Canucklehead Icons

Hmmm... so having read most of the insanity going on around the latest bannings and complete lack of professional PR skills from the LJ staff, I have to ask whether any of the fine folks on my friends list might have a JournalFen account and would be willing to send me an invite or request an account on my behalf. I think I'm paid up for the next six months or so, so I don't anticipate fleeing immediately, but I'd like to get my ducks in a row to do so just in case things around LJ go further into the shitter. Um... we are still allowed to say "shitter," right? Or is LJ underage?

Gah. My mind, it is blown.

Just watched two great rugby matches today on the Six Nations coverage. Neither was technically spectacular, but in terms of having the match up in the air until the last possible second of play, both were phenomenal. Lots of tension and excitement, plus Ireland won (which makes me happy), and Wales are looking at the distinct possibility of a wooden spoon. Hilarious.

As a spectator sport, I'm not sure rugby can be beat. Great stuff. It's a shame it's covered so little in the States; I feel like I've been missing out, not having had easy access to it all this time.

Now if England can just pull out a miracle win against France tomorrow to force a draw in the standings with Ireland. That sends it to points scored, and I think the margin will be higher between Ireland and Italy than it will be between France and Scotland. Hopefully, anyway.

This is so true. Heh.

I actually do love watching football when it's a good, solid match and people aren't falling all over themselves diving. Unfortunately, the latter seems to have taken over the sport in the last couple of years, and it's harder and harder to find games where that kind of crap doesn't happen. Plus there's the constant arguing with referees, trash talking... give me rugby any day of the week.

Once again, I'll be going in to work with fewer than five hours of sleep under my belt. It's almost 2:30 in the morning, and I'm still wide awake? Why? No idea, but whatever it is, it's not good.

I wish I could call in sick to work tomorrow.

Guess who just got a 73 on her assessed essay for Foundations of Political Science? Totally unexpected on my part, but I'm not complaining!

And, realizing that the above makes no sense to anyone who's not familiar with the way the British system works, a 73 is good (best in the class, in fact, going by the marks list they sent out). Rumor has it that I beat out a couple of PhD candidates who are teachers in their own countries, but I'm chalking that up more to language issues than anything else.

Anyway, I'm aware that I'm bragging, but I think I earned a little bit of it, and I don't really want to be that bastard that does it around all her friends. Guess I'm doing all right after all, considering how little I've enjoyed most of my classes and how unsure I was that I should have been doing this degree in the first place.

Here's a batch of 20 Beatles icons (John and Paul with a George for good measure).

-Comment
-Credit
-Hotlinkers will have their legs broken just as soon as I find "Russian mobsters" in the Yellow Pages.

A preview:



( Yeah, yeah, yeah.... )

Cross-posted to beatleicons, beatlepics, johnheartpaul

So this isn't very icon-related (but no fear, I have a good-sized batch to post in the hopefully not too distant future), but whatever, I felt like sharing.

The other day I downloaded the EP for thenewno2, a band featuring Dhani Harrison, George Harrison's son. I had my doubts, mostly because I never really got all that excited about any of Sean or Julian Lennon's stuff (though Julian does sound eerily like his father), but I have to say, I've been listening to this EP a load since I got it. I really like the style Dhani's adopted, and it's so different from the kind of thing I associate with his father that there's really not that much room for comparison. Anyway, it's a refreshing change from a lot of the stuff out lately; I hope they release a full-length album soon. I'd definitely go see them in concert, and I recommend giving the EP a listen if you have the chance.

In other news, if anyone has any earth-shattering knowledge about the Marxist concept of relative autonomy that they might care to share with me, you would make this long-suffering term paper victim very happy.

This is in response to a Beatles survey posted over at beatlepics. Lots of long-winded, self-important commentary found within.

( Read more... )

Here's a small batch of Beatles icons I've been messing with. Resources can be found on my user info page. Rules are as follows:

* Comment if you're taking, so I know what people liked.
* Credit canucklehead909
* Don't hotlink.



( Yeah, yeah, yeah.... )

Wow.

And to think all of my trig textbook's examples were based around things like flagpoles and the flight paths of rockets and such.

Actually, I do have a small stash of icons to post, but since I saw this and felt like filling it out, I thought I would. Icons to follow, though, promise.

1. WHAT CURSE WORD DO YOU USE THE MOST?
Hmmm. "Damn" or "shit," probably. There was a time when it would've been the f-word, but I've cut back on my swearing a bit lately.

( The rest of the story.... )

No icons, but I do have some to post eventually when I get the chance. In the meantime, ganked this from angelsnow and thought I'd post it.

So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button

Opening Credits: Staring At the Sun (U2)

Waking Up: LIFE is... (Ken Hirai)

First Day At School: Pastures of Plenty (Alison Krauss and Union Station)

Falling In Love: All Er Nothin’ (Oklahoma)

Fight Song: All Kinds of Time (Fountains of Wayne)

Breaking Up: Emancipate Myself (Thirsty Merc)

Prom: Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me (U2)

Mental Breakdown: Every Night (Paul McCartney)

Flashback: Ride Cowboy Ride

Getting Back Together: Counting Blue Cars (Dishwalla)

Wedding: You Didn’t Know Me When (Harry Connick, Jr.)

Birth of Child: Rainbow Connection (Kermit the Frog)

Final Battle: Hey Mama (Black Eyed Peas)

Death Scene: Summertime (Paul McCartney)

Funeral Song: Hash Pipe (Weezer)

Some of the results are sort of odd, but it would be totally awesome for a bunch of people to show up to a funeral and be treated to... "Hash Pipe."

These are for the er_icons50 challenge, based on the episode "A Walk In the Woods." They are, predictably, Luka-centric. Comment, credit, no hotlinking (note: I'm being a bit of a bastard about credit these days, since I've seen a couple of my icons floating around credited to people other than myself).

Teaser:



( Because you can never have enough Luka.... )

Here's a batch of icons I did based around the ER episode "The Lost." Focus on the Croatian Sensation, since he's my current favorite. These are the first proper ER icons I've done, but they were pretty fun to do, so I anticipate doing more. The rules for using them are simple:

- Comment, because I like to know whether what I'm doing is of interest to anyone.
- Credit, because I spend some time on these, and plagiarism isn't kosher.
- Don't hotlink, because that's uncool and will result in this stuff being made friends-only.

Preview:



( More, more, more.... )

This is a songset I did recently, inspired by the Green Day song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," off of their American Idiot album (which is excellent and highly recommended, BTW).

Preview:



( Four more under the cut.... )

So after some thought and coming to the conclusion that having this paid LJ account just to feed my obsession with icons might be going a bit far, I've decided to start using this journal pretty much strictly for my icons and fanart stuff (hence the title change). For personal writings, I'm going to keep using the blog, but I wanted to keep a place open on Livejournal so I'd be able to post my stuff to communities and so on (and so I could keep up with friends' journals, which I haven't been doing lately).

To go with the new journal title, I figured I'd go ahead and implement a new journal theme, after coming across some 'tunes of the CutestWolvieEver. A huge "thank you" to shaenon for letting me use his cartoons, which were awesome.

Icons (hopefully) soon to follow!

So it's long past time for me to post something explaining that, for all intents and purposes, I'm no longer updating this LJ (except possibly for icons). You can find further writings at Faustian Slip, instead.

I'm keeping this account around for icon stuff and to comment on friends' LJs, but I don't anticipate frequent updates, since those (by and large) go in the blog.

Phew... long time, no post. Sorry about that. I've been posting most newer stuff of interest to my blog, but I am keeping this open to vent my spleen about things that I don't want, say, my mother reading. I'll also do duplicate posts here once in a while.

Anyway, in that category is a meme sent my way by Suspira:

List five songs that you are currently digging - it doesn’t matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying right now. Post these instructions and the five songs (with artist) in your blog. Then tag five people to see what they’re listening to.

1. The Way You Do the Things You Do- The Temptations- the lyrics are a bit naff ("I'm holding you so tight/You know you could've been a handle"? C'mon, guys...), but it's a catchy tune with good harmonies, and it fits into the Motown kick I've been on lately.

2. Water- Matisyahu- I never would have figured reggae written by a Hasidic Jew from Crown Heights to be this good, but it is. Have a listen to it if you haven't already. Especially cool the way he worked the Shema in there.

3. Fortunate Son- Creedence Clearwater Revival- Having loaded the Forrest Gump soundtrack, along with Creedence Chronicle onto my shiny new iPod while I was home, I've been listening to this a lot. Great song, great lyrics and considering the loser currently occupying the White House, fairly apropos.

4. For What It's Worth- Buffalo Springfield- Also featured on the Gump soundtrack and (in my always-humble opinion) with somewhat current subject matter, politically-speaking. And you can tell I've been home with my mother- I swear I don't usually get a yen for certain songs based on the state of world geopolitics. Yeesh. Such a dork.

5. I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)- The Four Tops- Another in the recent Motown round-up. It has the advantage of having significantly better lyrics than "The Way You Do the Things You Do," but you don't get an excuse to do faux "Temptations walks" to the music. Not that I've ever done that, of course. Ahem.

As for tagging five people, I doubt that there are even five people reading this thing, but on the off-chance that they happen by:

- Ayo
- Jackmaniac
- Pbvalla
- Lilibunny
-Jeannie G

Knock yourselves out, guys.

Oh, and some kind of an update regarding the summer vacation back home will be forthcoming. In the meantime, there's some pictures up on the Flickr account.

So I spent Saturday evening at a seder hosted by the Kansai Jewish Community. The seder was loooong (from 7:30 to 1 in the morning), largely as a result of trying to coordinate hundreds of people so that everyone got through everything in the haggadah. That said, it was a great time, despite the fact that I think most of us were lagging towards the end.

I wound up meeting up with a group of other ALTs, two of whom I had actually met before- at JFK airport on the way to Japan way back last July. Extremely random, but it was nice to hear how their eight months in Japan have gone. I'll probably see them all again at the Recontracting Conference next month, so that should make it marginally less boring. One of the other ALTs, who I hadn't met before, was a really nice guy; we hit it off, and I'd definitely like to hang out with him again sometime. Unfortunately, he lives six hours away on Kyushu (that would be an entirely different island in Japan, for those of you keeping track). So much for that, but I will see him at recontracting.

( One is Hashem, one is Hashem, one is Hashem.... )

After numerous, rather pointed comments from a certain someone (yes, Erin, I'm looking at you), I've finally gotten off my duff and around to typing up a summary of the Australia trip. So hopefully I won't be getting called a "plonka" anymore. Heh.

So, the trip. It was absolutely fantastic. Melbourne's a great place, Erin showed me a great time, and I'd go back in a heartbeat. So lock your doors and windows. She is now under orders to get her butt to Japan and visit me at some point during the next year, incidentally.

Also, the pictures I'm linking to here were all taken by Erin, partially because she's a good photographer and I'm not, and partially because I haven't got my Oz pictures uploaded yet. Mine will follow eventually.

Now, a retrospective, if you will (in no particular order 'cause I'm incredibly lazy):

The Good:

- Everything. Okay, okay, that's a cop-out. Specifics to follow.

( More fun from Oz.... )