Cleolinda everywhere

1) Bella Swan: vampiring better than you since *checks watch* 2008. This is the same teaser that ran in front of The Hunger Games, so you may have already seen it (stop poaching Katniss's deer, BELLA). ( Read more... )

2) Meanwhile, shit got real: The Hunger Games' box office crushes the Twilight movies. All of them.

3) I seem to have hit a hypomanic upswing; mine, as I've explained before, are pretty mild. The only thing someone would really notice from the outside is that I'm a bit more upbeat, enthusiastic, and talkative--but when a movie I've really been looking forward to comes out, that doesn't seem out of place. (Honestly, I've started wondering--as I've said before--if you can trigger manic moods. If nothing else, I think it suddenly being SUMMER IN THE MIDDLE OF MARCH gave me an overdose of natural light, and that may have caused it as well. As I recall, my most pronounced upswings are almost always in the spring and summer.) Otherwise, I'm outwardly calm, but as I've gotten older, I've been edging further and further into mild mania, and the happy creative bursts have been "evolving" into something less comfortable. The upside at the lower hypomanic end is that I feel happy and creative (verging on hypergraphic); at the high, verging-on-manic end, I feel overcaffeinated, impatient, and irritable, I have all these ideas but I can't concentrate or focus, I have a hard time sleeping, and I don't want to eat. I have a sample of BPAL's Safari blend, and a dab on the back of each hand (so I can smell it while I'm typing) seems to have centered me a bit. Once I was able to actually focus, I got 1600 words written in a couple of hours last night (there's your hypergraphia), but it took me all day to be able to concentrate that long.

On the other hand, you get wackadoo flights of fancy like the mandatory Panem TV schedule, and like this:

@cleolinda: WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING RT @NikkiFinke: Hugh Dancy To Star In NBC Series ‘Hannibal’

@cleolinda: Look, save some time. Modern-day Sherlock Holmes hunts Hannibal Lecter. In a dystopia. With a vampire. An alien vampire.

@cleolinda: The alien vampire is on the run from a beauty pageant to the death. Also, Sherlock is a werewolf. His brother is a steampunk faerie.

@writingfreak88: No alien ninja turtles?

( Read more... )

omg so tired. I've been pleasantly busy but not getting much sleep, which is kind of a problem, given that I'm still consumptive. Lots of errands, lots of cleaning, not as much recap writing as needs to be done. My own Christmas shopping is pretty much accomplished, so I'm helping my mother agonize over what the hell to get for everyone else. Also, if anything needs to be ordered online, this is generally my department.


@cleolinda: My grandmother can't see her Bible well enough anymore, so my mother found the whole thing on CD, as read by James Earl Jones.

@cleolinda: This was my question. RT @swirlee: What, was the Morgan Freeman edition sold out?

@queenanthai: "THOMAS. I FIND YOUR LACK OF FAITH DISTURBING."


Did leave the house omg and see Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which was... ehhhhh, I don't know. ( Let's discuss )


Let's have a little linkspam. I confess, this is a catch-up pulled from my Twitter, but some really interesting trailers came out that I don't want you to miss. Plus, an update on The Arachnid Musical.

( Read more... )

Let's have a little linkspam!

Confirmed: Chris Evans Is Captain America. Half of Twitter is thrilled and the other half is pissed. Look, I don't know. It's not like the Fantastic Four movies left any kind of lasting cultural impression anyway.

Malkovich, McDormand, Jeong & a Ferrari Join Transformers 3. Malkovich joined Jeremy Irons on the Paycheck Extravaganza that was Eragon, so it's not like I'm surprised, but you, Frances McDormand! The hell!  

'Pirates 4' Producer Jerry Bruckheimer Confirms Geoffrey Rush Return, Penelope Cruz As Blackbeard's Daughter. But don't show up at extras casting with fake boobs, because they're not having with that.

Olivia Wilde and Freida Pinto Deny Bond Girl Rumors.

Spike Jonze's Robo-Love Short Is Here.

Tim Burton's 'Frankenweenie' is set to begin Stop Motion Photography shortly!

Rhys Ifans Has a Bizarre Take on Being in 'Harry Potter.' Warning: takes a hard, offensive left into wackadoo at the end there.

Steampunk Dinosaur Madness in Luc Besson's "Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec" [This Is Awesome].

Alexander Skarsgard: New 'True Blood' Promo!

Word on Twitter is that the Eclipse poster will go live tomorrow... on the official Twilight iPhone app. That you pay for. Well, internets, it turns out that I was shameless enough to do just that (as you will remember from the last time they released a poster OVER THE PHONE), so I've got you on that one. In fact, I will write it off as a business expense in a red hot second if they'll let me. Also: here is a Formspring answer I wrote two weeks ago to the question, "Can you explain what you mean by 'Twilight is badly written'?" Here is Linda Holmes' explanation at NPR. Notice the similarities. Which is to say, because it is truth. I am not making this shit up just to hurt your feelings, I swear.

Today on Tumblr: more things I thought were pretty.

And for the Uwe Boll Slot: Fourth 'Austin Powers' Movie Will Go 'Somewhere You Haven't Thought Of,' Jay Roach Says. NOOOOOOOO.

Okay, first of all, OUR LONG INTERNATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER: JKR/WB vs RDR Books Trial: RDR Books Withdraws Appeal.

Second of all: Holy shit, Edward Dollen really does look like David Boreanaz.

Third: For people wondering about what the hell's up with the Bella doll, this is the outfit she's wearing. You only see the peasant blouse in the hotel scene because she's got the jacket zipped up after that. And the doll's actually wearing the brown jacket from another scene (this one. Look at the cuffs). Look, I don't actually care what she's wearing--padawansguide and I just geek out over costumes like whoa on her site sometimes, so I'm used to scrutinizing tiny details like a nutbar. People were just asking, is all.

Fourth: An email conversation I just had with my mother, who is apparently way more invested in the situation than I had dreamed: ( Read more... )

And for folks a little lost with the whole Secret Life of Dolls thing, there's some background and a chronological list of entries over here (after a little housekeeping to get the list up to date).

( Linkspam! )

You know how bad I didn't want to work today? I went and scrubbed the toilet instead. And then I went and worked on footnotes for The Prestige anyway.

(The bitchful part of it is having to go back through my books on stage magic--which, being print copies, don't have helpful search functions--to back up my vague claims that, uh, stage patter was... important, and... stuff. People died doing the bullet catch... somewhere. I mean, definitely. I'm pretty sure. The real attraction of a footnoted "Prestige in Fifteen Minutes," though, is that I've gone through it and theorized (spoiler) ( Read more... ) and I think I can make a pretty compelling case. I'm working on a discussion of the differences between the POTO musical/movie and the book, with key excerpts from the latter--it's public domain, after all--and I already have huge amounts of My Thoughts on Dracula, Let Me Show You Them for that 15M. With any luck, this will be something people would actually be willing to pay for.)

So hopefully I'll have my little e-book (zip folder, really) done soon and can try to raise some money to pay off the air conditioner we had to replace, since I've been working on the footnotes for months and the no-interest period ends as of this month, and if we can't pay the rest off, we start having to pay 23% interest as well. And also, I want to move on with my life and get back to working on Black Ribbon. Particularly since October is such a great gothy little month.

(Hey, randomness! You know that's a really fun snack? A slice of bread with peanut butter spread over it and then covered in mini-marshmallows. Kind of an open-faced fluffernutter sandwich. The sad thing is that I don't even have the excuse that I liked to eat this as a child or anything. I just went downstairs to make myself a sandwich and went, "Huh, you know what might be fun...?" I think the bleach fumes from the toilet are starting to get to me.)

Linkspam! ( This guy better hope he is dead or else he'll be going to jail for a long long time )

I got mistaken for "nineteen or twenty" yesterday. I turn thirty in December. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. You probably want to slap me right now, but--if you're always being mistaken for being a lot younger, it's like you never really feel like you've grown up.

Oh! By the way, if you've told me you're sending something, I haven't received it (unless I came by and told you otherwise). Something weird is going on with our mail, and things either aren't getting to us, or they're taking a really long time. This is disconcerting, to say the least.

(Confidential to the sender of the unexpected t-shirt: I plan on disregarding your instructions and cherishing it forever. : )

Linkspam! ( Cher is not Catwoman, Twilight is shooting new scenes, The Road is depressing )

A Breaking Dawn followup: I have had no flames on the recaps at all, which has terrified me because I'm just assuming that I will get them eventually, and the hey-it-hurts is only going to multiply the longer it takes them to get here, so I keep trying to imagine what's holding the Hater Brigade up, and all I can think is that maybe they're taking a page from Aro's playbook and taking a month to mobilize or something. You know, let's make sure we organize this, stock up on the Haterade, get babysitters for the kids, alphabetize our sweater sets, whatever. And then I started browsing the comments at shinga's Twilight recaps, just out of curiosity, and I think I've figured out what it is (because she got plenty of visits from the Brigade): I have anonymous commenting disabled. I've had it disabled for years, actually. (I can't believe I can say that I've done anything on this journal "for years." But there it is.) I guess only the most dedicated 1% of Twihards is willing to actually create a sockpuppet account, and even that is so exhausting that they can't muster anything more virulent than "Please do not ever mention Twilight again" once they get here, which is what happened before. Which I am perfectly cool with, by the way.

(Maybe I've also dodged the Hater Brigade because I can rarely bring myself to snark on something at length unless I have some kind of genuine enthusiasm for it? And that enthusiasm comes through even when I'm bagging on something? This is the reason I will not be doing a Brisingr recap later this year, by the way. [Also, because I keep wanting to pronounce it "Brisingr...uh?"] The only enthusiasm I have ever been able to muster for Eragon was "Hey! Let's look at the costumes in the movie, because I love costumes! AND ALSO, THEY MAKE NO SENSE.")

(If you go to the Eragon costume link, by the way, please be advised that the "I have not seen the movie" statement is now outdated. I have seen it--on cable--and let me tell you, it manages to be even worse than screencaps alone were able to indicate.)

Linkspam! ( Frog princess, Stinky the Hutt, unicorn shit )

So, the mouse is still in residence, but the cat has discovered him (her?). Fortunately or unfortunately, whichever way you prefer to look at it, the cat hasn't been able to catch him, but we (the cat and I) have definitely been spending a lot of quality time together. Particularly at night. The way I figure it is, apparently the mouse is smart enough to stay out of my room when the cat's there, and that's sufficient for me. Meanwhile, I'm still cleaning, and I've probably gotten further in a week than I got all last summer. What my mother suggested was that I pick a given area of my bedroom (keep in mind that I have four large bookshelves, a dresser, a large closet, several boxes of unsorted crap, and an under-bed area to tackle) and work on it for an hour at a time. At the end of an hour, I can walk away and do whatever I want. As simple as the concept is, it's actually working for me, because I think one of my unspoken fears about heavy-duty cleaning is that it'll take over my life and I'll be shackled to a garbage can for days at a time, unable to escape until I've gone through every single thing I own and made the Sophie's choice of whether I get to keep it or have to throw it away. When you rephrase the task as "Spend an hour alphabetizing your CDs and then walk away," it's much easier to swallow. And since I've got this mouse hanging over my head (uh... metaphorically), I keep coming back for another hour, and then another. So... thanks, Reep!

(Why alphabetize the CDs? you're thinking. Isn't that unnecessarily fussy? Well, because most of my music is on my computer now. The CDs need to be straightened and arranged on a rack, so alphabetizing means I have them in a nice library format whenever I need to pull one out, and since I rarely touch them anymore, it's an order that can be easily preserved. I would never bother alphabetizing books, because I'd never be able to keep them that way. Although I do tend to group them loosely by author and genre--top shelf, right left side of room is historical biographies; top shelf, right side of room is fantasy, with a corner set aside for Harry Potter books.)

Anyway, it's a slow, sweltering Memorial Day weekend, and not much else is going on beyond cleaning and writing oh God help me I am so bored. Linkspam: ( Read more... )

A couple of things I wanted to talk about--first of all, crime. Local crime. Times is hard, and it's getting a little scary out there. My parents were at Publix doing the weekly grocery shopping last weekend, and there was, like, a gang rumble in the parking lot while they were getting into the car. Like, groups of people chasing each other around and smashing bottles and calling for getaway cars ("Come and get me, man! You gotta come pick me up, man!" An effective gangbanger should always provide his own ride, I always say). All while my stepfather's standing at the cart return with his hands on his hips going, "Huh." ("George, GET IN THE CAR!")

In a scarier incident, my aunt was in the parking lot of the Wildwood Wal-Mart when a stranger approached her and demanded a dollar. She said no--I don't know how to explain it in print, exactly, but you know how there's asking people money and then there's threatening ways of asking people for money? This was one of those Prelude to a Purse-Snatching ways. Something you need to know about my aunt, by the way: she's an inner-city kindergarten teacher, and she doesn't put up with shit. "I think you can give me a dollar," he says, edging closer. "I think you need to get a job," she fires off. He edges closer: "I think you're going to give me a dollar." My mother's telling me this story and I'm kind of freaking out at this point, but fortunately, one of the Wal-Mart employees came up to my aunt and said, "Ma'am, is this man bothering you?" And then the employee recognized the man, because he had just tried to snatch someone else's purse a few minutes earlier and they were still looking for him. This is all in the middle of the day, by the way.

"It's the economy," my mother said. "People are having to choose between food and gas, they just can't pay for both. They're getting desperate."

Well, then there's the other thing that happened to my cousin--same aunt: her daughter. My cousin was walking home and parted ways with a friend a street or so away from their house, when she noticed this white SUV was following her. Like, really closely. Really slowly. All the way up her street. My cousin has a very small build, so she often looks younger than she actually is (she's graduating high school this month, but she could probably pass for early teens if you weren't looking closely); maybe the creep in the car thought she was a much younger girl, I don't know. Maybe he didn't care. So this SUV follows her up the street, and she's freaking out this point, so she runs up her driveway, and the car follows her what the hell. Like, up this long steep hill to her back door. Fortunately my cousin was able to get in safely, and the car fled, but what the hell? The world is a scary place, and you can't always blame it on the economy.

( Stripped-down linkspam )

"Hey, you know that part at the end of Cloverfield, where they're under the bridge?"

"Yeah?"

"What's it called? I think I'm there." ( Read more... )

( Linkspam )