Cleolinda everywhere

Remember the Wicked Pretty Things debacle? Of course you do. Jessica Verday has now decided what to do with the story she refused to straightwash: "I'm extremely grateful to be able to say that my short story 'Flesh Which Is Not Flesh' (Cameron and Wesley's story) is now available as an eBook on Amazon, and from now through August 31, 50% of the proceeds from this story will go to the Living Beyond Tolerance scholarship. I'm hoping we can meet that $200 goal. Exceed it even. Perhaps $500? $1,000?" She also says that the scholarship is "for someone who is LGBT or an Ally and is doing something to make sure everyone is accepted, not just tolerated."

Meanwhile: linkspam! Also: cupcakes. ( Read more... )


I don't really have anything for The Slot, so instead I will show you cupcakes. Mmm, cupcakes. ( Read more... )

So. Today. Thirty-one. I was depressed (not about the number itself) and that was stupid but there it is.

(Also, the day started out really crappy. "PUT HIS ASS ON THE PHONE!")

I will say, there is one thing I feel very strongly about on birthdays, and that is: it is very important that you blow out all your candles in one breath, for thus shall you have good luck all the next year! Which is why I get UTTERLY CHAGRINED when people put the same number of candles on the cake as you are years old, because when you're seven that's awesome, but when you're thirty-one, that's just basically a giant NO LUCK FOR YOU. I just don't have the lung capacity to deal with those kind of numbers, people. "Can we just get two candles in the shape of a 3 and a 1?" I asked desperately. So after I explained why I wanted fewer candles, we compromised and just put them on my piece:

( I'M A REBEL )

So it was a quiet day; we had just my grandmother over for lunch rather than any kind of Entire Family thing. I don't know. I'm just getting to be a huge baby about not wanting to do anything for my birthday--what I want to figure out is what I feel so bad about. What is it that I actually want that I'm not getting? I'm throwing myself a giant pity party, but what's the occasion? Because you can't go about fixing a problem, about getting what you want, if you don't know what that is. And I just don't know.

Anyway. I'm still slowly replacing my music collection--I might be able to recover it when I'm sure I can afford to take Betsy into the shop after Christmas shopping is done, but I'm not counting on it--so I went and bought my two favorite Pretenders songs, "Night in My Veins" and "Love Colours." Coincidentally, I got that CD for my--16th birthday? I think that's the one it was. I wore that CD to pieces, which is why I can't rip it to Lizzie now. So, fifteen years later, here we are on iTunes.

Something else I bought on a whim off eBay just happened to arrive today, and I am counting it as a birthday present to myself because it is pretty much the best thing ever. Seriously, I think opening the packet and taking it out was the only thing that made me laugh all day. I paid the princely sum of $13.13 for it, and it will be a long time before I am able to work it into The Secret Life of Dolls, but you will die, all of you will absolutely die when you see it.


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

Early linkspam, since it's Lostnesday. And sometime after Lost, we'll check in on Iorek and The Littlest Edward.


ETA: CNN is reporting that Natasha Richardson has passed away, according to a statement from her family.

( Linkspam )

Caffeine withdrawal headache: Persistent. Four Advil (taken two at a time) seem to have knocked it out.

Declutteration: Threw out an old, mostly-empty bottle of vitamins, two pens that didn't work, and a broken desk clock.

Effort to be awesome: Set up a massive to-do list, then watched Prince Caspian this afternoon. This doesn't sound particularly awesome, except that I have a bad habit of getting DVDs and then just letting them lie around unwatched, no matter how desperately I wanted them in the first place. (Which is how you can tell I wanted The Dark Knight really, really bad, because I watched it almost immediately.) However, any effort to correct a bad habit will hereafter be considered sufficient to fulfill a minimum requirement of awesome.

Also, I'm trying to eat better. To most people, this means eating healthier, but generally for me, this means eating more (not that these two things are mutually exclusive). Which is going to sound odd, because I'm not underweight--my problem is the opposite. But I'm really lazy about actually thinking of something to eat and then cooking it (the effort of preparing food and chewing it, the horror!), so I tend to go from breakfast to dinner without eating much or anything, which means that my metabolism is shot, I'm sluggish all day, and I feel like crap. So we've got a big pan of chicken baking in the oven so we can nom off it all week, and hopefully I'll bother to actually eat, which will give me energy, which will make me get off my ass.

(Also, homemade spaghetti sauce is simmering downstairs, there's a roast in the crockpot, and a pound cake came out of the oven this morning. The Jones house is full of all kinds of nice smells today.)

Quick linkspam:

Veteran actor Pat Hingle dies at 84. Aw! He was an excellent Commissioner Gordon.

Top 10 Most Anticipated Movie Scores of 2009.

"Actually I didn't shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but he could tell I was extremely cross": In response to the Coraline Box items on eBay (I'd link you, but the auction's down now), Neil Gaiman is saying that they're not real. I'm not sure if that's better or worse.

New Horror/Reality Series "13 The Fear is Real." That's right, this headline doesn't even deserve a verb.

You know, I was in the shower today and I had one of my Great (For Certain Values of "Great") Thoughts, and it was this: perfectionism can be a kind of cowardice. And I'm suffering from it. Because really, perfection doesn't exist, you know? I mean, if it does, it happens only in nature or accidentally; I don't know that you can achieve perfection intentionally, just because of the perverseness of the universe. Um. If that makes any sense. It probably doesn't. What I'm getting at is that--of course we need to have standards. And of course there are objective fields in which you can be "perfect," in which you are right or wrong. Math, for example. The answers on your math homework are either right, or they aren't. Your spelling is either correct, or it isn't. (Yes, I'm sure there arguments against those ideas. Work with me here.) You can choose to break rules for effect in your writing, for example, but that's a kind of perfection you're choosing not to achieve. With objective correctness, when it's right or it's wrong, you can spellcheck the thing and you know when you're done.

With perfection, you don't. Or rather, you know that you're not done. And really, you'll never be done. Which is why I think--I just realized--seeking perfection is a way of being a coward. Because that way you'll never finish, you know? You are nobly dedicating yourself to the pursuit of getting it just right, rather than exposing your imperfect work to see the light of day--rather than allowing yourself to be vulnerable. And being vulnerable is incredibly scary, or at least I find it to be so--opening yourself up to criticism and rejection and all that. And I'm having a big problem with that, in terms of finishing the annotations and the first Black Ribbon book. Obviously we have to have standards, but... I'm trying to teach myself that "good enough" is... well, good enough. Even if people hate it and give me hell for it in some worst-case scenario. Because "I did it" is worth it, at the end of the day.

Linkspam! ( Vampire baseball, Wolverine in trouble, Gnomeo and Juliet (no, really) )