1. This never woulda happened if the Doctor hadn't been such a dick to Harriet Jones Prime Minister.

2. Is "Uncle Jack" a metaphor for "Uncle Rusty"?  Making me the grandson?  Because that's how I feel.

3.Great, now Jack has all of Jack's annoying qualities plus Ten's one annoying quality.

4. Screw this.


...

5. I still love Gwen and Rhys.  And Lois.

let's talk ballgown!

These are my pocket hoops:

 

I'm a bit concerned because I used plastic stuff instead of reed and I'm not sure they'll hold up under too many petticoats, but we shall see.  They are made of broadcloth, twill tape, plastic stuff, the same stuffing I used for Tubby Dalek, and love.

Also, I wish dresses nowadays could have pockets that big.  It's amazing!  They're like two little TARDISes on my hips.

I wore them around the house all night last night (yes, over my pyjamas).  I discovered why lazyboy armchairs did not exist two hundred years ago.

Next up, I must finish my chemise (meaning hem the bottom and the sleeves) and I get started on my stays.  Which will be light pink.  :D  With black ribbon.  I'm using JP Ryan patterns, but my grandmom and I are going to attempt to add a front lacing to the stays as well so I can get 'em on easier.

The panniers, though?  I made them all by myself.  I feel so special.

WHAT THE BLOODY BYZANTINE JESUS ON A STICK?!?!?

WHY??

Oh God I can't not rant about this.  Let me cut for spoilers.

( Spoilers and ridiculous attempts to monitor my language. ) 

I wanted Clem and Wilf to get their own spinoff...

Ianto is so gay you can smell it!!!

Okay I'm going to bed now. 

Now that I don't have a job for the school year anymore and since my major is, as everyone is quick to tell me, borderline useless in the US, I was looking at internships for next summer.  In the process the outdated search-y site I was using came up with an internship at the UNC Press.  Sounds good, right?  I could intern at some place that's right there in my town during my off-hours at school.  I suck at communicating online, but I decided to man up and follow the link.

Unfortunately, the search-y site was, as I said, outdated, and the link was dead.  So I found the UNC Press page through google and I emailed the first name on the contact list basically saying, "Hi, I know it's late notice, but I just heard you guys do internships and I'd be very interested in filling a position if you have a spare one for next year or the year afterward.  I'll be a junior and I'd love to get my foot into the door of the publishing industry."   That was the gist, anyway.  Also, that was probably a month ago.

Today, I got a vaguely cryptic reply from the assistant to the editor-in-chief:

"Hi Erin--

I'm not sure what our openings look like this fall, but write me tomorrow.

Thanks,
Zach"

In the signature beneath that was his full name and street address, along with a link to get on their mailing list and stuff like that.

So... what?  Email him tomorrow?  Write him a letter tomorrow?  And by tomorrow... why?  I mean, I understand maybe if he meant write him a letter tomorrow (ie Wednesday, which is technically today) but if he meant email me tomorrow... well, I guess that wouldn't make sense.

Then what do I write?  The same thing I emailed?  Include a resumé?  What's going on here?

I fail at the professional world already.
 

Watching POTC for the first time since I went all 18th century mad. Now it's twice as interesting! I've always loved this movie, but I stopped watching it after the second and third came out and annoyed me. And then I got mad at Johnny Depp and I've never liked Orlando Bloom and I have an on-and-off love/hate thing for Keira Knightley... but I stay for frikking Norrington and Jonathan Pryce. And Geoffrey Rush! Anyway.

So now I'm nitpicking at their costumes, though technically my expertise is in what was popular with the French elite and these people are clearly not in France, so. But the wigs and tricorn hats are all kinds of awesome. And there's a whole factory's worth of gilding in every shot, which is even more beautiful. Elisabeth's dress, the one she receives as a gift in the first scene... it's kind of a robe à la française, I guess? Her hoops aren't very impressive.

And hey! Young Elisabeth was in School Reunion, the episode with Anthony Stewart Head, who was in Merlin, which I was just watching on NBC!

Ooh! The ceremony scene in the shot that whizzes by the cello player, this lady walks by with a freaking epic robe à la française and a pretty parasol! Oooh. Also, screw the blacksmith-pirate, I loves me some Norrington. The third movie angered me so. It killed two of my three favourite characters. D:< For no reason!

For anyone who owns this movie on DVD, watch the commentary with Keira Knightley and Norrington (Jack Davenport?). They're so hilarious. I love that thing almost more than the actual movie.

Wait wait wait I'm calling shenanigans! Elisabeth's underthings! What the heck is all that?? She loses the dress (which didn't seem to have any hoops beneath it somehow) and then Jack cuts off her stays (which they call a corset--fail!) and she should be left in a chemise... but she seems to have some other corset thingy on over a chemise with really bizarrely poofy sleeves. How exactly could sleeves that big fit under a dress with the popular tight sleeves of the time, ey?

Speaking of poofy sleeves, let's talk about my new favourite era of fashion to research--the 1830's. That's right, The Stuff Cosette Would Have Worn.

So, somehow fashion went from my favourite, the side hoops and the tight elbow-length sleeves with flounces, to the early 19th century gowns with high waists and straight silhouettes (think Baptistine--I LOVE her) to the maddest ideas I've ever seen.

Ladies and gentlemen (let's not kid ourselves, no gentlemen will be clicking on this cut) I present... the 1830's:

( Prepare for some seriously bizarre trends. )

Oh! Have some what-the-barricade-boys-were-wearing:

( Tight pants and pinched waists! )

I like to think that last one might be something Montparnasse would flip for.

Speaking of which, I'm in the process of coming up with a new Montparnasse for my fanfic. I've got that emo one from Charmer of the Shadows, Jules, and I've got this really cold, hateful one from a bunch of oneshots, Marcel, who seems to always wear straight black as though he's in mourning, only changing the colour of his cravat. He's pure evil, but kind of dull. So I'm getting me a new one who really would wear that purple coat. He's going to be a lot of fun, possibly very John Jo Flynn-y (based on rumour, as I've never seen the legendary performance for myself).

A last word about Pirates of the Carribean: Elisabeth must be something of a hussy... it's appalling how unashamed she is to be seen by men in her nightgowns and her underthings--especially WET underthings and strange men!  

I should really buy The Duchess on DVD.

ETA: Cosette's dress in Québec Les Mis is perfect!  Big sleeves, wide neck, belted waist!

However, I noticed a little somethin' about this POTC movie.  The dress Barbossa gives Elisabeth (which the internet keeps saying is red, but I'm 100% it's purple) has big sleeves, a low, pointed waist, and a wide neckline.  All its bigness of skirt seems to be around the bottom.  It's very 1830's, just like this picspam... so can Barbossa time travel?  Someone write me a crack fic.  And let it involve the Doctor somehow.

Also, her first dress is indeed a robe à la française, though the sleeves are all wrong and, as I mentioned, its hoops disappear in the water.  Apparently the dress she wears at the end of the film will be a robe à l'anglaise, the française's homely cousin.  But this red/purple dress from the whole midsection of the film is all wrong for the time period and all right for at least the late 1820's.  Why?  And why are the men so successfully dressed (for the most part) when there's such a glaring fail in the middle of Elisabeth's costumery?  Or is that dress from another time period pre-18th century that I don't know about?

The scene: 10:30pm the night before a big theme park trip that my friends and I had been planning since spring break. I was actually about to go to bed, because I wanted to get plenty of sleep before I had to leave my house around 8:30am.
The backstory: there were originally five, but one lives too far away and one backed out last week due to a dislike of rollercoasters (I was initially angry, but only because I wish she'd been honest earlier about the problem instead of pretending she was excited and then trying to find random excuses not to go, but we talked it out and I think we're on lovely terms yet again), so I invited our mutual friend from my cinema to take her place and round the group out to four, an ideal theme park number.
The characters: Me, Loony, whom you know to some extent, and "Friend," who has been having trouble keeping up with the rest of us this summer because she claims that her job, working for her father, is keeping her to busy (never mind that I was holding down two jobs till last Thursday, one of which required a thirty-minute commute, and I have no problem keeping up with everyone else). Let it also be known that I had been asking for directions to her house for about a week and she hadn't given them to me, saying she needed to ask her dad. I was expected to be at her doorstep somehow by 9:00 the next morning. Is it unnatural of me to suspect she never really wanted to go if she couldn't even do something this simple to try to help me out?
And... action!




  (I'm the man.  My roommate is the lady.)

Today I was backing up my Sims 2 stuff to my massive 1.5TB external hard drive, and OMG I found all my snapshots! I thought they weren't saving properly when in fact I'd just been looking in the wrong place! And since my Sims 2 game will, in a few short weeks, be outed in favour of a Sims 3 game, I have decided it's time... for a picspam.

( REEEEEPO SIMS. REEEEEPO SIMS. )

( The Legend of Abel Magwitch. )

And that is the tale of my Repo Sims.

I also made Sims of my friends (and ABBA and Daniel Plainview...)

 

( This lj cut may contain nuts... )



( Richmulian, I'm Pathetic, and Voldetta. )

Geez, I feel like we need an intermission or something after all that.  Oh well, we shall carry on.


Now we'll look at my Vampire family, none of whom, ironically, are vampires.  Though one is a witch!

( Don't sue me, Anne-Howard Rice! )

( Rochester and Jane )


Alright, now it's Les Mis time!  *waits for applause*
...

Okay.

( Suddenly I want to hear One Day More in Simlish. )
Lastly, here are some other families I made just for the sake of having interesting characters wandering about the neighbourhood:
 
Adephaide, Nikolai, Edwob, Weeping Angel, Skippy, and Bartholemalla the penguin.  The Erolly family.

( And the others! )

And those are my Sims.

I didn't get into the whole MTECK family tree, but I feel like I've told that story before... if not, I'll save it for another, more wonderful day.

 
Holy jeebus.  I can't stop giggling.  Why did they make Tennant do that ridiculous evil laugh?

In other news, I've done translations for all twelve songs from the Mozart musical!  And found out that there's some dirty in my two favourite songs!  Gasp.  I'm working on an English website for the show.  :D

• 19:32 I had What Women Want on the telly because I'm killing time till Doctor Who comes on, and I experienced unexpected Angela Petrelli! Epic. #
• 21:43 I should stop yelling stuff out at the television... especially when other people are home. But Doctor Who is so engaging! #
• 22:12 Oh man! Why didn't I make John Lumic on the Sims 2? He could have build a whole bunch of Servos. Best idea ever. Too late. #

Tada!

• 13:55 I was reading my Julie Rose. It's fun to compare Baptistine to Cosette. (This is what I think about at work...) #

Tada!

Read Pyrexia.  It's amazing. 

I find out tomorrow if Emma is coming to Québec.  If she doesn't I won't be bothered, because I have a plan.

Ready for my plan?

I'm going to back up all my Sims to external harddrive and to megaupload, then I will uninstall all of the Sims 2 expansion packs and stuff I currently have on my laptop.  A mind-blowing amount of space will become available.

On my brother's birthday, two days before I get on the train, I am going to buy the Sims 3.  I will play it all the way there and all the way back.  Perhaps.  Or maybe I'll get bored with it.  Either way, I have a plan about which I feel quite good.

I realise that this is very similar to murdering my existing Sims, but once I'm settled and have a desktop computer maybe I'll decide to reinstall the Sims 2 and its expansion packs, and then I can bring them all back.  So it's good!  And I still have my Sims for now... I'll probably recreate some M-TECK favourites like Voldetta and Abel Magwitch.

Actually, for anyone who knows my Sims, which ones should be reborn into the world of the Sims 3?

Yay permanent cheeriness!  I'm no longer sulky.

Good things that have happened since my whining post:
-Lots of new audios!  Dance of the Vampires demo in English but with a different cast, so I think it's Steve Barton singing "Confession of a Vampire" or whatever Die unstillbare Gier is in English, meaning NOT Michael Crawford!  There's a terrible Sarah who makes me want to rip my ears off, but I think Alfred is Ari Sas or whatever his name is... maybe.  It's lovely.  I also got the Wildhorn Dracula in English and German and another Dracula musical that's French.  Plus I found the lyrics to all the songs from Mozart l'Opéra Rock and, more importantly, a synopsis!  Thank goodness.
-This deserves its own bullet.  A video of Mozart l'Opéra Rock.  I don't know exactly what it is... maybe some behind the scenes stuff and a song or two.  Either way.  I'm changing it from VOB to .avi now and it has about five minutes left.  Squee.
-I saw Molly today!  I love her.  We started planning the epic Carowinds trip and decided to bring Derek from work.  Because he needs better friends...  He's too awesome to spend his summer watching Dexter alone.  There was also lots of fun discussion about putting our faces on M&Ms and stuff just to be ridiculous.  Also, Derek has a new haircut which is adorable.

And look!  At this!



I love that little snippet of Tatoue-moi at the beginning, the a cappella-ish part. 

Look at those mad crazy costumes!  The girl singing Bim Bam Boum is particularly... interesting.  And that dance move she's doing cracks me the heck up.  A part of me wants to whiiiine that they're set in the 18th century and not taking advantage of it, but the rest of me is just staring with my mouth open at the pure awesomeness of this collision of goth, emo, and mozart.  It's just so... freaking awesome, really.

The costume on the girl singing Si je defaille is the closest thing to appropriate period in the whole show.  That quartet looks promising, actually, but it's hard to tell.  They might be in underthings.  Horrors!

Oh, and just because I never never never get tired of this song or this video (just wait till I charge my iPod again.  I guarantee the play count on this song will frikkin skyrocket.):


I'm also fond of the cello player who looks like Edward Cullen.
Plus, boys who stand way too close to each other and wear makeup.  And speak French.

It's good.

• 18:44 So Tennant will be at Comic Con. I am beyond upset. I was going to go! But my friend backed out at the last minute. Now it's too late. #
• 18:47 I don't think said friend realises that I blame her for this situation. I didn't even realise how much seeing Tennant would've meant to me. #

Tada!

 TRUE OR FALSE THIS VIDEO IS ABOUT EPONINE.

Those boys are totally Marius and and and Courfeyrac and... someone else.  I don't even care.  At 3am this is the height of hilarity.

• 23:35 Someday I will learn the difference between Norm MacDonald and Norm Lewis. Geez. #
• 23:49 Jim Gaffigan, Andy Richter, and Conan? Pasty, pasty, wonderful show. #

Tada!

ganked from sneakyangel

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strike through the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly.
Step 4: For those who are guessing -- looking the lyrics up on a search engine is CHEATING!

(I did do some skipping because some songs don't have words and other songs' first lines are the title, which would be lame.)

1. Relève la tête, Enlève ton mascaras. Tiens v'là mon kleenex, Efface ce rouge à lèvre. (Suddenly Seymour/Tout à coup Seymour, Little Shop of Horrors: 10littlebullets )
2. What do you see? You people looking at me?  You see a doll on a music box that's wound by a key.  (Doll on a Music Box, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: needsmorereverb )
3. No, stayyyyy. I don't care what you've said or done. (Prayer, Scarlet Pimpernel: elyse24601 and viorica8957 )
4. You're like voodoo, baby; you just take hold. (Voodoo Child, the Master played it on the Valiant: yourebrilliant )
5. Dieu en ciel, notre père (Comme un homme, Les Misérables: elyse24601 and misatheredpanda misatheredpanda )
6. Je sais ton amour, je sais l'eau versée sur mon corps (Mon Essentiel, Le Roi soleil: blind_baby )
7. Be still I say, for you excel / in virtues common in the infidel. (terrible!) (Kill Your Own Kind, the Lestat musical: larkacharka  and viorica8957 )
8. Ratgeber für Verliebte. Wie man ein Herz gewinnt.
9. Freedom is mine. The earth is still. (Somebody better get this one.) (Prologue, Les Misérables: elyse24601 , misatheredpanda , larkacharka , and viorica8957 )
10. You walked into the party like you were walkin' onto a yacht. (You're So Vain, Carly Simon: gipsy_dreamer )
11. Fear of an enemy, a hand to a face, words I overhear
12. Die Kaiserin ist noch sehr jung. (Eine kaiserin muß glänzen, Elisabeth: sapphirecrow , lovemoony4ever , and blind_baby )
13. Times are hard, our cash is tight, you've got the right, I've heard it all before
14. That's all very well, but what are we going to do about the Eye-talian? (A Little Priest, Sweeney Todd OBC: elyse24601 and larkacharka )
15. I don't want this, don't want to fight her. (Now That I've Seen Her/Her or Me, Miss Saigon: sapphirecrow )
16. In sixteen hundred seven we sailed the open sea (Virginia Company, Pocahontas: elyse24601 , misatheredpanda , and viorica8957 )
17. Just... don't... lie to yourself and... don't... ever pretend to be somebody just (lol)
18. I must be brave come, come what may.  Can I be saved?  Is there a way? (needsmorereverb  and blind_baby )
19. Well, I woke up today and the world seemed a restless place.  It could have been that way for me.
20. On part sans savoir où meurent nos souvenirs. Notre vie défile en l' espace d'un soupir. (if you get this one you win at life, especially since I'm not entirely sure if I'm getting that right)


I am shocked--SHOCKED!--that no one knows 13.  And I know for sure that at least two of you have 8 and 17 in your iTunes, but not terribly surprised that you didn't recognise them.

So, as some of you may have heard, this summer I'm embarking on an epic sewing project in which I'm going to be making, with the help of my lovely Grandmom, a robe à la française because they are awesome. I haven't gotten a decent start yet, unfortunately, though I do have the patterns from J. P. Ryan all ready to go. While I wait for my Grandmom to clear some space in her inexplicably-busier-than-mine schedule, I decided to go ahead and accomplish anything I could on my own. And no 18th century lady would be caught in public with her hair down! Wigs were popular for men, of course, but women usually had little hairpieces pinned in to help their own hair reach those magnificent heights of which you have no doubt heard. The powder (white, grey, and blue were popular) was then basically a great tool to make sure the different types of hair seemed to blend together. Clever, right?
 

Well, I decided to go all out and not just buy one of those awful plastic-looking wigs they sell online in the "Marie Antoinette style," but to actually buy a wig that was similar to my own hair (but much longer, of course) and style it myself.  I agree, I DO have too much free time.

Here are the before and after pictures:

   
That's not me, by the way.  Wig modelled by Molly's and my adopted child Edwob.  He's genuinely useful sometimes.

Oh, and I took pictures every step of the way, so if you're interested in making your own geeky 18th century wig, you're in luck!

( It's a tutorial! )

• 02:17 Dr Guillotin looks like a Baldwin. I mean it. Look him up. #
• 16:05 I have a recording of the Lestat musical now. I still have to believe if Armand really existed he'd have bitchslapped Drew Sarich by now. #

Tada!