escape yourself and gravity

Nine Inch Nails releases another online album--this one's free.

The Slip is available free at the NIN website and is being released under a Creative Commons license.

That's right, I said a party! I can't be the only one (in the Northern Hemisphere) who's utterly sick of winter. Today I decided I'd had enough. So we're having a tropical party!

So put on a Hawaiian shirt, break out your shorts and flip-flops and straw hats, mix yourself a drink (we've got lots of rum!) and ( Turn up the music! )


Feel free to add to our playlist as the night gets more humid, the tiki torches burn, and the ocean crashes against the beach. Or post pictures of yourself in a tropical outfit!

I have been very productive this week, but I am so very tired. And I want new music to listen to. What's your favourite song right now?

Last night I washed red clothes. Twice Mom told me to do something about them, and I was like, "Dude, I put them in the dryer, leave me alone," (except slightly nicer, she's my mom after all). This afternoon got home from work and she said, "You put your clothes in the dryer and never turned it on!"

>.> Well, they're dry now, anyway.

I need any copies y'all can give me of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day". I have Karen Carpenter's version and love it the mostest, as that's the one I grew up with (even though she says "Christiandom" instead of "Christendom"). I also have Bing Crosby and Burl Ives. What I really really want is a version where there are actually church bells in the distance. It's so obvious, someone has to have done it, right? But I can't seem to find one. Can anyone help me?

PS I would prefer vocals, though I will not turn up my nose at instrumentals either. Also, there are two melodies for this song, which I often forget. I like the one that goes high, then low, rather than low to high.

Has anyone else given a song as much thought as this? Tell me I'm not crazy. *tears hair*

18778 / 50000 words. 38% done!

At this point I really need someone whose read what I have to discuss this stuff with, and slightlyjillian doesn't seem to be home and astraea36 is probably not around since Ray is OMGhomeYAY!!! I have been lucky in that _lore is great for bouncing ideas off of, with Snupin fics...but the downside is, I've got used to having a plot sounding-board, and I don't have one for my novel at the moment!

In other news, I absolutely love Ceredwen, particularly their album O'r Mabinogi: Legends of the Celts. This song "Tir Gwastraff/Cwynfan Pryderi" ("The Wasteland/Pryderi's Lament") is my favourite, though "Porth Annwn" ("The Gates of Annwn") is a close second.

It is 44 F in Indiana, but for some reason that temperature always gets into my bones and makes me feel like I'm freezing to death. So I have my space heater going, and have opened a bottle of Oliver's Soft Red (for two reasons: 1) it makes me feel warmer, and 2) I always drink a bottle of wine during NaNoWriMo: Oliver's Soft Red for the past two years, and Martini & Rossi's Asti the two years before that.)

That reminds me. I mentioned that I went to Oliver Winery with the parents the other day. (And I have to say, it was by far the best time I've had doing a wine-tasting. I've done that half a dozen times over the past few years, and though I liked the people at Round Barn Winery in Michigan, Oliver still wins my highest approval rating. We arrived at 20 minutes till closing, not sure if we'd have time for a tasting, and they still did a full tasting and took time to find something all of us liked, even the non-drinking parents. And we still got out of there less than 10 minutes after their closing time, but didn't feel rushed at all.) I've wanted to try a riesling wine ever since gonzothegreat mentioned them. At that time I had just started taking a medication that I wasn't supposed to mix with alcohol. Four years later, I've mixed it several times with no ill effects and have started drinking more wine. So I tried Oliver's Riesling 2006. I liked it all right, so the guy doing our tasting told me to try their Traminette 2006. BINGO! I am in love. It's a fabulous wine, described by their website as "Floral, fruity and inviting, this grape loves our Indiana climate. A delicious match with baklava." He told me it also goes well with spicy foods. Unfortunately it's a tasting-room wine, which means you can only get it by going to the winery. I anticipate at least one more trip to Bloomington this year, _lore. I'd love to actually spend time with you and J the next time I'm down there. ^_^

Merlin seems to be feeling better. At least, he hasn't vomited for about five hours, though of course I've also only had him on water for the past 9 or so hours. He still growls if I snuggle him too much, but then again he always does that.

Dear Flist,

This is the most boring Thursday I've had in a while. Most of the Accounting department is in training this week. I've done most of the work I have to do. I could make phone calls, but I utterly loathe making phone calls. I'm putting this off.

Things I have done instead of making phone calls:

• Worked on Science of Love and sent it to severity_softly
  
• Discovered that one of my Culpae Patria summaries has been reposted on some sort of blog feed or something.
  
• Realised I really need to do another summary.
  
• Read cedarlibrarian's Supernatural ficlet she wrote for me, which inspired me to
  
• Listen to my SPN playlist on my iPod, lip-synching to Kansas in my cubicle
  
• Chatted with Israel for a while, because he is a cutie and stops by my cubicle whenever he's in the office
  
• Reread a CP scene with Remus' parents and realised we need to write more with John and Celeste, because they're fun. Well, honestly, Severus' reactions to them are funny.
  
• Ate peanut M&Ms.
  
• Looked in every way I know how to see if the St. Vincent Health invoice has been paid for respiratory tests. (Not mine, for employees here.)

Things I have not done include said phone calls, working on my Snupin Santa fic, or further revision on the no-longer-for-Pervy-Werewolf fic that I want to post by Halloween.

It's very cold in my cubicle. For that matter it's cold everywhere, whether inside or outside. I am not sure I'm looking forward to the Purdue/Northwestern game on Saturday. My house was also freezing when I got up this morning. I got up 15 minutes late because I really really really really didn't want to get out from under the covers.

Also, I don't remember having "Fight the Good Fight" by Triumph on this playlist, but yey, it's a good song. I really really want to watch "Devil's Trap", but I've been trying to get Dad to watch SPN with me, and we've made it halfway through the second DVD, which I think means he's hooked. I may try to get him to sit and watch it with me tonight, since I can't watch the new episode until tomorrow or probably Saturday, with the way CWTV.com has been posting new episodes later than they did last year. *sigh*

Anyway. I've made it to 11. The mail probably won't show up for another hour, and even then I may not have too much to do. Blah blah blah.

Oh! Watched the HBO Elizabeth last night, the one with Helen Mirren as Bess and Jeremy Irons (rowr) as Leicester and Hugh Dancy as Essex. I must say, I liked it a great deal more than the Cate Blanchett version, because it told the story in a much more accurate way, and the acting was superb. (Cate's acting was also very good, but the directing & editing of that movie was frustrating to me.) Anyway, as always, Jeremy was a delight to watch, and I enjoyed them. Of course, now I have to see if my best friend, who has developed a passionate interest in the royalty of England since her trip there, wants to borrow the DVDs. Maybe I should just send them back and make her rent them herself. *G* I'm ready to move on to other movies in my queue.

Ooh, yay, "Stranglehold!" I always have to play this song's intro about three times, making gun gestures to match the SPN "Story so far" summary. *grin* Obsessive geek? Me?

Naaaaaah.

I've posted a soundtrack, deleted scenes, and some research links for my fic Delineation of Duellist. I haven't got a zip file of the music up yet, and I need to tweak the back of the CD cover, so I'll try to do that tonight.

Warning: This does contain spoilers for the fic. LOTS of spoilers. *grin*

Link to my IJ


For the fic itself:

Delineation of a Duellist

Part One
Part Two, Section One
Part Two, Section Two
Part Three

I can't stand coffee. And yet I'm drinking it in an attempt to get warm. Why I didn't go with one of the 8 types of tea we have in the cafeteria, I don't know. I suppose butter pecan coffee sounded good - unfortunately it tastes nothing like butter pecan ice cream, which I love. Figures. Yesterday I drank hot chocolate, which we also have, but...well, I keep trying to like coffee. I figure it's like beer, an acquired taste. But I'm not so sure I"ll ever acquire this one.

I dreamed about work last night. It made it bloody hard to get up this morning, and now I feel like I've been here all day instead of just three hours. *sigh* Then again, I was also dreaming about Snupin this morning when I actually woke up. It's very weird, I occasionally dream I'm Remus. I'm not sure what this means.

I am listening to a lot of music here that I haven't listened to in a long time. See, four or five years ago when I was still driving Draka (the Grand Am) I put in a fancy MP3-playing CD player. It was crap, as it turned out, but I was just excited about the idea of creating MP3 discs and getting my entire music collection on, like, 20 or 30 CDs. I have a lot of music, and I was tired of carting around my big 200-disc holder. So I organized my music collection by genre and then by male/female performers and then by group/single artist. A couple of artists (U2 and Dave Matthews Band and Gordon Lightfoot) rated their own complete MP3 CDs, that's how much I had of their work. So today I've been listening to ROCK GIRLS, which--what the frak was I thinking when I burned this disk? Okay, it has Joan Osborne, Melissa Etheridge, Heart, and Sheryl Crow on it...but it also has Carole King, Dido, Donna Lewis, Emma Bunton, Cher, and Jann Arden. I would call all of the latter pop, I think, with the possible borderline exception of Carole King (though really she's rock as far as she's written, but recording is more pop-ish, I guess). But seriously.

Anyway, now I'm listening to ALTERNATIVE1 which has Better Than Ezra, Bush, Everclear, Incubus, Limp Bizkit, Oleander, Puddle of Mudd, Seven Mary Three, Staind, and Tantrik (or is it Tantric? I never knew how they spelled that). I suppose a couple of those could be called modern rock instead of alternative, but... Hey, my CD collection, my genre definitions. ^_~

It sort of makes me sad - I used to have all my music folders** organized that way, instead of the way iTunes has done it, by artist name. I shouldn't have had iTunes change that when I converted from using WinAmp to using iTunes. Then again, there are times I think about backing the music from Frodo onto the external hard drive (Samwise), wiping all the music off my laptop and just playing the music off the hard drive. That would free up 45G on the laptop's hard drive, and Samwise isn't all that hard to carry along, since he's a cute, compact WD 80G. (Why yes, I am lusting over the 1 Terobyte externals, why do you ask?) So if I went with that plan, I could reorganize my music by hand--which, yes, would be time-consuming, but that's okay--and then reinstall iTunes and tell it to import without organizing.

** (ETA: by folders, I mean the file folders on the hard drive, not the way it's organized within iTunes)

All this leads me to a couple of questions about y'all's music collections.

[Poll #1051649]

lyrics by Trent Reznor

See the animal in his cage that you built
Are you sure what side you’re on?
Better not look him too closely in the eye
Are you sure what side of the glass you are on?
See the safety of the life you have built
Everything where it belongs
Feel the hollowness inside of your head
And it’s all
Right where it belongs

What if everything around you
Isn't quite as it seems
What if all the world you think know
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection
Is that all you want it to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks
Would you find yourself—find yourself afraid to see?

What if all the world’s inside of your head
Just creations of your own?
Your devils and your gods all the living and the dead
And you’re really all alone?
You can live in this illusion
You can choose to believe
You keep looking but you can’t find the woods
While you’re hiding in the trees
   
What if everything around you
Isn't quite as it seems
What if all the world you used to know
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection
Is that all you want to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks
Would you find yourself—-find yourself afraid to see?



Download song here