Cleolinda everywhere

So I'm done with my exam. I don't know about the second and third essays, but I do think the first essay, the big compulsory question, is a thing of minor beauty ("Pierre seems to offer no moral instruction, unless it's 'Hey kids, don't marry your sister'").

As for the 15-page essay, I said to hell with it and took an incomplete (a common and casual occurrence in my department; I've had professors say, "I want this to be really good, so if you need extra time, just take the incomplete") rather than go to the exam wrung out over trying to finish it. On one hand, I do not have the pleasure of being done with the stupid thing (which I actually think is going to turn out pretty well). On the other, it felt really, really good to have it put off until January and not have a nervous breakdown right before the exam, so I'm going to have to believe I made the right call on this one.

And then I got home and we had another corporate Christmas basket. And this one was a good one: Godiva cocoa! Ghirardelli chocolates! Tiramisu biscotti! Smoked... salmon? Okay, that's a little Which One of These Things Is Not Like the Other, but we'll manage. Oooo, and more Danish butter cookies. And cheese straws! Cinnamon-roasted cashews! Dried apricots! And some kind of English tea that has bergamot but is apparently not allowed to use the words "Earl" or "Grey"! Sister Girl ran off with the cheese spread and the water crackers, which is fine with me because it means I'm more likely to get the chocolates.

(Speaking of cheese, I just got a spam email with the subject heading Careless cheddar. What, guilty cheese has got no rhythm?)

Also, I think I have finished my Christmas shopping. Well, I do have to buy something for the Dirty Santa game (and I know exactly what to get, but cannot mention it here if I want to maintain the element of surprise). And maybe another something for my mother. And I have a deep foreboding that I have forgotten someone or something. But we've got nearly two weeks until Christmas, so I'm sure I have time to make up for anything I've forgotten. (Cue ominous music.)

(I had a weird dream the other night that I came into the den and my father--who I haven't seen in eight years, and has never stepped foot in the house where I live now--had found the Sofia Coppola Marie Antoinette, the one with the trailer I just linked to the other day, on cable. Yes, even though it's not in theaters yet. We were all--"all"; I get the feeling there were other family members in there as well--like, "Holy shit, we'd better watch this then." And then the rest of the dream was a really weird version of the movie that... didn't really have much to do with the movie at all. I think Marie was eventually dragged off from an 18th-century spa to her doom. I just... I don't know what to make of these dreams sometimes, I'm telling you.)

Tonight (as in, Tuesday night): The original King Kong on Turner Classic Movies and the awful Jeff Bridges/Jessica Lange 1976 remake on AMC, both at 7 pm. I'm thinking it's TCM for the win, here.

From the lovely edda: "Would you mind throwing this: www.bestoftimeclocks.com into the mix? It's my former Intern Lady's new web business and I told her I'd try to give it a nudge out into the great wide 'net. If not, it's not the end of the world. It's basically a huge site for clocks, complete with chimes. *adjusts pimp-hat feather and jeweled cane*" Ooo, the sun clock.

The Mission: Impossible 3 trailer. Wait, Philip Seymour Hoffman is in this? Wow, not caring has totally interfered with my knowledge of this movie.

"I'm still lesbing with Angelina Jolie and you can't stop me!"

Depeche Mode win headlining slot at Coachella fest. Mmm, Depeche Mode.

Man Apologizes After Fake Wikipedia Post . "A man who posted false information on an online encyclopedia linking a prominent journalist to the Kennedy assassinations says he was playing a trick on a co-worker. Brian Chase, 38, ended up resigning from his job and apologizing to John Seigenthaler Sr., the former publisher of the Tennessean newspaper and founding editorial director of USA Today. 'I knew from the news that Mr. Seigenthaler was looking for who did it, and I did it, so I needed to let him know in particular that it wasn't anyone out to get him, that it was done as a joke that went horribly, horribly wrong,' Chase was quoted as saying in Sunday editions of The Tennessean. Chase said he didn't know the free Internet encyclopedia called Wikipedia was used as a serious reference tool."

I am wiped, you guys. And it's not even that I did any particularly heavy lifting. But it did involve trying to buy a Christmas present for Sister Girl on eBay, a situation that spiraled so badly out of control in the space of half a minute that I was relieved to lose the auction, for the reason that I actually will need to pay taxes and tuition next year.

So, three mild heart attacks later, I work on an email interview (more on that later in the week), slice up my pound cake, and go to class. No one eats any of the pound cake, which is my grandmother's recipe, and possibly the best, moistest pound cake you will ever taste. I am miffed, until I realize that this... leaves me with more pound cake. Also, we didn't workshop the first thing in class, which was awesome, because I had gone completely unprepared and unpapered (I'd spent so much time taking notes and cataloguing evidence that I hadn't begun to try to stuff it all into an outline), so sitting around and eating and shooting the American Renaissance shit was completely fine as far as I was concerned. And that was my class for the semester.  

We didn't go to Aeon Flux tonight because both Em and I were exhausted, and because we started hearing that it's "the worst movie of the year." Which I think means I should totally see it; I just don't know that I want to pay eight dollars for the privilege, and then fall asleep while I'm at it.

Tomorrow: tree decorating, and I am going to try to sit myself down to take care of all the mail I have piled up. Or finish annotating The Morgesons. Or finish Christmas shopping. Or SOMETHING, so long as it's useful, because I've got a solid week until the exam and I do not want to faff around for seven days. The faffing we save for Christmas vacation.

Livejournal is still not sending me all my comments. It has, however, begun to send me comments from November 20, which is... instructive.

 Linkspam:

allthelivesofme: "Saw this, and immediately thought, 'Cleolinda and Sister Girl would probably appreciate it...' Celebrity cookies."

The answers to the Virgin Digital band picture game.

Poodlepanda WTF.

Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese marry. 

"Splitney" calls in the lawyers.

omg The Wide, Wide World is online. READ THE FRENCH PORN!

Professor Loses Weight With No-Diet Diet. 

Arkansas Man Scales White House Fence. Look at the picture: this man may actually be possessed by Satan.

syneblue: "In the vein of Memoirs buzz, here's an interesting little essay on geisha in American culture."

Warring Narnia essays:

>> "Narnia is everything hateful about religion. See, Philip Pullman says so!"

>> "Before C.S. Lewis became a famous Christian, he was already a famous scholar - and there’s a lot more going on in his Narnia series than Christian allegory." 

>>  "The Chronicles of Narnia, seven tales penned between 1950 and 1956, are not so much Christian stories as stories penned by a Christian."

>> Philip Pullman is a stupidhead.

(I love His Dark Materials, but when it comes to his irrational hate-on for Lewis... he kind of is.)

The most awesome Narnia pendant ever. (Better picture.)

A first look at X-Men 3, a movie I fear greatly. (Here's the new trailer.) "We want this to look different from the first two." Uh, why? I mean, considering that the first two movies were good, and people liked them?

A site all for the O RLY? owls. I am way too happy about this.

Horoscope of Deadly Accuracy: You need some private time alone with yourself. You need it, and you're going to have it. Be prepared to explain it to your loved ones, and rest assured that even if they're not happy, they'll get over it.

The Lovely Emily and I went to see Goblet of Fire again on a nerdtastic, last-minute whim last night, and if you're asking yourself, "What's wrong with that?," this is because you are unaware that tornado warnings had swept the area only a couple of hours before. We were in danger of very little death by the time we went, though, and for a while it looked like we would actually have the theater entirely to ourselves, but then three girls, a mixed group, two guys, and one loner in the whiplash section rolled in. It was my third time seeing it, and I have to say, my funny started to wake up this time. It's still going to be a hard slog through a parody, though, and it still won't be put online (I don't think).

I only have two more classes, a paper, and an exam, though. The class on Monday will be a party, and we are required to bring only foods that appeared in the books we read (Typee, Venus in Boston/City Crimes, The House of the Seven Gables, The Morgesons, The Lamplighter, Pierre), which is going to be interesting. Almost everything in Typee, being set on Polynesian islands (I think? They're islands, I know that), is right out, and I really don't have time to manage Essence de Valet by Monday. I already brought soft gingerbread cookies for Seven Gables, but I think there's at least one tea party in The Morgesons that involves waffles and pound cake, so surely we can pull something out of that.

Anyway, speaking of writing up there, I have realized something, and it is probably something I realize over again every few months and then forget and have to realize again, which is this: I can't write unless I'm writing like no one is looking. It's what the Amazing McRachel would call the curse of "Look at me! Don't look at me!!" I want people to read my stuff, and I want them to enjoy it. But at the same time, I can't be thinking about that when I'm actually in the course of writing, because I sit there with my fingers poised over the keys and a sentence hovering in my brain, all the while thinking, "That's not good. They're not going to like that. It's okay, but it's meh. They're not going to laugh at that. They're going to say it's 'nice!,' but they mean that it's not as good as what I've written before. I have to live up to all that now. I can't think of anything as good as that. Oh God, I'm going to go lie down now."

And it's not even like that's all that terrible a mindset--it's just that it has a certain time and place, and that time is after you've already got a working draft in front of you. That is the moment when you circle things that aren't up to par, you mentally note that this joke is too obvious or that joke is too obscure, that you spent too much time here and not enough there. And if you write fiction, switch out "joke" for "plot twist," or "character development," or whatever element you're looking at. It's all the same process. It's just that you have to switch your internal editor off when the page is blank, and I know this, I've been preaching this for years, and somehow I've fallen into this trap all over again. Hell, I used to write diagonally across printer paper in red ink if that's what it took to convince myself that what I was writing "didn't count," and that no one was looking or keeping score, as it were. And it's particularly stupid of me to have fallen into this again, considering that this is exactly what paralyzed me while I was writing the book (with an extra dash of "Oh, shit, they're paying for it this time, too!"), but there you are.

(I would ramble on about it some more, but I've exhausted the day's ration of italics.)

In other news, it is hot and stuffy in my house and I cannot funny or paper, but it's too cold outside to justify turning on the AC. So apparently I'm going to be outside writing on the front step if it doesn't cool down soon.

(By the way... turns out my bibliography isn't due until tomorrow. The bad news is that a five-page mini-version of the paper is also due tomorrow. Sigh.)


corkdorkdan: "Target Stands by Contraceptive Policy: Target allows pharmacists to choose not to fill requests for emergency contraception, also known as Plan B, if it is against their religious beliefs. I've posted something about it on my own journal, along with other Target issues (no "Christmas" in their ads, no Salvation Army at their doors) here." See, I understand the Christmas thing--as a business, you're trying not to offend customers of other faiths, particularly since there's a shitload of winter holidays. Why not be inclusive and use the word holiday or season instead of Christmas? What I don't get is the seemingly contradictory policy to allow pharmacists to bring their religious beliefs into the marketplace. I mean, I don't agree with it anyway, but I particularly don't understand the juxtaposition here.

Texas Woman Mauled to Death by Six Dogs.

Teen With Peanut Allergy Dies After Kiss.

Some New Orleans Students Happy Elsewhere.

RIP Papa Berenstain.

mouseykins1: "May I reccommend something v. funny for HP fans? It's the official disgruntled-against-a-character form and you can....do something with it. I dunno, I just thought it was pretty funny."

"Man, I wish they would stop calling me Harry." "Hey, Frodo!"

'Lost' world created by diverse writing staff. There may be spoilers; I haven't read it yet.

There is only one Narnia collectible I want, and it is this.

The Church of Apathetic Agnosticism: "We don't know and we don't care." 

Courtesy telesilla: Victorian pr0n!

Earring of the Month Club! 

saadiira: "I know that you like to post goodies from the news. Have you done the FORBES top 200 charities yet?  It gives all kinds of interesting breakdowns on how and where they are spending."

torificus: "I keep meaning to mention to you, every time I see the links on your posts: an extension for Firefox (possibly other Mozilla things, I don't know. I'm fun and illiterate that way ;)) that pops up a reminder to click to The Hunger Site, The Breast Cancer Site, the Literacy Site, and a few others every day. :)"

Mmmturkey.

I keep meaning to tell you a couple of stories about my mom, but I never quite get around to it. This may be in part because I can't figure out a way to turn "Mom happened to see Closer on cable and won't stop talking about it" into an actual story. The best part is that I'm pretty sure she didn't like the movie, but she spent about a week just not able to get over it and trying to repeat major chunks of dialogue to me, which NO NO PLEASE STOP YOU'RE MY MOM AUGH. She was really tickled by the way Natalie Portman would take Clive Owen's money and chirp "Thank you"--the part where he's asking what her name is. So she went around the whole week just saying over and over, in this tiny little voice, "Thank you! Thank you!"

The other one is actually a story, because it's a story she told me. When we were at Ixtapa having lunch, and I forget how we got around to this, she started telling me about places she'd had to go on business trips back when she still worked for Birmingham Steel (they have since closed that office). Apparently she was in Salt Lake City looking at something in Clearview, and it was too early in the evening to go back to the hotel and just twiddle thumbs for the rest of the night, so she and her coworkers went back into the city to get drinks. So they're at some bar, and my mom goes to the bathroom, and there is a woman so trashed that she's snorting coke in one of the stalls... OFF THE FLOOR. Seriously, drink in that horror for a moment. I mean, I have never been to a bar bathroom that was particularly clean, through no fault of the bar's--people drink too much, mistakes are made, lunches are lost. I'm just saying. OFF THE FLOOR.

So she comes back out, and she's about to report this to her coworkers when she notices a girl sitting on a pool table and the girl is with some guy and oh, hey, look! They're totally just having sex right there. Okay then! And she's pulling on one of her coworkers' sleeves to be  like WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE when she notices this woman really obviously trying to pick up a guy at the bar. Like, in an "I do this for a living" kind of way. And Mom kind of looks at the bartender, for some reason, and he can tell that they're all not from SLC and are kind of scandalized, and he says, with an apologetic shrug, and I am not making this up, "Oh, she's a regular. Has to be--the schoolteachers don't earn much around here."



Gary Glitter Continues Fall From Grace.  

Believers Flock to 'Crying' Virgin Mary.

Simpson-Lachey breakup spurs online satire.

Pride and Prejudice Heroine Addict icons.

la_sonnambula: "As long as we are on the topic of the hotness of British men, there's a very funny article about American women's love of said men, America asks: cute, or British?" I think the Guardian syndicated this from an American newspaper, which makes it even funnier. Heh.

If you're still in an Austen mood, Eras of Elegance is closing their shop section, and so everything's on clearance. Might be a good opportunity to snag some Christmas presents.

Speaking of Christmas presents, the Zen gets resounding thumbs-up from everyone who commented. I'm thinking about compiling a Christmas list--not of things I want; hell, they might even be things I already have--of gift recommendations. Mostly because more and more people are turning into people who already have everything. If you have any suggestions, let me know--and please remember to check how late you can order and still have it arrive in time for Christmas, if it's an online vendor.

Find the bands. Hint: go through and ask yourself what things are literally. The giant spoon stumped me simply because I'd never heard of the band it was referring to, so if you're not sure what it's referring to, try the search box at Launchcast.

Back to my stupid paper due tomorrow. Sigh. I just keep telling myself--if the exam is Monday the 12th, that means I only have two weeks left. No matter how bad things get, it's only two weeks, right?

My Launchcast station is on fire this morning--within 40 minutes it's played "More Than This," "Angel Eyes," and "Kiss Them for Me." Ooo! And here's the Killers. Awesome.

Other than my radio's taste in music, things have been pretty crappy around here. I mean, not in an angsty way, it's just--it's been the kind of week where I dropped a bowl full of leftovers, broke it, and then had to mop Mexican off 46% of the kitchen. Sister Girl, who is obsessive about seat belts and stop signs, managed to get a ticket the one day she didn't buckle up, because she was so upset about some boy, etc., etc. (fortunately, the ticket's only $10, but she's worried that she's getting close to having her license taken away because of many minor tickets). And then, of course, the Sonic Incident on Sunday.

(We did watch Batman Begins, though, and Mom seemed to be cheered up--she even pronounced it "the best Batman movie they've made, I guess." I had already seen it--opening week this past summer, actually. Now we're trying to watch the Episode III DVD half an hour at a time, every day when she comes home for lunch. And... she's not liking it so much. She spent the first installment asking, "What's this? Who are these people? Why is he shooting at his friend? Who are they rescuing? Which one is that? Well why is he just sitting there? Why is there noise in space? Why did he give R2D2 a cell phone? Why can't R2D2 just turn the cell phone off? Where did he get rocket boosters from? Why is Christopher Lee in this movie? Christopher Lee is still alive? Why didn't that kill Obi-Wan? Why is that robot coughing? Why are they still fighting? WHY DOES THIS NOT END?"

And this was before the ship's windows were broken and the entire cast was not killed instantly by the suffocating vortex of space.)

(Eeeeee, "November Rain"!)

Sister Girl is also at the doctor's today and I'm sure it's going to turn out badly and she'll be cranky when she gets home, because that's just the kind of week it's been. Meanwhile, I have got to get myself to the doctor, because the polycystic ovarian blahblahblah is getting ridiculous--I have short bursts of energy and then I have to lie down for a while. (There are other things that make the energy-sapping nature of the disorder clearer that I will not get into.) We're on the last book of the semester before we hit term paper time--Melville's Pierre, and I don't know how I'm going to get through this one. Dragfully, I guess. I've almost entirely despaired of ever catching up on Lost recaps, but I'll do it somehow.


Linkspam:

sigma7: "File under mildly hilarious -- since Slashdot found out that Blizzard's "Warden" World of Warcraft anti-cheat tool snoops on the user's computer looking for cheats/hacks, someone went for the best of both worlds and thwarted Warden using the Sony rootkit. Fun, but a little high on the geek factor, even for me. Oh, and apparently the rootkit phones home, too. And a school shooting in Tennessee. Been a while, hasn't it?"

Speaking of which: Motive Sought in Tenn. School Shooting.

Black t-shirts are in beta testing at CafePress. That's right: the day for white-on-black polar bear shirts has come.

PS2 Class Action Lawsuit.

Sony sued over rootkits; Italy kicks it off.

Pilfered parrot used to stuff bra, cops say.

U.S. Papers Pick Up Japanese-Style Comics.

Improper Desperate Housewives Conduct Exposed?

Whoa! I didn't even know Lindsay Lohan knew Jared Leto!

Omg waaaaant.

LJ user icons. Heh. "Wicked" and "Zaphod Beeblebrox" are pretty good, as well as the Nightcrawler Bamfs. Another classic set. Clearly I have to be cleolinda.


An update on the bad review from Amilyn:

I get Total Film and I've found in the past its book reviews to be so inept that I don't even glance at them anymore. If the book's not about Star Wars or LOTR, they never give it over three stars. You got two stars anyway. The piece on your book is brief and quite mean. It begins with "You know the Abridged Scripts that Total Film run?", which basically tells you the entire review consists of 'we've done this first, and better, so keep buying our magazine, oh dear God, please, everyone reads Empire instead, and we have children to feed!'.

It says the book's unoriginal and too long - "only 10 films are spoofed in a whopping 400 pages" - and that "the only thing you probably haven't come across before is the author's first name", which...what? Especially since the reviewer's first name is Ceri (Ser-ee? Kerr-ee? Pot?). That's really great intellectual journalism there, that is.

sheepfairy: "Also, the next time you're doing a link post, could you please pimp ficsforcharity? It's set up to try and raise money for the victims of the Pakistani/Indian earthquake. I realize that most people have already given up most of their spare cash to help with Katrina, but, alas, it seems like God/Mother Nature isn't done being angry yet."

The Seeeeeeeeex Boooooooooooooat... My only question is, where the hell did the sex toys come from? Are they standard Minnesota Viking issue?

Lee to take spiky [har har har!] look at Katrina.

JESUS. "A woman clubbed her pregnant neighbor over the head with a baseball bat, drove her to the woods and cut her belly with a knife in an attempt to steal her baby, police say." And this is a completely different case from the woman who was killed for her unborn baby last December.

Josh Holloway (the Jackhole Sawyer on Lost) robbed in Hawaii: "Early Wednesday morning it was a real gun that was pointed at the actor and his wife. Holloway's agent says the experience has left the couple shaken. After rousting Holloway and his wife out of bed, the man left with cash and credit cards. The thief also drove away in the actor's Mercedes. The car was recovered a short time later, but the thief is still on the loose."

And if I could afford this, yeah, Lost recapping would be easier.

AUGH THE 1928 PORTIATA LINE IS ON CLEARANCE. ACK SO IS CAPRI. *sits on credit card hands*

Excellent political stickers.

The Onion: ESPN Courts Female Viewers With World's Emotionally Strongest Man Competition.

Bizarre otf_wank involving a writer named Steve Almond and his e-stalker, plus some Deep Reflections on the nature of blogging and/or famewhoring. Includes the immortal, tongue-in-cheek passage, "For the record, Birnbaum: If I get wind of you dissing my junk ever again, I'm gonna track down your mutt and see how she like my chocolate bone. Why? Cuz that b how real authors do they bidness." Gah, Steve--everyone knows it's spelled "authaz."

Weird spam email I got today--I admit to reading it, because I figured, maybe it's legitimate handbag spam, y'all. I could do with a fake Fendi right now.

Subject: "Replica handbags"

Sweetheart wants a Rolex ?
[spam URL here]

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.  
Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting.     
When women kiss, it always reminds me of prizefighters shaking hands. 

God heals, and the doctor takes the fee.    


Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex.   
What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?  

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in
determination. 

m15m