Creature of Mad Enthusiasms

I love Northanger Abbey - it's actually one of my favorites. But I also love sarahtales spoofing on gothic novels (there's link to her Jane Eyre takedown somewhere around here, and again on the link I'm about to give).

So it's two, two, two great things in one when Northanger Abbey appears on Gothic Tuesday.

A couple of reasons why you should read it:

In vain I have struggled. It will not do. You must allow me to parody NORTHANGER ABBEY.

JANE AUSTEN: Catherine Morland, not really heroine material. She was kind of plain and not that bright.
BELLA SWAN: She was just before her time, yo.

...

HENRY’S SISTER ELEANOR: Hey girl, how’s it going?
CATHERINE: I spend my days mostly writing ‘Mrs Catherine Tilney’ in my trapper keeper, and climbing out of windows to avoid John Thorpe. If you see John, tell him I’m washing my hair and I’ll keep washing my hair until L’Oreal is invented, because I’m worth it.
ELEANOR: Got it.

...

(and my personal favorite, out of a tough field of competition)
CATHERINE: Uh, what kind of abbey do you call this? Nothing is mouldering!
GENERAL TILNEY: I’d have serious words with housekeeping if something was.

To make up for grossing everyone out earlier: That Russian Sherlock Holmes parody that Gatiss tweeted (Sherlockology mirror). You've probably seen a dozen links already; it's spreading like wildfire and rightly so. Canonical, BBC, and Ritchie Holmes walk into a crime scene...

The actual OP is a metaquotes about fanfiction as literature's version of a team sport, which is an intriguing concept, but what I'm linking is this thread of win and glee about what constitutes "real" writing.

Move your drinks far away from the keyboard before clicking.

So, there's this actor named Isaiah Mustafa. Last winter, his willingness to work half naked, his smokin' hot physique, and his ability to rattle off random ridiculous non sequiturs with gravitas rocketed Old Spice to the top of the Superbowl Ads. (And showed up in a hilarious metaquotes post about the Doctor talking in much the same manner.)

Old Spice, somewhat belatedly realizing that they had tapped into a cultural phenomenon that could be the next "... for everything else, there's Mastercard" has announced that for the next few days, Old Spice Guy will be personally answering Tweets with video.

The Internet has exploded.

Some personal favorites:
Everyone's passing on the pitch for libraries. "Jump onto that giraffe."

The infamous proposal-by-proxy (rumor says she said "Yes")

I laughed like a hyena at the part about wolverine pelts.

I would pay good money for someone to engineer my answering machine message out of this


Paste Magazine has lots of links.

How has it taken me this long to discover this cartoon?

fandance sent this too late for Christmas, but it's too wonderful not to pass on: The ultimate Halleluja Chorus (Read the second page comments to be told the bits that don't show up on screen.)

An absolute must-watch no matter your religious beliefs. But keep the drinks away from the monitor...

Y'all have GOT to check out the French trailer for March of the Penguins. The subtitles are in English, but all you really need to know is that in France it was called "March of the Emperors" and it's about one person describing it to someone else who isn't thinking "Emperor penguin."

Worksafe. Major, major drinkables warning.

The same thing for Brokeback Mountain is pushing the boundaries of worksafe...


For fannish crack, I recommend shaggydogstail's Crazy in Love: A Case Study of Factitious Disorders and Relationship Breakdown in Gallifreyan Males (Thanks to nnwest for reccing!)

‘He’s trying to shag the evil out of me,’ said the Master.

Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘Is it working?’

‘I think it will take a very long time,’ the Master intoned gravely.

Y'know what I love about the Internet age? The stuff you miss in person is up on Youtube before you finish unpacking after a trip. (Thanks to nnwest for pointing this out.)

And then there's the just plain silly Peter Petrelli/Chris Eccleston emo-a-thon in macros. Drinks warning. Seriously.

Blessings upon thee, cedara for linking to If You Were Gay done in Doctor Who macros Not safe for work or dialup.

Put all drinks in another zip code away from your monitor.

It is very, very scary how many knitters I know will line up for this yarn.


Speaking of knitters, can anyone point me to online patterns for a mostly garter-knit afghan done in blocks? I've decided that the best way of doing something about my stash is to make something that I can auto-knit block by block.

ETA: for the crafty geeks on my list (now, why isn't that an LJ comm?)
Scarf pattern based on playing card "perfect shuffle" I don't understand the math. I do grasp "random, ever-changing stripe width, less intense than Doctor Who scarf, would make good strips for afghan."

Calculator for the above which lets you plug in the number of colors you want to use.

Other geek patterns are the gamer geek scarf/strip unpattern (Roll one d12 or d20. That's how many rows in the next color you use. Either roll or grab randomly to pick the color, depending on the number of colors you have)

and the one for math geeks: Fibonacci sequence in two colors Knit one row in color A, one row in color B, 2 rows in color A, 3 rows in color B, 5 rows in color A, 1 row in color B... (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, changing with every number.) If you want wider stripes, start further up the Fibonacci sequence or go further up it. But to make the stripes alternate in two colors, you have to pick an odd number of total rows to do (1, 1, 2, 3, 5 or 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13) NOT 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 or you will be beginning every sequence with the same color.

All bets are off if you're using up your stash randomly, although you still probably want to pick an odd sequence number and go dark-light-dark-light.

And then there's always adapting the sudoku pattern to knitted squares: 9 squares each of nine colors. If you don't want to work out the pattern yourself, crib the "Yesterday's puzzle answer" from the newspaper.

Some smiles for a Friday:

Seen all over the f-list: If Edward Gorey did The Trouble With Tribbles

I have feeds for Cute Otter and Cute Overload, but the one that really perks up the morning is schnuffi_daily. No idea what language schnuffi is or what it means, but the comm is one picture of one hot guy served up every morning. That's all. That's enough.

I think this is part of a gaming LJ and I'm not even sure who Lorne is (I always think of the green guy from Angel) but: a cooperative bit of Lorne/Ianto slash (NSFW!) that did it for me.

Late for work again. However, later today, a poll. Y'all get to spend my virtual money! (Well, you get to have opinions on the subject. As always, I reserve the right to do as I please.)