Green Room - Week 29 - Day 12

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Last night, I received one of those emails you always like to picture getting - but never think you will.

It was from Livejournal, telling me how great they think LJ Idol is, and what they are willing to do to help it to grow, and how much they want us to stick around.

I would have felt better if I didn't then ask around to other community moderators that I know and find out that they sent out the same email to a lot of other people. (Not sure if it was everyone, the Top 50/100/500 of communities)

It was like coming into your office to find it decorated and there's a cake - only to realize halfway through thanking people that it's for the *group birthday* of everyone born that month, it's still a really nice thing, and you appreciate it - but for that split second, you thought it was just for you. ;)

It's nice to know thought that Livejournal is planning on getting more proactive and working with their communities. Personally, I wouldn't be disappointed if they wanted to spend a little less time on their ONTD brand and threw some love at people actually *creating original content* on their site. But I'm a little biased. :)

***

If YOU want to throw a little love at people creating original content on Livejournal - now is the perfect time to do so, in the poll! http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/809247.html There is also a Contestant Only vote this week, and a few people who still need to get me their votes. So make sure that your voice is heard!
It's interesting to see the differences between the public voting and the contestant only. There is the potential for some heart-breakers... then again, at this point, isn't *every* option going to break some people's hearts?

There is also the Home Game/Killing Floor: Which, if you have participated in that, with either TWO pieces of constructive criticism, OR submitting one piece to the KF and giving someone else constructive criticism - you are eligible to vote for who will receive immunity this week! http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/808357.html And yes, this is open to everyone and even more importantly - Immunity is always important, with a week like this though, with how close some of the votes are, it could be the difference between who stays in, and who will be leaving us this week.

***
KF eligibility and the getting me your votes cuts off at 7pm EST tonight.
The Contestant Only vote cuts off at 8pm EST tonight.
The public poll is closing at 9pm EST tonight.

Yes, tonight is going to be interesting!

December is starting off with a BANG!

Comments

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

First? Really? LOL it figures too! No one around to have coffee with.

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

*java*

Happy first!!



***

Yeah, I think from here on out....each LJIdol poll result is going to be as bad as a Walking Dead mid-season finale.

:(

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I was thinking the actual season finale.

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

*nods* The body count...yeah....the body count.

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Idol contestants are going down like cannibals walking into a church.

[fodschwazzle.livejournal.com]

Do cannibals routinely have a hard time walking into a church without falling down?

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

On the Walking Dead - they walked into a church and ended up getting slaughtered. Every last one of them.

The difference in Idol is the one person gets to walk away! :)

[anyonesghost.livejournal.com]

Anybody up for BBQ?

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I have some Bob Burgers on the grill right now.

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

My first, *first* LOL...

When Daryl cries... the whole world cries. TWD is on of my 'shows'.

I'm just glad it wasn't Carol who bought it this week!

Also can't wait for Orphan Black and GOT to start back up!:)

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

A little late to the party, but happy first, and have a coffee icon! :)

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

Cofffeeeee. I love hot beverages with caffeine in them... eheheheh (said in Renfro's voice)

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

It's official - everyone has votes in the Contestant Only voting.

For those wondering

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know there has been some muttering about "How long we were stuck at the Top 50".

Considering what happened around then though, I would hope that people understand that it put us off schedule about a week and half.

We are still at that point.

Last Chance was at a fixed point in time (my birthday), that did end up being a little later in the game than originally envisioned - because of the early drops. We *should* have been holding at about the Top 60-70. ;)

The original "about a year" predictions are still on target though. There are a lot of moving parts to this sort of thing, but I think we're probably going to hit the finale just shy of that mark.

Re: For those wondering

[gratefuladdict.livejournal.com]

It *did* seem like you were hovering there on purpose to prolong the window for byes and special powers!

But I would have been frustrated being "stuck" at any point. We just had no movement for ages. It was painful!

Re: For those wondering

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

People end up submitting their material to editors all the time - and then sit and wait... and wait... and wait...

just when you think there's no use waiting any longer, suddenly you get an email and things start going faster than you ever expected. ;)

Not saying "that's what I did", but there are definitely examples out there of that very thing happening.

Re: For those wondering

[gratefuladdict.livejournal.com]

You have a LITTLE too much fun holding those puppet strings sometimes! :)

Re: For those wondering

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

The core of Idol is "Gary having fun messing with people". :)

The balance is to do that while at the same time doing something that amuses other people/that they find value in. :)

Re: For those wondering

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

and of course, it did shuffle the deck and set things up quite nicely for this week. :)

It will be interesting, now that the Last Chance people have had the chance to get their feet under them, and are going toe-to-toe with the folks who have been in since Day 1 - will they survive a Contestant Only vote?

Are there some who will? Will not? - and why? What does someone have to do in order to be that exception of "Yeah, they weren't here from Day 1. But they definitely deserve that spot".

Re: For those wondering

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

I update my spreadsheet every few weeks and get rid of the earliest weeks. My current spreadsheet only goes back as far as Week 19. So while I do know some of who got here later, in general I don't judge by who I did or didn't vote for that far back. Everybody has an equal chance, every week, in my book.

If you impress me or amuse me - or both - you get a vote. :)

Re: For those wondering

[fodschwazzle.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed hovering there. It felt like the gates of the top 50 were very tall. And in the meantime, our challenge was joined by some absolute monsters of writing. Being alongside them now makes the prospect of failure a little nobler.

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

I is now officially scairt.....

It's quiet in here... if everyone is finished voting... where are peeps? How dare they have lives outside of LJI
It is simply not allowed! LOL

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Here - have some Peeps!

Me, I'm currently at work. :)

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

Peeps! I love their marshmallowey goodness! :) since I have no peeps I must now make a peanut butter and fluff sammich. ( I know I'm over 50, don't judge me. LOL) ;)

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Mmm - I don't eat them very often, but I *love* Fluffernutters! :)

Peanut Butter and Nutella is a very close second. :)

(Edited to add: I'll be 47 later this month!)

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

Oh nutella and I have a love affair. I don't eat PBF's much anymore but every now and again! Like buying a box of Lucky Charms so I can just eat the marshmallow bits. ;) I stay away from this stuff because then I won't eat 'real' food. :-)

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Mmm, cake!

I still have a Holiday Card poll going on in my journal over HERE (http://roina-arwen.livejournal.com/1671641.html), so if you aren't shy about leaving me your name & mailing address (I'm the only one who can view those fields) and would like a handmade holiday card, feel free to go request one! I've got about a dozen requests, and I have the available card stock to send out up to about 40 without flinching. =D

Bowling league tonight, w00t!

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

Finished reading everything and voting and the whole bit!

Failed to make progress on my Yuletide story at all, though I did watch an episode of the relevant show to try to get a "feel" again for the narrative and voices. Still love the show. Still find it hard to write. Still have no ideas (there were no prompts).

Um... I'm kind of worried about how much Idol might slam the Christmas break (though the Thanksgiving week went well). Traveling, shopping and family obligations, etc. Still don't have the Xmas lights up or the decorations out, and those combined take a solid day. It's daunting!

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

[reckless-blues.livejournal.com]

I won my microbiology class. :3

The professor decided to give out prizes for our infectious disease presentations since he was just that impressed by how well we did. Everybody's presentation was terrific, we all did something creative, and I took the chance to be creative and kinda went off the deep end with it. (Our group was presenting on the plague. And we could do a little skit or something, he said ... Of course I wanted to do something sufficiently dramatic.)

"Sevastian ... you scared the crap out of us," the professor said. (Everybody laughed.) "And just that you'd go up there and do all that, by yourself ... " I melted into my chair. So our group got first prize. :'{ He's such a nice guy, and so dedicated to our class.

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!!!! That's so cool!

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

Yay, winning! :D That's adorable that your professor gave out prizes. Professors like that are rare -- it's nice to see he's so invested in you guys.

And lol, I remember when you told us about your pretend-collapsing from disease. Your dedication was obviously noted. ;)

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Yay! So what did you do that scared the crap out of the Professor??

[reckless-blues.livejournal.com]

Well, like I said, we could do a skit or something to supplement our infectious disease presentation, and I got the plague, so I ... well ... I did a goddamn motherfucking play. *rubs the back of my neck* The basic plot of the lecture was that a young professor from a fictional university in Russia was touring on an interesting document that had come into his possession, proofs of a plague pamphlet that was supposed to have been published during the Great Plague of London that appeared to, bizarrely, have modern information about Yersinia pestis in sort of a roundabout way. (Let me add that this pamphlet was in a period accurate typeface and had the long s and ligatures all where they should be even though it took me hours to do each page because I had to copy and paste them in by hand, and that the arbitrary grammatical rules for when to use the long s have been burnt inside the back of my head. Also I learned proper contemporary apothecarian notation, too.) The professor is also really not mentally healthy and the pamphlets and the lecture slides were bloodstained and vandalized and basically as he's conveying useful information about Yersinia pestis to a lecture hall of microbiology students there are these strange taunts and notes in the slides and then when I collapse it comes out that a plague doctor has been playing this cat-and-mouse game with him because he had been working on thanatology, senescence, and regenerative medicine in the de Poehl apothecary on Vassilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg and might have found the secret to curing death. And basically I came up with this because we were supposed to touch on the cultural and historical impact of the plague. That's a fucking lot to sum up, so I decided to fictionalize it in broader strokes - I was fascinated by the idea that the Black Plague had to have happened or else the European peasantry never would have started slouching its way towards democracy, so there's the discussion of whether this mass death could actually be worth it (and just the bizarre omnipresence of death during that time, the professor argues with the plague doctor and touches on many aspects of the danse macabre and everything and I was kind of trying to create the idea that our modern life will seem just as morbid and bizarre to immortal people who don't have any particular restrictions on their lifespans and personal growth). And the professor had drawn the conclusion that the author of this pamphlet had secret knowledge but had chosen not to publish it for the Greater Good and he was disgusted by that, and in general disgusted by the idea that anything about human culture or human nature would be worth keeping our mortality, or what's effectively the mass slaughter of anybody who lives more than a hundred years ... it was kind of complicated.

And of course nobody had any idea that we were going to do anything other than a really normal presentation with really normal slides, and like I said the presentation just gradually got more unnerving as it went on, so. x)

...I also wanted to do the entire presentation in character as the guy in my icon (he's from a Russian game, and he is also a professor working on thanatology and curing death who finds himself in epidemic conditions arguing about transhumanism, but that's where the similarity ends), just because he's my favorite fictional character, I had run out of fucks to give this semester, and I thought it would be fun. (Another semester I had a presentation to give on thanatology, senescence, and regenerative medicine, which I gave entirely in character and in cosplay, because, again, I had run out of fucks to give by that point in the year, so I think at this point I just want to see how many times I can do this and get away with it. Everybody needs a hobby.) Nobody noticed. It's an obscure game. I did mention it when I took questions after the lecture and everybody asked me wtf where did that come from?

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Goodness, no wonder you won! :)

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

holy crap, dude. that is fucking impressive. and i can see how you might have freaked out the professor.

you say "plague" and i think fuzzy (http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/products/blackdeath.html).

[reckless-blues.livejournal.com]

I'm a lazy person, and I half ass most things, but if I find something I like I will whole ass it to the point of excess. I gotta be me.

That's the cutest fucking thing I've ever seen. 8{ -holds it-

[crisp-sobriety.livejournal.com]

Congrats!! That's gotta feel nice.

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

I was going to say something here but since I'm evidently having a lot of trouble attempting to type today...eh.

A bright note: Nine more days until this *^@#@#^*@ cast comes off!

Design

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Is there anything from any of these designs that you can see that jump out at you as:

Man, that would be useful to have on Idol!

http://philips-matters.livejournal.com/
http://aprilhenry.livejournal.com/
http://hills.livejournal.com/
http://runaway-408.livejournal.com/
http://therealstanlee.livejournal.com/
http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/

Also - is there anything in general that you have ever thought "Man, I wish we could do that" (from a technical standpoint).

I have the ear of someone who can make it happen. So this is your chance to speak up. :)

Re: Design

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

I kind of like the "Top Commenters" sidebar on the ONTD link. :)

Re: Design

[tonithegreat.livejournal.com]

I will admit, I was distracted from your question with:

A.) Science Diet dogfood in Russian?
B.) Stan Lee has a livejournal? Awesome!

I like the simpler design layouts, like the last one. But the top commentor sidebar is a neat concept.

[rattsu.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I voted for some people this week that I have nevet voted for before. And there are some sentences out there that just deserves an accolade.

One day I will actually have time to start commenting again, the number of people are,approaching feasible.

Gonna be interesting to see who goes on, these are as brutal as gatekeeper rounds! I predict that one will decide top 30-20 dependin on Gary's mood...

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

Like I said I is scairt. Now that I'm back into writing (thanks and squish to my brat) I'm not letting you good people go easily. :)

[tonithegreat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am on pins and needles to see what happens tonight! All appendages are crossed! I don't want to be a hippy that gets kicked home. But I think it will be close. Good luck, my fellow late green room lurkers.

[sra33.livejournal.com]

Well I can definitely tell you it wasn't everyone. I am an admin to I think 3 or 4 communities and I didn't get that email. :P