Cleolinda everywhere

I discovered yesterday that Sam has been moonlighting as a superhero fighting crime. And that his masked alter ego is... Red Panda. ( BEHOLD! )

Meanwhile, Tour of Terror III is about to culminate in the Eclipse premiere in LA on Thursday. The last I heard, the tent city comprises 350 fans (no drugs, alcohol, cooking, or amplified music, plz), and OVER 9000 wristbands have been passed out. (For comparison, 6000 fans showed up for that San Diego Comic-Con panel in 2008.) ( In which I troll Twitter )

Meanwhile: The Associated Press has asked me to state whether I am Team Edward or Team Jacob. It looks like you will find out on Thursday. I think I did a better job of answering than Emma Roberts did, but I am prepared to stand my ground rather than be run off Livejournal, so.
 
A little afternoon linkspam: ( Read more... ) 

I've been holding on to some wtfery in the linkspam department for a while, and I feel like it's time to dump it all on you. I'll start you off easy.

Shrek 4 banner: "Where my witches at?" 

Jennifer Love Hewitt wrote a book, and that book contains the actual sentence, "Guys hate to spoon -- they prefer to fork, lol!"

Nicholas (The Notebook) Sparks writes Greek tragedies in the footsteps of Sophocles, or something. Also, when asked, Miley Cyrus says that The Catcher in the Rye is her favorite coming-of-age story (whether you believe she's actually read it), and Sparks says that his is... A Walk to Remember. Which he wrote.

Freakishly Lifelike Jack Sparrow figure is FREAKISHLY LIFELIKE.

An update from yesterday: the Robert Pattinson wax museum figure has been up for like ten minutes and already it's being mobbed. This is a thing, y'all. This is a thing that is happening. 

Seattle man who said he was a vampire and had bomb arrested. "He said he was a vampire and wanted to eat people. Staff asked him to leave, and the man then said he was a space cowboy and showed what looked to be a pipe bomb attached to his wrist." Police were able to subdue the man before he was able to declare himself the Pompatus of Love.

(And it wasn't even a REAL pipe bomb! You are not very good at vampiring, sir.)

Also from the Pacific Northwest: Police detain sword-waving, knife-throwing hunter.

A scraped-up, shirtless man armed with a sword and several throwing knives was detained by police today.

The man had been seen waving the sword near the ProBuild hardware store off High School Road just before 1:45 p.m. Witnesses said he had also been visiting the nearby Ace hardware store.

The man told police he was hunting werewolves and “chuds.”

I wouldn't tell him about Maurice over there with the pipe bomb if I were you.

Feeling a smidge better. Got a good bit of work done yesterday, even though I was stuck wrangling fussy dogs for eight hours while my parents were on a church orchestra daytrip. (Sam parked himself in front of the door out to the garage once 5 pm rolled around, because that is The Time Mommy and Daddy Come Home, and yet they did not. So he barked at it for two hours.) Today I got up and went straight to work in the den, instead of getting up and faffing around on the computer and/or sleeping on the couch (both also in the den). I'm in there anyway, usually by 7 am, because "I have to keep an eye on the dogs" is a good way to add structure to my day. ANYWAY. I'm starting a new book for my novel research (although, as I noted, there's a point where research is about finding out things, and then there's a point where it's about the fear of not having found out enough, and I've been at that second point for a long, long time now), but I'm also checking Twitter.

@scottEweinberg: This Pattinson kid is on my TV. He looks like a cross between @TheJoeLynch and a Lycan.

O rly?

Ah, the Remember Me publicity circuit has started. I had plenty of time to read my book during commercials, because as American viewers of the Olympics know, NBC is now 85% advertising content.

@cleolinda: Al Roker's outside the Today studio saying Robert Pattinson's name over and over just to hear the girls scream.

@cleolinda: Matt Lauer: "Harry Markopolous!" Herd of fangirls: "... Wooooo?"

( Wonderella refuses to save him; werewolves competed in the Olympics )

ETA: WARNING: Before you run off and buy The Great Big Werewolf Book of Werewolves, I have to warn you--the reviews on Amazon are terrible, and now that I've gotten into the actual encyclopedia-style entries, I'm starting to see why. There's an entire entry about aliens and UFOs, a really sketchy attempt to connect Elizabeth Bathory to lycanthropy (she totes hung out with wizards and vampires and werewolves, you guys!), and the tale of a French guy who was really more of a ghoul than a werewolf, see, but while we're here... And if you can tell me what Charles Manson has to do with lycanthropy, believe me, I'd love to know.

'New Moon' Smashes 'Dark Knight's' Opening Day Record!

Which means it's already made a shade just under one hundred million ($100M), which was my original entire-weekend prediction. (ETA: Or wait, the midnight screenings are included? $72M is a bit better. Although that's still more in 24 hours than Twilight made its entire first weekend.) I'm officially revising my estimates up to $170M now. (Well, in that case, let's take it down to $140M.)

You know, I'm not surprised, exactly. It was tracking above TDK all week, and it's already the highest-grossing advance ticket seller and midnight opening. And it may be that the mainstream won't turn out the rest of the weekend. But the official @Twilight account on Twitter has been RTing messages from fans saying that, as of mid-afternoon yesterday, they had already seen the movie four and five times. Four and five times. I understand, sociologically, psychologically, emotionally, financially, why it's happening. I'm not surprised, precisely. But I'm kind of astounded.


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

So I had a really bad weekend. I couldn't get to the (shared, family) computer either day, it rained the entire time, I spent most of it curled up under the covers moping, so on and so forth. I don't know if it was some kind of hormonal dip or that whole solar-powered thing I have going or what. (I notice that the weekends have been particularly tough lately. I think it's because that's when everyone's home and it's no one person--there's just more people around than there used to be, and on the weekends they're all here. We're all competing for the same physical space and the same resources and I'm so stressed out from the final e-book details dragging on and onnnn--last weekend I was in that foul head-punching mood the whole time, remember? So that may be it.) I ended up pulling out Fraser's Marie Antoinette and using my full-spectrum light as a reading lamp for about half an hour, and then I sat under it again this morning while I checked my email on the iThing and maybe that'll help. Also: cinnamon toast.

And then, a few minutes ago, I received the most delightful flame in the history of Flames I Have Received. Oh my God, it is a thing of beauty and joy and magnificent irony. I'm not even saying this in a LET ME TELL YOU, INTERNETS, HOW VERY MUCH I DO NOT CARE way. I am serious, I actually laughed out loud and clapped. Also, it has been pointed out to me that you must look at the interests (expand the "Connect" section), which are particularly hilarious given the stories I tend to tell. I just--seriously. Beauty and delight.

As a reminder, my FriendFeed page has unedited Comic-Con news and tweets from attendees as they roll in (unexpected Johnny Depp is unexpected!). Back to work, mostly, I go.

It's been a bad week, in terms of the depression thing. I'm just at a point where I'm afraid to talk about it. I finally let my mother in on the severity of it, and she immediately went into I JUST WANT TO FIX IT mode. And she knows she did, and she knows she can't. BUT OMG IS THERE ANYTHING SHE CAN DO TO FIX IT? NO REALLY, IS THERE? I've made about six different attempts at this paragraph and backspaced them all. My inner Elinor is flaring up and I'm afraid to say anything about how I feel now, because mostly I feel moldy and selfish and unmotivated on the best of days, and hellaciously cranky/stupidly weepy on the worst. And I am so, so afraid that if I don't post regularly enough (mmm, aged news! Delicious), readers are going to wander away, but I know I have to hold off if that's what I need to do. And meanwhile, I want to talk about this the way I usually talk about depression, but I just--can't. I don't know. Maybe I'll do a voice post or something--I feel like y'all would need to hear from my actual tone of voice that I'm not falling to pieces over this. It's just... heavy.

And please know that even when I'm not posting, I'm flagging stories for later, not all of which I even end up using. So really, I am keeping up with things, and if I don't compile a linkspam, you can still see what's going on there, if you want.

Re: Tonner SDCC exclusives: They're apparently going to be selling whatever's leftover on the direct site, so I think I'm going to try that (or eBay) rather than ask an unknowable number of readers to try to track down a slightly variant Tonner Edward. As much as I appreciate y'all offering--and, I mean, I did ask--I'm just not sure how that would not end up being a total clusterfuck, since no one would know if anyone else had managed to get one, and we'd end up, with, like, seven.

Also: they're going to have a Black Canary exclusive as well.

Also-also: I think I have found the Uhura I want.

( Linkspam: Yes, I *did* hear about the getting kinda-hit by a cab thing )

... which could probably change on a dime.

First off--had a couple of requests to talk about saving the show Chuck: library_of_sex says, "There's the usual letter-writing campaign and voting at E!Online's Save One Show, but there's also the Finale and Footlong, involving Subway, a big sponsor of the show," and foresthouse has more ideas here.

Oh, by the way: super cute charm necklaces. I have the Love Letter (wearing it right now, actually) and the Chat Noir.

( Linkspam! )

Early linkspam so I can go take some pictures for something I'm a bit behind on posting. Cough.

Re: the previous post: Okay, you know me. I love me some Tonners. That is not a factory fresh "original" Tonner Jacob. Now that I've gotten a good look at it, you can't convince me that it is. I know for a fact that the other two are repaints, because I know what the originals look like. That is just not a Tonner paint job, and you cannot tell me otherwise. ETA: Aha! Solved.

The new Made of Fail podcast is up, for real this time.

( More linkspam )

A bit blah today, but not too terribly depressed. I guess that's improvement?

( Linkspam )

And now, to finish work on something else.