Little Miss Jonesin'

Lame Post Pimps Blogging Project

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:07:09 GMT

Inspired by Gagglefrak's LOL-Heroes, I have my own LOLHeroes. Making lulz is fun!

The Fanfic 100

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:39:44 GMT

The First Twent-Five Prompts for my 3:10 to Yuma: Ben Wade in 10 Words or Less series:

1. Beginnings: “Not even I remember bein’ born, Charlie.”

2. Middles: That glorious feeling; after losing body awareness, before climax ends.

3. Ends: “I killed the man had this gun before me.”

4. Insides: "That is a fascinating specimen, doctor. Real human bones!"

5. Outsides: "I'm takin' you to a tailor, Charlie."

6. Hours: "How long you wait for that shot again, sharpshooter?"

7. Days: Fever in the desert night; it hardly got worse.

8. Weeks: He'd sailed to London, once. It had been worthwhile.

9. Months: He remebered the first trip west; a wagon from Braintree.

10: Years: His first and last whaling trip, out of San Francisco.

11. Red: The leitmotif of his life was warm viscosity.

12. Orange: He loves the citrus fruits of the Spanish teritorries.

13. Yellow: "I do appreaciate the thought, Charlie, but I dislike lemons."

14. Green: Missed you, he thought. He cut one, inhaled. Wonderful limes.

15. Blue: "It just don't look the same in the sky, Charlie."

16. Purple: An Irish girl used to talk about them, heather flowers.

17. Brown: He loved her skin, its duskiness- it glowed at sunset.

18. Black: He missed mud; thick, cool, full of life and hope.

19. White: He loved her skin, its frailty- it looked like procelain.

20. Colorless: "Once a blow rendered me blind- briefly."

21. Friends: There'd been a boy, loyal until the coughing killed him.

22. Enemies: "I don't have enemies. That implies mutual sentiment, Byron."

23. Lovers: He'd wanted whores when he could've had good girls. Mistake.

24. Family: He supposed there were some things he couldn't steal.

25. Teamates: War learned him obedience, but it didn't stick.

Written As: Myself
Fandom: 3:10 to Yuma
Feeling: Dull
Hearing: Irritating talk radio
Jonesin' for: A Root Beer Float!

Hot Damn

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 15:14:04 GMT

I could talk the hind legs of a donkey.

I don't know why I've never before realised this, yet it is true. I could... I might be the only person on this earth actually capable of talking another human to death. Literally.

I need to learn how to shut up. I really, really do.

Three Then Train

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:41:02 GMT

A happy member of a new fandom.

Feeling: happy, in a lazy sort of way
Hearing: planes taking off from LaGuardia
Reading: The Amulet of Samarkand
Jonesin' For: Vanilla ice ceram. Lots of it.

written as: myself
for: threetentrain
fandom: n/a

Long Time No Post

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 13:55:40 GMT

Non-Fandom Posting

So... Muse, fandom, etc; that's all dead to me now. Sort of. I'm a freaking fanfic junkie, can't do without it, and I like the avatar, so I'm coming back to this account as a general-use LJ fanfic base. Or basement. Like the kind I'll probably be living in for a while. Or... not. Since I don't live in a basement. Whatever.

I might keep doing random posts as Hestia Jones, I was having fun with that character voice. If that happens, well, hell, there'll be a note at the start like every other fic ought to have.

Feeling: Disconnected
Hearing: A helicopter, literally, it's flying over the neighborhood.
Reading: The Amulet of Samarkand
Jonesin' For: Fried haddock, home fries and a good bitter.

Written as: myself
For: myself

Freddy

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:37:40 GMT

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger." Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Friedrich Nietzsche's writings always make me feel a little fuzzy-brained. I mean, I know some people who love them. I mean, love them. Are just nuts for everything he wrote. Me, not so much. I tend to disagree with the man on principle- partly because I feel an obligation to do so, as an armchair feminist, and partly because I've always thought of him as a little scary, and very confusing.

But I do think he was right about that one thing. What doesn’t kill us, does make us stronger. Like the great heroes of Norse epics descending to the underworld and returning greater men for it- or, for a more realistic analogy, like the American President Theodore Roosevelt, dragging himself up from the depths of physical ills, and lifting his nation from the depths of a recession.

Or anyone recovering from an illness, really. Like the chicken pox. You only get it once, then you can't get it again. Unless you get shingles, I guess. Shingles are evil. But, in general, the body is stronger for having recovered from illness- but that's not really what he means, is it?

No, he's talking about- mental strength? This is what throws me off with this stuff, all the time. I don't get it. In order to decide whether or not you agree with someone's philosophy, you have to know what they mean by this or that statement. I can never get past that part.

I suppose I agree with that one idea. Insofar as I understand it, at any rate.

But of course, I can't claim to really understand it at all.

Feeling: Fuzzy-Brained
Hearing: Fuego by Bond
Reading: Shadow of the Moon by M. M. Kaye
Jonesin' For: A Higher IQ

Muse: Hestia Jones
Fandom: Harry Potter
Words: 284

The Langauge

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 03:58:18 GMT

Talk about something you inherited.

I’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about in that category. I mean, both sides of my family are pureblood, and wealthy. Both those things tend to come along with a lot of stuff. Most of it’s useless. That’s why all the pureblood families have such massive houses- they don’t need all the space to live in, they just need somewhere to put all that stuff. And we have to have house elves to clean the houses that are too big for any one family to keep up themselves.

Why doesn’t anybody just have a yard sale? Or donate something to a museum? (Yes, there a few wizarding museums in the world.) Or just throw things away? Sometimes I think the whole of the wizarding world learned how to keep house from the Collyer brothers.

Maybe if we had a few yard sales, we could move into smaller houses and get rid of the house elves. Then we wouldn’t have slavery. But what about elves that feel compelled to do service? I mean, almost all of them? Is that a catch-22?

Anyway, talk about one thing. Huh. One.

Ok, ok, I know.

I have these earrings that used to be my grandmother’s.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Oh, wonderful. This is going to be one of those sappy stories about wonderful gramma who wore way too much perfume and was always handing out those mentholated cough-drop candy things.

But it’s not.

My grandmother did not wear lots of perfume. She did not, in fact, wear very much perfume at all. You had to be right next to her- like, giving her a hug- to smell it. Everything about my grandmother was subtle. Except her earrings.

She always wore door knocker earrings. They were huge. I mean, massive. She was slim, with a long neck, just like my mom, so she could wear long earrings, without them getting in the way of her movements.

When my grandmother died, my mother (an only child) inherited most of her family’s wealth. I, however, got one pair of grandmother’s door knocker earrings. They were made of silver and quart, and were so large I did not ever attempt to put them on for several years.

Well, let me tell you, I wish I tried them on sooner.

Yes, they were uncomfortable. Yes, they were way to large for me. Yes, I looked awful in them.

But I finally found why she liked such large things.

I first wore them out of necessity.

My parents- in the way of all parents- had informed me that I would go with them to one of those awful fancy affairs that all children hate so much.

My mother picked out a new dress for me.

She "forgot" to pick out matching jewelry.

I didn’t have anything that went with the pale pink of the dress, except grandmother’s earrings. So I put them on.

They felt wrong. It wasn’t just that they were too large or too heavy- the tug of their weight extended far past where it should have, giving me t strangest feeling that something inside my brain was being tugged at, gently but firmly. I tossed the feeling, obviously. It was too silly to be true.

At the dinner- where I felt alone in a sea of old fogies and boring conversations- we were seated next to two honored guests from Orleans- wizards of mixed repute famous for their illusions, created without the aid of wands or spoke words. They spoke to each other at first, and with every foreign word, the tugging in my head grew worse. It wasn’t really pain, exactly, so much as it was a more definitive, insistent version of the feeling that you have forgotten something, you just don’t know what.

Then one of them addressed me directly. The younger of the two was seated directly on my left- my mother sat on my right.

He addressed me in the Queen’s English, but accent was so thick, that it must have touched off the last bit of whatever it was that had been tugging at my mind. I felt- no, I can’t describe it any better than this- as if my real self, the girl I expected to see in the mirror every day, was being pulled back inside my head, to watch the world through the eyes of a body she no longer controlled. The tugging blossomed into a not unpleasant all-pervasive rigidity, that felt more regal than uptight, and my mouth- which felt oddly full and heavy- began to produce words that were utterly unfamiliar too me, yet as each sound tumbled out of the lips that weren’t exactly mine anymore, I understood.

“Bonsoir, messieur. Comment allez-vous?” Good evening, sir. How are you?

And the tugging made sense. Grandmother’s earrings weren’t just door knockers. They were charms. Rather impressive ones, at that. The entire French language, stored in a single pair of earrings. It takes a fairly large piece of jewelry to hold such an impressive charm.

All of her jewelry was large.

Apparently, my mother knew about their true nature beforehand. She didn’t seem the least bit surprised when I started carrying on in a language that she knew for a fact I’d never learned a word of.

Anyway, that’s how I learned French.

The earrings still look awful on me.

I wear them whenever I can.

I have yet to discover what my grandmother’s other jewels do.

Feeling: Like a very cunning linguist.
Hearing: Lady Marmalade
Reading: Shadow of the Moon by M. M. Kaye
Jonesin' For: A French boy with a pretty face.

Muse: Hestia Jones
Fandom: Harry Potter
Words: 876

An Amenable Haunting

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 04:01:04 GMT

When I Awoke the Next Morning....

When I awoke the next morning, my parents thought it was gone. That the tiny thing which had caused so much worry, so much upheaval, had simply vanished.

Mama thought that perhaps it was only biding its time and would reappear when we least expected it, to ruin a fancy dinner, or a mid-day nap, or simply to be an annoyance.

Papa thought it had merely grown bored, and as a result had left for good, as such things often did.

The mirrors, who usually never shut up, wouldn’t say a word about the subject. Even the portraits- who almost certainly knew what had happened to it- refused to enlighten their living relatives.

The lack of definitive knowledge frustrated my parents immensely. My mother was constantly on edge, waiting for it return every time she opened a door, or picked up a glass. My father tried to act like he wasn’t concerned, but the mirrors had to reassure him that nothing would go amiss before he picked up his razor every morning.

My father insisted on shaving the muggle way. I think he thought it was more elegant than using a spell.

Anyway, my parents thought it was gone.

I knew it wasn’t.

The noises had stopped, and we could sleep through the middle of the night. The gasses weren’t flying around the kitchen at lunchtime anymore. Papa’s razor didn’t shoot out of his hand and nick his chin every morning. Doors didn’t swing wildly back and forth on their hinges every time they were touched.

But the curtains in my room still fluttered when the windows were closed. My room still stayed lit without candles. I knew.

There were other things, too. Pebbles, bottles, shards of glass, even stuck on bits of people’s old chewing gum- all disappeared from my path as I walked. Even the smallest umbrella was suddenly big enough for the word rainstorms. The summer never seemed to get to hot, even when my friends were laid low by the heat, and the chill of winter never reached my nose. Or my ears.

I couldn’t loose anything anymore. Try as I might, everything I “misplaced” turned up again, just when I needed it, even when I didn’t want it. Homework assignments, my wand, an earring, just the right book for the next essay.

I knew it wasn’t gone. It had just attached itself to me. It followed me everywhere from then on, my very own guardian angel. My friends told me that I led a charmed life, but they were wrong

I lived a haunted life.

Never trust your cousin to exercise a poltergeist.

Feeling: Content
Hearing: Come Together by The Beatles
Reading: The Plague by Albert Camus
Jonesin' For: A grape lollipop

Fandom: Harry Potter
Muse: Hestia Jones
Words: 438

OOC POST

Sun, 21 May 2006 05:37:15 GMT

I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!

That whole lapse in posting thing? That was bad. And I'm sorry.

I was cramming for AP tests. Since those are over, I can get back to having a life. Or... not having a life, but spending a good deal of time doing so, as the case may be.

At any rate, I am sorry about that lag. No more APs for a while, though.

I am taking some SATIIs in Junes, though, so there may be a lag then. Around June 3rd- the week preceding that day, I might get lazy again.

So, again, sorry about this bout of laziness, and in case it happens again, sorry in advance.

Mama Was a Little Bit Sneaky Sometimes

Sun, 21 May 2006 05:28:26 GMT

Write about mother (your own or someone else's).

My mother is the greatest woman alive.

She did all the right motherly things when I was a girl; she taught me how to cook, how to charm my hair in to the perfect style (or tried to- I never could get it right), taught me what every possible fork that might show up on a table was for, and loved me even though I was sorted into Hufflepuff.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved my house.

It’s just that my mother was a Slytherin.

She was also a Prince.

My mother was the daughter of... Of...

Oh, never mind. Here’s the simple version: she’s Severus Snape’s mother’s second cousin’s grandniece.

I’m not exactly sure what that makes in relation to Snape. Or what that makes me, for that matter.

She married my father, the younger son of Herbert Burke and Belvina Black Burke.

I suppose she and my father must have been distantly related…

I don’t… I don’t really want to think about that, actually.

Like most of her relatives, she was sorted into Slytherin. My father was a Ravenclaw. They met at a gobstones championship.

My mother had been forced to go by a friend- she hated the game. My father one the championship, and- after spotting her in the crowd- followed my mother around for three weeks trying to get her to learn how to play.

He gave up after she called him something very nasty. I won’t repeat it.

That was in second year.

My mother was a master potions brewer, but her true talent lay in charms.

My father was something of a musician.

After the gobstones incident, the two of them didn’t see much of eachother (thank school schedules for small favors) until winter break in their sixth year.

At the Black family reunion, my father had been enlisted to play a rather long and complicated solo on a viola, and he could not for the life of him get the A string in tune.

My father’s father insisted that the solo be played on his son’s great-grandfather’s favorite viola, which had not been tuned in nearly twenty years.

My mother, escaping the clutches of the sniping matrons of the family, discovered my father nearly in tears, warring with the A-string.

She inquired as to the problem, and offered to rectify it. Her method was rather dishonest.

She requested that my father bring her his own violin, and had him play it. Deciding that it was fit for her attentions, and that my father was talented enough to warrant her time, she cast a terribly complex glamour on it- one that still holds today. It would never again look like the shining piece of perfect craftsmanship it has once been. It was now the twin of the ancient, battered, hopelessly out of tune violin that my father had been asked to play.

She then cast the same spell on my father’s great-grandfrather’s instrument, ensuring that it would forever appear to be the instrument that belonged to my father.

My father performed, my grandfather wept, my mother told my father he was in her debt.

Their first weekend back at school after winter break, he took her lunch in Hogsmeade.

Six years later, I was born.

Daddy tried to teach me the piano, and Mama tried to teach me charms.

Feeling: Musical

Hearing: Different Trains

Reading: Vanity Fair (Nearly done!)

Pesky Loss

Sun, 21 May 2006 04:53:43 GMT

Who was the One that Got Away?

Who?

Well.

I did.

I’m the one that got away from me.

I know, I know, “how does that work?”

Well, I’m not sure. It just sort of happened.

It’s not that I don’t know where I’ve been or what I’ve been doing in a given week anymore- I’ve never been able to keep track of things like that very well. It’s like… I’ve lost my… not my personality, not really.

It’s just that- I used to know where I stood on things, y’know? This is this, that is that, I like yellow roses. That sort of thing. I don’t seem to have time to like or dislike anything anymore, I only have time to do what I’m told.

Decisions made on the basis of personal preference rather than necessity are the way that most people define themselves, I guess. We don’t really think about it, we just do it. We order chocolate milk instead of regular, strawberry ice cream instead of plain vanilla, eat meat or go vegetarian. It’s not “I think, therefore I am,” it’s “I like, therefore I am.”

I ought to say that Voldemort changed all that, that Voldemort is the reason I lost that so often-overlooked ability to define myself, but that’s not really the way I feel.

I blame Dumbledore.

I’ve got no business doing it, I know. He’s a wonderful man. He’s a hero. He’s the best. He’s a martyr. We should all love Dumbledore.

But I don’t. I can’t. It’s petty, and selfish, and small-minded, but it’s the truth.

I don't love him, becuase, well... If anyone else had been running the order of the Phoenix, if anyone else had asked me to join, I would have said no.

The cult of personality centered around Albus Dumbledore took myself away from me.

One morning, I was Hestia Jones, strawberry milk please, banana split with rocky road and rainbow sprinkles, yellow roses would just make my day, thank you very much. The next morning, I was Hestia Jones, member, Order of the Phoenix.

I haven’t had the time for a proper banana split since, and I’m not sure what happened to the part of my that bothered about what sort of milk she was drinking.

Maybe I’ll find it some day.

Feeling: Pouty
Hearing: "And Your Bird Can Sing" by the Beatles
Reading: Vanity Fair (Still, but not for much longer!)
Jonesin' For: A banana split

Tall Hats

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 20:05:41 GMT

What is/was your childhood ambition?

Oh, dear.

This is embarrassing.

My childhood ambition... Was to be tall. Can you believe it?

I suppose it's not quite as dumb as it sounds... Alright, it is... But there you have it.

I wanted to be tall.

Let me tell you why.

I was always the shortest girl in the class, the room, in my family. My mum, for example, was 5' 11.5' tall, with skin the color of snow and shimmering black sheets of straight, silken hair that fell to her knees.

Well, 1/4 out of three isn't too bad, I guess. I very nearly inherited her hair. It's black, but not shiny, not straight, and I just can't manage to keep it long, it's much too much work. Everything else, I got from my dad. My height, my eyes (brown), my weight (which didn't really start adding up 'till my late teens, and was a very nasty surprise, at first), my skin color (very pink, with a tentancy to turn bright red).

I've gotten over it now, but when I was 15 and my mum told me I wasn't going to get any taller, I was devastated.

When I was little, I remember watching her walk through the house, so regal and statuesque, and I though I want to be her. As soon as I figured how, I started measuring my height every week. The doorjamb of my bathroom in my parent's house was covered scratches where I'd used a knife to mark my progress skyward.

I remember exactly when my mum told me that I wasn’t going to grow anymore. It was June 23rd, I had been 15 for nearly three weeks. I still measured myself every Sunday morning.

As I had grown older, and stronger, the marks on the doorjamb had grown progressively deeper.

I had never been neat, and whatever wood was removed from the doorjamb stayed on the floor until a house-elf cleaned it up.

My mum had come into my room to retrieve a bracelet of hers I had borrowed. She was barefoot, and there were splinters on the ground.

She stepped on one of them, and it went right up into the middle of her foot.

She screamed so loudly I though she was going to die.

To be perfectly honest, I don't remember exactly what happened after that.

Here’s what I do remember:

I remember that my father was out of the house, I know this becuase usually whenever anything too loud happened in the house, he came running- red faced and huffing and puffing- to see what the matter was, and my mum was shouting and my dad wasn't running to the rescue, and I felt the world had fallen away from my feet.

I remember that it was the first and only time I had ever heard my mother curse. I remember what she said, and I have never, ever, used any of those words.

I remember that she kicked my books- I had piles of books all over my floor- and told exactly what she thought of the state I kept my room in. She sat down on the floor, and dug the splinter- which I remember as being nearly the size of my pinky (which may not be entirely accurate)- out of her foot.

I remember trying to apologize, but not being able to get anything coherent out of my mouth.

I remember that, finally, with my mother frighteningly quiet, and my heart pounding like a base drum, I blurted out that "I was just trying to be taller."

The look on my mother's face is something I will never forget. I had only seen it once before.

At a birthday party, for a distant aunt, when I was two- and not enamored of clothes- I had wriggled out of the frilly dress my mother and stuffed me into, and was walking around starkers. When my mother first saw me, she gave me a look I didn't understand, and started trying to chase me down. I thought it was a game, and I had fled, laughing. When I saw my mother again, and she wasn't laughing, the look on her face started to make sense. When she finally caught me, I was screaming and crying hysterically.

The same look was on her face when I tried to explain away the splinter.

"You were... you were trying," her voice was terrible, so low and quiet, "to be taller?" I didn't say anything. I could see her chest expand as she took a breath. ""You will never be any taller! Never! Stop being so stupid! What is wrong with you? Why can't you just behave? Stop trying to be taller! Stop ruining my house!" I think I opened my mouth, and tried to apologize, but my mother cut me off. "Don't," she spat, "apologize. Just clean up this mess."

So I did. I have never let any room of mine become a mess since.

I was 5'2" at the time, and I have never measured my height, or allowed myself to fuss over it, since.

My mother, I think, was as deeply effected by that little disaster as I was. She never raised her voice to me again. I think that was her way of apologizing.

I've tried my best to repay in her kind.

Feeling: Embarrassed
Hearing: I'll Fly Away by Alison Krauss and Gillian Wlech
Reading: Vanity Fair
Jonesin' For: My mum

Muse: Hestia Jones

Fandom: Harry Potter

Word Count: 888

Perception

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 03:42:59 GMT

Perception: Generally speaking, how do you think others perceive you?

Oh, I know how people see me. Fat. Fat fat fat. Like a pig. A squishy, pink pig.

They’re not wrong. To be honest, I agree with them. I could stand to lose twenty pounds. Ok, ok, thirty. For a girl who’s only 5’5”, that’s a lot. Snape, when he was still about, always found something to say about it. Mad-Eye always came to my rescue. I think he did it mostly to give Severus what-for, and not out of any great love for me, but that was all right. I always liked Mad-Eye.

Jim- my boyfriend, Jim Crostix- never can keep his mouth shut about my weight. But that’s alright, seeing as he means it all in jest.

“God. Can’t even fit my arms around you, I can’t.”
“That bother you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why you stay with me, then?”
“Oh, y’know me, jus’ too lazy to find someone better,” and he laughs, and he kisses me.

He can fit his arms around me, by the way, I just want to be clear about that. He can pick me up like I’m one of my mum’s old rag dolls.

Sometimes, I get nervous. Sometimes I worry that maybe he means it, about being to lazy to find someone better, and maybe one day he’ll find the energy. Usually it’s, well, that time, and everything upsets me, and I bother him constantly.

“God, I’m a cow, aren’t I?”
“No, dear.”
“I’m hideous! Hideously fat!”
“No, darling. Just a bit plump, that’s all.”
“You hate me, don’t you?”
“Would I stay with you if I did?”

Sometimes his jokes get a bit nasty, a bit over the top, but it’s alright. They’re still jokes. Molly doesn’t think highly of him, or his jokes. She sees me as the girl with terrible taste, in need of guidance in matters of love, always asking me what I see in “that boy”.

Frankly I don’t care what Molly sees me as, love her though I do, and I think Jim can tell all the jokes he wants, tasteful or otherwise, because I love him.

And I know he loves me. I know because he never forgets. He remembers my birthday, my favorite color, favorite food, favorite band, book, ice cream flavor, candy, stores. He remembers how he met me, when we went on our first date, when we first, well, you know (it was awful, by the way, but we both got better).

Fat, tasteless and foolish, too. Minerva’s always tetchy with me. I’m far to giddy for her. Everything that’s terrible in the world, and I still manage to laugh at it. She’d make everyone clinically depressed if she could. Me, I think it’s better to laugh, even when things aren’t funny. Especially when things aren’t funny. My mum used say “tell yourself you’re happy for long enough, and it’ll be true.” I suppose she’s right. It’s worked most of the time, anyway. Laugh at the world and it’ll laugh with you, and whatnot.

So Severus can see me as the fatty, Molly can see me as tasteless, and Minerva can see me as the fool, and that’s all right with me. That’s all right, because I know what I see myself as.

I see myself as the girl with Jim.

And that’s plenty good enough for me.

Feeling: Loved
Hearing: Foamy's Fat Song
Reading: Vanity Fair (the book, by William Mackpace Thackery, not the magazine, published by Conde Nast)

Microphone

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 03:18:07 GMT

Alright, we don't actually have those in the wizarding world, but I like them anyway.

Testing, testing, one two three.

Hello?

Isn't this just so exciting? Hahaha!

Feeling: Giddy
Hearing: You're Driving Me Crazy (Dianne Reeves)
Reading: Vanity Fair (the book, not the magazine)