I found myself.

Getting in late, must be up early tomorrow, so I must be brief:

Saw "Hot Fuzz" with violetbloom tonight. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. I nearly made myself choke.

Yarb. ;)

I think I've mentioned this before as part of a longer entry, but I'm going to pimp it again here:

tmg_icons is fabulous. Go check it out if you haven't already.

And here I was thinking I wouldn't find any way to use up the extra icon space I got for Christmas.

That is all.

I'm pretty sure most of the friends list knows about it, but as I've promised I'll send people the link to the full version, I'm doing it here:

College Saga

There really isn't a good way to describe this one. "The ultimate saga about friendship, heritage, sex and explosions" ...or just the result of lots of Final Fantasy and general college insanity.

And a lot of alcohol.

For those who don't want to wait for the whole 40 minute vid on YouTube, episode links:
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4

The first class of the spring semester starts in 20 minutes.

It has begun.

EDIT mid-class, staring at syllabus: OH MY GOD. I am going to have to save up so much leave for my impending nervous breakdown. Thank God I didn't take this class with a six-credit load!

Happy New Year, everyone. Tried to post on the 1st, but I lost the wireless signal I was picking up at Grandma's and got home pretty late.

So - hope everyone had a good holiday. Spent Christmas with my folks, and spent New Year's Eve at Grandma's so she wouldn't be stuck home alone sick that night.

Operation: Organize and Clean the Office has kicked off. So far, I've gotten through the window seat, the right half of the writing desk and the art shelf. (I say the right half of the desk because the cabinets are in the left half.) It's a start.

I only made it halfway through my Christmas cards by the time the semester ended, so - I'm going to finish them all anyway and then send them. So if you're getting a holiday card a month after the fact, you know why.

Anyway, I actually have some resolutions for this year already:

( The list )

Heh, I think this is going to grow as the month wears on... and I need to go keep one of those, get off the computer and wash the dishes now. :)

The semester is now officially over.

That is all. :)

So, here's what I've got to somehow get done:

By Dec. 1st: MOST of Exercise 4 for Health Informatics so I can host people for the Anime Society marathon. Wanted to get it all done earlier, but one-sixth of that assignment took several hours. I'm in trouble.
By Dec. 5th: The rest of Exercise 4.
By Dec. 12th: Grad Student Exercise, Comment on someone else's Exercise 4, complete code and presentation for database group project, don't have a nervous breakdown.
By Dec. 14th: Finish all my Christmas cards.
By Dec. 16th: Get 13 9 (excepting the four who have replied) people to reply and tell me if and when they're coming to a potluck, get a consensus on the time, clean the house, move furniture, put up decorations and make the food I'm signed up to make.
By Dec. 19th: Study for final exam in Database. (Okay, that at least I'm not too worried about.)
By Dec. 24th: Gifts for everybody.
By January 1st: FIND A NEW GENERAL PRACTITIONER. Preferably one who knows about asthma and ADD (and doesn't either believe that they're all in my head or throws pills at everything). The online provider directory isn't worth a damn since apparently they list physical therapists as "general practice." Spent an hour and a half making phone calls and have already eliminated a ton of possibilities and I can only search by a distance radius.

Oh, and in the meantime, my hopes that the interim between the maintenance release and the next big project will be quiet? Pretty much dashed to hell as we now need to do an emergency Dec. 16th release. The front-end team and build management team for that one? Me.

So if I'm leaving everyone hanging in terms of RP, real life, responses, what have you, I'm sorry. Things are coming to a head. I just need to make it through the next two weeks in one piece.

So, I'm not dead, and I will probably be spamming a bit to get caught up.

First off, I actually saw more than one movie in a six-month period, so here's my commentary.

( The Prestige - cut for spoilers )

And more recently, but with less spoilers because spoiling the ending would be cruel. And I don't want to spoil it because I really, really liked the film a lot more than I expected to:

( Stranger Than Fiction - moderate spoilers )

Anyway. Need to wake up.

So although I don't think anyone else on my friends list reads Spider-Girl, Cosmic Comix got the first issue of the gimmicky relaunch in today, and I wanted to air out my first-read thoughts. Cut for spoilers and for people who don't care. :)

( First off, what I didn't like. )

Having gotten that out of the way, the important part:

( Why I am definitely picking up Amazing Spider-Girl #2. )

Yeah, I'm going to pick up Amazing SG #2 when it comes out, because I am fairly intrigued. Hopefully, the explanation for Mona and the Glowing Green Bag of Doom will live up to the tease, May will put the webs back on (and I would not be surprised if she doesn't find it hard to get a costume given Peter's suspicions), Felicity will get a clue, Gene will either show his true colors or get written better, and May will get fed up eventually and get a haircut.

Hey, I'm allowed to have my pet peeves. Nyah. :)

So I happened to stumble across a fanfic on my lunch break - a fic that falls DEEP in the category of "Crossovers That Shouldn't Work But Do." The premise was so bizarre, the crossover was so weird and yet the story worked so WELL that I had to recommend it.

CSI: Death by Chocolate by Beth Einspanier
Crossover between CSI and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005 movie). Yes, you read that right.
Summary: "A young man is found in the desert, having been drowned in chocolate. Who would want him dead, and what does he have to do with a reclusive chocolatier from London?"
Rated: T
Warnings: Character death.

Yes, I would have run in the other direction if not for two things: 1) the person who recommended it has a good eye for these sort of crossovers, 2) there were a good deal of coherent positive reviews.

I was pleasantly surprised. Was it bizarre? Yes. Was everyone in character? Yes, even though I don't watch much CSI - Grissom and company had to play the "straight man" to all the Wonka weirdness, which just made certain scenes even more bizarrely funny. I mean, come on, the scene where Nick and Warrick discover the, uh, witnesses alone had me on the floor.

There's a line between genius and madness, and this story straddles it handily. All the little bits make it work, and the culprit - as in any good murder mystery - is not immediately obvious.

If you're easily prone to brain-breaking (and/or don't like weird crossovers even if they do work), don't read it. If you hated the movie with a fiery passion, don't read it, it's movie-based.

The rest of you... take a look. Seriously.

EDIT: Hey, this shouldn't have been friends-locked.