IT'S FINE EVERYTHING'S FINE I DON"T HAVE A PROBLEM

I also bought
-two flowerpots (for the ongoing 'be a person who doesn't kill houseplants" self-improvement project) ($1)
-a top with optical experiments built in, a tensegrity puzzle kit, and a caged hedgehog puzzle with two broken spikes ($.60)
-two Victorian costuming patterns ($2)
-nine pairs of bamboo knitting needles, ass't sizes ($5)
-two Daekor potbelly bears ($1.50)
-a plush octopus ($.25)
-an embossed tin treasure chest ($1)
-a folding sterno camp stove (hidden in treasure chest)
-two miniature globes ($.50)
-three pairs of brand-new earbuds ($1.00)
-two partial feedsack patchworks (one unfinished, one cut up) ($2.75)
-11 yards of cloth ($4)
-four pieces of homemade chocolate walnut fudge ($1)

....I don't get to go yard sailing again for awhile. I hope.

Because sometimes a girl just has to get her spreadsheets out on a Friday night.

In 2011, I:

Added 418 items to my LibraryThing catalog;
of which 289 were new acquisitions;
acquired from at least 25 different sources;
and completely failed to track my reading (but it was a lot fewer books than 289.)

Went yard sailing on 14 Saturdays between March and November;
bought things at 29 separate sales;
spent $150 almost exactly (assuming my spreadsheet is finally right);
on 220 separate items;
for an average cost per item of 68¢ (this is why I say my standard of pricing is very, very off)
of which 140 were books, at an average price of 50¢ (this is why ebooks are not yet in my price range);
with an average total spent per sale of $5.17;
had a ridiculous amount of fun making the spreadsheet.

Posted 23 complete works to AO3;
With a mean/median word count of 3533/1729;
Including about 35 different fandoms;
With a mean/median feedback ratio ((kudos+comments+bookmarks)/hits) of 7%/6%;
With two stories over 10,000 words (for the first time ever!)

Worked on 35 distinct fanfic stories (plus Nano, several long bits of not!fic, some original fic, lots of journal entries, and some fragments too short to be separately counted);
for a total of 164,658 fannish words written;
of which 31 stories were posted, somewhere;
26 stories are complete, 4 are unposted works in progress, and 5 are languishing as WIPs on some kinkmeme somewhere.
4790 of those words are het; 14246 are slash or femslash; 9825 are gen; and 88924 are things I don't feel confident about putting in any one of those categories.
14 are crossovers; 6 are on the borderline of being crossovers; 15 are not crossovers;
which allows for me to have written 30 fandoms this year (I count fandoms differently from AO3.)
19 of the posted stories, and 79,000 of the words, were originally posted anonymously.
The average length of a story, finished or not, is 4207/1991 (mean/median) words; the mean length of a finished story is 3053 words; of an anon meme wip is 5277 words.

And there is much more data to be mined from the spreadsheets. What else would you like to know? :D

ETA: OMG, we took down the holiday decorations today, and the Three Wise Men left a ridiculous amount of cash in my stocking last night. :O We need to stop Mom from learning about other Christmas traditions, it's dangerous. I guess that's my 2012 yard sailing money.

And while I'm at it, might as well post, this year for Christmas ( I got: )

Nobody has yet conveniently nominated any of the fandoms I was thinking of for Yuletide. Which leaves me unable to narrow it down to three! People, it is up to you:



1. I have requested Lucky Starr repeatedly since year one, and offered it every year, and other people offer/request it too, and yet none of it has ever been written for yuletide.
2. We have to keep Madelyn Mack rolling, don't we? Also: canon is available legally and free.
3. There needs to be Pinkwater fic. It really should be nominated under "Pinkwater - Works" because it's one semi-cohesive universe, but everyone previous years has requested individual books/subseries, so I'm not sure how nominating the umbrella fandom would go down, or how that would work with matichng. And Lizard Music is available free-legal-on-the-net as an audiobook read by the author.
4. LIBERTY/JUSTICE BONDAGE FEMMESLASH PORN. Or the fandom I think of as "lots of smart, sexy, women with swords." If I requested this, somebody would probably write it. But on the other hand it might act as a nuclear option like the year I requested DW/LJ and kill my chances of getting anything else. Also I'd probably need to finally get around to writing that fandom overview/guide for Victorian civic allegory.
5. Harriet Adams/Nancy Axelrod: I really really want this. I doubt anyone else in the world does, though. And even if they do, they probably don't feel qualified to write it, either.
6. There needs to be more panel comedy RPF - they put like six slash prompts in an average episode of one of those, c'mon - but I don't like having to split it up by show because it's the same people on all the shows (even though I think somebody's already nominated WILTY) and British Comedy in general might be too big to qualify for Yuletide, but I don't think a "panel show" sub-fandom is really established (even though there is a LJ community for it), so I don't really know how to nominate here.

***

Brief, belated yard sailing update:

yesterday, HOPE sale: five crochet hooks, $.50; hand-woven, hand-embroidered pouch for costuming: $.50

last week: Knights of Columbus sale: 2 hardbound notebooks @$1, one spiral-bound sketchbook @$1, 3 pamphlet cookbooks (Sunmaid Raisins, 1921; Outdoor Cooking with Reynolds Wrap, early '50s; Chiquita Banana, 1956) @$1, "On the Seas: A Book for Boys" (c. 1870s), $1. At the high school sale: two 1950s Hardy Boys hardcovers w/ good condition dust jackets, @$.50 (she was asking only a nickel each but after overpaying for all the other books I refused to underpay by that much for the actual collectible ones.)

There will be a brief, small flurry of pre-holiday bazaars, and then the season will end for another year; I'll probably to a wrap-up in January and then you won't have to put up with these posts anymore.

( Yard sailing catch up )

...yes, I am out of shelf space again. And coat closet space, incidentally.

Anyway after that I ended up going and hanging out with xerahanadu and lindentreeisle and company in Baltimore, and X-Men: First Class was watched.

I feel like I should be writing a thoughtful post about the fact that every time Charles and Erik were on screen together, the reaction from the audience was giggles as we waited to see who would be the first to give in and shout "KISS ALREADY!" at the TV, and what that says about society and the media and gender and sex, but I didn't get in until 2:30 AM last night and then I had to get up for church, so instead I'll say: it was a fun movie.

But it made no sense. ( cut in case anyone actually cares about spoilers )

The title of the troll version of this movie is A Talented Psychic Seadweller Rescues From Drowning A Renegade Threshcutioner Bent On Revenge And They Attempt To Build A Moirallegiance As They Gather A Team To Find The Cruel Subjugglator Who Killed His Lusus, Until The Unexpected Flowering Of Their Black Passion Leads To The Destruction Of Alternia Through The Release Of Thousands Of Missiles Carrying Nuclear Fission Bombs; There Are Seven Kisses, Three Of Which Are Followed By Explosions And Three Of Which Are Vectors For Nonconsensual Psychic Manipulation.*

It's probably a better movie than this one, too.

*I am assuming that Troll XMFC actually had kissing at some of the places where we had to just yell "kiss already!"

( yard sailing report )

***

Oh yeah, speaking of tab weaving: ( crafts update )

****

Did I mention we got flooded out last week? We got flooded out last week. We had about an inch of water in the basement (which has never flooded before - we're up on top of a hill) and three small bridges near our house flooded over with major damage; two are still closed, which is really screwing up the traffic patterns. Also somebody drowned in the friendly little creek that goes right below our house, which ): Best I can figure, we had about half of our average yearly rainfall in about three weeks, most of it in steady downpours. We just finished putting in new flooring in the basement on Thursday.

Dear Earth: Can you please wait at least until January before we get a blizzard? Thanks.

On the upside, I realized that lots of closed roads means space to roller-skate. On the downside, I have learned that while I can still skate in a straight line indefinitely, and turn pretty well, I have forgotten stopping, and when your first stretch of skating is down a 10° grade into a construction site... well let's just say I'm glad I remembered where the ditch was mud rather than sharp rocks.

Flooded basement, and particularly the fact that the tenant down there is living in what the Internet diagnoses as Level 2 Squalor, has really kicked me forward into cleaning up and cleaning out, too. So I'm enjoying that, and pondering my relationship to clutter.

***

Oh! And I am clearing out my desk/office area today. So to join the "save the post office" effort, anyone in the US who wants 'something I found in my desk area' - might be a postcard, might not - mailed to them can PM me a mailing address.

Reading list, I have a question: does ~3,000 words of Methos and Joe Dawson talking about the Lone Power, Ahriman, Immortality, and the Song of the Twelve count as "a Highlander/Young Wizards crossover fic" or "boring self-indulgence"?

Because that seems to be appearing on my desktop, and I'm not sure which one to file it under.



So yesterday was the church picnic. And Saturday I went to the Books for International Goodwill book sale in Annapolis, and pulled A Calendar of Dinners with 615 Recipes (printed 1923, last revised 1913) off the free-cookbooks shelves.

I was thumbing through it and found a recipe for The Wholesome Parkin, which turns out to be a traditional molasses-oatmeal-ginger bread from Northern England, famous for only getting better as it gets staler ('excellent when a week old'). And partly because I have a thing (inculcated by LotR at a young age) for durable breads, and partly because I realized that it only uses ingredients that I have in my basic camping kitchen, I decided I needed to make it for the church picnic.

( Here is a picture, and a recipe, and also Crisco and some other things. )

( Other books acquired at that sale )

PS: I am testing the new AO3 update in IE6. Always offer to test in IE6: it is so much fun, there are so many things that don't work.

Yard sailing: went to one sale, a massive moving sale held at a nearby church. There were no prices, you just picked up the stuff you wanted and gave them however much money you felt like giving them. I ended up with:

A large rectangular lap weaving loom, already strung for a placemat (which I will probably re-purpose for other sorts of fiber arts, possibly sprang, because, um, I find almost all lap weaving ugly. Probably due to the prevalence of scratchy, coffee-stained brown-and-orange exemplars at my grandmother's house.)

An old-fashioned rectangular embroidery stretching frame.

Two small jars of even smaller nails (for nailing medallions to my hiking stick)

A mini spiral notebook of heavy drawing paper.

How To Make Paper Flowers from the Dennison Publishing Company, 1922. Because one day, kyabetsu is finally going actually throw a wedding with that guy who she agreed to marry, and on that day, I will give her a bouquet made out of comic books. Even if she doesn't want it any more by then. :P

Campcraft ABCs by Catherine T. Hammett, 1941. This seems to be a different recension of the 1950 Campcraft paperback I was looking at earlier, only published in a larger and more DIY format by the Girl Scouts of America. And since the little paperback is falling apart, and also full of neat stuff, I grabbed this one up.

Nature Crafts by Ellsworth Jaeger, 1949: I don't usually pick up nature crafts books, because they almost always consist of "creative ideas" like putting pinecones on a cardboard wreath or gluing googly eyes on a pebble. And the front cover makes this one look like more of the same. But no. You open it up, and the first 'craft' is how to make a hexagonal thatched hut as as your workshop. Then it moves on to stools, benches, and tables to furnish the hut, how to lash together a frame loom to weave grass mats as wall-coverings for the hut, and an old design for a folding portable chaise lounge made of willow-shoots. And just keeps getting awesomer, ending with several designs for temporary wilderness pottery kilns and how to make inks, paints and dyes from gathered materials.

I have to be honest, I am kind of in love with this book.

I threw in $5 for that lot, which was probably too much, but I combined my load with Mom's and she had an armload of Sunday School teacher books, so it more-or-less came out right.

Well, sort-of here. I am back on my secondary backup power cord, which seems to have some sort of voltage issues and occasionally shorts out / makes my computer blink angrily at me. But it will keep me going until I decide what to do for a long-term fix.

Survived the hurricane, too! We didn't even lose power beyond a few flickers. Spent the evening in a hammock chair out on the screen porch, which I can definitely recommend as a venue for watching a storm. When poking around the neighborhood today, and the only extensive damage seems to be the old outhouse behind the crumbling 1920s farmhouse in the woods, which was crushed utterly by a falling tree.

I am also - okay, some of you may remember my post from about a year ago, when I made a post talking about over a dozen fake-news-topical-comedy type shows that I follow, some more casually than others. This week? The week when Tripoli fell to the rebels, New York City got hit by both an earthquake and a hurricane, Nick Clegg got hit by paintballs, and Toronto got covered in memorial chalk? All of them are currently on break. Yes, even the Canadian and Australian ones. (Well, the Bugle sort of had a new episode, if you count a half-awake episode that was mostly a pre-taped stand-up show and only vaguely 'current events'.) There is no-one to reassure me that it is okay to make cynical jokes about what has happened, and convince me that it will all be okay! Whatever shall I do?

So instead, I spent my hurricane listening to old episodes of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and making ( an awesome hat. )

Anyway: yesterday before the hurricane there was yard sailing. because it had been too long! and there was one that was not cancelled, and I'm glad we went, because I forgot how awesome their book prices are:
( community Church of God sale )

petra on history of identity porn in the DCU; melusina on Stagegay and online performance; beccaelizabeth on identity porn.

For the record, if somebody else gets inspired to start the fanlore entry on identity porn, I will not be upset! I can just write Admiral Naismith/Lady Vorkosigan for that square instead. :P

***

We went yard sailing Sat. morning before the heat advisory went into effect (the afternoon I was hanging out in the AC with kyabetsu and lindentreeisle. This morning the AC was broken at church, yaye). So here is yard sailing report from yesterday:

( $23.50 )

It is July! And I have written over 75,000 words of fiction! Which means I met my year's goal in only six months. Hooray! Granted, the magic spreadsheet says that only about 43000 of those are finished+posted, and 71,000 were for the d_f anon meme (which means I have 28000 words of WIP sitting on the anon meme, shhh.)

What I should aim to do for the rest of the year is either: a) turn out 75000 words of original fiction, or b) increase the finished/unfinished ratio. Or I could just keep filling random meme prompts as long as the meme goes on. I am... debating.

***

Yard sailing today! No big sales, probably due to the holiday, so all I ended up with was $1.75 in: Two Dover coloring books and an "Easy-To-Make Castle" book (the Dover books are Art Deco, and Dinosaurs with Feathers. The Castle is a gag gift for certain people who have spent three years trying to build a castle;) also a half-gallon plastic water bottle to replace the one that failed me awhile back.

***

So commodorified posted We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years, a music mix for going to the barricades; and then sara posted De America, Yo Soy, her mix of angry leftist music, and then lotesse posted Oh, Freedom on a similar theme. And I downloaded them all, and they are all awesome. If you have any leftist passion in your heart, you should go listen.

So I thought I'd pay it on.

Only, nearly all of my going-to-the-barricades music is still trapped on the external hard drive that failed, so I'm cheating. :P This is a songmix that's been sitting on my hard drive for almost two and a half years - since January 21, 2009, in fact. What it is, basically, is my account of going to see Barack Obama's presidential inauguration, done as a fanmix instead of a journal or a photopost - a combination of songs that were played there, songs that should have been played there, and songs that got stuck in my head anyway. I meant to post it way back then, but kept coming up with new things to tweak, and it didn't happen.

So, given the occasion, it's less go-to-the-barricades and more 'cautious hope liberally mixed with engrained bitterness and cynicism', but I figured what with the new election campaign starting up AUUUUUUUGGGHHH, and the holiday and stuff, maybe I'd finally post it.

( Party at the Crossroads )

Party at the Crossroads / 100 mb / direct download

So every time something happy like the NY gay marriage law happens, people pull out all the icons and macros based on that famous Liberty/Justice kissing pic. And every time, I go looking for the Liberty/Justice femslash fic based on it, and I can't find any. Fandom! Why have you not delivered? C'mon! Lady Liberty sweeping Justice off her feet! There's so much story and personality in that image.

They could even get married in Lady Liberty's home state now. :D

****

...also while I'm am mixing fanwork and politics, ellemurasaki (using her Liberty/Justice icon, natch) posted about the effort by a pro-science group to buy the rights and all the production materials for Expelled, the horrible, horrible anti-science film that was made a few years ago and interviewed several well-known scientists under false pretenses so they could butcher the interviews. They are hoping to get it all cheap at auction (the production company went bankrupt) and then make the materials, including the uncut interviews, available for people to turn into awesome, awesome transformative works. :D

Even if I had the ready cash I couldn't donate, because they're taking paypal only, which hates me, and donations have to be in by Monday for the auction closing Tuesday, but the link seemed worth passing on.

****

Yesterday, I shelved ALL the books! All of them. Well, for certain definitions of "shelved", "all", and "books." And I didn't actually do the full sort or the catalog re-check, but I decided I'd met victory conditions. Most of them are even spine-out and single-shelved! And I can find any of them with almost no time or trouble! And there are no piles on the floor. And there's, like, three inches at least of free shelf space.

They haven't been orderly since the last time I moved. I feel like my head has been swept clear by a sea wind, or something. If I get the rest of the room neat enough to be willing to show it off, I might even take pictures. :P If I never buy any ever again, I might even me able to maintain this state affairs!

And then Mom went "it's been awhile since we were free on a Saturday morning, want to go to some yard sales?"

...I was trying to be good. I only bought seven? And two of them weren't really books?

( Yard sailing loot )

***

In other "things there needs to be a fandom for" news, I have been continuing to watch the UK 'Time Team' while crafting. I'm not sure I actually want there to be Mick/Tony/Phil fic*, but I want there to be a fandom where people talk about how Mick, Tony, and Phil are adorable. (Raise your hand if you've been around this journal for awhile and this surprises you in any way.) Also I have an abject crush on Carenza. Obviously. There can be Mick/Tony/Phil/Carenza OT4s too (except that she deserves better.)

*although if anybody wants to write the Tony/Phil fic set during the dinosaur special, or the fluff fic where they all live together in a rickety cottage full of artifacts, or a Time Team historical AU set in any given period of UK history, I would not complain...

****

Now, as it is Great American Backyard Campout Day, I need to go drag out some tents and cots and see how dry-rotted they got over the winter.

Slightly late yard sailing update: This weekend was our church's big spring rummage sale, which Mom is always in charge of and I end up helping out a lot. This year's had about three times the normal amount of junk, because two elderly church members gave all of their leftover things to the sale. (One of them passed away; one of them just moved to a retirement home.)

Anyway our church's sale means I can spend all the time I want picking through the junk and taking home anything I decide I need - we put in a couple twenties' worth of change and have that cover whatever we take.

So, not counting the stuff I pulled out before the sale that came from our house anyway, or what I got from Miss Mary's before the sale, I ended up with:

( lots of stuff. )

My task for today is to find places to put it all away, and take out the stuff I'm getting rid of in exchange.


Here, have a meme thing, because all of the deep and creative and thoughtful posts I want to do just aren't happening right now:

You're now a Time Lord. The 41st picture in your folder is your companion. The 17th is your arch enemy.

I only have two image folders on this computer that are big enough for this. Using my "interesting or appealing photos of people" folder, I get:

My companions are ( Ian and Barbara in togas ) and my arch enemy is ( Boris Johnson. )

...I want this episode now. Boris is a Dr. Who villain anyway. He and Hartnell's Doctor would bounce off of each other beautifully and Ian and Barbara could just lounge around in their draperies enjoying the show.

Using my "photoreferences for fanart I may or may not ever finish", I get:

My companion is ( a very young William Hartnell ) and my arch enemies are ( some Time Lord luminaries from the end of War Games. )
Um, I'm pretty sure that Theta Sigma vs. The Man is already canon. (I think the lesson here is that I have too many Old Who pictures saved, although if I'd been one off either side I'd have ended up with Cut ya' man vs. the Repentant Magdalen and Betty Grable vs. Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith, which yes please. Also I seem to go for black & white.)

Today was a big day for local yard sales! It's the day the two largest methodist churches have their spring flea market, and the day the historical society has its used book sale. It's kind of the ceremonial opening of the season, so of course we have to go to as many of them as possible.

(It's also free comic book day, so I stopped in for form's sake, but there weren't really any I wanted this year so I didn't bother fighting the crowd.)

So... when I decided to start doing this, I hoped it would prove that I don't buy "mostly books" at yard sales, I buy lots of other things too! This week's haul... does not make that case.

( From the GBIA/HS book sale )

( From the GBUMC flea market )

( From the SPUMC flea market )

Total: 27 books, 2 DVDs, 2 packs of cards and 1 LP = $10

Also, while at the sales, I ran into: my uncle, Pat from church, Mr. W. who taught with Dad, my old preschool teacher and my old third-grade teacher. And they say there's no sense of community 'round here!

Then I went to the library to do 2 hours of volunteer TAing for a "Beginning Computers" class and ended up buying some more books there, but we'll gloss over that.

Then I walked the 1.8 miles home, since it was nice, and on the way back I saw a native American koala! (By which of course I mean a groundhog Marmota monax climbing a tree, which was a new one for me. see the fall 2010 issue of Spotted Turtle for the first known photo of a native koala, taken by my uncle.)

1. Fine, you bulgegobbling windholes, I am reading Homestuck now. (Why didn't anyone tell me that troll AUs were canon? Look, it's troll Indiana Jones! I am trying to figure out his quadrants but keep running into his issues. He had some good blackrom tension going with Troll Belloq until he got him killed, which is probably a recurring problem with Troll Indy; and Troll Brody tries to be a surrogate moirail for him but isn't really up to it. I suspect his thing with Troll Marion has been flipping black/red since she was a grub.) (Also, why did nobody tell me that nearly all the troll characters have disabilities?) (Also, has Homestuck fandom noticed that the humans' game has two girl and two boys - exactly enough for two closed romantic pairs - and the trolls' has 12 - exactly enough for two closed troll romance systems? Although of course neither of them wind up being closed systems.)

I am still finding it immensely frustrating to read, but somehow I can't stop. (I just got up to the original troll romance explanation and decided to stop reading and actually post something.)

2. Yard sailing! We haven't made it the past few weeks because we've been helping clear out the house of an elderly friend who recently passed, age 97 (I have so much newly-inherited crafting stuff) but we went today!

( Today's Loot )

Total: 12 books and 1 Wacom tablet, $28.75

...also I have been informed that library volunteers like me get to take withdrawn/sale books home for free if we want. NO. BAD. I DID NOT NEED TO KNOW THIS.

3. I paid my taxes online, e-filing for the first time since the federal government seemed to be pushing it this year, and I do approve in theory of paperlessness. And can I just say: NOT IMPRESSED, US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. So not impressed. Especially compared to the MD state e-filing, which was so convenient and well-thought-out and went like a dream. I could start outlining in detail all of the things that are wrong with the federal electroning filing process, but really I can sum it up with the first one: there is absolutely no reason why the IRS should be contracting out all of its e-filing stuff to outside for-profit companies. D: It's secure web forms! With a little math in! The only hard part is handling the traffic load, and the IRS is probably paying for that anyway! If MD's state government - which is not known for being competent, well funded, or lacking in corruption, let it be said - can host its own efiling forms, I'm pretty sure you can too, IRS.

4. If you have ever wanted to know what 1000 paper cranes look like, here is a picture. Also there is a picture of a baby dalekling, and a field full of dandelions.
( Photos of help_japan stuff, etc. )

5. ETA: I knew there was a fifth thing: The brookerfic kink meme is doing that weird error where it screens comments even though it isn't supposed to. D: I need to prompt Brooker/Mitchell/Maypoles, dammit. (I'm a Doctor/Master fan, maypole dances have special meaning for me.)

This morning we went yard sailing! I am thinking that maybe this year, as the season starts to wind up, I will try to blog my yard sailing for the year, because I keep getting in conversations where I realize that lots of people don't really understand how seriously skewed by idea of "buying stuff" is as a result of a lifetime of yard sailing. Plus it might be fun just to have a record.

So, here ( Record of purchases )

Yard sailing, by the way, is why I missed most of the stuff that I am supposed to be nostalgic about from the '80s, and by that of course I mean Saturday morning cartoons. Because sure, we could have gotten up early on Saturday and parked in front of the TV, but instead we got up early, strapped on our roller skates and our $.25 allowance money, and went exploring all over the back roads of the county and buying cool stuff!

And that is a totally smooth segue into: I am still watching My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

Also: totally crossing it over with Dresden Files. Look, if you need any more evidence that Twilight Sparkle basically is Harry Dresden, just watch Feeling Pinkie Keen from about 15 minutes in: complete with laciviously wisecracking lab assistant, pyromanical anger management issues, complicated relationship with faith, heroism lemming-ness, and all. Although admittedly Twilight is the protege of the Summer Queen rather than the Winter Queen, but that's because Equestria's Winter Queen wasn't really in any position to mentor anybody until Twilight Sparkle brought Summer fire to Arctis Tor. (Rarity is obviously Thomas, Pinkie Pie must be Butters if only because they're the only two people in history to have saved an entire town with a one-man-polka-band, and Rainbow Dash is probably Murphy. I am not so sure about Apple Jack, though - one of the Carpenters? And I am stuck on Fluttershy.)

One of the things I like about Dresden Files - and one of the reasons why it's so much fun to cross it over with really girly things like My Little Pony and color-coded dragons - is that DF is a canon with a lot of powerful women in it. And I don't mean Strong Female Characters - I mean women with enough power to crush any given male character with just their pinky finger, who are not at all hesitant about using it and don't get punished just for having it, and male characters who are very, very well aware of what these women can do.

Even characters like Harry (the wizard) and Marcone (the mob boss) and Michael (the knight), who seem like they're full of traditional male power, aren't really. Harry gets a lot of his power through Lash (spiritual), and Luccio (temporal), and his power in a magical sense comes in large part through his mother and his fairy godmothers. Marcone's power in the magical world comes mostly through the favor of Gard, and she works for him very much on her own terms, and while Amanda and Helen are more or less his fridge motivation, yes, Helen at least is a powerful figure in her own right who acts in her own interest (and survives above all.) Even Michael the Knight of the Cross has Charity behind him like a sovereignty maiden in an Arthurian romance, making it possible for him to act at all. And then there's Maeve and Lily and Murphy and Ivy and Molly and Elaine and Susan and Lara and Mavra and ...

I mean, I guess it's kind of inevitable in a series that started as a mash-up of hardboiled fiction and fairy tales, because those are both genres that are obsessed with women's power, and women's power being dangerous. But it is so amazing to have all of these awesome - in the original sense of tremble-in-fear awe-inspiring - women to play with. It takes real effort to leave out the women in Dresden Files fandom.

Which isn't to claim that Dresden files is some kind of shining light of feminism, or even anything less than frequently deeply faily when it comes to gender and sex, but it makes it a heck of a lot easier to forgive the fail when I know that for every time Harry does something face-palmingly douchey involving women, Mab will do something even worse to him, or Lara will effortlessly manipulate him into being her catspaw, or Charity will narrow her eyebrows at him and turn his bones to jelly, or Murphy will give him a dose of sweet reason + aikido and he'll have to apologize and admit he's in the wrong, and Harry will just have to sit there and take it because he's utterly unable to do anything about it.

Hello. I have been having a very dragonish day today. And by "dragonish", of course, I mean hoard-gathering, and by hoard-gathering I mean GEEKY.

enemy_anime called to say that the comic shop had just acquired a bunch of XF stuff, and did I know if stellar_dust would be interested?
Three hours later, I brought home a longbox *entirely filled* with XF ... stuff.
Including:
A complete numbered run of the Topps comic, from #-2 to #42, including duplicate copies of -1 and -2, and copies of 1/2, and 0, and including all variant covers, or at least all variants known to me.
Also: Two copies of each of the annuals, three copies of the first digest, Special (omnibus) Editions #1-5 with several duplicates, two copies of the Special Ashcan Edition, the complete Ground Zero miniseries, the "Fight the Future" graphic novel/adaptation/illustrated storybook/whatever the heck it is, Season One adaptations of Pilot, Deep Throat (+Variant cover), Squeeze, Ice, Space, Fire, Beyond the Sea, and Shadows; also Special Numbered Edition copies of #2 and #3, and Special Numbered Editions of #1 to the order of: 069561, 069465-069469 consecutive, and 119478-119481 still in shrink-wrap packaging with what appears to be the same run of Special Numbered Editions of #2.
Also: two issues of "The X-Flies" from Twist and Shout Comics, and "The Axed Files" #1 from Parody Press! Comics (which actually has a fairly awesome cover - too bad the interior art kind of sucks); also 8 issues of the Official X-Files Magazine, 4 TV guides with XF covers, half-a-dozen or so more fannish magazines with XF covers and feature articles, a small amount of various trading-card related ephemera, and two sets of Official X-Files Fan Club membership premiums, still in their original mailing envelopes.

It's nice to be occasionally reassured that there are people out there geekier than you are. (IF this were stellar_dust's lj, that list would surely be accompanied by offers to send stuff to people; but I am completely incompetent at sending people stuff***, so just rest assured that she will get her sticky little hands on it all eventually, and I am sure she'll share the love then.)

...of course, that's just the stuff I acquired *after* 7 PM.

This morning, I bought 3 Star Wars books (unfortunately I guessed wrong and 2 were duplicates; I need to start carrying a list in my wallet) and 1984 Han and Leia action figures (unfortunately the Leia one seems to have escaped on the way home, but I'm pretty sure she was a duplicate anyway). And those were the *least* geeky things I bought.

I also got a copy of "Tales from Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean" (which predates the movie by a good 8 years); Pamela Dean's "The Secret Country" (it was on a table with a *bunch* of HP merchandise, and I did give in to the temptation to ask if there was a relationship between the two, but the people manning the table knew nothing about HP much less fandom; it was a daughter's stuff. Then Mom asked why *I'd* bought it, and I was .. at a loss to explain); the 300th Anniversary Colonial Williamsburg Comic Book (which quite unexpectedly turned out to be an anti-materialism screed); an anthropology monograph on potlatches, and an Infamous Women of History Paper Dolls book.

But wait! I also bought some LPs: the Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack, and a Smothers Brothers album that on reflection I think we may already have, and "Comic Strip Favorites" and also "Batman and other Super Men" by the Revengers, which with track names like "Meet Mr. Solo", "The Man From THRUSH", and "Robin 2" I had high hopes for, but turns out to be just kind of lounge-y sounding remixes of theme music. Plus, the sound quality was pretty bad, although that may be because our record player has finally reached the point where you have to give it a couple good whacks before it'll play.

"Comic Strip Favorites" was actually better, I think - it's also mostly theme tunes, but it has theme tunes like "Alley Oop", "Flash Gordon", "Richard Tracy, Esq.", "Popeye the Sailor Man" and a rather interesting "Superman". It's not good exactly, but it's definitely *weird*, and I actually liked it enough that I was going to try to rip it to share with ya'll, only some industrious person who is much groovier than I has already done so, and it's still available to download from his blog (Alongside a couple of ... interesting '60s Batman-themed albums, and Hogan's Heroes and Get Smart LPs, and many other tuneful things...)

I also bought the Complete Sports Night on DVD. I have no actual *desire* to watch this show - sports shows are pretty much my definition of heck, I can't abide commentators ruining a beautiful contest, and a show *about* sports commentators is *really* hard to sell me on - but it was hard to turn down the complete DVDs of one of the seminal slash fandoms when I could get it for well under $5, like-new condition. At the very least I can toss it on a swap table unless a better purpose for it comes up in the next fourteen months q:

Mom, on the other hand, bought stuffed animals of Sam I Am, Go Dog Go, a Sneetch, Woodstock, and a 4' tall Foghorn Leghorn.

***Yes, I know I still owe some of you guys maps! I'll get them sent out! Soon! I swear!

Mom took me yard-sailing this morning and we bought some junk. Yep. Some books - mostly really old hardcover novels, including a 1950s Tom & Huck with illustrations by Norman Rockwell. Also, for $.25, I got a set of Angelic Messenger Cards with book, which is *hilarious* - it averages 1/3 dippy new age buzzwords by *word count*, and is the most useless thing imaginable.

Also, I bought some little tiny miniature pressurized canisters of C0₂, which came with instructions for making any liquid into soda pop. Unfortunately, to do that, you needed the special mixing container. However, I believe (though Mom disagrees with me) that the mysterious Thing which was found in our basement and used in a prop in last fall's high school musical was the mixing nozzle. Which would be awesome. Even if not, though - I now have seven teeny-tiny metal canisters of pressurized CO₂! Imagine the possibilities! Also in the category of random junk, we got a coffee can full of really old buttons. Over three dozen of them were carved shell, probably (by feel, and also this being Maryland) oyster shell; a couple were darker iridescent - Abalone? Mussel? Dunno. Probably not valuable, but still neat.

In other news, it turns out that my new copy of Le Mort Darthur is *missing* some bits - ten scattered pages near the end of Book VIII were mistakenly left blank rather than printed. So I have trotted out my pens and inks and my crabbed hedge-uncial script, and I'm copying out the missing parts from the Project Gutenberg etext onto the blank pages. I'm actually managing a density that's about the same as the printed parts, too, so it may actually *fit*. But it's so *slow* and I have to take a break about every hour in order to prevent severe pain in the back and wrists. If I were a monk, I'd be so glad of having to go sing for one hour out of every three. My illuminated capitals are rather unsightly so far, too.

Yesterday morning I had a single twenty-dollar bill in my wallet. Tonoght, I have but a single penny. Alas. When I was living at school, $100 in pocket money would last me for a year. Now, it seems, I go through that much in less than two months.

Not that I regret spending it: that $20 got me: a giant illustrated encyclopedia of the mythology of the American Nations, an ice-cream cone, a dinner out, like-new copies of Tales From Earthsea and The Other Wind, Teaching Very Young Children About Nature (for my Sunday School class), a bit of Star Wars junk, a ticket to Firefly: Serenity, and two raffle tickets at the church spaghetti dinner. And a penny left over for savings! (I didn't win the raffle, but I did get a door prize out of it!)

Yeah, I've finally been to see Serenity. I very much liked it even though they *spoilered* my *spoiler* favorite *spoilers*. If anyone wants to link me to their old Serenity spoiler posts, I'll be digging around them over the next few days.

ETA: Oh yeah, Halloween pictures! I'm the one in blue and white. Halloween was awesome, and for the rest of my life? Those will be my mental version of Superman and Wonder Woman and Batman and Aquaman and Black Canary. I think enemy_anime not only did a great job at making costumes, he did a great job at matching people to characters, too.