Filched from north_of_you:

Go over to Wikipedia and enter your birth date and then pick 3 events, 2 births and 1 holiday that occurred on the day of your birthday.

July 19th

Events:
1692 - Salem Witch Trials: Five women are hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.
1799 - A group of Napoleon Bonaparte's soldiers discover what is now known as The Rosetta Stone, enabling the translation of hieroglyphics for the first time.
1912 - A meteorite with an estimated mass of 190 kg explodes over the town of Holbrook in Navajo County, Arizona causing approximately 16,000 pieces of debris to rain down on the town.

Births:
1860 - Lizzie Borden, American accused murderer
1960 - Atom Egoyan, Canadian filmmaker

Holiday:
The Feast of Saint Kirdjun, converted thief and martyr

Apologies for the lateness of this last installment - real life grew teeth and ate me alive.

For illicit_grace, who asked for a sequel to either But a Dream or Hallelujah. I offer a drabble for each (though I ended up accidentally fudging the requested timeline for the first, sorry!)

( The Justice Paradox, Severus Snape, G )

( Song of Songs, Snape/Dumbledore, G )

For purplefluffycat, who asked for a look at what's happening a year after Goat Song.

( Familiar Faces, Hermione Granger, G )

For thenightsfall, who asked to see what happened the night after the events of Suspension.

( What You See Is What You Get, Ezra/Nathan, PG )

This one is for earthphoenix, who requested a look at Severus years after the events of Educatum Esse (Note: The original story depicts the sexual abuse of a child.)

( An Exaltation of Larks, Severus Snape, PG )

A drabble for lookfar, who wanted a glimpse at six months after the last posted chapter of The Yorkshire Palimpsest. This one was tricky, since I didn't want to spoil anything...

( The Return, Severus Snape, G )

For sinick, who wanted to see how Severus first became entangled with Lucius before the events of The Yorkshire Palimpsest (which I will finish rewriting someday soon even if it kills me).

( Received Pronunciation, Severus Snape, G )

For bethbethbeth, who wanted to know what Snape and Slughorn were up to in France after the events of Friends and Wine:

( Non-Domestic Bliss, Snape/Slughorn, PG )

Two posts in one day - what is the world coming to?

This meme intrigued me when I first saw it, but I held off trying it until a week like this, where I'm really in the mood to write but just don't have the concentration to work on any of the big projects I'm 'supposed' to be finishing.

Give me one of my own stories, and a timestamp sometime in the future after the end of the story, or sometime in the past before the story started, and I'll write you at least 100 words of what happened then, whether it's five minutes before the story started or ten years in the future.

Any takers? My website, shockingly, is pretty much up to date: http://delphi.popullus.net

Surf and Turf by ~avisvulgaris on deviantART

I have tasty risotto. I also have a new Deviant Art account for my (very, very) amateur photography.

That is all.

Prompted by a thread the other day about the horrid programming to be found on the Canadian version of the History Channel, I just have to announce: They're playing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The remake.

That is all.

Taken from thenightsfall:

Pick a fandom you know I know about, and I'll tell you:

01. The first character I fell in love with
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
03. The character everyone else loves that I don't
04. The character I love that everyone else hates
05. The character I used to love but don't any longer
06. The character I would shag anytime
07. The character I'd want to be like
08. The character I'd slap
09. A pairing that I love
10. A pairing that I hate
11. Favourite character
12. My five favourite characters
13. My five least favourite characters
14. Which character I am most like
15. My deep, dark fandom secret


Fandoms I could answer about include Harry Potter, The Magnificent Seven, various strains of X-Men and Star Trek, Homicide: Life on the Street, Firefly, Tin Man, Fables, Dead Like Me, Battlestar Galactica (2003), The Dark Tower series, Discworld, Torchwood, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Sandman, Lord of the Rings, Dexter, Rome, Deadwood, and Carnivale. There are probably others, so if you know I know something, feel free to pick it.

If you're a Canadian who grew up in the 90s, you probably have dozens of these commercials committed to memory and have at some point (possibly while intoxicated) exclaimed "Dr. Penfield - I smell burnt toast!" or "Twenty dollars? That's a working man's salary for a month!" or "Both of ye know I cannae read a word!" To those not familiar with these, in the 90s and in a second wave more recently, various Canadian channels would constantly air one-minute history lessons in the form of vignettes or monologues, often featuring prominent Canadian actors. Some were cheesy from the start, others became cheesy through constant repetition, but the series was utterly Canadian (for better or for worse). I can honestly say that I learned more from them - or at least retained more from them - than I did from any Canadian History class.

The whole set can be found here, but to mark Canada Day, I thought I'd share a random sampling of favourites.

Emily Murphy

Nitro

Nellie McClung

The Great Peace

Jennie Trout

La Bolduc

Myrnam Hospital

Marshall McLuhan

Les Voltigeurs de Quebec

The B-52 Because it's not a Canadian institution if it hasn't been parodied on a CBC comedy show.

About six months ago, when he was getting ready to move, my dad brought a large box of my weeded-out books to the paperback exchange. Yesterday, he finally found the credit slip and passed it on to me and, following a gruelling morning of working a yard sale, I decided to nip downtown and treat myself to what was practically - after six months - free stuff.

I still haven't spent the whole $40 credit, since Saturday bus service is awful and I didn't want to wait another hour in the heat to get home, but I scrounged up the following treasures:

- S is for Space by Ray Bradbury (the first Bradbury short story collection I ever read - borrowed many times from the library in my childhood)
- Selected Poetry of W.H. Auden from Vintage Books
- W.B. Yeats: Selected Poetry from MacMillan
- The Complete Plays of Aristophanes from Bantam (brand-spanking-new, never cracked - bought, I'll wager, for a course at the nearby satellite university campus)
- Contact by Carl Sagan (great book and - I don't care what the other 99% of the population thinks - great movie)
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (I've got this in an omnibus, but a portable copy is essential)
- Stalking the Nightmare by Harlan Ellison (who's on the list of authors I only buy second-hand, because it consoles me in some small way not to be sending any real revenue his way)
- King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard (another childhood favourite - finally reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen recently gave me a craving to revisit Allan Quartermain)
- The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh

Reading for leisure is one of the great pleasures of summer break.

Originally written for hp_beholder - I completely forgot to post it here.

Title: The Art and Science of Change
Author: Delphi
Recipient: purplefluffycat
Rating: Adult
Pairing: Minerva McGonagall/Severus Snape
Summary: Minerva begins a new life amidst memories of the old.
Notes: Thanks, as always, to my wonderful betas.

( The Art and Science of Change )

I've finally moved over to my dad's...wife's house (they've not even been married a week, so I'm not used to saying that yet), and I have cable for the first time in years. After a day of sci-fi, all I can say is that Torchwood only wishes it were as gay as The Sentinel.

A mystery author at hp_beholder was wonderful enough to write me Eileen Prince/Tobias Snape, which I've been dying for every since HBP came out. Go check out Underneath the North Star and the Sycamores, and if you haven't been keeping up with the exchange, give the rest a look too because there's truly something there for every taste.

Title: Go Big or Go Home
Author: Delphi
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Severus Snape/Rubeus Hagrid
Summary: A Slytherin requires the biggest and the best.
Author's Notes: Written for hp_springsmut

( Go Big or Go Home )

Every Saturday, I walk from my house to the grocery store, and every Saturday I take the same route, as it's the very shortest path on top of the three-block detour required to cross the train tracks. And about once or twice a month, when I'm on a certain one-block stretch of a street, I experience the oddest and most painful headaches I've ever felt. The pain is deep in my ears, radiating to my temples and the hinges of my jaw - a terrible pressure that makes me feel like I'm going to have an aneurysm or my eardrums are going to burst. I don't seem to feel a thing the block before it, and the pain has faded entirely by the time I'm a block past to the grocery store. It's a perfectly flat street (no change in altitude) but the train tracks and a bit of a trainyard are to my left, so my uneducated guess is that there must be some sort of signal being put out.

My f-list is a well and varied bunch, so tell me - have any of you ever experienced this? Inquiring minds want to know.

After the day I had today, there could have been no better surprise than having my Springsmut gift posted.

Rarity of rarities, Snape/Filch art! A lovely piece of work by an artist with a unique style that I am just tickled pink about. Check it out here: http://asylums.insanejournal.com/hp_springsmut/15026.html (Adults Only)