I nominated a bunch of things for Festivids; this pretty much means I'm participating, which could be really bad because things are not going well with my dad at all and I'm drowning in work, plus there's Yuletide, but I'm going to give it the old college try anyway.

I nommed:

Miami Vice
The Middleman
Catch and Release
Charlie Jade
Justified
La Femme Nikita (USA series)
Life
MDs
Prison Break
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension
The Jacket

I was genuinely surprised that Prison Break had not been on the list before. And some of those... well, I'm fairly certain I will be the only one offering or asking, just as I often am in Yuletide. Especially MDs -- my slashtastic show that only seems to encompass about three people in the whole world, and only one other person who seems to know the show as well as I do (looks wistfully at trelkez, the only person I think who has ever made a vid for it). I did post the only episodes that seem to be out there in this post and you can DL them and get caught up in the William Fichtner/John Hannah slashy goodness (PLUS bonus Jane Lynch pre-Glee). What are you waiting for? Go. Download. I'll wait.

I would love to make or receive a really creepy sicko vid of The Jacket, too. I have an idea but haven't been able to motivate myself yet to vid it because it's so wonderfully disturbing, so this might be good for me. And oh man, if I could make or get a Prison Break vid for Lang and Mahone, I would possibly perish of happiness. I love thinking of all these things. I have been watching the movie Catch and Release a bit lately -- Tim Olyphant has never looked more beautiful. Anyway. Lots to think about.

I have this big "Fuck you you fucking fucks" TV post boiling inside me but I have to go take care of a bunch of stuff. Related to some of my shows, or shows that will never be my shows because of the fucking fuckballs who run them. Maybe later. Every time I think about these things, I get so worked up. I need to go look at shoes and post shoe pics at my Tumblr.

This is so weird -- I've spent the day working on the new book, a Living Abroad guide to New Zealand. One of the chapters details the earthquake-proneness of the country and talks about the geology of the area. And now they've had a terrible one, right around the time I was reading this. Yoiks.

I'm looking forward to going to Escapade on Thursday, but now they're scaring us by saying there's a possibility of snow in the forecast by then. In Seattle, life shuts down when it snows, and it's pretty much impossible to get in or out of the area I live in because of the size of the hills, so this is making me miserable. Even if the weather isn't that great in California, it's still probably better than here. The other day when I was moving stuff out of my dad's apartment, I ended up stuck outside the building and had to walk around to the front. I cut across the lawn, and my feet sank into the sodden ground about three inches, ruining my favorite shoes. We've had so much rain that there's nothing left to soak it up. My own lawn has become completely moss. (Which is, all things considered, better than the horrid floods and earthquakes and myriad other disasters befalling the rest of the world, I know.) This has been a really hard year here, the kind that makes you start feeling suicidal.

The past week has been so stressful I can't sleep or eat much. I wake up in the wee hours and can never go back to sleep because I'm so weighed down with all this stuff to do related to Dad. We met with the hospice people on Saturday and we're still going through with it, even though last week he was unbelievably great. I feel like I'm on the world's worst rollercoaster -- up and down up and down, getting sick to my stomach. Just when I thought he was dying, he turns more lucid and happy than he's been since this first happened.

Still, if they made the order to do hospice, that means the doctor believes he has six months or less to live as he's going now, so he and I talked about it and I told him I started the thing when he was in bad shape, and he understands. He's still not eating much, though he says he is, and I found out he's dropped over 35 pounds in the past month or so. The hospice lady was every bit as great as the people we dealt with in San Diego when sis_r was dying, and I'm really looking forward to having a whole team of people who will communicate with me and really truly tell me what's happening to Dad, and talk to me honestly. She was amazing with Dad, too.

Moving him out has been horrible. A lot of stuff in his place belonged to my sister or my mom, so there's that pain, but mostly it's just been so... I don't know. Pressurey, and dealing with my cousins and their fussing and bullying, and taking out my frustration on my friend Michael (everyone kept doing stuff that I didn't want/need them to do, and being guys, they had to all give me this shit as if they were in charge, which just... gah). I hired a business that deals with a lot of people in the retirement communities, specializing in elderly transitions, a group of women who are all daughters who've gone through this sort of thing. They've been enormously helpful. I haven't talked with them today but they were supposed to come in today and tomorrow to do the final clearout. They've been really sweet -- and I wish I could have disinvolved everyone else, but that was a lot harder to do.

I promise I will get to the comments everyone's left on my Prison Break vid as soon as I can. I kind of felt like I needed something positive, an attagirl I guess, when I posted it, so your comments have been a really welcome break from all this. I wish I had time to work on my PB story, but I'm starting to feel like that's never going to happen now. There is still so much to do about my dad -- getting his mail changed over, all the finanical stuff... arg. Leaves little time for fandom love. But OMG, Fichtner's new movie starts Friday and sdwolfpup and I (and possibly more fangirls) are going to see it when I get back from the con. It's been years since I've been able to watch him in a movie on the big screen, and I'm sooooo looking forward to this.

Season finale of Tabatha's Salon Takeover tonight. WAH! I am sad, I will miss my girl. I thought the most awesome thing this season was seeing her take that party girl a few episodes ago shopping after she made an effort to come in sober. I was filled with envy!

And I have many many thoughts on Fringe, but I don't know when I will have time to articulate them -- or at least try to, I'm not sure if I can even.

A couple years ago at a bash with the locals, we were talking about this memish thing going on where people were discussing their pairings through their fandom histories, and what that says about people. I couldn't see a pattern in mine, but Jo said she saw one... I just can't remember what it was. I was intrigued because I don't know that these pairings say much to me about who I am/what I like. Many are taciturn types, classic clams, paired with an anti-clam. But beyond that, I have no idea.

But these are the ones I was most fannish about and listed off when we talked about it at the bash, with a few additions for new things:
Joe/Chad (Laredo, '60s TV western)
Castillo/Crockett (Miami Vice)
Skinner/Mulder (X-Files)
Michael/Nikita (La Femme Nikita)
Spike/Buffy (Duh)
Doyle/Bodie (The Professionals)
Skinner/Scully (X-Files)
Steve/Kayla (Days of Our Lives, very formative)
Dom/Brian (The Fast and the Furious)
Chris/Vin (Magnificent Seven)

I would add at this point because I've written or vidded them (or thought about it):
Jack/Ianto (Torchwood)
Michael/Alex (Prison Break)
Don Eppes/Billy Cooper (Numb3rs)
Ed/Greg (Flashpoint)
Sherman/Cooper (Southland)

So, aside from the preponderance of slash, I have no idea if there's a pattern in these relationships and what it is. Do you see one? What are your patterns?

This post brought to you by my inability to concentrate on anything because I am freaking out about my dad. I did get a nice break the other day with fangirls coming over to watch Mag 7 together, which was a whole lot of fun and also we took a little side trip into Prison Break, which was fun. I showed them my Escapade vid and it was judged a success, so I think I might post that later today if I can get the credits fixed up. I don't think there's a lot of overlap between the audience at the vid show there and my LJ, so I'm not really worried about giving it away.

You know what's really hard? Making a vid and then just sitting on it for a long time, because you're sending it to a con and it's also Festivids time, and you're really really happy with it and want it to be out living in the world. For, um, definitions of hard that are totally selfish and fannish.

I'm about 6,200 words into a Prison Break story and nowhere near finished, but it's so frustrating because I think it's going to be really bad -- yet I still want to keep writing it. The thing is, there's so much to do in regards to my dad, and I don't even have anything workwise on the immediate front, yet I still don't have that much time to write, and I need a lot of uninterrupted time so that I can let my thoughts wander and try to steer it in the right direction.

One of the most frustrating things about coming back and diving full force into this fandom is that much has been taken away. There was a Michael/Mahone community called wallporn, but whoever ran it fucking purged it so all the stuff is now lost. Many of the people who posted stuff haven't posted it anywhere else, so it just seems to be lost. I don't understand people who do this. Let it languish if you don't want it anymore; don't fucking purge it and take everything away as if no one will ever come back to the fandom.

Things with Dad continue to be bad. Every once in a while, he starts to seem like he might make it out of the nursing home, like maybe he could go to the second floor of his apt. building, where they have full-time assisted living situations, but then it backslides and I think that no, it's never going to get better. I know they're going to ask me to clear out his apartment and I'm terrified of this; he's borderline hoarding, such a packrat that I don't know what to do with all that shit. And I'm all alone.

I've been freaking most about his license tabs. His SUV hasn't been driven since October, I guess, and the battery completely died. So I have to find a way to get it jump started and then take it to the emissions test, and I have only a few days to do it before it becomes illegal. Fortunately my mostly useless cousin volunteered to come down and help me tomorrow; cars are one thing he knows so that feels a little less frantic. I can't sleep unless I take something, the instant I wake up to pee or something, I'm wracked with worry and fear. I have never felt so alone and helpless and I wish my sister was here more than anything in the world. Not having someone to share this kind of thing with... this is hard. The fact that I have to do everything on someone else's timeline makes it worse.

Maybe it's a good thing I have Prison Break to watch and play with. Hell, maybe that's why I've fallen so hard for it again. I'm lucky that I have some kind people in my life who listen to me blather about it and even have watched an episode or two with me -- both belmanoir and killabeez have been endlessly patient with my squee and even watched it. That's when you know someone is good people.

For more joy day, I decided to do something that would bring joy probably only to me, but that's okay, too. I have been eaten alive by Prison Break fandom, specifically Michael/Mahone slashiness, but since the show ended a year and a half ago, everyone's moved on, which means I am very late to the party and short on cash. But I've been reading through past posts by my PB friends for the last few days, and just enjoying the hell out of the conversations, and wishing I'd participated a bit more back then (not that I didn't participate, but it wasn't as extreme as what I feel now).

What is bringing me joy about this cracked show? Oh, so many things. Let me tell you about them!
( Crackiest show ever? You decide. )

OMG y'all, Prison Break is eating my brain. WTF??? IDEK. I DON'T EVEN KNOW. I watched the whole thing from second season on pretty regularly because William Fichtner had joined the cast in S2 (I'd gotten really bored with it immediately in S1) and enjoyed it, and enjoyed talking about it with sdwolfpup and other people. But it didn't move me to write anything or vid. And I was more than content to watch SDW's wonderful vids but I didn't feel the need for fic.

But a couple months ago I was flipping through channels and found this really cool super hi-def channel called HDN was airing it, and it was S2, so I was all, "FIchtner yay!" and I kept watching. I was feeling very FIchtner-ly fannish lately anyhow. But I don't know if it's the plasma TV and HDN's insane ability to make use of all 1080p (when they showed Torchwood, it was breathtakingly gorgeous), or just being in the right mood, or not having anything I feel super passionate about lately except Justified, but this thing is eating me alive. I CANNOT GET ENOUGH. The hoyay in this show is crazy, I'm telling you.

I'm sure it's that it hits a lot of my kinks -- there's my competence kink in that Michael and Alex both are the smartest guys in any room they're in, there's my thing about equals -- they're very evenly matched in intellect, ability, clever trickiness. But all of that is constantly compromised by the things that happen in the show, so it makes it especially fun. I mean, the first season is all Michael and Mahone basically having a "whose dick is bigger" contest for the entire season, trying to outsmart each other -- it's essentially "I'm smarter" "No, I'm smarter" "my dick is bigger" "no, look at mine" punctuated by relentless eye-fucking and heavy breathing at each other. Srsly, the heavy breathing at each other is EPIC.

And then the third season, they're IN A FREAKING PANAMANIAN PRISON TOGETHER. Sweaty, dirty, Mahone being all twitchy from addiction withdrawal, Michael being all desperate and needy because he thinks his lover is dead, and OF COURSE they're having HATE SEX and desperate needy pervy stuff together. There are no guards in the prison, it has no regular cells and that sort of thing, so it's a slash wing-ding free-for-all. They could be doing it anywhere. They get to have gladiatorial-like fights and neck-snapping and all manner of wonderful comic-book violence and Fichtner flexing his fabulous muscles. I'm not usually into the twitching junkie look, but my god it works on Mahone.

And then in S4 they are FORCED to work together but it's also heavily implied that Mahone comes back to help Michael because he wants to -- he can't leave the pretty alone. And they're in a sort of makeshift prison trying to gain their freedom and finally using their smarts together, and they're constantly in each other's spaces, finishing each other's sentences, and being all in each other's heads. IT'S SO HOT. And then Michael comes to totally depend on Mahone and stops calling him Mahone in favor of calling him Alex and it's totally 'cause they're doing it, you know, even with Sara around.

I mean, most of the show I just FF through, because it's way too much talking. If this show hadn't had cell phones, they couldn't have done anything. Everyone spends hours talking on their phones. And they're always getting close to something, and then talking it to death while someone else causes a stall, so everything drags on for forever. At least S3 is only 13 episodes (because of the strike? I can't remember if it was that or the show was suffering...).

But I must make a vid for this and I really want to write something for Yuletide/NY's resolution, but it doesn't look like any requests were made for it. At least, I don't see it in the summary page, but maybe when the master list of requests goes up I'll see. It's a shame if it's not, I tend to have motivation troubles lately and having a challenge to write for would help. I have a freaking 530 page book I have to finish by Jan. 4, but all I can think of is wanting to write Prison Break.

But damn. It's not my usual style to fall so hard for something that's off the air. Mostly I'm an early adopter, and once something's gone, I tend to move on as well. But for whatever reason, it was fun when it was current, but now it's taking over my brain! It's a zombie show! I don't even like threesomes, but I've been reading fic and totally buying into Alex/Mchael/Sara three-ways. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME? ::shakes fist at Prison Break::