parasols

unknown

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:25:24 -0700

97.126.217— whoa there. Take it easy, turbo.

Yfrog - qan - Uploaded by NathanFillion And the squeaks of a...

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:26:21 -0700

Yfrog - qan - Uploaded by NathanFillion

And the squeaks of a thousand fangirls made bats everywhere lose sonar capabilities and grow confused.

Eh, why not.

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:37:30 -0700

Eh, why not.: sarahb: Pierce did it first. Well hell, if you guys are doing it, I may as well...

Photographic evidence of Christmas card fail. (I was playing...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:21:00 -0700

Photographic evidence of Christmas card fail.

(I was playing with textures, handmade cotton paper with brown corrugated paper beneath— I was aiming for rugged and outdoorsy!— and it ended up looking like a Christmas card from the town of Bedrock. It was then determined that it should be transformed into the most epic fail of a Christmas card ever. Results: holiday wishes from Moulin Rouge by way of the X-Files office, situated in the basement of the Flintstone house, located in the North Pole. My mother will not allow it to reside on the kitchen table with the candy; my father keeps replacing it in the candy bowl when she moves it. I may have to take it to my office for the season.)

I spent a large portion of the other night wrapping gifts and...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:11:26 -0700

I spent a large portion of the other night wrapping gifts and making Christmas cards. I am feeling very quiet of late, spending perhaps a little too much time alone, wanting nothing but to write and to have a warm bed and solitude. In the beginning I was convinced it was unhealthy; lately it seems that it is only the right thing to do, smoothing out the unnecessary creases and pressing lavender between the folds, keeping things in order. Simplifying.

It has done wonders for my Christmas spirit. Things seem remarkably fresh after a period of quiet.

chels: gregbrown: Awesome actor Brian Cox (Marvin Belli in...

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:33:11 -0700

chels:

gregbrown:

Awesome actor Brian Cox (Marvin Belli in Zodiac, bad guy in the first two Bourne movies and Xmen 2) teaching a child the famous Hamlet soliloquy. As adorable as you’d imagine. (via Roger Ebert)

Hydrocephalus (via jack_mord) I don’t think anyone has...

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 04:34:40 -0700

Hydrocephalus (via jack_mord)

I don’t think anyone has been this excited to be photographed since.

"She looks like Neil Gaiman made her up."

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:43:24 -0700

“She looks like Neil Gaiman made her up.” - Alex, re Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent)

(via viereckige-augen) Instant Cthulhu associations, dead but...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:54:00 -0700

(via viereckige-augen)

Instant Cthulhu associations, dead but dreaming, etc. All things H.P. Lovecraft are starting to feel very festive and seasonal to me as they pile up this December. We are board game fanatics, and Rafferty recently bought a game called Arkham Horror which we are learning how to play. It is alarmingly similar to the intricate and fussy rules of tabletop roleplaying games— we have learned not to kid ourselves that we are not actually playing a tabletop roleplaying game because, well, we are. None of us are certain how we feel about that.

I am always Kate Winthrop, clever scientist, inventor of flux stabilizer, very sane, begins the game with seven dollars (two dollars gets you excellent medical care!) and somehow always a gun. Cemented myself as the nonpareil of geekery when I squealed upon discovering the Hounds of Tindalos and ghouls in the bag of monsters. Rafferty, Cole, and Trent all gave me blank stares, so I let the Byakhee whip Trent’s ass and didn’t close any more portals for them.

One time, my life was sucked into a portal where all I did was play board games. Yeah. That.

a particularly gloomy day; or, run-on sentences

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:52:13 -0700

Today is the first heavy snow we have had this year and I have discovered that my coat that once...

Alex cheers me up, part 2431239

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:00:00 -0700

Chels: see now I am rereading my stuff and going "I AM JUST AS BAD AS SHE IS, I AM A SOULLESS...

These little trinkets are packed inside the wee wooden trunk to...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:48:00 -0700

These little trinkets are packed inside the wee wooden trunk to the right, which was painted black and treated with a crackle so the white paint would look aged. Inside: Serenity tag (am gigantic Whedon fan, and even bigger Firefly fan). Trinkets: an Estimated Time of Death post-it note, a la Dead Like Me (Bryan Fuller is another favorite); the cap from an Izze soda, as that tends to be the lifeblood of nights with Milla and Erin; a small white seashell from my grandfather’s collection (he used to make jewelry pieces out of seashells and rough gemstones until his eyesight failed him); a pressed penny from Bridal Veil Falls (which must date back to at least my seventh birthday); a tiny pewter globe and heart from a former roommate; a brooch (broken) that belonged to my great-grandmother.

The bottom of the box is cut from a black sweater I wore on a personally significant night. It’s a false bottom, and there are trinkets super-glued to the actual bottom that represent things I would like to forget, keep under wraps, or that I am not ready to confront. The outside of the box (not pictured well because I am embarrassed to picspam) is oblong, ornate with vines and flowers, and has an oval painting of two resting hunting dogs on the top. Fin!

Sarah asked to see inside the cavity of the juju box, so here...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:32:00 -0700

Sarah asked to see inside the cavity of the juju box, so here are a couple more photographs. The lid is my favorite part, but the rest is all right. The box is relatively small, so I had to find things that were meaningful to me that fit in it and jump-started memories. Pictured here: my copy of Jane Eyre, which belonged to my mother (I did most of the loving to it over the years) and a copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (which belonged to my uncle, now deceased, and which ended up the most personally meaningful show I ever did).

Pictured at the top is a piece of canvas from an old apron, tea-dyed. It is meant to roll up to fit in the box, and it fastens with a small soft leather belt and brass buckle (unfortunately not pictured much). I also tend to collect ribbons, another odd habit. The black ribbon is from a significant and absurd secret, stapled to the canvas; the swatch of pink ribbon is from a night with Erin and Milla, where Milla and I nicked ribbons from a wedding reception as it was being dismantled. The safety-pins look crude (I wish I had a whole jar full of the ones like the pink-ribbon one), but I didn’t want to sew down the jewelry in case I wanted it quickly. Pictured: a “shield of St Brigid” (I have long suspected this is not a real thing, and I discovered that apparently it is one, but there is no design specific to it, like the necklace implies; I think it’s lovely anyway). The locket without a chain belonged to my grandmother and also satisfies a representation for my Victorian love-lust; the tiny gold cross was a gift years ago from a friend who knew that Dana Scully remains a very-favorite-heroine of mine. The pink gingham bag is from Anthropologie, where I have spent many a happy hour, and inside it is a bit of marble from Connemara. (Ireland does double-duty as ancestry and also the place I would like to visit most in the world.)

dear raynor

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 04:43:35 -0700

I have not forgot, you see, but we as a collective have missed Annual Dirty Literature Day. Since I...

I’ve meant to take pictures of this for quite some time...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 04:06:00 -0700

I’ve meant to take pictures of this for quite some time and I was reminded tonight. Early in the semester, you may remember, my creative writing teacher asked us to make a “juju box”, a box filled with things that were precious to us or could jumpstart writing (or… something). I took it more seriously than I think she meant us to, which probably says more about me than the box does.

I used a small cedar chest that had belonged to my great-grandfather (it is not as pompous as it sounds). This is the inside of the lid. It has this Anaïs Nin quotation half-hidden under the paper. The little phials are emptied BPAL imps, but they are filled with water and labeled. I have a strange habit of collecting water or assigning it significance: the water left in the Dasani bottle from that night we went to the fireworks, the rainwater from the first storm of the summer, a tiny bit of river-water gathered by an off chance as I was distracted by the way it filled the jar. It was pure accident and now that I’ve noticed, I feel like I can’t continue it, genuine fluke turned into an affectation.

(ETA: the river water was not actually that murky. I doctored the phials a bit so they would look different. River has a tiny bit of tea in it, while rain has translucent glitter— didn’t work out at all— and moon has tiny shards of broken glass.)

inconsistent angel things

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:28:00 -0700

Dreams are often vaunted as romantic, ideal; lacy constructs in the mist, cherished because they are...

New Moon in 15 Minutes

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:29:00 -0700

New Moon in 15 Minutes: Everyone has probably read this already, but here it is anyhow. I was almost...

new moon

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:59:00 -0700

The Short List: 1. First twenty minutes: oh god what have I done my mother wanted us to have a nice...

"Inglourious Basterds is stupid"

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:10:54 -0700

“Inglourious Basterds is stupid” - (via blaaargh) Oh my god, where’s MY lighter?!...

THANKSGIVING (Fake trailer for a fake horror movie of the same...

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:58:00 -0700

THANKSGIVING

(Fake trailer for a fake horror movie of the same name, advertised between Tarantino’s Grindhouse double feature. Happy Thanksgiving!)