Ecce Ija

Today a flurry of unconnected info, funny, creepy and some just a bit boring.
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My recent experiences in crowded public places such as shopping malls, main streets, stairs, passages and so on prove undisputedly that every pregnant woman would greatly benefit from one tiny yet crucial fashion accessory.

Let me describe it: imagine a wide, well fitted belly belt, lined from the inside with fleece/cotton/silk for cosiness and warmth. The outside of this belt would be a resilient, sturdy black leather covered with 3 inch long sharpened steel spikes. The fake blood stains on said spikes would make a non-obligatory addition.

Don’t you think that it would brilliantly improve the behaviour and consideration for pregnant women? Not to mention their safety when faced with rushing crowd.;->

I wonder whether some punk/metal clothing company would be interested in a new target group – mums-to-be…

By the end of this month my inner passenger will have started his seventh month with me, which means I'm 24 weeks pregnant. Wow?

( Click for boring details )

To end it on a traditional note :-)
Our cats still endure everything stoically. Wish I was a cat. ;-)

/Crossposted to Fanficrants/

Two days ago I found the story on my beloved OTP, a quite rare pairing to start with, and now even more rare, as both of them are canonically dead.
"Wheee, I love you, author," I thought.

I discovered that it had a logical and creative plot, was as canon compliant as possible (with the understandable difference of my OTP being alive), and the erotica was brilliant. Did I mention that the fic was deliciously long? Over 100 thousand words, mind you.
"Wheee, I love you, author," I thought again.

Well... And then, after several wonderful chapters, the author decided that she'd like her puppets better if she turned one of them into an angsty, tortured, self-hating whipping boy and all the other characters into emotionally unstable abusive idiots, not able to remember their own motivations and opinions from mere days ago. Her aim? To make us love the poor misunderstood and despised woobie even more.

More specifically:
- He didn't have to be whipped by an abusive teacher at school.
- He needn't have been humiliated and shouted at in each and every chapter, by both sides of the war.
- The sexual abuse scene wasn't just unnecessary, it was out of character for both of them.
- Eating disorder? Puh-lease...
- His slight death wish might have been canonical, but the author took a personality trait and turned it into a pathetic tear-jerker.
And so on and on...

I felt cheated, you know? Character and relationship development does not equal OOC-ness and piling on improbable amounts of really pointless angst.

By the way, why so many authors forget that bisexual people in fact exist, huh?
If the character was decidedly heterosexual in canon (and he was!), I would suppose it'd be easier and more plausible to make them bi instead of homosexual. The fact that he once loved a woman does not diminish the value of his current relationship with a man, honestly!

Jeez, and the fic started as a really wonderful, creative idea. Not to mention that new fics with my beloved pairing are disappointingly rare now. Grrr.

And you know what? Despite all those drawbacks I couldn't stop reading. I raged at the psychological improbabilities, I sneered at the idiocies and still I read.

If the story had been a complete waste of time, I'd have left it unfinished, but in fact what made the whole experience that painful were its undeniable good parts.
Not to mention that no amount of beta would've fixed it, 'cause the angst *was* in fact the plot propeller. Ugh.

I like my Snack bitter and dark and slightly filthy but not without humour. I like it clever, plot-driven, adult and (I know, hardly possible) mostly canon compliant. I just ask for the impossible, don't I?

Lamb in vegetable sauce, based on moroccan tagine

Last year our annual SAS translators/testers meeting took place in France. That's why we've been wined and dined in a little Moroccan restaurant. :-) It was the first time I encountered a dish called tagine (or tajine) and I fell in love with it.

Basically speaking it's a meat & vegetables stew, cooked very slowly in a ceramic "hat", also called tagine. Why "hat"? Because it's a wide bowl, covered with a conical shape, not unlike a wizard's hat, but with a small hole on the top. It enables the slow simmering of the food in the lukewarm oven (100-130 centigrades), without losing much water. In result the food is exquisitely tender and savoury.

Well, my bastardized version was prepared much, much faster and sadly not in the tagine (sigh), but I sticked to canonical ingredients instead. :D

( Lamb tagine )

I decided to enclose another category of entries, tagged simply Food.
Cooking, or at least Free Chaotic Cooking (I'm not disciplined in the slightest) is one of my top ten beloved activities, along with reading, having pleasant dreams, mountain hiking and canoing. ;-)

The recipes you'll find here will appear intermittently and certainly won't be very precise; I usually make it up as I go along with the preparation, even if the muse strikes me beforehand. So, there won't be many 13,45 grams or half-and-a-quater of a teaspoon. :-) In a result I can't be held responsible for the food rebelling and not tasting as it should. Still, I'll try to write down approximate proportions of ingredients.

( A chicken-coconut soup behind the cut )

I'm fully aware that it's riveting only just for me and Marek, and the rest of you find it slightly boring, but hey, it's the easiest outlet for my joy. :)

Today I had my first ultrasonography of the fetus.
The whole procedure was unfortunately a bit bleargh and eww if you get my meaning (usually all the gyne examinations are), but I saw my child-to-be eventually. :D
Well, in fact, it was the doctor who could discern all the finer details like hands, fingers, legs and so on. I mostly saw a generally organic blob (48 millimeters!) with little something pulsing inside (the heart) and with a thin line all along it (the spine). It was equally bizarre and joyous. Sadly the printer wasn't working so I couldn't get the USG prints.

Marek dutifully sat behind the doors and later listened to my enthusiastic account while watching the examination's report. I'm sure it says something unflattering about my maternal instincts that I felt more excited by the data on the report (various risks probabilities, measurements, line plots) than by the visuals on the computer screen. ;-) Hopefully this just means that my dominant sense - instead of sight or hearing - is analysis. ;D (Joking, joking.) Besides, I must share this ailment with Marek, as the first thing he did was to make a copy of the report.

Whew. I feel as if the great weight got off my chest. Everything's all right, all the measurements are well within the norms. And I saw my own, private, almost 5 cm long organic blob. :D

It's the most hilarious, innocent and completely devoid of inner depth dream I've had in a long time. I woke up smiling and wishing it was made into a real TV series. I'd have adored it as a child. Scratch that, I'd love it now.
The dream had a proper title, as it was dreamt mainly in form of the black and white TV series from late fifties. Sometimes, when the action got intense, the camera was shifting to the 1st person and turned colour. Still, I liked it even more when "watched" as if on the old TV screen.

The Amazing Adventures of Professor Thor Heyerdahl and His Fearless Companions.
music - Mos Eisley Cantina (this jazzy piece) and other sunny quick-steps

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Lena? Whenever you decide to abandon Europe and to bring Hollywood to its knees with your directing and script-writing genius, will you be so wonderful and direct this? I'll be deeply grateful. :D

As the title suggests, I'm pants at keeping my own personal secrets longer than few days. I just can't do it - even not talking about Christmas presents (what, for whom and so on) seems a difficult and unnecessary hardship. ;-)

So, ladies and gentlemen... (omgomgomg)

I
AM
PREGNANT
!!!!
Whoohooo!!! :D

The little cluster of cells is 20 days old now and for the time being seems to be a wonderfully polite guest, causing me no discontent. No nausea, no Sudden Stink Sensitivity Attack, no bouts of unexpected tiredness... Even my acne seems to vanish. ;-> I can only hope that our peaceful coexistence will continue for another 8.5 months (and much much longer after that). :D

The due term is January 10th (with a confidence limits of roughly 7 days), which - knowing my family's early birthing habits - means that I'll probably have an exciting New Year's Eve party in the hospital's maternity ward. ;-) Still, I won't be alone - Marek wants to help.

More boring info:
my firm surprisingly accommodating (they practically agreed to everything I suggested)
mum and mum-in-law ecstatic
dad a bit shocked but still ecstatic
dad-in-law (reportedly) speechless
Marek happy and in awe
the doctor, hospital, and Birthing Classes are being chosen now (ungh)
books on pregnancy bought yesterday
cats stoic and patient :-)

...wish I were a cat... :D

EDIT on May 13th:
I've booked an appointment with the doctor (finally we decided whom to choose) and I'm slightly anxious about it. Thankfully Marek will accompany me.
Birthing Classes chosen.
cats stoic and patient :-)

...wish I were a cat... :D

Almost two weeks ago Lena and me saw Watchmen. I loved it dearly, but please, please don't expect a detailed review from me. It'll surely appear in some way or another ('cause the only thing better than a long detailed review is a long detailed data analysis); but now I just got a thought:

Watchmen author, Alan Moore was also a creator of V for Vendetta. In both stories one of the leading characters is a masked uncompromising man, deeply hurt by the world. In both of these stories these men refer to their masks as their "true face", dismissing what's behind. V doesn't have a face, literally (at least it's strongly suggested); Rorschach calls his face "a mask".

Well, to be honest, almost everything else is completely different: Rorschach is an antisemitic paranoid right-wing extremist, with a strong sense of warped honour, while V is an anarchist paranoid left-wing extremist, with a strong sense of warped honour. ;-)

Still, I deeply appreciate the juxtaposition of the mask and the face. Must look up other Moore's characters; maybe it's his favourite kink. :-)

BTW there are some theories, although I don't know how strongly supported by the comic canon, that Bruce Wayne is also a mere mask for the Batman. Personally, I beg to differ. Nobody can flirt that skillfully without enjoying it. :-)

To Jim Gordon’s surprise, adjusting to the new surroundings took amazingly short time. After all, the most important thing, his job, remained practically unchanged. Oh, surely Barbara was a bit taller and his son proved to be younger – but still named after him.

Other changes took some time to get used to. Montoya, for instance, wore her badge on her collar and got herself an irritating goody-two-shoes boyfriend, but her skill as a nose grew even better. The brute police force was as usual: brute, rock-hewn and dumb, with an accent you could crush rocks with.

But the city. Oh, the city was the same, no matter how they named her. Dangerous, dirty, smelly and cruel, and so utterly, utterly beautiful. Some things never changed.

The high society and assorted celebrities were still as dim-witted and irritating at the balls, which turned to be exactly as boring as before. The formal clothes, the bane of his existence, still made Jim feel uncomfortable and dressed like a pillock.

What came as a biggest surprise, was Bruce. Slightly older, maybe a bit thinner and paler, and certainly not afraid to use his influence. Finally grown into his parents inheritance, a veritable patrician of the city.

At some ungodly hour, so early that in fact it could be very late, Jim stood at attention, rapping out his weekly report, gaze fixed at the point two inches over and three inches left from Wayne’s ear. The words flew relentlessly. The Mob, the Guilds, assassins, thieves, beggars, traffic, disturbances, pursuits…

Wayne observed him from behind his stapled fingers, face inscrutable. The litany dragged on.

“Is that all?”, he asked calmly.

“Yes, sir.”

“In that case don’t let me detain you, Commander.”

Jim saluted sharply and with a furiously ground “Sir”, left the room. The sheer arrogance of this bastard, he thought. Some things never changed.

Considering that I have no intention of torturing myself with American Psycho nor with The Reign of Fire, my weekly Bale watching addiction has come to a sad end. I'll just have to wait for Terminator, the Salvation for my Bale-y hit. ;-)

Wouldn't be myself, though, if I hadn't attempted to mold my fangirlishness into something apropriately nerdy, i.e. a nice data table. With ranges. Tied ranges. And weighs on those ranges. Yum.

( Some Big Bad Science )

Ranges for CB movies

movie	amb.	CBnice	CBpretty	didilike	aver.	place
3:10 to Yuma	3	1	1,5	1	1,625	1
Equilibrium	7	7	1,5	6	5,375	7
Prestige	3	6	7	3	4,75	5,5
Batman Begins	5,5	4	4	5,5	4,75	5,5
Dark Knight	5,5	5	3	4	4,375	4
Machinist	1	2,5	5,5	2	2,75	2
Rescue Dawn	3	2,5	5,5	5,5	4,125	3

( Some Big Bad Science )

Revised range table for CB movies

movie	place
3:10 to Yuma	1
Equlibrium	7
Prestige	4,5
Batman Begins	6
Dark Knight	4,5
Machinist	2
Rescue Dawn	3

( Some Big Bad Science )

For a long time I dreaded The Machinist. It's after all a thriller, the genre I don't like and most often don't understand a reason for. Thrillers are at odds with my sense of logic and rationality, and their mood equally irritates me and scares me sh..less. To sum it up, I see no reason for watching something that does not make sense AND makes me feel uneasy.
Well, but this one had Bale in it. Resistance was futile. ;->
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Hardly ever do I refuse an invitation to a war movie. It's one of my favourite genres, provided that the war in question is not just a excuse for big guys with bigger guns causing even bigger explosions.

Rescue Dawn though directed by Herzog, and with Bale playing the main character, failed short of my expectations. Maybe I shouldn't have expected that much?
The premise, although quite simple, immediately fascinated me: during Vietnam war a young pilot is shot down, captured, tortured, imprisoned and subsequently he prepares and executes a successful escape. Add to this that the story is based on a real man's experiences: Dieter Dengler in fact served in US Air Force in mid-sixties, got shot down and barely survived his escape from Laotian war camp. “Wheee!”, I thought. “Heroic handsome men in dreary predicaments!”
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Our office kitchenette brings out the worst in people, or rather it simply uncovers their true colours by forcing them to interact in an environment lacking in basic supplies, such as coffee, cups and space. ;-) Last week's leitmotif was bawdy though unintentional innuendo.
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On a less frivolous note, Lena and I continue our trip through Christian Bale's filmography, inspired by his Batman performance.
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I wrote once on my slightly shameful reading preferences: which pairings, no matter how ludicrous, make my slasher's heart happy, and why. The strong tendency for unrequited love could be easily discerned, with a striking exception of Rincewind, whom I wish only the best and the most requited. ;-)

Another one of my emotional kinks may not seem so tame in comparison, though it's probably the oldest and the strongest of them all. It certainly precedes my fascination with slash, my penchant for unrequited-ness and even my love for underfed longhaired protagonists, which I've been declaring at least since I was eleven. It's a hero's death.
( Explanation )

Wherefore the issue? I watched 2007 version of “3:10 to Yuma” last Saturday and it brought me to my knees. The movie pushes all of my buttons so deftly that it as well could have been hand-customized exclusively just for me. The movie combines neatly the action genre (I’m a gun-loving girl) and the moral parable. ( Rec behind the cut )

An eye candy:

Dream 1. Genre - ( action )

Dream 2. Genre - ( horror/adventure )

Dream 3. Genre: ( catastrophic/fantasy )

Dear subconsciousness,
Honestly, what's up with your water obsession?
Yours truly,
the conscious one - Ija

Poszłam dziś o krok dalej w zamienianiu tego journala w rushoffy blogasssek. Nie, nie będę tu wklejać lolcatów, ani zapisywać co dziś zjadłam, ale eksperymentalnie pozwolę sobie na nieregularne wklejanie co ciekawszych snów. Snów fabularnych, snów akcji, snów-westernów i snów s-f.
Raczej daruję sobie szaleńczo głąbokie interpretacje w ujęciu mistrzów psychoanalizy. Proponuję potraktować je jako zalążki fajnych pomysłów na opowiadania, za których napisanie raczej nigdy się nie wezmę. Jeśli kogokolwiek natchną do tworzenia - poczuję się zaszczycona. Tak czy inaczej - miłej lektury.

( Wydział )

Wakisashi-girl once wrote something that made me think. :-) It was just a small off-topic reply in a post centered on a completely different issue, but it got to me.

She said that although she adores the HP universe, she doubts she'd ever write anything for that fandom. The same goes for me - I love HP world, but probably will never write anything for it. This universe is overwhelmingly big, and I'm afraid I'd never give it the justice it deserves.

When I try to think up something Potterish I end tangled in technical issues. Seems that every time I try to follow the plot, figure up characters' motivations, make them interact - the technical minutiae pop up and demand to be solved right now, detracting me from the matter at hand.

Example? I've had (and still do) an idea how to make Sirius' comeback canonically correct without wiping off the majority of books no 6 and 7. Noble quest, that, isn't it? Incidentally (my foot...) this idea also included my favourite HP pairing, i.e. Snack.
Everything should have started with Albus requesting Snape to construct a magical portrait of Sirius, in hope of obtaining some information about the locket and horcruxes.

A normal author would skip over the preparations, give the readers two or three paragraphs of pseudo-technobabble and then focus on characters' interactions.
I, on the other hand, kept on hammering the details of these preparations - that there's some truth in the belief in photos stealing a bit of man's soul, that with a careful extraction and compilation said copies and impressions taken from many photos can work as a patchwork, which in turn can be applied to the canvas in order to create a faithful living portrait... and so on and on.

I caught myself checking up the Wikipedia, to confirm the differences between Antarctic and Greenlandish blue ice and then checking up my university textbooks for memory storage theories - and please, don't even ask me why I needed this. I'll start and won't stop. The same goes for every HP plotbunny I happen upon - transfiguration (Are magical substances transfigurable? Do their inherent magical properties change? How? Is it possible to create potions/wands using transfigurated ingredients?), love magic (won't even start on that), Deathly Hallows, horcruxes, metamorphmagic etc. etc.

I've just wanted some hot Snack action, dammit! With a healthy dose of danger and angst and whatnot. But nooo. It would require an actual writing and it's easier to delve into technicalities. Seems that technicalities are in fact more my turn-on than a slashy hotness.
Isn't it disturbing?

Must be the laziness, I guess. As long as I keep on molesting all those details I don't have to, y'know, actually WRITE anything.
Sigh. Makes sense.

I blame Lena for my new flight of fancy. ;-)
It's her who's mainly responsible for my contacts and interactions with a superhero genre - thanks to her I fell in love with Iron Man and now (maybe not with so much fervor) I sincerely love Jim Gordon from Batman universe. Fancy that: in a movie stuffed with three squee worthy eye-candies, my choice was a middle-aged, tired cop.
Don't ask. Go watch him. Just watch him.

To spare you a long and hard to understand speech filled with "squeee", "cute", "Sam Vimes", "Gotham is Ankh-Morpork" and so on - a cracky comic:

( Optimistic )