half a league, half a league

So today I came across this, in which Stephen Colbert crashes the party at Jon Stewart's last show to give Jon a thank you speech and then goes off the prompter and I'm pretty sure Jon almost cried. And I'm like. This was one of my oldest RPF ships and I am really really remembering why. I hope everybody sees this and writes truckloads of fic. I need it again.

Speaking of fic, I've been trying to psych myself up to write some for Generation Kill. I've been half wanting to for ages, but I can't get past how real the show feels, and it's weird to write for this in a way it never was for me, even for bandom or winter olympics ice skaters or random actors or all the RPF fandoms I've been in. It's hard for me to reconcile the fact that even in the show, the characters are real people who really went through all that war shit. I've almost finished the real Nate Fick's One Bullet Away (which is a damn good book, btw, in the tradition of war autobiographies or whatever. He's a good writer. Classics major, right? Why does this happen to me).

So for a while I figured the show was all the story I needed. Couldn't stop myself from reading the fic anyway, though, so now I've got an idea for some Brad-centric character study type stuff and it's slowly taking shape. I also kind of want to podfic And he who dies fighting has increase, by chantefable, if I can get permission. I also really want to make a Brad/Nate-focused (but overall GK) fanvid to King and Lionheart. I can't believe no one's done it already! Seriously. Listen to it. Look at the lyrics.


Seriously!! Augh. I have ideas for like all the scenes and where they should go. The imagery of "king and lionheart" is exactly how I characterize the Brad/Nate relationship, like ancient ideas of a knight and his lord and shit. The atmosphere is perfect. I just...don't know how to vid. Oops.

Anyway. I've been at my parents' house for the last few months, getting my shit together and reveling in being done with college and doing very little at all, and simultaneously doing a whole lot. I stopped running for a while after the semester ended in order to make absolutely sure my legs are fully healed from any shin splints or almost-fractures; my legs are way too fucking fragile. But I think I finally figured out how to run properly so that's good! In the meantime I took up going to pilates at the local YMCA. And let me just say, pilates is so great, you guys. It's so much fun and it's doing such good things to my body. It fixes my particular posture problems (too much...curve in the back?) like magic. The teacher is awesome. She constantly offers modifications and variations for everything, so the wide range of people who come to the class (like all ages and skill levels) can do what works for them. It's surprisingly hard, but in a really satisfying way.

I also went to visit family in India for about three weeks. My great-grandmother is really not doing well, health-wise, and she lives with my grandma, who's old enough herself that she really shouldn't be taking care of her mom all by herself. She's like seventy-eight or something and constantly busy. But I think my parents and I were able to help a bit, just by being there and taking some work off her hands and increasing morale? I hope. It was good to see my cousins again, and go street shopping, and just generally take in how much India feels like a different world. I'm not super fucking short there! I'm 4'10" and average! It's amazing.

I also highly highly recommend Madras coffee, if you can ever get it. It is so damn good. The best coffee I've ever tasted. It has a really full flavor and it's sweeter than most American coffee. I think it's because they put chicory in it.

And I've finished the last half of Lost and have very conflicted, passionate feelings about Benjamin Linus.

And...I can't think of anything else but I'm sure there will be more! Hope you all are doing well. And enjoy that Stephen Colbert video. By "enjoy" I might mean "watch it and weep with me," but I'm maintaining some plausible deniability.

So now that the Long Deadline of "get the magazine to the printers" has passed, I'm finally back in the swing of things, "things" meaning watching TV, mostly. I have watched a few more episodes of Generation Kill. And this is my situation, now: this show is obviously super fucking serious, and at the same time, I can't help desperately wanting fic where Lt. Nate Fick tops.

Like, seriously. I understand he's got the delicate-faced prettyboy looks (by god do I understand) but we gotta look past appearances and into personality, here. Lt. Fick would make such a good top. And it would be so hot. Why won't the internet indulge me in these things? :(

Today jabbergrey directed me to this. And so today I interrupt all of your Wednesday nights to say: OH GOD GO READ THAT. It's about My Chemical Romance and it's about love, you guys, I don't know how to talk right now without sounding like a giant dweeb but that is what I am and MCR taught me to embrace sincerity. This band. I care so much, they mean so much to me, and I can go a long time without breaking down and shouting about it but reading that was like going to a thousand shows. Fucking Aly from One Week One Band, you guys. Thanks for that.

So: if you need something cathartic and anguished and powerful, if you need the world MCR created to reawaken in your heart, or something I don't have the words for right now, if you need to listen to a band's entire discography and cry and feel like everything is a story that continues today and matters and is bound together by love or something dweeby and camp and real, well. Aly's got your back. Or music's got your back. Or something like that.

I'm having a good Friday! It's been really busy this past week—third week of my senior semester in college, \o/! I'm taking a lot of higher-level classes, but so far I've actually managed to stay on top of the work. I work on a literary magazine, and I have an editing workshop this weekend, in addition to a 40-minute presentation next week, and a group lit review project, oh god. But it's all good, because this morning I've been swallowed by music feelings!

I have a lot of love in my heart today, for the person I'm dating (I'll call her A, she's awesome, we've been together almost two years and all I want to do is, like, travel the country and bash out amateur guitar melodies for her stories), and for music in general, because last night I watched The Black Parade is Dead! again with A (for the first time in ages—god, I honestly don't know if I've watched it since I was seventeen and got it from the library and went to my very first show, in the virtual emotional rollercoaster of my living room).

In other music news, I've recently gotten very into the Weakerthans! It seems like every song of theirs has this rough, open, tiny-spark-of-potential-in-the-void kind of feeling to it, and I love it. Fucking hell.

Also, I am sore as shit, because I've started taking this PE class called Military Fitness for the second semester, and as you can imagine, it's brutal. But it's brutal in a strangely enjoyable, satisfying way! I took it last semester because I went on this really long train of thought where I discovered that you could do space-related work in the military without having a science degree (which I don't), and I have desperately wanted to do space things since I was a wee child, okay. So even though I would never ever have even thought of it before, I decided to get in gear for the possibility of Air Force things, which mostly entailed getting a series of shin splints, running shoes, an ingrown toenail, and aches and pains no one my age should have. But also, I (who have never even so much as step foot in a basketball game) managed to pick up full-grown human beings and run more than I ever have in my life and do, like, so many pushups the dudes were impressed. There's a certain camaraderie in everyone getting put through the wringer alike, so even the athletes are falling snot-on-the-grass down and high-fiving the new kids. ...It's probably my masochism talking.

Anyway! So that's happening, and I also recently discovered there's something called astrobiology, which, why did no one in my life ever tell me about this? It's literally the scientific field that studies the possibility of alien life. Like, that exists and it's real and even NASA funds it. What the hell? Here I thought my dreams were relegated to television and no, I could do it. For real. (They also study respectable things like "how do human bodies react to the stresses of space," which is cool in itself, but. They study what kind of life could live on Mars. They figure out what kind of signals we'd need to look for to detect aliens. I am not even fucking kidding.)

So, yeah, if I want to actually do that I'd have to take a few more years of classes in biology and calculus and get some research experience and shit, because mostly astrobiology happens at the graduate level, but. It's out there and I'm thinking about it.

And that's an update in the life! Now I'm gonna go hum in the shower or something. Does anyone have experience with song composition? I'm thinking about it a lot right now and my experience consists of "I started out humming Scarborough Fair and it turned into this unidentifiable mass, help," but I suppose maybe even the pros do that sometimes.