Monday, April 29, 2002

And now, for those of you who just don't have the time to search out and read new fanfic, I present ... Every Fanfic Ever Written! (With, possibly, a few exceptions.) Now you never need to read another fanfic as long as you live, including mine, because by the time you finish reading this blog you will have already read it!
So don't say I never did anything nice for you.
UPDATE/EDIT, TWELVE HOURS LATER: Wouldn't you know, I forgot a few, the AU, the AU, Part 2, the Fish Out Of Water, and the Crossover. Not any more!

THE EXPLANATORY FIC

(CHARACTERS do something interesting. CAMERA fades to black in the middle of it.)
CAMERA: Well, I'm done here.
AUTHOR: Like hell you are.

THE BACKSTORY FIC

CHARACTER: Alas, I do not have much of a backstory.
AUTHOR: Now you do!
CHARACTER: ... hooray?

THE BACKSTORY FIC, PART 2

EXTREMELY MINOR CHARACTER: I have no backstory, no personality, and perhaps three lines of dialogue.
AUTHOR: Well, we can't have that.

THE MARY SUE

CHARACTER: I'm OOC.
MARY SUE: I'm stereotypical.
(Awkward moment.)
CHARACTER: I love you.
MARY SUE: I love you too, snookie-ookie-wookums.

THE SELF-INSERT

CHARACTER: Something is wrong.
SELF-INSERT: I can fix it!
(She does.)
CHARACTER: You're very strong.
SELF-INSERT: I can beat you all up!
CHARACTER: You're fourteen.
SELF-INSERT: And I can solve all your problems!
CHARACTER: That's wonderful! We trust you utterly!

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT FIC

CHARACTER: We won! It's over!
AUTHOR: Like hell it is.
(New VILLAIN appears, looking startlingly like the AUTHOR.)
VILLAIN: ... rar?
CHARACTER: Well, shit. Gather everybody up again.
AUTHOR: Yay!

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT FIC, PART 2

CHARACTER: We won! It's over!
OTHER CHARACTER: Suddenly I feel so... evil.
CHARACTER: Shit. Everybody, get back here.
YET ANOTHER CHARACTER: I'll bring the angst!

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT FIC, PART 3

CHARACTER: So, here it is, five or twenty or a hundred years later.
OTHER CHARACTER: We're all old and we've gotten on with our lives.
(Something happens.)
CHARACTER: Well, shit. Everybody?
OTHER CHARACTER: I'll be right there! Where are my false teeth?

THE AU

AUTHOR: So if this never happened then this happened instead and this never happened and then this happened, and...
CHARACTER: ... who am I?
OTHER CHARACTER: I'm so lost. I don't think I used to be this nice.
READERS: Whoa. Cool.

THE AU, PART 2

CHARACTER: ... this isn't an AU, I'm just ridiculously OOC.
OTHER CHARACTER: I think that's thanks to the freakishly modern-day setting.
CHARACTER: ... someone, help, I'm having an identity crisis!
OTHER CHARACTER: Jeans! I'm wearing jeans!

THE FISH OUT OF WATER

CHARACTER: Help me! I've been yanked out of my world and dropped into the real world!
AUTHOR: Hi there!
CHARACTER: Help!
(See: MARY SUE.)

THE CROSSOVER

CHARACTER: Where am I?
CHARACTER FROM COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SERIES: What are you doing here?
CHARACTER: Who are you?
AUTHOR: Play nice!
(Wackiness ensues.)

THE PWP (HET)

CHARACTER: I'm straight!
CHARACTER OF OPPOSITE GENDER: What a coincidence! So am I!
(They have sex.)

THE PWP (HOMO)

CHARACTER: I'm straight!
CHARACTER OF SAME GENDER: Like hell you are.
(They have sex.)

THE CUTE ROMANCE

CHARACTER: I am flirting.
OTHER CHARACTER: I am flirting too.
CHARACTER: Aren't we cute?
OTHER CHARACTER: We are!
(They kiss, or hug, or just eye each other meaningfully.)

THE ANGSTY ROMANCE

CHARACTER: This is so wrong.
OTHER CHARACTER: Yet this is so right.
CHARACTER: I love you yet I hate you.
OTHER CHARACTER: Shut up, bitch, and kiss me.
CHARACTER: Fuck you!
OTHER CHARACTER: Hey, don't mind if I do.
CHARACTER: Noooo!
(Someone dies or kills self.)

THE CONFLICTED ROMANCE

CHARACTER: I love you!
OTHER CHARACTER: I love you!
YET ANOTHER CHARACTER: I love you too!
CHARACTER: ... shit.
OTHER CHARACTER: Angst.
YET ANOTHER CHARACTER: Woe.
CHARACTER: I just can't decide!
READERS: For god's sake! Flip a coin!

THE ANGSTFEST

CHARACTER: Woe.
(Bad shit happens.)
CHARACTER: Angst.
(More bad shit happens, sometimes in flashback.)
CHARACTER: Alas.
(CHARACTER dies or kills self.)

THE ANGSTFEST, PART 2

CHARACTER: Woe.
OTHER CHARACTER: I'm sorry.
CHARACTER: Angst.
OTHER CHARACTER: I wish I could help.
CHARACTER: Alas.
OTHER CHARACTER: Please, let me heal your soul.
CHARACTER: Okay.
(Everything becomes fine.)

THE PARODY

CHARACTER: Something OOC and highly ironic.
OTHER CHARACTER: Equally OOC and ironic response.
(OOC stuff happens.)
YET ANOTHER CHARACTER: Highly OOC ironic commentary.
(Hopefully, the READERS laugh.)

THE INCOMPETANT PARODY

CHARACTER: OOC and scatological!
OTHER CHARACTER: OCC and mispeled j0!
(Nothing happens.)
YET ANOTHER CHARACTER: OOC response!
CHARACTER: Dorky laughter!

THE POST-GAME FIC

CHARACTER: Hey, are those the credits?
OTHER CHARACTER: Well, I guess we can go on with our lives now.
CHARACTER: Okay! So, where do you want to go?
OTHER CHARACTER: ... I dunno.
AUTHOR: That's okay! I know!

THE POST-GAME FIC, PART 2

CHARACTER: Well, we've had a very sweet innocent loving relationship for a while now.
OTHER CHARACTER: Are those the credits?
AUTHOR: You bet they are!
CHARACTER: Wanna live happily ever after, or failing that, have filthy sex?
OTHER CHARACTER: Sure!

THE SONGFIC

CHARACTER: I quote lyrics to a popular song in a meaningful way.
AUTHOR: I am saved from having to be original.
CHARACTER: More lyrics are quoted as I perform appropriate actions to them.
AUTHOR: I hurt people with my perceived depth.
READERS: AUGH get this BSB song out of my skull AUGH.

THE POEM

CHARACTER: Angst. Woe. Oh dear. Oh no.
AUTHOR: Hey! Not like that, that rhymes.
CHARACTER: Oh. Sorry. Um. Angst. Woe. Depression. Sentence fragments. Oddly indented phrasing.
AUTHOR: That's better.

THE HOLIDAY FIC

CHARACTER: ... but why would we celebrate Christmas? We're so obviously not Christian.
OTHER CHARACTER: And I've not really the type to be this happy.
YET ANOTHER CHARACTER: It doesn't snow in this town!
AUTHOR: Shut up and string tinsel. My fic.

THE MOOD PIECE

CHARACTER: Nothing is happening.
AUTHOR: Mood.
OTHER CHARACTER: Nothing is still happening.
AUTHOR: Mood.
CHARACTER: But it's not happening in a very pretty and adjectival way.
OTHER CHARACTER: So it is.
AUTHOR: Mood.
(READERS snore.)

THE CONFUSING FIC

CHARACTER: What happened?
OTHER CHARACTER: Fuck if I know.
AUTHOR: It's symbolic!
CHARACTER: ... fuck.

THE CONFUSING FIC, PART 2

CHARACTER: What happened?
OTHER CHARACTER: Fuck if I know.
AUTHOR: hur hur hur th1s suxx0rz j00 r so GAY!!! R&R pl33z!!!!!!!
CHARACTER: ... fuck.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 01:46 AM EST
[link this entry and its comments]

Saturday, April 27, 2002

Okay, before I go any further, I'd like to make the following very clear: I am currently high on powerful cold medications. Very high. Very powerful. Very cold. Very medicated. Uh. Where was I?

Oh, right. Now then.

Using the phrase 'pit of voles' to refer to fanfiction.net seems to have caught on in a minor way in this corner of blogland. I'm so pleased. I'd always dreamed of the day I'd start a blogmeme. So I was poking around other people's blogs the other day, and I had this thought.
You know those little blogcliques that people run? Where you look on their blog and there's a little cryptic statement or five in the sidebar to the effect of: Ç ? I blog # È and it turns out to be a webring? I want to start one. Well, more to the point, I want to start two.

Blogclique No. 1: Death to the Pit of Voles: Ç ? Death To Voles! # È
Self-explanatory. To join, you must display occasional fits of contempt for the voles and their pit on your blog.

Blogclique No. 2: Proud to Be a Vole: Ç ? Vole Pride! # È
Also self-explanatory. To join, you must have a reasonably active account on the Pit of Voles. And a blog.

You would, of course, be allowed -- nay, encouraged -- to join both blogcliques. And have the little text strings right next to each other on your blog. Everyone's weblog needs a little more irony, right?

So, tell me, all you ficcers and bloggers, all you zombies in the streets. If I were to spend a couple of days putting these cliques together, would any of you out there be interested in joining one or the other or both? Or is this blog entry the last gasp of the blogmeme in question, leaving me no choice but to get on with my life?
Anyway, either leave a comment or email me or something if you think the idea sounds like your kind of thing. If there seems to be a reasonable amount of interest, heck, I'll do it.

Because it is, you know. It is a Pit of Voles.
And, hey, if I put the cliques together, maybe I'll explain just where that phrase originated.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 03:34 AM EST
[link this entry and its comments]

Wednesday, April 24, 2002

And now, I blog about smut. Actually, I recycle a long-winded email to a friend, editing it to be a blog entry and not just a ramble. Recycling is good for the Earth and for content, remember. Warnings for smut-talk, rambling, and overuse of the term 'phantom woody'.

First, let me make this distinction: the smut that I choose to read has less to do with the smut I choose to write than you'd think. First, a few words about the smut I choose to read.

I am perfectly capable of appreciating well-written smut no matter whether it's euphemistic or explicit in nature. Note that I said 'well-written'. The purpose of smut is, at base, to arouse. No matter how explicit or fine-tuned your smut is, if I don't get a phantom woody, your smut has missed the point.
Right here, I could waffle, and say that everyone has a different standard of arousal and therefore what doesn't work for me might work for someone else; but after thinking about this for a while, I've come to the conclusion that that's largely not true. If the author writes well and with conviction -- if the author absolutely believes that her smut is a turn-on and is turned on by it -- then I cannot help but respond, at least a little. No matter how far away from my usual tastes it is. The phantom woody twitches even if I feel guilty or disgusted for it, and that's that.

I, personally, think that it's harder to succeed with euphemistic smut, because the flowery euphemisms add another layer of obscurity to the real nitty-gritty of the smut in question. The more layers I have to peer through in order to see the sex, the more likely I am to miss the action that makes my stomach flutter. And, on a more prosaic level, if I'm giggling over someone's 'pink pearl of pleasure', that's kind of distracting for the phantom woody. I promise I'll get over that phrase eventually.

Now, then, about the smut that I choose to write.

Largely, almost entirely, I choose to write masculinized smut, cocks and ass and balls, oh my. It seems clearer, more to the point, more directly effective. You know, in the same way that hitting someone with a baseball bat is more effective than hitting someone with a baseball bat swathed in cotton batting.

Euphemism makes me feel ridiculous. I am twenty-nine years old and not a virgin; I am comfortable with the concept of the penis and what it can and cannot do. And since I tend to write stuff that turns me on, well.

And, as I said above, euphemism is harder, not easier, to write well. And not just in the prosaic 'thinking of a phrase' manner, but thinking of an appropriate euphemism that won't make your reader burst into disbelieving giggles. If you can pull off euphemistic porn that's still a turn-on, I salute you.

If you'll indulge me in a pointless metaphor (and we all know how I like my pointless metaphors), it's like this: your libido has a little tiny spear with a length of red cord tied to it. Your objective is to throw that spear into someone else's libido and pierce through into their sex drive, linking their libido to yours for the minutes or hours it takes to read your smut.
Euphemistic fic adds a layer of fog between your libido and theirs. How thick the fog is depends on how euphemistic you get; but any amount of fog is going to somehow impair your ability to throw straight and true.

But, then, almost all porn is euphemistic at some level. 'Cock' is, no matter how 'crude', a euphemism for 'penis'. And man, if you can write effective twitch-the-phantom-woody smut using nothing but medical/technical terms, man, you are the best writer ever. Medical terms are just as distracting as cutesy euphemisms, to me. Even more so; medical terms are just vaguely nauseous in my mind, because usually when I hear a medical term it's because said part is malfunctioning and needs something disgusting and expensive done to it by a doctor. 'Vagina' makes me think of pap smears, okay?

Euphemism isn't a light switch; you don't just turn it on or off. Euphemism in smut is a literary rheostat, with a thousand phases of 'turn on', if you'll forgive me the smirky phrasing. There is, indeed, a degree of difference between 'erectile tissue' and 'penis' and 'cock' and 'manhood' and 'erect reddened fruit of his loins' and where you set that rheostat in your own writing is up to you.

Me, I set my rheostat to a comfortable 'cock and balls' and relax in the relatively bright light. Quote that one out of context, baby.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 12:16 AM EST
[link this entry and its comments]

Friday, April 19, 2002

More fun from the home front:
Today, Boyfriend and I went outside to discover that a wasp was building its nest on the underhang of our porch. This, we decided, was undesirable, and since it had fallen to me to rid us of the gigantic spider that had set up housekeeping in our front hall, it therefore fell to Boyfriend to rid us of the wasp's nest.

Now, how do you think he got rid of the nest? Bear in mind that we are a Geek household, founded by a Geek-Geek marriage, and as such are unlikely to own cans of Raid.

That's right. Boyfriend simply went over to the Corner o' Melee Weaponry and selected a properly sharp katana, then went outside and used the katana to cut the nest down from a reasonably safe distance.
Now, take a moment to imagine this picture: you're in an attractive, quiet, moderately upscale apartment complex somewhere in central Ohio. The door of the nearest townhouse opens, and a tall friendly-looking ordinary white guy in a polo shirt and jeans comes out onto the front porch... then draws an ornate katana from its lacquered scabbard and starts calmly hacking at one of the porch supports, in full view of the rental office.

One supposes it's a good thing for calm quiet central Ohio that he wasn't moved to kiai. Or, you know, announce the name of his attack out loud, a la certain styles of anime. "Pretty Deadly Wasp-Slaying Slash! Kiaiiiiii~!"

For the record, the Corner o' Melee Weaponry includes three staves of varying degrees of ornamentation, the Big-Ass Two-Handed Axe, the ornate katana, and a smallish scimitar. The assorted daggers, the wooden mace, and the squishy cloth flail are all upstairs. The tonfa are downstairs, as are my beloved red and black leather bracers. The ornate katana in question, hereinafter dubbed Waspslayer, was a wedding present from a most clueful relative.
We really need a crossbow. You know, just to complete the set.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 10:25 PM EST
[link this entry and its comments]

Wednesday, April 17, 2002

This just in: Me First And The Gimme Gimmes is the best damn cover band in the world. (Warning: site is Flash-dependent.)

And now, having spread the Gospel, I go back to banging my head to 'Over The Rainbow'.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 01:27 AM EST
[link this entry and its comments]

Monday, April 15, 2002

SIX SEMI-REBELLIOUS THINGS I THOUGHT ABOUT DOING TODAY:
1). Balling up the candy wrapper in my pocket and beaning the slowpoke customer in front of me with it. Damn you, woman, I want my coffee now. Ignore my biological imperative at your own risk!
2). Trying to work the phrase 'multiple lecherous bishounen' into my order at the Chinese restaurant. Decided that the waiter would probably misunderstand and bring me beef with broccoli. A good thing, but not quite the rampant orgy I had in mind.
3). Shoving a rude teenaged girl into a shelf full of SF books as she sniffed and flounced by. She was skinny. I bet I could have gotten her airborne without too much trouble. All I really would have needed to do was get my shoulder up under her ribcage.
4). Purchasing a dirt-cheap gas-guzzling beater of a car, solely for the pleasure of ramming it into my neighbor's brand-new gigantic red pickup over and over again until both cars were completely dead. God damn you, neighbor, if you must buy a cherry-red penile extension, at least learn to park it decently. Penile extensions do no one any good unless you can insert them between the clearly marked lines, so to speak.
5). Walking up to a random stranger who seemed to be emanating lecherous brainwaves in my large-breasted direction, thrusting my chest out, and screaming "THESE ARE MY TITS!... AND THEY HATE YOU!"
6). Going through Boyfriend's Vagrant Story savegame and renaming all of Ashley's weapons to appropriately suggestive things. Like, say, 'Penile Extension', or 'Compensating For Something'. Or 'Ball of Steel'. Or 'Big Prick'. The crossbow would have to be 'Premature Ejaculation', I think.

ONE SEMI-REBELLIOUS THING I ACTUALLY DID DO TODAY:
1). Changed my bio on the pit of voles to something egotistical. That happens to rhyme.

All in all, I think my fantasy life is more fun. But my real life involves fewer nights spent in jail.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 03:45 AM EST
[link this entry and its comments]

Saturday, April 13, 2002

WARNING: This entry is without a doubt the most sickeningly disgusting thing I have ever written. If you have a weak stomach or are currently eating something, I recommend you skip this entry, which deals with bodily malfunction. Unfortunately for everyone, it's something I feel like I have to rant about. All right, now that you're warned, on to the gross.

In the past, I've mentioned how I dislike underwire bras. And now, I'll tell you why.

When I was in college, it was a bit harder to find bras in my size than it is now. Every bra that I owned was worn long past its 'retire by' date. At one point, due to a combination of factors, I had exactly two bras, both underwire. And both of those bras had experienced Underwire Eruption: the underwire had exploded out of its fabric casing on one end or the other.
On one bra, it had exploded out of the middle; every time I wore that bra, there would soon be a proud 'underwire erection' growing out of my cleavage, until I noticed and shoved the underwire back into its little nest. But soon enough, there would be a pointy little tent in my shirt again.
On the other bra, it had exploded out of the armpit side under my right boob. And once an underwire scents freedom, it will slide for it with every move you make.

We are now approaching the gross.

One morning, I went to put on the armpit-eruption bra. In order to stave off the inevitable, I put a Band-Aid over the end of the casing, to help hold the wire in place. Which did help, for about an hour, before the underwire ripped through the Band-Aid, as well. In the process, it lost the little plastic cap that was designed to keep the underwire from lacerating my skin.
It hurt like blazes, but I didn't have time to go back to my room, so I'd just keep shoving the underwire down every five minutes and bitching. When I got back to my room that evening, before dinner, I discovered that it was a very good thing that I'd been wearing a black t-shirt, because there was a deep laceration in my armpit that had been merrily bleeding down my side all day.
I cleaned myself up the best I could, put on the other bra, and went to dinner with a washcloth folded up in my armpit.

Gross incoming.

Unfortunately, since the human armpit is a dark, dank and sweaty place, more often than not coated in chemicals meant to deodorize, the laceration got infected. And the laceration was deep enough that the infection got into the lymphatic nodes, there in the armpit.
And there that infection stays, to this day.
Every three or four months, the infection recurs. The lymph node in my right armpit swells up and becomes incredibly painful to the touch. I can't lie on that side at all, and moving my right arm creates constant twinges of pain. So does not moving my right arm. So does having a right arm, really.
After about a week of this...

(Last warning!)

... the swollen lymph node, having nowhere else to go, explodes out through the skin of my armpit.
Buckets of half-rotten lymph, pus, and blood come pouring out of the deep dark bloody pit that was carved by the underwire ten years ago and go running down my side, and I have to spend the next couple of hours in the bathroom mopping the foul-smelling yellowish guck up with tissues. Hopefully I managed to get my clothes off before they got soaked.
Eventually it tapers off and I wash up (this hurts, let me tell you) and disinfect as best I can (oh boy does this hurt) and walk around with a washcloth in my armpit for the next few hours. At least now the swelling is over, and so the pain has receded.
And eventually the disturbingly deep pit sort of heals over (pink and shiny skin, like a burn), and the cycle is over for a few more months.

Gross, and pointless, and I apologize.
I hereby submit to you that the human body is not really meant to be rubbed with metal, and if you have an underwire bra that's exploded? Get rid of it.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 12:43 AM EST
[link this entry and its comments]

Thursday, April 11, 2002

Reason no. 69,312 why I love Boyfriend:

So, I'm currently replaying Star Ocean: The Second Story. And Boyfriend, as is his habit, is sitting on the couch watching. I keep randomly pointing out completely specious things that I claim as proof that Ashton is Gay. I mean, not just Gay, but Flaming Queen Gay Gay Homosexual Gay Ashton. Boyfriend thinks this is funny. So do I.

About twenty minutes after I made my last 'point', I am sitting in Linga assigning skill points to the various skills. Boyfriend silently watches me do this, watching me scroll up and down through the long list of skills.

Then he says, "... you should teach Ashton Fairyology. ...Fairyology and Below The Belt."

I laugh myself purple and breathless. Then I throw the controller at him.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 12:56 AM EST
[link this entry and its comments]

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

Very very briefly, to the Pit of Voles:

Fanfiction.net! Fanfiction.net! As in, a website for fan fiction!

Not Teenage-Wanker-Original-Poetry.net!

Thank you!

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 01:41 AM EST
[link this entry and its comments]

Monday, April 8, 2002

I get a small but steady trickle of hits on my blog from people looking for various 'how to draw anime-style' tutorials. How to draw hands, girls, clothes, shoes, hair, stuff like that. No big deal; I definitely prefer hits from aspiring artists to hits from aspiring pedophiles. Anyway.

That being said, you'll notice that I don't have any tutorials on my site. That's because, you know, I'm a really incredibly mediocre artist and no one in their right mind would want to learn anything from me. Well, okay, it's also because I find art tutorials to be generally either useless or extraneous.

Don't hit me. You see, it's like this. When I was first starting out as a fanartist, I did indeed go out and track down tutorials and devour them like so much candy. And just like candy, they felt like empty calories; I came out the other side of these tutorials not really that much wiser than when I started. I've also flipped through those 'How To Draw Manga' books in the comic store. Again, empty calories, at least as far as I'm concerned. (I'm sure that a lot of other people have benefitted amazingly from online tutorials and artbooks, but not me. Personal bias, of course, not general Rule For Living. I'm Tactile-Kinesthetic, can you tell?)
But I did, somehow, learn and start to get better, even though I have miles and miles to go before I sleep, so to speak. And therefore, this is my tutorial for you:

Every piece of art is a tutorial, just by the fact of its existence. If you cannot look at a finished artwork that appeals to you -- just the artwork, without commentary or tutorial attached -- and learn something from it, you have not yet developed the artistic eye that you need, and no tutorial can take you very far at all.

Learn to see. Break that picture down into its components, stare at it until it loses all meaning except shape and color. Analyze the placement of shadows and the flex of the muscles, note the actual colors used, study the placement of wrinkles, understand the shape of fingers and eyes, learn the ebb and flow of hair. And then see if you can't replicate that effect.
I'm not just talking about tracing or copying the artwork, here. While copy/trace is definitely one way to learn, and a good way at that, it's also largely beside the point. (Tangent: and never ever copy or trace an existing artwork and then claim it as your own work, you little bastards. Okay. Tangent over.) Copy/trace will teach you to look without teaching you to see.
Which is, after all, still important. Just don't depend entirely on copy/trace to teach yourself. It's a dead end.
Can you tell I majored in art history? No, didn't think you could.

The exception to this rule is the odd tutorial meant to teach you something technical about computer programs. Technical stuff is a completely different ballgame, and tutorials for that are worth their weight in silicon. I'm talking largely about learning to be artistic. In the grand scheme of things, this is something no one and no tutorial can teach you; it's something you must find within yourself and within the artworks that somehow speak to you.
Grasshopper.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 07:21 PM EST
[link this entry and its comments]

Friday, April 5, 2002

Yet another reason to love CD 101: right now, as I type this, they're doing something called an 'Undercover Weekend'. The craziest cover versions of old songs that they can find, all weekend long.

Willie Nelson's cover of Paul Simon's 'Graceland'.
Some insane speed-funk cover of 'Pass The Dutchie', of all things.
Information Society's cover of Madonna's 'Express Yourself'.
A cover of Bryan Adams' 'Summer of '69' by some group called Bowling For Soup. (Bowling For Soup sounds a little like Blink 182, which means that in 1969 proper they were all probably about negative ten years old. I wonder: in referring to 69, do they then instead mean the act?)
Speaking of insane, a thumpy-rock cover of 'Happy Happy Joy Joy'.
A cover of the Men Without Hats song 'The Safety Dance' by a group called, I am not making this up, 'Twenty Dead Flower Children'.

I am going to be glued to my radio all weekend, man. If I'm really lucky I'll get to hear Powerman 5000's version of 'Relax', which I love. Mmm, gay.

Also, in the GenX Nostalgia Corner for the day, today I found, squealed over, and purchased... a Thundercats hoodie.
You heard me. A big ol' black hoodie with the Thundercats logo in red on the chest, and a matching red lining in the hood.
... does that make me the Thundercats ho?

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 07:21 PM EST
[link this entry and its comments]

Thursday, April 4, 2002

All rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, I am in fact still alive.

Cold, tired, sick, and breaking my new computer at least twice a day, but alive. Bear with me, I'm having one of those dry spells in which all I really want to do is hide under the comforter and doze, and occasionally overdose on painkillers and OTC cold medications.

Well, that, and stare at the magnificence that is my eighteen-inch TFT flatpanel monitor eee. It's so big! I don't think I can take it!

Whoa. I'm channeling bad porno again. Time to up my dosage.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 07:06 PM EST
[link this entry and its comments]