Cleolinda everywhere

Here's the sum total of my blogging for the night. Unfortunately, it's all newest-entry-first, but I think you can manage. Oh, and we're in the second hour of the SAG show rerun on TNT, if you want to catch the most awesome cosmic punkout ever: Clint Eastwood finally convinces Sean Penn to show up for an awards show at which he will be winning an award, and it goes to... Johnny Depp. WHO ISN'T EVEN THERE. GIVEN BY HIS PEERS. FOR A PIRATE MOVIE.

You may also want to catch the last award of the evening, in which Return of the King beats out Mystic River (a movie full of Actor's Actors doing Actor's Acting) and Bernard Hill gives a gracious acceptance speech on behalf of the actors present. And then Sean Astin sidles up to Hill and takes over the mike... and preaches a not-rousing sermon about unions and runaway productions to the choir a roomful of actors. About the time Astin manages to become more politically annoying than Tim Robbins (no, I didn't know it was possible, either), who managed to broach the same topic in two sentences at the beginning of the evening, John Rhys-Davies boots him out of the way so that their producer and Billy Boyd can say something. Liv Tyler's job is to be pretty and Andy Serkis is chopped liver, apparently, so there you go.

I'm being such a lazy schmo today. I'm supposed to be revising poems, but I've gotten myself turned around so badly on the night-day thing that I'm desperately-but-pleasantly sleepy right now.

The exam went fine, thanks for asking. I suppose I could have written more, but it was late, and I was tired. Quinlan was cool about the paper, so I think I'm all right in that regard. Of course, it's too short, but he's said before that he'd rather people go under rather than over, or too few sources rather than too many. Seriously, can I have all my classes with him?

I have to write a 3-5 page paper for Crunk--a critical review of my own writing style. I'll post that here when I'm done (under a cut--good God) just in case you're curious to see what that entails. Put it this way: I've had to do it before, as an undergrad, and the second semester I wrote one, I titled it "Portfolio 2: Electric Boogaloo." It's not as dry as it sounds.

Couldn't sleep for shit last night, as previously stated. ( Guess what I ended up reading? )

( Christmas vacation, as it tends to be, is Bookapalooza over here )

Over at SAST, because I am a link whore: new Johnny Depp pics; "Tom Cruise" invites me to go see "The Last Samauri"; tasty Peter Pan pics; cameo ideas for The Hobbit; what you get for the Lovecraft fan who has everything; get your "Legolas Dies" and "Frodo Is My Babydaddy" t-shirts while there's still time.

Icon of the Day: This is not the soda you are looking for...

Have updated the Newstracker after a week off for the flu (that's the movie news page at my site, the Daily Digest, which is theoretically updated daily and is, in reality...not-so-daily. Sigh). Anyway, the premise of the site (since I haven't mentioned it much before) is that I go read some fifty movie news sites and then summarize the links by category--casting, trailers, new pictures, interviews, reviews, new projects in general, DVDs, a smattering of gossip and other news, etc. I'd like to run first-hand news and scoops and such, but since I can't really compete on that level, I decided to create a site for the people around me, friends and family who like movies and are interested in this sort of thing but don't really have the time to read every single site on a daily basis. I have been known to say that it was the most fun, least gainful employment I've ever had, and in a perfect world I would make a living doing this.

What's that? Oh, I'm sorry, that's my wallet laughing at me in the background. My wallet does not like the Digest very much.

It doesn't like Short Attention Span Theater very much either, as it can't figure out why I need a blog in addition to the site. "But Wallet," I say, "SAST is to the Digest as Headline News is to CNN."

The wallet squints back at me and says, "Did you just compare yourself to a TV channel that makes actual money?"

The wallet and I are not really on speaking terms at present.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Lucky Dog smells like a tar pit after his three lime baths (even after a shampoo!). I refuse to stop petting him though, even if the lime smell keeps rubbing off on me, too, because that dog got me through some hard times, yo.

Vladimir got much worse yesterday, but now he seems to be somewhat better. Still very worried about him. Also, he "no longer trusts Peter Jackson" after the Saruman kerfluffle of Monday and sounds heartbroken. I maintain that everything will work out all right.

It looks like Best Friend of Sister Girl may be pregnant... how do I say this tactfully, and in a way that doesn't buy into the sexism of "slut"? Because I wouldn't say that she is one. She's... very open and impulsive with her sexuality. Let's try putting it that way. And... it was an isolated incident, this rendezvous that resulted in two positive EPTs, so... yeah. Sister Girl spent all yesterday comforting her and so didn't get her home-schoolwork done, and Mrs. Owens was not happy this morning, and... sometimes I totally feel like Jane Austen tucked quietly in the corner of the sitting room, you know? I'm not writing about my own dramas, just observing other people's. (Isn't that an Irish curse, though? "May you have an interesting life"? Maybe I'm lucky.)

My own schoolwork: I did a quick Yahoo search (see? I haven't even gone to Google, the big guns, yet) on Philip Larkin, and mercifully there are people who, unlike me, had actually heard of him before. I might just survive this presentation after all. Oh, and I did remember to register, and so now I'm in fiction workshop, children's lit workshop, and American Lit (1820-1870) seminar. Woohoo!