Re: LiveJournal: Here's the press release about the layoffs.

Back at the ranch, as it were, I got so sucked into this afternoon's rerun of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit when Sister Girl was over doing laundry this afternoon--it was one of those L&O specialties where they started off with one crime and midway through switched to another that they discovered in the course of investigating the first one, which was great and fantastic and all except that I kept screaming "BUT WHAT ABOUT BRIANNA????"

... maybe you had to be there.

Meanwhile, yesterday, I ran around doing housework (you know it's bad when I try to procrastinate by cleaning) until I ended up throwing up all over the bathroom. (Which then, of course, had to be... cleaned.) I have no idea what that was about, except that I'd had a heavy breakfast (well, you know: greasy fast-food biscuit) on a nervous stomach. And then I felt feverish and had chills all day (and a good bit of today as well), so maybe I'm legitimately sick, who knows.

I made Sister Girl take the rest of the Mountain Dews with her, though, so that temptation is at least removed. Also, I think the withdrawal headaches have eased up.

I'm also trying to remind myself that I may be in a hypomanic phase (what with the running around cleaning), so if I suddenly crash and don't feel magically energetic anymore, that's not a moral failing. It just means that if I feel good now, I need to make hay while the sun shines.

Apropos of nothing much, one more thing about Prince Caspian: ( Read more... )

Oh, by the way, I got an email newsletter/casting call from Universal Pictures, and when I tried to copypaste the info to pass it along, it turned out to be a series of image files. Huh. Therefore, I will present it to you as it was presented to me (click to enlarge): ( ARE YOU THE NEXT MCLOVIN????? )

Of course, I saw the name "Edward" and ran screaming, but there you are. (Oh, and the MySpace and Facebook links were clickable; at least you don't have to type those in. The latter demands to know whether you are THE NEXT MCLOVIN' OR MICHAEL CERA?!, which should give you an idea of what they're looking for.)

Speaking of Edward, mistress_gwen has started the comm sparklpires for lolfans. Enjoy.

( Catchup linkspam! )

As promised, the linkspam. And now, to find a heating pad or something.

( Something of Boris is all Daniel Craig's fault; Russell Crowe assaults a chicken )

I fell into the bottomless pit that is TV Tropes again yesterday afternoon, and came across this and... well, it made my entire day. Apparently there are a (very small) handful of m15m mentions sprinkled across the site--probably because pointing out abused/overused tropes is a large part of what I do in the parody things. It still makes me giggle every time I find one.

One More Time: Britney returns to MTV VMAs. I hear that, despite all official denials, she will actually be performing. Which is why I can't not watch this trainwreck. She'll probably end up doing just fine, though, because you'd have to be an idiot (no, a real, genuine, flatlining idiot) to crap out on national television two years in a row. And more power to her if she can hold it together this time.

(No, I'm not sure why I have a "britney spears" tag, either.)

(Oh hai! Paramore seems to be there! I am pleased.)

Also, word on the street is that some sparkle motion is going to be present tonight. I hope The Hair brought backup.

Entertainment Weekly's VMAs liveblog. I would do one myself, but... I'm just not sufficiently aware of when MTV actually plays the videos What the Kids Today listen to. I'd spend most of the liveblog going, "Here's... someone? I don't know? They are saying things and doing stuff. Hey, that girl there is almost naked."

So... I had a shitty evening last night. My blood pressure still feels a little high today. Hurrah. Here was the one bright spot: I was at TV Tropes going through the Characters as Device list when I saw "The Littlest Cancer Patient" and went, "Aww, hey, that's like the thing I used in the... omg."

Presumably, the name of this trope is a reference to The Day After Tomorrow in Fifteen Minutes, which uses the phrase to great hilarity.

I have made my contribution to the world and can die happy. You think I'm kidding, and I'm not.

(Maybe I shouldn't say things like "die happy" after the High Blood Pressure of Fury last night. And the last time I had it checked, the nurse actually said I had very good, low blood pressure. Knocking on wood... now.)

(Before you ask: yes, I voted today. Now I'm going to go scrapbook something random until I feel mellower.)

Speaking of which, from entropy_and_me: "I was so inspired by your digital scrapbooking creations that I've gotten a bit, er, obsessively into it myself now. I made a digiscrapping resource post at my blog. You might be collecting links to do a digiscrapping linkspam yourself for all I know, but I thought my little resource post might be of interest to your readership."

( Read more... )

... because I like the updating streak I have going. Mom's still weak, but doing better. Shelby seems a little pitiful, but we can't tell if that's because she's worried about Mom (when Meko was really sick there at the end, before she rallied for a few weeks, Sam was really pitiful about that as well). So right now, Shelby's curled up on Mom's lap, which, given that Shelby weighs forty pounds, is a fairly impressive feat. But then she's always been a cuddler.

I finished the Virginia Rounding book--can't remember if I mentioned that--and have moved on to Jim Steinmeyer's A Glorious Deception. I knew I wanted to read this after I read a description of the subject's death, which might have actually been in the Houdini bio I read last Christmas, but I liked Steinmeyer's Hiding the Elephant, so a Chung Ling Soo bio by Steinmeyer recommended itself. Here's basically what happened (and how the book begins): Chung Ling Soo was one of the greatest magicians of the early twentieth century. He performed amazing feats of magic (with his wife as his assistant) and, not knowing English, never spoke, leaving his assistants to speak for him. One night, he was performing the bullet catch, which was rarely mentioned on the program; no audience ever knew in advance if he was going to include it or not. But this time, he did perform it, and this time, something went wrong. Instead of "catching" the bullet in a china plate, he was wounded in the chest. And as he fell, the first row of the audience distinctly heard Chung Ling Soo cry out, "Oh my God! Something's gone wrong!"

I pretty much had to read more about him after that.

So, a couple of things:

The reason LJ broke late Thursday night/early Friday morning: Britney Spears refused to give up children, was taken away in ambulance, is being held for evaluation; ohnotheydidnt (which dubbed it "Hostage Brituation '08") started producing a new page of comments every thirty seconds and then Perez Hilton stole their live feed screencaps.

What's worse than plagiarizing someone's fanfiction? Plagiarizing their journal. And their comments to other people. After they've passed away. And then claiming that the deceased told you to do so. The online reaction is a good example of what I like to call "social consequence": when there's nothing the authorities can do (LJ says they can't do anything unless Thamiris's family files a report, and it was her wish that her family not know about her fannish activities), there's nothing like a good old-fashioned shunnin'.

I really am leaning towards all this activity being part of a hypomanic episode, though, because I had that slightly dizzy, feverish feeling after I'd finished working for the day, like it was time to crash. Or maybe there's guarana in my High! Energy! Multivitamin!!1!, who knows.

Yeah... it's guarana. I checked the back of the vitamin bottle after being completely unable to sleep last night--I actually just gave up and sat at the computer until 4:30 am, that's how hopeless it was. The H!E!M!!1! contains not only guarana but also green tea and cayenne pepper (wait, what?); it's so effective that even after I'd only had a couple of hours' sleep, I went downstairs to let the dogs out, took today's vitamin, lay down on the couch, and was so very, very awake. Painfully tired; BOLT AWAKE. Also, my blood was really loud. But for three days in a row now I've gotten tons of work done and mentally I'm sharp as a tack, so... I'm just gonna have to get used to it.

("This product contains about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee." Okay, no, I can't hold my caffeine anymore, thanks for asking. I kicked Mountain Dew a year ago! Don't judge me!)

(ETA: Since several people have expressed concern, let me just assure you that it's just a very common, mainstream Centrum vitamin, not something exotic off-brand thing I found randomly. It's just that I never drink caffeinated drinks unless I'm in a restaurant or a movie theater, which is, sadly, not all that often. I've taken this vitamin on and off before when I wasn't too lazy to bother, and I never had a problem with it back when I was also drinking caffeinated drinks. I seem to remember that the antidepressants I'm on can magnify caffeine effects a little bit, which is probably why I'm noticing it so vividly--if I take it early enough in the morning and give it a week to get used to it, I genuinely don't think it's going to be a problem.)

Meanwhile, I noticed in audiography that all these entries would be titled, like, "1988," "1989," so I was like, "Oh, cool, some kind of '80s week." And then I saw the actual theme: Birth Year. I felt heinously old until posters finally showed up with some '70s entries.

(My year of birth, dear God.)

( Search inside... my PANTS )