Love In The Asylum

Best. Day. Ever.

I was actually kind of mildly sad this morning, because I had to be out the door right as the Spain v. Italy match was starting, and what kind of Spain fan am I if I miss that sort of game? But it ended up working out for the best - I got downtown earlier than I expected to and one of the places I wanted to go was closed, so I had an hour to kill, and the only sports bar(/pizzeria) in town that shows European football was right across the street. So I watched the second half of Spain v Italy in a bar full of Italy fans while eating deep-fried ravioli, which is really the best way to do anything.

After the game was over I went back over the university campus to hit up the library for some research time. I swear, more than anything else I miss since I graduated college is my access to JSTOR - I know they are trialing the individual accounts now, but the journal selection is really limited, especially if you are into the less mainstream academic subjects. And considering that I downloaded 25 articles on Heian-era Japanese lit and medieval monasticism this afternoon, I think we can safely say that mainstream is not a word to describe my academic obsessions. This batch of papers should keep me busy for awhile, at least. The 'Sodomy and the Knights Templar' essay I expect will be very relevant to my interests.

And then. The actual reason I was downtown in the first place. LES MISERABLES. OMG IT WAS SO PHENOMENAL I CANNOT EVEN. MUSICAL OF MY SOUL YOU GUYS. This was the 25th anniversary production, and just. God. It's one of my favorite musicals but I've never seen it live before and this was an amazing show. I pretty much started tearing up around Valjean's soliloquy in the first act and didn't stop until the curtains went down. Marius might be incredibly boring, but I maintain that Empty Chairs is the saddest post-revolution song in the world. And On My Own and Eponine's death - most of the Eponines I've heard in recordings were fairly demure sopranos, but this girl could seriously belt it out. Which made a nice contrast with Cosette's role, and I ended up awfully fond of her by the time she kicked it. And Javert. JAVEEEEEEERT. WHY MUST YOU GIVE ME ALL THE FEELINGS JAVERT? I DON'T WANT TO LOVE YOU THIS MUCH YOU ARE KIND OF A JERK AND THEN YOU DIE. I don't know, I think his suicide song might be one of my favorite songs in the show (aside from all the awesome heart-breaking crowd songs in the middle, because I am a sap), just because it is such a complex and crushing character moment. I had to reread all the Javert bits of Roommates as soon as I got home, just to remind myself that there were still Javert stories in the world that don't make me sob.

So, yeah. Utterly awesome day, I am going to be singing Do You Hear The People Sing all week at work, and now I have to go and read all the Javert fic that exists.

Three Things (The Pie-Making Thursday Edition)

1. Yay, fall TV season has started. Hawaii 5-0 continues to have plots that are too stupid to even bother paying attention to, but that's fine because following the plot would distract me from gazing lovingly at Daniel Dae Kim's exquisite cheekbones. He was so pretty in this episode! And Kono was so ass-kickingly awesome, and Steve and Danny were so totally gay for each other. I approve strongly of all of these things. And of the general existence of Max the Adorable Dorky ME. Meanwhile, NCIS has realized that the main reason I watch this show is for delicious Tony!angst and whumpage, and has provided accordingly. Good job, show.

2. Fun with role-playing group this week! We spent the whole session making character sheets - I don't know if they are all like this or Eclipse Phase is just unusually complicated, but damn. I need to re-do mine this weekend, since I'm pretty sure I screwed up the math on all my character stats. But I like my character! I'm playing a woman who ran away from life in an ultra bioconservative cult in the outer planets to become a cynical gun-slinging mercenary. Her hobbies are gambling, not trusting people, and bouncy hypercorps pop music. Anyway, it seems like we've got an interesting range of characters, so I'm looking forward to seeing how things work out once we start actually playing.

3. It is David Bowie Week at Casa de Midget. I don't know why it's David Bowie week, but it is. So much glitter! And somehow, even though it's glitzy 70s glam rock, so many songs that make me cry. I cannot stop listening to this cover of Space Oddity, or this one of Ashes to Ashes. And I just discovered Bring Me The Disco King, which is amazing.

Three Things (The Lazy Tuesday Edition)

1. luzula made a podfic of my Yuletide story, "Lefty Sings the Blues." You should definitely check it out, she did an awesome job. It's really neat hearing my words in someone else's voice. :)

2. Today I made empanadas for the first time ever. Christmas-time tamales and homemade tortillas aside, we don't really do a lot of Mexican/New Mexican/Guatemalan food around here - I just don't like it that much, even though my dad makes great enchiladas and my mom's posole and green chile stew are infamous. But we had some pastry dough to use up and no particular desire to make pies, so empanadas it was. Filled with ground beef, potato, and onions, and an improvised variation of my general spice mix (smoked paprika, chile powder, salt, pepper, optional cumin, garlic). And they turned out pretty good! Better than I was expecting, honestly. Which is good, since we have enough left over to last through a short war.

3. I'm currently in the kind of mood where I have to force myself to stop listening to the same Decemberists songs over and over on repeat, because they are lovely songs but I know if I don't rein myself in I will be up at 4 in the morning foolishly enraptured by the perfect tragedy of You'll Not Feel the Drowning and The Engine Driver and I Was Born For the Stage and Oh Valencia and Yankee Bayonet, which I realized for the first time this week is a Zack Fair song and now I can't get it out of my head. It's not an unpleasant mood, this wallowing in poetic misery that isn't mine, but it isn't conducive to getting anything done.

I maintain that if you are capable of sitting through an entire Mariachi performance without wanting to get up and dance, or at least clap along, I am going to start harboring serious doubts about whether you have a soul. I do not think anyone at the concert I went to tonight had that problem, though.

It's interesting. I'm neither Catholic nor Christian, and definitely not Mexican, but I've spent so much of my life steeped in this culture that the iconography of New Mexican Catholicism is deeply resonant to me. I can love them as stories and symbols, I guess, even if they aren't my stories and symbols. However I try to rationalize it, anyway, I totally started tearing up during the Las Posadas segment of the concert. What can I say? It's always been one of my favorite (conceptual, I've never actually done it) Christmas traditions, and this version was beautifully choreographed. Really wonderful.

Actually, all of the music and staging was wonderful. And the costuming. And the dancing! I am very impressed by anyone who is willing to get a machete that close to his balls while performing a complicated line dance. It was really just a great performance, and I am very glad I let my grandmother talk me into going.

But the drive home, oh my god. It has been raining here on and off all day, and by the time we (by which I mean me and my dad's girlfriend) got to the theater, it was really pouring. Which is fine, if unpleasant and miserable. But by the time we left at 9.30, the rain on the ground had started to freeze up, and the rain coming down had turned into snow. Heavy snow.

I don't think I've had a drive that bad since the time my dad and I were coming home from a hockey game in a blizzard. And at least that was a relatively short trip, on roads that were mostly deserted, in a car that could more or less handle it. NONE OF WHICH WERE TRUE THIS TIME. We were driving 10-15 miles an hour, most of the way, and the car still kept swerving every couple of minutes when we hit an uneven patch. It was snowing so hard we couldn't see more than 20 or 30 feet ahead of us, even with the beams on. We were on the freeway for literally an hour, during which we saw at least five other cars that had gone off the road. One of them was a semi.

It was exciting, to say the least.

But we're home! And at some point tonight I may even be able to feel my toes again.

I am still alive! More or less. This week and the next week are my big awful midterm crunch weeks: I had a presentation this week, and a paper due Monday, a long creative essay due Tuesday, and another paper due Thursday. I AM NEVER GOING TO SLEEP AGAIN.

But all hope is not lost! Aside from the soul-crushing amount of work I've got going on, this was actually a pretty good week. I was really worried about my presentation (which was on the role of the police in detective fiction, using Peter Wimsey and Philip Marlowe as examples) because I didn't think I was prepared enough for the actual talking part, but it went fine, and the professor complimented me on my thesis. The first paper I have due next week is a write-up of that presentation, and my notes are pretty thorough, so I should be able to bang it out easily enough.

I am slowly getting my tiny, triangular room to the point that it looks like an actual person lives in it, and not just a mobile library. Current step: posters! It's kind of a slow process, since I'm buying posters on Amazon with the money I get paid for participating in psych experiments, but yesterday I got my first new poster put up. It was nice to wake up this morning and see Cesc Fabregas being gorgeous on the wall beside my bed. And soon I will have an Amy Pond poster for the other wall.

Since the performative aspect is such a big part of the music class I'm taking right now, it shouldn't really be shocking that we're expected/encouraged to go to concerts. Which is pretty neat, even if it does play hell with my work schedule. On Wednesday night I went to see Shubha Mudgal (a Hindustani classical, khayal, and occasionally pop singer of great awesomeness) perform on campus, and then yesterday she and her accompanists did a Q&A for our class and did a few more songs. They were all really interesting, and really incredible musicians, I don't know how to talk about it at all. I really, really love the tabla. This upcoming Wednesday, we're taking a class trip into San Francisco to see Ravi Shankar perform. I considered not going, because it will make it hard as hell to get all my work done for Thursday, but DUDE. RAVI FUCKING SHANKAR.

I am right now in the process of dyeing my hair purple. Yay purple! I kind of wish I could have done it for Spirit Day, but I just couldn't get to store to buy dye until yesterday. But at least I've be properly interesting looking for Yaoi-Con! Tomorrow my aunt is coming up from Sacramento and we're going to, I don't know, do lunch or something. And then it is into the trenches for the foreseeable future of writing, writing, more writing, and some reading. And then writing! Ah, the glamourous life of an English major.

Okay, I needed to cheer myself up, so you guys are getting a music post, albeit a rather shorter one than usual.

Five Songs I Wasn't Expecting To Be Fannish (that totally are)

( lyrics and explanations under the cut )

 Living in the dorms, I always worry about the protocol for listening to Christmas music early in December. Because I love Christmas music, deeply and, given that I'm not actually Christian, kind of illogically (especially since all my favorites are the traditional religious carols), and in my family growing up, December 1st was fair game for changing the radio over to the Christmas stations. But I don't want to come off as the weird roommate, any more then I already do, so I've been keeping the music strictly secular until I get home.

Roommate has been playing Christmas music on her computer for the past three hours. I think our room is going to be very musically festive this year. :DDD

When I went to check my mail today, there was a letter from my aunt with twenty dollars in it. The letter said to take a night off and go to the movies, but the only movie I want to see right now is New Moon, and I already promised Hanjuuluver we could go when I get home next month so we can mock it together. So now I have twenty dollars that I am not allowed to spend responsibly, and I cannot make up my mind what to spend it on: 

• One of these hair slides - pretty and interesting looking, and also pretty! And I've wanted to try out hair slides for awhile, and see if I can get the hang of them, because they are really neat. Not entirely sure these would be the right size for my hair, but they sound big enough.
• Sims 2 Seasons - Max didn't have the RAM or the graphics to support any of the newer expansion packs, but I think Spock does (judging by how smoothly the game runs now), and it would be nice to have the extra functions and shiny. On the other hand, I've had a lot less time for simming this term, and I don't think that's going to change.
• A Seanan MchGuire CD - either Stars Fall Home or Red Roses and Dead Things. Stars Fall Home has more songs that I know I will adore (River Lies, Paper Moon, Still Catch the Tide), but Red Roses has a Supernatural song (Darkness Falls) that I am dying to get my hands on. Neither album is available in mp3 format, or readily found in less expensive, less legal venues (which I guess is the curse of liking such an obscure genre).

Bah. I am such rubbish at making my mind when no option readily stands out. This is one of the reasons I didn't declare my major until the last possible moment. 

I think I have been listening to too much Voltaire this week (is there such a thing as too much Voltaire?). I can't get Zombie Prostitute out of my head, and that's the kind of song people look at you for when you start singing while you are walking in the quad. And I can't stop thinking about Goodnight Demonslayer, which on its own is fairly adorable, but when my head puts it together with tiny!SamnDean, suddenly becomes kind of heart-breaking.

Anyway, it's Tuesday, and that means Int Fiction, and that means I have writing to share!

 

( the one about wanting to kill your boss )

 

 

( the one where Fox is a creepy stalker )

 

( Five People That Mara Took Home With Her )

So, I stayed up insanely late last night because I got a bunch of new music and had to listen to it all obsessively. And I figured that made it time for a music post!

Seven Songs Sung By Awesome Women (and a couple by an awesome guy)

( a thorn by any other name draws blood )