(no subject)

( Russian )

Oogh. Well. We got four sets of flatpack bookshelves last night, and I finally got frames for my damn posters, the Covenant one and the Threepenny Opera one, and the Akira one. And now our junk room can look a little more like a guest room and a little less like a junk room. I also threw out about two bags of trash and took out one bag of things to donate, too. And that's just half the junk room. I need to get the rest and then I can have sewing space to work with. And the apartment management won't be down our backs, either. Okay, so, they aren't specifically, but they're being annoying.

Dear lord that is how you do a cliffhanger. I want more pocket ninja and I want him now and we don't even know if they're going to renew for a second season. ARGH. I've also realized that a large part of what makes Jackie Earle Haley sexy to me is just, the way he moves. I'm not sure what kind of aesthetics that is I'm looking for but man, when he breaks into the mad leet kung fu (tai chi actually, hee!) skills, it is the hottest thing I've seen in a long time and I want one. For that matter, Mark Valley, when he breaks into the deft hand to hand, is pretty hot, too.

Oogh. Today, dealing with the backlog of the mail order sale, yay. It wasn't that bad? Or at least, it didn't seem like it was. But this will be a weekend backlog, which means it'll be worse. And then I get to come home and unpack and put together flatpack bookshelves. And pick up the junk room. But on the other hand, I'll actually have places to put everything, which will be pretty nice. There are some boxes that haven't been unpacked since we moved here. Yeah.

On the other hand, we did get a fair bit of the place cleaned up and, hopefully, we can keep it cleaned up now. Now that we can get rid of a bunch of stuff, have some place to put the stuff in the junk room, things like that. It'll be nice. And in the spring, again. Spring cleaning. Go figure.

Right. Work.

(no subject)

( Japanese )

Oogh. Headache. Headache and sore throat, actually, and if the Flutter got me sick I will kill her. She's shown up to work sick for three days in the past week. Not cool, dude. Very not cool.

... I'm starting to talk more like Guerrero the more I watch this. Which isn't hard, since I used to talk that way, but it is funny.

And I was watching Good Night and Good Luck over the weekend. Partly for apparently only one scene with a new actor I'm looking into, but also because it's just a damn good movie. And David Strathairn is pretty damn attractive. And it made me remember some things. That, years ago, we had journalists and news companies that were interested in reporting the news as it was, and maybe reminding us a little that we were supposed to think about things that were happening in the world today. The news that happened was the news that happened, the political events, the war or what have you, the things shaping our world. Not what celebrity banged who and whether or not they were married to them. Or who was seen stepping out for dinner with whom. We learned about trials, political atmosphere, wars, communism or terrorism or whatever ism was currently the boogeyman, we learned about a lot of things. This weekend, I learned that the Polish President died, and about the event that happened seventy years ago that he was going to commemorate, and a bit about relations between Russia and Poland as they currently stand, as well as a bit about how Polish government is structured. But if I had turned on the TV news I would have learned that there was a crash in Russia and the Polish President died, some local people had been arrested, and Tiger woods is still out of favor.

I don't suppose I mean to slam TV journalism today as hard as it may sound like I am, I just wonder. When did the focus go from telling the news as it is, to telling the entertaining and salacious stories about actors and celebrities who, as far as I can tell, have done nothing but be rich and go to parties to earn their status? When did we go from Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man on television, and Edward R Murrow, who exhorted us to rational debate, and the likes of them, to... Hell, the most famous of the FOX news national division, all of whom are somewhat reviled or admired for being partisan. Even Keith Olbermann, whose show I occasionally catch on the internet and who is, I will admit, more to my tastes, is kind of... what's the phrase I'm looking for. Argumentative, maybe.

It feels like there's no dignity or grace or poise or, well, mostly dignity and self-respect in the bulk of the TV news world today. Restraint, that's another one that seems to be lacking. It's very bright, very noisy, and very flashy. And maybe I'm watching all the wrong news programs, but watching a movie like Good Night and Good Luck, which does contain a fair amount of not only archive footage but speeches recited pretty much verbatim by actors, it makes me wonder. Edward R Murrow made a fairly famous speech about the direction of television, his 'wires and lights in a box' speech. I think maybe I just miss the kind of wisdom I could agree with.

Blah. I don't know. There's my blather for the afternoon. Now I get to finish up my emails, go home, and assemble cheap bookshelves so I have some place to put all my research books that is not the table or the floor. Yay! Wait, no, the other thing.

(no subject)

German will NOT go here but right now I'm too brain fried to do it. because there is no way I'm translating all of this tonight.

And for my next trick, anvils! a fic circle! Here's how it works, people, and it's original fiction because at least me and two on my f-list need to kickstart our brains into the original fiction groove, for various places. You sign up with a one-sentence description of your original world or idea. Then you give the next person down from you a question type prompt regarding their original world or idea. And so on until the last person goes up to the top. Then write! We'll start with an arbitrary week to write 500 words minimum. Pimp it to your friends! Hell, pimp it to your enemies.

1. cruelest_month "Were-dragons living in various ancient civilizations (based loosely on Earth-based ones) with elemental powers."
2. mic_soldier "In a world where all humans believe that they are merely a god's dream, what happens when testing the implied lack of limits starts to go very wrong?"
3. kittydesade "Angels, demons, unplanned nephilim babies, and the jealous lovers who want to kill them."
4. kikibug13 "A guy raising his husband's daughter and learning about a lot of things again, because of that."
5. crescent_gaia "Sky pirates that are seeking revenge but end up saving the world."
6. gusthemoose "In a world were society is divided between magic users and non-magic users, what happens when a non-magic user is appointed to the magic user council?"
7. booknerdguru "A shattered Keeper has to cross over the boundary to the mundane world in order to save the world."