Question

Nov. 13th, 2008 01:58 pm
cleolinda: (Default)
Hey, quick dumb question: does anyone have or know how to get the original French text of Phantom of the Opera ? (I mean, quickly, online, and/or free.) There's a line I'd like the original version of--it's translated in one of my editions as "A sort of bluey light surrounded us," and I would really, really like to know what the original wording was. It's from the book scene where Christine is describing the first time she saw the lake leading to the Phantom's lair.

ETA: YAY! Thanks, guys!


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*flop*

Oct. 30th, 2008 07:38 pm
cleolinda: (spooky03)
Fairly productive day--a long slow slog, but I kept on keepin' on. I mean, my eyelid's started twitching again, but what're you gonna do.

Today's journal flashback: Van Helsing in Fifteen Minutes, because that's pretty much what started everything. And, you know, Halloween and stuff. Speaking of which, I have something fun planned for tomorrow, if I can get it all to work.

Meanwhile, the dogs went crazy yesterday evening while everyone thought someone else was watching them and they tore a large strip of wallpaper off near the kitchen window. Which means that if we can't match the wallpaper (we probably can't), we'll have to re-paper the entire kitchen. You know, because we have the money or the fortitude to deal with that right now. Also, they ATE THE WALLPAPER, WHAT THE HELL. So now we're going to have to get a second crate (they're too big to both fit in the old one) and crate them during the day because I can't watch them and get work done, which hurts my heart but guess what? It's not like we can let them run around and destroy the house, either--they've already acquired a taste for magazines as it is. Fnarr.

Total change of subject: can anyone recommend a good, free music player/program for my computer that is NOT iTunes? Yahoo Jukebox has decided to suck hosewater since they killed Y! Unlimited and tried to send everyone over to Rhapsody, WHICH IS NOT FREE, leaving the player a shell of what it once was. I downloaded Media Monkey and it seems okay... )

Linkspam! Blogger bloodbath! )


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cleolinda: (spooky03)
I started writing up a list of Specific "Fifteen Minutes" Footnotes That Still Need Work (links, research, a quick polish, whatever), and the Dracula one's kind of long, the Van Helsing one's okay, the POA one is really short, and then you to get to the King Arthur list, and it says, I am not kidding,
Total mess. Seriously, you have like 6 pages of unincorporated research. Get basic intro together.
HAVE YOU DONE ANY WORK ON THIS AT ALL?
Pelagius?
And then I just said to hell with it and took the dogs for a walk.

Today's journal flashback: a handful of shorter movie bits, Wicker Park ("A movie I haven't seen in five minutes, if you will"), the cracked-out Jurassic Park 4 script (really honestly truly, not making it up), and... hey, why not a discussion of Picnic at Hanging Rock? Can't think why not.

Earlier today, because I don't want y'all to overlook it: Where my synesthetes at?

From [livejournal.com profile] mercat: "There are several different movements in action to try to save Pushing Daisies, so I thought I'd link you to them: Help Bees Help Daisies, Pies for Poverty, Honey for the Homeless, and a mail-in (more info)." And I'll tell you truthfully, now is the time to act. You know, not several months later like the Moonlight fandom, bless them.

And from [livejournal.com profile] entropy_and_me: Doctor Who spoiler ) I'll just be in my scream-proof anti-fangirl bunker now if you need me.

More linkspam, now that I have crushed half my readership's souls: Han Solo Ain't Never Had No Sex With Princess Leia in a Star War! )


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cleolinda: (Default)
Today, I am full of French onion soup and accomplishment. Really full. I have a few screencaps to make (I want to link to visual evidence of some of this weirdness), but other than that, I'm putting the Van Helsing footnotes to bed. Exciting. Which means I get to plow on through the list chronologically and keep going until I hit another unfootnoted patch, and hopefully work through the entire set UNTIL THEY ARE DONE, OMG.

A weird little sidenote: I've been trying out different old BPAL favorites as room scents, and even though Fae is a pretty bubbly scent (bergamot, heliotrope and peach, I think?), I haven't been all that productive this week. Then I put out Siren (ginger, jasmine, vanilla and apricot), and suddenly I'm getting a lot more done. Could be a coincidence, I don't know.

OH OH OH I KNEW I WAS FORGETTING SOMETHING: Today's flashback is (the oddly prescient... kind of) MyScene Lindsay Lohan entry. I even went through and freshened up all the picture links (well, except for one, and I have no idea what it originally was).

Linkspam! The Hair touches down in Mexico, is assaulted with sombrero )


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HAY GUYS

Oct. 20th, 2008 02:19 pm
cleolinda: (spooky02)
Wow, y'all. I need an internet brain vacation. The problem is, I don't have time for one--I have GOT to finish these annotations; it's just not even funny anymore, how long it's taking me. (Also, my grandmother's icemaker broke, and when she opened the freezer door, water poured out and ruined her old kitchen floor and now the tiles are twisting and buckling and she's going to trip over them and fall down again so we have to get it replaced ASAP and seriously, is there anything else, anything else, that the universe can think of throwing at us? Don't answer that.)

That said, I do feel fairly accomplished--even a little energized, except for this headache--that I actually caught up with the show and turned out three recaps in three days, good God. I wasn't even actually sure I could do it, but I thought, well, won't know if I don't try. The problem is, I've been under a lot of stress lately, and I've found myself getting really tense and cranky over the last three or four days. I was even going downstairs and my mother just happened to be there at the foot unexpectedly and I jumped about three feet. And then Shelby let out one of her piercing sonic barks and I jumped again, and my mother was like, "Well, you're on edge today." But I need the internet to fact-check my footnotes, and even if I did try to cut back on intarwebs interaction, I hate that feeling of missing out on things and falling behind on the news. So... I don't know. I'm just saying, I'll try to hold it together if y'all will forgive me for any crankiness.

Well, here's something to make us all feel better: Upside Down Dogs. I so need to get Shelby on this, she is a champion upside-down sleeper.

OH AND ALSO Sister Girl came over and spent three hours showing me old boy band videos on YouTube (I spent my entire childhood and adolescence completely immune to the charms of boy bands, which made me the weirdest girl in fifth grade), and we decided that this is THE GREATEST BOY BAND VIDEO EVER (That Did Not Involve Monsters):




DISCUSS.


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cleolinda: (twilight)
Lots of work done today! No whammies! no whammies! crashes! And yet, there is still more to do. And once again, I hunger. I hope there's some of that ravioli downstairs.

Let's get the pre-trailer bedazzlement Twi-spam out of the way so you can skip it if you want.

ETA: ~*THE TRAILER IS HERE*~

Widget, you suck.

(WHAT THE SHIT IS THIS, FOR REAL)

I got an update on the Baby Renesmee situation; new pictures )

A few non-partisan stories about (American) voting: Massive voter roll purges being done in secret?; 5 Friends, a celeb-packed campaign to get people to register and vote; Vote for Change, where you can check your voter registration regardless of affiliation; Your Grievance For the Next Four Years: "Voter Fraud"; There's Nothing Some Fear More Than Citizens Exercising Their Constitutional Rights.

I'll tell you the truth, I'm to the point where I want to vomit if I so much as see the word election on a TV screen--I can't even find a channel that will report news on anything other than the election at this point, and it's been going on for more than a year now, and all they do is talk about the same superficial talking-head soundbite non-issues over and over again. And I make a point to rarely, if ever, mention politics here, because the parts of this journal that aren't personal are pop culture/entertainment blogging, and I like it that way. I like not having to moderate arguments and I like having a happy little quiet place where I don't have to hear about politics--not because I don't want to hear about politics ever, or because I don't want you to hear about them, but because I assume we're all getting our daily political FDA requirement elsewhere, at (the few?) blogs and websites and newspapers that actually know what they're talking about.

Anyway, my point is that I do care. I just don't want to care about it here, other than the occasional link or story that's about politics as it relates to entertainment, or politics as it relates to everyone regardless of party. Like voting. Because I do believe it's important, and you better believe that if someone tries to stop me from voting I will raise holy goddamn hell about it. And you should too.

More linkspam! Gambit and the Nuclear So & Sos )


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cleolinda: (spooky03)
Hmm... today's Journal Birthmonth Flashback? Let's go with Tiny Moist Hand.

Tried to record a Halloween story reading; made one tiny stumble--but at a key line, unfortunately--so I can't put that take out. But I haven't been able to get the right voice back on any subsequent takes. I tried to warm up by desk-dancing singing, but somehow, that just didn't do it. I'll just have to keep trying, I guess.

Didn't have the most productive day ever, but soldiered away at the Prestige footnotes until finally I just said, "This is as done as it's gonna get right now, even though there are a couple that aren't ready, but screw it, I need to move on to something else." The POTO footnotes are going to be a lot of work to finish, I think (I've been skipping around the whole time), but at least it'll be something different.

(Trying BPAL's Dorian--which has been in my little storage chest for far too long--as a room scent. Not really sure it's working for me in that capacity. Need a bottle of High John the Conqueror, actually--my sample vial of that got me through the last three months of writing the 15M book, to be honest.)

More True Blood recap icons!

More linkspam! Transgenic Jellyfish will be the name of my next band )


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La la la

Oct. 2nd, 2008 07:40 pm
cleolinda: (how I roll)
You know how bad I didn't want to work today? I went and scrubbed the toilet instead. And then I went and worked on footnotes for The Prestige anyway.

(The bitchful part of it is having to go back through my books on stage magic--which, being print copies, don't have helpful search functions--to back up my vague claims that, uh, stage patter was... important, and... stuff. People died doing the bullet catch... somewhere. I mean, definitely. I'm pretty sure. The real attraction of a footnoted "Prestige in Fifteen Minutes," though, is that I've gone through it and theorized (spoiler) Read more... ) and I think I can make a pretty compelling case. I'm working on a discussion of the differences between the POTO musical/movie and the book, with key excerpts from the latter--it's public domain, after all--and I already have huge amounts of My Thoughts on Dracula, Let Me Show You Them for that 15M. With any luck, this will be something people would actually be willing to pay for.)

So hopefully I'll have my little e-book (zip folder, really) done soon and can try to raise some money to pay off the air conditioner we had to replace, since I've been working on the footnotes for months and the no-interest period ends as of this month, and if we can't pay the rest off, we start having to pay 23% interest as well. And also, I want to move on with my life and get back to working on Black Ribbon. Particularly since October is such a great gothy little month.

(Hey, randomness! You know that's a really fun snack? A slice of bread with peanut butter spread over it and then covered in mini-marshmallows. Kind of an open-faced fluffernutter sandwich. The sad thing is that I don't even have the excuse that I liked to eat this as a child or anything. I just went downstairs to make myself a sandwich and went, "Huh, you know what might be fun...?" I think the bleach fumes from the toilet are starting to get to me.)

Linkspam! This guy better hope he is dead or else he'll be going to jail for a long long time )


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cleolinda: (Default)
So my computer crashed in the middle of me footnoting "The Prestige in Fifteen Minutes" (and I had just spent like an hour discussing, uh, who I thought was in each scene--if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean) for the e-book project, which was a buzzkill. Meanwhile, my grandmother's sick (a sinus infection similar to mine, I think, only worse, since she's so frail), she's also worried about her money being with Merrill Lynch (yeah... I would too, right now), Shelby's having stomach problems, my stepfather is having a really, really hard time at work right now, my sister's having to do catering deliveries again and she inevitably ends up getting her car totaled by some nut loose on the street, we're going to have to have a plumber come out and look at the downstairs toilets, Tiny Tim needs a new crutch, and I'm just tired of it all, really. And feeling bad for everyone.

That said, I've already posted twice today and I was very productive (the computer crash aside), so I've got that going for me. Actually, I think I'm cycling back through a manic or hypomanic phase again. Who wants to make bets on what I'll be doing at the end of October? )

Oh, and apparently Let the Right One In is going to be playing at the Sidewalk Film Festival here in town on Saturday night (!!), although I don't know if I'll be able to go.

Speaking of which: Cloverfield's Matt Reeves Remaking 'Let the Right One In'; Countdown under way for 10th Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in downtown Birmingham.

More linkspam! Hey, it's Alice! In Wonderland! Why is she on a ship? )


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So tired

Sep. 17th, 2008 07:36 pm
cleolinda: (wtf)
Aw, hell. I've been sneezing a lot lately, and then today I came down with these weird alternating hot and cold spells. I don't know that I'm running an actual fever, but it sucks either way. It's probably allergies. But still--I am determined to not go into the month of October without finishing the annotated Fifteen Minutes thing because I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON IT LONG ENOUGH NOW, GOD. I have got to move on with life at some point.

(That's frustration with myself talking there, by the way.)

("Are you feeling guilty? YEAH YOU ARE!")

By the way, I'm recording another--different--podcast on Saturday, which should be fun. General subject: vampires in the media. Doing speaky-speaky stuff like this seems to help my confidence, so I'm going with it. Someday, I may actually bring myself to be sociable in real life, my God!

Linkspam! Feast upon the Uwe Boll Slot )


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cleolinda: (GALADRIEL SMASH!)
Okay, our dishwasher is now on its last legs. I mean, it'll still turn on, but it's been so spotty for so long that we're obviously going to have to replace it in the next few months. Yes, we can get by washing dishes by hand. It's not so much that the dishwasher's dying as it is that this will be the eleventy-thousandth appliance to die this year. And Shelby's going to have to have surgery for her hip dysplasia in the next year or so, and we're still paying off the Unexpected Pension Taxes, and somewhere in there we've got to buy Tiny Tim a new crutch. The really stressful part is that my mother is now looking to me to finish my writing projects and hopefully bring in enough extra income that we can get on top of the bills and pay more than just a tiny bit, the interest, and sneaky late fees (everyone wants payment just before the last paycheck of the month) on them. You know. No pressure or anything.

And then my computer crashed in the middle of the "King Arthur in Fifteen Minutes" notes, and I lost all yesterday afternoon's work. "Document recovery" my ass. This is why you didn't get a linkspam, because I was too pissed busy trying to redo my work to deal with it.

(Also, Semagic came thisclose to eating all of tonight's linkspam when my computer crashed. "Load automatically saved draft" only pulled up the earliest version, until I finally thought to try "Load Draft" and see what came up.)

Let's go to another happy jewelry place! Damn, I need one. It's an old favorite, but what the hell: Sweet Romance Online. Favorites (and man, is it hard to narrow it down): the rose pendant; the art nouveau "Futura" set; the morning glory suite; the lily of the valley suite.

Linkspam! Superman reboot, Lost in Austen, Marion Cotillard IS (not) Catwoman )


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Hmmm

Jul. 1st, 2008 12:21 pm
cleolinda: (Default)
Thought #1: I noticed a song that really caught my ear, so to speak, in the scene in Wanted where Fox picks Wesley up outside his office (you know, where he's all giddy about quitting his job and all), and I caught enough of the lyrics to do a search. Except that I could not find a single song that matched--I'd assumed it was an existing song they'd just put on the soundtrack. Finally I got the bright idea to check the soundtrack listing on Amazon, and what do you know--it's a Danny Elfman song called "The Little Things," which I presume he wrote for the movie, since he also scored it. And I really love it. Good times.

(I would love to discuss how much I loved that crazy silly movie, but I almost don't even want to spoil the awesome bits for you. Some of which I left out of the Fifteen Minutes on purpose, by the way.)

Thought #2: In addition to trying to wrestle fifteen annotations into submission, I started to wonder if maybe $10 would be a more appealing price than $15. As in, maybe only put together ten annotations and save the rest for later. I already have 17 online "Fifteen Minutes"--two more than when I started annotating in April--anyway. It would make more sense to pick only ten than choose two to drop. That, and I had been angsting way too much about having to revisit Hannibal (not exactly my favorite piece of work).

(Thought #2b: We are, in fact, going to have to replace the dishwasher--I'd forgotten: the door is about to fall off--but it's not a priority until it actually falls down dead, and even then we can wash dishes by hand. I'm just saying, fundraising is still very much stressing me the hell out on my mind. I hate thinking of things in terms of money, but--well, I probably need to learn to do it more, not less.)

(Oh, by the way--the Sears Fridge Guy came. The part we need is back-ordered, so unless my mother can prevail upon Manager Sayid to just switch out a new fridge with us [shpfff, likely], we're not going to have the fridge fixed until July 11th.)

So, my question is--I reserve the right to choose whatever ends up working best for me, but just as another factor to take into account, which parodies would you be most interested in reading the Pop-Up Video version of (so to speak)? I'm curious to see if something I wouldn't have expected might rank really high (or really low). (Note: Only room for 15, so I took off the Harry Potters--POA and GOF. They're almost done, and I'm sure they'd get voted in anyway.) Vote! )


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cleolinda: (Default)
So the McJackass clan has passed two more checks--this time at Target and Home Depot--so they're up to something like $2400 now. But that's not $2400 coming from us--as [livejournal.com profile] raven_feathers succinctly pointed out, "It's not about your money in your bank. It's about the swag." They're actually stealing from the retailers, not us, since banks tend to back their customers up, it seems. Of course, if the McJackass clan starts applying for credit cards under our name, we're screwed, but there you are. And it's already hellaciously inconvenient to go around with certified bank letters explaining what happened to everyone my mother's written checks to in the last two weeks. Plus, any automatic payments made on that account will have to be updated to the new debit/credit card as well.

(Since people brought the issue up: my mother does drop checks off to be mailed at official USPS boxes, so they weren't poached from our mailbox.)

I'm starting to worry about my mother's health, actually--my grandmother's had shingles for nine weeks now, and while they're almost gone, this has necessitated my mother and my aunt taking turns to go by her house to fix each meal and help her with the ointments, and the strain of constant running-around is starting to get to both of them. So then we have the Great Check-Washing Scam of 2008 and all the crapfulness that's entailed, and today my mother had to stand in line on her lunch hour (after taking care of my grandmother) at the DMV to re-pay for the family car tags, since those checks had bounced. Since it's the first of the month (which was particularly galling, since she'd gone out of her way to pay for our tags early), there were about a hundred people in line. And then the presiding deputy told eight of the ten women working the counters to go on to lunch. All at once. 80% of them. With a hundred people in line. "You have another story to tell your people," she said grimly when she stopped by the house (she calls y'all "my people"). "I'm standing there with steam coming out of my ears afraid I'm going to sink down through the floor because it's melted underneath me." That's not really a story; it's more just "a thing that happened without any climax or comeuppance or dénouement," but I wasn't about to tell her that.

My point is, I'm really worried about her stress levels. I mean, she's always been a type A personality, but I think she's got an overload of fuckery on her plate at the moment. I'm really hoping that I can finish these annotations (which I originally thought, somewhat hilariously, would take me a weekend) a few days before Mother's Day, so that hopefully I can write her a check and wrap it up in a pretty box and give it to her as a surprise. Any little bit I can pull together would help at this point, I think.

Oh, and the police department here said they would need to go to Columbus, Georgia, to file a report. The bank's already dealing with it, obviously, but they'd suggested we go to the police as well. So my mother's going to talk to her people--the UAB police department, whose benefits she administers and firing squabbles she mediates, to get their advice. (See, she has people, too. Everyone should have people, I think.)

Another massive linkspam--sorry about my spam management, you guys. : ( I've got some reader links, but I'm saving them for tomorrow so they're not completely lost in the tidal wave of awesome. Read more... )


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