My sleep schedule is appalling. Got home from work at four yesterday, having been lectured and feeling terrible about it. Cleaned up after Christopher (he is not doing well--but he's still eating, and he's overdue for his shot anyway, so hopefully that will help). Talked to my aunt. Had something to eat. Toppled into bed at seven; woke up at two in the morning. Great idea!

...I did go back to sleep at about eight, whereupon I slept until one in the afternoon. Some part of my brain is still not entirely sure what day it is. Hopefully sleeping at a more usual time tonight will fix that somewhat.

With all that sleep chaos, I didn't accomplish much today. In fact, my greatest accomplishment...was making cat macros and icons. Sigh. Nevertheless, I feel the need to ( share the cat macros. )

The icons aren't particularly impressive, but I did upload a few, including a new default; slowly I become more satisfied with my own personal collection of icons. This batch included an abused Sokka and an adorable Rydia from the new FFIV DS remake trailer. I want that game so very badly. Of course, first I need a DS.

Gathering screencaps for Avatar icons did turn up something amusing, though. You see, AvatarSpirit.net has an interface which lets you search its screencaps. You can search in many ways, but these include "by character" and "by emotion." I decided to play around with some combinations of these two and see what I got.

Sokka + angst = 0
Aang + angst = 18
Zuko + angst = 71
Sokka + embarrassment = 31

...I'm not sure who to feel sorrier for, Zuko or Sokka.

I'll try to watch more Avatar tomorrow, but the Wire has eaten my brain again. Thanks, Season 4. >:( It's especially painful since I have to wait for my mother to be available to watch more, and she has a meeting tomorrow night. Augh. So in the meanwhile, I ramble. I've been thinking, you see. ( About the Wire, of course. )

And...I have a shameful admission to make. I really, really want somewhere more to RP Omar. I still feel weirdly wrong RPing such a serious business character from such a serious business show, but damn do I need it. I'm even considering LJ RPs, if people will help show me how to RP in them. Thoughts? Recommendations? Slaps upside the head?

Went to NY Anime Festival today. There wasn't really much there--it was my first convention other than Otakon, and the difference was striking, both in content and organization. Still, they had some neat stuff and some nice artists (including Avatar light ali_wildgoose and the amazing ghostfire, who I'd happened on both on DA and at Otakon before), and there was sushi at the Maid Cafe; that's as much as anyone can ask for from a small convention, I suppose.

I didn't mean to spend as much money as I did, but then I came across the Berserk artbook and it was expensive. But I got it anyway because eeee the little pictures of the Hawks were so cute and there were so many angsty pretty Griffith pictures. I know I haven't seen really good scans around much, so if there's a specific picture you've seen smaller and would liked scanned bigger, I'll do my best.

I also got several chibi action figures. One was a Rin/Archer set, and they are adorable (and OTP); the other bunch was three Final Fantasy figures, one of Squall, one of Rinoa, and one of Penelo. So cute.

Finally, I got two doujinshi, continuing my trend of picking up clean doujin from the porn rack at conventions. One was a very prettily-drawn Locke/Celes; the other was a hilarious Fran/Balthier. I wouldn't say the latter is entirely clean, since there's plenty of nudity, but there's no on-page sex, just lots of jokes and the two of them being drunk and naked and flirty. Also, abusing Vaan.

Oh yeah, and for free, I got three Sweeney Todd posters. YES. I am so excited for that movie I think I could burst. But then I wouldn't get to see it! Oh, these cruel paradoxes.

Anyway, I close with what appears to be the cutest video ever. I actually teared up from the cuteness while watching it.

Crow mothers kitten. It's true. And adorable.

I. ( Cat stuff. )

II. ( Wire stuff, lololol. )

III. I was going to make icons tonight, but I got distracted by watching those commentaries. Whoops. I have, however, pinned down some more Wire screencaps to icon when I do pop open Photoshop. Plus, the first DVD cover for Romeo x Juliet demands iconing. I should also see if I can find more official art to icon so that I can get cracking on my Juliet claim.

Meanwhile, I'd like to get some more work done on my mostly-finished Cagalli claim. It's at 71%; I'd like to get it up to 80% soon. Which means I should actually get back to entering icontests. For that matter, I really should start up rxj_icontest--assuming someone hasn't already gotten fed up with how long I'm taking to set it up and created one under a different name.

IV. So, as usual, here's a list of things to do tomorrow:
--Bug my brother about passport stuff.
--Print out the GED transcript request form, fill it out.
--Watch at least RxJ 7, preferably more.
--Resist urge to watch the commentary on 03x11. Probably fail.
--Resist urge to watch season four, no, seriously. Succeed at this one.
--Work on fic for yuri_challenge.
--Make icons!

I will also, inevitably, probably get some RP in for nexuscity to sate my constant and terrible urge for moar Omar. Sigh.

V. Sleep now! Whee.

I. Once again, I did not actually accomplish anything today. Unless you count writing a fanfic as "accomplishing something," and...yeah.

So I'm just going to make a post full of cat macros! Yay!

II. Actually, first I'll make a quick list of nice, accomplishable things to do tomorrow:
1) Work on cleaning room
2) Finish Jiraiya app for apresmoi_rpg
3) Watch Code Geass 18 and maybe 19

There! That should not be too painful. If I can finish that stuff, I might also want to
1) Send emails to local photographers
2) Make some icons

Here are some other things I will likely do:
1) Read more of Academ's Fury
2) Play more Wii Sports
3) Watch more Scrubs
4) Stare at the computer until my eyeballs fall out

III. Now, the main reason I made this post: I actually got some fanfic done! Shut up, I'm justified in feeling a tiny bit accomplished; it's been forever since I've really written something, or at least it feels like it. Ugh, my creativity is so down. Especially when it comes to Naruto. But I managed to churn out another entry for my 30_kisses claim by way of a 31_days prompt.

Here at 30_kisses and here at 31_days. Tomorrow I will probably stick it up on jc_eastling, FF.net, and Ficwad, because I am a cross-archiving whore.

For the record, it's only nominally SasuSaku for the sake of having another entry at 30_kisses; it's mostly Sasuke-POV Team 7 gen. It's kind of weird; I've never really done this particular perspective on Sasuke before, and I fear I might be losing my touch. I'd rather be writing Suzaku/Euphemia.

IV. Aaaand now, what you've all been waiting for (or not): cat picture! A few cellphone pictures of my own kitties (sobsob I want a real camera back), some four-year-old-plus pictures I dug up of me with evilbeej's cat, and a handful of silly cat macros I made. ( Images! Of fuzzy lovey mews! Awwww! )

V. Speaking of Geass (the segue to that is under the previous cut. You will just have to click)...a new group, Your-Mom, has started subbing it. Apparently they pick up popular series with slow or unpopular fansubbers. I don't really appreciate picking on gg for being slow (although it does kind of annoy me that they seem to have stopped working on Geass altogether for the past several days, judging by the lack of change in the project status page), but their attitude bugs me enough that I like seeing them get knocked down a peg.

However, I'm kind of leery of watching the Your-Mom avis, because apparently they're really low-quality--bad translations, shitty encoding, and random pointless, distracting comments added on. Still, I'm desperate at this point. D:

...although oddly enough, I haven't even bothered watching the recap at this point. I suppose I should do that before getting into the new ones. For now, though, I'm going to go watch some Scrubs.

Edit: VI. Quick note to say that I picked up Academ's Fury, Cursor's Fury, and Proven Guilty at Barnes & Noble today. *drops money into Jim Butcher's pockets*

However, the main point of this edit is what the fuck, how did it take me until Chapter 9 of Academ's Fury to figure out what "Tavi" is short for? adfjsklfdsjkl.

I don't normally like YouTubes, but then I realized their potential to make me extremely happy.
( Under the cut. )
Okay, I think that's enough for now. I'd better go write something to do some descing before my brain implodes.

Does anyone know why cats love to sleep on open strategy guides?

It is a mystery. Or, more likely, it's just because they're pains in the asses.

This, however, is not a cat on a strategy guide. It is a cat on a bookshelf.



Yes, he really is as skinny as he looks there. I wish we could get him to eat more. :(

On an unrelated note, my brother happened to be watching West Side Story on TV today, because it happened to be on. When the "Gee, Officer Krupke" scene came on, I sat down and watched it. I was reminded of something I'd noticed when I watched some of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying a while back.

Specifically, old musicals had a ton of homoeroticism in them.

I'm not talking about "teehee they looked meaningfully at each other so they must be fucking!" homoeroticism. I mean, like, guys leaning reeeally close to each other and staying that way for a good portion of a dance scene; guys winding up in other guys' arms; lots of touching; the works. This shouldn't be surprising, given that it's Broadway--but what surprises me is that there was so much more of it back then. I suppose it's because back then, society at large liked to pretend homosexuality didn't exist, so gay-heavy communities like Broadway (and by extension the people in Hollywood who turned Broadway musicals into movies) were free to stuff it into their productions while everyone was was looking the other way. Today, whenever anyone sees two guys touching, it's OMG TEH GAY, and that is only allowed in carefully regulated relationships with no actual kissing or sex unless it's in a SUPER SPECIAL GAY MOVIE or on a special gay channel on TV.

The ironies of modern society, I guess.

...

... ...

... ... ...

...thought I was going to go an entire post without mentioning Code Geass, huh? We can't have that! For those of you who are members of code_geass, check this out. Kallen looks hot there, I'm thinking. ♥

And now I sleep. Tomorrow, bleach_yurithon fic, dammit.

♥ ♥ HAPPY BIRTHDAY caltan ♥ ♥

♥ ♥ HAPPY BIRTHDAY autophanous ♥ ♥

autophanous has also reminded us that today is Caturday. She requests that we post some fucking cats.


( more fucking cats )

I just clipped a cat's front claws and barely lost any blood! Go me!

...however, writing this IchiRuki fic is going to be even harder than that.

*stares at it*

help?

I don't have any inspiration to do icons, either. Whee.

Oh well. After midnight, I'll start putting together the assignments for bleach_yurithon. That's just mindless sorting, so hopefully I'll have the energy to do that.

Another thing I have the energy to do, ganked from dragonsquee:

Comment with the name/title of a fandom I'm aware of, no matter how obvious you think the answers will be, and I'll reply you with the relationships--canon or not--from it I ship. I'll give favorite romantic relationships as well as favorite platonic ones. Just one comment per fandom so it won't get messy. You can comment as many times as you want to, though and you may reply with any fandom. If I happen to not be familiar with the series, I will let you know. Also, you're free to reply in subthreads and ask me why I ship or don't ship something.

(In case you haven't figured it out yet: you're much more likely to get a lengthy answer is you ask about anime or video games than if you ask about Western stuff, since I ship much, much less in my Western fandoms.)

And now I'm going to go play some more video games to put off doing anything useful. In my defense, I'm still a bit sick. But I seem to be getting over this cold much faster than usual, just to give me less excuse for procrastination. Of course, now that I've said that, I'll probably relapse and wake up tomorrow morning with my throat on fire and my nose overflowing.

Edit: Wheeeere are the winners of this week's seed_icontest? :O

Return of Edit: That Star Trek DirecTV commercial is amusing for me as a Trekkie, but it's also freaking me out, because the first line is Chekhov speaking, and I'm starting to get nervous at hearing Walter Koenig's voice at random intervals from downstairs. You don't understand, he's evil and he can read my mind.

Son of Edit: For the meme--you know my fandoms, right? Just in case, a list off the top of my head: Bleach, FMA, Naruto, D.Gray-man, Gundam SEED, Final Fantasy IV through X-2 (not Tactics, I'm afraid), Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Babylon 5, Dead Like Me, House, Firefly/Serenity, Fate/Stay night, Ouran High School Host Club, Kingdom Hearts, Star Ocean 3 (who_shot_kr already asked about this one), Spooks, and any number of others (Discworld, Dresden Files, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Witch Hunter Robin, the League of Peoples series, Hellblazer, Sandman, even Harry Potter) that I don't really have pairings in. Yeah, I like fandom.

I continue to be vaguely useless tonight. Er...this morning. Unfortunately, if I went to sleep now I wouldn't wake up until five in the afternoon or something, so...gotta stay up, take a nap on the couch, and then go to sleep at a more decent hour. Fortunately, I have a lot of DS9 to keep me awake. Hooray.

I'd work on icons instead, but my graphical productivity has deserted me. I have basic ideas for the icons, but I sit down at Photoshop with the images, stare at them for a bit, think about how there seem to be so many better icon-makers entering the icontests, and stomp out of Photoshop in frustration.

Fic is even more out of the question because oh god I am so lazy.

Instead, well, I've been playing with my cellphone's camera feature a lot lately, so you can have a bunch of blurry pictures of my plushies and figurines in compromising positions.
( These are pretty dumb. )
And, of course, no trip to the camera is complete without a bunch of pointless but painfully cute kitty pictures.
( Bow before your mastars of CUTE. )
And that is it for tonight, because I have nothing more worthwhile to do.

I got my camera working! Thank goodness, as I had some nice pictures on it. To celebrate its return, not only will I share those pictures, but also some others. And, of course, some cat pictures. Because I can never force too many cat pictures on my flist.
( General pictures )

( Cat pictures )
And that's it for now.

♥ ♥ ♥ CHRISTOPHER IS EATING AGAIN ♥ ♥ ♥

Okay, so it's not much. He's only having a few bites of kibble at a time. But it's better than before, and he's acting totally normal--scrambling around into the window or onto Mom's record player so he can peer outside, following me around and yelling at me, all that. So I'm hopeful.

Yesterday Mom took him to the vet and got prescribed a people-antihistamine which apparently encourages appetite in cats. So far, it seems to be working. We're not out of the woods yet, but things are looking better. One of the vets we took him to thinks it was some kind of random allergic reaction--we'll have to figure out what it is he's allergic to. o_o But we'll do our best.

So thank you, everyone who offered suggestions or wished my kitty well ♥

My black cat is sitting on top of my Urahara hat.

I don't really have anything to say here. I haven't been doing much but sleeping erratically, reading, messing with Kingdom of Loathing, and icon-making. Yesterday (not that anyone has figured this out already) was Massive DS9 Fangirling Day. Things remain undone. Fic languishes unwritten.

However. To this all, there is a bright side. I have been alerted to the existence of a picture.
( Everyone needs to click this. )
I believe that Love Incarnate has been discovered.

So I'm going downstairs to try to find my copy of New Scientist so I can take it to bed with me. I sleep with Science, you know. And there on the armchair are two cats. This is not particularly unusual, because Christopher and Othello enjoy attacking me with cute in the middle of the night.

But they're sitting next to each other, and their tails are entwined.

This is simultaneously the cutest and the gayest thing ever. I think it has killed me, and I am now a ghost typing away at my keyboard trying to communicate with the living. And what is my message?

Beware the gay cats.

I. I have finished the associations for the Bleach runes (although I'm still a bit uncertain about Kenaz, Eihwaz, Mannaz, and Ingwaz). Here they are, along with the words I'll use to represent them on the icons: ( What, spam. )
The problem is, I'm going to need images. As much as I hate doing it (because I suck at it), I think I'm going to have to color some manga scans. :x I'll stick to already-colored stuff when I can, though, and to the anime when there's no alternative (but not for anything involving Orihime, Shunsui, or Urahara, because I hate how the anime does them). Bleah. Anyone have any good (preferably already officially colored, but in some cases that'll be impossible) images for any of the above? Especially for Ansuz, Raidho, Kenaz, Wunjo, Hagalaz, Nauthiz, Mannaz, Ehwaz, and Othila.

II. Memeage!
--A) Ask me to rant, rave, or ramble about anything related to fandom--a pairing, a character, a particular trend in fanfics, a specific fandom, whatever.

--B) Ask me for a fandom-related top five list--top five reasons I like a character, top five favorite pairings in a series, etc.

III. Who'd have thought monochrome week at seed_icontest would suck so much? I mean, normally the technical quality there is pretty damn high, but this is just painful. Not to mention some of those don't even really look monochrome to me.

IV. I have two adorable kittons on my bed. Aren't you jealous?

Oh, wait. Now I only have one. Damned cats.

I have discarded all thoughts of making myself a YoruSoi moodtheme. Well, maybe I'll make one just for the principle of it, but it will not be for myself.

No.

You see, I have discovered the glory that is Chi's Sweet Home (and I believe I owe several chunks of soul to wreeth for finding it). Now, I am a person who is lifted to great heights by pictures of happy kittens and plunged to despair by the thought of sad, lonely, and hurt kittens. There is no easier way to plug directly into my most primal emotions than with cats.

Chi is a small grey kitten. The manga Chi's Sweet Home is about him.

I have read the first three pages of the first chapter of this manga. From my unbiased viewpoint, I believe I can safely say that Chi's Sweet Home is the best manga ever drawn.

At first I thought that I would be satisfied with making icons of Chi. But then I realized that this would not be enough. I needed to have him on every post I make.

Over the weekend, I believe I will be making a Chi moodtheme. Oh, and lots of Chi icons. Which I will of course share with all of you.

Happy days, my friends. Happy days.

Edit: After some judicious Googling, I have discovered downloads here.

Return of Edit: love_chi.

I forced myself to attempt sleep last night/this morning (that is: at about 5:30) without drugs. The result? Well, it took a while, but I managed it.

And I had a crazy damn dream.
( There were kittens. )
Why can't I have cool dreams with interesting plots instead of vague and incoherent dreams about kittens in danger? It's not fair.

What are my awesome ideas, you ask?

Well, one is writing Mwu/Murrue semi-smut, because seriously there is not enough good fic for that pairing. But that I can do on my own.

The other Awesome Idea I believe I will need some help with, because my friendslist can do it better than I ever could.

It is this: KINGDOM HEARTS/BLEACH CROSSOVER.

Come on. Heartless and Hollows? Organization XIII and the Bleach-world politics? IT NEEDS TO BE DONE.

Okay, with that out of the way, autophanous reminded me recently of how there are not enough Urahara/Benihime icons. So I had to go and make a couple. As always, they are free for the taking with credit:



The latter one, although not perfect (my icons never are, dammit) is, I think, one of the better artsy icons I've made. If anyone is interested, I may do an Icon Tutorial on how I make that crap.

(p.s.: the text on the second one is "by our lady," an oath which is one of the many suggested sources of the use of the word "bloody" as a swear.)

And since I am tragically separated from my copy of Kingdom Hearts II while my brother plays it instead, I may as well share some pictures of my magical wardrobe. How is it magical, you ask? Well...





It contains a kitton! If that's not a magical wardrobe I don't know what is.

To see what I am thankful for today, you need look no further than this post on catography.

And now I go to make matzah ball soup. Yup, we can jew up even the most American of holidays! NOTHING IS SACRED TO US DIRTY LATKE-EATERS.

I really, really want my computer to be working again. I had so much stuff in progress, including files for rosemush, and just--AUGH I want to work more on them. It's even worse than not being able to play more KotOR, and let me tell you, that's pretty bad.

In other news, does anyone have any tips for getting cats accommodated to a new home? The company Mom works for decided that its assisted living/nursing homes needed to have cats, so Mom and I picked out a very lovely mew named Varsity who was extremely friendly to us when we went to the adoption place and just in general seemed quite confident. But now that he's at his new home, he shies away from people easily and refuses to go into half the building.