One of my other favorite forms of music is Cowboy music (which is neither country nor western). I also love Cowboy Poetry, especially when it is spoken word.

I had, when I was teaching computers, a whole lesson plan built around the exploration of the west, the culture of the Native Americans and the mythology of the American Cowboy. The cowboy is probably the most uniquely American mythology there is. Because of that, it's often disregarded and belittled. What I find most interesting is that so many people condemn the cowboy and then go on to create characters that embody everything that cowboys were.

Anyhow, on to the song:

Wow.

The con was great.

I am now brain dead. I will post something, sometime.

Home is good.

Wow. Busy.

Myria spent eight days in DC for the Citizenship Washington Focus trip that the 4-H sponsors. She had a great time. She took 2000+ pictures! She got to meet her senators, visit the Library of Congress (a place she loved) and see a play at the Kennedy Center (Shear Madness). She now had mad love for DC.

I spent the time working around the house and ignoring the internet. I didn't do any of the writing I had planned. I did do some gardening. My husband went to Ohio on the weekend. My brother, his family and our folks are up in Canada. finabair came to visit on the weekend. Yay, JennJenn!

There are details to all of this. I may not ever get around to sharing them here. *frown*

I am leaving tomorrow for a mini-vacation in Minneapolis where we will attend Convergence. YAY for a Con! It has the greatest interactive scheduling page. At least this way I will know that there are three different panels I want to go to at the same time -- the reality of it is, I may just end up not going to any of them. I will, however, hit all the room parties and play in the Steam Century Mystery.

Four days of Conage!

Before all that starts, however, we will have a day of geocaching and walking through the Mall of America (Apple store!). There will be pictures. I'm hoping that, once I'm recovered, there will again be posting.

Thought I'd share. I not only adore the show and the characters, but I'm beginning to adore the actors, too. I usually avoid that. But I definitely will have to pick up the TV Guide...

A short video of Burn Notice goodness....

I have failed miserably at gushing about Burn Notice this week, so a little preview of tonight's episode:



And GIP (kinda). I'm actually going to redo this icon, but I needed one for the post so I thought I''d use it! While this icon doesn't suck, I feel the need to tweak it.

Leaving country (old and new) behind for the moment, I thought I'd share a bit of my other work favorite song group -- soundtracks.

You may have heard of these songs if you've seen the movies, but they actually do sound different when they don't have visuals accompanying them. This selection (I love saying that) is from The Dark Knight Soundtrack, it's the 12th track, "Harvey Two-Face". The entire song is great, but it's the ending, particularly starting at 4:45 and going almost to the end, is wonderful. I have iTunes playing in the background at work and that bit always catches my attention.



Trying a new music share thing, also. This allows me to twitter the music I put up here. Plus it doesn't clip half my songs down to 30 seconds. I know I could post these where anyone can download them, but that just feels wrong for me to be doing.

So I thought I would share my Fiona icon. In one of my rare moments of girl love, I think she is absolutely beautiful in this shot.

I adore Fiona beyond words. Semper Fi!

This show may possibly be my favorite show of all time.

I tend to like male fictional characters more than the female ones. There’s a lot of reasons for that but mostly its because I like certain character traits and those traits are more often given to male characters. And that's a shame. However, there’s been a rash of posts that talk about the female characters that people love and I thought that I would join in and list women that I adore.

( Because I have to editorialize. )

Oh, and GIP.

Your uniqueness is more than an outward appearance.

My daughter translated it: Mom, you're weird inside and out.

but finabair is made of win!

Happy birthday Jedi JennJenn!

LOVE!

Look! Slightly different version of the Burn Notice trailer! More Michael! More Fi! More Sam!

What more could you ask for? I cannot express in words how gleeful this show makes me.

Thursday is tomorrow! Go Thursday!

And if you go here they will loop different trailers/previews/whatnot. Not that I'd do anything like that. Oh... and it has games and you can watch an interview with Matt Nix and... way cool.

Yeah. It is that bad.

And I really, really, really need a Fiona icon. I will get one. It needs to say "Get your Fi on" or maybe "Be like Fi" or perhaps "Sempre Fi".

Oh, wait, it definitely has to be "Sempre Fi"

Now if I can just find right screencap.

I seem to be on an every other week schedule, a consistency that is rare for me.

I'm still in a country mood -- and let's face it, most of my flist will never have heard most of even the most popular country songs, so I have less of a chance of contradicting my title if I stick to country. Besides, I feel like sharing and I'm often a country girl at heart.

My favorite line from this song:

Now our windshield’s a painting that hangs in our room,
Changes with each mile like a radio tune

I love the idea of the freedom of living on the move, the call of the next hill, the next town, the next unseen vista. I also love the independence of it all, just relying on yourself to get along. Yes, I blame the fact that I read way too many westerns growing up.

Gakked from afteriawake: Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

As I thought of them:

1. The Bible -- I have several different translations/versions of the Bible and I'm not going to pick a specific one.


2. The Black Stallion by Walter Farley


3. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett


4. The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien -- Yes. I consider them all one book.


5. The Sackett Brand by Louis L'Amour -- I'm a huge L'Amour fan and I had a very hard time with this because I love a lot of his books, but I can't justify listing them separately. I could have listed Flint or the Kilkenny series... but The Sackett Brand is always one of the first of his books that comes to mind when I think of L'Amour.


6. How Fletcher was Hatched by Wende and Harry Devlin. I still have my original copy and despite all the tape, it is falling apart.


7. Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi


8. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell -- What I love best about this book is that people often get upset if I list it as a favorite or as a book I find influential. Many actively try to discourage me from liking it. Controversy. It's a good thing.


9. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle


10. Whip Hand by Dick Francis -- as with L'Amour, I had a hard time picking one book, but Whip Hand was the first novel of his I ever read and even beyond enjoying the story, it impressed me with how powerful a tool first person POV can be.


11. Animal Farm by George Orwell -- by far a more prophetic book than 1984


12. Odyssey by Homer


13. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons -- I have problems with the storyline and underlying story of the book, but it sticks with me, if only because I love parts of it as much as I hate others.


14. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens


15. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry I actually have the old, single volume book edited by XJ Kennedy. I also have XJ Kennedy's Talking Like the Rain which is an anthology of poems for children. Both are amazing.

This Thursday, People! Thursday!

And yes, the only reason I use my Twitter account (Username: Partly, if you're interested) is to follow Jeffery Donovan's twitter. That is how bad I have it for this show. The good news? Myr loves it slightly more than I do. Yay for Family Fandoms!

ETA: I really hope they find a way to being Bly (The guy who says "You really dress like an Easter egg") back. The snark between him and Michael is a thing of beauty.

Found on a fic post under "warnings"--

Rating: Nc-17 (or higher)

Got that or higher

That's right, because this is ZOMG! so amazing. It has, like, graphic sex, man. You've read other NC-17 stories, but it's nothing like that namby-pamby crap. NO! This story is hard core. I use all the words. I describe all the action in detail damn it!

This is way beyond NC-!7!

. . . Yeah.

Sometimes I fear the internet, people.

These are the definitions of "smirk" --

From Word Net Search
-- smile affectedly or derisively
-- a smile expressing smugness or scorn instead of pleasure

From wikipedia
-- A smirk (from the Old English amercian, "smile") refers to a smile evoking insolence, scorn, or offensive smugness. "A constant smirk upon the face, and a whiffling activity of the body, are strong indications of futility," the Earl of Chesterfield once wrote in a letter to his son. ...

From Dictionary.com
-- to smile in an affected, smug, or offensively familiar way.

From wiktionary.com
-- A smile that is insolent, offensively self-satisfied or scornful; To smile in a way that is affected, smug, insolent or contemptuous

Notice the words offensive, scornful and contemptuous in those definitions. Notice that a smirk expresses all those things instead of pleasure.

Please do not use the word unless you intend make the character look like an unbearably smug and offensive jerk. A character smirks at someone to tick them off, to demonstrate his/her complete and utter contempt for them. A character smirks to show that whoever they are dealing with that they are beneath contempt and undeserving of even the smallest consideration. Smirking often implies malicious intent. Smirking is always insulting. It's a simple word and one that can be used as a powerful characterization -- but only if used correctly.

Please stop having characters I'm supposed to like smirk. Even when they do it at bad guys, at people who may deserve it, it makes them look small and petty. Never have a male character I'm supposed to like smirk at a female character. Never have two characters who are friends smirk when exchanging friendly banter because smirking means it's not friendly.

You are writers, people. Words are your tools. Please use them correctly.

Thank you,

Me (not smirking)

a midnight movie!

I have mentioned that I love my theatre, right?

Terminator was good, well worth staying up for.

I will have to post during the day at some point.

Band concert and awards tonight.

Which means I'm watching 24 two hours late.

I so love my DVR.

Didn't get one posted last week, but I'm not going to post two this week, so don't panic.

I love most of Ray Price's work, his voice is one of the iconic country sounds out there. This song, however, is a recent offering from Price and is the reason I called these posts "unknown" song of the week, rather than "old".

I really can't describe this song, while the lyrics are definitely on the depressing side, the song itself isn't depressing. The music is patently country in sound, with piano and fiddle and steel guitar. It's more "night club" country than "honkey tonk" country.

One of the most interesting things about country music is that there are many different sounds that are all distinctively country music. I often think that country is more of an attitude than sound, but that's not always true either.

Anyhow, here is "Time" by Ray Price:

Went to see Star Trek. Again.

Yes, that makes three times. But really, there were reasons!

Saw it first as a midnight movie. Then hubby wanted to see it again, so we went the following Saturday. And then my mom, a old trek fan from way back, hadn't seen it so we went with her.

Very logical. *grin*

I probably won't see it again as it gets pricey even with the bargain movies we have here in town. Although I will point out that tonight, with four adult price tickets, one large popcorn, three large sodas and a box of chocolate covered peanuts, I still walked away with $2 left of the $40 I started with. (Just for a comparison, in Madison it costs $14 for two medium sodas and a large popcorn, here in Merrill, you get two large sodas and a large popcorn for $9 -- and we get real butter here!)

Anyhow, the movie still rocks. I desperately want an icon of Spock beaming down to Vulcan, and something with Kirk, too. I have much more to say about it, but as I need to get up early in the am to help with Myr's birthday breakfast party, I'll just have to type it all up some other time.