Off the prompt "cuddles."

Tonight we heard a strange squeaking noise, which, when investigated, proved to be a ball of grey fluff with whom BratMonster kitten was playing through the window. Vaguely tribble-ish in size, adorability, trill, and furriness, we determined it was a kitten really too young to be on its own and lured it to us with a steady stream of inane babble (after we figured out that sitting quietly was only freaking it out) and wet food. It is currently locked in the downstairs bathroom of conhq, as it was too late to canvas the neighborhood asking if anyone had lost their kitten. Though we suspect it may be abandoned as upon picking it up and feeling it, we found it was an underfed scrap of a thing with a knobby, knobby spine. It puts me in mind of Little Miss when we first got her, only tinier and therefore exponentially more deadly cute--at a year and a half old, Little Miss was barely over four pounds and her fluffy tail was as big as her body. (Little Miss has since been fed adequately and is something like twelve-ish pounds, and may no longer accurately be called Little, though what has accuracy to do with how I address my cats?) We estimate the grey fluffball to be 3-4 months old and possibly its weight should be measured in ounces.

I had an episode of... I don't even know. niqaeli suggests it tromped on my mommy buttons. In a fit of insanity I txted the roomie to ask what he thought of having three cats; I later retracted that. In any case I managed to hand the kitten off to other people, leave the vicinity, and slowly pry myself away from the idea of taking it home to be mine mine mine, during which period I repeatedly announced I was being very reasonable about this whole thing and burst into tears every five seconds.

List of Things Juls is not allowed to review while recovering from kitten:
Memory
Cetaganda
A Civil Campaign
that episode of Nero Wolfe where the dog follows Archie home
any episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation featuring any incarnation of Spot
Red Dwarf
the icanhazcheezburger feed on my droll
Glass Houses (see icon)
eta: small humans being adorable--I better not read any of thefourthvine's Earthling entries/eta

...and if I continue, this rapidly reaches Skippy length.

Curiously, the fantasy genre obligatory talking cat archetype doesn't nail this the same way, but I am still wary of removing Red Dwarf from that list.

I feel a little better now but I think I will be falling down to sleep at conhq as the whole thing has left me too exhausted to drive.

At some later point when we've made sure no one in the neighborhood is looking for the little thing, I will probably post a link to adorable pictures in niqaeli's journal as we seek to find it a home that is not mine (or hers, but mostly not mine, as that seems to be where the emotional risk lies).

The waitress at Waffle House informs me tomorrow is another day and it will get better. Also I think she may have threatened to beat up my man (I was not very articulate about why I was crying).

Tasty things are still tasty even when in pieces.

No one judge my experimental baking. I had a nightmare about that. DEAR BRAIN, SHUT UP.

Vid: The Long Spear
Vidders: MANY--Please credit to "jmtorres, niqaeli, et al", not JUST to jmtorres. This was NOT a solo vid
Music: The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel, with additional material
Fandom: Star Trek and... Star Trek. Yes.
LINK (right-click or ctrl-click to download and save): http://houseoftorres.dreamhosters.com/vids/jmtniqetal-startreks-longspear.mp4 (60MB) (link updated 16 May 2020)

I promised since, oh, about the second time I saw the movie that this vid would say everything I wanted said and that if it didn't I would cry and hang up my hat as a vidder because clearly I would be no good at communicating in the medium.

So I will limit my remarks here and let the vid do most of the talking. I really only want to say three things:

1. An expansion of the credits:
jmtorres and niqaeli were the primary vidders in the sense of putting material on the timeline.

traykor, echan, and grey_bard did lots and lots additional clipping above and beyond what jmtorres and niqaeli managed.

grey_bard also recorded the vocal track for the last verse specifically for this project. The other women whose singing I sampled for this vid are Joni Mitchell and Lorenna McKennit.

killabeez and slasher69 are two vidders to whose work we paid homage. Those vids were: Killa's Dante's Prayer, because Killa is a seminal Trek vidder of the modern era (Dante's Prayer has been cited as "Hey, you guys! We can use those computers things for vidding!"), and Kandy Fong's Both Sides Now, which is, so far as I know, the earliest vid of which we have visual record (see this OTW journal article for more on the history of vidding).

The following fangirls took pictures of themselves in Vulcan salute for me to use at the end of the vid: ysobel, lierdumoa, settiai, lferion, azurelunatic, revolutionaryjo, gchick, zarhooie, missingwatch.

elfling made the awesome costumes we wore to Club Vivid.

I would also like to give a special nod to nshoe, who, while not one of our women's voices in the traditional sense, did help out with Memory Alpha abuse for clipping and making one of my hard drives live again. His wife, niqaeli, also notes that he was very patient with the crazy women in the house.

2. I did, briefly, want to explain the title, because I used a metaphor that I thought was not uncommon, but google entirely disagrees. So you may never have heard it before unless you read all the same stuff I do. papersky writes about her spearpoint theory; the example she was using it on when I appropriated it into my personal vocabulary was the Vorkosigan novels, how the later novels like Brothers in Arms and Memory are that sharp point on the long spear, they have an emotional impact because of the history of the other novels they carry. I consider the Star Trek Reboot movie to be the sharp point. Since I'm trying not to overexplain the vid, I'll leave the rest of the metaphor unspoken.

3. My hat is made of tin.

I will now take questions from the audience.

(Holy cow, it's harder to hear people cry than to hear them laugh.)