Cleolinda everywhere

Lucky (my English cocker spaniel) seems to have ingested something--something dropped on the floor, I guess; as best we can figure, it was either a Halloween candy bar or one of Sister Girl's Adderall, because he could not sit still last night. But in a really freaky way. Like he would sit there, and he would look at you, and then he would run across the room, sit down, and stare at you again. He kept me up all night jumping on and off my bed, trying to dig through the bathroom tiles (SCRITCHYSCRITCHYSCRITCHY), and breathing really, really fast. Not panting; it was normal breathing. It was just really, really--oh my God. You know what it was like? It was like when you give a GoPet coffee and they get sped up. That was exactly what it was like. And Lucky's smart, I give you that, but I don't think he's tall enough to make his own coffee yet.

He seems to be okay today, but I still don't know how he found something bad to eat in the first place, and I'm really upset over this. I mean, whatever it was probably could have killed him if he were a smaller dog.

Anyway, that's why you kinda got The Riot Act earlier today, because my dog was chasing his own tail at five in the morning. On my spleen.

Speaking of GoPets, I can't get the client to work, for no particular reason. It very helpfully tells me that it's a bug in the client and no fault of my computer or operating system, however. 

I also can't get through Melville's Pierre for class--I'll probably just have to sack out with it tomorrow and wrestle it into submission--and my eye twitch is coming back. Also, the cat knocked a plant cutting in an old vase into his litter box. Twice. It's that kind of week.

I will say that the professor handed out a brief compilation of Pierre's bad reviews, and that kind of made my day:

The amount of utter trash in the volume is almost infinite--trash of conception, execution, dialogue, and sentiment. Whoever buys the book on the strength of Melville's reputation will be cheating himself of his money, and we believe we shall never see the man who has endured the reading of the whole of it. [...] A hundred times better if he had kept ["his really fine talents"] in a napkin all his natural life. A thousand times better, had he dropped authorship with Typee [his first book]. [...] As it is, he has produced more and sadder trash than any other man of undoubted ability among us.

alchemylab

particle_person

Then you take it out to the dumpster, and you dither for about thirty seconds, and your chest feels tight, and finally you grit your teeth and take the very worst one, the one that looks like a dog turd with a lid, and you wind up and you pitch it into the half-empty dumpster and you listen to it smash and something happens in your head that falls about halfway between a cry of anguish and an orgasm. And you pick up the next one and smash it, and the next one, and the next one, and by the end you're grinning like an idiot and you feel as clean and sleek and hollow as a Hamada tea bowl.

sigma7

wumbawoman

fxchip

saadiira

dwg

Ahhhhh, a big ol' Law & Order: Criminal Intent marathon last night. Nice.

I had forgotten how much I like peach fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt. It's like sunshine floating in a sour cloud.

Hey! It's the Ted the caver story!

Ah, the Chewbacca defense.

I can't get the GoPets client to work, for some reason--it crashes when I try to log in. Woe.

Okay, I redownloaded the client and it's working now. Until I try to play Shanghai, and then it crashes afterwards. (How do you earn prize points, anyway?)

Oh God, Kingdom of Loathing is having to reset itself back six weeks. We who have ascended are screwwwwwwed.

Hee! The photogenic MommyBeast pimps my boo(k).

(Speaking of which--if at all possible, read the beginning of LOTR--Story Time with Galadriel--with "Cool Rider" from Grease 2 playing, in your head or otherwise. That's what I was listening to when I wrote it. I mean, clearly, this is the missing piece of character motivation to explain why she fell for the lies of Sauron/Annatar/Jerkface: he was a rider that was cool. Coo-oo-oo-ool.)

(I'm trying to think of any other musical cues y'all might enjoy, and can't. All I remember is that I listened to a lot of Prince and some Sheila E. when I was writing Titanic.)

(I also kind of find it hilarious that a book that includes Vengeful Dolphins, tiny white warrior mice, and Pink Lady Galadriel is reviewed as "accurate.")

firefly_ca: "I don't know if you've seen it or not, but I figured you (and all your readers) would have a good laugh. All I know is, one of my friends sent me this link this evening, and I'm now firmly of the opinion that the regular Backstreet Boys should just give up and the Chinese Backstreet Boys should get all the fangirls." Firefly also mentions an auction a while back for an air guitar (case not sold, for display only) that is a little bit genius.

Oh shit, you guys! They're adding stuff to the SJC catalogue that involves opals and lavender jade. And OPALS.

"King Kong" Super-Sized. What you can possibly say about King Kong for three solid hours is beyond me.

Bush Abandons Push for Miers Nomination. "'Let's move on,' said Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi. 'In a month, who will remember the name Harriet Miers?'"

2 Science Groups Say Kansas Can't Use Their Evolution Papers.

Ala., Detroit to hold services for Rosa Parks.

Hospital workers subpoenaed in post-Katrina deaths.

Star Trek's George Takei is coming out.

Suit: Siegfried taunts, torments, humiliates his magician partner Roy.

Suicide Mistaken for Halloween Decoration. (I don't think that particular story is up at Snopes yet, but count on it being there as a story-proven-true within days, if not hours. Meanwhile, when I went to search for it, I was greeted by this link on the front page: Cabbage Patch dolls designed to get people accustomed to the appearance of mutants following a thermonuclear war (False). There's also a legend at the site about the company dispatching "death" certificates and/or coffins if you sent a doll in to be repaired, which is frickin' hilarious, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I'm just bitter because mine was named Mary Anne, unlike everyone else whose dolls had awesomely cracked-out names like "Phoebe Jolene," my sister's actual doll that she still has to this day.)

Oh, and I was hoping y'all would remember the significance of the new button down there, but in case you don't: please click the breast cancer button this month, even if you never do again, because all clicks are tripled and they're behind on their fundraising goal. And seriously, all you have to do is click, not even give anything.

Sorry about the icons going belly up on m15m--had to throw another $9 at Photobucket because my three months of paid account had expired.

arpeggiodreams: "God forbid we teach the girls to like themselves!"

hulamoth: "In case you're interested (of course you don't have to post it!), here's one for No Nonsense in November - activism against proposed Constitutional Amendment 21 in Texas, which would define marriage as solely between a man and a woman. The particular wording of the amendment might have bad effects for common law marriages, as well as for gay couples with adopted children."

Wife of Calif. defense attorney and TV legal analyst Daniel Horowitz found slain.

Bigfoot Conference in Texas Draws Hundreds.

Anti-White Supremacist Protesters Riot in Toledo, Ohio.

L.I. Principal Cancels 'Bacchanalian' Prom. "Kenneth M. Hoagland had heard all the stories about prom-night debauchery at his Long Island high school: Students putting down $10,000 to rent a house in the Hamptons for a weekend bash. Pre-prom cocktail parties followed by a trip to the dance in a limo loaded with liquor. Fathers chartering a boat so their kids could go out on a late-night 'booze cruise.' Enough was enough, Hoagland said. So the principal of Kellenberg Memorial High School fired off a 2,000-word missive to parents at the start of the school year informing them that the Catholic school would no longer put on the spring prom." I gotta say, the man has a point.

Police: Women Brawl Over Microwaving Soup. That soup better have been chunky, man.

3parts:

Way back in March, you posted this - a link to a virtual pets game. I know you had problems getting it to work at the time and haven't logged in since April, but I was one of your referrals that stuck around and I've been active since then. The site has grown by leaps and bounds (we hit 100k users last month) and there's loads more to do now and most of the more annoying bugs have been fixed.
ANYWAY. They've just introduced their associate program:

"With the GoPets Associates Program, you can earn a reward for the purchases made by the users you refer. Whenever a user you invited buys Gold Shells or a Premium Subscription, you will automatically be received a percentage of their purchase amount. You can choose to receive your reward in Gold Shells, cash, or even donate your earnings to charity!"

The rewards aren't retroactive - unfortunately - but I believe you referred a number of users who are still active and who are continuing to subscribe (hi!). With your current charity efforts, I thought it would be good to let you know that you have yet another way to get people to make donations if you pimp out your referral link.

Besides, Cookie misses you. Aw, kitty.

I already loved Keira Knightley, but now I have to see Domino.

Did I admire "Domino"? In a sneaky way, yes. It's fractured and maddening, but it's alive. It begins with the materials of a perfectly conventional thriller. It heeds Godard's rule that "all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun." It gives us Keira Knightley in a role all the more astonishing because I've just seen her in "Pride and Prejudice." It not only stars Mickey Rourke and Christopher Walken, but uses them instead of just gawking at them. It blows up a Las Vegas casino, and it's a real one, not a fictional one. And it contains the line "I'll never tell you what it all meant," as if anyone could. Seeking guidance in understanding the movie's manic narrative, I poked around online, and discovered in one review the explanation that the movie "totally challenges the bourgeois notion of the nuclear family."

Hee, more from Ebert in his letters section, on Flightplan: "I got a lot of complaints like yours, including a masterpiece of analysis by Andy Ihnatko of Boston that was so thorough I believe he even disproved the existence of the movie itself."

Oh, good Lord, Madame Alexander goes LOTR. 

Larger version of the Daniel Craig Bond pic.

Tons of HP&GOF pics.

virtuistic: Excellent Wikipedia list of Latin phrases. Also: "I was just wondering if you would be so kind as to pimp a community for me? It's invadetheglades, for ABC's Invasion, and it's still very wee." Well, I'd say that's of community interest, so up it goes.

A must for your next eHissy: The Lurkers Support Me in Email.

Oh shit, you guys! The Yule BPAL update is live, and we are all so screwed.

The price per bottle for out Limited Edition Yuletide scents are $16.00 per 5ml of the Cracked Bell, Herr Drosselmeyer, G'Poppet 2005, Hearth 2005, Jacob's Ladder, Lick It, Midnight Mass, Midwinter's Eve 2005, Mistletoe 2005, Nuclear Winter, the Peacock Queen, the Rat King, Rose Red 2005, Snow Bunny, Snow White 2005, Stardust, Sugar Cookie 2005, Talvikuu, and Yuletide 2005. A portion of all profits from the Yule LE series will be split between the Humane Society US Disaster Center and Running Wild in the Night / Covenant House.

Sol, the first of the Musica Universalis Revisited [aka Celestial] scents, is a harbinger for both the inception of TAL, and also the BPAL Three-Year Anniversary Shindig. More details will come later. For now, all you need to know is that Sol is $15, as is Beaver Moon, and they both are impless and come in 5ml’s only. Sol comes down at the same time Beaver Moon does. Sorry, guys, it has to be a one-nighter on this scent, too.