Yet another fangirl raving. Pity the world for having yet another one of those.

 
CC, join more lists. You'll get lots and lots of mail then. As for the Fan Qs, well, you gave it your best shot. The popularity of Linda White's 3rd Level Universe is really starting to puzzle me. In the beginning, it was interesting and well-constructed. Illya as a pushy tops soooo different from the passive bottom he's usually written as. And her Napoleon! A Napoleon Solo dying to bottom made me drool. The 3rd Level Universe probably helped form a lot of my MfU buttons and kinks.

But now? I think Linda White decided she could do whatever the hell she wanted to the characters, and proceeded to do so. She can probably point to places and points that support her universe, but I could care less. She's lost me. Actually, she lost me in RS4. I read her 3rd story in that zine once, and then refused to do it again. She just went too far for me. Should she care? Nope. I'm only one reader. While I might highlight my dislike of the story/stories, obviously other people are very very happy with them. shrugs Go figure.

Of course, this obviously means we need more PushyTop!Illya stories, and Bottom!Napoleon. There's obviously a need for them in the fandom. Characterization has swung to long wimpy/abused/feminine/de-sexualized Illya end of the scale. Time to move it away from that and try something different. To help with that, I bought a thick and depressing book on POWs. Someday I will write that story.

posted by Mer W at 10:09 AM

 
To prove I just don't babble on about m/m subjects, I'm going to babble on about Buffy's finale.

On the whole Spike issue. I was right about what the writers where the writers were going with him. Go me! It's going to be fun to see how is personality is going to change because of the re-souling. His pre-vamp self was rather wimpy and mousy, I wonder how years of 'Spike' has affected it. I'm also betting that he's vamp with a soul. If it was that easy (well, kinda easy...) for a vampire to have their humanity (life & soul) returned, then Angel would have done it long ago. It's also going to be fun to see how the Scoobies react to that. They are so going to shit. Xander had enough problems with Angel, and he knew him (mostly) as souled. It is going to be soooo much fun.

On the Buffy acknowledging Dawn as a Scoobie issue, it was about time. I understand Buffy desire and need to protect Dawn, but it didn't really hold much water. Dawn just wanted to do what Willow and Xander had been doing since they were her age. Considering what the group goes through, it's a valid desire. Dawn does have to deal with the fallout of the demons and death that stalk Sunnydale and Buffy, she might as well learn to do it under the guidance of responsible mentors. It's safer for her. If she knows what to look for, she won't wander into blind dates with vampires. When you think about it, that whole blind date of Dawn's wasn't so bad. Of course you have to factor in that Buffy almost got sacrificed by frat boys to a Snake God as her stupid blind date.

Next up, Giles! Hey look, they brought back Giles! And he kicks ASS! Of course, he's kicking ass with someone else's magic. (Wonder what happened to his own? He did use to dabble. Must have atrophied from disuse.) It was so nice to see Giles, he might not have directly saved the day, but he was such an important grounding force for the last half of the show. (Where did the "Daddy's home." comment come from. Is that fanon of canon? Love it which ever.)

Pulling out different threads from Giles interaction. The Giles as a father figure aspect of his personality is incredibly strong for the Sunnydale crew. Giles is probably the best male role model they have. Xander's father is a drunk. Willow's seems disinterested in her life. Buffy and Dawn's father has disappeared. He is Buffy's protector and mentor, she takes an incredible amount comfort from him. Most of this has been picked to death. It's a done deal. Yet tonight, I didn't realize how much Anya drew from Giles. It use to be Xander and Giles were Anya's role models. Xander removed himself from that support role, so Giles return must have been manna for Anya.

Continuing on with Anya, I like Anya. I have such a warm spot for the bitchy, honest characters in this show. I liked Cordelia too, once the Scoobies borged her. Yes, Anya has her issues. Yes, Anya is a money-grubbing bitch and an unrepentant Vengance Demon.

But, hey, Spike is an unrepantant vampire and an dangerously obssessive bastard, and yet, people still like him. Spike's bad points don't seem to faze them. People adore him. To all the people who do do so and hate Anya, I would like to say, your misogyny is showing. To all the people who hate them both, I would like to say, folks ain't black and white. Deal with it.

Back to Anya and Giles. They had some of the most heart-warming scenes in the Magic Box. Anya forcing herself into the hug with Giles was jarring, but so Anya. She needed the comfort that Giles provided, and she did her socially maladjusted best to get it. It was lovely to see that Giles accepted her. Anya sitting with Giles once she thought he was dying rang true to me as well. She only left to give Buffy the information she needed, and then she rushed back. Her covering him while the earth shook was so telling. She couldn't do much for Giles, since the magic drain seemed to be killing him, but she could do that.

Onto Dark!Willow. Whoa, the girl kicks ass. All the fans knew that Willow had the ability to be evil when they met Vamp!Willow, but no one thought our Willow could do it. Sur-prise! She's damn good at it, and damn bitchy too. It was fun to watch. (I am such a sick bitch.) She had attitude and cause and rage. What can I say, she hit my buttons.

Now onto Xander, because his purpose in this was huge. For all this angsting that he did nothing, he did the most important thing. He managed to connect to the opening Giles gave to Willow and stop her. Please everyone note, a carpenter saved the world. pauses Please tell me ya'll picked up the Christian text there.

Minor notes, I'm going to miss Tara. I am really going to miss her. Jonthan's moral center keeps wavering. Hopefully, he's finally grown up enough to stop dabbling in stuff. Andrew is such a sub...Somebody find that boy a nice Master.
posted by Mer W at 8:48 AM

 
poings about

I have Love Mode drama cds! I have Love Mode drama cds. Be happy for me, even if you don't know what I'm babbling about! W00t! Go me!

For my next trick, I'm going to try and score the SY drama cds! Once I have money again. (Must save. Must save. Must save. Wish to take trips. Wish to take trips.)

poings off
posted by Mer W at 2:24 PM

 
Maaaaaaaa, what a weekend. I spent most of it exhausted. It had periods of intense activity and sometimes fear, followed by extreme exhaustion. Though, I did learn valuable lessons this weekend. The first was that I learned to never have Burmese iced coffee at dinner. I thought the first time I tried it the fact that I was bouncing off walls was a fluke. Well, it wasn't a fluke. There is enough caffeine in there to affect even a caffeine hound like me.

On Saturday, I awoke to find that the rain had sent water into the ultility room and into the hall in front of my bedroom. Imagine my shock... I woke up earlish so I could be lucid before my friend arrived and we left for the concert/festival. I stumbled to the bathroom. Suddenly wet and cold feet. So, tired, groggy, and needed to tank up the kitty and take a shower and needed to clean up the water. The shower happened first, then the tanking up of the kitty, and then I started to clean up the water. Somewhere in there, I got dressed, ran out to get bread and got coffee into me.

Friend arrived and we left. We went to Metro station, and meet 2nd friend. Admired 2nd friend's new baby truck. Friend #1 and I agreed that we were surprised Friend #2 hadn't gotten a truck sooner. Cause, she's just a truck kinda person. Get downtown and peaceably line up for concert. They finally let us into the concert/festival area.

Have I mentioned that they closed off a major chunk of the Nation's Capital's streets for this sucker? I don't believe I have. A large chunk of Pennsylvania Ave was closed off for this sucker. The J. Edgar Hoover FBI building was visible through the stage. So was the US Senate. Anyway, enough location details.

How about crowd details? Deeear lord, are people stupid. The concert starts out well enough. Small local band opens up the event. Small local band seems to be made up of very nice boys. Crowd was nice and peaceable. Everybody had plenty of room. Not to many idiots about. Next band comes on, a group called "Something Corporate" and they're okay. Nothing special. Crowd starts moving forward, and idiots start showing up. One group of girls decided to get closer to the stage, and barrel through. Doesn't matter that everyone else is quite happy where they are and don't want to move for them. The tail-end of that group smacks me in the face twice with her damn pony tail. I am not pleased, and tell her to watch it. Am also pissy as she tries to apologize. She eventually goes away.

Then up comes the next band, they're called "Two Skinny Js." I guess they're rappers with a band, and a guy in a Zoot suit wearing gold lame. They were just silly. They made the dumbest faces, and the crowd loved it. Boys started crowd surfing. I was feeling pretty good for my sex, because no females were crowd surfing. That of course was blow out of the water in short order. I am very surprised that one girl kept her top. The crowd also starting jumping up and down at some points. Which is not something I usually mind, buuuut when I do that, I'd like to be sure I don't land on anyone coming down. The crowd was now so tight that I couldn't be sure of that. So, no jumping for me. Just curled up my toes and stayed out of others way.

That band finally goes off, and the crowd is now so tight that I can't even lift my elbows without touching someone in an intimate way. Which I didn't really want to do, since the rest of the crowd seemed to be young enough that it would be illegal for me to touch them in intimate ways.

Next the announcer announces that Carbonleaf will be up next, and I am very happy. For lo, this is the band I really came to see. Because they're cool, and I like them, and they opened for Great Big Sea in Chicago. All which adds up to a good enough reason to go through all this for me. That and I really like "The Boxer." (Their one and only song to get airplay.) Carbonleaf takes the stage and plays really cool songs. A song from their new album, Echo Echo, called "Shine." They also use "Sloop John B" to lead into a song of their's called "Home," and then they went into something called "American Tale." Next came a folksong they snitched from GBS. Maybe I'm just use to the GBS ver. but Carbonleaf's arrangement sounds very similar. Then came their last song, "The Boxer," and that was it for them.

Remy Zero was suppose to be up next, but once they started the crowd got to dangerous for me. Bad enough that I'd been knocked down during Carbonleaf's set, because someone who was crowd surfing dropped on top of me. (That's where the fear came into my life. For a minute, I was certain I was going to be trampled.) It just did not get any better after that. Someone blonde bimbo decided to start shoving so some sort of whirlpool effect was set up in the crowd. Nobody was really amused by that. Except of course, the idiots who were pushing...

So, after that, I decided to take pity on my poor abused and tired friends, and we got out of the crowd and left. Found some lunch and then dragged ourselves back to the Metro station whence we came. Then, I went home and collapsed.

Surprisingly, F#1 has agreed to go to another concert with me. Great Big Sea is playing at Wolftrap, and Pam can't go with me because her boss is being a dick. F#2 is going to see if she can get the night off, but I ain't holding my breathe for that.

posted by Mer W at 1:07 PM

 
I'M BORED! BORED. BORED. BORED.

I'm sick of pulling metal and foldering stuff.

I have nothing to peep about. I have nothing to rant about.

I'm throughly uninteresting today and BORED!
posted by Mer W at 1:59 PM

 
(whine)
wails I waaaannna go toYaoicon in Oct! I can get from Bal'more to LA for less then $250...
sheepish look But I don't wann be all alone there.
(/whine)

posted by Mer W at 2:12 PM

 
GREAT BIG SEA! GREAT BIG SEA! GREAT BIG SEA!

Thank you, Pam Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I love the videos! Even if it does my browser crash... Everybody! Go look! See the glory of GBS! Just make it the last thing you do, because it will fuck up your browser. Then again, it might just be my browser. Aithine keeps telling me mine are crap.

By the by, Pam, did Sean McCann hair change color halfway through "Ordinary Day?" I swear one moment, it's short and dark and the next it longer and blond. Oh, if you're still curious, CC the first instrument you see in "Ordinary Day" is a bodhran. It's the round thing the guy who's hair changed color is playing.

Next comment, what the fuck were they smoking during the "Mari Mac" video? That was one of the most surreal things I have ever seen. They sure do like "Lukey's Boat" don't they? Loved the video for that one. Totally cool to see Great Big Sea and The Chieftains playing in what, a pub? And have that intercut w/the old man pushing his boat. I giggled and grinned the whole way through the video.

Hey, ya' know they're playing at Wolftrap again this summer? puppy dog eyes It looks like they're headlining and everything! W00T!

Yes, indeedyou are evil, and I'd also like to add an "It's not fair!" sulk I didn't quite get what they were going for in Sandry's Book either. I just kinda skipped over that part. Big tension filled scene, and I skipped it becuase it was kinda boring. Go fig'.

CC the plot to Gravi isn't that hard to describe. You hit it on the head. All the rest of the story is just the details that make it different from other stories.

Okay, off to crash my browser. Again. GREAT BIG SEA! GREAT BIG SEA! GREAT BIG SEA!
posted by Mer W at 12:35 PM

 
Okay, T you addicted me to the Circle of Magic series, so now explain to my WHY CAN'T I FIND THE FOURTH BOOK?!? I went to four different bookstores, and now of them had Briar's Book. Most had the beginning next series, but not the last book of the first series. I'm gonna go sulk in a corner about this.
posted by Mer W at 10:33 PM

 
I could blog about food, yet again, because I made some great carrot muffins yesterday, but I'll save that for another time. Someday, I'm going to have to take all these recipes and throw them onto my page.

Went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on Saturday. The last time I went I was in my early teens and it was raining. Therefore, it wasn't that crowded, and I don't think it was as big. It has grown, a lot. The Festival took up the HoCo fairgrounds and it was crowded. There was lots and lots of stuff to buy, if your crafty sensiblities took you towards yarn. Sadly, mine don't really go that way. I did buy some yarn to embellish the fleece blanket I want to make, and a kit to knit a scarf, but that's about it.
Not too surprisingly there were lots of animals. Not only were there the required sheep. There were goats, rabbits, llamas and I believe alpacas. The llamas were kinda cute. I also got to see border collies herd. Talk about your type A dogs. Even after the dogs had completed their part of the demonstration and were called off, their focus was on those sheep.

Ended up in Old Town Ellicot after the Sheep and Wool thang. Going to go back Saturday and get a nice mirror. Also went to the Korean grocery store and got some veggies and coconut milk. I can't get a good Japanese grocery store in this area, but I can't get Korean and Vietnamese. Go figure. Convinced the friend I was with to try bugoli, (I'm mangling that spelling, I know it.) and she liked it! She's famously picky, so I'm glad she liked the food. I just had bimb bop, and I didn't think it was the greatest I'd ever had. Not enough meat for one.

Saw Spiderman on Friday. It was fun. The story doesn't really stay with me, but it was fun.
posted by Mer W at 10:14 AM

 
So, I snitched another recipe from here. The recipe is basically chicken in coconut milk. I played with this one much more then I did the lamb stew one I snitched. So I'll remember my variation, I'm going to put it down in here.

Chicken in coconut milk
6 skinned chicken thighs
1 can of coconut milk (I had to use Spainish cm, and I don't think I liked it as much as the Asian stuff I usually buy.)
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 chili peppers (I used dried Tien Tsin peppers)
cilantro (I mixed dried into the milk and chopped a little fresh overtop.)
salt to taste
pepper to taste (I used some sort of Asian peppercorns...Not sure on type.)
about a 1tbsp of fish sauce (I didn't actually add this, I just wished I had.)

Preheat oven at 350. Pour coconut milk into baking dish. Add much garlic, salt, dried cilantro, chili peppers, pepper, and fish sauce to milk and stir to combine. Plop chicken into milk. Snip fresh cilantro over the top. Bake for about an hour and then serve.

Plain rice goes well with this.

Use the leftovers to make soup for another dinner.

For soup:

Leftover sauce & chicken
Chicken broth (maybe 3-4 c?)
2 shallots
Whatever veggies you have on hand in whatever portions you like. (I had asapargus, mushrooms, green pepper, red potatoes, yellow potatoes and carrots.)

Pour broth and leftover coconut milk into pot, and let simmer while you chop up stuff. Chop the shallot and veggies. Chop the chicken last, because it will probably be ookey from the coconut milk.

Put chicken into soup. Saute the shallot in olive oil until clear. Add the "harder" veggies then, (Asapargus, potatoes & carrot) and saute until soften. Dump into soup pot. Then, saute the softer veggies. (ie mushrooms and pepper) Dump those into the pot. Taste. Add more cilantro, salt, pepper and/or fish sauce if you think it needs it.

Serve with a salad and bread.
posted by Mer W at 1:32 PM

 
CC, what do you mean it's done? I thought I had until the 31st to whip up something for that last paragraph? checks calendar Okay, what happened to the 31st?
posted by Mer W at 9:35 AM