Hello Everyone.

Kindly note that you may submit any type of story (fanfiction) to http://endless-dreamers.net and we can code them as dream novels.

Dream novels are stories that YOU can participate in.

At the moment the site hosts stories from D. Grayman, Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, Gakuen Heaven, Vampire Knight, Ouran High School Host Club, and Prince of Tennis. With your submissions, we’re hoping to host more titles.

For more information, please visit us at http://endless-dreamers.net

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/business/energy-environment/08water.html

Charles Duhigg, reporting for The NYT:

More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data. […]

Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards.

(Because I know that some of us are at various stages and are starting to think about pushing the panic button.)

Remember everything your Language Arts/Composition/English teachers labored to instill into your heads about being very concise and, um, oh yeah, adverbs were the great woogy evil?

(And yet they made you read classics where things were described in excruciating detail down to the last sub-atomic particle and completely failed to see the conflict?)

Well, forget their advice and get in touch with your inner dead Victorian!

Never use one word if you think you might be able to get away with three or four of them!


---

I'm not saying that you shouldn't do the best you can under the circumstances. I'm saying that your target audience isn't the EIC Grinch in Chief of the Ivory Tower Snooty Pants Review and Bastion of Artistic Pretense.

It's US.

Frankly, I'm always amazed and delighted that somebody took vorpal keyboard in hand and snicker-snacked back at the holiday madness long enough to get the gorram thing written and uploaded for somebody who's probably a stranger.

---

Don't panic.

It's 1000 words, not War and Peace.

Reach for your thesaurus. Adjectives and adverbs are can be amongst your dearest friends indeed at a time like this.

And who knows, one of those extra bits of description you worked in because ZOMG! 980 words and it's got a beginning, middle, and end, and I've got to squeeze out an extra 25 words just to be sure, might be what your recipient thinks is *the* perfect detail that shows how much you've got the character/world/situation nailed. ;)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/INhthfB366c/woman-has-fingerprin.html

Japanese police have arrested a Chinese woman whom they claim had her fingerprints removed from the fingertips of each hand and swapped to the other side in order to fool immigration controls. The woman, whom they arrested for unrelated fraud, is said to have have paid US$15,000 for the operation. Japanese police believe that it is a widespread practice.

Skin patches on her thumbs and index fingers were removed and then re-grafted on to the matching digits of the opposite hand.

Japanese newspapers said police had noticed that Ms Lin's fingers had unnatural scars when she was arrested last month for allegedly faking a marriage to a Japanese man.

The apparent ability of illegal migration networks to break through hi-tech controls suggests that other countries who fingerprint visitors could be equally vulnerable - not least the United States, according to BBC Asia analyst Andre Vornic.

'Fake fingerprint' Chinese woman fools Japan controls (via /.)

(Image: Fingerprints, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from kevindooley's photostream)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/W8Kg5qMi3ic/wendy-elfquest-pinis.html

Tavie sez, "Wendy Pini, creator of Elfquest, is my favorite living artist. I had long been curious about this out-of-print book about her quest to bring Michael Moorcock's "Stormbringer" to the big screen. The artwork was supposed to be phenomenal, but the book was unfindable long before I had even heard of Elfquest. Richard Pini has now made the book available online - in its glorious, lushly illustrated entirety - at Wendy's website for her web graphic novel, Masque of the Red Death. The paintings are incredible."

Law & Chaos - Wendy Pini (Thanks, Tavie!)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/BWMdjzkFgOQ/furniture-made-from-1.html

Etsy seller Stil Novo Design makes beautiful furniture out of old wine-barrels. I remember visiting the Bushmill's distillery in N. Ireland and asking what they did with their barrels after they were finishing converting grain to ambrosia, and the tour-guide said, "Oh, a man from town turns them into rubbish bins." I was agog. I wanted to furnish my entire house with them!

Stil Novo Design (via Make)

Don't know if anybody posted this yet, but here's a link to Jackson's update on the movie:

www.firstshowing.net/2009/12/07/peter-jackson-provides-an-interesting-update-on-temeraire/

For those who missed the earlier post, Joe will be playing with Mike Kinsella and Bob Nanna in a Morrissey cover band at the Sub-T in Chicago on Dec. 26th. The show is a fundraiser for Girls Rock! Chicago.

Tickets can be purchased at ticketweb here.

this is gonna be bonkers. bigger than you could expect. ill be there. you should be too.

At long last, I bring screencaps of Trouble at Totleigh Towers (88 MB, 1810 caps). Enjoy! :D

LJ ate a chunk of my captions just when I was all ready to post it, so I had to redo a bunch. D: Luckily I remembered most of it!

( Oh by Jingo! )

Fic title: Crush

✩ Thank you to all you sweeties for the snowflake cookies AND cake! With luck, the snowflakes will keep the real snow from falling and the cake will...um...attract real cake? Or chocolate, anyhow. :D

✩ Thank you also to everyone who commented on the Tezuka/Oishi story! I was expecting a much smaller response to what's essentially a boutique pairing and such an un-shippy story at that. You made me feel all glow-y.

✩ I'm experiencing a strong desire to get back into Harry Potter just now, though I'm not sure what precipitated it. Maybe it's just that this is a nostalgic time of year? Or because it was so cold I was wearing my Slytherin scarf today? I think I will dig out the books and start a re-read and see where that gets me. (To some hot Ron/Draco, if I'm lucky.)

✩ It's warm inside and I'm happy. I hope you're warm and happy too. ♥

Fic title: Crush

On my lj, at least! Thank you, cordelia_v, fatfred, cincodemaygirl, and Anonymous for the snowflake cookies!

And yesterday, I finally achieved words on my Yuletide fic. 575! Now if can just do that every day until Yuletide, I might bring this thing in at something like the proper length.

Today may be a wash, though. I am procrastinating so hard, I just played a full game of Oregon Trail. (In which John, Ronon, Rodney and Teyla all died. I suppose it's a good thing I didn't use the Torchwood team instead. "JACK has died. JACK has died. JACK has died...")

Maybe there is inspiration, or at least motivation, at the bottom of this cup of eggnog. If nothing else, there is eggnog in it.

This entry was originally posted at http://ellen-fremedon.dreamwidth.org/705249.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

My profile page is a blizzard. Thank you, awesome people, both named and anonymous. I'm just sorry that I've been so busy that I didn't have time to reciprocate before LJ yanked away the freebie.

All to Catch a Thief
PG, 9200 words, Brendon/Ryan

Summary: Brendon's life is comatose until someone breaks into every house in town except his. A fairy tale about criminals.
A/N: AU fic written for drawn_to, and inspired by the day Ryan Ross looked like this and heartequals' requests for snow, bright colors, shenanigans, and no porn. I hope you like your gift! :D

( Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a sleepy town. )

Thank you all for the LJ snowflakes! Apparently it was an error, and they weren't supposed to be free, but I'm so glad they were. I had to leave Illinois just as the snow began to fall, and so it was nice to take some home with me!

Relatedly, I have Dreamwidth invites, if any of you can be persuaded to make the switch - I grow increasingly happier with DW the longer I use it, and I hear LJ has been slow and error-prone lately. Email or comment with the address you want the invite sent to, and I will set you up.

And in totally other other news, I have finally acquired, though not reviewed, all of the source and background materials for the Excessive Yuletide Project of Doom! Woohoo! I am bizarrely excited about the task I have set myself, even with so far yet to go and the deadline a mere two weeks away.

[read comments at Dreamwidth | comment | How to use Open ID]

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/S0VjJtBhSVg/spaceshiptwo-unveili.html

The world's first commercial spacecraft was officially unveiled on Monday afternoon.

Photos shot for Boing Boing by Alan Radecki, photographer and Mojave aviation and space historian.

The craft will take six tourists at a time to the edge of space. Each seat is $200,000, requires the traveler to pass a strenuous physical, and offers just a few minutes of zero-G flight.

The Mojave desert is home to Virgin Galactic's research and development base. Its commercial spaceport is to be built in New Mexico.

Earlier in the day, an ice-sculptor's work reflects similarly cold conditions two hours east of L.A., lashed by heavy rains before the unveiling.

Journalists gathered for the event, bussed out on coaches to what one correspondent described as a "goat rodeo."

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was among the attendees.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/W_ZLUKWds3E/malaria-in-the-usa-1.html

Nat Torkington says,

Here is a Library of Congress map showing prevalence of Malaria throughout the United States in the 1870s. Astonishing how dangerous it was. In some places, it accounted for one-seventh of all deaths. People thought it was bad air (literally, "mal-" + "air"), figured out it was a parasite in the blood in the 1870s, but it wasn't until 1908 that a Cuban doctor made the connection with mosquitoes.

Incidentally, if you've ever wondered what the "ague" is that Shakespeare kept banging on about--it's what the English called malaria. It was widespread in the marshlands during Shakespeare's time. (via sciblogs)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/ND8_IzecIKI/mobius-bagel-interlo.html

On the website of sculptor and mathematician George Hart, there are step-by-step instructions for how to craft a Möbius strip from a single bagel. I like his thoughts at the very end of the instruction process:

"It is much more fun to put cream cheese on these bagels than on an ordinary bagel. In additional to the intellectual stimulation, you get more cream cheese, because there is slightly more surface area."

Mathematically Correct Breakfast: How to Slice a Bagel into Two Linked Halves (via Serious Eats NY, thanks Laura)