You can read on your mobile device, which is why I was the only blissfully happy person standing amidst a crowd of very disgruntled people for an hour and a half in the security line at La Guardia. So yes, I was basically reading what amounts to very light soft core lesbian erotica in a pack of strangers. Turns out that’s not as disconcerting as one would think.
I know this means you’ll be suspicious of what I’m reading whenever I have my phone out in your presence. As well you should be; I probably am. 🙂
I haven’t read fan fiction in quite a few years because it was always so hard to hunt down good stuff and separate it from the crap. But I’ve been a long-time fan of Dorothy Snarker, and somehow I navigated from her site to fanfiction.net the other day. This site does a great job of aggregating fan fiction, sorting it out, and even encouraging group editing projects to improve people’s writing skills. There’s still a lot of bad stuff there, but it’s possible to navigate your way around it thusly: go to whatever category of stuff you like. Sort by characters you want to read about. Look for stories with tons and tons of reviews. These are the stories people really like because they bother to comment. Read some of them. Look at their authors, and the authors also have lists of their favorites stories and authors. Visit those. Repeat. This was an awesome distraction to the stress of going out of town on business this week (I suck at travel; indeedy I do).
(I have a similar method of finding cool stuff on Flickr by surfing the favorites of photographers I like. Hours of awesome.)
Here, let me highlight a couple of the steamier Rizzoli & Isles items for you:
Yeah, come back after you’ve read those and let me know what you think. 🙂
I have more stuff to link to, but I’ll hold off until I hear from you.
ADDENDUM: Of course, as soon as I posted this, I got email from the other other half of TNT’s dynamic duo:
Maura Isles as confirmed you as a Friend on Facebook
Of course this whole post presupposes that you’ve actually seen the TNT show Rizzoli & Isles, which aired this summer and will be back next. If you haven’t you can catch it in reruns. It stars Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander, along with a small dog, a tortoise and absolutely insane amounts of subtext and Totally Gratuitous Touching. Shame on you for missing it.
"For a piece called Metropolis II, artist Chris Burden is building a huge track and put 1200 Hot Wheels cars on it" – I hate this guy, because I want to do what he's doing. 🙂 How do people make a living playing with cars?
Richard Koos is my mom's uncle — "An unsung hero of the decision not to abort the landing is Richard Koos, a NASA simulation supervisor who, on the afternoon of July 5, 11 days before the launch of Apollo 11, put the team of controllers including Bales, Garman, and capcom astronaut Charlie Duke, through a simulation that intentionally triggered a 1201 alarm."
Wow. Intense training can help you fight off aging, but there possibly some genetic component as well. But the fact that she didn't begin her intense training until her 70s leaves me with some hope. I can start now and have some hope of holding on.
"Only children are happier than those with siblings, which may reflect the fact that they endure less bullying — something more than half of kids with siblings in the study reported. "Quarreling siblings increase stress for parents and some [parents] just give up intervening or intervene inconsistently, leaving the field wide open for the bully sibling," says one researcher."
A smart, funny, brainy show with the strongest female lead I’ve ever seen and interesting story lines. A version of the X-Files done right, and infinitely smarter; It doesn’t go off the rails or take itself so seriously that it’s over blown the way Mulder and Scully did. I don’t know what I can say to get you hooked on my current obsession – Fringe – but I’ll say it, because it’s good.
Can’t remember what caused me to start watching Fringe, but one or two episodes of season 2 got me roped in, and I started getting the first season from Netflix to get caught up. I’ve been saving the current season to watch after I met up with myself in the middle, which turns out to be a mistake, because I should have been watching the show right away so my viewings counted toward the ratings – cable numbers are counted live or if viewed from DVR within 24 hours. Our drastically pared down Fall TV schedule has allowed me to get nearly caught up (I know, I know! But we’re still watching less TV).
If you’re a current viewer or fan, you should know that it’s moving to Friday nights on January 28th. Be sure to follow it, because unless it’s successful there, it’s projected to be canceled. I always manage to find the really good stuff too late and lose it too early.
PHILLIPS: "The Founding Fathers originally said, they put certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote. It wasn’t you were just a citizen and you got to vote. Some of the restrictions, you know, you obviously would not think about today. But one of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners."
Speaking of things I’ve been remiss in writing about this year – several months ago, our good friend Chi Sherman became a writer for Nuvo Newsweekly (our local alt weekly, for non-Indy residents.) She’s on the arts/writing/entertainment beat writing about all the cool happenings going on about town, and much of our new awareness of what’s going on in Circle City has been due to her articles and reviews. Among the many things we’ve picked up from her writing: we learned about the vibrant local poetry scene, various cool First Fridays events, the twin renaissances of cultural awareness in Irvington and Fountain Square, and what was going down at the Indy Fringe Festival and at the Spirit and Place Festival. We tried to keep up with her at the beginning going with her while she attended events, shows, openings and celebrations, but the schedule was exhausting, and now we just try to attend something with her once a week or so. The girl is busy.
I’ve mentioned Chi a number of times here commonplacebook.com, because she’s not just a good friend but also a respected and award-winning poet and writer in the local scene, with some chapbooks and recordings to her name and a bit of a fan club. It’s not unusual to be out to dinner or an event with her and to have people come up to her and gush about her work. It’s pretty cool the first several times it happens, but after a bit, you kinda wanna eat your dinner. 🙂
In addition to being a moving poet, she’s also downright hilarious — like Dorothy Parker funny — and never fails to make me LOL. Add her blog to your feed reader or regular schedule – you won’t regret it. And if you have tips about something you’re working on in the Arts scene – you want her to write about your stuff. Contact her at her blog, or just ask me. I’ve got pull. 🙂
