Cleolinda everywhere

There seems to be a Team Littlest Edward movement brewing in the Secret Life comments--I particularly enjoyed these two icons. (If you feel the urge to acquire your own Littlest Edward, you can get one from Entertainment Earth through my affiliate account. Put a teacup full of cotton balls or knitting yarn out for him and your stuffed animals ought to be fine.)

Early linkspam, so I can go outside and play! ( Read more... )

Breaking news: Taylor Lautner Locked In For 'New Moon.' And those of us on Team Sparkle Motion rub our hands with a low, evil laugh. Meanwhile: Who Should Play Leah Clearwater In ‘New Moon’? An MTV Staffer Weighs In (rumor: Vanessa Hudgens to Join 'Twilight' Cast?); Twilight DVD Date, Art (large enough to frighten children). Also, take your pick: two, two, two overpriced Twilight conventions! AH AH AH! And finally, Something Awful does Twilight.

( Moar linkspam! )

Have done a little spring cleaning over on my user profile--when Greatest Journal went down, it took some of my graphics down with it. Revised my user interests a little, added some OMG RECAPS HERE buttons, and as soon as I can think of something for a Cleoland graphic, I'll put one there, too. (My Occupation: Girl banner--and my default user icon--come from some fabulous Marguerite Sauvage artwork that I lost when my previous computer crashed, and she doesn't have those particular pieces on her own site anymore. I would kill to find that older artwork of hers.)

(She did artwork for French Nancy Drew, you guys!)

Hm. So... today's Journal Birthmonth flashback will be... ah! Let's do Cleo Sue.

Meanwhile, I must decide whether to sleep or start working on the third True Blood recap. Decisions, decisions.

P.S. Sookie has a flavor and it's MOON PIES, winning with 40% of the vote.

Since we were on the subject of the Secret Life of Dolls earlier today--top ten movie-related Tonner dolls that do not exist but would put a spectacular hurt on my wallet if they did: ( Skip down to the next cut if you'd like to avoid the dollness )

From anjalilj: "I know this isn't quite your usual sort of linkspam, but I was wondering if you could drop a link for this anyway: An old classmate of mine from Bryn Mawr College went missing from her New York City apartment a week ago, and hasn't been seen since. Her friends and family are trying to get the word spread as far and wide as possible in the hopes that they'll find someone who's seen her. Here's a link with photos from Daily Intel (a New York news blog) and Neil Gaiman's journal. Thanks a whole bunch in advance."

Join us on Facebook to help a great cause, the United Way of Central Alabama. Wave to my friend David, y'all!

Linkspam! ( There's a reason I chose this icon for today. Just keep reading )

So today is the day of the birth of the Mama of the Cleo! It is also her sister's (my aunt's) birthday. However, my aunt (her sister) is five years younger. Yeah... we don't really know how that happened, exactly. I mean, at least Sister Girl and I were born seven years and three days apart. Anyway, that's what I'm doing this evening: dinner, chocolate roulage, and presents. Remind me to tell you tomorrow what I watched on TCM today.

( Linkspam catch-up )

ETA: Breaking local news: If you grew up in the Jefferson County (AL) school system and have fond memories of band director Pat Morrow, you may want to send him a get-well card--apparently he's in ICU, having a third stint put in tomorrow, after a heart attack he had last night.

Ohhhhhhhh no. No no no no no. My mother put a load of my sister's laundry in to wash this morning and asked me to put it in the dryer for a little bit and then hang it all up to dry. (For those of you asking where my sister was that she couldn't do her own laundry, her shift started at five this morning and she had a class last night. She's been a lazy cuss in the past, yes, but for the last six months, her schedule's been insane.) So I throw the clothes in the dryer, don't really look at them, and come back a couple of hours later to hang them up. They're covered in spots. Clutches of small, random, oily spots. Most of the load was polo shirts for work, but also in there? The outfit she was going to wear on her date tonight. Ohhhhhhhh no. And Sister Girl has, let us say, an Irish temper. I thought I had an Irish temper, but I realized it isn't really--with me, the amount of bluster is inversely proportionate to the actual amount of mad I am. I read something ridiculous in the paper, and it's like, "OH, WHATEVER, I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS GUY, DID YOU SEEEEEEE THIS?!"; someone does something shitty directly to me and I turn into my mother with the "I'm sorry, this is NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR" Terrifying Calm thing. With Sister Girl, on the other hand, the dial's pretty much on eleven all the time. We're all going to die, is what I'm saying.

( CSI: Special Laundry Unit )

Movies this weekend: The Wicker Man at 17% fresh: snap. Crank seems to have amazingly good reviews at the moment, though.

Munch's "The Scream" found by police after two years.

Meanwhile: apparently by the time y'all got to the gelfling porn Wikipedia entry, it had been sanitized, making me look insane. Well, nothing ever disappears entirely from the internet, baby. (I like how a note on the history page says, "Classified everything below the first paragraph as 'Gelflings in Fan Fiction' since that is all the contents really are at best.")

Maybe the Russian Wtf, as y'all call it, was an ambulocetus? Yeah, I don't feel better.

("Russian Wtf" reminds me of the old joke--a reporter at a garden show or a greenhouse or something (look, I forget the context) asks the gardener what the big purple flower is, and he says, "Damn if I know." Next day in the paper, a picture of it with the caption: The rare purple damifino.)

Brian De Palma talks about The Black Dahlia a bit. "De Palma was juggling simultaneous plot lines 'that overlap in ways you don't realize until later,' he says. 'Some things I changed were too complex for audiences to absorb unless they were able to pick up the book. I had to pare down a lot of the eccentricities of the storytelling. If four things were going on simultaneously, we didn't need five.'" This is the kind of thing I find fascinating, if only for my own writerly purposes.

Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan in I'm Not There. Okay, I howled at this one. Maybe it works in action, but it's just hilarious out of context in stills. I forget which other actors are playing Dylan--seven total, I believe--but more of the cast in general is here. Definitely Heath Ledger, apparently.

Queen Fights for Right to Party, Blog. Brian May is ready to go over to MySpace and "apply a fist or two." I support this motion one hundred percent, sir.

The End of the Internet? I linked something similar before, but it's worth reading again. "If Americans are to succeed in designing an equitable digital destiny for themselves, they must mount an intensive opposition similar to the successful challenges to the FCC's media ownership rules in 2003. Without such a public outcry to rein in the GOP's corporate-driven agenda, it is likely that even many of the Democrats who rallied against further consolidation will be 'tamed' by the well-funded lobbying campaigns of the powerful phone and cable industry."

Here's what you can do about it (and if you can, write your own text; it'll mean more).

In more news of internet-related greed: Licking this postage stamp may be a problem.

Syrians Torch Embassies Over Caricatures.

Teen Wanted in Gay Bar Rampage Is Caught.

Red Sea ferry survivors say captain fled.

Two Kidnapped Girls Found, Returned to Dad.

Feminist Author Betty Friedan Dies at 85.

Arson suspected in Alabama church fires.

Jon Stewart explains the difference between Oprah and news. Hint: only one is willing to call out a liar.

E! previews the Super Bowl - the music, the commercials, the movie trailers. There may also be a sporting event in there somewhere.

Schools grapple with policing students' online journals - and whether to police them at all.

Kay Nielsen at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. I had no idea Nielsen worked on Fantasia! I love his illustrations for The Twelve Dancing Princesses (shown at link), and have even used them as writing inspiration. Someday, I have got to track down the book they're in.

From 5000 different people: Brokeback to the Future.

I have word, from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a security guy, that [GIANT LOST SPOILER] ( Read more... )

Dateline's online predator sting. It's hilarious in an awful sort of way--maybe "absurd" is a better way to put it. "The decoy asks him to bring Mike’s Hard Lemonade and 'southbayguy310' says he’ll bring a camera, hoping she’ll let him take naked pictures of her. As he’s driving to our house, he calls the decoy to get directions. He finds the house but just as he’s pulling up, another man being arrested outside. He calls the decoy to find out what’s going on and Del [the decoy] quickly makes up a story saying her neighbor was arrested for dealing drugs. Amazingly, the police activity isn’t enough stop him." ( And it only gets crazier from there )

I'm being such a lazy schmo today. I'm supposed to be revising poems, but I've gotten myself turned around so badly on the night-day thing that I'm desperately-but-pleasantly sleepy right now.

The exam went fine, thanks for asking. I suppose I could have written more, but it was late, and I was tired. Quinlan was cool about the paper, so I think I'm all right in that regard. Of course, it's too short, but he's said before that he'd rather people go under rather than over, or too few sources rather than too many. Seriously, can I have all my classes with him?

I have to write a 3-5 page paper for Crunk--a critical review of my own writing style. I'll post that here when I'm done (under a cut--good God) just in case you're curious to see what that entails. Put it this way: I've had to do it before, as an undergrad, and the second semester I wrote one, I titled it "Portfolio 2: Electric Boogaloo." It's not as dry as it sounds.

Couldn't sleep for shit last night, as previously stated. ( Guess what I ended up reading? )

( Christmas vacation, as it tends to be, is Bookapalooza over here )

Over at SAST, because I am a link whore: new Johnny Depp pics; "Tom Cruise" invites me to go see "The Last Samauri"; tasty Peter Pan pics; cameo ideas for The Hobbit; what you get for the Lovecraft fan who has everything; get your "Legolas Dies" and "Frodo Is My Babydaddy" t-shirts while there's still time.

Icon of the Day: This is not the soda you are looking for...