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ipswich, the_second_time, jacksamjanet, jsj100

You can also find my art and fanfic journal at purple_garters_

Since I failed so epically at last year's reading challenge, this year I'm going back to the good, old fashioned, just making a list of things I've read.

( January )

Please feel free to make suggestions of books you have read in the comments. My favourite genres are generally: drama, science fiction, mystery, fantasy that ties into other genres (urban, thriller, science-fiction, etc), non-fiction that is less "poor me" and more about compelling characters and quirky stories. I am definitely open to any and all other genres not listed.

Pick 25 movies/comic books/video games/literary works/tv shows and put their summaries from Better than it Sounds and, WITHOUT CHEATING, have your friends guess.

1. Time-travelling ghosts teach a cheap old British guy to be less of an asshole.
2. A famous actor must reinvent himself after the suprising discovery that he can't actually act. His girlfriend has a co-worker try to take credit for her work.
3. A stomach cramp gets out of hand.
4. Eastern European man turns into a bug.
5. A misogynist addicted to smoking and cocaine lives together with an ex-army doctor with a mysteriously migrating injury. Together, They Fight Crime! The Big Bad is a math teacher.
6. Twenty Minutes Into The Future, nobody reads. Man starts to question his job.
7. Three middle-aged men arse about with cars and a whole bunch of the BBC's money. Somehow, the results are brilliant.
8. A school principal tells his minority students they can improve their reputations by beating up others in their ethnic group.
9. A Card Carrying Villain tries to ruin a Romantic Comedy as it unfolds. He fails when his plot is uncovered by a dumb policeman.
10. Ancient Greek women beat people up and engage in lesbian subtext.
11. Police detective gets seriously injured and finds himself having (possibly) hallucinatory experiences that look inexplicably like 1973. His boss is a loveable sexist homophobe, and the soundtrack is larded with all that awesome Seventies music.
12. A government employee has a really bad day.
13. Four guys drive around in a van and trap restless spirits with laser-powered vacuum cleaners. They save New York City from a giant candy mascot by taking serious risks with their equipment.
14. Vermin becomes a chef using a human puppet.
15. A super-strong cheerleader, a Jewish computer nerd witch, a goofy slacker, and the school librarian fight undead (mostly) monsters of the week while their personal lives turn into a soap opera. Beloved people die with depressing regularity.
16. Two kids get invited to visit their grandfather's zoo and watch a lawyer feed one of the animals.
17. A woman on a Greek island doesn't know who the father of her daughter is. Blamed for popularizing the Jukebox Musical.
18. Uptight but independent teacher falls for mopey rich man.
19. A paranoid nerd and an attractive doctor (who may or may not be sleeping with each other) spend a lot of time trudging through forests and other out-of-the-way places in search of the truth whilst an elderly government employee smokes a lot.
20. Children learn about boar hunting and killing each other brutally.
21. People stuck in a place where weird things happen and no one has any idea what's happening. Not even the producers. Also features a soap opera set in East Asia.
22. A man decides to rebel against his oppressive government. He fails, and it ends with him dying pointlessly and accomplishing nothing.
23. A trigger-happy botanist and an elderly sanitation worker fall in love. Then they rescue some fat people from a steering wheel.
24. Teen girl throws a fit at a prom.
25. This was described in some TV listings which took brevity too far: "A farmboy seeks his destiny."

BONUS OBVIOUS:

A series about a really old man who spends his lifetime convincing young hot girls to join him inside a (flying, time traveling) phone box. He is routinely harassed by tin men, giant nazi pepperpots and one of his college buddies.

I don't usually repost emails but, holy crap, this is hysterical and it came with a .gif.

A seagull in Marinette , WI has developed the habit of stealing Doritos from a neighborhood convenience store. The seagull waits until the Manager isn't looking, and then walks into the store and grabs a snack-size bag of cheese Doritos. Once outside, the bag gets ripped open and shared by other birds. The seagull's shoplifting started early this month when he first swooped into the store and helped himself to a bag of Doritos. Since then, he's become a regular. He always takes the same type of chips.

The Manager thinks it's great because people are coming to watch the feathered thief make the daily grab and run, and that's good for business, and especially since customers have begun paying for the seagull's stolen bags of Doritos because they think it's so funny. However, the Manager did say, 'This is Wisconsin , and if that seagull starts to grab a 6-pack to go along with the Doritos, I may have to put a stop to it.'

List 5 fictional doctors you'd want treating you.

+ Dr. House (Er... House)
+ Dr. Beverly Crusher (Star Trek: TNG)
+ Dr. Dana Scully (The X-Files)
+ Dr. Martha Jones (Doctor Who/Torchwood)
+ Dr. Janet Fraiser (Stargate SG-1)

Reposted with thanks to rhienelleth for the original post.

LJ allows certain links to be redirected through a third party site for ad revenue.

Basically, LJ is taking you through a third party whenever you click on a link to certain sites, or when you link to, say, amazon, and other people click on that. In a really sneaky way. There's some financial gain they're getting from it, but thanks but no thanks, I didn't sign up to be google ads on my journal.

You can opt out by following the directions here.

Ashes to Ashes: Season 1

This sequel to the original British TV series "Life on Mars" follows the further adventures of time-traveling Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) -- who was thrown from the 21st century back to the 1970s -- as he transitions into the 1980s. Joined by feisty criminal profiler and fellow time traveler Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), Hunt hits the streets of London to thwart a bomb plot that threatens Lady Diana's wedding and more.

So there's this site called awesomestart.com where you can find themed Google pages to use as your start page. They finally set up a template so you can make your own, so I went ahead and did it because I was bored.

Anyway, here's a Gene Hunt and Alex Drake start page for anyone interested.

It was sort of an initial test, but I think that site is a neat idea so I wanted to share.

Okay, seriously. I understand some of you people hate Twilight - and you know what? I don't really care. That's not the point of this post.

But I swear, if I have to read one more complaint about how incredibly unrealistic and inaccurate it is that vampires can walk in the daylight, I'm going to scream.

Points of Fact:

1. Vampires are fictional. Stop taking it so personally.
2. Vampires have been around for a long time. Wiki claims the first use of the word "vampire" in English etymology is sometime in the 18th century, although the folklore predates that by at least a few thousand years, as a discovery last year indicates that anti-vampiric rituals on the bodies of supposed vampires can be dated to at least 4000 years ago. So, unsurprisingly, folklore predates your fandom.
3. Vampires are not some kind of isolated, unique mythology. As a matter of fact, mythology is filled with evil creatures that return from the dead, suck the lifeforce/blood/fat/soul/etc from various living creatures, and all of these creatures tie together in various ways. Mythology is not black and white - cultures change, translate, assimilate, and vary their perceptions of mythology and folklore based on historical significance. There is not "right" or "wrong," there is just the way people perceive their fears.

With that said, let's point out some basic facts about the vampire timeline:
( Vampires - When They Were Important )

Obviously, this list is not comprehensive. But the point of it was not to be completely through, but rather cover a large history of folklore in a short amount of time to illustrate the change popular culture has inherently made to a preexisting mythology.

Vampires originally began as something to be feared. They were dead people. Reanimated corpses that wandered around drinking the blood of innocents and scaring the shit out of people and generally being disgusting. Of course, it makes sense that a mythology of darkness surrounded them - darkness is not the time that (many) people feel comfortable. Alleys and street corners you walk through in broad daylight often do not remain comfortable and relaxed when cast in shadow. Death is, commonly, associated with that of darkness. Darkness is often used as the cover for dark people doing dark deeds.

However, the point in time in which it, somehow, became "exclusive" for vampires to only exist in darkness can't be pinpointed any better than the point in time when it became "exclusive" that they could only be killed by chopping their heads off, or staking them through the heart, or shoving garlic in unsavory places, or driving nails through their temples, or sending them into alternate dimensions... Oh wait, that last one was just an episode of Buffy.

On the other hand, the point where vampires went from being something reviled and feared to something our culture felt pulled to in the most revolting of fashions can, for the most part, be dated. In 1888, Jack the Ripper became the first publicized and sensationalized serial killer in modern history, if not ever. He went around, at night, murdered prostitutes, and generally scared the shit out of people. An entire city was absolutely terrified of his existence. Terrified and obsessed. To the point that he is still a point of major discussion and controversy.

Enter, Dracula. Enter the vampire who could walk in daylight (granted, his powers were weakened, but it did not kill him), the vampire who made himself at home in the bedrooms of innocent women to feed of them, the vampire who, single-handedly, made the term "vampire" a day-to-day occurrence in modern pop culture. Yes, he was a disgusting and feared individual, but for the first time, properly at least, the legend of the vampire became sexualized. Infringing on a world where "sex" is a much of a reviled topic of conversation as any undead folklore, we have a villain who's lust for blood is so forceful that even the act of drinking and, thus, possessing his victims is an arguable point for a blatant metaphor for sex. And at some point in time, vampires become sexy.

And as our societies evolve, so does their mythology. Suddenly, we see less of the creepy, undead, Nosferatu-type vampires and more of the sexy, wanton, hero-type vampires. Angel, Edward Cullen; you hate them or you love them, but face it, they are vampires, rooted in the same mythology as those corpses in mass graves that people feared 4000 years ago.

My general point, which is admittedly long overdue, is this. Vampires are not a rule book, and they are not a list of what is "right" and "wrong." They are a reflection of our cultures, of our own fears and doubts about ourselves, or about death, or about what we want and when we want it. They are not exclusively American, or English, or Romanian. They are folklore - they are the legends of our fore-bearers, and they are fluid, because our culture is fluid. They change to fulfill our needs about ourselves, and not vice versa.

The day our mythologies stop evolving is the day we stop evolving too. So stop being irritated, and start being thankful when you live in a culture that embraces change and movement of thought, instead of one that stalled. Because, you know, you could live in a town where people drive nails through people's temples and throw them into mass graves. The world is a big place, and such horrors still happen. If your biggest trouble is being pissed off that someone's idea of a vampire can withstand sunlight, you're having a pretty good day.

So next time, before you throw up your arms in anger about how someone's belief system is wrong because it's not yours, try to remember why these beliefs, mythologys, folklores and stories exist to begin with. Try to think about what has inspired you to believe what you do, and how others may have been inspired, as well. Most of all, try to remember that something like a "vampire" is not a tagline for a TV show or a sentence in a dictionary, but, instead, a mish-mash of multiple cultures and memories that were never yours to begin with. Some vampires can die with a stake through the heart, but you know, it just immobilizes others. Some burn up in the sunlight, and some don't. Some are sexy, and some are hunks of decomposing flesh.

And by God, welcome to the 21st century. Some of them sparkle, too.

Not quite half of the pledges have been confirmed yet, and we still have a few more pages to check through in the Lightning Round, but at this point, we can state that over $50,000 has already been donated to various relief organizations to help Haiti rebuild.

And if all the pledges are kept and the sums donated, help_haiti will have raised nearly $115,000.00.

Maaaaaan, guys, you're awesome, like seriously.

And a special thanks from people like me, who did not have the immediate funds to donate monetarily, and it's nice to know I helped by doing something I could do. &hearts

My little pony went to amelia_80 and ellisbelle for $10. And as you can see from above, every dollar really does count.

You rocked the world this week, fandom. Stay awesome.