sundries

[rm]

Oh, hey, doing analysis on a random Fortune article about American families with combined incomes of 100K - 400K and one of them is a pair of lesbians with two kids and a dog. Go Fortune! Not what I would have expected.

Patty comes home tonight. Yay. I've been very swoony about her while she's been away. Actually, I'm just very swoony about her, but you knew that.

Not going to fencing tonight. Too much to do, and I had such a good session on Wednesday, I don't want to risk going in to tomorrow with something less brilliant or a random injury or anything. Have decided to do three lessons a week in January, and then two a week with plastron lessons in Feb (my travel schedule will preclude Friday lessons).

Now if I could just win the lottery, because ideally I'd also be horseback riding twice a week and getting my pilot's license, but time and money! But I'm hoping when my debt is paid off in May, that I can then schedule the general aviation thing into the fall (I don't want to start back in the summer, because the air is more turbulent, and my stomach doesn't like it and I want some time to readjust).

I never thought, never for a moment, that my life would become about being physically capable and decisive. But it has, and it's a blessing, mainly because I know what it's like not to have that and not to have the choice of having it.

There's also the voice lessons issue. My voice is actually always my biggest courage issue, and I'm in a really good place to go there right now, but I also know that what I need to get through now is less quality of my voice things (always a thing to do) and just learning how to sing in front of people. Yes, it's time to fail in public, my dears. So hopefully marchek is still up for the Gallifrey karaoke prep idea.

I think I'll be able to pick the coat up tomorrow and then hopefully get it to a tailor before Thanksgiving.

This fucking Barrowman song is so catchy (airspaniel, are you obsessed yet?), it's appalling. Patty is very lucky I rarely put music on the stereo at home, because this would drive her up the wall. Also, she would laugh at me. I think music is probably the only way in which our age difference is really, really apparent.

Have started the next piece of IHNIIHBT, but Kali has the flu, so no idea what progress is going to look like there for a little while.

Must go buy a new fencing glove, like, now.

Hey, Megan's in town this weekend before she heads back to Asia.

I'm hoping I can find a white shirt I like shopping tonight. I am not holding my breath.

Oh! That reminds me, I've been looking at the custom shirt sites again, just because I'm so cranky about shirts in general, and I found one that has both the pale green I haven't been able to find anywhere and amusingly the awful "dishtowel" pinstripe used in one of Jack's shirts on TW. Can I just say it's nice to be engaged in cosplay stupidity when it involves good work shirts I can actually, like, wear, in my life, even if it makes me giggle to myself.

Can't believe I got that LJ Idol done. Or that it was so vicious. That had a lot of false starts to make it work, which is unusual for me.

Comments

[hllangel]

"What about us" gets stuck in my head randomly. And I can't stand the song. I really can't. Yet....

(I have to say, though, that he looks exceptionally good in the video.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

I find videos sort of hard to look at and intolerably cheesy (I also dislike looking at photos of people I don't know -- it's like I know all the tricks -- gaze into the lens, blah blah blah, but it's still like "this is weirdly intimate _and_ total bs and it freaks me out" -- I have issues and being in the industry does not help), but yes, yes this is true. Very true. It's rather ridiculous.

And I don't know why I like this damn song so much. I really, really don't listen to shit like this.

[hllangel]

The video is somewhat boring and massively overproduced, but John looks gorgeous.

There must be something in the song, because I don't listen to this sort of music either, and generally find it rather annoying.

But along comes John Barrowman and suddenly I can't get the damn song out of my head. If anyone else were singing it, I'd switch it off every time. It grows on you. Like a fungus. I have no other explanation.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I mean, part of it is the structure. It's really brilliantly written, and it's ridiculously singable. You don't have to have a good voice to muddle through it at all, but if you do, big fun. It is the definition of accessible.

[hllangel]

It would explain why I can't STOP singing it some days.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yup. It moves across the break in most people's voices really, really well. Total proof of how pop music can be evil genius.

[hllangel]

With more emphasis on the 'evil' part.

[logospilgrim.livejournal.com]

~I think I'll be able to pick the coat up tomorrow and then hopefully get it to a tailor before Thanksgiving~

I can hardly wait to see a photo of this coat (with you wearing it, needless so say!).

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

I've been staying out of the LJ Idol stuff this time around, but I did want to comment on your New Orleans entry. That was brilliant. You pulled it all together and made it look effortless. So I was amused to see it was a bit of a bear for you. You certainly managed to keep that part out of the posted result, so my hat's off to you...

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It was hard to focus it -- because there's more to the story of what happened in NO, just as there's more to the story with the situation with the lover and more to the story about how I feel about stories and more to the story about what a procrastinator I am, and it was really, really hard not to want to tell a lot more of all those pieces, but it really didn't work when I tried.

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

Ah, but some of that pops up between the lines. I don't actually have to know more about the situation with the lover, or more about what you thought of the letter on rereading it and so on, but in wondering about all of those hints, it adds overall to the story as told. A let the reader fill in the details kind of thing...

[laurab1.livejournal.com]

The shirt with the really bad stripes was very probably one of John's - he's known to wear stuff like that XD

The single - it's by Gary Barlow, so it is basically a Take That song, but sung by JB instead.

I posted the pics I made you - http://laurab1.livejournal.com/331404.html

[rm.livejournal.com]

Being completely out of the loop on current music in general, and thinking that this is also probably a British band that hasn't been a thing over there, I have utterly no familiarity with Take That. At all. Is it a boy band or something?

[laurab1.livejournal.com]

Yes, boy band. Most of their success in the 90s. They were massive. There was a helpline when they split up. Recently reformed, and having as much success now as they did then.

[rm.livejournal.com]

And thank you for putting those up. I've got to link to that and your newest icons later! Also, we'll be emailing you about using the DVD covers for something. We're actually getting webspace and putting the whole arc up when it's finished with commentary track (we're doing both a typed one and an audio one, and I think we might do podfics of some pieces of the arc), and at least one very specific side story in the universe that's sort of the "DVD extra". We sort of never manage to get out of a project without it becoming multimedia in some weird way.

[airspaniel.livejournal.com]

You know what's ridiculous? I haven't heard it yet. 0_o I think I've been holding out for the very reason that, yes, i will be obsessed, and it'll be worse than the weird fixation I have on his version of "She's Always a Woman."

Proof that the song can be absolutely wretched, and I'll still blast it on repeat for upwards of six hours a day.

(If you have, or know where I can get the new single, I'm willing to take that risk.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

Go, go to YouTube right now. The video is there. It's SO FUCKING CATCHY YOU WILL DIE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf4GFvSzPgo

(and yes I've been listening to it on repeat nonstop).

[airspaniel.livejournal.com]

Oh sweet lord have mercy... This thing is going to WRECK the adult contemporary charts! 0_o

...also, damnit, you're so right. You're absolutely right. I'm already singing along.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's going to be totally huge. It's ridiculously good.

Hehehehhe. I'm so glad to have infected someone else with this shit.

[airspaniel.livejournal.com]

Fuck! When does this album drop? The single's not on iTunes yet, and I need to hook it to my veins...

LOL, you're insidious. ^_~

[rm.livejournal.com]

Okay, he's the annoying part. The single's already out in Britain, but all the online buying music sites in the UK don't allow American purchases. The album drops here on the 25th.

[airspaniel.livejournal.com]

All right, four days. That's not terrible.

God, this youtube clip is gonna get a lot of mileage...

[rm.livejournal.com]

Ayup.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Random fandom OMG... You may or may not have heard of the Pimp My Bookcart (http://www.unshelved.com/PimpMyBookcart/2008/) competition. It's a librarian thing. Um, yes, it's as dorky as it sounds.

But I was having trouble believing that I was really seeing this. http://www.unshelved.com/PimpMyBookcart/cart.aspx?cart=345

On closer examination, they're not *actually* doing the Torchwood cast, but my first glance read was Jack and Ianto in the middle with Gwen to audience left and Tosh to audience right. (The giveaway is that my "Jack" is holding a sonic screwdriver.)

Mind you, I'd have been all over doing a K-9 themed anything at 13, but since I was living on old PBS reruns at the time, there wasn't the commonality of interest with, well, anyone.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's freakish and hilarious. Like really.

[gement.livejournal.com]

More disturbingly, Inara's bookcart (http://www.unshelved.com/PimpMyBookcart/cart.aspx?cart=335). Because courtesans need bordello-decor bookcarts, too, apparently.

[marchek.livejournal.com]

I'm still totally game for a pre-Gallifrey karaoke run. Hey, it could be a cosplay dry run as well. I'm ready when you are although I think with both of our crazy schedules it might be able to happend until January.

We are so not going to be able to take ourselves seriously. If you really start channeling Jack I don't know if I'll be able to contain the laughter.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think you're safe from me being too insane at first. Singing in front of people is a big issue for me, and I really want to get past it, mainly so I can be the funniest person EVER at Gallifrey. All those nerdy old-school Who fanboys won't know what hit 'em.

[contrarywise]

Yeah, that song is totally earworm-y in an awesome and evil way. However, the video bugs me because, although it is chock full of teh pretty and all, I can't help but go, "Um, I can haz lesbians? Prettyplease? Hello??" and that makes me both sad and pissed. So I listen but don't watch. *sigh*

And yay for your latest LJ Idol entry. It's one of those "this is how life is bigger and stranger than you think" stories, and it totally worked for me.

Good luck with the fencing tournament tomorrow, and with the coat tailoring and all!

[rm.livejournal.com]

I was annoyed by the video at first for that reason, but sort of got over it, because I think the video works focusing on two couples, and I bet a third would have been distracting. Physical and emotional intimacy between gay women is a lot more media acceptable, so I think the video does more good with the male couple -- on the other hand, I hope that if JB and team find themselves in this sort of position with a future video they go with a female couple next time, just to balance stuff out.

And thanks on all that! More as I know it.

[ladypeculiar.livejournal.com]

I know!!! I'm in HKG right now, awaiting my flight to Seoul, and my connection to JFK.

When I leave Seoul I'll arrive in NYC 30 minutes after I leave Korea. The world is a forking WEIRD PLACE.

You need any kimchee? Shrimp paste? Babies?

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Oh, John. Considering his previous covers CD, I guess I'm just too damn much of a punk/music snob to care much for his taste. I can't imagine anyone I'd rather hear sing Cole Porter, but pop songs... oh, John.