minus the thirty minutes of The Sentinel I got to watch without explaining to my grandmother what's going on).

It's weird spending time with my family. I think the only people I actually talk to are my aunt j (who was there) and my cousins t & k (who weren't there and are from the other side of the family tree). Nobody else wants to talk to me, they just want to hear about my marvelous accomplishments. (or else they want me to get a driver's license and a car and turn into their personal taxi service; this would be thing 1 and thing 2, aunt j's kids.)

It was also weird at the graduation. All of the grown-ups made reasonably short speeches (clocked them all at just around three minutes or less) but the salutatorian gave a halfway decent 11 1/2 minute speech and the valedictorian gave a painful, droning, awful, meandering 14+ minute natter on the theme of dreams and reaching for them. My brother informs me that this was, in fact, a considerably cut down version of the original speech. I have to inform him that his school has done absolutely nothing to prepare him to handle the english language, if these two are the best they can offer.

The other thing I took away from this graduation was a deep appreciation for white, strappy shoes (most people would probably describe these as high-heeled sandals, if you're confused as to what i'm talking about). The girls had to wear white dresses because their gowns were light-colored, so the vast majority very fashionably also wore white shoes. (i would probably have put on my dependable black sandals or my sparkly jellies, provided my mother didn't stop me.) I find graduations terminally boring (unless they're mine, then they're only mildly enervating) so I looked at feet and timed speakers and laughed at the valedictorian a lot and talked about my own graduation with my dad and read a book. But I am sort of sneakingly proud of my brother for sticking it out.

Tuesday, May 30, 2000, 11:08 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:46:04 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Blog some more!
The time I spent today that was not frantically reading my e-mail or watching The Sentinel (with occasional, intermittent doses of homicide courtesy of courttv or the x-files from fx) I spent working on my three new blogs.

Thanks to these, not only do I have new time-wasting activity to delight myself with, I've overcome my long held fear of coding tables in html. Watch out, my next web project might just convince me to learn how to do frames!

For the curious, I have a blog of my blogs and those I read, another blog of slash story recommendations, and an (as yet partial) list of urls I have minded.

Monday, May 29, 2000, 09:04 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:45:26 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Gorge yourself!
Metaphorically speaking, of course. That's what I did today. It's Memorial Day in the U.S. and the scifi channel ran a ten episode The Sentinel marathon. I finally got a chance to see the pilot episode and the second series finale. (the first time they announced they were ending the show, it was at the end of the third season, and that finale was an evil, awful cliffhanger.) They were both better than I expected them to be, and even though I knew pretty much what would happen in them, they really packed an emotional wallop. Which makes me happy, because a lot of times, you have to realize, The Sentinel is not very good television, as opposed to say Sports Night or Homicide.

Monday, May 29, 2000, 08:53 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:41:57 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Learn to keep a secret!
Somebody told Toni (who is sometimes called aiobheann, it's her sca name) that I am desperately in lust with her. How embarrassing!

She's told me that she doesn't want a dog, she's more of a cat person. I suppose that's okay. I had been planning to research dog breeds and figure out which one I was supposed to be, but I guess I'll have to research cats.

The obvious temptation, of course, is to become a panther, but I am not that much of a TS freak. Yet. I suppose I'll just have to do some research and figure out what little feline beauty most resembles me ... and what sort of cat Toni most deserves to have worship her.

Although, it's not entirely clear that a cat can worship a human. Very often, it's the other way around.

Monday, May 29, 2000, 02:17 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:34:39 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Blog Again!
I decided that I wanted to do a story recommendations page in the form of a blog. Decided to go with blogger instead of pitas. Just because blogger allows for multiple blogs in the same account, and I already have an idea for yet a third blog.

Monday, May 29, 2000, 01:08 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:33:22 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Admit to telling lies
I told you I was going to go off and look at and read gay porn, didn't I? Well, it turned out that I went and read Jane's diary instead. It's nice. I just might start reading her regularly.

Sunday, May 28, 2000, 10:52 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:32:25 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Look at big tits!
Ran across a very informational page about big breasts with many illustrations. Some of the pictures also portray naked buttocks or pubic areas, but the focus is on breasts.

It seemed like a lot of fun, but honestly, I couldn't finish because I was inspired to go to Jane's Guide and find pictures of naked gay men. And then maybe I will go to Nifty and read poorly punctuated stories about fucking.

Just to clarify, I wasn't disgusted by all of the breasts, but I find looking at naked women to be one level of arousal, looking at naked men fucking a step above that, and reading about fucking a step even above that.

Sunday, May 28, 2000, 09:45 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:31:06 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Leap without looking!
I've spent the past three hours, just about, installing a random link generator on my page. The bulk of the time was spent collecting 100+ links to randomly generate, but I also had to have a good long conversation with a friend about how to install the script, which I got from Matt.

I was going to tell you why, exactly, I thought a random link generator would be cool, but I forgot.

Wait, wait, no, I remember! Well, first of all, Helen has one (her's also has text generated with the link, but i, alas, am not that cool). She's cool, so if she has one, it must be cool. But also, I was making the top page of my domain, and I figured that I needed at least four links, and at the time, I had only though of one to this log, my stories, and Down in the Basement. So, I needed a random fourth link, and I figured that just that, a random link, would be the ticket. So, I searched on Yahoo, which pulled up the MSA script for it, and, well, you can read the top of this log entry faster than I can retype it.

Sunday, May 28, 2000, 05:41 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:27:51 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Be Toni's Bitch!
goddamnit. Yesterday, Peja Dalton made the list CrichtonLuvsDargo at egroups. I thought it was a dumb idea. I thought, you know, there are enough slash or slash-friendly Farscape lists already at egroups. I personally am on Smutscape, Scapeslash, DARGO, AdultFarscape, and Farscape_Fic, already. And Scapeslash and Farscape_Fic are basically dead lists, too. So what do we need another one for?

But then Toni joined it, so of course I had to, too. My patheticness knows some bounds, but they're way the hell over in California.

Sunday, May 28, 2000, 11:30 a.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:26:27 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Be nice, asshole!
I'm a nice girl. Who knew?

Sunday, May 28, 2000, 02:15 a.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:25:04 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Plainify your webpage!
I was reading about this weblog phenomenon, since I'd decided to start one of my own. (that's just the way i am. start to do something, read all about it: that's me.) Actually, I just told a lie. I went back to Aiobheann's page. I was just trying to pretend for a moment that I'm not her (unacknowledged) Siberian Husky. (i'm trying different breeds on for size until i find one that fits.)

They were very pretty. Thin, sans serif fonts. Pastel colors or metallic colors or colors that are just indescribably cool together. Neat little .jpg's and .gif's to make it all look so damn designed.

I hate that. I'm on the web looking for text. Isn't a weblog all about text and links? So what's with all the cutesy, man? Stop it, before you end up like boo.

Sunday, May 28, 2000, 01:28 a.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:22:50 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?

Read a soap opera!
I would never, ever, ever start watching a soap opera on television. I have heard way too much about how low-brow they are, how nonsensical they are, how beautiful all the actors on them are, etc. (besides, they all started many, many years ago and i am intimidated by the idea of trying to figure out the history of what's already happened. and i hate watching a show if i can't figure out the history.)

But, I will read the fan-fiction equivalent of a soap opera for chapters and chapters and chapters. The Terranova Situation, in the link above, is such a soap. Life from the Ashes is another. Get Your Kix! and spinoffs are yet a third. I've been trying to figure out exactly what I see in these stories, and this is what I've come up with:

• they've got kilobytes
  I read loads of stories, probably a minimum of 100k/day per average. So I love anything long
• they've got characters (lots of 'em!)
  Slash stories have a tendency to focus almost claustrophobically on the two (or three) people in the relationship the story is about. In a story like this, there are lots of secondary characters, and they're important. I like it when there are secondary characters, and they've got lives of their own.
• they've got cliffhangers
  When you write an ongoing saga, you can afford to leave your readers anxiously awaiting the next chapter. Both you and they trust that you'll resolve it and go on to bigger and more anxiety-causing dilemmas. But you can never stop reading, because you want to know how the cliffhanger is resolved. Each chapter leaves you hungry for more.
• they've got melodrama
  Wouldn't you like to give David Duchovny a script and say, "Hey, you! Overact!", or tell Robert Duncan MacNeil, "Today, Tom Paris is going to be a complete drama queen."? Okay, maybe you wouldn't but I would. Yeah, most of the time, it's distressing when characters act really out-of-character (particularly if it's so they can be a superfemmy bottom), but sometimes it's just a lot of fun.
• they've got me inspired
  they let me think three things: one, that i can write at least as well as that and someone (like me!) will read it; that I can keep writing, even if it doesn't start out so good; and that writing improves through the writer writing. All of these authors (to me, anyway) seem to have gotten better as they've gone along.

Saturday, May 27, 2000, 11:32 p.m.

so spoke WitchQueen
7/7/2000 03:20:47 PM | linkyluv?
discuss the entry?