Cleolinda everywhere

Lamictal, day 8: Reading's getting a little easier if I try really hard. As proof:

Do you ever find yourself wondering about really arcane, random things? Like, I was watching the Prestige trailer again. I'd just watched it streaming before, but I downloaded it this time so my mother could see it (I'm going to try to sell her on the new Bond trailer as well; she's still mad that they didn't get Clive Owen. You know, even though she can't remember his name half the time. He used to be "King Arthur," now he's "That Guy from Inside Man"), so I watched it again. And I find myself wondering... where did magicians in that period (the book is set in the late 1870s, I think?) actually perform? Well, I did a little digging, and I found out that they generally performed on the vaudeville circuit in the United States and in music halls/variety theaters in Britain. And then I started wondering... where do the performers live? It's not like a circus, where they're basically carrying their own accomodations with them. Some of them seemed to stay in one place, maybe performing at more than one theater, but probably staying in one city, but that seemed more London-based; American vaudeville (particularly from what I've seen in Gypsy, set some 60-70 years later) seems a lot more nomadic. Did ordinary traveling B- and C-list performers just live at the theater while they were there? In (cheap, I assume) hotels? Was it kind of a pain in the ass to find a place to stay every time you moved on to a new city (which is why I'm wondering if there was some kind of set accomodation)?

The obvious solution would be to read a biography of such a performer--Robert-Houdin turned up as an interesting possibility. Houdini is the obvious choice, of course, although he was more early twentieth-century. What I noticed was, once I'd gotten sucked into a daisy chain of Wikipedia articles, you see several classic magic tricks in the Prestige trailer: the bullet catch, the vanishing cage (you actually see the secret of how that works), the Aquarian Illusion (which I don't think actually existed until recently), a little sleight of hand in passing, and the big trick that's Real Magic Zomg looks like a dressed-up version of your basic teleportation.

(What? Two movies about magicians this year, and you thought I wasn't going to get sucked into the history of stage magic?)

Speaking of Bond a long, long time ago up there, if you liked the trailer: updated Casino Royale gallery. Also at the trailer link: a download of the Catch a Fire trailer I mentioned the other week.

(I'm going to stake my money on it right now: somewhere, somehow, someone will not like the Bond movie, and they will write a negative review, and it will be titled "Royale with Cheese.")

Still Life Takes Top Honor at Venice. More importantly (for our purposes), Helen Mirren and Ben Affleck take top acting awards. Start your Oscar betting... now.

Ledger on the Joker: I Wouldn't Have Thought of Me Either. Heh.

Rumor: JKR Says Book Seven "up to about 750 pages." Sweet fancy Moses. I'll remember to rent a handcart when I go buy the book.

First Glimpse of Kingsley Shacklebolt and More in New King's Cross Report.

Models Flunk BMI, Get Spain Fashion Boot. That's right, bitches. You gotta have something to work.

Jilted bride turns wedding into benefit. No, not for herself, either.

In other news, I just realized that Marie Antoinette and The Prestige come out on the same weekend in October, and I am feeling something like panic--moviegoer's panic? Maybe we could swing another double feature, but I don't know...

Oops, I was wrong--I had started writing today's first entry yesterday, so today is actually day six. Because I know you care.

sigma7: "Comics creator extraordinaire and LJ-er Lea Hernandez, aka divalea, just lost her house, artwork and several pets in a house fire. Thankfully she and the family made it out unhurt, but obviously they can use any help they can get. Paypal info here, but prayers and good vibes are also good. She's one of the good ones, so keep her and the family in your thoughts."

Design for new WTC towers unveiled. I don't quite have an opinion on any of it yet; I just know that it is destined, by law, to cause a lot of yelling and arguing.

Mice don't actually like cheese. Instead, scientists say, they prefer grains and fruits to something like cheese that they wouldn't find in their natural habitat, so it would be better to bait a mousetrap with cereal. I hear the free-range Froot Loop works well.

Sean Bean and Tilda Swinton to play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The most intriguing thing about the whole project to me, though, is that the cowriter--i.e., the person updating from Shakespeare--is apparently the same actor who was Mark Antony in that hilarious-awful Empire thing I never finished recapping (shhhhh) and was Brad Pitt's right hand man in Troy. Which is... something else I wrote about.

Picture from the Hairspray set. I am not looking forward to the time when we will be bombarded with trailers and posters and commercials of this movie, because... that ain't right. The triangular hair is all wrong for a jaw like that, for starters. Bouffant, Travolta, bouffant!

Guerilla artist Banksy tampered with 500 copies of Paris Hilton's debut album "across 48 record shops in the UK by replacing the CD with his own remixes featuring such titles as Why am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For? as well as swapping out her picture on the CD sleeve with one of her topless and [another] with a dog's head." Seriously, click through to the link where they have scans of the tampered CD booklet. Not only is it priceless, but I would rather pay for that than I would the real thing.

You know you're a geek when you get this joke: "Beren For Congress: He'll clean up government single-handed!"

Lamictal, Day Four: 3000 words today (actual narrative/dialogue, rather than narrative sketchy), which is both good and surprising, because I was half expecting a decrease in productivity. I know that when I first went on Zoloft back in the spring of 1998, I spent the rest of the year feeling sort of pleasantly blasé. There was a point when I wondered if I'd ever write again--or if it would even bother me if I didn't. For someone who dreamed of being a writer ever since she was old enough to hold a crayon and have picture books read to her--who had first been published at the age of eight*--this was a fairly disturbing development. But as I got used to the medication, I started writing again and the sensation that I had a hand pressing down on me--in a mellow, easygoing way--faded. Since then, I've come to expect a certain period of side effects when starting a new medication. Of course, I'm still only on 25 mg of Lamictal, so it's kind of negligible at this point, I suppose.

This does mark the second day in a row that I've had a fairly bad headache, though.


* This gets an asterisk because I wrote up a strange little dream I had one night, and my teacher liked the "story" so much that she sent it to a student-teacher magazine called The Imaginary Club, where they accepted it... and proceeded to rewrite it entirely. The most egregious change, for example, was that when my protagonists finally managed to hail a cab with their cohort of talking animals (it involved an around-the-world-in-a-year bet between the animals and their owner. What? Stop looking at me like that), the editors changed the story so that the cab driver was shocked and surprised and astonished, etc. I was very indignant, because in the nonsensical dream world of this story, everyone recognized these talking animals, as if they were celebrities, and the cabdriver wouldn't have been shocked at all. As an adult, I mean, yes, I understand that there's no way the editors could have read my mind, and that if I didn't express this in the story, it wasn't their fault for thinking something entirely different would have happened. I fault them for changing it at all--I mean, why they would bother to publish young children in the first place, if they were so het up about logical consistency, I don't know. Anyway, they sort of rewrote the whole thing like that, and I didn't know until the teacher handed me the magazine one day, and she wanted me to read it aloud but there wasn't time and thank God for that, because after I read it on the way home from school, I spent the rest of the day sobbing uncontrollably because it wasn't my story.

Linky-link:

Two pictures of Suri Cruise from the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair. I'm tempted to format a poll as to whether that's a toupee, a hat, or a dead muppet on the kid's head.

ETA: The cover, in which Suri is a dead ringer for Roy Orbison.

We're through the looking glass with the Harlan Ellison thing now: I think, if I'm understanding this correctly, he's saying didn't do anything anyway, shouldn't have apologized in the first place, and in fact was getting back at Connie Willis for roasting him, which... those are two mutually exclusive explanations there, Mr. Ellison. Also, we seem to be immense stupidheads for discussing this at all. Apparently.

Another writer's take on the situation--interestingly, she maintains that it's not about Sexism, Capital S, in the Science-Fiction Culture; it's about one man who does things he knows he can get away with, and the people who indulge that.

More on The Bridge, including a discussion of how the filmmakers lied about what they intended to film (although Eric Steel does have a good point about not wanting people to know that cameras would be on the bridge to provide instant immortality).

Something I wanted to say about suicide, regarding survivor's guilt.

Awww: The Discovery Channel sets up the Crikey Fund.

Paris Hilton refused entry to club, weeps in arms of friend outside. With pictures, which is the fun part. Insert obligatory "Why can't a stingray get her?" comment here.

Lamictal, Day One: Head has not exploded yet. I feel a little--I wouldn't say caffeinated, because I don't feel buzzy; I just feel very, very awake. This may be because I overslept until noon and didn't take my normal medication until nearly one. The important thing is, I'm not dead (yet).

(I'm kidding.)

(Mostly.)

(Yes, I probably will be documenting my medication progress here. Number one, it's my journal, and number two, it might help someone. I don't know.)

Damned Spot update: Prognosis not good. Publix employees apparently have never heard of Soilove before, much less stocked it. I think I'm going to try the Diet Coke thing next, after Sister Girl's left for the night--she still doesn't know, after all.

Randomly felt like reading some Bradbury, so I pulled out a paperback I got for Christmas and haven't read yet--which describes a lot of books, quite frankly (Christmas, with me, is the holiday that keeps on giving several months later). It's a Grand Masters edition of The Golden Apples of the Sun and R Is for Rocket combined, and I'm all the way through the former and a couple of stories into the latter. I also have Something Wicked This Way Comes, which I haven't read since my freshman year of college (my original Bradbury kick). I love his short stories--I love short stories in general, the shorter the better. I'm not saying that a story that short isn't about character, because character helps, but it's more a sweet flash of idea and imagery, which is actually harder to pull off in a lot of ways, than a long, rambling character piece that may end up feeling plotless.

The other thing I like about Bradbury is that reading his work makes me want to write. He's good enough that it's inspiring, but not so soul-crushingly good that you're scared off.

Speaking of Christmas, I'm trying to find a good Empress Sissi (Elisabeth of Austria) biography--any recommendations?

(I have some linkspam for later, but there's one that I'm almost not even sure I should post, particularly after discussing depression so much recently. Maybe later, away from that context.)

More about my mental health, because I know you find it so very fascinating--I did quit caffeine two or three weeks ago, and cold turkey, too. In the up-and-down flux of medication adjustment, I didn't really notice any particular withdrawal, because I was too busy feeling crappy in general. So I had that going for me. The problem is, I have been stricken with a deep, abiding, psychological craving for the Dew ever since. It's not about the caffeine--it's about going downstairs at eleven in the morning and getting my little twelve-ounce bottle of yellow-green citrus happy. We needs it, precious. And the entire reason I quit was weight loss--Sister Girl had kicked soda a while back, and reported that after she'd been off it a solid month, the pounds really started to drop. In fact, we had all noticed that she had lost a good bit of weight, in a healthy way--weight she had gained mostly in a self-medicating snack-food funk over Asshole Ex-Boyfriend.  So I thought, you know, I don't want to mess with my meds and try a new one and go on an actual diet, but quitting caffeine might be a good idea before I mess around with the rest of my brain chemistry, and really, it might be nice to have a few pounds drop off while I'm at it. I'm not expecting a huge difference, but I figured, you know, that might be a nice bonus while I'm going through a crappy adjustment period. Not to mention that messing with my dosages has alternately made me want to eat nothing and eat everything. I'm just saying, I figured it couldn't hurt.

Yeah. It's three weeks later, and I am still in the throes of this Proustian longing for my secret carbonated lovah. No, I don't want to replace it, thanks for asking. I don't want to drink a diet soda (which won't work anyway--where's the link for that study that says that the body doesn't recognize diet soda as "diet"?), a caffeine-free soda, or any other impostor you want to sell me. If it's not Mountain Dew--full stop--it's just colored water, people. I just want to remember all the hours we spent together, the Dew and I, writing the book parodies and pulling desperate all-nighters for class and running through sunlit fields together. I personally think it's no coincidence that "madeleine" and "Mountain Dew" have the same number of syllables.

(By the way--when did we stop calling it Remembrance of Things Past and switch to In Search of Lost Time? I mean, I understand that it's a better translation, but I missed that newsletter, apparently.)

Speaking of Proust, Little Miss Sunshine was so good. There are so many little things that are just so right--of course Uncle Frank is a Proust scholar. Of course Olive's song is both deeply inappropriate--appropriately inappropriate, if you will--and still manages to feature a message of acceptance in the chorus (I'm trying to be non-spoilery here). And the acting is uniformly good and real--you never feel like anyone's grandstanding for the audience, even though there are plenty of big emotional outbursts. The thing I ended up liking about it the most, though, was what amounted to a scathing critique of child pageants. The sad thing is, we all know they're kind of terrible; the JonBenet thing was ten years ago, and yet here it is right back in the news again right as this movie comes out, and all the movie has to do is put a normal little girl onstage next to these preening little sexified horrors and it knows that it doesn't even have to say anything else. Well, it says one more thing, which is that Olive's "shocking" dance is only the next logical step forward from those coy little ass-shaking, pedo-baiting routines.

Also, Steve Carell runs exactly like Tom Cruise. With the flat robot hands and everything. Priceless.

(I'm not saying it's a lock or anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone came out of this movie with a supporting nomination of some kind. Everyone's talking about the movie; everyone--at the moment--loves it. My best guess is that it might be Alan Arkin, who plays a... unique character, let's say, and might find himself on the receiving end of a Let's Honor the Old-Timer campaign; or it might be Steve Carell, who plays just absolute raw despair in a very quiet but unmissable way, which in and of itself wouldn't be that extraordinary, except that my God, it's Steve Carell. Who knew he could pull out a performance like that?)

Anyway. Good times. Also, we heard at the concession counter that the Vestavia Rave will be getting The Illusionist "next week," which is to say, Friday--the nationwide release date.

Also, I just got an email newsletter from Lane Bryant: "V is for Versatility." Yeah, but if it doesn't come with matching daggers, I don't want to hear about it.

Linky-linky:

Harlan Ellison did whaaaaat? I mean, yes, I have heard the stories--including the "What would you say to a little fuck" story--but Harlan Ellison did whaaaaaaaaaaat?

Interesting things you find on flickr: "Cameras rolling on the second day of shooting in Redcar of the Working Title film Atonement, based on the Ian McEwan novel of the same name." And here I just clicked on it because the photo was gorgeous. In fact, there seems to be an entire pool for photos taken on the set of this one movie.

Heh. I'd forgotten ABC was going to do this: "Airing opposite the Emmys, a 7-10 p.m. offering of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl on ABC siphoned off an estimated 9.3 million viewers. The telecast, far from the run-of-the-mill rerun typically made available as award-show fodder, was seen as ABC's revenge for its top shows--Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives--being shut out of the glamour categories."

A new Antonia Fraser book, whee! 

"Challenged" books drop to all-time low, yay!

The full story on the "Emily" billboards and blog.

Shit. I really am going to have to buy the new LOTR DVDs, aren't I?

And, finally, the new Halloween and LE blends are up at BPAL. I want the Dracula blends so bad. All of them. Even the ones I know won't work on me at all. Shit. (What? I have a Dracula thing. Like, specifically the book, not just an emo vampire fetish or something.) Seriously, that job I applied for better come through soon. Although, ironically? The university is a scent-free working environment. Yeah, I'll be over here with Mr. Bemis shaking my fist at the sky--call it "Money Enough at Last."

Sort of languid-sleepy. Feels a little like being stoned. Having a hard time concentrating--can't read for very long.

Banana pudding for my stepbrother's birthday. Race to shower for hair-washing rights; lost; still waiting. Had "Gimme Shelter" playing all day, for some reason. Two missed calls from "Number Withheld"; phone won't let me call back, because... number withheld. Need to call doctor about going on Lamictal. Not thrilled about it, but... not feeling good. Applying again for job; don't need to keep feeling like this. Not so much bad as... ready to hibernate.

Herewith, links compiled last night/this morning, when feeling more grammatical.


O SNAP: Turns out Sumner Redstone's wife is the one who got him to dump Tom Cruise from Paramount. Why? Of all the shenanigans he's pulled, the Brooke Shield comments pissed her off like whoa, and she used those to convince her husband that Cruise had bombed his own popularity with women. I can't put my finger on why I think that's the most poetic thing ever, but I do.

Demotivators: the original motivational mockery site. Be sure to read the comments at the bottom. Hee! And a few more.

Heeeeee--a Veronica Mars Threatdown, Colbert-style.

Local news: Scrushy ordered to repay $47M in bonuses, will start panhandling at all buildings in town bearing his name.

The only thing more disgusting than the Forbes article? The responses to the Forbes article. So toxic that the closest I got was the comments about the comments, which indicate that not reading the originals is probably for the best.

Kidnapped Austrian teenager begins to tell harrowing story. Freed Austrian kidnap girl refuses to see parents. Sounds bad, but it's more that she's saying she needs time to adjust to freedom.

Fire destroys St Petersburg cathedral domes. 

New Pirates 3 pic of... someone. Look, I don't know. (Keira? Really? Why does her face look weird?)

Knightley and Grant targeted in phone scandal. Apparently this is where some gossip tips have been coming from.

Stick of dynamite found in student's luggage; student claims he works in mining and that he therefore "knows how to handle" explosives. Damn, son, don't you at least watch Lost?

What terrorists want, and how we're giving it to them. Just something I found interesting, particularly the part about the liquids: "We're all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since. In truth, it's doubtful that their plan would have succeeded; chemists have been debunking the idea since it became public."

China cracks down on striptease funerals. Wait, what?

Am I crazy for wanting to put fonts on my Christmas list? (Petronella! Old Glory!)

Halloween lipgloss. I kind of want the Sleepy Hollow, Full Moon, and whichever one is the gingerbread one. I bought some of their catalogue glosses--what, last year?--and the scents are amazing. The ones I ordered seemed to have no flavor at all--not sure what's up with that--but user comments on the site seem to indicate that they are supposed to be flavored. So I don't know.

Sweet Lord. Apparently it's really not a tumahhhhh.

Zoloft 150, down from 200, day 3: Mostly sort of limp and sleepy. Not sad, not really hot-and-cold flashy like I have been the rest of the week; less dizzy. Had a twenty-minute swim, which was nice. And just in time, because it looks like it's going to rain (again).

Also, I have been craving chocolate really, really badly. Too bad there's none in the house.

Head of company uses advertising list to ask his customers to be homophobic. Now, I would just like to say that I'm not entirely sure I believe this. I mean, I believe stoney321; I'm just a little thrown by the fact that a company called outsidepride.com is trying to complain about gayety on television.

Billy Boyd cornered by some old-fashioned LOTR crazy. Suffice it to say, I felt it necessary to leave a comment on the Fandom Lounge entry saying, "It's the fingernails thing that gave me the wig worst. She was really doing that? And had no teeth?" (Someone who witnessed the incident firsthand: "Yes. And yes. *retch* According to someone who spoke with her (I never got that close), there was a distinct smell of urine, too.")

Diane Lane was the inspiration for "You Give Love a Bad Name"? Wow. I'm not sure my world will ever be the same.

Jude Law as General Zod? You know, I haven't even seen the movie that's out yet. Also, Hugh Jackman is probably sulking somewhere.

From its99pm: Wha? Maybe this is not the time to mention that I hoard Arby Sauce packets. (What? They never give you enough for the sandwich and the fries!)

Chocolate Russian Roulette. The intarweb is just taunting me at this point, isn't it?