Cleolinda everywhere

@christylemire: Greetings from the Academy. It's Hollywood's biggest morning. We are all very glamorous. And jacked up on caffeine.


@ropeofsilicon: Hugo leads the pack with 11 nominations followed by The Artist with 10.

( TWEETRAGE )

So. Much of my online life takes place on Twitter these days because I am often accessing the internet while away from my computer, and it is near impossible to tap out an entry on a phone. This is because, as I have mentioned, Sam is now mostly (but not entirely) blind and deaf, and he requires more care (help getting outside, to the water bowl, back to his blanket-bed) these days. He's happy, but he needs a lot of attention--and now that Scout has gotten really jealous and can't understand why Sam keeps bumping into him and reads it as aggression, he's started snapping at Sam. It's only gotten bad this last week, once Sam stopped sleeping most of the day and got active again. In fact, he rambles around way more than he did when he could see. So theere's a lot of watching and refereeing and wrangling that goes on if all three dogs are in the same room, and we're still working out how to handle that. We're to the point where I'm going to have to crate Scout and Shelby for a few hours sometimes, let Sam ramble around, and then tuck Sam away in the bedroom and let the big dogs out. If they can all doze peacefully in the same room, that's great. If they can all chill on the deck in dogly harmony, awesome. But if they can't, I'm going to have to put one or the other up somewhere, because I'm unable to get anything done and I'm near the point of hysteria from trying to micromanage them for eight hours at a stretch. Even my mother said, "You cannot sacrifice your life to these dogs."

( But I can totally take pictures of them! Plus a few other things to mention )


Meanwhile, the two links of greatest interest:

@SmartBitches: Have a look: think it's Poe fiction plagiarism? http://is.gd/5iV31Q http://is.gd/l2qlAB http://is.gd/bk3BIM

@McDougallSophia: @cleolinda could you maybe link to Genre for Japan charity auction? Proceeds to BRC Tsunami appeal http://genreforjapan.wordpress.com/

I didn't get shit done today in the work department, but: TONNER ALICE DOES COME WITH THE LITTLE GREY CHOKER! ALL IS FORGIVEN. Well, a lot is forgiven. I can mess with her hair; I can't make tiny dumbass doll heraldic crests.

(I think Alice, particularly Alice the doll, has become completely divorced in my mind from Twilight. Shit, I think pretty much all the Twilight characters in The Secret Life of Dolls have nothing to do with Actual Twilight in my mind. It's a coping mechanism, people.)

(There is a new Secret Life coming soon, once I work some logistics out. No, really this time. Sadly, we're still on... Christmas... but I think you'll like the presents they get. We're working up to one of the most epic things that has ever happened, which is what's hanging me up to an extent.)

Meanwhile, Tonner's Zoe doll from Firefly is up. I have to say, it actually looks good.

Linkspam! ( We may have a Hobbit ) 

So. To recap the last few entries: as you can see in the screencaps, the comment crossposting privacy issues aren't terrible on Twitter, but they are Not of the Good on Facebook. Turning on Facebook Connect posted my full name on my user info page without any warning. Pingbacks have been behaving erratically, but I have personally gotten links to locked entries I wasn't supposed to know about and huge excerpts quoted back at me. People have tried to turn off pingbacks; sometimes it's worked and sometimes it hasn't. Nothing seems to work the same way for any two people. LJ has updated their news entry to say that they're doing... something. I would not expect to hear any news on this front until Monday (which is a holiday in the U.S.) or Tuesday. (ETA: The news entry is now magically down for maintenance.) (ETA: It seems to be back now.)

Today, short version: I'm staying here, but I'm also mirroring my entries on Dreamwidth for people who choose to leave.

Long version: ( The new Facebook stalker button, the billion dollar investment fund, and the reason the LJ staff's hands are tied )


ETA: If you've got Dreamwidth codes and want to share them, feel free to do so in the comments.

I am a little tired right now.

@cleolinda: I did not sleep at all last night. Just lay there hoping Bad Cat was making That Rustling Sound.

@SuperCricket: @cleolinda and that's how Cleolinda found out she had a heffalump infestation.

Speaking of Twitter: please do not contact me there if you currently are or are pretending to be on hard drugs. Thank you.

@NASA_Hubble: Helium walks into a bar. Bartender says "We don't take kindly to Noble Gasses here." Helium doesn't react.

You know, as Mark gets ever further into Harry Potter, I began to wonder why I never did Order of the Phoenix in Fifteen Minutes. What the hell was going on at the time? So I went back and checked some dates. ( MARK DON'T READ THIS THERE ARE SPOILERS. DON'T READ THE COMMENTS EITHER )

Speaking of which: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Behind the Scenes Photos. ( More linkspam )

Before I start whining, let me give you an update on my mother. Her knee replacement surgery went wonderfully, it seems, and she was texting me by the early afternoon. I mean epic, multi-paragraph texts. ( Texts, linkspam, booze, and a poll )


ETA: I'm on the phone with Mom now, and she says she sat up in her bed, put in her contacts, put on her makeup, and painted her nails. YOU CAN ONLY HOPE TO CONTAIN HER.

Okay, we have a lot to talk about. First of all, I have a question, since I do talk about mental health and the treatment thereof pretty openly: have any of y'all had any problems with Zoloft withdrawal? I'm moving from a fairly low dose to an even lower one, and I'll probably stop taking it entirely after my next med check. (This is my doctor's idea, and I am on board with it; I am very vocal when something does not work for me, so it's a whole process, and it's professionally guided.) I just want to know if there's something I should look out for. Because we tried to increase it a couple of years ago, before eventually moving to Lamictal (which, after a bumpy adjustment period, has worked out really well), the Zoloft increase was... bad. It was bad. So I want to know what to look out for, so I can recognize it and go back and say "This isn't working" if I have to. (ETA: It may affect your answer to know that I'm going to try to taper entirely off Zoloft after twelve years of being on it.)

Second: I have been sick the last two or three days. Not too badly, but a low fever, some sinus drainage, a sore throat, and I've had a cough for a while. So I've been dozing on the couch a lot. I would hate to think that I am such a ~delicate blossom~ that the anxiety of posting a new Fifteen Minutes--let's face it, I only do this 2-3 times a year, so there's kind of a psychological build-up to it--did me in, or smacked my immune system upside the head, or what. But it's possible. I'm usually a bit done in for a day or two after these things, after all. Because I am, apparently, a fragile little e-flower. Who knows.

Third: Let's have some linkspam. ( Read more... )


Meanwhile--bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this--this is my new favorite thing. Yes, it's actually a "mystical eye" design.

And there is a reason I am showing you this, because: ( Read more... )


Meanwhile-meanwhile, YA Highway has linked to me a couple of times this month---first to the "Twilight and the female gaze" entry, now to Eclipse in Fifteen Minutes--which is nice.

What I saw while I was over there was... not so nice. ( YOU GAVE YOUR BABY A PUNNY TWILIGHT TRAMP STAMP? )

I'm going to go lie down again.

Hey! Hey! You know what's not okay? THIS.

(There's a second locked entry--I don't know why it's locked--that you can see if you're a member of ONTD, wherein basically this girl is shown to have said on Facebook, "jokingly" or not, that if they accused the guy of rape, they'd get to ride in the police car with him omg. 1) You morons, it doesn't even work that way. 2) NO.)


( An Open Letter to Fans )

( An Open Letter to Celebrities )

So. First of all, I did manage to get some sleep last night, although I woke up a few times, and I was BOLT AWAKE at 7 am again. You take what you can get. I did spend most of yesterday feeling like I'd downed a quart of espresso, and loud/sudden/vehement noise (such as someone venting about the guys hired to fix the brickwork, Mom) was irrationally upsetting, but--I want you to know that this isn't really "mania" as severe as a lot of people have it, or what the popular conception of bipolar mania might be. It is very, very mild, and while it could get worse over the long run--I didn't used to have it at all, after all--talking about it here is part of how I keep an eye on that. It's unpleasant the way insomnia might be unpleasant, or--again, the "too much coffee" metaphor (I don't even drink coffee). It's unpleasant, but it's not life- or sanity-threatening. In fact, I did record a new HBP-themed Made of Fail podcast last night, and (probably by this weekend) you'll be able to hear that I sound completely calm and together and no wackier than usual. I think I laughed a bit loud a few times, but then, I've always had something of a parrot laugh.

Meanwhile--I've been wanting to say something about this, but I want to tread carefully because I understand that most of y'all really, really do not mean to upset me; it is really, truly meant in fun. But: since I started writing about Twilight for various reasons, I've started getting responses and emails and comments from people of a nature that I really didn't get when it was just Harry Potter or Lost or Phantom of the Opera or whatever. People have told me that I'm their soulmate and they want to stalk me and watch me sleep, so on and so forth, [*insert rocking chair joke here*]; I mean, people are being funny, they don't mean it--I understand that, I really do.

The problem is that I've gotten communications from some people who did. And I didn't want to mention it because, for your own safety, you don't want to draw attention to that kind of thing and validate anything dangerous in someone's mind--but really, I haven't gotten anything malicious or threatening, it isn't that. It's mostly people I feel a lot of sympathy for, some of them telling me in all sincerity that they're obsessed with Twilight, I am the only person in their life who understands them, I am the only person they can trust, I must be their soulmate, can they call me on the phone, they just want to hear my voice. I mean, verifiably more than one person asking me this, some of them a bit... insistently. In fact, I feel fairly certain that I got tricked into doing a "podcast"--with someone who had no show plan, no questions, no topics--vanished afterwards and never posted a finished product, never even contacted me again. Just so he could spend three hours talking to me? I don't know.

Here's the reason why I'm telling you this: six months ago, I might have thought "I want to sit in the corner of your room and watch you write" (this is a made-up example statement, no one said this) was funny. Now, it's just upsetting, because even if I can tell that you are clearly joking, it makes me think of the people who aren't. I get that when you say you want to sniff my hair you're totally joking via a satirical parallel to Edward and Bella or the way fans mistreat the actors, but--guys, I kind of have reason to believe there are people who might actually want to sniff my hair, and it freaks me out. (And y'all, my hair doesn't even smell that great.) So--I'm just telling you, I can totally see why Twilight stalking jokes would be funny, and there's no way for you to know that they upset me if I don't tell you. And it is genuinely no one person doing this, either end of it, because no one person would leave me permanently spooked like this. It's a small number of people wanting something from me that I can't give them and a larger number of very sweet, well-meaning people joking around. But taken as a whole, particularly since I journaled here for five years almost entirely without incident and then it all started up after the Twilight recaps--I don't even know. I mean, don't apologize for anything you've said, there's no need for that, because I knew y'all were kidding and you couldn't have known. I'm just telling you now so that you do.

I am having a gigantic crankiness problem lately, particularly in real life. I can tell I'm being really irritable and snappish, but noticing it tends to make me... more irritable. At least I can hide it a bit better online, but I'm still losing my patience way more often than I should--I get really pissed off about things I know are stupid, about things I know never used to bother me, but--it's completely involuntary and irrational. And I've been like this for weeks now, if not months.

I'm trying to work on it--I cut out caffeine again (a long while back) after I noticed it was making me cranky, I've been trying to eat better but more often, drink more water, get more sun--I already take a B complex and a multi-vitamin (and antidepressants, for those of you just coming in; I've been doing really well as far as the drugs + vitamins regimen goes, and for a long time now). I just don't know what else it is. Stress, maybe--stress of the uncertain and the unfinished, I guess. People around me dumping their stress on me, possibly. To be honest, I think a lot of it started six months ago when I began getting really emotional about turning thirty but not being what and where I wanted to be by this point in my life, and I don't think I've gotten past that yet.

I think I need more alcohol in my life. Perhaps something with fruit.

( Linkspam )