Warhead On Legs

( Deutsch )

At some point I'll write here about how big business is trying to take over my downtown, where I work and some of my family lives, but right now I'm too pissed off and sad and tired about it to do so.

Tracy Chapman songs on repeat probably aren't helping. (Not that Asheville is subcity. Far from it. But goddamn if that isn't the attitude that's killing us.)

I feel like I might actually start watching Once Upon A Time again. After giving up in disgust 3/4 of the way through last season because of shoddy writing (my opinon, I'm not asking anyone to share it, I just hated the writing) But between oldandnewfirm reblogging some tempting Rumplestiltskin things and the possibility of a rousing game of Trope Bingo, possibly with booze if I do something I probably WON'T get alcohol poisoning from, it's tempting. On the other hand, if I do, you'll all get to hear me bitch about how awful it is. It's put me off ever trying Lost, that's for damn sure. And no, I can't cite examples from the text anymore. I could last year! And finally, pigeons can't fucking fly in the rain, goddammit. Though the only reason I know this is because of Blade Runner.

I'm having one of those weird moments where I feel like I should be upping my language study intensity in case of needing to find a translation job in the next five years or so. Except then I read my German questions and I find I can actually construct sentences pretty readily to answer the questions, and maybe I don't need to up the intensity on any but two languages that much. Something. It's a weird thing, and what I probably just need is to talk to people in the proper language. Or just write. But I don't. And now I'm going back and forth on it. It's been a long day, okay?

At any rate, this is clearly not the proper mood to make that kind of decision in. And it's not like I'm not doing language studies at all. Slowly but surely. I mean, give me eight to twelve weeks and I probably damn well could test pretty high in French, Spanish, and even German. Give me a year and I will knock Russian out of the park. Just. Right now I have Yuletide and Nano and personal writing and Shit To Do. So. And in a couple of hours I'll have a garden to weed. So there's that, too.

( Gaeilge )

I have no idea where my Japanese book has gone. This is irksome. I really hope it didn't get packed.

So, it looks like we finally are on for inspection tomorrow morning! At this rate, as much trouble as has been going on, the boy thinks we might have a heffalump instead of a house. I am trying to stay hopeful, but that is not helping. Still. It will be what it is. We have the money for the down payment, we have the money for the repairs we know of so far, and we have the money to get some appliances and some new furniture to replace our falling apart furniture, so if there are no new major repairs, we'll be good. And then it should be smooth sailing from here. I hope. And (I'm fairly sure I said this before) at this point I hope it just so I don't have to fucking deal with all of this anymore, I am behind on shit I want to get done and I want to devote brainpower to something other than house logistics or recovering energy.

Better news. I got an answer to my burning question about Carlyle and spinning last night, which is to say that he has two people to help him during his spinning scenes. They do a pretty good job, from what I've seen! Apart from the weirdass rig of the walking wheel in the most recent scene, which I didn't even touch because I don't know all the ways a walking wheel can be rigged up. He was also incredibly bitey last night. I'm going to put that down to weariness and homesickness from coming to the end of shooting the season and hope it's not a sign of impending Sorcery.

After the bitey wee Scotsman there was Merlin. The 1998 mini-series Merlin with the unlikeliest Merlin ever because I could not then and I still cannot see Sam Neill as Merlin. Ever. But he is the subject of my latest frenzy and I wanted to watch it. I forgot just how utterly hilariously awful that miniseries is. Everyone takes it so seriously! They forget that they should be frothing and chewing the scenery as the over-the-top everything demands. The CGI was... well, okay, it was 1998, so it was suitable to the standards of TV miniseries at the time. And remember. This is the Hallmark Merlin. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

Still the unlikeliest Merlin ever. He wanders around with his pretty blue eyes and long tawny hair (Sam Neill should not ever have long hair. He doesn't have the head for it.) and I just want to pat him on the head and go "Silly wizard. Have a biscuit while Mommy makes it better." That said, now I really want to hear him going "I am SCHMENDRICK THE MAGICIAN." Because he would be so much more suited to it.

Anyway. Hopefully we're coming to the end of the house-buying saga. Hopefully this means I can get the rest of my life in some semblance of order. I'd really like that. Really a lot. At least day job work is cooperating by not being too hectic. So far. I shouldn't have said that, should I. We've had our share of hectic today, we got in and the front registers weren't on, and I had to call the Elf Lord and ask him where everything was plugged into because the wires all ran around the back and I couldn't see a damn thing. Turned out I just had to push the big red button. So at least there was that.

( Deutsch )

Tired. So very tired. I think I keep underestimating the emotional toll this whole house thing is taking out of me. It's not unreasonable to carry some stress over where you're going to live in a couple of months. Are the odds good that we'll get the house and not pay over what we can afford for it? Yes. Does that mean this is in any way shape or form settled? No. Thus, uncertainty. Thus, stress. Come on, Jag, you know this. Account for it, install coping mechanisms, do not beat yourself up for needing coping mechanisms or ignore the need for them.

Really, I want to just curl up with Once Upon A Time and write stupid Gold self-insert fanfic forever for the next week. So far I have, self-insert character breaks into his house, curls up in his chair, drinks his juice/booze, and tells him he's an idiot and a jackass. Because he is. Admittedly, mostly the latter than the former, but still. I have... Okay, I don't have so much self-insert fanfic. I have The Courtship of Rumplestiltskin and his Lady to finish and I have probably another Ruby/Gold to write. I also want to do that self-insert pointless fic set to Florence + the Machine's Howl with someone/Gold but I haven't figured out how to do that one yet. I also want to write fic involving smacking Rumplestiltskin upside the head every time he giggles like that. Or, no, every time he fakes that stupid high-pitched cackling mad persona. I think that was one of the things I liked most about Skin Deep; it gave us a glimpse of Rumplestiltskin speaking openly, honestly, and normally, instead of pretending to be more erratic and deranged than he really is.

... Which actually makes me wonder just how over the top he went after we left him in Desperate Souls, and how long it took him to regain some semblance of normality. Obviously some parts of him broke forever, he goes around exploding fairies and turning people into objects without blinking even when he's not the tittering idiot, but the gleeful rage we saw when he slaughtered the soldiers doesn't seem to be there. And it all reads like he went, well, mad with power for a bit and then dragged himself back to some form of stability. And, see, that's a story I'd be interested in seeing. As opposed to Regina, who only seems to be doing things for the Evulz.

Actually, that's another thing. Rumplestiltskin has issues which have subscriptions to entire catalogs of back-issues, but to me, he doesn't read as either psychopath or sociopath. Severely damaged person who went through a horrible war, spent years twitching with PTSD, then flipped into a whole other phase where all these feelings burst out into murderous violence. Which made him a very dangerous person to be around and, in all likelihood though we never see it, a highly unfit father. Which is kind of sad, but there you go. And then years pass and somewhere in between then and 'now' in fairy tale land he became someone so detached from humanity in general that individual lives have little meaning for him, and so dangerous in a whole other way. But at neither point was he inherently psycho- or socio-pathic. It's all learned behavior/reactionary, whereas we've seen nothing from the Evil Queen in either incarnation to indicate she ever had any ability to relate to other human beings on any kind of emotional level, ever. Two different types of monsters. One, heh, significantly more interesting than the other. I mean, there probably can be interesting sociopaths, just look at half the crime dramas, but god, EQ is so damn dumb sometimes.

I also feel like I should double check my definitions to make sure I'm using the correct term for murderous-volatile-Rumple. Ah well.

Right. I want to go home and curl up with all the Clayne Crawford episodes of everything ever. What will probably happen is I'll go home, do my guitar practice, do my Japanese, and then curl up with writing and try not to create several characters with my latest lust object's face while I'm doing my writing. Such is this crazy life of mine. And I have to make sure the goddamn fridge and freezer are actually working, I forgot, fucking hell. God I want to be in this new house and fuck the rest of this stress crap.

( Gaeilge )

Fucking goddamn Sorcerers.

And see, this is why I do rewatch things. 'cause then I notice things. Like how Gold was pointing a gun at someone. Or how I'm pretty sure half the pictures on the wall behind him where he stands are of either his old village or other people's old villages. Or how Gold's limp makes no sense, although that I kind of expected. Actually what it reminds me of is weakness in the leg, in the muscles controlling the knee and so on. Sometimes he holds it stiff because that's the only way he can manage to swing it over things. Like tree branches. And sometimes he just sort of lurches on it because he can't put too much weight on it without it buckling under him. Anyway. Things like that. Like noticing how Rumplestiltskin is spinning on a wheel that we sell in the store and giggling like a madwoman because I know that wheel. (Of course, and then I dig up fan art and they've got him all wrong at the wheel but, well. Spinning wheels aren't exactly common knowledge I suppose.)

Of course, rewatching piles of Robert Carlyle apparently leads to dreams about Rush. Although how it led to a dream about a character from a TV show I've never actually seen I don't know, but I've seen clips of him in that travesty. Also, River innabox was in it. I have no idea but suddenly I'm rather amused by the idea of Rush poking at River nekkid innabox and then Mal threatening to shoot him between the eyes. Rush is, as I understand it, kind of a dick.

Okay, something that doesn't involve Robert Carlyle. Didn't get as much writing done over the weekend as I wanted to but I did get some done, started on the Rumple courting his lady fic and the Plunkett and Macleane sequel and did get a chunk of Long Road pounded out. I am now at the point where almost all my projects on needles are hope chest projects! Which is only a little bit silly. I did some actual resting, too, which was much, much needed and I feel much more energized. I really, really would like to not start off the weekend with my tank that low, though. Please. Is there some way I can get to a point where I'm not constantly catching up only to get piled on with a bunch of things I need to do and collapse at the end of the week again? I'd love that.

Right. One thing after another, setting them up, knocking them down, etc. I have things to do on my organization list and thigns to strike off and things to add, so let's get to it. And for extra badass points, wearing all the guitar picks ever.

( Gaeilge )

So, um. The preview for Once Upon A Time in two weeks has me thinking only two things. One, this is going to suck. For once, possibly not in the bad way it's been sucking. And two, I'm pretty sure Robert Carlyle went roaming around other people's back lots looking for more scenery to chew. Goddamn. About this week's Once Upon A Time we will not say a word. It didn't happen, and no one can convince me it did. If plot advanced even in the micrometer steps it seems to be advancing, it did so offscreen where actions happened that no one saw because this week's episode didn't happen. Except for Gold rolling his eyes and sighing his, as Anna called it, "I can't believe I got you elected" sigh. That was pretty priceless.

But I got some stuff done this weekend at least! Some cleaning, a lot of cooking, a good half-batch of minestrone because I didn't have all the veggies for it. A batch of cream of tomato soup with some spinach ground into it because of reasons, I discovered a good marinade in which to soak the beef to make it even more better for stew, and made the stew again, and omfg the whole damn thing was incredibly, incredibly tasty. I am inveencible! And I want more stew. And I cooked up half the chicken, the other half will get cooked up tonight since the rest of Sunday evening was devoted to discovering mold balls the size of golf balls in our bag of rice that we just fucking bought. Ugh.

Not as much writing done over the weekend, but some. Still not quite sure why but it had better damn well quit it, I have shit I need to get done. Still, today may or may not be light once I get the weekend backlog done, there's no incoming to speak of.

Oh, and I've been rewatching New Amsterdam. I'd forgotten how awesome that show was, I kind of miss it now. And Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has the most adorable little accent slips now and again. And now of course I want to write fanfic of it, which, excellent! There's a prompt on Yuletide for it. I tried to floss my brain with that sometime this weekend, it didn't quite work, maybe today.

... Oh. Also, the Muppets are awesome.

( Gaeilge )

So, went to look at more houses over the weekend. It looks like the leading contenders now are New and Busted and Old Hotness, thank you Anna for the names. Both are pretty much what they say on the tin, New and Busted needs about six months of work and is as old as I am, Old Hotness is considerably older, needs less work as far as I can tell except for some cosmetic wear and tear on the outside, and is fucking awesome. That said, right now we're back to financing and dragging an inspector out to Old Hotness. If we end up going with New and Busted I know at least several pieces of work that need to be done there, and that all the money we'd save going into that one would go into repairs fixing it up. Whereas Old Hotness might not actually require that much immediate fixing.

Oh Once Upon A Time. Oh you fairy tale people in the real world, why are you made of so much fail. Mary Margaret, why do you make me want to slap you with a dead trout? David, you make me want to slap you with a dead trout in both worlds. And Rumplestiltsfucker, what the hell was with the spontaneous burps of accent? Plucked from your heid? Really? I'd say that doesn't even sound authentic except it kind of does, and, really, he is a native Scotsman, but really? This after half the conversation was conducted with him using a fairly flat near-American accent. Also, the Once Upon A Time writers need to be beaten with every single book on writing dialogue I've ever read, my lord. I am, however, seriously giving this Mysterious Stranger the side-eye. That was an awfully Gold-like conversation he had with Emma. Which then resulted in even more speculation that he's grown-up Bae, which resulted in me shipping adult!Bae/Emma so hard like burning. I cannot even tell you, flist. Of course, I need to finish the Ruby/Gold fic first. Oh, decisions.

Heh. Of course, the other reason I want the Mysterious Stranger to be Bae is for the reunion scene. I know Carlyle can carry it. I'm pretty sure Eion Bailey can. That would be one hell of a scene, there. And no one else would understand, because no one knows Rumplestiltstitter's history. They just know him as the scary, scary motherfucker. So. That could be interesting, too.

One of the randomass things I have decided to do to occupy me while househunting, in addition to filling a hope chest, is planning a garden. Basil, Oregano, and the Scarborough herbs, along with some carrots and potatoes and tomatoes, because it is REALLY HARD to fuck up tomatoes, and composting! I am so excited about composting o my flist, you would not believe. Which probably says something about me. You know, I think if I could get away with it in the city, I would keep chickens in Old Hotness. But I don't think the city's zoned for that.