I am back from my annual Winter Holiday away-from-internets-ness! I have not even started catching up on the DW posts I have missed, or the hundreds and hundreds of Yuletide recs, but I *did* get to my stories.

And as seems to be a trend, I have an embarrassment of riches again this year: three stories!

My assigned story is The End of the Enlightenment, based on A Night in the Lonesome October, and Awesome Author took up the challenge of writing about a Game other than the one in the book, and it is amazing! Alas, I am not knowledgeable enough about the place & time that author chose to recognize the characters immediately, but that is okay, because not really knowing just makes it creepier, plus! That means there is research to be done! Which is always a good thing!

I also got The Story of Elihu Yale, which fleshes out John Hodgman's account of the founding of Yale University, featuring Elihu Yale and his wise prostitute, and it is adorable!

And finally, there is Two Out of Three Ain't Bad, which is Myssmo/Law and Srafen/Hedgyt and comes in chapters, OMG. Author took up the challenge of writing queer lamnviin! And in a way that fills me with joy!

...also, while all the above stories are amazing on their own, two of the authors left notes to the effect that they plan to write more, which a) means more story for me someday YAY! and b) makes me feel slightly better about the fact that I did the same thing to my yuletide recipient. :/ Dear recipient: You seemed to like the story, and I hope you could not tell that I only wrote 1/4 of what I intended (and instead just assumed I'm not a very good writer) but I *do* still intend to write you the other 3/4. Hopefully by the time the archive opens again. Maybe?

Meanwhile, apropos of you-really-don't-want-to-know, here is a song I have written:
( I want a Necronomicon for Solstice (only a Necronomicon will do.) )

So! Stuff has happened. The most relevant, however, is that I have fallen in love.

With a radio show!

I was driving home t'other night and stumbled on a re-run of Tapestry of the Times on my very own local public radio station, WYPR, and it's like it was a radio show designed solely for me. ¹

It's a hour of music, history, context and commentary that is entirely from the archives of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the non-profit record label started in the 1960s for the purpose of documenting folk and world music and later taken over by the Smithsonian. I'm sure it has some appropriation issues - rich white people recording other peoples' culture always does - but Folkways has always at least tried to be non-exploitative, and oh my god, if I had all the time and money in the world I would have already bought out the Folkways back catalog. This show did it for me and picks out an hour's worth of good stuff a week, just enough, and omg yay.

They have their entire archives up as mp3/podcast on the website (less than a year's worth, so far), and I am slowly (savoringly) working through it. The last episode I listened to features "blues piano from Memphis Slim, marimba music from Guatemala, labor union songs, World War II anthems, Tuvan throat singing, and classic old-time tunes from Doc Boggs and Roscoe Holcomb." SERIOUSLY, could there possibly be any radio show better made for me?

As a bonus, most of these songs are basically impossible to find as pirate downloads, so I can't go and download another gig of mp3s that I don't need after every episode. :D (so I downloaded the complete Smothers Brothers discography instead, help p.s. does anyone have any peggy seeger tracks i think i have fallen in love with her too.)

¹Mind you, I am the girl who spent her high school years with the radio tuned to the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential tapes instead of rock'n'roll, so my taste may not be yours.


Also, while I am on the topic of hippy music, wintercreek made an mp3 recording of herself singing Enterprise, Starship, the John Denver filk that gets sung on the Enterprise in the novel The Wounded Sky, and posted it to starry_sea. You guys, wintercreek is amazing; she has - no lie - fulfilled a childhood dream of mine. Even if that community never does anything ever again, it was all worth it for that.

Ain't fandom amazing? Ask, and it will be given!

Anyway wintercreek mentioned wanting to get a bunch more voices to add to make it a singalong, so I did: Enterprise, Starship four voices: this is my three best takes (recorded with headphones on, and then layered over the original in Audacity.) Y'all should do it too so nobody has to hear my singing in the final version.

...and, while I'm on Star Trek multimedia anyway I guess, gblvr posted the Star Trek Reboot Art Meme (which originated with annime1231 on dA) like, umm ... over a month ago? But I just finished doing it. So here it is:

( Long fanart is long. And has no text description. Also, warnings for tentacles, hybrid babies, cocktail metaphors, space floozies, old people, Rihannsu, crossdressing, Star Wars quotes, JF injokes, Captain Maddow, Vulcan-touching, anthropomorphization, bad art, and girlsex. )

..enjoy.