Cleolinda everywhere

BREAKING: David Carradine Found Dead in Bangkok; David Carradine, Actor, Is Dead at 72.

Fantasy Author David Eddings Has Died.

( Read more... )

Spent a nasty rainy day baking six dozen cookies for Mom's work lunch meeting tomorrow. Pretty nice, actually.

Also, that package that went missing? UPS Twitter Dude showed up (on Twitter, naturally) to ask if he could help (I guess they use Twitter search to find mentions of "UPS"?), which was great, and then our communication concluded with, my hand to God, "And by the way, your Twilight commentaries are absolutely brilliant. Good work." I could not stop laughing. Oh my God, I am STILL laughing. I mean, it's a lovely compliment, it's just--of all the things I ever expected a customer service professional to say to me? That was not one of them.

( SERIOUSLY, THE UPS GUY, I CANNOT GET OVER THIS )

Sixth Annual Valentine Fairy Deputization! I'm just going to link to last year's because homg, I am sick. I woke up with a cough and then wrestled with an extremely unhappy stomach for most of the morning. So... not doing so good. You may not hear much from me today, I don't know. It'll depend. If anything important happens (cough), you'll hear about it by tomorrow at the latest.

(Related reminder: The Eowyn (Not Eowyn) and book auction ends tomorrow.)

I will, however, show you my favorite valentine-themed earrings. I think I've had them since high school at least, if not middle school. Each one has a pink stone and a white/iridescent stone, and the hearts are tiny lockets.




( It's the Valentine's Day gift that says I love you... and I'm into rope )

I had a couple of thoughts today while I was making breakfast after posting the True Blood recap:

1. Are sunlight-phobic vampires so angsty because they don't get enough vitamin D?

2. Could you kill a vampire with a full-spectrum lamp?

(Not sure when I'll post the second episode. Writing recaps needs to be contingent on my getting actual work done.)

Linkspam! ( I kissed a doll and I liked it )

So I have finally, finally gotten through all the email and comment notifications in my inbox. Whew.

Linkspam! ( NONE OF IT IS ABOUT TWILIGHT )

I finally realized why I may be--have been--so tense:

I haven't actually written anything in about six weeks.

There's been annotations, there's been journal entries and linkspams, but there hasn't really been any narrative fictional writing over here, not even in the idea-planning stage. I've had everything on hold because of the financial problems and whatnot, afraid to get carried away from the annotations by something else--even Black Ribbon, which desperately needs to get done. That's why I'm so tense; that's why I feel like I'm "supposed to be doing something else." And when this occurred to me, I felt a great sweeping relief--that feeling you get when an answer clicks into place. ( Also, a couple of stories about my family )

From missnanna: "An editor at Jezebel is pooling together funds to get 6 women who started an NGO to promote women's rights (and their husbands) out of Iraq as soon as possible, because one of the women they were protecting was murdered recently. They have no money themselves and are in real danger. She's asking people to contribute something, anything, to her Paypal account, which will then be transferred to a helpful journalist in Iraq. The full story is here and here. Back story here." And sure enough, today I saw this: Thanks To Your Guys, A Few Brave Women May Get Out Of Basra [Exile In Jordan Fund].

From robyn_ma, because it made me laugh: Dr. Clive Owen will see you now.

( More linkspam )

ETA: Could someone with a ff.net account and better Spanish than I speak deal with this for me?

So we had a metric ton of awful crap football food for dinner--I say that lovingly--and now I don't feel so good. You know, like Rotel-and-cheese dip and three kinds of chips and cocktail dogs in bacon and raw veggies for dipping (no one ate those). Whatever new-year new-life plan I had going, I realized in a greasy haze, has long since fallen by the wayside. Coming down with the death flu probably knocked that down initially (although I did lose about ten pounds, just by, uh, being unable to eat for seven days). But, you know, it's February. It's time to pick the slack back up.

(I think my parents were rooting for the Giants. Were the Giants playing? I heard a lot of screaming downstairs, that's all I know. I'm the kind of person who, if you asked me who was playing the Super Bowl today, would have said, "Oh, Tom Petty. I think.")

Petty too safe for halftime show. Ah, Tom Petty. I mean, I love him--I was as happy as anyone when he started off with "American Girl"--but I was questioning the wisdom of having him as the halftime act. You know, in this crazy-go-nuts world of musicians under the age of fifty. But you could totally hear the crowd singing along with all the songs, so I think they liked it. Which may really be the point of the thing--you've got a wide swath of America in that stadium, all ages and tastes, and maybe a half hour of greatest hits from a hall-of-famer is what's needed. I feel like Prince last year was The Most Awesome Thing That Ever Happened or Ever Will Happen to the Super Bowl, but--thinking about it now--I'm not sure that anyone else could have pulled off "Proud Mary," Bob Dylan and the Foo Fighters in a single set. Maybe vanilla sets of Greatest Hits are for the best at large sporting events, the majority of the time.

(My parents were not happy with Prince last year. Not in any moral sense, just that they don't like His Music, whatever that means. I figured Mom would be happier with Tom Petty this year. "Who?" she asks. After I'm done headdesking, I rattle off some song titles and she recollects who he is. "Oh," she says. "I don't like His Music." What music DO you like? WHAT MUSIC DO YOU LIKE???)

PUPPY BOWL IV! Who won? Everyone.

Not much going on today, except that I think I'm coming down with my mother's snerfy cold, so am resting up with Allegra-D today in hopes of not being too wiped out tomorrow to blog the Oscars.

(Something interesting I noticed: there's a commercial that's been airing for Amazing Grace, a movie I had not even heard of, but yet involves a number of famous British actors, ships blowing up, and Ioan Gruffudd shouting at people. My mother was intrigued and thought my stepfather might also like it, because it was clearly about the Revolutionary War, right? The wigs and ponytails and knee breeches? Ships blowing up? Gruffudd shouting righteously at people in a legislative setting? But here's the thing: the commercial is completely vague about what the movie is actually about, conspicuously so, which is something you see a lot with Christian movies from small production companies--this attempt to show you things that you would be interested in, while hiding the pill you're going to have to swallow. And "Amazing Grace" does betray a certain Christian element. But this one seemed to have way too many famous actors in it, fairly expensive production values--what are they hiding? Well, here's the actual synopsis: "The idealist William Wilberforce maneuvers his way through Parliament in 18th century England, endeavoring to end slavery in the empire." Whaaaaaat? Well, that's clever, I thought. A complete bait and switch--give an American audience just enough imagery to assume it's about the Revolutionary War to get them into the seats. And then I felt angry that they felt like they had to hide the entire storyline of the movie because Americans wouldn't go see a movie about slavery. And then I felt sad because it's true.)

ETA: Okay, maybe they're just doing this in Alabama. Because we suck.

How to achieve blog nirvana, and blogs that have done it. Hmm... the hot spots seem to be indignation, titillation, stimulation, affirmation, outrage, scandal, novelty, lust, schadenfreude, perversity, sex and revenge. For starters, I can't really figure out what "affirmation" and "stimulation" are supposed to mean. "Affirmation" may be taken from the idea of the Daily Affirmation calendar type thing, which is actually supposed to help you "affirm" or assert your self-worth; it doesn't actually mean "positive feelings." I mean, you could affirm negative feelings, is what I'm saying; it's the act of "upholding the validity of," as I understand it, not the feelings you're validating themselves. But with Cute Overload squarely listed under Affirmation, I'm going to have to think they mean "warm, fuzzy vibes." And stimulation--I'm not sure how that's different from titillation, except that if Google and Yahoo are listed there, they must mean... intellectual stimulation? In its purest form, and then the combination of stimulation, titillation and affirmation being sex? Man, achieving nirvana would be a lot easier if I had any idea what the hell they were talking about. I actually kind of wanted to try to hit all the categories myself, if I could figure out what the difference between sex, lust, and titillation in a blog context is supposed to be. Well, let's give it a go, shall we?

Lust: Well, the Tudors people did give me a preview/behind the scenes/interviewish clip I could embed... ( Read more... )

( The rest of the linkspam )

Wow. Nirvana? Harder than it looks.

So. Uh. Anna Nicole Smith died earlier this afternoon. anw says more about ANS as a person than I could even attempt, so I'll stick to the event itself, which is both shocking and shocking that it's shocking, to paraphrase riney. ( Read more... )

( Your regularly scheduled content )

And just to keep Prince Week going: Money Don't Matter 2 Night.

Continuing with Prince Week (yes, it's a whole week now): Remember the silhouette that I vainly argued “wasn’t that obscene in motion”? Prince's halftime imagery questioned. ( Read more... )

( Linkspam )

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