You know what I've been missing from my Sunday nights? Mad Men. Why are their seasons so short? :(

This weekend was the first epic snowfall of this winter, and I felt it was the perfect opportunity to seal myself up in my apartment and write. And that's exactly what I did. I have an assortment of half-written fics begging to be finished, so naturally I ignored them all and wrote a whole new fic from scratch. AND IT IS THE LONGEST MOTHERFUCKING STORY I'VE WRITTEN IN YEARS. It felt really good. I needed that.

A few months ago I made this cracky Star Trek/Mad Men picture and ever since, whenever I've mentioned that I feel like writing a ST/MM crossover, the reaction I got was "DO IT DO IT!" So I did it.

Title: A Beautiful Mine Meld
Rating: R
Word Count: 6,250
Notes: It's not a true crossover--there's no MM characters here. It's more like Mirror Universe!AOS, if the Mirror Universe were an ad agency in 1960s New York. Thus you don't have to be familiar with MM to read this, although if you are there's a lot of subtle goodies for you. Title is a play on "A Beautiful Mine," the theme song to Mad Men. Also, this is quite possibly the most dramatic thing I've ever written. It kinda goes with the territory.

Summary: Just another day at the offices of Sterling Cooper Starship Enterprise Advertising.

( Shut the door. Have a seat. )

The year is drawing to a close, and for music nerds like me that means one thing. Lists. Top tens. Albums, singles, new discoveries, a way to quantify and rank the music that has come into our lives and made itself at home in our record collections (or as we think of them, souls) over the last twelve months. The NME and Q are scoured for inspiration, blogs dissected and disagreed with, but ultimately we settle down alone with our iTunes and a notebook and pen to make The Big Decision: what WAS my favourite record of the year?

It’s important stuff. You can’t rush it. I’ve been known to start with a list in the hundreds and spend days whittling it down to ten, only to change my mind the instant I close the document and plump for something on a whim. Other people’s lists become instantly fascinating, a source of quiet smugness or irritation, and every year I miss John Peel and his Festive Fifty, the surge of hope and nostalgia as we neared number one, the sense of collective reflection on another year gone by and marked in tunes that will live forever.

’09 has been a good year for music: more girls than I can ever remember front and centre where they belong, more invention and merging of genres, old favourites returning and proving they’ve still got it in them to surprise and delight, new faces blasting open music as we knew it.

So for interested parties, here is the result of my agonising. My top tens of ’09.

( albums )

( singles )

So those are mine. Collectively I think they tell the tale of my record collection this year. Rock music, you're in a holding pattern and you need a kick in the ass, indie, some of your stalwarts are letting you down by slipping into mid-career malaise but you can still pull out the odd wonder, electro, you constantly delight and surprise me with your genre-twisting ways.

What are yours? Which records set your '09 alight?

It’s coming on Christmas, and this year poverty means I’m going handmade. And unlike a lot of you I have no crafting or art skillz whatsoever - but I can cook a bit, so that means foody gifts. I thought it might be fun to swap some recipes, because frankly people are bored of me being a one trick festive shortbread pony. So:


Edible Christmas Gifts

& Festive Recipe Swap!


( mine )

So those are mine - show me yours! Any recipes you have that always go down a treat, either festive favourites, edible gifts or things you make at this time of year that you always look forward to, leave them in a comment. I know I have a lot of foodies on my flist and I'm counting on you.

And I'm wheat free but that doesn't matter - if you have wheat and dairy-free recipes please share them (because finding good ones is amazingly tricky and there's a bunch of us dietarily-challenged folk here) but feel free to share your all-butter all-flour all-real food ones too for everyone else ♥.

1. 2010 needs to hurry up and get here, because 2009 and I are fucking done professionally.

2. WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN.


The snowflakes totally took me by surprise; I had no clue LJ even had this going on. It's like Valentine's Day come early, only unlike V-Day I actually got stuff! :') So thank you to Anonymous, maraudersaffair, revelried, so_severus, zombres, dharmavati, wheres_walnut, hilsongirl, kuro_nyoko, ziasudra_fic, clytemnestra215, almalthia, letmypidgeonsgo, zia_narratora, acacia_123, & blue_hobbit for the V-Gift spam <333


I WANT TO AWKWARDLY MAKE OUT WITH EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU.

I didn't send any to anyone, because I'm an asshole. Also I can't get over the term "V-Gift," it sounds like a euphemism for vaginas or virginity, like "Hey man I totally unwrapped her V-Gift last night *wink wink*." Ew.

3. In case you missed it, HOLIDAY CARD POST!

4. If you haven't yet, vote for the People's Choice Awards! I think it's only open a few more hours :3 Here are some of my choices, which I'm sure seem completely unpredictable and shocking:



You can vote as often as you want (I'm up to 3x so far). I actually voted for both ZQ and Chris Pine BECAUSE I COULD. I wish I lived in LA so I could attend. One of you west coast people need to go on my behalf!

5. My new job sucks hardcore. FML.

6. One of the many reasons my job sucks, though a shallow one, is now I have to work Monday nights so no more participating in awesome Twitterspam during Heroes and Big Bang Theory :( But can I just say last night's BBT was EPIC? It was one of the best episodes of the entire series IMHO. Kaley and Jim have so much chemistry it's not even funny. Except it is, because I couldn't stop laughing.


I asked for BBT on DVD for xmas so that I can use it to convert everyone I know into BBT fans ;D


7. THIS NEEDS TO BE REAL. ONLY I WOULD CALL IT "SPOCK BAND."