All the best on this festival of the sainted Patrick and immigrants everywhere!

Slainte mhor agus a h-uile beannachd duibh

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Today, my Sarah Connor Chronicles icon doubles as my 'don't fuck with an Irish girl' icon. BTW, if you get the chance, drive up the Connor Pass, Dingle, County Kerry, it's heartstopping. So is the view. On a related note, it's wrong that the idea of this movie turns me on, right? I mean there's no way it's not going to be exploitive, gynophobic violence porn, right?

Hello flist,

Until I actually finish my thesis project and then my novel after that, I'm going to be scarce(er) on ellejay. However, if you could use your communal powers for good and not evil and help me find a novel that begins in media res to use as an example in the intro to my thesis project, that would be awesome. I know they exist but, typically, I can't think of one right at the moment.

See, my novel begins with a discussion of an incident that we never actually see or return to in the novel. It happened and the repercussions leave my character in the position we find her in at the start of the book. I think of it a bit like an episode of Farscape - I'm simpling skipping over what would normally be the first act and jumping right into the second.

Needless to say, I can't write in my introduction that "I based the structure of the opening of my novel on an episode of Farscape where we jump over the trip to Katrazi and open with our crew about to infiltrate the Scarran space station." I'm in treacherous water as it is, submitting a "gothic" (I say horror) thriller for my thesis to be graded by some stuffy litfic writer from Trinity College (wankers!).

So, if any of y'all could help a sister out, that would be marvellous, mates. Utterly bloody marvellous.

Also - being compared to John Updike... good?

My life writing assignment drained my batteries pretty dry this week. This is what's left:

Saw:

Iron Man - Robert Downey Jr. was great as Tony Stark, the effects were cool, the script funny and Jon Favreau dialed Gwyneth Paltrow back from gratingly annoying to tolerably charming. On the other hand, the big bad was ludicrous and in our post-The Incredibles media reality, there's no excuse for a bad guy to be caught monologuing ever. Stay until after the credits.

Persepolis - awesome and intense and searing - at some point I will have more to say about this but it's too rich in my mind right now. I need to digest a little more.

Bones - Booth, Brennan and a baby made for fun TV. Bones is definitely my favourite forensic procedural - not only do the girls get to be smart but it manages to avoid much of the female death porn that is CSI's stock-in-trade.

Speaking of CSI - the most recent episode was boring even as background viewing while I caught up on a week's worth of newspapers in my room. And last week's Supernatural was even worse. Couldn't make it through either episode. Ick.

Read:

Half of Anna Karenina - stupid Russians! Write shorter books. Also the title is a lie: the book is really about this dude Levin who's Tolstoy's Gary Stu and thinks well-intentioned and terribly patronizing ideas for how to improve the lives of the Russian peasantry. I should look up how the Leninists felt about Tolstoy - I can see it going either way.

On Writing by Stephen King - the dude knows his stuff. A bit of a refresher, particularly after this past year, but all stuff that needs to be said.

Realized:

Lena Headey as Sarah Connor (TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES) pretty much saved my sanity in February: grad school in a foreign country - lonely and depressed and February. It was ugly up inside my head and watching Sarah Connor kick ass helped, put me back in touch with the 18 year old inside of me, her enthusiasm and her passion. I should probably send a thank you card.

I write really well about my own life. I need to find that same voice and momentum in my writing about my fake lives and that probably comes from rewriting, rewriting and rewriting until I find the truth in it. Writing about myself is more about how much truth I leave out (I'm no James Frey - it's all true but it's not all of the truth - there are things, even when you're writing confessional memoirs, that no one else wants, needs or has a right to know about my life). It's finding that line that's the hard part.

If you're feeling oppressed by your grad school advisors, all of who think you're wasting your time writing a horror novel, there's no one better to read on writing than Stephen King.

Fidgety.

The Breeders. Live at Vicar Street.

Fucking brilliant.

Entered student pub at 3:30.

Got home at midnight.

May fall asleep on keyboard and start drooling at any moment.

When your first reaction to an otherwise perfectly sweet story is "dude, you just got a puppy - you are so not spending the rest of the day in bed snogging your gf" are you a) officially old or b) someone who knows too much about dogs or c) no fun at all?

I met the Fellowship of the Bean at Sbux (it was a meeting of the complete set, too - whoo) and I wrote poetry. I wrote a lot of poetry - three new poems today alone. Finished them today, anyway. They and two of their friends are off to the class anthology, one other is being held back to send to the Poetry Review of Ireland: more because I believe my collection of rejection slips needs to start somewhere than I think it's something someone would publish. Then again, I'm still shocked that serious people take my poetry seriously, so maybe they'll love it.

Meanwhile, today's Bunny Comic is awesome.

And because I actually worked today, I get to play! God, it's been so long since I've done this, I've forgotten how you format these things... (and I have "Space Oddity" on my iPod? Huh).

Title: Watershed (1/2)
Rating: PG (harsh language, implied violence)
Spoilers: The Terminator
Characters: Sarah Connor
Summary: There's a moment when the future becomes real and it's not pleasant.
Author's notes: When bored, I play with narrative voice. If you don't like stories in the 2nd person, this is not the fic for you.

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( You’re nervous when you arrive for your ultrasound )

I'm not just watching South Park in Irish, I'm watching a South Park sex scene in Irish.

The scary parts is that the voices really match. It's either great casting or Trey Parker and Matt Stone were phonetically dubbing their cartoon into Irish.

Either way... I feel like I need to finish the bottle of wine.

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So, Ruby on Supernatural. She really is Veronica Mars as demon, ain't she?

I just saw the ep where Lilith blows up the sheriff's office (in English). Jared Paledecki is getting prettier as he ages and Jensen Ackles is... not. Hmmmmm.

I still have to work way to hard to find something to like in this series but Ruby is kind of cool.

I'm sure she dies horribly next week.

Happy Easter, bunnies.

The Headache of Reluctance has turned into the real thing. If I had hot water in my shower, I'd take a long one and see if that would loosen up my neck. As you may have already deduced, however, there is no hot water in the flat.

Again.

This morning involved a True. Irish. Experience. of heating the kettle and dumping it into the basin so I could wash. Delightful.

So, slow day of lying in bed sleeping and wishing my headache would actually leave.

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Interesting phenomenon I've noticed the last few days talking US politics in Ireland (aside from my buddy R's failure to understand why it annoyed the three of us Canadians when my tutor repeatedly referred to "American" speech patterns - possibly 'cause there weren't any in the room) - Senator Obama's appeal doesn't seem to have crossed the Atlantic, at least not to the group of us sitting round the bar in the M on Friday night. We all preferred Senator Clinton, saving the lone American. Then again, none of us are particularly exposed to US media at the moment, which seems to have thrown its weight behind a "good" (Obama) vs. "evil" (Clinton) narrative in the Democratic primary.

Today, I came across this extremely comprehensive comparison of the three Democratic candidates, which confirmed my instinctive sense of Barack Obama as a candidate of much flash and rather less substance in the sense that he's a) less experienced b) certainly no more progressive than Clinton (and possibly substantively less so on issues such as healthcare reform) and c) not particularly electable - I think if he becomes the Democratic candidate, he will be shredded by the Republican machine and all the campaign appearances by Oprah and stump speeches about hope in the world won't save him.

The Republicans are shit scared of a Hilary Clinton campaign because there isn't anyone who doesn't know her business. That makes her a dangerous candidate because she has everything to win and nothing to lose in a character battle. Obama, on the other hand, has everything to lose - this link, taken from the one above, is a good example of the kind of game-playing that will cause Obama's campaign to implode under the weight of a full media press by the Republican Party. In my opinion, anyone who believes that Obama's ability to win the nomination demonstrates his ability to win the presidency is fooling themselves. Then again, I also believe that Obama's appeal flows from a desire among Democrats to find a mythic figure who will sweep away the evils of the past and by extension excuse the party and its supporters of their complicity in the actions of the Bush Adminstration - he's quite literally the candidate of their dreams. However, dreamland is not where the next election will be fought.

And that, gentle readers, is my 0.02 on US politics for the next while.

You're in Ireland (Oi-erland), luv. Is it possible that the notice "Irish Mass Times" refers to masses in Irish and not a schedule of every mass being said in every parish on the whole friggin' island, eh?