Too Tired for Coherency
May. 9th, 2007 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
itsallovernowAs some people may know, LA is currently on fire (Griffith Park in particular). There've been evacuations of people, of the Autry Museum, and I believe of the zoo. If they discover that this fire really was arson, I hope bad, bad things happen to the arsonist. Griffith Park and the surrounding areas are the eastern heart of the city, a quiet oasis, with beautiful neighborhoods and sprawling land. Places to hike and horseback ride and picnic, and park and makeout. They string Christmas lights up there every winter so people can drive through it. I hope everyone I know who lives near there is safe!!!
The air smells woody and burnt and thick, and it's just... well, it's always felt like the apocalypse would start in LA and no one would notice:)
THIS PROJECT looks fascinating. It's a ten song cycle of Farscape's second season. I wish I hadn't discovered it at work (thank LJ Seek which I'm complete addicted to) because I'm fairly sure I shouldn't listen to it at work but I'm curious enough to follow up when I get home (at midnight. Argh!!!) The singer/songwriter, Beth Kinderman, lives in Minneapolis and has played at one of the coffee houses by one of my old apartments (the one that bore more than a passing resemblance to both the Paper Street house and the basement from the Blair Witch project. The one with the ceiling that had caved in on previous tenants.) I like that kind of weird fannish six degrees.
If anyone has not read THIS yet, go do so because I laughed so hard yesterday I had to go hide by the elevators until I could breathe again. Sometimes I miss the canny, cunning simplicity of dogs. (M. and I watched a band on Letterman called Cat Empire a few nights ago, and it made me think of how fruitless it would be to have an empire of cats. An entire citizenry that won't do what the hell you tell them to, will pee on everything, get high off of grass, and insist that despite the obvious food in the bowl, you are in fact starving them. Then rub their face in an embarrassing body part or clothing article and try and take over your furniture.)
It reminds me of my sister's dalmation who would put his face in ANYTHING, and always suffered the consequences. He got stuck in a cardboard ice cream box once, weaving all over the kitchen like Stevie Wonder on a bender, whacking into the cupboards, all the while trying to get that last, tiny, imaginary droplet of ice cream before someone came to chastise him and strip him of his ice cream crown.
Also, that first line of a story meme is pretty neat (I always feel like a dork using language like that, but honestly, for those of us brought up in the 70's it is a constant effort to reform our language so that we sound moderately hip, and unfortunately, in 10 more years, when I have hopefully reproduced and am still calling my offspring "Dude" since that has wormed it's way inexoribly into my vocabulary, I will long for the days when I was fine with "neat.")
Behind the LJ cut are the first lines of some of my stories. If you're up to it, take a line and write a story/drabble using it as the first line.
(I got this from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
6beforelunch.)
First Lines
These aren't necessarily here because of a particular preference for them, more because they were marked and easy to find and didn't reference anything specifically enough to be a damper for a future story. Of course, I'm not sure how well MY first lines lend themselves to other peoples work because I tend to know the first line of a story the instant the whole thing comes to me.
1.She decided to take her parasol because the day is bright, shiny despite the dust, and it made her think of that little bar on Hecuba’s moon that served drinks in clay cups with tiny little umbrellas.
2.He sat on the edge of the bed, digging the heel of his hand into his eye sockets, trying to pry away the exhaustion, the haunts and spectors that flitted and flashed behind his lids like a bad B movie on a drive in screen.
3. He sets them up one by one, the soldiers that are finished, placing the stylized pieces onto their squares on the big, tiered board he had found in a junk shop on Merit. The front line on his side is only half completed, and the row is filled in with curled metal shavings. Her side has a full complement. (Technically a whole paragraph, but...)
4. He's long given up thoughts of meltingly hot days, sunscreen strained and thin and coconuty spread on long limbs, giving them a sheen that says summer and languid hours; that says cold drinks sweaty with condensation, drops of water rolling down sweet skin, slipping into half covered cleavage.
5. Even in August, early morning in the mountains nips and snaps.
6. It should have been easy. It was never easy.
7. One of the things they never told you about space exploration was that it was an absolute bitch to get Scarran out from under your fingernails.
8. She cuts through their bindings in silence, no sound of voices, traffic – pedestrian or otherwise - just the sawed fraying of strands snapping against a sharp blade, of heavy breathing and the skipping hum of an old generator powering a fan in the ceiling.
9.You draw away because his almost death, his false absence is still fresh behind your eyes, and truth be told – and they are all about the truth tonight, so much truth your teeth ache, your head spins – you're still angry, can still taste frustration, fear, the rush of near loss.
10. It was the smile that did it, that wicked fast grin, all white teeth and fake gleaming innocence, the way she grinned at him like she'd never done anything wrong, wouldn't even consider it, and if you believe that, I've got some nice land on Mars to sell you.
The air smells woody and burnt and thick, and it's just... well, it's always felt like the apocalypse would start in LA and no one would notice:)
THIS PROJECT looks fascinating. It's a ten song cycle of Farscape's second season. I wish I hadn't discovered it at work (thank LJ Seek which I'm complete addicted to) because I'm fairly sure I shouldn't listen to it at work but I'm curious enough to follow up when I get home (at midnight. Argh!!!) The singer/songwriter, Beth Kinderman, lives in Minneapolis and has played at one of the coffee houses by one of my old apartments (the one that bore more than a passing resemblance to both the Paper Street house and the basement from the Blair Witch project. The one with the ceiling that had caved in on previous tenants.) I like that kind of weird fannish six degrees.
If anyone has not read THIS yet, go do so because I laughed so hard yesterday I had to go hide by the elevators until I could breathe again. Sometimes I miss the canny, cunning simplicity of dogs. (M. and I watched a band on Letterman called Cat Empire a few nights ago, and it made me think of how fruitless it would be to have an empire of cats. An entire citizenry that won't do what the hell you tell them to, will pee on everything, get high off of grass, and insist that despite the obvious food in the bowl, you are in fact starving them. Then rub their face in an embarrassing body part or clothing article and try and take over your furniture.)
It reminds me of my sister's dalmation who would put his face in ANYTHING, and always suffered the consequences. He got stuck in a cardboard ice cream box once, weaving all over the kitchen like Stevie Wonder on a bender, whacking into the cupboards, all the while trying to get that last, tiny, imaginary droplet of ice cream before someone came to chastise him and strip him of his ice cream crown.
Also, that first line of a story meme is pretty neat (I always feel like a dork using language like that, but honestly, for those of us brought up in the 70's it is a constant effort to reform our language so that we sound moderately hip, and unfortunately, in 10 more years, when I have hopefully reproduced and am still calling my offspring "Dude" since that has wormed it's way inexoribly into my vocabulary, I will long for the days when I was fine with "neat.")
Behind the LJ cut are the first lines of some of my stories. If you're up to it, take a line and write a story/drabble using it as the first line.
(I got this from
6beforelunch.)First Lines
These aren't necessarily here because of a particular preference for them, more because they were marked and easy to find and didn't reference anything specifically enough to be a damper for a future story. Of course, I'm not sure how well MY first lines lend themselves to other peoples work because I tend to know the first line of a story the instant the whole thing comes to me.
1.She decided to take her parasol because the day is bright, shiny despite the dust, and it made her think of that little bar on Hecuba’s moon that served drinks in clay cups with tiny little umbrellas.
2.He sat on the edge of the bed, digging the heel of his hand into his eye sockets, trying to pry away the exhaustion, the haunts and spectors that flitted and flashed behind his lids like a bad B movie on a drive in screen.
3. He sets them up one by one, the soldiers that are finished, placing the stylized pieces onto their squares on the big, tiered board he had found in a junk shop on Merit. The front line on his side is only half completed, and the row is filled in with curled metal shavings. Her side has a full complement. (Technically a whole paragraph, but...)
4. He's long given up thoughts of meltingly hot days, sunscreen strained and thin and coconuty spread on long limbs, giving them a sheen that says summer and languid hours; that says cold drinks sweaty with condensation, drops of water rolling down sweet skin, slipping into half covered cleavage.
5. Even in August, early morning in the mountains nips and snaps.
6. It should have been easy. It was never easy.
7. One of the things they never told you about space exploration was that it was an absolute bitch to get Scarran out from under your fingernails.
8. She cuts through their bindings in silence, no sound of voices, traffic – pedestrian or otherwise - just the sawed fraying of strands snapping against a sharp blade, of heavy breathing and the skipping hum of an old generator powering a fan in the ceiling.
9.You draw away because his almost death, his false absence is still fresh behind your eyes, and truth be told – and they are all about the truth tonight, so much truth your teeth ache, your head spins – you're still angry, can still taste frustration, fear, the rush of near loss.
10. It was the smile that did it, that wicked fast grin, all white teeth and fake gleaming innocence, the way she grinned at him like she'd never done anything wrong, wouldn't even consider it, and if you believe that, I've got some nice land on Mars to sell you.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 09:09 pm (UTC)It should have been easy. It never was easy.
A supply run on a planet no one had heard of and wasn't in any of Moya's data crystals.
Perfect.
That should have been the first warning. Rule #1 in the Traveling with Crichton handbook: Nothing is ever perfect. Rule #2: Nothing is ever easy. Rule #3: If something seems perfect and is going well, Crichton will some how frell it up at the worst possible moment. Crichton claimed someone named Murphy came up with that rule, but D'Argo never met this Murphy and is sure that if he did come up with it, it was because he travelled with Crichton.
"Come on, D. You can't pin this one on me."
D'Argo turned and snarled at John.
"I will tongue you."
John stepped back, hands raised. "I;m just saying, if you want to toss around the blame, aim it at Chi, not me."
"And who was supposed to be watching her?"
"Chiana in an open market is like herding cats and you know it." John sat on the floor, leaning against the wall. "Besides, you wanted to be captain."
D'Argo growled at John, throwing an extra bit of menence in there for good measure then looked down at the outfit he was supposed to wear to the 'cleansing' ritual. When he became captain, this was not the kind of thing he thought he would be doing. The pink fabric crinkled in his hands as he tried to get it over his hips. He didn't know what a 'too-too' was or why John kept humming about swans, but he did know that regardless of his protestations, it was most assuridly all Crichton's fault.
-end
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 09:23 pm (UTC)And hee. Baby, this is fabulous.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 09:54 pm (UTC)but oh, thank you for the link about the dog story...that's pretty frelling hilarious. the dalmation story is pretty fine too.
also, i like your first lines. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 01:04 pm (UTC)*ahem*
no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 05:03 pm (UTC)*chooses to believe that it was just a poor performance, yes*
no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 05:21 pm (UTC)If you like, I could upload one of their songs for you?
Line #4, SG-1, Mitchell
Date: 2007-05-10 06:17 pm (UTC)He's long given up fantasies of campfires in sheltering woodlands, warm hearths in comfortable old houses, feather beds mounded in goose-down comforters and afghans someone's great-grandmother knitted, the homey scent of steam and the clanking in old radiators. He's long given up imagining that the engine vibration he can feel through the deck is the rumble of the 'Stang's new V-8, that the chill air passing across the exposed skin of the backs of his hands like the caress of death's fingertips isn't the cabin's atmosphere rushing past him toward the hull breach but just the cold air the blower spits out before it starts pulling heat off the engine, that in another minute the relief of warmth will creep up his legs and wash over his face, that he'll die the easy, sleepy carbon-monoxide death instead of the grisly death of vacuum exposure. He's long given up trying to remember whether suffocation or freezing or decompression gets you first, and which one hurts the most.
But he hasn't given up on rescue, and he hasn't given up on her, and he knows she hasn't given up on him; and after the tingly chill of beaming transport seeps through his body like the blessed warmth of a car heater, a mounded bed, a blazing fireplace, a crackling campfire, a summer's day, when she turns from the control panel to make sure she's got him, there's a sheen of perspiration on her neck and face and down her long arms, a cleavage-bound droplet sliding between the knobs of her collarbone, a smile of profound relief spreading across her face, and he doesn't need his imagination to warm him anymore.
Re: Line #4, SG-1, Mitchell
Date: 2007-05-10 07:00 pm (UTC)Re: Line #4, SG-1, Mitchell
Date: 2007-05-10 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-16 04:29 am (UTC)Beth Kinderman