Pulled straight from Skorp's lj, so that I don't have to retype it or sort out who to give credit to a second time.

Borrowed from Kit, whose LJ name I can't spell anyway and don't think she'd want spread over the internet:

A quick game of "name the song and artist." Because on Livejournal, every repost is a repost repost.

Step 1. Put your playlist on random.
Step 2. Post a line from the first 25 songs that play.
Step 3. Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.

For the sake of sanity, she modified the selection process a bit.
*No instrumental tracks. Should be obvious, but this does axe a good bit of my library.
*No one-lyric songs. "Is There Anybody Out There" is a lovely track and all, but it kinda gives itself away.
*In the same vein, all songs must have at least one complete, coherent lyric that doesn't include the song title.

For each guess you venture, list the number, song name, and artist. I’m screening comments to give everyone a fair chance, but I’ll acknowledge those who answer correctly in comments, if I get around to it.

Bonus points if you get a memory I associate with the song, and identify the version.
Googling is cheating.

There.  I'm going to modify the rules further.  You get extra special bonus points if you can describe how a song relates to one of my characters.  As a hint, if it's Queen, it probably relates to or served as inspiration for Will at *some* point. 

Apparently (I got this from word of mouth, rather than reading others' journals), there's an idea of offering up to do a director's commentary style evaluation of a piece of one's own writing.  I happen to like the idea, so I'm making that offer here and now, in the public.  (I think I know how to do stuff friends-only, I just want this offer public.  Makes for more potential requests.)

So!  Anybody who cares, pick something I've written or helped co-author and I'll go through giving my thoughts as I re-read it a few times.  I have a small handful of short stories up on the tC Wiki and far more posts in tC itself than I can remember.  If there's ever been one that you were particularly interested in, enjoyed especially, and wanted to know precisely what I had in mind at the time and what I think of it now, give me a head's up and I'll see about commenting.  I keep many, but not all, of my posts as notepad files on my computer.  If you say "The one with Joe and Robert and the cake launcher in the torpedo factory," I'll probably be able to remember which one you mean, but a link would be very greatly appreciated.

I also reserve the right to refuse requests and not give any reasons for the refusals.  Just, you know, in case.

Edit: Since Jon went and gave a link to a list of significant Ash posts as potential suggestions for commentary, I'm going to try to list (from memory) various posts that might be interesting for other people to see and force me to give insight/figure out what I was doing.

There's actually a fair amount of backstory stuff that comes out about Will during Fall of the Dark Goddess, which might be interesting just to figure out.  (It's not like I remember writing it.): http://forums.megatokyo.com/index.php?showtopic=1707625

Two pieces from the end of the Corporate Takeover arc come to mind: Shiri and Will's cooking attempts; the final post itself, Will and Erden's fight scene.

My early stuff in the soft canon threads ought to be worth a look.  Laura and Will's first date; the Heist series of posts; Shiri being the only person at Will's housewarming party.  Somewhere in the middle was the Big and Serious conversation between Laura and an unnamed vampire resident of the Hollows.  From the third thread and this past year... I'd say, look at any of the posts written with Saeko as a costar.  In each of those, I think I've managed to impart something about my characters which is worth commenting on.

A word, because there are some non-assertive peoples out there.  I want to do some of this stuff.  I think it'd be really fun.  I just also think it'd be horribly selfish to just pick some random thing and work on it for myself--or more correctly, I don't think it'd be a very good read if I just did that.  Besides, then I'd be taking away my efforts from posting.  (The selfishness part.)  So what I really want is to do this for someone, giving both the sign that they're interested and that I'm rewarding their interest.

Really, you'd be doing me a favor by requesting something for commentary, because it excuses all the random self doubt *and* gives me motivation.  So yeah.  (This is mostly in response to Jon saying he didn't like demanding things of people, and so was just going to offer up his own posts for commentary.  Silly kitty.)

My last LJ post is from August, innit?  That means that I've had tons and tons of random complaining, angsting, bitching, etcing, that I could've thrown up here.

My policy, as always, is "Fuck that shit", because I'm a private person who shares his thoughts directly with people.

Note to self: Figure out how to make my lj only readable by mutual friends, like Kit's is.

Time passed. It happens.

The deal, which I realized sometime after my last post and presumably before this one, is that I'm a data/info/content consumer, not much of a provider. Who knows if anybody reads this. I certainly can't tell.

I may try to get myself to make a post on a specific night of the week, force myself to say something. Who knows, once more.


...Coulda sworn I had more to say. Damn headache's coming back. Goodnight.

I finally bookmarked this, maybe I'll get to checking it more now. I go to sleep around 11pm only to get out of bed by 2:30am, untired, shaky, and with a night's worth of sweat. Third time in four nights, the only time it didn't happen was when I didn't go back to sleep at dawn. Bad dreams, or heat, one friend suggests. Perhaps going to sleep listening to sirens that would make Baltimore proud wasn't the best of choices I made tonight.

One good thing about this condition: I'm enjoying XTC's The Big Express. Haven't been able to do that in... months? Over a year? Always got bogged down by lyrics, by music less refined than their later work, and couldn't just throw my mind into the hyperactive early stuff they did.

Wait, what was I going to write about? I can't remember.
POINTS OF INTEREST:

1. Seem to be on course for finishing the Career 101 class I took this spring. (Three tries. Damn you, word, damn you.)
2. Enrolled for two classes over the summer, profs with good reputations.
3. Jury Summons for the first week of class.

Note how #3 isn't fun.

Fuck it, I can't remember where I was going, I'll post this and adjust some of the formatting. Expect the colors to look horrid in the in-between stages.

4am snuck up on me again.

tC has moved forward one lurching step. I continue to write related works.

The Planet Terror soundtrack is really good. It makes me remember all that I liked about Grindhouse.

I need to start adding friends, let people know this journal exists, other than two guys who'll never read it.

For the WoW players: I have just now, after two and a half years of noncontinuous playing, made my first Priest in WoW. A troll, just so I can go "Why am I troll priest?" later in life.
She is named Travoria. Give yourself a cookie if you know why.

All livejournals exist to complain.

Or to network parties, I'm told. But none of my friends are nearby enough to network such a party.
See? Complaining in the third line already.


I got the idea to finally make this journal after reading Dracula, by Bram Stoker. I specify the author because apparently some people think only of the media character, not of the book itself. The book's dry, slow, old, and amazing. It is also written entirely in journal form. This presents a problem for the final chapters, as it's a chase scene and Bram liked to have the journal entries be from fresh in the characters' minds, not months, or years later.

While Dracula was one thing that got me thinking of an lj, the other was dreams. Having a place to sit and write out the vivid dreams I was having would be nice, and so I could easily show them to all who cared. Of course, I said was. I can't remember when the last was. Months ago.


I suppose I should explain something about myself to whoever finds this lj randomly searching for "Vavrek". I thought of being witty and denying you an explanation, but I figure I'll just be unhelpful in other ways. I'm John's son, off in the west.

There. That should be enough for anybody I care about who doesn't know who I am.