I didn't bother mentioning this when I wasn't posting, but I've set the comments in this journal to friends-only in the wake of a truly impressive level of spam over the past few months. I always used to screen non-friend comments and then let through anything obviously human, but the spam was such a hassle I gave up. I plan to leave it this way for a few months and then change it back to see what happens.

Sorry to anyone who might see an old Flashpoint entry or something and want to comment. :(

I owe many comments, responses to emails, and comments on stories, but am at least breaking out of the "I will never catch up!" paralysis to post this.

This has been some winter term-- I've had soft-tissue injuries so I've pretty much been in pain since the New Year, and my old pal sciatica is back (only occurring in the other leg, and so far I've managed not to herniate the disc. Small mercies.) I can sleep but I sure can't work my horse. Saw Leonard Cohen with my folks a few weeks ago and reminded myself that the last time this happened, I also had tickets to Cohen. Remind me never, ever to go to another of his shows again. (Sexy beast though he certainly is!)

Have been working with the new reference interns these last two weeks-- very promising pair. So of course I was out sick with an awful cold for part of last week. And then this week I had to take two days to go up home for an uncle's funeral. He was elderly and had been sick for a long time, but it was still kind of a shock and my aunt and cousins were in no way really ready for it. Nicest man on earth, truly. The priest put up a Christmas tree and wreath on the altar at the funeral, in tribute to the fact my uncle always provided trees and wreaths to the church at Christmas. (There is a lot to dislike about the Catholic church. My parents' parish priest is not one of them.)

And next week I'm off to Saskatoon for the Canadian Health Libraries Association conference, which is always fun. Traveling to Saskatoon may be less so, but hey. I've never been, so it'll be an adventure.

Also, last night was the season finale of Elementary. I have to admit, I was one of the people who was highly dubious about the wisdom of that show-- among other things I was afraid Lucy Liu would end up in the "typical girl role" and spend all her time teaching Sherlock to cope with his FEELINGS. Imagine my surprise when instead, the show let her demonstrate talent in the investigative line, and she and Sherlock have developed a genuine friendship as well as a really quite respectful mentor/mentee relationship. Plus, both characters have likable traits and are fun to watch. Well. I often forget the show's on as early as it is, but I have found it a real pleasure, and will probably catch up on DVD. Turns out there is room for two shows about Sherlock, as long as they're notably different.

And... that's about it from me for now. Long weekend coming up. I will probably spend this evening lying on the floor muttering at my back, but I have a new story to work on and the barn to visit this weekend.

And then beautiful downtown Saskatoon!

I should probably go to a bunch of movies that just feature people talking. I've seen advance trailers for the new Star Trek and the new Thor, and I'm like, "Really? Space vehicles destroying cities, Bad Guy locked in a glass case being threatened by Good Guy? Didn't we just do that in The Avengers?" And I didn't even LIKE The Avengers, which kind of makes it worse.

And the thing about Thor 2 is, it's the same villain in the glass case, giving in part the same speech to Righteously Threatening Good Guy. (In this case, Thor, who always knows where to find his brother when he wants something from him.)

I didn't mind so much in the last James Bond picture, but Marvel is beginning to repeat itself.

Or maybe I am just crabby because I have a spring cold. And resentful that my dislike of The Avengers last summer has ruined all the fun I was taking in Marvel movies, although the dark and depressing tone of the Thor 2 trailer (as well as my conviction that none of the interesting character stuff raised in the original Thor movie will ever get an airing) probably would have done it anyway.

Oh well. I enjoyed 42, so maybe I need to take a break from action and superheroes and watch something set on Earth among actual people!

Still with Harry Potter, in a way-- a few weeks ago I ran into something on Tumblr that I really liked, but it was in the form of a fairly complex gif and I can't quite figure out how to put it together here-- it's images that join together in a specific way to represent the Sorting Hat, with human faces in each section.

Regardless. The point is, it was for a "recasting" challenge (although, really, I don't think these parts have ever been cast in the movies) in which the founders of Hogwarts would all be played by people of colour. The proposed four made me squee pretty hard in places:

( Cut for largeish images of the actorsCollapse )

Headcanon accepted! :D

While I'm thinking about Harry Potter...

So yesterday I spoke of Snape, and in passing referenced Horace Slughorn. In the course of wandering the Internet for discussions to read between books, I ran into a site called Ferretbrain, where I'm just gonna tell you, they HATE JK Rowling and all her works. (Because I am not all that emotionally invested, it was interesting to read, but as I said yesterday, it was kind of interesting to not be the ranting fan/antifan for once, and I may have learned some things about moderation to carry to my own fannish activities.)

With that said-- the review of the Half-Blood Prince film was not half bad. They mention in particular that Horace Slughorn, a ridiculous figure in the book, comes off a lot more sympathetic and nuanced in the movie.

And I was reading the review thinking, "Well, of course he comes off more nuanced and sympathetic in the movie! He's played by Jim Broadbent!"

Which I thought of that night, when I put on my DVD of Half-Blood Prince and realized that, while I can let the first three movies play along like old friends, I get restless during the later ones when the kids are less head-pattable, and my favourite character in HBP is, far and away, Slughorn. He's likable and slightly pathetic and clearly well-meaning.

He's the only representative of Slytherin House who defends Hogwarts in the last battle in the last book (is it another knock on Snape that, according to a remark Voldemort makes in the book, pretty well all the Slytherins joined him?)

And he's just wonderful in my favourite sequence from HBP, Aragog's funeral and its aftermath, and so here's a video of it. Broadbent's elderly-clergyman voice in the eulogy is funny but not quite ridiculous: he's taking Hagrid's grief seriously. And then afterward, when he speaks to Harry of his mother, it's just really a touching moment.

Ahem. Video. One of the pleasures of the Potter movies is all the Really Distinguished Actors they have playing minor parts, and they got their value with Broadbent.

Okay. As I have mentioned before at various times, my writing pursuits have, over the past couple of years, turned from mysteries to fan fiction, almost entirely crossover stories in which Loki from the movie Thor moves in with the characters from Being Human (UK) and a great deal of alternate-universe fluff ensues.

Turns out I mostly just want to write stories I think are fun, and then have a small number of people read them and tell me, "Hey! These are fun!" It's always nice to figure out your priorities.

Anyway, over the weekend, someone on Archive of Our Own informed me that she had turned my story, And Your Little Cat, Too (in which Thor innocently runs afoul of a witch, and Loki has to figure out how to return him to his own shape), into a bedtime story for her five-year-old daughter. (The little one apparently wanted to know why her mother was giggling at the computer. Heh.)

Said child illustrated her own version of the "Thorkitty" story, and her mother sent me the link.

And here it is, because it's too damn cute to keep to myself:

Thorkitty, An Illustrated Bedtime Story

Is this not the BEST THING EVER? And the wallpaper on my Blackberry may or may not now be that last image of Thor and Loki, with the big smiles, and Loki's horns all curled like the feelers on the head of a Who.

I have seriously never been so flattered. I've said before that I'm no longer aiming to be formally published, so this will probably remain the coolest thing that happens to me as a writer. I'm okay with that. (And given the interests and tendencies of the Loki in these stories, HE is even happier than I am!!)

Jully Black sings "Put Your Hand in the Hand":



at the Canadian Songwriter's Hall of Fame a few years ago.

No, really!



Looks RIGHT up my alley, even without the utterly precious cast!

By now of course anyone interested has heard, but it turns out the missing Twin Otter apparently flew into a mountain, and no on survived. I found that out on Saturday morning-- I pretty much spent the night before refreshing news sites on my phone every ten minutes, so when I woke up at 6:00 I checked and they'd found the wreckage.

Because of the terrain and the time of year, recovery of the crew's bodies is being postponed until October. The cockpit voice recorder has been recovered, so perhaps they can figure out what happened. Speculation is that the plane turned too early on a course through a mountain range.

It was an upsetting weekend-- particularly since, when the crew was only "presumed" dead, I could not shake the stupid hope that maybe... despite the fact that, with no sign of activity around the site, it was pretty clear anyone who survived the initial crash would have died in the elements in the three days they were missing.

One interesting fact: you never, ever look at comments on news stories on the Internet. I know that. They bring out the horrible in human beings.

But I happened to look at a few, and they were, uniformly, people posting to comment that they flew with Bob (the pilot, the guy I knew back in the 80s when he taught my sister to fly and took me along on some courier flights just to be nice to the teenage airplane fan) and what a great guy and proficient pilot he was.

It's a first, frankly. I've never seen so much decency on display in comment sections.

So there we are. Bob Heath, you were apparently just that awesome.