I have been having a very Fortean sort of a week.

We went on a road trip out to Michigan, and there's something very Fortean in general about an American road trip; it doesn't help that the reading material I brought along was two books by Loren Coleman, including "Mysterious America". And then I actually wrote a thousand words or so of the Great American Werewolf Novel, which surprised me.

We came back by way of my sister's archeology field school in Boston, and while there, I saw three UFOs, and I also saw a real, honest-to-goodness pair of concealed shoes (and then embarrassed myself by regaling them all at length over supper about the history and folkore of concealed shoes, oops. I have settled myself so nicely into my current niche of people - RL and online - who are totally groovy about people who know things, and are enthusiastic about the knowing of things, that I've forgotten the knack of, you know, not spontaneously being Quite Interesting all over everything.)

Anyway, then, just this afternoon, a friend of a friend called me to tell me about how she's been hearing this weird hum, intermittently, when she's in houses in her neighborhood, and some of her neighbors can hear it and some can't, so as my good deed for the day, I sent her to the wikipedia page on The Hum.

...possibly this is the universe trying to tell me I should do something more than just idly wonder about the possibility of graduate school in folklore.

Anyway, that is not what you're interested. What you're interested in, obviously, is pictures of cats. ( so here are some pictures of cats. )
The cat above - aka Miss Georgiana Darcy - has decided that I am never to be out of her eyesight. I don't know why. But I thought I was done being creepily followed around by cats. At least this one leaves me alone on the toilet. And at night, where my bedroom is under the paws of her dear sister, Miss Caroline Bingley, who perches on the one square foot of clear space on my top bunk and surveys her domain.


*Well, they *were* unidentified objects. Until one of them landed at the dig site, and several of the students braved life and limb (and stinging nettles) to haul it back to camp, and it turned out to be an elementary school class project. Still kind of weird and creepy looking though. :D

So, a long, long time ago, before I had an online journal or interacted with fandom in any way, back before Wikipedia ruled the internets, I used to post on Everything2, which is a wikipedia competitor with a very different structure, ethos, and culture. (As much as I do like the Wiki system, I wish more sites used an E2 framework instead - I think it would've worked really well for fanlore, for ex., with its emphasis on multiple voices and automatic flow.)

Anyway, one of the things I posted there, over eight years ago (!!!), was an attempted translation of the Old English poem Wulf and Eadwacer into poetic Modern English. I'm no Anglo-Saxon scholar, but I go through phases of reading lots of early English poetry and poking at the language, so it may be a bad translation, but I like the poem, and I like my version better than any of the other translations I've found, and I have nothing at all staked on it being a good translation, so critique it all you want. (I am, oddly, very fragile when it comes to criticism of my fiction - I can get scared into writing nothing for months even by *effusively good* feedback - but have a very thick skin about my poetry - say whatever you want about it, it won't change what the poem means to me.)

So there's this translation, that's been sitting pretty much ignored on a website that's been slowly dwindling in readership, until shanaqui with her riddles on poetry inspired me to look it up again and repost my Wulf and Eadwacer there.

And what should I discover but that someone has quoted my translation in an academic paper, as far as I can tell from Google pretty much in full, and published it in the journal "Language and Literature" only this month.

I am trying to articulate why this pisses me off so much. Given that I generally approve of fair use and quotation and derivative/transformative work with or without permission, and am pretty radically anti-intellectual-property in general, and strongly support acafandom in using internet postings in published papers, I ought to just be happy that somebody (somebody who I rather admire as a writer and scholar) has noticed my un-expert little translation and thought it worth talking about.

But, well, what pisses me off? Is that the journal's publisher wants 25 dollars from me in exchange for the privilege of looking for only 24 hours at the article about my work that they published without even notifying me.

( <I>That</i> pisses me the hell off (pardon my Anglo-Saxon. And Old French.) Cue rant. )

Short version: if Transformative Works and Cultures was pay-only, I would be a lot less supportive of it, that's for darn sure.

(I tend to think that fanacademia, even beyond TWC, tends to be fairly good about freely sharing info - even when papers are published behind pay-only, it's been fairly easy for me to get copies for free - but that might be because accumulated fanmeta rep has gotten *me* inside several locked walls of access that I don't even see any more.)

(Also, said fan network has already gotten me a copy of the paper about Wulf and Eadwacer that discusses me. I am now officially recorded in the ongoing conversation of Western Thought as "Melannen, a kind of 'groupie' for wit and wisdom" --- I'll take it! Could be worse. Also, my e2 post is "not exactly post-structural exegesis," but rather "a crude recommendation" to "make the empty room exciting with your own furnishings". Hmm, you know, I don't have any titles on my DW journal pages yet... :D But seriously folks, it's a reasonably good paper which is doing pretty much the same thing I tried to do in my e2 post but better - the quotes are actually a compliment, because I'm the only one of six translators - including Burton Raffel - he actually discusses at any length whatsoever. Even if he is baffled by the internets and the way learnings happen there. And he got the date of publication of the E2 entry wrong by five years somehow. And altered my translation in a fairly significant way without, apparently, noticing.)


...er. Speaking of the value of a public domain, last weekend I was at Farpoint - my first ever sci-fi con! - and spent most of the time trying to pretend it was con.txt, which meant hanging around the do-it-yourself panel rooms and figuring out how to talk about fanfic in them without outright admitting I'm a fanfic writer. (Panels I either gave or attended: Writing SF Erotica, DIY Social, SF Worldbuilding, Webcomics 101, Sex and SciFi, Not Everyone's a Pro, Copyright/Copywrong, Convention Sales for Creative Types, and Sherlock Holmes. I want to talk more about the con later, but this post is going to be long enough already.)

One of the coolest ones I attended was ( The Copyright, Copywrong panel, which was recorded and is available as a podcast. )
...anyway it also features me as "person in audience who wouldn't stop talking". Hear! Me attempt to talk to Marc Okrand without getting squee all over him! Hear! Me slip slash discussion in under the radar by casually mentioning the OTW without explaining what it is! Hear! Me get scolded for talking too much and not letting other people participate! Hear! Me completely fail to mention Interrobang Studios, which is ostensibly why I was at the con!


(and for the record, if I was not so lazy I would officially put all of my work under a creative commons share-alike license, the share-alike being most important and the attribution being least.)

So I just announced to the rest of the Interrobang Studios crew that I had, for the first time ever, posted stupid fanart to my DeviantArt account, and roommate Kevin misheard and thought I had said Scrooge fanart, so I had to admit that I had *written* Scrooge fanfic, because my 2003 Yuletide fic was Scrooge/Marley slash (and it got highlighted on the lj comm today!), and they made faces at me and said "You know I meant Unca Scrooge, right?", so I told them that as far as I knew, I was one of only two people who had written that pairing, and the other one was Henry Jenkins, Director of Media Studies at MIT, and other roommate Sarah said, "Wait, Professor Jenkins? I think he taught my Science Fiction class there. Why didn't I know he did fan studies?"

Ah, geekdom.

Anyway, yes, I have posted stupid fanart at my almost-empty deviantart account. Remember how I mentioned that there are a few LJ comms for pairing I still hang out on? One of them is best_enemies, the multi-era Master/Doctor community. (And we mean multi-era: the community is currently trying to fill in the chart of all 216 possible Master/Doctor pairings.) And ages ago, wingedkamui posted fanart of Shalka!Doctor luring Catboy!Master into the Tardis with a mouse.

Since Shalka!Doctor already has a Sexbot!Master of his very own, and since Shalka!Master goes only to doomed planets, it would be perfectly canonical for him to pick up Catboy!Master, and Saxon!Master has access to hammerspace by way of the Toclafane, and hey, planets don't get much more doomed than Professor Yana's .... the phrase "Gotta Catch 'em All" may have been used, and Tenchi Muyo was mentioned.

So I have been in possession of a Doctor/Master As Harem Anime comics bunny for the past year or so, and I finally got through the first set of character designs, and there be postable art:

(click for larger versions.)

This is a promo poster for Who Needs a Doctor? the (existing only in my head) American manga based on the (non-existent) Japanese anime that was very loosely based on the (really real) spin-off Shalka cartoon of the British Doctor Who television series. There are a few (very minor, of course) variations from the original British show, as you may have noticed. (I'm claiming that the crappiness of the art is intentional because I'm parodying bad American manga-style art. ...yes.)

The poster shows the Doctor's "travelling companions" circa the end of season one of the anime: (vaguely left-to-right): Magister-san, Snake, Cheetah, the Master, Harry, Kosch-chan, Yana-Sensei, a Kitling and a Toclafane, Crispy, the Chief, and Vworp the baby TARDIS.

But I also do have a three-season-long plot outline, two 24-page comics scripts, a brand new deviantart account, fortyleven bookmarks from TVTropes, and a bunch more character designs (Time Lady Beautiful President Romanadvoratrelundar! Sexy Time Agent Captain Jack! Dalek Caan, because every anime needs a tentacle monster, and who also accidentally gave me a way to make this CRACK tie in with canon! Rani the Zaftig!)

Will I ever get around to drawing any of the actual comic? ...Rassilon knows!

Metro subway trains wear Vorkosigan livery; Amtrak wears Imperial Service colors. I just thought you might want to know what goes through my head while sitting at train stations. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who dresses their minions in orange and blue (MARC) or turquoise polka dots (Acela). Although if I ever have minions I'd be tempted to try that last. CSX freight trains are patchwork, of course, but the locomotives are all gold and navy (who wears gold and navy livery? I can't recall. And it's been ages and ages since I've spotted a car that still had Chessie on it, alas.)

I timed my walk from the station to the car today; it took me eight minutes to go the .45 miles to the car, which ends up about 3.5 mph, while carrying an 18lb pack. (Apparently, ten-year-old laptops are godawful heavy. Who knew? Add in the two textbooks I *usually* carry, and we're up to 25 lbs, which is already approaching the suggested backpacking weight for somebody my size.) Then I helped Mom mow the lawn, and then I grabbed my hiking stick and we took a walk down to the old WB&A bridge over Old Mill Road that got washed out by Agnes in '72. That was about 1/4 mile in 6 minutes, which is still 2.5 mph. So let's split the difference and say my average walking speed when not pushing myself is about 3 mph. Which is actually better than I thought it would be.

Which means I ought to be able to do 16.6 mi in not much more than 7 hours, barring disaster, even at my slower stop-and-smell-the-wildflowers pace. This is relevant because it's 16.6 miles to the first campsite on the C&O trail, which would be both the longest stretch and the longest day by far. (What, you thought I wouldn't keep talking about that? Hahaha. The thing is, it's so eminently *doable*, and I so want to do it, so why not? I just need three days free with clear weather, and I shall be off, I will, I will.)

( Canals and trails, trains and hikes, maps and dreams, and oh yeah, I should be doing homework. )

Anybody want to join me some weekend in bushwhacking from my house down to Academy Junction on the old WB&A right-of-way, and find what's been built of the WB&A trail? If they ever, finally, get the wheels moving on finishing that trail, before I'm too old and creaky to enjoy it, which, fingers crossed, they may actually be doing at long last, it's concievable that I could go all the way from our front yard to my sister's place without leaving designated hiker/biker trails - and while I'm dreaming, then I could concievably just *keep going*, right past Mom's hometown, until I hit the Pacific Ocean - and wouldn't *that* be cool? But baby steps, kid, baby steps.

In honor of learning about the Nutritional Transition, today I have eaten: a bowl of cereal, a granola bar, a soft pretzel, a cup of Instant Lunch, and some sandwich cookies. Yay, starch!
(One of the few things that makes me wish I lived on my own is the dream of having fried plantains whenever I want them. Mmmm. third world food.)

Even with all that starch, and add in three glasses of milk and a can of guava juice, it's still on the low side of the number of calories I'm supposed to get a day. But, hey, I had fruit, and sweets, and bread, and milk, and salt; the only basic food groups I was missing today were cheese and chocolate.

Anyway and meanwhile. The library book I checked out for my sustainability project has sunk to the bottom of the pile; the one about alternative uses of pharmacologically active herbs among premodern cultures, which I checked out for fic purposes of course, is turning out to be very useful for class. Typical. Plus, I found my credit card marking my place in it from two weeks ago, so now I can renew my paid lj account!

Oh, and I watched this week's House and Bones and Boston Legal tonight while sewing the gauntlets and utility belt for the Drop-Bear's costume. I got stuck on the utility belt - see, KB doesn't actually have a waist, so any sort of substantial belt just looked silly. And then I thought, what do marsupials and superheroes have in common? That's right - Pouches! So even though he's a male koala, he now has a belt with a pouch on it, and is busy trying to tell me what supplies he needs, other than boomerangs, swing line (for doing the DEATH FROM ABOVE bit) and eucalyptus leaves (which are pretty near impossible to get 'round here, but he swears are a miracle drug.)

Anyway. ( House, Highlander, House, Stargate, Bones, X-files, Boston Legal. )

In memory of Erwin Schrödinger & for the unofficial last day of Agnostica, My Cat Hates You.

Yeah, I'm back around. Still haven't caught up from LJ for the week that I was in the wilds of Ohio, though. Particurly, I haven't narcissistically read every single yuletide recs post in hopes that somebody mentioned my story. (Which, by the way, was Earthsea fandom: Calving, and wasn't nearly as good as the story that was written for me, which was Riddle of Stars fic: Unanswered Riddles, by Rhiannon Shaw. Usually when people say "I am not worthy" it's meant as humorous exaggeration, but it this case it was literally true.) And then there's a whole bunch more fic to read and maybe even review. And *then* I might have time to do a proper New Year's update.

Or then, not. I'm taking a winter term class, 4 hours a day, on GIS. Plus substitute teaching still. Of course, after two days of class we still haven't done any actual GIS work, because the lab's software liscense expired on Jan 1st and they haven't figured out how to reinstall it yet. Yay! Ooh, and I actually used YSI for a legitimate purpose today. Okay, no, it was to share illegal copies of protected intellectual property, but it was real class readings and not fannish silliness, so it counts.

And speaking of that, I have another public-transit related ethical dilemma to throw to your collective wisdom:
[Poll #645707]
There ought to be a community just for ethics polls. I would use it all the time. After all, who better to trust your integrity to than a bunch of random semi-strangers on the internet?

I am eating a leftover cheese ball for dinner & then I need to get a job for tomorrow and do homework. When there are two boxes of new (okay, fourth-hand hand-me-down) sci-fi novels sitting *right in front of me.* ETA: If you're interested, here's the contents of the two boxes. Yes, I cataloged instead of doing my reading. Bad me.

If I get highest grade in the class in Geochemistry, and something miserably low in Chemistry, we will take it as given that the fault was neither the material nor the student, as they were exactly the same in both classes.

That is-- Finals: Done.
Yuletide fic: Mostly done. Debating whether to add a lemony bit, or whether, given the characters I have to work with, that'd be cruel and unusual punishment.
wam account clearout in preparation for trip home: Done.
Packing: staring at me.

'm off to winter holiday. Plans consist of: get dragged to RotK, drag sister to the Pirate Movie, steal sister's x-files dvds. Oh, and possibly start my christmas shopping.

Leaving the dorm I will miss two things: my ethernet connection is one. It will probably be good for me to be without, mind, but it shall be frustrating all the same.

And the noise. On the dorm, if I leave the door cracked, as I usually do in my only concession to sociability, I can almost always hear music. Somebody's stereo, someone noodling on her flute or picking at a guitar, somebody strolling down the hall singing Memory at midnight.. It's one of my few favorite things about living with other people: you can be alone but still feel that life around you.

And it always used to remind me of home, those threads of faltering melody that filtered through the wall. Dad practicing his hand-scored clarinet medleys downstairs, Dad whistling Bizet, Dad playing the piano in his personal fake-book-and-two-chords style or trying to pick out a melody when he'd forgotten half the words. It could get annoying at times, but nobody else played like him and it always sounded like home and love and safety. I don't even think we ever made any recordings of it.

Home will be quiet, this Christmas. I will need dvds and movies to have on.

If I ever get stuck and convinced everything I'm writing is utter crap? Remind me to go ding for a while. Yeah.

acadine has declared a Mary Sue goodfic challenge. Hence, an excuse for an attempt at my American DaDA teacher who saves Hogwarts and boffs an OoC Professor Snape . .

( he wasn't looking forward to this. )