Fun links and fireflies

I’ve ushered four fireflies out of the house so far this evening. (I sure hope it was four fireflies, rather than one very determined one.) Luckily, they don’t have good enough reflexes to avoid being caught.

News roundup (wow, I’ve been sitting on some of these for a while):

A bunch of studies about language, and specific ways in which it helps you perform. Fun fact: many languages don’t distinguish between “blue” and “green”. Meanwhile, Russian (and Italian) have words for “blue” and “blue” (a distinction that English doesn’t make).

The NYT profiled xkcd. Is that cool or what?

And a recovering blogging junkie lays out her story. Seriously . . . this is pretty heavy stuff. I’m going to be thinking about it for a while.

That said, I’ll end on a note of silly-yet-righteous indignation: Stop Making Movies About My Books, by Dr. Seuss (in the Onion, naturally). I want to smack the author for writing lines that scan so badly; on the other hand, I agree with every word.

Notes from Balticon 42

I knew I was among friends when I paused in the dealer’s room at a table of expensive jewelry, and the vendor complimented me on the chain on my glasses.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s . . . plastic on plastic . . .”

“But it’s shiny,” she replied, “so who cares?”

Notes from Balticon 42

This Belated Week In Erin, 5/18-5/25

Balticon notes will come later this evening. Also, it looks like somebody tried to hack my much-neglected Gaia account while I was at the con; I got emails about twenty failed logon attempts. (In other words, somebody needs to get a life.)

Emma
—Raws of most of the Emma Bangaihen chapters are now available.

Hellsing
Gentlemen, We Love War: a Millennium fanmix
Sketch – The Dance (art, PG)
Post-dance relaxation (art, PG)
‘Teggy Loves Spaghetti (art, G)

—New layout at Shine Hell. There’s also a page for fanmixes.
—The Hellsingpuffs are making a comeback! Six scenes freshly uploaded, and counting!

Next Week in Shine:
Research! Logical deduction! Catboy mischief! Pip, of all people, has a flash of insight about vampires! But will it be enough?

Balticon

Balticon 42 is upon us. (Local sci-fi convention. With a Douglas Adams theme this year, for obvious reasons.)

It’s open overnight and lasts until Monday, so the Sunday update may or may not be late, depending on when I come home and how much sleep I’ve gotten in the meantime.

…curses!

This little story took place during my drive home, so the weekend before last. I’ve been meaning to type it up ever since, but naturally, since it was the first week of summer vacation, I was hellishly busy.

If you’re following my Curious Inability to Swear, you’ll be interested. If not . . . you probably won’t. (But who knows?)

A note: this devolves into a bit of an angry rant at the end. Brace yourself.

These Weeks in Erin, 5/5-5/18

News from the past two weeks.

Fake News
A Good Night’s Sleep (fic/comic, PG)
On His Knees (comic, PG)
The Count (fic, R, highly controversial, locked; ask at reseda_ptah to be added)
68 icons

Hellsing
—Awesome new Alucard and Anderson figures!
—Volume 9 hits stores October 1, 2008

Crossovers
A fellow DeviantArtist just uploaded a whole mess of new Colbits art. O’chan go boom!
Trailer: Drawing the Line (vid, TCR/Harvey Birdman/others, PG)

Next Week in Shine:
Pip finishes cleaning up the kitchen, while Seras returns from cleaning up a crime scene. The plot relevance of both begins to appear.

Quick update

I’m home, I’m safe, I have no Internet at the house, I’m typing from a Starbucks, and I have limited battery life.

I can keep Shine up, but everything else is momentarily on hold.

Over and out.

I finished the last two pages of my final-comic, printed them out, and promptly stapled them out of order.

Way to be awake, Erin.

Page count remaining: 2. This is actually a short paper that I neglected to do in the middle of the semester. Not realizing that it would be accepted late, I took it as a calculated loss. At this point, I’m going to stand by that decision.

In which case: page count: 0.

I’ll be leaving this evening for the first leg of my drive home, stay overnight with an aunt, and return to the Internet around Sunday night. See you on the flip side.

Close call

My phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Erin?”

“Yes it is.”

“This is [name], calling from InterLibrary Loan…” (This is a program through which the college library can access books from hundreds of others. I’ve been receiving overdue notices from them for several weeks.)

“My paper is due in three hours; I’ll have the books back right after that.”

“Okay. Have a good day.”

“Cheers.”

Click.

(3 pages left to write, 1 of which is from the paper in question. 2 left to draw.)

Clawing my way towards the finish line

I’m trying very hard to concentrate, but my mind is busy flailing in circles about the way tonight’s TCR ended—and rereading my miles of notes on trauma and child abuse.

The job of my glamor-puppet, whom even then I called Appearances, was to demonstrate that everything was super keen while I was most despairing. I ran her in school elections, entered her in popularity contests, placed her on athletic teams, bought her a cheerleading outfit. For several years she won the trophies and garnered the votes….

Just you wait, Internets. Next week, I’m going to be churning out whole new ten-page papers. Of meta. On the fantastically detailed, consistent, and heartbreaking repression of one “Stephen Colbert”.

For now: 7 pages left to write, 2 left to draw.

(*sings* “Go, Speed Erin, go-ooo…”)