It's late and I'm babbling, but at least it's fannish. Ish. Hm.

So, yeah, I was indeed talking to myself in public last night. I couldn't see my babble test until today, though apparently others could. Go figure. Not much else has been working, either. You know, I miss paper. And pens. Those were nice. And they didn't require the whimsical goodwill of some technodweeb to work correctly with any consistency. But at this point I'm getting all philosophical about it; my computer's just on Mediterranean time. "Oh, you want email? Certainly! Right after I have a little nap. LJ comments? Of course, of course, any time. Well, soon. Well, maybe after lunch..."

Haven't been watching the Olympics, since the events I would be interested in either aren't really televised or won't be for a while yet, but I thought the opening ceremonies were neat. They were a bit "Cirque du Soleil meets great lashes of the local liquor," as usual, but the history-on-parade thing was very, very snazzy, and I got a kick out of Brian Williams's "Art History 101" narration. Thank you, CBC, for showing it twice, so I could tape that part (though not the Parade of Nations, which, while cool, took for-freaking-ever. You guys are athletes; walk faster!). And the fabulous costumes led to Geekgasm Number One, since I'd just finished reading Women's Work, which had a long section on that Minoan fresco of the saffron gatherers. And then poof!, there it was, in fabulous Technicolor! Very cool. Geekgasm Number Two came as the parade-thingie moved past the Olympian gods and on to the caryatids, because the music? Was Xena music. Well, okay, it was actually probably originally some traditional melody from northern Greece or Bulgaria or some such that Joe LoDuca nicked because Xena was Thracian (hence the fierce Bulgarian ladies singing her theme song, natch. He did that a lot), but it still gave me a thrill. Dunno if anyone but me was geeky enough to tape it (or care about the music), but it's at the end of the Classical gods bit, the little descending run on some wind instrument of the sort I collectively and lazily label "Romanian shepherd's pipes"- compare it to the very beginning of track 13, "Burying the Past" on the first Xena album. Cool, no? Just smile and nod, it's not like I'll know the difference. Heh.

( Some generic Xena babble cut for length. And to see if I remember the coding after so long )

( Should I cut the generic SG-1 babble, too? Decisions, decisions )

Besides, my computer probably wants some wine and meze by now, with wild times at the Compaq Discotheque to follow. For it, the night's just getting started.

So where are the fabulously wealthy comic-geeks to set up grants for libraries, hm?

There are Joan of Arcadia vids now? Aw, I wanna see. Oh well, no one ever died from not getting a pony. I also see that the Serenity teaser trailer is online now (not that I can get the blasted thing to cooperate), and that leads me to a confession. I'm scared of this movie. I love Firefly with a mad passion, I miss it every time I turn on the tv, and I hate Fox for cutting it off at the knees, and yet... from a fannish standpoint, at the moment, it's safe. It's a closed canon with a lot of possibilities and a lot of loose ends, and that's fannish clover. I'm terribly fond of closed canon these days, what with all of my crimeslash fandoms coming horribly undone, Angel having ended with a "dammit, my favorite character!", and SG-1 perpetually teetering on the brink of oh-please-don't. So the promise of more Firefly is both thrilling and terrifying; there are so many ways it can go wrong and break my heart all over again (and I know it won't surprise anyone who knows me that most of those ways involve Simon). I loved the story the way it was, even incomplete. A new chapter is... daunting. And scary. I haven't forgotten Highlander: Endgame.

Of course, that doesn't mean I won't be there on opening day. *g*


I had things I was going to pretend to accomplish today, but instead I spent it hanging out with Little Sister and watching kids' shows on PBS. Oh hush, like you wouldn't watch cute young LeVar dance around in an awful '80's shirt singing about spiders if you could. And then a tempting meme torpedoed the last of my ambition for the day. Might as well embrace my inability to be productive, tomorrow is another day, blah blah blah. To think, I used to be such a striver. Okay, not recently, but... Anyway, here's that Leiber's Eleven meme that went around the comics blogs last week (I nicked it from krisdresen). To quote Steve Leiber:

I'd like to challenge other bloggers to come up with their own list of eleven titles that libraries should shelve. No rules, but participants are encouraged to cite a variety of genres, and you get extra bonus points if you can avoid repeating a publisher. One-line summaries are nice, but not required. And no, they don't have to be all-ages books, though all-ages lists are certainly welcome.

So here's a mix of all-ages and older-skewing titles. Not quite a "top ten" (top eleven?), just the ones that came to mind first. Only one manga, because eleven isn't very many and I needed to limit my options somehow. I did cheat a little by counting all books in a series as one title (well they are). I also cheated on the two Jay Hosler books. And I feel noooo guilt about it. ( Come into my library... )

Wow, my biases are really visible in that list. Closest I get to the big presses are the three titles from Image (a strange quirk in itself, that), only one superhero (well, "science heroine") and she's an... odd duck, an overwhelming tilt toward female lead characters, a tendency toward history and fantasy (and historical fantasy)... I'm terribly predictable. But they're all such good comics! Must reads, every one.