Ultranormal

  • Vote Until It Hurts

    Like I said the other day, ficlets is up for two SxSW Web Awards this year. Now, part of being a finalist, is that it’s also eligible for the People’s Choice Award. One of the finalists will win the award based on voting by the public.\
    Now, it’s a long shot for ficlets to win. It’s up against some very well-funded and popular sites. But, there’s a chance. I’ve already posted about it on the ficlets blog and now I’m posting it here. So… please please please go vote! You can vote once a day, every day until March 3rd. Please?

  • Woot, Democracy!!

    I voted! I voted! I voted!

  • Rasputin’s Booty

    I frequently whine to anyone who will listen about the lack of good used cd stores in Northern Virginia. But, that’s definitely not a problem in the Bay Area, so when I’m out here, I always try to make a run to Rasputin to stock up on cheap tunes. I may have overdone it a bit yesterday. Here’s what I got:

    • Massive Attack – Singles 90-98: I’ve wanted this set for years and I found it for \$30 (it’s \$120 on Amazon). It’s totally worth the wait. Twelve CD’s of the 12 best songs from their first three albums. Each CD is one song, with several remixes. The Teardrop CD alone is worth almost the purchase price.
    • Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People: I keep hearing about them on the CBC Radio 3 podcast and decided to take a flyer on this one. I listened to it in the car, and it’s good stuff – deep rich layers of instruments, which I can’t wait to go over with headphones on and pick out the layers.
    • Annie Lennox – Medusa: Two bucks. How could I not?
    • Something for Everybody: It’s a collection of remixes of songs from Baz Luhrman’s movies and stage shows. Yeah, it was two bucks too. Another flyer.
    • Wintersleep – Wintersleep and Untitled: I just got their latest album and love it (and now everyone on the project I’m working on does too because I keep playing it for them). I found these in the Indie bin and had to get them. I had to order their new album from Canada, so figured I should get these while I could.
    • Mountain Goats – All Hail West Texas: I love Get Lonely and the gimmick on this album was too good to pass up (ten songs about seven people from West Texas). I haven’t listened to it yet.
    • The Clash – Combat Rock: After Tim’s Joe Strummer tribute, I had to pick this up. Another \$2 steal.
    • The Shins – Oh, Inverted World: I love both Chutes Too Narrow and Wincing the Night Away. This one was on sale, so why not?
    • Art of Noise – Ambient Collection: The Seduction of Claude Debussy is one of my all-time favorite albums. I’m not a huge fan of their other stuff, but for two bucks, I was willing try this one out.
    • New Pornographers – Challengers (Executive Edition): It was only two bucks, so I figured I’d see what was “executive” about it. Turns out, it came out before the album and has a code to download a bunch of b-sides, demos, and live tracks from a super-secret website. Very cool. And yes, I already have the album.
    • Kimya Dawson – I’m Sorry The Sometimes I’m Mean: She’s all over the Juno soundtrack, and I love her lyrics. A really good angsty folk album.
    • Take Action! Volume 5: Yeah, no idea why I got this one. It was a dollar. I think it was because the Dropkick Murphys have a song on it. Yeah, that must have been it.\
      So, that’s a grand total of twenty-four CD’s (there are three CD’s in the New Pornogaphers set even though you have to burn them yourself) for a little over a hundred bucks. I love used cd stores!

  • The Fics Keep on Coming

    (remind me to use that title again somewhere… probably on ficlets)\
    Speaking of ficlets, I just posted the news over on the ficlets blog that the site is a finalist in not one but two categories in this year’s SxSW Web Awards!\
    I’m geeked. I entered ficlets on a whim when I registered for SxSW Interactive last year, and didn’t really think anything would come of it. But, here we are and, well, if it wins, I’ll accept and cry my fool head off just like Sally Field.\
    I think I’ll probably write the acceptance speech as a ficlet and let people finish it for me. Yeah, that’d be appropriate.

  • TGIF

    I am extra tired this morning, boo, because I stayed up later than usual last night. Supernatural freaked me out, yay, so I had to watch some lighter tv before I could journey through the dark basement up to bed. Then, both kids woke me up in the middle of the night. I know they didn’t want to, it was just that Murphy’s Law made them.\
    In other tv news, tonight is the Friday Night Lights finale. Kristin at E! is pimping it pretty heavily, with these wise words: “You don’t have to know anything in advance. This is not Lost; there’s no complicated mythology to learn. If you’ve ever been a person, known a person or wondered about becoming a person, you’ll get Friday Night Lights.”\
    Enjoy the weekend, everybody!!

  • Ficlets on the Radio!

    Last week, I got an e-mail from someone from the CBC show Spark asking about ficlets and wondering if I’d be willing to do an interview for the show. After freaking out in the airport for a couple minutes, I replied saying (very coolly, I’m sure) that you betcha, I’d love to. So, sitting in my hotel room in Miami last Thursday, I talked to the show’s host about ficlets and read one of my stories (the first one ever published on the site, called The End).\
    Please, go check out the interview (ficlets is the first segment)and let me know what you think. It was my first real interview other than a job interview, and I was nervous as hell. Hopefully it doesn’t show too badly. The folks from the CBC were delightful to talk to, and it was a lot of fun to do the interview, nervous or not.\
    In other ficlets-y news, since John Scalzi left us as ficlets’ blogger-in-residence, I’ve been filling in and doing my best to keep the seat warm. So, if I’m quiet here, I’m probably over there, talking about inspiration, writing and “stuff”.

  • When Silly Becomes a Series

    I wrote this silly ficlet about how the lolcats take over the world, and it’s turned into a series! There are nine parts total. A lovely ficleteer in Australia and I have been trading parts. He took the original bit of silliness and basically turned it into The League of Extraordinary Librarians. There’s adventure, romance, violence and silliness (lots and lots of it, bordering on absurdity). A couple of the characters are (very) loosely based on real people. See if you can spot yourself (Howard, don’t freak out, the Howard in the story isn’t based on you).

    I’d love to see some more branches off the original to see where people take it. It could be Kittehpendence Day where the last dregs of literate humanity fight back, or Dawn of the Kitteh, you know, kitteh zombies. The possibilities are endless.

    (Oh, and there are more than 20,000 ficlets now. Yeah, I’m pretty amazed too.)

  • A Blast From the Past

    <object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”400″ height=”300″ data=”http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=669551&server=www.vimeo.com&fullscreen=1&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933″> <param name=”quality” value=”best” /> <param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” /> <param name=”scale” value=”showAll” /> <param name=”movie” value=”http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=669551&server=www.vimeo.com&fullscreen=1&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933″ /></object><br /><a href=”http://www.vimeo.com/669551/l:embed_669551″>Tech X: Tucson Public Access Show from 1998</a> from <a href=”http://www.vimeo.com/user167311/l:embed_669551″>kplawver</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com/l:embed_669551″>Vimeo</a>.
    \
    What you see above is an entire episode (lucky #13) of the public access show I was a part of back in Tucson. It was called Tech X and was nominally a computer call-in show. We took a few computer calls, but had much more fun screwing around with our friends and making fun of the callers, each other and saying extremely inappropriate stuff.\
    I only did about twenty episodes. I watched a few on the plane today, and the first five or so are really painful to watch. By episode ten, though, when we moved to Saturday nights at 10 (opposite the local news and then SNL), we really picked up steam. We were actually funny for short stretches!\
    I played Otto the HED and was basically a fat head floating behind the two “stars” of the show, Lee King and Hugh Mongous. Yeah… ummm… just watch it. Or don’t. You’re an extremely strong or masochistic human being if you can make it to the end.

  • These are totally interesting…

    Five things you might not know about me, because they are false:

    • I am a recreational furrie.
    • I slept my way to the top. …. of Mount Everest.
    • I don’t own a tv.
    • I once killed a man in Reno just to watch him die.
    • I’ve never read fanfiction for Scarecrow and Mrs King.

  • None of these are interesting, sorry.

    Kevin wants me to do the “five things you may not know about me” meme.

    • Except for a handful of must-haves, I don’t like owning DVDs or books. I am more of a “watch ’em/read ’em and rotate ’em” kind of gal.
    • I started college in the Honors College with a major in Electrical Engineering. What the heck was I thinking?
    • Even though we’ve lived in this house for over seven years (!!!), the master bedroom looks like the “before” on makeover show: temporary curtains, no pictures on the wall, clutter everywhere. We have a big bed with lots of pillows and no tv, so at least we are doing something right.
    • Comfort entertainment:\
      movie- Drive Me Crazy\
      tv- Designed to Sell\
      song- Jukebox Hero by Foreigner\
      books- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Mammoth Hunters by Jean M Auel
    • Dream job: organizational professional. (Which is funny considering my bedroom, right?)