Cleolinda everywhere

1) Bella Swan: vampiring better than you since *checks watch* 2008. This is the same teaser that ran in front of The Hunger Games, so you may have already seen it (stop poaching Katniss's deer, BELLA). ( Read more... )

2) Meanwhile, shit got real: The Hunger Games' box office crushes the Twilight movies. All of them.

3) I seem to have hit a hypomanic upswing; mine, as I've explained before, are pretty mild. The only thing someone would really notice from the outside is that I'm a bit more upbeat, enthusiastic, and talkative--but when a movie I've really been looking forward to comes out, that doesn't seem out of place. (Honestly, I've started wondering--as I've said before--if you can trigger manic moods. If nothing else, I think it suddenly being SUMMER IN THE MIDDLE OF MARCH gave me an overdose of natural light, and that may have caused it as well. As I recall, my most pronounced upswings are almost always in the spring and summer.) Otherwise, I'm outwardly calm, but as I've gotten older, I've been edging further and further into mild mania, and the happy creative bursts have been "evolving" into something less comfortable. The upside at the lower hypomanic end is that I feel happy and creative (verging on hypergraphic); at the high, verging-on-manic end, I feel overcaffeinated, impatient, and irritable, I have all these ideas but I can't concentrate or focus, I have a hard time sleeping, and I don't want to eat. I have a sample of BPAL's Safari blend, and a dab on the back of each hand (so I can smell it while I'm typing) seems to have centered me a bit. Once I was able to actually focus, I got 1600 words written in a couple of hours last night (there's your hypergraphia), but it took me all day to be able to concentrate that long.

On the other hand, you get wackadoo flights of fancy like the mandatory Panem TV schedule, and like this:

@cleolinda: WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING RT @NikkiFinke: Hugh Dancy To Star In NBC Series ‘Hannibal’

@cleolinda: Look, save some time. Modern-day Sherlock Holmes hunts Hannibal Lecter. In a dystopia. With a vampire. An alien vampire.

@cleolinda: The alien vampire is on the run from a beauty pageant to the death. Also, Sherlock is a werewolf. His brother is a steampunk faerie.

@writingfreak88: No alien ninja turtles?

( Read more... )

@cleolinda: Extremely Crappy Draft: 173,749 words. Enter stage two: Readable Draft.

@cleolinda: Precisely! RT @particle_person: Yes! That is enough words to still have lots of book left when you toss the half that don’t work right!

@cleolinda: I guess it’s not really time for a victory lap yet. Maybe a victory… skip.

@alliancesjr: Admit it, you’re going to do a victory macarena like it’s 1992, aren’t you?

@cleolinda: More like a victory flop. I just keep sitting here going, I can’t do this. What am I doing? I can’t do this.

@cleolinda: But it’s like… doesn’t really matter if I can’t. Don’t really have a choice, do I? Have to keep going with whatever I’ve got.

@alliancesjr: Like a shark. But…on land.

@cleolinda: LAND SHARK!

( [BANTER] )

( RANDOM LITERARY DISCUSSION ) 

While we're here, hours after I started writing this post--the #occupywallstreet thing has blown up into a multi-city protest, but police have arrested "about 400" protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge so far. There's a livefeed, and, apparently, some kettling happened. Mark Ruffalo, of all people, seems to be tweeting from the front lines ("People in 5 different jails. They are releasing people now. 3 in NYC and 2 in Brooklyn"). BPAL, meanwhile, has put up a charity scent to help send pizza to the protesters (the pizza is already going out): "Rock the protester cliché! This is a filthy friggin’ patchouli, dark, deep, rooty, and strangely sexy, with cocoa absolute, tobacco absolute, and bourbon vanilla." More as I hear about it, assuming anyone in the media bothers to cover it in the first place (*side eye*).

ETA: Here's an article that does a fairly good job of explaining what's going on and how it came together.

Such as:

There is a new Made of Fail podcast up!

Foresthouse is in an American Gods contest, and if she can stay in the top 20 until May 2, those 20 entries will go to a panel to be chosen for a part in the audio book! You can vote for her here.

The Liz Miles LGBTQ-inclusive anthology that Saundra Mitchell was talking about (and is in) is now out for sale (Amazon link)! Yes, it is a Running Press anthology. However, people said they wanted to support inclusiveness, and this isn't a Trisha Telep anthology. I leave it to you.

Speaking of that whole business, ( Read more... )

BPAL has a new RPG line of scents! And they're layerable, so you can have, say, your Good/Elf/Paladin combo.

( Many people have been cast in The Hunger Games movie!  )

Meanwhile, I'm going back to try to write. Shhhh. Don't wake the Petite Lap Bear.

1) snowcoma says her mother made it through surgery all right (which is a relief), but that she will (as expected) be in recovery for several weeks, so keep the good thoughts coming.

2) As a side note/follow-up to the "I can't drive and thus I am ashamed" entry: two things here. ( Read more... )

3) I specifically held this entry until the new Deathly Hallows trailer went up, so: huzzah! Also: ( SPOILERS )

4) Given the privacy issues we've talked about: you're going to want to read this. @griner: Wow, that subtle Facebook "not now" button change has a pretty big side effect.

MOAR LINKSPAM ( Read more... ) 

So I had to go to the DMV to renew my driver's license today, except that it's not a driver's license, it's a driver's permit (it looks exactly the same, except there are two "exception" codes on the back. A: Corrective lenses and Y: Not a license. Oh. You know. That), because I can't drive, because I get panic attacks, because I'm a neurotic loser, so on and so forth. For the last fifteen years, the Alabama Department of Motor Vehicles has peaceably taken my money and renewed it without question. Except... this time. And somehow, going in, I knew they wouldn't renew it. Somehow, I knew.

And it was, in fact, exactly as humiliating as I expected. ( Read more... )

Later this week: bloodwork. I'm afraid of what's going to show up in it, although it's on the order of my psych doctor, basically to rule out a few things, not omg you have all the cancers. I'm still afraid of what might turn up. Like, you know, full-blown diabetes, which runs in the family and I'm at risk for. I mean, obviously, whatever turns up is something I already have, not something the bloodwork bestows upon me, so just refusing to find out isn't going to help. However, I also have a deep fear of needles--( this may squick you out, depending on your own issues )

So. Bloodwork. Later this week.

P.S. No one can ever find my veins.

But so help me God, I have a state ID, which is good because I need a drink.


Meanwhile: The weekend's discussion of character deaths and your feelings thereunto was very good, and our querent wishes me to pass on to y'all that it helped a lot. Also, my inbox is on fire.

Linkspam! ( In which I get... a little riled up ) 

I have been writing so hard and so fast lately--seized by an idea and therefore cheating on my long-term projects, which actually seems to happen a lot in the second half of any given year--that I am miserably behind on the news. (And I'm at the really exciting part, too, where you get to do lots of research and world-building. I'm letting it take over because I actually have a window of opportunity, it looks like, to pitch it to someone if I can get enough of it to come together. But it's also making me feel a lot more energized about writing my regular things as well. Except that some of them I've had to table, because of Things We Cannot Speak Of. I know it sounds confusing. It confuses me too, because everything kind of got thrown up into the air and now I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing, because I have so many things I can do that I don't know where to start. It's like walking into a really big buffet, or a a fairground, or a library, or a museum, and feeling a kind of wonderful panic because you don't know where to go first.

WHAT I AM SAYING IS that I feel like I also need to post here more regularly, because a couple of people have said things like "since you've moved to Twitter" and I was like OH BUT NO. Twitter's just an easy way to keep up with things (but not all things) and people (but not all people) with a minimum of effort. Which is useful when you're putting a maximum of effort into other things.

Of course, I did post here yesterday. You all may have come to regret that now.

(I'm sorry--I know how disturbing that whole Edward Fashion Cat thing was, but that last picture, I can't stop looking at it. It's like this perfect storm of hilarrible. I laughed so hard at it yesterday that I gave myself a headache, in fact. I think it's because the--victim, let's say--hanging over that woman's shoulder looks like a cat AND a child AND a goblin AND a serial killer, and he really only ought to look like two of those. Because no jury in the world would convict him if something "happened" to his owner. Even if cats got jury trials. What I'm saying is: that shit is so wrong.)

ANYWAY. Let us have a little linkspam! ( Read more... )

More Formspring questions. Posted 3/9/10.


( So ... dreamed about Brad Pitt lately? )

@cleolinda: Text from Mom: "Well, I just found out my car [repair] is going to cost $2850. Too much wrong with it to put in this text."

@cleolinda: So... people said I should sell the e-book for $5 instead of $3. I... I think I may do that now. My GOD, what else could we have to pay for?

@cleolinda: (Don't answer that.)


Also, Scout is throwing up.

And now I can't find my bottle of High John the Conqueror, or even the imp (vial) I used back when I was writing the 15M book (IT IS AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE), although in frantically rifling through two BPAL stashes I did find a few of the Conjure Bag blends (Aunt Caroline's Joy Mojo, yay!) and AN ENTIRE VIAL OF SIREN THAT I DID NOT EVEN KNOW I HAD. There are no special "powers" attached to that one--it's just the general catalogue ginger/jasmine/apricot blend (not the "magickal" Twilight Alchemy Lab blend that, apparently on purpose, smells like decomposing roses)--but it is my favorite working scent because the ginger gives me a ton of energy and focus for some reason (and also, I love peach and apricot). Sadly, my family hates the way it smells on me (I think the way my skin amps the ginger bothers them?), so usually I don't wear it--I use it as a room scent, in MY room, so if you don't like it GTFO, etc. But since I'm working at the family computer, I'm wearing it so at least it'll leave the room when I do--in theory, although some of the scent will probably linger. And you know what? The depth of my not-caring is phenomenal at this point. I need to finish this Harry Potter thing and we need the money. Keep in mind that my sister ALSO got handed a mechanic's bill for $1300 at the end of August.

(Don't be concerned about September, though. The car repair relates to a concrete something or other my mother drove over in... August.)

(And since people have been asking about Secret Life of Dolls--I need to take a picture, and I think my iPhone will be good enough for the purpose, but I don't know when I can post a new thing, what with the frantic writing for laptop funds and car-repair moneys.)

So... that's my day. So far.

ETA: An email from my mother, re: what's wrong with the car:  "Apparently everything.  I need a new water pump – very labor intensive to replace (which means lots of $$$$); timing chain is cracked – that’s what actually makes the car run; front and rear brakes are 95% worn and rotors are warped; transmission fluid is black – it’s supposed to be clear; air filter is filthy and has dog hairs in it; it’s also time for an oil change (way past due………..) and I need two new tires – the front two apparently are bald.   Like I said, I guess I’m glad I actually got home last night."

 

A band of trick-or-treaters just came to our door and sang my mother a song about pulling down her underwear. SOMEHOW, THEY ESCAPED WITH THEIR LIVES.

("What was that about my underwear...?" "When I was a kid, it was something about smelling your feet." "Oh...?")

( Halloween linkspam! )

( Regular linkspam! )

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 )