muffinity.com

The pumpkin cheesecake turned out wonderfully. I haven’t taken a picture of it, but there’s still some left, so maybe i will later. i will make this cheesecake again, probably next year.

i got the recipe here. i substituted milk for the brandy. and i’d recommend loosening the cake from the pan when you turn the oven off, as opposed to when you take the cake out.

i have an episode of Legend of the Seeker to watch. i haven’t decided if i’ll watch it tonight or save it for tomorrow. right now i’m watching this show on the History Channel about tunnels and hidden passages in Europe that allowed people to hide from the Nazis during WWII. i like me some hidden tunnels. if i were ridiculously wealthy, i would build a big-ass mansion riddled with secret passages and layers of tunnels underneath, complete with underground bunkers.

not only would i get immense enjoyment out of such a juvenile house, it would serve a practical purpose as a fortress against zombie invasion.

pumpkin swirl cheesecake

an awful picture of my pumpkin swirl cheesecake taken with my webcam. tomorrow, i’ll try to take a proper picture of it with my real camera. yes, it does have 2 giant cracks in the middle. the recipe said turn the oven off and leave the cake in for 1 hr and then to loosen the sides after taking it out. i wish i had loosened the sides sooner.

tomorrow is thanksgiving and today i am baking a pumpkin-swirl cheesecake. the batter was delicious, so i hope the cake lives up to expectations. that is, i hope it sets properly. i have yet to have a cheesecake not set, but this is a new recipe that i found on the internet, i only trust it’s good.

last night at work a customer came in at about 9:20pm to exchange a sofa. usually our store is closed at 9, but starting this week and through the holiday season, we’ll be open until 10. it also bears to note that my store has a strict return/exchange policy; all customers must have a receipt for any returns or exchanges. anyhow, the associate working the furniture department told me a customer had a sofa to exchange because she wanted a different color, after cursing somewhat, i asked the kid if the customer had a receipt, he said, “yes, she said she had one. and she was here earlier and talked to _other associate_ who told her she could exchange the sofa.”

ok fine, the lady has her receipt, it’s a little late in the evening to be moving sofas, but whatever. we go to the loading dock where the customer and her husband have backed up their pickup truck, full of metal pipes and wooden boards and sundry bits of carpentry work, with a black durahide (fake leather) sofa strapped on top. before they take the sofa off, i ask the lady, “you have your receipt, ma’am?” she says “yes, i was hear earlier and spoke to _other associate_” they take the sofa off the truck; the lady’s husband stumbling over the pipes and boards and buckets he’d perched to sofa on. then the customers drive back around to the front of the store to do their sofa exchange.

up at our service desk, the gal at the counter asks the lady for the receipt so she can process the transaction. surprise, she doesn’t have the recipt. (more…)

i like the second season better than the first.
cameron is the best character on the show
cramartie’s body isn’t in ellison’s back yard. ha. no, shit.
ok, so the chick from the furture is here to kill cameron because her influence on John isn’t good.
contrived, but then the whole time travel thing in contrived.
awww. the nice doctor died. that’s a shame.
how much you want to bet that this nice asian tech company guy gets killed.
So Reilly has a nice foster family. how cute. so now we get to delve in the psychy of poor disturbed Reilly. yawn.
future chick is talking to Reilly. no good can come of this. i don’t care for future chick. didn’t like her when she was in Battlestar Galactica: Razor. Razor was good, but i didn’t think she fit in it. i don’t think she fits here. i don’t like her.
shit, it’s starting to sound like Reilly is from the future. shit. she is. damn.
the nice asian tech guy is gonna get killed, la la la la laaaa la. something bad is gonna happen to him, that’s for sure.
i like agent ellison. it’s a shame he’s in league with the bad guys, espically since he doesn’t know it.
the japanese dinner isn’t interesting me. there goes Sarah, getting to the point. glad it’s over and the show can go on. (more…)

I’m watching Heroes.

why the hell are they pretending in the promos that the eclipse gave them their powers? in the original season at least some of them had their powers before the eclipse.
i hate shows that rewrite their histories when it suits them.
i’m actually liking the new Sylar and Elle is becoming less annoying.
dr. surish is getting less interesting and more irritating.
stupid show. why do i still watch it?
Parkman is an idiot.
10 year old Hiro is funny.
Oh, shit. Elle is a psychopath. Poor Sylar. He just wants to be a good guy now, and everyone keeps provoking him to kill. I wonder, does he have the same power as Art Petrelli?
Ha ha funny. Now HRG is training Claire. So melodramatic.
I’m sick of Tracy. It’s a fucking excuse to bring back that actress. It’s dumb. I don’t like her.
So who is writing that 9th Wonder comic since Issac died in the FIRST SEASON.
there’s a commercial with Ozzy Ozbourne. no one can understand his mumbling British speak so he text messages every one - the guy behind the coffee counter, the taxi driver, his therapist - actually, an amusing commercial. followed by a preview for The Day the Earth Stood Still with Keanu. I like a good disaster film/alien flick. time to fast forward this nonsense.
ugh, enough with slime covered Dr. Surish. it looks like they wrapped him in rubber cement.
I’m damn sure it was implied that these people, some of them anyway, had their abilities before the eclipse.
They keep teasing something dreadful in Daphney’s past. This better live up to expectations. (more…)

watching another episode of legend of the seeker.

it pisses me off how hasty Richard is, wanting to jump in and rescue the kid, jeopardizing everything. that’s not Richard. Richard isn’t that stupid. maybe i’m just remembering his character differently. he was always hard headed, but i don’t think he was stupid.

hmm. that’s not how i’ve been pronouncing Zeddicus all these years.

aw. well isn’t that just tragic. the father sold the son. tragic and cliche.

woah. they’re going to find the Sisters of the Light. i hope they’re like the sisters from the book. but Thandor? WTF. never heard of it. they keep making up towns in this show.

this kid is a dick. funny, but a dick.

at least Kahlan can kick ass too.

Richard is wounded. how much you want to bet they have to go to the Sisters of the Light to get him healed?

gee, i didn’t know Kahlan was friends with the Sisters of the Light. ok, now they’ve completely screwed up Kahlan’s back story. That’s not her story at all. Here we go with Thandor and the Sisters of the Light again. Kahlan did not live there. What happened to Aydindril and the Confessors Palace? this is bull shit. (more…)

as i type this, i’m watching legend of the seeker.

this is not the correct story. no, no, this won’t do at all.

it’s one thing to add little quests that didn’t happen in the book; i understand, it’s a tv series, it’s got to work like one. it’s another thing to completely change the characters and their relationships.
Richard is supposed to be Lord Rahl’s bastard son, after Lord Rahl raped Zed’s daughter. I was hoping that they would at least keep that much the same. Ha!

In this episode “Brennidon”, I’ve learned that not only is Richard not Zed’s grandson, but his real name was Owen and his mother and brother are alive and well in a little town called Brennidon, (his real father having died years earlier). This is nonsense. Previously Richard’s immaturity annoyed me. Part of what made him the Seeker was his innate wisdom and maturity beyond his years. And I always pictured Richard with broader shoulders.

oh great. an I am SPARTICUS! moment.

Don’t get me wrong, the show isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The accents are inconsistent and the acting is lame, but genre tv is lacking in general. You can’t be too picky.

The only thing that can redeem this episode is if Zed’s secret turns out to be he’s Richard’s grandfather.

okay, so she’s not his mother. OH. ok. she’s the midwife. You know, that who I thought she was in the beginning, before she told him she was his mother. Richard’s name wasn’t Owen. I’m ok. Richard’s parentage is still ambiguous. It’s possible Richard is Zed’s grandson after all. Eeesh.

OOOOOO. Yea!! Zed revealed it. He is Richard’s grandfather. Whew.

I got all pissed for nothing.

Now I hope that at some point we find out that Richard memorized the Book of Counted Shadows before he burned it.  And please, please, let Lord Rahl be his father.

When I stumbled upon fanfic years ago, I thought it was ridiculous. That people would have the audacity to take established characters and throw them into stories outside of canon … scandalous, really.

Then came the final season of Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

When the series began wrapping up, I didn’t know where to turn. I needed my DS9. That’s when I turned to the glorious guilty pleasure of fanfic. Here were all those characters I knew and loved continuing their lives and adventures. What fanfic writing often lacked in polish and cohesiveness, it made up for in gratuitous angst and delicious melodrama. Some stories were absolute shit, yet some would have made perfect episodes themselves. Back in those days, nearly 10 years ago at this writing, there was plenty of it around to choose from. I remember a particular Warf story, titled, “Son of My Youth”. I enjoyed it. And after reading to the end, I learned that story was incomplete, the final chapter never posted. I don’t remember the story beyond the title now, but I still recall my disappointment at not knowing the ending.

Fanfic, written by fans, often took characters in directions that a show’s real writers would never take them. By this I’m talking slash. At first, I avoided it like the plague, then it was all I wanted to read. And what kind of slash? Garak/Bashir, of course. There something both alluring and hilarious about man on man/cardassian love. When the series ended and Bashir ended up with Dax, I was disappointed not only because I hated the new Dax, but also because I knew that he belonged with the Cardassian tailor.

I remember drawing Cardassians in my college notebooks. It was an odd time. I didn’t have many friends back then. That was many years ago and my fanfic phase only lasted a few months. I have a short attention span. I’ll be surprised if this blog lasts much longer.

Anycase, the other day I was googling for DS9 fanfic [specifically G/B slash, since it is the most entertaining]. Where the hell did it all go?

One site I went to had thousands of links to stories from Enterprise and Voyager and TOS and Next Gen, but only a few hundred for DS9. What the hell? Deep Space 9 was the best of them all. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Voyager and Next Gen (never got in to the other two), but they don’t hold a candle to DS9.

And most of the few piddly sites I found for DS9 fanfic were dead links and if the links weren’t dead, the stories were dated from the ’90s. With one shining exception.

http://prelocandkanar.livejournal.com/

In all the internet, there’s at least still one person out there who knows the value of a good old fashioned angsty G/B story.

There’s probably plenty of people out there still writing G/B slashy goodness. Google just hasn’t been my friend in finding them.