Whee! This week's challenge at dramione_ldws needed to be inspired by Grease's song "Summer Lovin'" and be 499 words or less... and I won! :)

( He Said/She Said )

Today is my day over at ship_manifesto, and, as you can tell from the title, I did indeed pair up Romeo Montague and Mercutio Gotnolastname from R&J. If you want to take a gander, high thee hence.

This week's challenge was the song "Summer Lovin'" from Grease, and there are actually only six of us this week (which, if my math is right, means fully 1/3 of us are going to be eliminated... eeek!). The votings over this way, and yes, I'm in there somewhere. :)

I went to the corner market to pick up some basic stuff: apples, bread, strawberries, bananas, something for dinner from the deli line, etc. This sounds perfectly innocuous.

Unfortunately, I also saw no fewer than five people get fired as I stood there.

( I think this guy had seen a few too many episodes of Hell's Kitchen or something. )

I admit it. Jackson's daughter completely undid me. Actually, considering my mother insisted on watching the funeral on FOX, I was rather stunned to realize the daughter also completely choked up their usually-nasty commentator, proving something truly shocking: FOXNews anchors do have hearts. Wow. Who'd a thunk. Snark aside, though, it was a very nice service.

I also saw Public Enemies today.

( spoilers, but I liked it )

Yes, I'm trying to come up with another fun Monday link, and here you go:

Toonarific, an archive of all Saturday morning cartoon info. If it was on, it's probably at least a stub in there. It's very much a work in progress, though, so lots of them are only the most basic info, but some of them have pretty good background stuff.

Go play!

I have just returned from the fruit market with potato salad, pasta salad, fresh strawberries, stuffed mushrooms, and chicken noodle soup. This will join the chicken to be picked up later along with the big, flag striped cake I made last night. Mmmmm!

So, I'm researching for my day at ship_manifesto for my chosen pairing, Mercutio/Romeo, an as I'm combing Youtube for possible 'ship vids (and there are some good ones out there), what do I come across? This. Granted, I'm getting rather MJ'ed out, but I was stunned by how well the song actually fit with the action.

Apparently, shudder while wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, drink hot chocolate, and try to convince myself NOT to turn on the heat the day before July 4.

It's freezing here.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm in the next round of dramione_ldws, and the next round of voting is up. I'm in there somwhere. :)

Also, I saw "The Proposal" this week with Sandra Bullock.

( eh...contains spoilers )

I nearly forgot! Happy Canada Day to all my flisters who live up to the north, land of Nathan Fillion (any country that produces NF is pretty dang terrific), hard-hitting hockey (not so much a fan when it's us against you on the rink, but I gotta give you props), Anne Shirley (best Victorian era teenage girl ever), the Stratford Festival (which I actually might get to this year!), TVO (the only reason I could spell "cucumber" on the second grade spelling test), and general awesomeness. :-)

This was my entry for last week, the prompt for which was " What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.” ~ Jane Austen ~ 100-300 words

( Ficlet beneath )



:)

Jim Butcher uses pop media references on occasion, especially Whedon ones. I'm almost 100% SURE the phrase "Do you have a nice dress?" (or it could be "Have you got a nice dress?") from his latest book is a quote from somewhere. I can literally hear a character (male) saying it in the back of my mind.

Anyone? Bueller?

What I have learned...

People like roses and tulips the same amount, (although most flowers got a vote except for poor stephenotis and freesia), but not as much as they like "Other" though no one told me what that was.

Silver is a very heavy favorite for jewelry, with gold far behind and then copper. Nobody dug platinum or bronze.

Milk chocolate barely edged out dark chocolate, and those were the only two kinds of chocolate to get votes.

Autumn SMASHED the competition in favorite season, with only one lousy vote to summer as the sole exception... and that one was from me.

I found the results of favorite cake amusing as it's a four-way tie of chocolate, yellow, spice, and cheesecake. The one other here was a vote for ice cream cake which, hey, is very fine cake indeed.

For pie, cherry tied with pumpkin, so a traditional fruit-based pie tied with a custard base pie. Apple came in next. Mysteriously, some one liked some other pie, but I do not know what.

For veggie, potato and tomato tied, proving the fruit-veggie is still a favorite! Corn came in next.

Green and blue tied for favorite color with a vote each going to purple and red. There's an other in here that is making me insanely curious. What the heck color did I miss?

Books wound up with fantasy taking first and mystery/thriller second. Other, that happy category, is here again, and making me nuts!

Vacationing in the mountains is the most popular answer, followed by a tie for the beach or home. And then there's other. Hmmm.

Chocolate ice cream wins, barely edging out mint chocolate chip and... other. One other was Play Dough/Rocky Road, but the other is a mystery the world may never know.

Books were far and away most people's favorite toys, followed by dolls/stuffed animals. No other here. Now the lack of other is making me nervous...

As for geeky songs, Weird Al took first place in the hearts of the nerdy, followed by Sweet Caroline and People who like all of these.

So, if you wanna make people happy, wait until autumn and give them green and blue roses in the mountains along with a cherry/pumpking pie, a cake of your choice, a fantasy novel, some chocolate ice cream, books, silver jewelry, tomatoes and potatoes, and then serenade them with Weird Al tunes. This should ensure lifelong happiness.

Other...

I completely meaningless poll about happy things, because I think happy is nice.

( Fun things poll )

In other news, my church's air conditioning broke. Hence, the padre's entire sermon was "Uh, it's hot. It's hot as that other place. Don't go there. End of sermon." Heh. I think that's his best work ever.

We just had a storm whip through here that achieved hurricane force winds. Huge branches are down in the backyard (though during a let up we hauled most of them to the curb already). I don't think I've ever seen rain this hard before.

Farrah Fawcett died. I'm very sorry to hear this. Sadly, I do not remember the Charlie's Angels years at all, and I mainly remember her for her rather odd behavior. That's a horrid way to die, though, and I'm glad she did marry O'Neil as that seems to have been her wish.

And then there's Michael Jackson. In recent years, the man has become the punchline to a series of progressively sicker jokes, none of them funny at all. Either the man was a child molester, which is not funny, or he was framed as a child molester, which is not funny, and in the opinion of the courts, it was the latter. Granted, the courts also think O.J. didn't kill his ex-wife so I don't always give them full credence, but that's not really where my brain is tonight.

I do remember before there was any whiff of strangeness around Jackson. News stories keep saying we'll never see his like again as a performer, and that is completely true. I saw him on tour in 1985 when I was 10, and even then I was blown completely away. To be honest, I've never thought he had an incredible voice, but there's an essensential aspect of the performer in him that was present in him that never was seen before or will be again. In many respects, I think the man should have simply been a dancer because he was indeed phenomenal in that respect, and I think the lesser acclaim that came with it might have served him better mentally.

But "Beat It"? "Thriller"? "Bad"? Those were indeed pieces of art. In fact, they were such phenomenal pieces of art that they warped his sense of the world through the level of fame they created, maybe damaging his ability to judge what was happening around him or have anything like a normal life. It's the ultimate example of "be careful what you wish for because you might just get it."

I don't recognize the strange, nearly-alien appearance of the Michael Jackson of the last fifteen or so years, the one who wore pajama bottoms to court and behaved more and more like either an overly naieve child in an adult's body who had been given far too much freedom and far too many people who agreed with him regardless of what he did.

I do remember the guy who I had a wild crush on at eight, who read the E.T. storybook on record and moonwalked like the stage was made of oil and came up with amazing beats and rhythms and made music wildly different, the guy Gene Kelley thought was the best dancer he'd ever seen. Had I been around even earlier, I might remember the little boy with the amazing child's voice who could dance, sing, and charm an audience like a pro despite having an abusive father and working like an adult instead of being a kid.

For that performer, the one before the strangeness set in, I'm sorry to see him go.

Okay, I'm trying to work out the timing on the next chapter of Shadowed Lives, which is still in the first month of first year (which is fine since HPSS/HPPS also has way over half the book take place in the first month of first year). ( I'd like an opinion on a canon timeline, if that's possible: includes a poll )

::puppy dog eyes:: Pwease? This is one of those things that's driving me nuts and I can't move on the fic until I get it figured out!

Last week's quote stated "Summer bachelors, like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be." It needed to be exactly 200 words, and frankly, that killed me. For my own sake, I'm going to put in the one I turned in followed by the longer version that actually makes more sense. The problem was this image hit me hard and I couldn't dump it for anything else, which was probably a mistake, though I didn't get eliminated, which is good.

( Too Hot Not to Handle, 200 word version )

( Too Hot to Handle, alternate version )

I went to the eye doctor today because my right eye has had an intermittant twitch in it for roughly the last two weeks. It would go away for hours at a time, then come back. Being a paranoid person, I supposed this was due to everything from allergies to my Sjorgren's syndrome all the way up to wondering if there was something majorly wrong.

The doctor very kindly told me, after checking my eyes carefully, that I am too stressed out. The twitch is entirely the result of being overly emotionally upset.

He gave me eyedrops, and I kidding asked for a perscription for a vacation in Hawaii, to which he laughingly replied he'd write me one as soon as he could find somebody to write him one as well as he happens to have the same problem.

So, note to self (insert Cher's voice here): SNAP OUT OF IT!

I've been a wreck over the cholesterol results, my family golf outing, my mother's job, my job, my lack of getting my fall assignment yet, politics, my inability to get to my father's side's family reunion again this year, the certainty that I am going to die alone some day, removing a downed rose of Sharon tree in the backyard, bills, the library's book club turn out, the application process for the other campus, and on, and on.

No more. This is where I get off the worry train. Period.

Yeah, I'm posting a fun link because I actually remembered this week.

I thought I'd actually linked to this blog previously, but going through the tags it appears I haven't (unless I did and didn't tag it, which is highly possible). Hence, I bring you the joy that is Cake Wrecks.

And just in case I did post this and it's old news, here, have Once Upon a Win, which features incredibly cool, neat, fun stuff from childhoods up through 2000. Tis fun.