Courtesy of Jim MacDonald at Making Light. The original post itself is funny. Then the regulars join in, adding verses in the comments section, and oh, the slashtastic, multi-fandom hilarity that ensues.

Mommacow’s going to kill me. I can’t stop giggling.

My friends have looked at me oddly for months, when I’ve occasionally uttered “STARVING!” and peered around expectantly, hoping they’d get the reference. I know I sent around the link to the story from which it comes, but chances are the site was getting slammed at the time. It was linked off of Making Light and several other places, so my friends probably gave up in an impatient 404-rage and never tried again.

Bastards.

ANYWAY. Lori has recently discovered the hilarity that is the sweet potato story, and now, because I am a good friend and I love you all, I link it here for you:

Littera_abactor’s I Has a Sweet Potato.

Just a bit of housekeeping today. Updated a few links over there on the side that I kept reminding myself to put up, and promptly kept forgetting to do.

I haven’t been up to anything terribly interesting. Garden’s still alive (but not doing science). There are more tomatoes, since my mother grew some from seeds and more of them sprouted than she’d expected. The great part of having your mom live ten minutes away? “Here, I don’t have room for these in my garden. Also, I’m pulling up my broccoli tomorrow because the deer and rabbits are eating it. Can I put it in here?”

A couple of the tomato plants have these tiny little tomatoes-to-be growing. They’re round and green and will hopefully someday taste awesome. A few summers ago, I happened to stop by my parents’ house when my mother was trying her hand at fried green tomatoes, fresh from the garden. (On occasion, I have awesome timing.) They came out really good. So, hopefully in a couple of weeks, I’ll be trying my hand at my own.

I submitted “Kate” to Strange Horizons on July 1st. Probably won’t hear anything until September. Cross your fingers for me.

I opened up “Running” and stared at Lil for a while last weekend, and she stared back at me. I have some better ideas of where the story is going for her, but I’m not quite ready to go back to it yet.

Also, I snagged tickets for Great Big Sea in October! /squeeeeee

Okay. We have far, far too long until BSG’s endgame begins. Nothing new (from what I understand) until 2009. Which means… let the speculation begin!

If you haven’t seen the most recent episode, “Revelations,” DO NOT CLICK THE MORE BUTTON.

Because, darlin’-pretties, there will be many spoilers after you (insert Hybrid-voice here)… Jump!

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I am an occupational hazard waiting to happen today. I wish I could say that the stacks of samples perched willy-nilly along the edges of my cube’s walls were the building blocks for a Fortress of Evil, but alas. It’s awfully hard to make a Fortress of Evil out of colorful children’s books. Bunnies and farm animals just aren’t all that intimidating.

So, instead, I watch as people walk by and cringe if someone’s footfalls are too heavy, waiting for the inevitable crash. I’ll have a hell of a mess to clean up if they fall (and maybe some apologizing to do, if the heavy-treaded ones are too close.) But right now, there’s nowhere else to put anything; there’s so much sample material that it has overtaken the surface of my desk and made me resort to the stacking of things atop narrow ledges.

However, once it’s all mailed out and the leftovers put away, I am sorely tempted to open up a package of monsters and a package of knights and lay out a battlefield along my desktop.

The only problem with that is that Cthulhu is one of the monsters (yes, we have a children’s book featuring the greatest of the Great Old Ones.) I think he might eat all the others, rather than side with the rest of the hellspawn.

And then, when I come in one day and find that all my coworkers have turned into fish people, I’ll feel really bad.

…to seeing Iron Man (which was so, so good) earlier this week is that now I can’t get the gorram Black Sabbath song out of my head.

Listen to me.

Listen.

I won’t steer you wrong. 

Some of you watch Battlestar Galactica, and this is for you.  I’ve plugged Jacob before.  I’m doing it again.  If you’re not reading his recaps over at Television Without Pity, you are missing out.  Those recaps are love letters to the show, to the story, and reading his reviews feels like sitting down with a friend, discussing the show over beer or coffee.

He recapped Doctor Who for the first two seasons, before TWOP took it off the list of active things.  (And yes, I am re-reading the recaps from the end of season two, because I just know something here in season four is going to break my heart all over again, and I’m not sure I can actually watch  “Army of Ghosts” and “Doomsday” right now.)

I know, I’ve probably said it all before.  But I wouldn’t send you there if it wasn’t totally worth it.

The 2008 Hugo nominees are up. I am horribly remiss in not having read the novels that made the list (but I will be picking up the Chabon and the Scalzi at some point, I promise.)

However, I have seen four of the five nominees in another category:

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

Battlestar Galactica “Razor” written by Michael Taylor, directed by Félix Enríquez Alcalá and Wayne Rose (Sci Fi Channel) (televised version, not DVD)
Dr. Who “Blink” written by Stephen Moffat, directed by Hettie Macdonald (BBC)
Dr. Who “Human Nature” / “Family of Blood” written by Paul Cornell, directed by Charles Palmer (BBC)
Star Trek New Voyages “World Enough and Time” written by Michael Reaves & Marc Scott Zicree, directed by Marc Scott Zicree (Cawley Entertainment Co. and The Magic Time Co.)
Torchwood “Captain Jack Harkness” written by Catherine Tregenna, directed by Ashley Way (BBC Wales)

The only one I know nothing about is the Star Trek.

Now, were I a member of SFWA and had a ballot to cast, I’d have a damned hard choice before me. “Razor,” honestly, didn’t impress me. So, that’s out.

And, as much as I like the talented Cap’n Jack, and as good as that episode was, it still pales in comparison to the two Doctor Who nominees.

“Blink” was brilliant in many ways. There’s very little of the Doctor and Martha in it (boo for the former, hooray for the latter). It’s Sally Sparrow’s story, and her mystery to solve. Some of my favorite lines of the season are in there.* And, of course, there’s the way the audience is itself a factor of the world. (Note: I can’t take credit for catching this, and sadly, I can’t find the post to link to from Making Light where I first saw it discussed. It was either a blog post or a particle, and linked to another blog, whose title also escapes me. If anyone finds it, I’m happy to add it in.)

The genius is this: the Weeping Angels have one weakness. They can’t move when they’re being observed. So, as soon as someone is looking at them, they turn to stone. How many scenes, though, do we see an angel when Sally is walking away? As she leaves the house for the very first time, just before the opening credits roll, they’re in all the windows, silent statues watching her go.

If Sally’s not keeping them from catching her and sending her back in time… who is?

We are.

Here I will pause, in case your head is doing the same splodey thing mine did when I read that.

Okay, better?

“Blink” is masterfully paced. The writers as a whole do amazing things with characterization - figure that most of the episodes, you’re never going to see the supporting cast ever again. And yet, they manage to flesh everyone out so well, you’d swear they’ve been there for three seasons themselves. In this one, you get to love minor characters who are only there for a few minutes - Kathy, Billy Shipton.

Were “Blink” the only nominee from Doctor Who, I’d vote for it in a heartbeat. But then there’s the two-parter, “Human Nature”/”Family of Blood.” You could argue that this, too, is a nearly-Doctorless pair. Even though we have two hours of David Tennant, he’s not himself. All traces of the Doctor are gone, except for sketches and stories in John Smith’s Journal of Impossible Things. There’s plenty of annoying Martha bits (guess what, Martha? The Doctor loves Rose, and John Smith loves Joan Redfern, but neither will ever love you. HA.)

You get a glimpse of what might-have-been - a quiet, simple life with Joan. Having children, growing old, something he never got to even try with Rose. There’s this horrible feeling of loss, when he has to choose - the Doctor, or John Smith. What makes it worse is that Joan understands it all so much better than he does.

All season long, when Martha would do her puppy-dog why-don’t-you-love-me face at him, I’d yell, “Because you’re not ROSE.” at the screen. It probably drove Greg a bit crazy. Joan’s not Rose, either, but I’d have been okay with it if she’d accepted his (The Doctor’s, that is, not John Smith’s) offer to come with them in the TARDIS.

But Joan’s far wiser than I am. The man she was falling for died with the opening of the pocketwatch. The Doctor might look like him, might wear the same skin, but they’re nothing alike. She’d be travelling at the side of a man she didn’t love, one who was a constant reminder of the man she did.**

I teared up over the loss of a man who never existed.

I’ll be happy if either episode wins the Hugo, but I don’t envy the voters who have to pick between them.

*”It was raining when we met.”/”It’s the same rain.” and “The angels have the phonebox!” (which I still need to get on a tee-shirt.)
**Now that I think about it, there’s an interesting contrast in this. Joan has to deal with the man she loved changing into someone else - same body, different personalities. Rose, after the Regeneration, also has to deal with the man she loves changing into someone else - different body, same person.

If you haven’t seen last night’s Lost, you probably don’t want to read this. Because I am a kind and benevolent queen, here is one of those cut things, where you have to click to read, so I don’t spoil it for you.

Aren’t I gracious?

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