Between Impossibilities

Oh, hectic week. I got back from Phoenix (where I had a WONDERFUL time with horizon_greene) on Tuesday and had to rush to get ready for school tomorrow. So, because I don't want to think about that anymore before I go to bed, and because I think the trip to Phoenix and the two basketball games while there inspired me, here's a Nuggets picspam.

Starting here:



With AI's "come hither" thing.

( and so on. )

The Golden Compass was a bit meh. Oh well. I'm actually looking forward to Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. I think that the first entry that I made in this journal mentions the first AVP movie. :)

Tomorrow I'm meeting the brother in Old Colorado City for Christmas shopping. Then I plan to bake Christmas cookies and go to to the library. I need to take back various books, including When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, by Peter Godwin. I just finished it today while I was working out and I would definitely recommend it. It's a memoir of Godwin's relationship with his father and his life in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Admittedly, I'm a little tired of memoirs about fathers and sons; however, there is more to the book than just that, and more to Godwin's father than just their tense relationship.

( review. )

.... and I'm done.

This has been a LONG ASS day, and also cold. And snowy. Which is fine because Slim is bringing firewood tomorrow and we will use it after we eat Indian food and go see The Golden Compass to celebrate the doneness.

I gave my last final from 1-3:30, during and after which I did the grading and submitting thing. Then, I came home, bathed both dogs and partially cleaned the house. I needed clean dogs, specifically, because my mom knitted me a blanket for Christmas and it is made of furry green and pink awesomeness. There will be no smelly dogs on the blanket.

Also, I just finished both The Kite Runner and Land of a Thousand Suns by Khaled Hosseini. I liked The Kite Runner, but I LOVED Land of a Thousand Suns. Both books are set in Afghanistan and follow roughly the same time line, from the overthrow of the monarchy in the mid-seventies to the rise and fall of the Taliban. The Kite Runner is more autobiographical and uses the male perspective. It also deals with the life of Afghani immigrants in America. There is a deeper focus in The Kite Runner on ethnic conflict than in Land of a Thousand Suns.

Both books have friendship and belonging as central themes, and the country of Afghanistan is put the starring role. Land of a Thousand Suns looks at women's lives from the 60s until the American invasion, and Hosseini pulls absolutely no punches. Because his prose is so stark, and his language so plain, the pain that the women feel in the novel is never obscured.

( quote. )

As an aside, I don't know if the Land of a Thousand Suns is partly informed by Hosseini's work with refugees in Darfur, but I don't know how it couldn't be. When he talks about Sudan, he talks about the plight of women there.

I teach the history of Afghanistan only briefly and only in one class. Students never remember exactly how the ethnic conflict between Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Hazaras came about. They rarely remember the country's Buddhist, Bactrian or Persian past; they inevitably get lost in the Soviet invasion, the Mujahideen and the origins of the Taliban. However, they do remember the numbers. Life expectancy in Afghanistan is in the 40s. The country has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, and that includes sub-Saharan African nations. The same goes for women who die in childbirth. The literacy rate for women in Afghanistan is currently at 21%.

Despite all of this, and despite the fact that Hosseini left the country in 1980 -- shortly after the Soviet invasion -- his love for the country and the people in it is evident. And because he has never lost hope for Afghanistan, his characters don't either. I think that both books are beautiful, painful, accessible, and important.

Saw The Mist last night and No Country for Old Men the night before. No Country is essentially Fargo in the desert. The Coen Brothers stripped the book of all of its deeper meaning and left the gratuitous violence and odd humor. Since Fargo is the only Coen Brothers movie that I like, No Country wasn't bad.

The Mist, though. Wow. I thought it deserved a special review all of its own.

Spoilers, etc.

( PUNISHER AND VARIOUS MARKET WORKERS, HUEY, DEWEY AND NORM. AND OLLIE: *go check it out* )

First and last lines of the last ten stories I've posted in reverse chronological order (I saw this on nycscribbler's journal last, I think):


( it was a dark and stormy night. )

The Nuggets are playing some basketball, apparently.

( there has been awkward groping )

( unbearable cuteness )

( a KENYON MARTIN sighting )

( and then this: ai dancing. with a basketball. only it's not what you think. )

OMG ROCKIES.

They played the lights out.

Kaz! (With the intentional walk!) Yorvit! U-Ball! Boys! COVERED IN CHAMPAGNE.

*flails*

"The Light in Our Eyes" Part 3.

For warnings, etc. See part 1. There is also a part 2.



( it's a cold world, and I can never go numb )

"The Light in Our Eyes" Part 2

For warnings, etc. See part 1.



( forever begins, just because I thought about it )

Title:”The Light in Our Eyes”
Pairing(s): Carmelo Anthony/Eddie Najera, Carmelo Anthony/Eddie Najera/Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony/Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony/Steve Nash, Allen Iveron/Steve Nash (implied), Eddie Najera/Steve Nash (implied), and for my final trick, Carmelo Anthony/Brendon Urie. Yeah, I went there.
Word Count: Apx 19,800 (posted in three parts: part 1, part 2 and part 3.)
Rating: NC-17
Warnings, Summary and A/N: This is an AU in which I take Melo and chart the course of his life, assuming he never made it to the NBA, starting when he’s five years old and ending when he’s twenty-five. Along the way I throw in every basketball player I can possibly justify using as cops, drug dealers, art buyers, lawyers and soccer players. Be warned for drug use, dub-con, violence and character death.

“Thank you,” can’t possibly express my gratitude to horizon_greene for holding my hand through writing this (starting in May), believing that NBA fandom needed an epic AU, and then betaing the damn thing when I was done.

All of the chapter headings taken from Common’s “Forever Begins,” except for the title, which is mine.


( They push the living room furniture around and Allen kneels on the old mattress and JR and Melo take turns punching at his hands. He’s always too quick for them and their boxing matches usually end up with them flailing in his direction while he slaps them until their cheeks start to sting and they tackle him. )

I just finished reading Susan Bordo's The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private and I'm trying to process. (I'm re-reading her Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body now.)

( ramblings about the male body, the female gaze, male sexuality in the media, myths about the nature of women's sexual choices, size DOES matter, visual appeal in fandom, and spoilers for Eastern Promises. )

Title: "Dreaming My Way Deep"
Pairing: Allen Iverson/Melo, and some light Eddie/Melo
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 1781
Summary and A/N: This is kind of a deleted scene from "All Stars and Crashed Cars," only from Melo's POV. Part of it takes place during the 2004 Olympic Games. Many thanks, as always, to horizon_greene for the beta, and also to a_bit_surreal for asking me about the dynamics of the AI/Melo pairing, which prompted me to write this.


( He’s not home; he’s half-awake, half-hung over and half-naked on the floor of T-Mac’s suite. )

( ... )

Got Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, by Max Boot for a little, light bedtime reading.

Also, a meme stolen from nycscribbler

1. Comment to this post with the name of a character that I have written in fic. Or geeked out about.

2. I will comment telling you the following:
a. What initially prompted me to like the character enough to write about him/her.
b. One of his/her best traits.
c. One of his/her worst traits.
d. How easy/difficult I find it to write the character.
e. The story/chapter/paragraph/phrase where I feel that I truly captured the character*.
f. My plans (if any) to write the character in the near future.

So, hey.

Bored and unwilling to clean the apartment = Baseball drabble!


(Rockies!Slash)
pairing: Yorvit Torrealba/Ubaldo Jimenez
rating: pg
word count: 846
summary/notes: Yorvit muses on baseball in September, playing in the rain, and rookies (of the shortstop and pitching variety.) This is obviously my first attempt at writing baseball, and it's unbetaed since it's little more than a drabble.



( let the rain come down )

The AU is done and off to beta.

( mini melo picspam. )

( five celebrities )

Which leads us to: ( a melo picspam! all new pics from this summer. melo shirtless and inked; angsty!melo; VERY intense kobe/melo; melo/kobe/lebron; melo/lebron )

I've seen some good movies lately (Stardust), some harmlessly bad movies (War -- Quick! Name your favorite Jet Li movie, and also, help me win a bet -- has he ever kissed a girl in a movie? He almost danced with Aayliah in Romeo Must Die, and did he maybe almost kiss someone in Twin Warriors?), but then tonight I saw Septemper Dawn, and it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

My brother and I went into this knowing nothing other than it had John Voight in it and that the poster said it was "CONTROVERSIAL." Which, yeah, I guess. You could say that a movie that sets out a clear agenda to conflate Islam and Mormonism without a basic understanding of either, and uses a massacre as a plot device, could be "controversial."

title: "Purgatory"
pairing: S/X
rating: NC-17

note: A standalone fic not related to any episode. Also, my first fanfic ever. Written sometime in the summer of 2003 and posted to the yahoo! lists.



( it would kill the pain, the stars would spin all night, and it would keep the bugs away )

title: "Lying to Beat the Sun"
pairing: Allen Iverson/Steve Nash
rating: NC-17
words:: 3900
summary: Steve gets drunk, angsty and horny over the All Star Break. AI is also drunk, and perhaps horny. There are cameo appearences by: Carmelo Anthony, Dirk Nowitzki, and Eddie Najera (by phone.)
A/N: This takes place in the same 'verse as all of my other NBA fics. This is the same Steve from "Almost Broken", and this fic takes place at the same time as the last section of "All Stars and Crashed Cars". Someday I'll move on. Today is not that day. Many, many thanks as usual to horizon_greene for betaing this in a hurry and for generally listening to some strange shit from me lately. So, because this has Steve in it, this is dedicated to her.


( AI doesn’t look stiff and sore and worn out, sucked dry from the desert heat and the stress. He still looks like a kid, dancing and drinking and hanging on Melo, unconsciously physical, unaware or indifferent to the people around him, to the expectations on him. Which is painfully unfair.  )