Random thoughts

[cleolinda]

>> Important note: I had four of the BPAL envelopes returned to me--the addresses were wrong? All I had to go on were the addresses on y'all's Paypal, so if you paid but haven't received yours, please get back to me in the comments.

>> My mother just up and cleaned the entire refrigerator from top to bottom, with bleach, on Friday afternoon right when she got home. Some vague, pernicious funk was emanating from the fridge, and whether it was animal, vegetable or mineral, we do not know. Yea, we do not know even now, verily, because it had vanished by the time the fridge was clean, and yet she never encountered anything stank on the way down.

(Pernicious Funk will be the name of my next garage band.)

>> All three dogs came home from the vet on Saturday with clean new Easter-print bandannas around their necks. The poms wanted theirs off pretty quickly, but Lucky is still wearing his--and before you start in on me about how making a dog wear a bandanna is tacky and/or cruel, he's worn them before, and he's always very sad when you take the bandanna away to wash it, and always very happy when it comes back. Don't judge my dog for being stylish, okay?

>> I think I had forgotten how very good chocolate-marshmallow-almond ice cream is. (Marshmallow ice cream. Think about that for a moment. It's actually softer and stickier than the chocolate ice cream. Zomg.) I think it just knocked chocolate chip back off the top of my list.

(It's actually chocolate ice cream, marshmallow ice cream, and chocolate-covered almonds, lest I mistakenly give you the impression that almond-flavored ice cream is involved. I have not yet witnessed such a thing.)

>> On Saturday, I finally read Stephen King's On Writing, and was perhaps the last writing-interested person on the planet to do so. It was just one of those things--I wanted the book, I asked for the book, I got the book, I... never read the book. Shit happens, what can I say. I did, however, mark this passage as a truth for the ages:

"In many ways, Eula-Beulah prepared me for literary criticism. After having a two-hundred-pound babysitter fart on your face and yell Pow!, The Village Voice holds few terrors."

>> Courtesy of iczer6, we have a charity request with a twist: a family that's had one hell of a time needs your help getting on Extreme Home Makeover.

SeattlePI.Com: A year of bad luck leaves family struggling to cope: "Todd Downing and his two children, Kayleigh, 8, and Tyler, 11, of West Seattle have endured many hardships over the past year including the death of Sam, his wife and their mother, the death of Todd's father, a flood of sewage to their home on Christmas Eve and a fire which destroyed the home on Valentines Day 2006. Now the family is living in a rental home across the street."

Click the second link (EHM) to see how you can help. And no, collecting money is not involved--it's more "using the power of the people on the internet to make something good happen."

>> Linkspam:

Ancient Sun Temple Uncovered in Cairo; Egypt announces discovery of Ramses II statues.

"Your Boyfriend Was the Killer All Along" Day! I got to the second paragraph and laughed out loud. Hee.

Is the LA Times taking advantage of Kate Braverman's bi-polar illness to make her look bad? 

Science fiction writer Octavia Butler dies.

A freaktastic new Rolling Stone article on Scientology.

Stewart Blasts "Evil, Immoral" Trump. Oh, come on. I refuse to believe they're not funnin' at this point. Surely this is a sham feud to drive up ratings for the new season of The Apprentice.

George Michael in Drug Arrest.

On the heels of last week's hidden passageways: do-it-yourself secret hollow books.

Video: Recess time at Panda Kindergarten. Yes, it's as adorable as it sounds.

dailydigestnews: Much linky goodness.

Comments

[onyx-noir.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks for posting that link about making your own secret hollow books. I've got an accounting textbook I've been holding onto for years specifically for that reason. Guess I'll have to try and find it now ;-)

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Lauren, I know you get crazy email sometimes, but Neil Gaiman must get the cream of the crop. Did you see this (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/02/spear-of-destiny-now-on-ebay.html) entry yet? The email that cracked me up starts:

NEIL

NEIL YOU FAT LOAD

YOU CRASHED OUR FORUM

WHAT THE HELL DUDE
[...]

Neil replies with "...Probably the best solution is never to post interesting things, and to stop other people doing it."

[promise19.livejournal.com]

Bluebell occasionally has Pistachio Almond, which they say is pistachio ice cream with chopped roasted almonds. But to me, the ice cream tastes like it's been flavored with almond extract. Try it sometime... it is really good.

[promise19.livejournal.com]

tee-hee. I thought the same thing.

[yarha.livejournal.com]

Somehow, I'm dubious about a guide to writing by Steven King.

Yarha, Color Me Snarky
"Make like a glacier and go with the narrative floe."

[daemonnoire.livejournal.com]

A couple of years ago, Bluebell put out a "Mardi Gras" ice cream. It was purple with green and yellow bits, and was supposedly almond flavored. But it was so screamingly purple that all I could taste was food coloring.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw that. He's such a nice British man.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, it's part autobiography--how he started writing as a kid, and how he got back to it after that van hit him in 1999, I think. And I'm not saying he's Faulkner, but he's actually a fairly good writer, and reading this one I realized that I owe a lot of my style to having read a lot of his books as a teenager. I honestly think I picked up a conversational quality from him.

[yarha.livejournal.com]

Ah, well. It seems like everybody has a trick to writing or being motivated to write. I'd bet a million-billion dollars the same tricks don't work for everybody.

Style is so different, too. "I wish I could write like Dickens," I've said. However, that'd just make me a Dickens-clone which could get tiresome extremely quickly, especially after the 100th paragraph-length sentence.

I've not read enough S. King to have an opinion if you've inherited or not. Would be interesting to compare.

Yarha, Comparative Liturgy or Something

[potatofishy.livejournal.com]

SO TERRIFYING. And yet, they are so very very comforting. Yay.


Although it made me SO SAD to see ScoJo on the celebrities page. Please, just let me believe she was born perfect. It would make me feel good.

PS Scarlett Johanson is the size of a real human, yay! ...Compared to Amy Poehler, at least.

[pigsnicket.livejournal.com]

Yes, they came today! Thank you! They're so awesome.

[kdorian.livejournal.com]

That is VERY sad. I don't go often, but it's very very good.

[edda.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I still haven't read that article. Thanks for jogging my memory.

And I did read that Stephen King book a long time ago and enjoyed it. Now must get that, too...

[stefficus.livejournal.com]

i... don't know what the heck, but i didn't get my smelly imps. i figured it was just the painfully slow mail around here, but perhaps not.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Stephanie? I think you're the missing fourth one. Email me the correct address--dailydigest at yahoo.com. : )

[foresthouse.livejournal.com]

This one amuses me:

http://www.girlsarepretty.com/blog/elderly_action_day.html