constance blackwood

The recent lj DDoS attacks and the subsequent just-in-case account creations at dreamwidth have reminded me that I have several dw codes available for giveaway. In the past, I've made the mistake of thinking that anyone who wants a dw journal has long since set up shop over there, but clearly that's not the case; if you're interested in creating a journal, let me know and I'll shoot you an invite code.

Just as a quick plug: I don't use dw exclusively (obviously), or even primarily, but they've made crossposting and importing ridiculously easy, they don't use ads, and there are numerous only-on-dreamwidth perks to explore. In these days of OMG WHERE IS MY CONTENT AND WHY CAN I NOT GET LJ TO LOAD, it seems smart to have a backup plan in place. Just in case.

I've been meaning to do this meme (most recently seen on the lj of venivincere) for a couple of weeks now, and somehow it just hasn't gotten done; but now I have two hours and a little space, and BY GOD I AM JUMPING THIS TRAIN. Memes are important! I know you agree.

( four decades of census data )

A few days ago, laurelwood linked to this article and asked people to talk about sleeping with books. So I did, there in her livejournal, but I've been playing with the idea ever since, in association with, like, everything I've ever loved, and I can't seem to stop and I want to get this down so maybe it will go away. (And I think it'll help if you play, too.)

So here you go: ( one-handed reading, the multimedia edition )

As seen in the livejournal of everyone: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.

Upon request, I will post a random line or two from any of these you choose. Assuming that the file adds up to a full line, that is.



( divided by fandom, because that's how I organize them )

Many and many a moon ago, resonant very kindly made space for me on Archive of our Own. Excited, I immediately registered an account, and then did nothing with it for more than a year and likely closer to two, because although the AO3 has made the upload process relatively painless, they have not yet provided settings so that all one's fics (scattered over the various pseuds and idents that one has created in different places because one has never especially minded whether the world knew whether the tradescant who wrote A and the tofty who wrote B and the ordinarily who wrote C and the constance who, um, made a house for Piglet and Pooh are actually the same person) are magically gathered together and coded with the single click of a button.

Okay, I kinda got lost in that paragraph, but anyway, I finally got my shit together and uploaded my fics, is what I'm saying. Yes, that's right, I have finally embraced the perfectly crazy idea that it might be a good idea to keep all one's transformative works in a single, tidy, accessible central location. Which, since this seems like as good a place as any to mention it, is here.

Well, I lie: not quite all my stuff is uploaded there, though. I didn't include anything under 500 words, of which I have a surprising lot, and none of my sundry non-writing projects are uploaded either, simply because I'm not sure whether they're welcome. Hey, AO3 users, do you know if they are? If I can link to art, for example, in a post?

Many thanks to resonant, and to the folks at AO3, for the space. And many thanks to me for finally getting it done so that I don't have to dread the process any more.

Now, if only I can keep it up to date.

You guys. I have my new stove, and it is so beautiful. I agonized over my choice for long enough that some things I wanted went off sale and others went on, and in the end, I ended up with something not on my original wish list, the choice guided not by recommended brands so much as what seemed like the best stove within my budget at that moment.

It was a good choice. At least, I think it was a good choice; I say this because I haven't actually used it yet for anything more taxing than boiling water, which is, I hear, a thing every new-bought stove in the world can do. Part of the reason for my negligence is that my kitchen is still dismantled because I paint at a snail's pace, but most of it, I admit, is that I'm afraid that if I cook on it I will somehow mess it up, as if its now-pristine surfaces aren't, you know, wipable.

(Well, maybe I've played too much Sims, too, seen too many inept cooks start kitchen fires by cooking. It upsets the Sims so! And I feel sure that starting a kitchen fire would upset me too, and I would stand helplessly by clutching my hair and stomping a little while the fire consumed the stove, and I would get a small insurance check out of nowhere to compensate me for my loss, but that wouldn't be enough for me. I don't want that!)

One day, my friends, I'll get over my awe-inspired fear, and then watch out! There will be Meals Aplenty generated by that stove. I'm certain of it. Nearly certain. And until then, I'm just going to keep going into the kitchen and turning on the burners with the sort of exuberant glee usually reserved for naughty toddlers and pyromaniacal teenaged boys.

Have you ever been confounded by a city or town? Maybe you thought, however inexplicably, that it was a bad place; or maybe it was a good place but it seemed unknowable from the outset and never got any less so, or maybe its layout seemed deliberately intended to trip you up at every turn; or maybe it was a place you wanted desperately to escape and it took a long time, longer than it really should've. Stuff like that.

If you've experienced this: what is that place for you? And how did it affect your perceptions? Let's talk about that.

Okay, so. Last week at this time, I was wearing flip-flops. It was at least 75 degrees, WTF CENTRAL GEORGIA, and just a little bit sticky; the weather reminded me of Christmases of my childhood when my parents (after my father and his best friend had gotten drunk and climbed up onto the roofs of their respective houses (in the face, we heard many years later, of vehement opposition/threats of divorce from their respective wives) and stomped around ho-ho-hoing, pretending to be [santa + eight tiny reindeer], waking us kids up and freaking us out and rendering us incapable of sleep for the rest of the night) would turn the air conditioner down as low as it would go, so that on Christmas morning we'd have that goddamned fire or bust, and then we'd go outside to play with our new bicycles and pink-wheeled white rollerskates and whatnot wearing shorts and t-shirts, because it was the Gulf Coast, baby, and as likely as not to be pretty fucking balmy on Christmas Day. The weather here, it was like that, is what I'm saying, which is highly unusual for these parts, where as a rule it's chilly and dry and ridiculously pleasant in November.

And the weather held steady through the start of the weekend, and then the temperatures plummeted forty degrees over the course of one wildly windy afternoon, wherein I lost almost all my leaves, or anyway, my trees, of which there are many, lost their leaves. It was like that Terry Gilliam animation, you know the one I'm talking about. And it was frigidly, unseasonally cold for a couple of days.

And THEN yesterday the temperature -- what's the opposite of plummeted? -- shot up like a round fired in the French Quarter by some redneck on New Year's Eve, a round that's going to fall again at the same speeds at which it ascended (that's just physics) and is fated to hit you square in the top of the head, likely killing you instantly, but at least if it doesn't kill you, you'll be too drunk to find it anything but hilariously funny. And it was seventy-five degrees again today.

And NOW. NOW it is raining like crazy (which don't get me wrong, we're grateful for the rain) and there are tornado warnings for my entire region, and guess what? The temperature's gonna drop again, and by this time tomorrow, we'll be headed straight down into the twenties, and we may or may not stop there for a while. I won't count on it, though. No one really knows what the hell's going on any more.

I mean to say: Central Georgia, seriously, WTF? My grass is confused! Clover is growing, and shriveling, and growing again; it looks like my yard is breathing. The trees, which lost their leaves en masse like three days ago, are budding again. The incredibly beautiful wild-growing twenty-foot-tall camellia trees lining my neighbor's side of the driveway are biding their time in a decidedly gingerly and possibly disapproving fashion. It seems I'm gonna be forced to do that, too, and mostly I'm cool with that, but still, a little part of me is with the clover, here. YOU DO YOUR JOB, NOVEMBER, AND I'LL DO MINE, OKAY.

The newest incarnation of the 826 Valencia ventures may be my favorite, and I don't say that lightly. I am wishing, today, that they shipped overseas, or indeed accepted credit cards or human sacrifice (apparently they don't), because I think these items would be excellent additions to my future potions laboratory.

Check out some of their products here.

After an exhausting and productive day spent sitting on my ass in front of my computer (no really, productive! Bills paid, bank account reconciled, Christmas shopping freaking finished, can you believe it, pending one address that for my Aunt and Uncle who recently moved into a new house), I'm ready to kick back and watch movies for the rest of the night. On tonight's menu: Import! Action! Films! I'll start with House of Flying Daggers, I think, then move on to Hero, and finish up with (of course) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and I'll emerge into my comparatively sepia-tinted and gravity-regulated world around midnight or so, all dazzled and pleased and reluctant to let go, which in my opinion is exactly what movie marathons are all about.

See you on the flip side, my friends.