I regret to inform that the cat that adopted me died unexpectedly this past spring; I only just noticed my last journal here was about me adopting her. She'd gotten into some gunk and I was bathing her and she kind of flailed once and then went limp. Since her previous way of dealing with baths was sullen acceptance, I didn't think anything of it and didn't realize she was gone until I was drying her. Which is kind of an extreme way of getting out of being bathed. But, I gave her a good life and that is what I'm going to take away rather than being sad.

In the words of that great philosopher Dr Seuss, "Don't be sad it's over. Be glad it happened."

Ecce felis:

Sprawling

Being cute

Well, actually, she adopted me. I used to have two cats, had them both for 15-16 years; they both died within a month of each other nearly eight years ago. It's taken this long to find the right one/be found by the right one.

She's a colony kitten, born this year in the late spring in the little copse of trees behind my apartment building, one of only two from that litter. Several of us have been working with the cats to get them fixed and checked out and keep them fed and semi-socialize them. Except the kittens got fully socialized, and one of them adopted me (the other disappeared about a month and a half ago; he was such a sweetie we're hoping someone adopted him, and I don't care to think otherwise).

She's a brown tabby, spotted underneath (roll the tiger over and reveal a leopard!). I've named her Althea after the Grateful Dead song, and she already has a tie-dye name tag.

And she doesn't merely lie down to get petted, she undergoes a Catastrophic Appendage Failure and collapses in a heap, purring like a tribble the whole time. :D

Picture? Okay.

Scarfed from Cashew Lou... I haven't memed in ages, so what the hell.

1. Name a movie you have seen more than ten times:
Uff. Plan Nine from Outer Space, MST3K: The Movie, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, Amadeus, War of the Worlds (George Pal please), Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, Dr Strangelove, Duck Soup...


2. Name a movie you've seen multiple times in a theater:
Rocky Horror (natch), Jaws, Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Mystery Science Theater: The Movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Despicable Me.


3. Name an actor who would make you more inclined to see a movie:
Martin Freeman, Johnny Depp, William H. Macy, Frances McDormand, any of the MST3K or Lost Skeleton crews


4. Name an actor who would make you less likely to see a movie:
Larry the Cable Guy, Adam Sandler.

Really, the actors and actresses generally don't have as much influence on me as the director would. You couldn't pay me to go see a Michael "I have ADD and my editor is on speed!" Bay movie.


5. Name a movie you can quote from:
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and most Marx Brothers movies


6. Name a movie musical to which you know all the lyrics to all the songs:
Can you count concert films? Scorsese was robbed over 'The Last Waltz' - he damned well deserved a best documentary Oscar for that, and it's still absolutely the best concert movie ever made. Also The Grateful Dead Movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Rocky Horror (of course).


7. Name a movie musical with which you have been known to sing along:
Rocky Horror (of course), Attack of the Killer Tomatos... :D


8. Name a movie you would recommend everyone see:
I actually don't like recommending movies until I have some idea of what someone else's tastes are like so I can make an intelligent recommendation.

That said, and beyond the obvious (everyone should see Kane, Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Animal Crackers, GWTW, Oz, Fantasia, every frame of film Kubrick ever shot, etc etc etc), I'd suggest the European comedies Le Grand Blond avec une chaussure noire and Good Bye Lenin!.

Shadow of the Vampire (which presupposes having seen Nosferatu, which you should), π and the original Night of the Living Dead in horror.

Johnny Slade's Greatest Hits is my favorite mob movie--really, you should see everything Larry Blamire has filmed.

Also, any chance you ever get to see the classic Warner and MGM cartoons on a real theater screen -- run, don't walk, to the venue. They are completely different that way... and that's the way they were meant to be seen.


9. Name an unusual movie you own:
Heh. It's harder to name a normal movie I own. I collect unMSTed versions of the movies from MST3K, so I have an uncut and unMSTed Manos: Hands of Fate... and have watched it! I have not yet had the nerve to watch my uncut and unMSTed Red Zone Cuba, though... yikes.


10. Name an actor who launched his/her entertainment career in another medium, but who has surprised you with his/her acting chops:
Martin Freeman -- I thought he was a good 'everyman' Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker's Guide movie (that movie had problems, sure, but he wasn't one of them), and he has turned out to have depth I wouldn't have predicted based on that. He was one of the few things I liked in 'The Hobbit', and I love the hell out of him in 'Sherlock'.


11. Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in?
Yes, oh yes, oh yes. And I have a recollection of riding in the car when I was about ten, coming back from who-knows-where on the north side of town, passing a theater whose screen was visible from the roadway... and catching a glimpse of the bathroom scene from "Fritz the Cat". Uh, whoops?


12. Have you ever made out in a movie?
Nope.


13. Name a movie you keep meaning to see but just haven't gotten around to it:
Hmm. There are really quite a few. I've been meaning to see Kubrick's earlier and later works, rather than just the ones from the 60s and 70s, and some of the Welles movies I haven't seen yet. Nothin' out there right now that I've been meaning to see.


14. Ever walked out of a movie?
No. Hell, I saw Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the theater and didn't walk out. However, I did very nearly walk out on the trailer for the mess they called "I Robot".


15. Name a movie that made you cry:
Schindler's List. I can't make it through the end in one piece. Also, most any documentary on Apollo XI -- yes, I'm that serious a space nerd that I choke up over Neil Armstrong saying 'The Eagle has landed'.


16. Popcorn?
Just keep pouring on that 30-weight the theaters use for butter, too.


17. How often do you go to the movies?
Very infrequently; usually I go with some friends of mine to help keep an eye on their kids (well, and they're going to see the same kind of movies I love anyway). And really, there's so very little out there that I want to see. I'm much more a word guy than a picture guy; I don't have cable, I have satellite radio, or I listen to BBC Radio 4 online.


18. What's the last movie you saw in the theater?
I... really don't remember. It's been quite a while.


19. What is your favorite/preferred genre of movie?
Comedy, hands down... except no one makes the style of comedies I like anymore and the closest thing out there are animated features -- I loved the hell out of both Despicable Me movies.

There are so few genuinely good SF movies that I generally don't care about seeing them in the theaters. I mean, seriously -- who's the cabbagebrain who handed off Asimov's Foundation to Roland freakin' Emmerich? I mean, I don't have a problem with disaster porn, but if there was ever a story that was NOT disaster porn, Foundation is it.


20. What was the first movie you remember seeing in the theater?
Heh. My dad took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey in its first run. In Cinerama. I was three or four. I am not going to pretend that I understood it... but I loved it. And I still do.

Do not forget to check account for several months.

D'you know how long it takes to clear a backlog of 1750 submissions and 690 journals? (o.O)

One may hope that this is the future of advertising. Even just gay themed, it doesn't have to specifically involve gay anthros.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKK37G-ZWvk&;

Okay, that was the most fun I've had going to the movies in a long time. "How to Train Your Dragon" was good. "Despicable Me" was great. First time in a very long time that I've left a theater thinking "They had BETTER make a sequel!" (note: they are)

Oh, and I am going to be knitting myself a Gru scarf. That's an amoral imperative. It will rotate service with my Doctor Who scarf, and the Scarf of Fate. :)

And any good idea I have now is accompanied by a "Liiiightbullllb..."

So I'm burning off data DVDs because my drive's filling up, and because the folders fit on a disk just perfectly, I stored a Doctor Who 'spinoff' and an old animated series on the same disk.

It was only after I'd put the pen away that I realized I'd just written on the disk PROBE WILD WEST COWBOYS OF MOO MESA.

Anyone got a Sharpie eraser? XD

Well, that was a perfectly fruitless "debate" on one of the AUP discussion threads. The only purpose to the thread, so far as I could see, was to accuse Poser users of being "lazy" or "cowards".

Guess I'm just going to be a watcher from here on out. Ironically, since Y!Gal changed their rules, I might actually move back over there if I come up with any further posts.

The new AUP is certainly a point of contention to those of us who use Poser. The problem is as it's currently written, it would be acceptable for me to upload a stock Poser render where I did literally nothing but make the model's finger move, but it would be unacceptable to post a carefully constructed still image that actually tells a story if all the props and models are stock/downloadables.

I understand what the mods are trying to do, but in putting the dividing line at stock props and models, they completely miss the point of Poser.

You don't use Poser like an artist uses pen and paper. You use Poser like a photographer (or a director) uses a camera and their models/actors.

The analogue here is not that telling us we can't use stock/downloadables is like telling us we can draw as long as we don't use pencils.

Rather, it's like telling us we can do a cover shoot, but we can't use Kate Moss because she's already been a model and we have to go find people who've never been photographed. Or we can make a movie but we can't use Tom Hanks because he's already been in one and we have to train up several people who've never acted before.

Couple of my pieces? Sure, they're shit, they belong in scraps. I was learning what I could do at the time. But at risk of committing hubris, I'm going to say that pieces like 'Reality Depends' are NOT "playing with Barbie and Ken" or "Mr Potatohead work".

It ain't the tool. It's what you do with it.

Edit: Oh, this is entertaining, as long as we're talking about AUP changes: y-gal is letting furs back in. As long as their "parts" are human. XD

 estudiocomik had a journal about his ten favorite books, so I had to think about mine. I posted 'em there, but I suppose I really oughta post 'em here.

In no particular order, and including several series for a lot more than ten books:

- The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov ... and, really, anything else Asimov wrote--he is my absolute topmost favorite writer, bar none.
- Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell ... really needs no explanation. Even more disturbing on its annual re-read these past couple years.
- The Increasingly Inaccurately Named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy, by Douglas Adams. The books, the movie, the TV series, the radio program, the records, the computer game ... pure genius.
- A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking. Speaking of pure genius.
- Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner. Difficult, deep, disturbing.
- A Good Walk Spoiled, by John Feinstein. Arguably the best golf book ever written.
- The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling. But only through 'Order of the Phoenix'. I hated 'Half Blood Prince', and only read 'Deathly Hallows' out of momentum and a need to finish what I started.
- The Door... series, by Diane Duane. The book that brought me back to fantasy -- I was scared away from the genre by the Lord of the Rings series. Duane's heroes are mythic and human all at the same time.
- Cosmos, by Carl Sagan. Speaking again of pure genius.
- The Joy of Cooking (1971 edition), by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker. Without a doubt, the best guide to the kitchen ever printed.

So, my top ten really includes 22 books... XD

Still, it's hard to not include A Year At The Movies by Kevin Murphy, All the Presidents' Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Harrington Street, by Jerry Garcia et al., or even the 'zine/APA I was in almost twenty years ago.

I'm just glad the question wasn't 'favorite DVDs'... there would be the sharp wet *splortch!* of my head exploding, and that would be that.

So I come in the apartment last night, and  cirrus tells me that we've had a visitor drop in.

Literally.

Like, through the attic access panel.

There, in the back corner of his closet/computer space is a little raccoon kit. Sitting, of all things, on a drawing he (he the roommate, not he the raccoon) did of an anthro raccoon.

Now, I had heard scurrying around in the attic--we don't use it, it's just empty space up there--and I had rather assumed squirrels or something.

Poor little thing tried climbing the walls for a minute or two, then came over and plopped down on his desk. He was very tame in a "You know, this really is a wild animal" sort of way.

I got pictures, Cirrus got pictures... and then I bundled him up in some heavy rags and took him outside where he belonged. He didn't really struggle in any meaningful way... I think he chittered irritably because his paws were in the air, and the last time that had happened, he'd fallen through the ceiling.

Not exactly Marlon and Jim, but it was an interesting thing to come home to!

Saw  milligram_smile do this one, and I liked the idea: Songs That Changed My Life.

1) 'Cosmik Debris', Frank Zappa, Apostrophe'. Around 1975, I got turned on to FZ by my mom, of all people. It opened up my mind to a whole new class of music, previously limited to whatever was on the radio. Sure, the "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" is amusing, but 'Cosmik Debris' was more satisfying in a musical way, and broadened my horizons immensely. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie2uVMtc3Hk

2) 'Linus and Lucy', Vince Guaraldi, A Charlie Brown Christmas. I sometimes suspect that most jazzheads my age and younger can point to this as ther seminal jazz experience. It led me onwards to Dave Brubeck, Stan Kenton, and Benny Goodman. http://www.archive.org/search.php?q.....0and%20lucy%22

3) 'Box of Rain', The Grateful Dead (Lesh/Hunter), American Beauty. I was already a Deadhead by the time I first heard this, but this is the one that specifically made a Phil Lesh fan of me musically and a Robert Hunter fan of me lyrically. http://www.archive.org/search.php?q.....20of%20rain%22

4) 'Pictures at an Exhibition', Modeste Mussorgsky, arr. Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The best possible introduction to 'art rock', and arguably the single greatest argument that rock is a serious musical form. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3zUOvKl5ZA

5) 'All Around My Hat', Steeleye Span, All Around My Hat. This was my introdunction to the incredible folk-rock sound of Steeleye Span, and the magnificent voice of Maddy Prior, who remains my favorite female vocalist. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Wteo4UqJY

So I actually made it to AC on Saturday, and my only regrets are that I a) didn't get Diane Duane's autograph and b) didn't get to meet more people. I did get to at last meet Lionus, who has been just wonderfully supportive of my scribblings, lo these many years. And of course, my friends  cashewlou,  Cirrus,  P_moss,  Reynard, and  T-Chall were all there. Odds are pretty good I saw people I would know, but never actually got to bump into them and get introduced for more than a "hi".

Anyway, a splendid time was had. Slept in a rest area on the drive home, when I70 started looking like it had six lanes.

So much for 'barring anything untoward'. Now, barring a miracle, I *won't* be there. Goddammit, I want to see Diane Duane!

Barring anything untoward, I'm going to try to make AC on Saturday. I mean, I've only wanted to see Diane Duane (and get my 1st edition Door... series books signed) for, oh, 25 years now (Dusty was one of the first literary crushes I had, and it ain't gone away yet...)

And of course, any excuse to see Tom Smith, who's... well, if you're familiar with him, you know what to expect and don't warn the virgins!! Jeez, there's nothing quite like sitting there, watching someone experience Smith live for the first time. Trust me on this one--I know.

Anyway, I'll try really hard to be there. Should be interesting.

Well, I'm copying all the stuff that's on Y!G over here that's not here already. So pre-apologies for those who are gonna get clobbered with 'new submission' messages for stuff you've already seen. I'll probably end up doing the same and condensing all my dA and SA stuff here, too. But later. More of that's duplicates anyway... I think.

I'm keeping my Y!G, dA and SA sites for now; I'm going to wait and see how it all shakes out before I make a final decision as to whether I stay or go from Y!G and I have no idea what to do with dA and SA.

100 hits as of today, thanks! This is actually a higher rate of hittage than I'm accustomed to. :)

This is gonna be a placeholder page until either my old account can get re-loaded, or I say the heck with it and start uploading stuff and rebuilding it from scratch. Hey, WB everyone.