image-heavy arashi picspam

you probably already have some of these, because i recognised some of the other stuff on the site as stuff that you'd shown me before. these are kind of sho-heavy too. i think the blog owner has a favourite. (and jun after sho. i guess jun is universal - it doesn't matter who your favourite is.) ( about 60 from that korean blog for aes )

creativity pressure-cooked, pop nostalgia

time crunches in general and betaing for other people in particular both make me want to write more myself. for the past week i've been switching off between kessie's latest ambitious undertaking (i've been waiting a while for more tezuryo futurefic like this! and the ending ♥), and elfiepike's painstakingly-nursed magnum opus (not yet posted, but delightfully working-titled "no clothes for ohno" ♥!). all that combined with running errands and to and from school has resulted in little time for writing, which is probably the cause of the inspiration i've been feeling (that and new fandom joy). in fact, when i was trying to reward myself for a beta draft finished by writing a mini-scenelet-dribblet response to the last mago mago i watched, it turned into a 1300-word short-short story instead. the exhilaration!

now i feel creative in other ways too. i could sketch something. i would love to paint some chairs, though we have no sandpaper and paint, and have not yet been brought the new chairs wax agreed i should paint. i have been thinking about altering my jeans and a brocade waistcoat and hemming up a corduroy skirt (it's mainly the consideration of winding the bobbin first which is stopping me in these cases). i am feeling the urge to buy some of those paper-thin throwaway-cheap white canvas sneakers and colour them with my rainbow sharpies. also i keep wanting to cut my hair again; i like how it looks, it's true, but i don't like how it keeps getting in the way.

wax and i were talking last night about popslash and how the other bands in it were kind of lame compared to nsync, mainly because they were just sort of riding the wave as she said, or beta groups compared to nsync's alpha group as i said. no album has ever outsold no strings attached, according to my better half (a fount of trivia ♥), and most likely none ever will because (she read in an essay recently) the nature of the music market has been changing since then and is changing ever more, and today's pop superstars aren't as big because of interests and genres splintering. i remember when nsa came out; there was nsync fever in the air. i could catch "bye bye bye" on the radio twice in a single drive across town and it was never enough. those people who sneered at pop music (there were more of them back then at the height of the pop craze, as so astutely noted by nsync on their next album) still knew the words and the tune. most of them still hummed it. the high point of junior prom was when the five coolest guys in school performed the "bye bye bye" dance impromptu in the middle of the dance floor, tuxes and all, and the whole school crowded around them cheering and shrieking with delight, shoving each other and climbing on each other's shoulders to get a better view. that summer there were life-size cardboard cutouts of britney in mcdonald's, and she may've been the biggest female star of all time but she was only slightly above the status of their opening act even after the release of "...oops! i did it again". (if nsync are the beatles, does that make you yoko ono? britney: "who?")

in other pop nostalgia news, madonna and her peeps have designed a chunk of h&m's fall line and every time you walk in h&m they're playing an all-madonna-all-the-time career-spanning mix. if they were selling it as a promotional cd i would certainly buy it: my last two shopping trips have been full of "what's this? it's awesome!" and "oh my god, the original version of papa don't preach!" and "what it feels like for a girl! i remember this video!" and "ahhh, that frozen song! hey, i remember when this album came out!" and "that's right, madonna did a cover of american pie! MISTAKE! but i'd still listen to it!" and "eee, like a virgin!" if anyone has a bunch of madonna lying around... *cough*.