I got this from kimmparker and others. I filled it out at work this morning while I was waiting for queries to run etc., but then things got busy and I didn't get around to actually posting it. So I will now.

If anyone actually reads it all, well... good for you.

( Mem-age )

The answers to the Movie Quotes game - thanks everyone for playing!

I left the answers "hidden", so any of you late-comers can still play along if you like.

( Quotes ahead! )

Saw this meme thing on T's LJ and others.

1. Pick 10-20 your favorite movies. (Does anyone expect me to do less than 20?)
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Fill in the film title once it's guessed.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.

[UPDATE: Please let me know if you're not able to see the answers. And don't mock my code, it was just a quick hack.]

[UPDATE 2: They're going fast! Some of the rest might be a bit harder. The hint from my icon wasn't necessary (go mlwl!) but if you look at my tags, one of them could be a clue to three of the yet-to-be-guessed movies here... (and no, it's not the Spider-Man tag!)]

( Quotes ahead! )

I think for the next month and a half, all of my posts will just be links to the wedding LJ.

So, click click (for those who didn't already see Tuuli linking this same entry).

Thanks for indulging me... feel free to ignore it.

Don't have much time to write an entry, but wanted to point out this new community: Tuuli and Jason are Getting Married. Tuuli got it up and running, and hopefully in the coming days we'll both have time to add to it to the point that it can become a useful place for people interested in our wedding to check in from time to time. We hope you find it worthwhile - please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions or what-not!

This is a bit random...

Two of my friends and former roommates at Rice University are out there making their way in the entertainment industry, and I just want to do my little part in getting their names out there. I can't remember if I've done this before, and I'm too lazy to check through all of my old posts. Anyway, I have new things to link to, so who cares if I did it before. Besides, it's easier than talking about myself...

The first is my man Mike Macrae. Now, if you're like me, you love a good standup comedy act. And that's exactly what Mike Macrae will give you. He has his own website, but it seems like he hangs out more on his myspace page. And what did I just discover today when I randomly surfed over there? He was on Letterman, and has a clip of the video there! It's really good stuff, you should check it out. I haven't spoken to him in years, but I know he's a good dude, and a truly gifted comedian. His impressions in particular, as you'll see, are awesome. Check out his tour dates on his myspace page and see if he'll be performing near you in the future!

I'm going to try to embed the video:



Then there's Elbert Traister. One of the greatest guys I know, and an aspiring actor in out in Hollyweird... he's got a myspace page, too, which I just discovered, and it's got links to several trailers of upcoming independent movies that he's in, and some of them appear to be pretty big roles. The two trailers I saw, Vengeance and Fists of Righteous Harmony, both seem to be action flicks; the trailers contain some violence/gore and maybe a curse word here or there, so be warned, if you don't want to see that. However, that being said, give 'em a look! I have no idea what these movies will be like, but I can honestly say that my interest is definitely piqued. Put that together with the fact that Elbert's in them, and I definitely want to watch!

I know the acting business is a tough business, and it's hard to get anywhere in it... but if anyone can do it, it's Elbert. So just keep your eye out for him in the future, is all I'm saying. And if you have the opportunity, throw him your support - he's definitely a guy who deserves it.

So yeah, I'm totally feeling semi-important because I know these guys. I know it's dumb, but I can't help it. But I'm also just really proud of them, that they're out there chasing these dreams. And that's not to say I'm not proud of all of the awesome people I know who are doing all kinds of amazing things with their lives - and believe me, there are many of them. I've had the good fortune to meet a lot of amazing folks through the years... but I guess there's something unique about being able to say, "that guy who was on TV - I knew him before all of that!"

In other news. My fiancée recently got me onto Facebook, since many of her school friends were on it and convinced her to join. And of course she needed me on there, so she could list that she was engaged to me... So anyway, in spite of myself, I'm finding that I'm really liking the site so far! And I actually found a few of my friends on it already, imagine that! It seems like a decent way to keep in touch with people who you don't talk to often - and there's ways to play around with those friends you do keep up with, too. SO, if you're someone I know, and you're on Facebook, find me and friend me! And if you're not on it - go sign up so I can increase my network. I'm only half kidding... (Do it!)

The fact that both Elbert and Mike (yeah, I'm back to those guys) have myspace pages is actually making me consider whether I should sign up for that thing too; but myspace just seems too chaotic. I guess I'll think about it, but I don't think I'll go jumping right away into signing up for yet another site. There's only so much I can keep up with, and I do a pretty lousy job already with what I have, most of the time. Still, there's something enticing about being on one of those sites and saying "yes, I'm this person's friend". I dunno. Maybe I'm just weird...

Oh, and I finally reserved Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the nearby Barnes and Noble. They'll be open at midnight; I wonder if I'll go then or if I'll just go in the morning? I have no idea what to expect, I've never waited for a book to be released before...

Do my real life friends know about the Harry Potter side of my life? I guess most of them do by now, although I wonder if they understand just how much of an impact it's been. I don't really talk about it all that much, but it sort of has to come up eventually, particularly insofar as how the heck I met g_smarmy in the first place! Ah, Harry Potter, my life would be a lot less excellent if not for you.

Somewhat related to that - I've written two essays, pulled mostly from my own experience as a fan and in the online fandom for Harry Potter. They're both hosted at the Leaky Cauldron. The first was for the first issue of Scribbulus - and you can find it here. (That's the low-bandwidth version of the site; the main site does evil things to my computer. They need to improve that...) The other was for the Harry Potter Seven project, which was originally supposed to be a chapter of a book that would be sold to raise money for Book Aid International, but... eh, something happened. I was disappointed, but they still made it into this snazzy looking collection attached the main Leaky Cauldron site. And they set it up with a donation button, but I have no idea how successful that ended up being. I just wished I could have had one of those books to hold in my hand, and put on my shelf, and know that yes, something I wrote got published in a book! Anyway, here's a link to it (I couldn't figure out if there was a low-bandwidth version of this). I'm fairly proud of these, but fair warning: if you're not involved in the Harry Potter fandom, you might not really appreciate them too much. I'm not discouraging you from reading them, per se, just giving you fair warning (and covering my backside, in case you hate them!). Of course, I don't think there are many people reading this journal besides those who might have me on their LJ friends list, and nearly all of those are HP people anyway.

What a rambling, crazy, entry. Should I put it under a cut? Ehh... too lazy.

Peace.

Hello?

Is this thing on?

I'm just making a quick post - well, because. Because I haven't in ages, and I'm full of nervous energy and want to do something. I'm leaving in a few hours for a great weekend in Boston to see a bunch of my high school buddies, and then from there, I will be flying to Finland, the country that in the span of a year has come to be very important to me, and at this moment in time, happens to contain the person who's become most important to me. So, you know, frickin' awesome and all that. I can't even imagine how great it will be, but I'm obviously very excited and dreaming about it. I'm glad my weekend fun will keep my mind off of it, and then I'll only have the plane ride to really start going nuts thinking about it all :)

Who knows, maybe I'll even make a post or two while I'm there. But if you know me, you know to not really count on that...

Oh, and my subject line for this post? I asked Tuules how to say "Finland, here I come!" in Finnish, and she said that was pretty close to it (there's no real literal equivalent that would sound natural, I guess).

So, just wanted to ramble a bit, and say hello to the world. Hello!

'Allo Slothwatchers!

BIG TIME CONGRATULATIONS to thessalymarley and atschpe for winning NaNoWriMo (and Witherwings from the Leaky Lounge as well)! If you know any of them, they deserve your absolute praise for what they accomplished!

As for me, I guess despite my attempts to convince myself and others, I never succeeded in really getting myself fully devoted to NaNo this year. Oh well, I'm not too broken up over it, although I would have liked to make a bit more progress on my latest project. But that's OK, I continue to plug away, and it will get there in the end! And perhaps I will try my hand at another NaNoWriMo sometime in the future.

I watched Chungking Express a little while back, perhaps a week ago or more. It's a great film out of Hong Kong by Wong Kar-Wai. It's basically two stories connected in a very small way (but perhaps sharing more thematically). I tend to have trouble explaining why I like movies without giving away lots of plot - not that the plot necessarily is so secret in this movie, but I generally just don't like to give summaries. There's just - a lot of life in this flick, I guess would be my take on it. It made me happy, and also made me a bit sad or wistful - but it's good to watch a movie that encourages one to feel something, but doesn't beat you over the head with it either. Perhaps its the method that Wong Kar-Wai uses to make his films - as far as I know, he never works from complete scripts, instead writing them as he goes along - so there seems to be this sense of "I don't really know where this is going" to the stories. Which can be very refreshing. Anyway, just thought I'd give my little rave about the movie! Check it out if it sounds interesting.

All right, that's enough for today. Happy December!

Peace.

( Some Yankees Ramblings )

I watched The Royal Tenenbaums last night... I really like that flick. Wes Anderson has a style that really appeals to me... I love the quirkiness of his characters, the little worlds he creates for his films. And his use of music in his movies is outstanding. Anyway, I blabbed so much about baseball, I'm not going to write up a big movie review... just needed to rave for a line or two.

Shame on me for not knowing about this Spider-man 3 trailer until sue_tlc posted an entry with the link. I hate waiting! I wanna see Spidey 3 right now! Grrr... As always, it's hard to tell much from these things, but I think it's an interesting twist that they've apparently made Flint Marko (aka Sandman) the criminal who killed Ben Parker. That should certainly make things a lot more personal for poor Pete. And SWEETNESS! Harry's goin' Goblin on us, baby... that's my boy... the Goblin lives on!

So NaNoWriMo, I've changed course (which is actually what I've been planning since probably day five, but I've finally implemented it): I'm using the month to finish an old, half-completed draft I started over a year ago. So this makes word counts kind of irrelevant - I'm not going to win NaNo this year, and I don't mind in the least. But I am still trying to stay in the spirit of the month, and just bang out a rough draft without worrying too much about editing as I go. And I still have a very concrete goal to shoot for, which seems to help me. So I'm in the middle of Chapter Five, of Eight. That's more or less how I'll be tracking this thing as I go forward.

Oh, and I liked this Quiz - "Where Should Your Inner New Yorker Live?" ( Another cut to hide the Blogthing )

Peace.

Thanks to kimmyblair I have something simple and dumb to start this post with:


How White and Nerdy Are You?

Yeah!

So yeah, NaNo is not going well... or just, not going. I've been chatting with thessalymarley and g_smarmy about it; I think I made a mistake choosing the story I did at this time (and really, as evidenced by earlier posts, I hardly thought about the choice at all, which was a bit careless). Yes, I realize this is an excuse, but it still makes a lot of sense to me... I'm not sure what I'm going to do, my heart's not in it because this story is supposed to be a fantasy, and I didn't do any of the character-building and world-building I should have done beforehand. Last year I was able to kind of wing it, because the setting was so easy, I knew the two main characters well, and I knew where the story needed to go. Here I only know the characters, really (and only two of many), and some vague idea about the context but nothing about this land I'm making up, the people there, the conflict, etc. I'm glad I've written what I did already; whether I have a total change of heart and try to dive back into this now, or save the story for later when I've had more time to plan, having this prologue written is invaluable as a resource for me, whether it (or something like it) stays in the eventual story or not; it's good background material for me.

So anyway, the point is, I don't have the motivation I did last time to just plow ahead without much idea of the early plot; here, in every other sentence, I'm running into something I need to make a decision on, and I'm just not ready to commit to those things yet for this story. *sigh* I'm not prepared to let NaNoWriMo go to waste this month for me, but it's probably too late to do it the way it's supposed to be done. I'm thinking about alternative challenges for myself that can keep me in the spirit of it and still get something nice accomplished. And in the meantime I may be pretty wrapped up in other things for the next few days, so this might get pushed off further...

So I dunno. It stinks that it's not working out the same this year as last, but whatever. There's still a lot of month left... and I am charged up about writing again, which is nice. So if I can turn that energy into some productive writing time, then that's great, and I won't feel bad if I fall short of the NaNo challenge this time.

Oh, and I voted today. It felt good!

Peace.