the stars and the sea
Jul. 25th, 2006 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenI got not one, not two, but three parcels in the post today. I feel really loved. Okay, one of them wasn't actually for me. But still, very much loved. The first one, which was too big for the letterbox and resulted in the postman making a racket and waking me up, a good thing as otherwise I would have slept 'til noon, was from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_acrobat. Who is MARVELLOUS. She sent me a new Anastasia book and lovely postcards from Green Gables (as in Anne of, it is a real place OMG!) and my very own enchanted frog to kiss and boxes and boxes of sweeties. Specifically, Nerds - those boxes of tiny little neon sugar pieces, which I loved when I was little - and I am all squee-ish because I don't they make Nerds here any more. I am rather amused that I still remembered instinctively the best way to prise open the box.
So I will be on a sugar high for a week, which is wonderful, and sadly I have already devoured the Anastasia book but never mind, I can read it again (and again, and again). These books, by Lois Lowry, are children's books all about a girl called Anastasia Krupnik growing up in Cambridge (Massachusetts, not England) in the late seventies. I love them so much. I mean, I loved them when I was about ten, but re-reading them as an adult, I was amazed by how charming and sweet and non-dated and incredibly, hysterically funny they are. And one of the scariest things about them is the fact that they are thirty years old but are still the most liberal children's books I've ever come across. Anastasia's parents are an artist and a Harvard poet, who are delightfully eccentric and hilarious, and her brother is called Sam and is two-and-half. It's a blatant narrative device to make him into a proper character, but he's verbally precocious and talks in full sentences about the problems and issues about being two-and-a-half. Talking about the liberalism, we have Anastasia complaining about things being anti-feminist and how her summer job employer is bigoted, and in a truly delightful scene, she falls in love with her (female) gym teacher and her mother has to gently explain to her that that's all right. But anyway, they are delightful and they are out of print. And now I have another one, Anastasia's Chosen Career, and I am squeeful.
The second package was fromjacinthsong - I am now the proud owner of Casanova and Blackpool! Thank you very much! I foresee much Tennant lust coming up soon. I haven't seen either of them before, so I'm looking forward to that.
(Um. I'm going to break off here and talk about something completely unrelated. I am writing this and also watching QI, and for the sake of the latter, having to suffer from a lot of adverts because I'm not watching on the BBC. Why do the people who write these things always take viewers for complete idiots? Kellogs are trying to convince us that to get are much fibre as there is in one bowl of branflakes, you'd have to eat nine potatoes. Since when were potatoes a fibre-rich food? It's like saying you'd have to eat stupid amounts of popcorn, or cucumber or something. And don't get me started on the advert for toothpase that claims it's the first to contain "liquid calcium." If I remember rightly, calcium is an alkaline earth metal with a melting point of more than eight hundred degrees. Pretty awesome toothpaste, then.
Of course, that said, some advertising does actually work. The Muller yoghurt people apparently now make banana yoghurts. I now know what will be my major source of calorific intake this academic year.)
The third package, sadly, was from Amazon and sadly was not for me despite being addressed as such. But I still feel much loved by the universe. Of course, the parcels were the most exciting thing to happen all day. It is still too hot. As well as being too hot, there is no water, which is not of the good. Well, there is some water but all the taps are trickling. This is because there is apparently some sort of scrubland fire at Formby Point, which has been burning now for four days and has led to the lovely people from the fire brigade siphoning off all our water. I do understand their need is greater than ours, etc, etc, but it's bad enough not having fans or air conditioning when you can't have a nice cool shower either, and are forced to stand there like an entirely dry lemon as water drips in the manner of egg yolk down your hair.
Anyway, this is all getting a little distracted. I was supposed to be doing actual academic work tonight. Actual feminist theory, as that situation has become sort of dire. I have done nothing. And instead I wrote fic. It's official: writing fic only happens for me when I have other things I ought to be doing. Which probably means I should never take up writing as a career. And the weirdest part of it is that the fic I wrote tonight is not part of the bad-sex-scene fic I am trying to write, nor is it one of the two ficathon entries due next week. It's a strange, standalone fic, 1700 words long and written all in one go, and I swear I don't know where it came from. It's loosely related to late XF-canon, which I barely remember in the first place, and has only one canon character in it, and I don't even know if it's postable, or where I would post it if it were. I'd appreciate it if any of you could take a quick look at it (if I don't scrap it in disgust in the morning!). I know I've already got the usual suspects pinned into a corner for the bad-sex-scene fic, when that gets finished, but I thought I'd ask.
Okay. Now I try and work. I hope I can.
the_acrobat. Who is MARVELLOUS. She sent me a new Anastasia book and lovely postcards from Green Gables (as in Anne of, it is a real place OMG!) and my very own enchanted frog to kiss and boxes and boxes of sweeties. Specifically, Nerds - those boxes of tiny little neon sugar pieces, which I loved when I was little - and I am all squee-ish because I don't they make Nerds here any more. I am rather amused that I still remembered instinctively the best way to prise open the box.So I will be on a sugar high for a week, which is wonderful, and sadly I have already devoured the Anastasia book but never mind, I can read it again (and again, and again). These books, by Lois Lowry, are children's books all about a girl called Anastasia Krupnik growing up in Cambridge (Massachusetts, not England) in the late seventies. I love them so much. I mean, I loved them when I was about ten, but re-reading them as an adult, I was amazed by how charming and sweet and non-dated and incredibly, hysterically funny they are. And one of the scariest things about them is the fact that they are thirty years old but are still the most liberal children's books I've ever come across. Anastasia's parents are an artist and a Harvard poet, who are delightfully eccentric and hilarious, and her brother is called Sam and is two-and-half. It's a blatant narrative device to make him into a proper character, but he's verbally precocious and talks in full sentences about the problems and issues about being two-and-a-half. Talking about the liberalism, we have Anastasia complaining about things being anti-feminist and how her summer job employer is bigoted, and in a truly delightful scene, she falls in love with her (female) gym teacher and her mother has to gently explain to her that that's all right. But anyway, they are delightful and they are out of print. And now I have another one, Anastasia's Chosen Career, and I am squeeful.
The second package was from
jacinthsong - I am now the proud owner of Casanova and Blackpool! Thank you very much! I foresee much Tennant lust coming up soon. I haven't seen either of them before, so I'm looking forward to that.(Um. I'm going to break off here and talk about something completely unrelated. I am writing this and also watching QI, and for the sake of the latter, having to suffer from a lot of adverts because I'm not watching on the BBC. Why do the people who write these things always take viewers for complete idiots? Kellogs are trying to convince us that to get are much fibre as there is in one bowl of branflakes, you'd have to eat nine potatoes. Since when were potatoes a fibre-rich food? It's like saying you'd have to eat stupid amounts of popcorn, or cucumber or something. And don't get me started on the advert for toothpase that claims it's the first to contain "liquid calcium." If I remember rightly, calcium is an alkaline earth metal with a melting point of more than eight hundred degrees. Pretty awesome toothpaste, then.
Of course, that said, some advertising does actually work. The Muller yoghurt people apparently now make banana yoghurts. I now know what will be my major source of calorific intake this academic year.)
The third package, sadly, was from Amazon and sadly was not for me despite being addressed as such. But I still feel much loved by the universe. Of course, the parcels were the most exciting thing to happen all day. It is still too hot. As well as being too hot, there is no water, which is not of the good. Well, there is some water but all the taps are trickling. This is because there is apparently some sort of scrubland fire at Formby Point, which has been burning now for four days and has led to the lovely people from the fire brigade siphoning off all our water. I do understand their need is greater than ours, etc, etc, but it's bad enough not having fans or air conditioning when you can't have a nice cool shower either, and are forced to stand there like an entirely dry lemon as water drips in the manner of egg yolk down your hair.
Anyway, this is all getting a little distracted. I was supposed to be doing actual academic work tonight. Actual feminist theory, as that situation has become sort of dire. I have done nothing. And instead I wrote fic. It's official: writing fic only happens for me when I have other things I ought to be doing. Which probably means I should never take up writing as a career. And the weirdest part of it is that the fic I wrote tonight is not part of the bad-sex-scene fic I am trying to write, nor is it one of the two ficathon entries due next week. It's a strange, standalone fic, 1700 words long and written all in one go, and I swear I don't know where it came from. It's loosely related to late XF-canon, which I barely remember in the first place, and has only one canon character in it, and I don't even know if it's postable, or where I would post it if it were. I'd appreciate it if any of you could take a quick look at it (if I don't scrap it in disgust in the morning!). I know I've already got the usual suspects pinned into a corner for the bad-sex-scene fic, when that gets finished, but I thought I'd ask.
Okay. Now I try and work. I hope I can.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2006-07-25 10:48 pm (UTC)Sounds like my current fic project. Heh.
I'll take a look at whatever, if you don't scrap it. :)
no subject
on 2006-07-26 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-25 10:55 pm (UTC)Did you ever read the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor? I always associate them with the Anastasia books, possibly because I read them around the same time and they both feature teenaged girls with names starting with "A".
It's official: writing fic only happens for me when I have other things I ought to be doing. Which probably means I should never take up writing as a career.
My thought process about myself exactly. ;)
no subject
on 2006-07-26 12:52 am (UTC)No, I didn't read those! Were they good?
no subject
on 2006-07-26 01:09 am (UTC)I really liked the Alice books, because she was just as awkward and unsure of herself at thirteen as I was at nine or ten or whenever I read them. They were kind of like a lot of Judy Blume books in that they dealt with Issues Of Growing Up (Female), only they were funnier. She had a lot of entertaining internal angst, a bit like Bridget Jones.
no subject
on 2006-07-27 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-27 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-25 11:56 pm (UTC)Unless I am away or so busy I can't stand up, I am always available for betaing your writing. If you think I could be helpful in this case.
no subject
on 2006-07-26 12:54 am (UTC)Oh, thank you. If I get up in the morning and am not inclined to torch it - which may be the case! - I will send it along to you.
no subject
on 2006-07-26 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 05:23 pm (UTC)And I also love the way her goldfish is an essential character.
no subject
on 2006-07-26 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 07:39 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 08:37 am (UTC)I have no time).no subject
on 2006-07-26 05:53 pm (UTC)You know, I think I will send it to you. I haven't deleted it yet, and probably won't now; I'll give it another look over tonight and send it along. It's mostly about William, of all people, and is a little... strange.
no subject
on 2006-07-27 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-27 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-26 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-27 12:29 am (UTC)I came to that knowledge late in life, too! Why do people not mention it?
no subject
on 2006-07-27 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-27 03:33 am (UTC)I would love to write books that are as entertaining as Anastasia...
Did you know that Lois Lowry has a blog? It's a good read.
And I would love to beta X-files fic for you, but I'm about to go on vacation, and I don't have time.
And, yes, love. :)
no subject
on 2006-07-27 06:57 pm (UTC)Nerds! I haven't had those in years!
And those books sound really interesting, I suppose if they're out of hope it's too much to hope the library would have them. *sigh* Ah well, I really should be reading Electromagnetism by Grant and Phillips...