Hi peeps, A perhaps unusal request for you. Can any of you link me up to a screencap from that Top Gear episode where James May is naked behind the wheel of a car? That would be awesome. My interweb searching skillz are letting me down today. A cookie for the one who can link me up. :)

I keep seeing people's response posts to the Supernatural Season 3 finale - all good with spoilers behind cuts (you lot are great with that. Top marks!) But I wanna know what's going on! Like, so much! I want in on the pain, the angst, the broyaysexing *ahem*. That is how I imagine it - please don't spoil me and tell me otherwise. I don't care! I don't want to know!

I am, however, rather far behind. I have been rewatching Season 1 and have only one episode to go there - that will provide me with a nice bit of pain, angst and broyaysexing (if my memory serves me correctly)... then I'm gonna rewatch Season 2 and then I'll get to Season 3. *le sigh* Or maybe nixwilliams will agree to be hardcore with me and watch as much as we can of Season 2 and 3 in ONE OR TWO DAYS and we can gorge ourselves on cheese and whiskey and chips. How does that sound, Nix? Then we can write fics about faun!Andy and Ash getting stoned and having sex on the pool table. Or that thing... I'm having vague memories of an idea involving Ash having sex with the jukebox - do you remember that as well, or is my brain lying to me again?

Something else SPN I was gonna tell you. What was it? Oh yes. ( This rambling theory thing. Beneath a cut purely to save space on your flists. Nothing spoilery. This is safe to click. Clicky clicky clicky - see? )

Speaking of Christopher Eccleston (and if you didn't read beneath the cut, don't you now want to know how I got from SPN to Christopher Eccleston?!), watch this:


( and this: him on Top Gear! OMG LOVE! )

Poll #1188197 A Poll for Pervy Faun Fanciers and Friends
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

I'm thinking about starting an lj comm for Pervy Faun Fanciers, like myself. Would such a community interest you?

Who is your favourite faun?

Do you or would you enjoy...

In 255 characters, please write a short story that either includes or does not include one or more fauns.

I bought the new Martha Wainwright cd and listened to half of it while in the bath on my housemate's portable cd player. Mmm, nice. Clean, sleepy, Martha-happy. Then I went back to my room to dress for tonight (I think it's a night to crack out the 18th century whore boots), put the cd in my cd player and it just clicks and clicks and whirs and clicks. So I do the laser lens cleaner thing about 3 times and put the cd back in. But still nothing. It won't do the thing where it tells you how many tracks and how long the cd is. It just keeps trying to read it. Trying and trying and trying. And nothing. I try play another cd - fine. No probs. I put Martha back in. Nothing. Then I'm doing something, I forget what, and I have the cd thingie open and the cd starts spinning around and gets faster and faster and faster. WTF? So I turn the power off the player and surround it with a ring of salt, just to be on the safe side, and arm myself with some holy water. Power back on, it reads the cd - gives me tracks and times and whatnot, but plays them with a crackling far-away broken sound. Every track. WTF? IT'S A NEW FUCKING CD FOR FUCKS SAKE!!?! I just cleaned the cd with one of those white cleaning thingies and drops of the magic liquid - but THAT MADE IT WORSE! Now it's gone back to the clicking thing again. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRFUCK!!!

And I was so hanging out to listen to Martha's new cd. I fucking love me some Martha action. *koff* *shifty eyes* YES I MEAN THE MUSIC.

The cd player is only about 10 years old. I'M GORRAM OLDER THAN THAT AND I KEEP GOING AND DON'T MAKE CLICKING NOISES LIKE THAT!!! Maybe I have to get a new one. *sigh* And there was that pair of boots I was eying off and everything. Actually, two pairs because I couldn't decide between red and black so I thought I could go both and then sometimes wear odd but matching boots and pretend I was Lee Lin Chin. *massive emo sigh* *head-desk*

I was, um, "researching" on Wiki and you'll never guess what I came across at the bottom of the entry on Satyrs. It said: See also: Glaistig - Scottish. Glaistig? GLAISTIG???!

You can read the entry itself here. It appears The Stig, I mean, The Glaistig is a lady-faun who conceals her goatish legs with a racing suit with long flowing green robes. She has "dusky or grey skin and long blonde hair".

This site tells of The Glaistig in local Scottish folklore:

In the village of Ach-na-Creige on the Isle of Mull, a Glaistig served as the guardian of the local cattle. It was customary to pour some milk into a holed stone on the cattle fold as a libation to the Glaistig. This small token was the only payment she requested for her long vigils. A local herds boy - who was widely known for his mischief - decided he was going to have some fun at the Glaistig's expense, and poured boiling milk into the holed stone. The Glaistig severely scalded her tongue, and was so angry that she left the local countryside, and her wardenship of the village cattle for good.

So perhaps this is the truth that The Stig conceals behind his (or her??) helmet and racing suit! Perhaps Richard Hammond (and sometimes James May) is not the only half-goat member of the Top Gear team. Perhaps, after those cheeky bastards scolded her tongue, The Glaistig left bonny Scotland behind to pursue her lifelong dream to be a racing car driver - but she had to maintain her anonymity because of her non-human status. So she dropped the 'glai' part of her name and hid behind the dark visor of her helmet.

I anticipate further proof in form of manips and fics to be forthcoming.

I have always harboured the suspicion that I'm a bit slow. Academic achievements aside, I don't quite know how to "do" life and suspect that I am in fact "doing it wrong". But that's a whole other kettle of fish. The point of this post is that I've had what to me is a significant realisation. I want to record it here so I don't go and do something stupid like forget it. And I know I do that kind of thing: some years ago, I was perusing my own journal of the time and on one page I read a realisation I'd had (about being bisexual I think, I can't exactly remember) and then, a few pages later, I'd written down the exact same realisation, worded only slightly different and written as though I was thinking it for the very first time. Even though I'd thought that thing only days before - I must have forgotten it, but the issue was still playing on my mind and I had to do the thinking all over again in order to reach the realisation for the second time. WTF brain?

So maybe it's kinda slow of me to only be realising this now. Or maybe I have realised it before and forgotten it. And maybe it seems obvious and insignificant to everyone else, but it's not to me. The realisation is this: If I'm writing a short story or a short fic or whatever, and I get some momentum up, have some mojo happening, the thing is moving and flowing like I want it to, then I need to bloody well finish writing it IN ONE SITTING. Or at the very least, that same day.

I think there are undercurrents in a piece of writing that you can't jot down into notes and continue the next time you pick it up. They are things, almost, that can't be easily put into words. Things to do with tone and feeling and subtext. And replicating a headspace in order to continue a piece, to carry on the same tone and/or feeling of what you have already written, well, that is bloody hard. Hence the large pile of unfinished fics I have scattered about my computer.

So what I have done in the past is write the most of something - or half of something - and think I've done enough for the day and it'll be only a short job to finish it the next day or sometime during that week. But no! I find I can't get back into the headspace I was in before, the headspace I need to be in in order to continue it. I can't find the tone I was using - I can read it in what I've already written, but it's suddenly difficult to write it. Because I'm in a different mood, because I've had a different amount of sleep or coffee, because I'm distracted by something, because I'm irritated with someone or something, or because I'm worried about something. Or because of something in life getting in the way, getting in my head and standing between me and the story. And what I should have done is just continued writing, keep going when I had the flow, when I knew what I was writing and how I was writing it. Which, admittedly, isn't always easy. Life does get in the way. Cats demand feeding. Stomachs demand feeding. Sleep needs to be had and work needs to be attended (unfortunately). Rent and bills need to be paid. But if I'm to prioritise this writing life, then perhaps I need to push myself a little bit more than I have before. (Which would not be hard, considering I push myself very little to begin with.)

So, happily, the last two things I started writing, I finished in one go. Then went back later and looked over them, tweaking and editing and tidying things up. Because of first drafts are rough drafts. But at least they are drafts, instead of ideas drifting around the inside of my head, evaporating or stagnating, but remaining for the most part unwritten.

I suspect the same goes for novels - but on a larger scale. I have done Nanowrimo for a couple of years and have yet to actually finish one of the novels I started. I managed to get to 50,000 words in one month, in order to "win" Nano. But, having reached that point, I was so exhausted and jubilant that I let myself have a break, let myself drop the story for a bit in order to relax and celebrate - which is what one needs after such an intense month of writing. But, despite extensive thinking about both stories, I have yet to pick either of them up again. The first one, too, I thought would only be a couple of days work, a couple of chapters and an ending and that would be it. The draft of a first novel that I could feel satisfied with, put under my bed and forget about it. But "a couple of days work" in the month of Nano is quite different to "a couple of days work" in the rest of my lackadaisical life. And it's actually more than a couple of days work - you have to work at getting back into the headspace of the novel and reacquainting yourself with the characters, who have perhaps grown prickly with you in your absence. It's not all that easy. Perhaps it would be better to keep on writing - slow down maybe a little after reaching the 50K mark - but keep going nonetheless in order to get the thing out and down, words on a page, real things existing in life where previously there had been nothing.

So that's my realisation. Someone in last year's series of pep talks for Nano said something about there being "no right time to write". You just have to do it when and where you can. I think that goes with my realisation. Writing, when I can. And if I can, to keep going, to see where the writing takes me.