Hi Livejournal friends,

As you know, I like to get in on trends on the ground 51st floor, so please feel free to subscribe to throughadoor dot dreamwidth dot org. I apparently squatted on this username and imported my Livejournal content like ... four years ago? But then got distracted because I post so infrequently anymore that it just never seemed worth it to make the switch. However, dafnagreer recently pointed out that I'm the ONLY person she cross-posts to LJ for anymore, so, what the hell.

Anyway, if you would like to continue reading my biannual excuses for disappearing from online journaling for so long or if you would like me to be able to read your own entries, let's find each other on Dreamwidth. Honestly, I will probably only read/post over there because it seems easier. Is that inconvenient? Is this thing on?

xoxo,
throughadoor

This will not make sense unless you've been watching the current seasons of Scandal, RuPaul's Drag Race and Project Runway. [*]

sparkymonster: [texts to say we should watch Project Runway when she gets home]
throughadoor: Spoilers, Huck won Project Runway.
sparkymonster: I thought Olivia did.
throughadoor: Olivia won RuPaul's Drag Race. Jinx is the mole.
sparkymonster: Hello. Roxxxy is the mole underneath the other mole.
throughadoor: Roxxxy is painting a textile under another textile.




[*] And if you're not watching Scandal and RuPaul's Drag Race? [**] No tea, no shade, but look at your life. Look at your choices. I want to say "Scandal is a great nightime soap" or "Scandal is a Shonda Rimes show, but--" but, hahah, sorry, can't do it, Scandal is the best show on television, the end. Also, RuPaul's Drag Race is one of the most racially and socio-economically diverse reality shows on television, and has crowned a person of color three out of the first four seasons.

[**] If you've figured out how to effectively break up with Project Runway, please send me detailed instructions.

Patrilineage
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell / gen / 5427 words

Contains exegesis, the trouble with translating Godfather quotes, seven lines of intentionally bad porn movie dialogue and women playing Major League Baseball. It turns out that this is both the second time this year I've written a story that required reading up on the New Testament and my second Yuletide story in a row with a Star Wars homage. And, if I'd focused on a different part of this story's canon, I could have had the dubious honor of writing two Yuletide stories that required rape/non-con warnings. So ... yeah. Thanks a million to paintedmaypole for the beta!

You guys, I'm getting so old. I didn't even get drunk and write the majority of my Yuletide story on a cocktail napkin while flying from Boston to San Francisco like, I don't know, every year since 2004. MATURITY!

Nocturne of the Brooklyn Bridge
China Mountain Zhang, all audiences, 6000 words.
I am Teresa Luis but also Comrade Li Taiming, because my great-great grandfather Rafael José Luis y Iglesias was born in the old United States, became a founding member of the Reformed American Communist Party and died defending the Brooklyn Bridge at the start of the Second Civil War.

Posted on AO3 so it can be with the only other two China Mountain Zhang fan works in known existence. For moireach on the impending occasion of her nuptials. Thanks to paintedmaypole for beta action & also to annakovsky, because we're always in the same place when we're from the internet.

***

On Tuesday I saw The Avengers with smartlikejustin and imogenics and when we were getting tipsy on frozen sangria (wine slurpees!) I said: "So, I did something today I haven't done in a really long time." And they indulgently asked me what I did, even though they probably thought I was just going to tell some boring story about my job. But the answer was that I finished and posted a story for a purpose other than Yuletide. How long has it been since I finished and posted a story for a purpose other than Yuletide? APPARENTLY IT'S BEEN SIX YEARS. The occasion of M's marriage? Pretty much a big deal.

The sad thing is that I still write all the time. Ostensibly I write for a living, or at least part of my living. But it's all grant writing, which creates monetary benefit and promotes social justice, but it's not as much fun as making up stories about Justin Timberlake. Adulthood, I guess? I'm dubious.

Yuletide reveal!

The F**cking Movie Never Motherf**cking Ends
@MayorEmanuel, for norah, 7400 words

* Beta action thank yous to katienyc and xica_s (Chicago residents extraordinaire) and sparkymonster (long-suffering roommate).

* Thank you also to norah for her request, and I hope I ended up somewhere she enjoyed.

* When I was writing this story, I thought to myself "I have never written something that is more likely to accidentally find its way to the attention of the source creator. It has never been more likely that the source creator will already have a general understanding of the concept of fan fiction. I have never been more embarrassed at the prospect of this happening." I VASTLY underestimated how embarrassed I would be when Dan Sinker tweeted about being alerted to the @MayorEmanuel Yuletide stories.

* That being said, if you were a fan of the original @MayorEmanuel Twitter feed, I highly recommend reading Dan Sinker's The Epic F**cking Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel, because he does a DVD commentary style running narrative on the entire saga and after reading it I appreciated the obscure Chicago insider politics about six times as much as I did before. In the spirit of Dan Sinker's book, I did my own DVD commentary on this story, mostly to explain all the obscure Chicago sports references (Beef Wennington!) and point-and-laugh at all the things I forgot to include (WE HAVE TO GO BACK). If you're inclined, you can read it behind the cut.

( Fuck this shit. 9/25/11 6:31:40 PMCollapse )

The F**cking Movie Never Motherf**cking Ends: now overly verbose with commentary. [go back to part one]

( Wandering the city with Hayden all week. I even showed him how to slot machine the fucking parking meters. It's wealth redistribution! 10/21/11 4:20:09 PMCollapse )

Dear Livejournal,

I need to make a confession, and I feel like only y'all will understand the deep, ridiculous hypocrisy at work here. For the last 18 months, I have been relentlessly shit-talking a colleague because she sends all of her professional email correspondence and renders her full electronic email signature in lower-case text.

[...]

To be fair, no matter how committed I was to lower-case text for, like, FIFTEEN YEARS of my obnoxious life, I never pulled that shit at work. Anyway, I noticed today that she finally stopped, and I felt older than I did when I realized I was probably too old for that to be cute anymore.

Someone on my friends list did the "what's in your purse/bag" meme! I love this one. As a non-car-owning urban commuter, I lovingly refer to my bag as my car trunk. ( Because ... it's basically the same size as a car trunk.Collapse )

Anyway, hi, hello. Today I signed up for Yuletide and some crazy beautiful bastard had nominated @mayoremanuel as a fandom and I was reminded that I really love you all.

wretches who
So ... this happened. Also, M was a lovely and charming host, although I'm pretty sure that having out-of-town guests who live in Boston and Cleveland come visit you in Atlanta in the middle of March is a lot like babysitting patients at a methadone clinic. For ex: "No, seriously, we can take a scenic tour of the local garbage dumpsters AS LONG AS IT STAYS THIS WARM."

Although we did manage to start developing the pilot for a half-hour comedy that takes place at the Boise Aquarium, so be on the lookout for that.

three very important things I have been meaning to tell you about the film Battle: Los Angeles
1. This movie is amazeballs. If you have ever said to yourself, "I want to watch Independence Day, but I also want to watch Speed. I could put two televisions side-by-side and watch them simultaneously, but that seems like a lot of work," A MOVIE HAS NOW BEEN MADE THAT WILL SOLVE THIS VERY IMPORTANT PROBLEM.

2. No seriously, wrt: #1 I think Aaron Eckhart took lessons in making his face look more like Bill Pullman's, which was very thoughtful of him.

3. Most of the main characters are a platoon of Marines based out of Camp Pendleton, which made me really, really want to find-and-replace for the cast of Generation Kill. There was even a fresh-out-of-OTS lieutenant and a seasoned, cold-blooded staff sergeant. Seriously.