After ages and ages, I have finally done up my LJ in that Series of Unfortunate Events layout I was thinking of! And I made a header image. You should all come look at it, because I am really really proud of that header image. I'm looking for a matching mood theme, but haven't found one yet.

Real life: still boring, sadly.

Layout code by aqrima, tinkered with by me with help from slaarti; background texture from Velvet Factory.
Header image by me, from stock photos and jaeliyah's caps of the end credits from A Series of Unfortunate Events, with text by Lemony Snicket.
Profile code by eunkyung.

A meme from the_wanlorn!

Here's how it works:

1. Reply to this post if you want me to tell you how cool you are!

2. I'll respond to your comment with why you are so cool.

3. Post these instructions in your journal and give your friends a much needed dose of love and adoration. (As always, this part not mandatory. This here is just to spread the love.)

Eventually there will be actual content again, it's just that this week and maybe the next are looking to be pretty hectic with work and school and fandom and moving things.

nai_is_not is a shining, brilliant example of everything that humanity should be and TODAY IS HER 21ST BIRTHDAY.

EVERYONE GO WORSHIP HER, AS IS HER DUE.

Off now to a viewing party with kisonecat-- see you all later! And you should go worship him a little too, as he is now a Doctor Of Mathematics, how badass is that?

First of all: a belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the_antichris, whom I don't see around nearly as much as I used to when we were on opposite sides of the world but nonetheless adore.

Secondly: I have the awesomest mom there is. I called her up this weekend and told her I was writing Hairspray fic, because I needed to ask her some stuff for research questions, and she went "grmph humbug fanfic ew, write your own stuff" as usual. And then I came home from work this afternoon to find an envelope from her with a page from the New Yorker-- over a year old, too-- with a column about musicals set in Baltimore. Oh mom, I love you but you really aren't fooling anyone any more.

Another conclusion I could draw from this is that leaving my mom home alone, sick and bored, is a Very Bad Plan. I should probably have gone over to show her movies or something, twelve-hour drive and lack of driver's license notwithstanding. Oh well.

Thirdly: I just finished watching the original British State of Play and it is so incredibly good, Internet. SO GOOD. I'm going to need to watch it again, because I was too busy falling in love with all the characters to follow half the plot, but even so the end was heartbreaking and amazing. I am immensely pleased and request fanfic.

. . . there isn't any, is there :(

I'm still trying to catch up on various procedurals and British TV, and after all that and rewatching State of Play I think will come rewatching of Leverage, and then the American Life on Mars and season one of Life and taking a shot at Lost. Basically I want to watch all the TV ever that starts with L! Hooray.

Friends list, this is VERY VERY important:

fox1013 is currently taking prompts for her Gen Battle here through the 11th.
More urgently, bribitribbit is taking prompts for her Kisses and Cuddles Battle here through today, the 7th.

You know you all want fic that isn't porn. Go write some prompts! Go read some and start writing things! It's a party :D

You guys all remember oxoniensis's Porn Battle, right?

Well, my buddy fox1013 is running a Gen Battle-- go check it out! The rules are here and the prompts post just went up here.

And in similar news, my other buddy bribitribbit is over here talking about running a Kisses and Cuddles Battle on Valentine's Day, so please go check that out too.

And in related news to that: y halo, it's that time of year again! Leave me a message please? :D?


Get your own valentinr

I am the very latest to the bandwagon, but here goes.

( Icon meme! )

In other news, I have to pay for rent and groceries and I will not buy tickets to see Bruce Springsteen at United Center in April. No really, I won't.

but mephron did this and I thought it looked neat.

The year in review, via the first sentence posted to LJ each month.

January: HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE.
February: So this is a neat little widget I found on . . . some person's LJ who I don't actually know.
March: State of the Pringle, at the end of her twentieth year.
April: and I return with tekteks. Eventually I may write a post with actual content. Anything's possible.
May: So movie music gets reused in other trailers all the time, right? Annoying, but true.
June: I fail at memes lately, but.
July: So I went to the movies tonight and did the double-feature thing; I went and saw the 8:50 Hancock and the 11:00 Wanted.
August: Friends cut time! I'm pretty certain all the journals I cut were people I don't talk to any more or outright defunct, but if I made a mistake tell me.
September: PROTIP FOR SELF: If what you really want is to never get any RP ever again, you've got a great strategy going.
October: Well, I was going to go to NextFest with newredshoes today.
November: I don't think I'm going to be doing this every day, but. Have some spaz.
December: On the plate for today: meeting with my academic advisor oh god help, laundry, possibly getting a job, possibly getting another job, catching up on either Sarah Jane Adventures or Merlin. And no writing.


And the first thing I have to say for January is that I started getyourwordsout today and am currently a little ahead of schedule. If nothing else, ariastar will have her 21st birthday present before she turns 22. :D?

No, really, I just want to post about how awesome all my new icons are. The end :D

Hooray, extra icon spaces! Just so I can use this icon :DDDDD

I need Merlin icons, and probably Hot Fuzz, and I have some I keep meaning to make myself, so. Hm. What should I get icons of, ladies and gents?

. . . that's all, go about your lives.

IMPORTANT QUESTION FOR YOU, FLIST. Do you want to put up with my NaNo spam for the next month? I've never done this before, I'm not sure how it's going to turn out for me, but word count widgets are awesome and I want to play with them.

On the one hand: I have an unused LJ sitting around, which I could call my NaNo journal, and then I could friend all you people's shiny new NaNo journals and use it to spaz out and post widgets and cover art and things on a daily basis.
On the other: I could friend people's NaNo journals under a specific filter, spaz out right here like I do the other eleven months of the year (possibly also filtered, unless I want general plotting advice or something), and just stick a widget or two on my profile page in case people are curious.

Either way, if when I get this damn story finished and edited I will harass someone into betaing it for me and post it here in shiny flocked chapters. Because I am an attention whore. Yes. :D

Anyway: use this journal for NaNo, or my spare? Which would you guys prefer?

I've devised the ultimate procrastination method: I've made up a nice sane comprehensive tagging system, and I'm going back through my journal and tagging everything from the beginning. Now if only I really had anything to put off :(

This is going to be a multi-day project, considering I've got 1462 (I think) entries dating back to late April, 2004. I've been at it since dinnertime and only made it to early December 2004, so . . . yeah. This could take a while.

It's a very interesting experience, though. There are things that are nigh-on horrifying about sixteen-year-old me-- I called slashfic "freakish sexual fandom stuff" and was horribly ashamed of liking it at first, I got pretty stalkery over boys I liked, I thought quoting French pop music made me deep. But a lot of it sounds suspiciously familiar-- "I slept all this afternoon and told my parents I was studying. I still haven't done my calc homework that was due last Friday. I can't think."

I may still be a bit fucked in the head, but at least these days I recognize it =/

I'm changing the text in my intro box to a French translation of the song "At My Most Beautiful" by REM. So here's my translation of the Bene Gesserit fear mantra-- I wanna preserve it for posterity.

Je dois ne pas avoir peur. La peur tuera mon avis. Le peur sera le petit-mort que m’emmènera à être tout détruite. Je vais reconnaître ma peur. Je le permettrai de passer autour de et à travers de moi. Et quand c’est passée je regarderai dedans pour voir son chemin. Où la peur sera passée il n’aura rien. Ce n’est que moi qui restera.

BTW: If you sing my French lyrics to "At My Most Beautiful," they will fit the tune. I'm quite proud of that.

Wow. This totally made my, um, morning.

BrgBri: you know how brill singles people out to answer questions because she thinks they can't answer
custardpringle: oohhhh yeah.
BrgBri: and then she give them an evil look (and possible a zero for the day)
BrgBri: when they can't answer
BrgBri: well later in the year you get much more into current events
BrgBri: so she asked phil a current events question
BrgBri: and he says... calm as ever "I'm sorry, I thought this was a history course... not current events"
BrgBri: lol
custardpringle: oh em gee

I swear . . . if I hadn't been into the kid already . . . I'd sure as hell be now.

(To clarify for people who don't go to my school: Ms. Brill is the next best thing to having Judge Judy teaching your AP US History class. They even look alike, which is just scary. And Brill does not take any shit from anyone. Phil was damn lucky to escape with his life.)

custardpringle: well, there's only one of me
custardpringle: I'm a singular pringle
custardpringle: not a plural one
BrgBri: I dunno
BrgBri: sometimes I think you're a few pringles short of a full can
BrgBri: other times... I'm sure

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*reads Courtney's LJ*

*wants cheese and crackers now*

*rapidly consumes family's entire stock of Ritz crackers*

Now look what you made me do.

------------------

For further clarification:

I AM NOT IN LOVE WITH PHIL. LEAH, I'M TALKING TO YOU HERE.

Yes, he's hot (in both body and personality), and yes, he makes me smile, and yes, I like being around him, and yes, I absoposilutively want his ass. But I am not by any means in love with him. Just lust *grins*

------------------

LdyVolarisSteele: i don't ahve to work and I'm offically a pumpkin
LdyVolarisSteele: <--- is pumpkin
custardpringle: OK
custardpringle: you do that sweetie

you see what I have to put up with here?

------------------

And we has a Trek icon, precious. *dances*

I changed the title of my journal yo.

Oh, Sartre XD

So I'm bored, and on a belated caffeine high, and freaking out. Of course my solution is to type Phil's SN into Google.

All I got was a couple of posts on a Zelda message board.

( Like this one. )

If that was him . . . *squees wildly and falls over* There's something insanely hot about that.

I should probably get off in an hour or so . . . I'm not sure how early my mom gets up.

I just realized that all three of my icons (Data/Borg Queen, Norman/Miriam, John/Rodney) involve freakish sexual fandom stuff. My brain is rotting, yo.

I'm freaking out now. Which is pretty damn funny, because I've got this presentation at least halfway done. But my heart is pounding like an insane thing.

Maybe it's a delayed caffeine high from the large quantity of Coke I drank at practice this evening.

I'm vibrating. This is bad. This is very bad. Courtney, I am massively sorry that you have to go through this on a daily basis.

I'm going to cry now. And I don't even know why.

I have to get this done now, too. I can't use my lunch period and/or skip Japanese, because I need to ask Phil out then or several dozen females of various ages (plus Branden) from all over the globe will mob me and start screaming.

LATER:Counting this one, the last five entries on my Friends page are my own.

Click here.

Tell me that is not the cutest stick-figure icon you have ever seen.

I dare you.

My playlist has 138 songs on it, of which only 32 are in French. So why does Windows Media insist on playing French songs at least half the time?

I'm screwing around with Yahoo!Avatars again. Right now I'm a blue-eyed half-Asian wearing a red-and-black corset and a long black skirt (I look tres hott yo) standing in a weight room. It's really creepy.

*goes back to nighttime cityscape* That's better.

Talking to Brian right now. He says that a)Phil's been planning to go to Snowball but b)he might not, because he had a crappy time at Spring Fling last year.

*beats head on table*

Of course, he went to Spring Fling with Ashley Gray, so that's not terribly surprising.

Who? Me? A stalker? Naahhhh. Just making friendly conversation with my calc classmate :)

Kent noticed the other day that I write comparatively little in my LJ. (The comparison he was making was to himself and Jess, neither of whom are exactly average in that respect, but my entries are pretty short a lot of the time.) I thought this over for a while, and then looked back over my LJ and discovered that most of my LJ is written very similarly to my fanfic, which essentially means that it's angsty, and whiny, and melodramatic, and that I'm excessively fond of short choppy paragraphs. And that leads me to some really weird conclusions about the way I perceive my RL.

Thanks for asking. I'm immensely flattered that you went, "Hey, this cartoon's in French. Better get Cyndi to translate it for me."