Monkeys and keyboards aside, one Random + CSS still doesn't make poop.

Re: Breaking Dawn

2008-08-05T01:08:31Z

I've never seen a fandom implode like this.

There's so much rage at the amazon.com forums, so much froth across the internet, so many (possibly NWS) m a c r o s and lists and sparkly text blocks and lulz at ohnotheydidnt, mmmcradle, and however many other places. Hell, professional reviewers like Publishers Weekly are even taking giant bites out of it. There's also a movement starting for people to return their copy of Breaking Dawn if they hated it.

Seriously, yes, it is that bad. (I have links for downloading if you wanna see. It's terribly edited & terribly paced & terribly worded & terribly plotted in such a way that it almost makes the earlier works look good.)

But y'know, for the trash-talking SMeyer did on Rowling for taking so long with her books . . . Epic. Pwnt.

21

2008-08-02T22:46:36Z

From The Feminine Mistake, p. 141 (ARC), quoting one Dr. Fels:

"(I)t has been shown that for both men and women, the less time individuals spend on low-control tasks, the better the quality of their marriages."
Low-control tasks are subsequently defined as "household chores that must be done, such as preparing meals, doing laundry and housecleaning."

Thus, the truth is out: Zen and I are doing so well because of our big pile of unfolded laundry. :D

The word of the day is WAT

2008-07-30T22:08:52Z

It wasn't enough that SMeyer went about spoiling the fourth book of her Twilight series to Entertainment Weekly. Word has it the full thing has since been leaked. In brief:

~~What.~~ WAT.
LulzWAT
Powers of observation . . . Wat?
Lily Potter, what the hell are you doing here?
OmgSelfInsertWAT
Y helo thar, RAGING PEDOPHILE (and oh, yeah, that open hate-on of women's free will). (aka WAT)

At length: Clickity here.

And Tweak's quote at the top of the page: "It was an honest mistake." I <3 Tweak. :D

randomsome1 @ 2008-07-29T00:35:00

2008-07-29T12:07:30Z

Okay, who hasn't seen Batman?

. . .

The hell are you waiting for? Theaters aren't sold out for full weekends anymore, there's time! (Yes, at least one theater in town sold out completely for that first weekend--by Friday afternoon.)

But yes, it's a thing of convoluted, abjectly insane glory. There were a bunch of nods to Moore's The Killing Joke and Frank Miller's Batman, and possibly a hint that Catwoman will turn up in #3. The movie also keeps in mind that there is no easily defined good & bad--well, aside from the Joker, who is so gleefully, ridiculously quotable it's not even funny.

I'll try to not be spoilery in the main post, but in short:
1) Best. Magic trick. Ever.
2) He said "social experiment" and I pretty much went into hysterics.
3) There are very very few men who can really be menacing while wearing a nurse's dress & floofy wig. Okay, let's just say there's one. Was one. I doubt there will ever be another.

Gideon Defoe's Pirates! series is insanely happy unrepentant fluff. It's a good balance for . . . well, everything else, and I recommend it.

Math is ugly.

2008-07-26T22:29:04Z

OTW (aka the Organization for Transformative Works/Wank)
Status: Tax exempt, .org (usually associated with not-for-profit groups)
Income: Good question, though we know there was at least one straight-up $500 donation and there's a decent number of official members.
Accomplishments: Nothing.
It takes two weeks tops to get a wiki together. It takes maybe two hours to attach a messageboard to a site. The OTW's been promising these things and more for over a year--and while doing so, they've taken in an unspecified amount of money as donations and membership fees for what continues to be a Livejournal-based community.
People starting movements/freaking out over this? 0 ETA: I'm told there's some, somewhere.

Fanfiction.net (aka The Pit, Pit of Voles)
Income: ~~60-80 million dollars a year~~ ETA: Numbers are being called into question. For all my luck they're borked, though the source that triggered (I repeat, triggered, not made) the original fanthro post was certainly someone in the know.
Income, though? Still a lot.
People starting movements/freaking out over this? I seem to remember seeing . . . one.
Seriously, let's crunch some numbers and make this a little more real to people. The data from '07 said ff.net gets 1-4 cents per adview. They have between one and four ads per page--anyone who's loaded a page there knows this.

We'll take the middle-of-the-road numbers: two and a half cents per ad, about two and a half ads per page.

.025 x 2.5 = .0625 per pageview.

Now let's expand upon that. My three most-read stories, between them, have more than 365,000 hits.

365000 x .0625 = $22,812.50

If the numbers are right, Fanfiction.net has easily made more than twenty-three thousand dollars off just a few of my stories alone.

Twenty-three thousand dollars.

That's more than half my student loans. That's the Master's degree I couldn't afford to go back for. And the more I sit and look at that number, the more pissed off I get. For that much you'd think they'd be on the ball with plagiarism reports, or have coding that didn't eat your formatting and wording, or have ads that didn't give you spyware every few days. You know, like Fanlib did. Whoops, Fanlib was transparent about its intentions to make money, and talk of making money in regards to fandom is sorta like summoning the Antichrist and inviting him to bang your mom on the dinner table. Onlookers tend to flip the fuck out.

(And even if the numbers are borked and we shoot for the extremely low end, they've made enough off my writing in total to pay off my car.)

Is fandom massively spazzing out over ff.net, or the membership dues paid to an essentially dead organization, or any of the other half-dozen things that are making money off fans/fanworks? No, they'd currently rather be piling on Fanhistory for being a dotcom, for having a single ad per page, and for Laura H. trying to market the thing. And since Fanhistory's venture capital page went up around March, this dogpile's just a little late to the party.

I'll start laughing when it's funny.

Long multi-faceted Fanhistory.com wank relatively short: Yes, I know Laura H's gone about things the wrong way. Yes, Laura knows she's gone about things the wrong way. Was she/Fanhistory clear that if someone on Fanhistory wanted their name or page down, they should say so? Yes. Would it have been done? Yes--if worse came to worse, I would've done it myself.

Does the entire name fuss look remarkably like what happens when a few spastic Black Jewels Trilogy fans go through ff.net reporting & flaming everyone they see because they say Anne Bishop said she doesn’t want fic written? Hell yes. (If Bishop doesn't want fic written, Bishop would tell ff.net herself. It's only the big girl thing to do.)

Has this entire mess, initiated under the flag of protecting someone's RL-name from association with their fandom pen name, only served to out that connection to however many people didn't know of it yet? Yes. And is that connection still made in numerous other locations online--most notably by the person herself? Yes.

Has there been this much internet attention because the target isn't exactly a well-liked individual, & because her opinions don't tend to mesh with everyone else's? Yes.

Has Laura since said she's going to change her methods of interaction, espc. in relation to the wiki? Yes. And even though it's only been ugly when she tries to engage the shrieking dissenters, she's got a public apology in the works. So if that was the goal, the goal's been attained.

Me, I'm a dirty optimist. I believe people can change if they want to. I also believe they'll need backup and direction to keep them out of trouble--a theory of social responsibility, in a way. It applies to everything. You wanna see things get better? Help out. You just wanna sit around and bitch? You're part of the problem.

So I'm putting my money--or my lack of it--where my mouth is. It's a wiki. Wikis are collaborative. Laura's taking a step back, in the interests of Fanhistory and its future. Now it's time for the rest of the community to decide where they stand.

randomsome1 @ 2008-07-22T23:37:00

2008-07-23T03:53:02Z

So Oni's been eating my garden. This sucks. I intend to pick my damned bouquet out of my garden, and that becomes rough when he keeps pulling the flowers out by their roots & digging holes in the planters.

But it's mean to shorten his lead any more. He already spins in circles until the thing kinks up and he can barely move off the porch.

Thus, the next rational option was to shift everything over and build a roadblock.

Okay, so "rational" may not be the best word to use. But the neighbors watched me carry these clunkers around, and I'm now pretty sure they're terrified of me. Zen's grandmother is a slightly different case; she's taken to calling me "the powerful Katrinka." I'm not sure where she got that one, but it kinda makes me feel like I need big blonde braids. :P

acrylic dreadfalls

2008-07-22T02:57:42Z

So sorry, Lj people. I promised this tutorial forever ago . . .

I like dreads. I like the look of ‘em and I like to play with ‘em, but I’m not all about the feel or workability of synth hair, I hate falls that look like a ball of yarn, and I'm not all about potential itchiness/cost/wet sheep smell of wool. So I hunted about, cobbled some ideas together from various sources online, screwed up about a billion times, and ended up with a different method. Without further ado, here’s how to make single-ended soft fake dreadlocks out of acrylic yarn.

You will need:

A ball or two of Lion brand Homespun acrylic yarn (Can be found at Wal-mart, most craft stores, and at various places online.)
A bottle of plain white craft/school glue (Did you know Target brand craft glue is half the price of Elmer’s?)
Assorted large-holed beads & other decorations—coins, dangles, bells, so forth
Scissors (preferably skinny little ones)
A seam ripper (better than scissors but not absolutely necessary)

A single ball of Homespun makes a decent fall. If you’re going to be making a longer fall (consistently longer than 24”) then you’re probably going to want to buy two. If you want a longer fall, buy two balls at once to be sure you get colors that match well. There’s a lot of variety within Homespun. It sucks to run out of a color, go back for more, and bring your purchase home to find your red-toned fall might end up with greenish or grayish streaks.

Some of the info here is common sense. The more dreads you make, the more full your fall will look and the better its overall appearance will be—but also, the more it’ll weigh. Forty mid-sized dreads will make a skinny fall. Fifty is better; between fifty and sixty seems best. I haven’t tried more—mostly because there's only so much yarn I can deal with at one time before I start to go a little batty.

The best method I’ve found here is to hold onto the end of the yarn, measure how long you want the dread to be by the length of your arm, loop the end point around your finger, and make a few loops between your hands. Three loops makes for a decent thickness, but feel free to keep going—just know that a few extra won’t show very dramatic difference. A triple-looped dread ends up about the thickness of my pinky, while an eight-looped dread was a bit thinner than my thumb—which afterwards seemed like a waste of yarn.

Finish your loops on the same hand that has the end bit of yarn. Be sure to leave a few inches of extra yarn on that final string (we’ll need it later), then cut the loops at the bottom open.

Now take your longer string and pull it out. Make a loop at about the midpoint of your yarn and run the longer string through it. Even your ends out as much as possible—but don’t get too worried over it, it doesn’t have to be perfectly even—and tie the longer string around the group. Then take either end of the longer string (which should both be longer than the rest of the yarn) and start tying a string of single macramé knots around the yarn.

Pics help. ~~Otherwise my descriptions turn into “You put the thing with the thing and then do some stuff.”~~

It’s possible to put these knots over top of each other. Keep them side by side instead. Continue this until you have about the length of the attachment loop you want. Repeat on the other side until you have a loop of the approximate right size. I like ones I can fit a finger through, just in case I get adventurous one day and try an actual installation. Remember: if you make the loops too small, you might not be able to string the dreads properly.

Take your two longer strings (which probably aren’t longer than anything anymore) and tie the dread off. The right string goes over. The left string goes under. Each string gets pulled through the loop made by the other. Thus:

Repeat that to make a square knot. Ta-da! You’re almost there.

Okay. Now take a closer look at your yarn. You see that little bracer string wrapped around it? This is what keeps it looking like yarn—but if we wanted the yarn to look like yarn, we wouldn’t be starting this adventure! You need to get rid of it. A pair of scissors will work for this, but a seam ripper works best. Hook ‘em under the string near the top loop & pull.

Repeat until you’ve got all the strings out. Then cut them. If your yarn’s tangled here, untangle it—but carefully! If you pull too hard it’ll come apart, since everything holding the strands solid is gone. Now it’s just a big mass of floof with direction. Don’t let that direction be into the trash can!

You have options from here. Option 1 is the fastest but least sturdy—gently pull the yarn straight, then twist it until you have one long smooth cable. This makes dreads with spirally color patterns that are visible from close up.

Option 2 is a little slower: Take a brush and very, very carefully fluff the yarn until the strings start to blend together. (If you brush the yarn too hard you’ll rip the dread to bits.) Then roll the fluffed yarn between your hands until it’s less floofy and more dread-like. This makes dreads that have more of a matted appearance from close up. For all intents & purposes, though, they'll look the same.

“So what’s the difference?” you say. "Besides the perpetually-changing yarn colors, of course."

The difference is in how well they last. The boiling process (see below) isn’t hot enough to melt acrylic, but it is enough to make it shrink around itself. If the yarn is still essentially in separate strings, it’ll condense to those separate strings—and is much more likely to split to those separate strings with enough abuse. If it’s a big matted mess, it’s that much more likely to remain a big matted mess. And seriously: for all the time you’re gonna put into making these, you’ll want ones that’ll last.

From there, no matter your method, twist the dread into a tight cable, then wrap around your fingers a few times and tuck the end in to keep it out of trouble while you make the rest.

That’s one.

Now repeat that about forty, fifty, or sixty times.

Okay, so maybe thirty. Twist braids are a nice variation (and are best for stringing smaller-holed beads & anything involving jump rings), so don’t forget to do about twenty of those. And even if you don’t want to make them, make at least one twisted/braided/otherwise solid string to hang the rest of the dreads on. Or use a shoelace—whatever makes you happiest! Just remember that a shoelace doesn’t blend as well as a twist braid made from the same material. I’ve also heard good things about some kind of elastic lace, but I have yet to find it.

Hey, I said this takes a while! We're talkin' hours.

Twist braids are easy. Split your yarn into two equal sections. Twist each section clockwise. Now twist the two sections around each other counter-clockwise. A little bit at a time makes for the neatest, most even twists. You don’t have to worry about taking out the bracer string here, too—if you twist everything tightly enough, the material will cover them up for you.

I like two colors because I like adding some contrasts. This is also a good point to throw in some glittery yarn, or any of those other neat spazzy varieties. Just remember: if it doesn’t work, you can always unwind it and cut the offending strands out!

When you get to the ends of these, pick out a longer remaining string and finish the twists off with a wraparound tie like you used to make the top loops. I usually do two in a row and then sometimes tie the string back to another of the remainders with a square knot. If you tie it tightly, it’ll be pretty inconspicuous.

Decoration:

You know how belly dancers tend to be like magpies and collect shiny things? This is where that habit comes in handy. Just remember that there’s a method to things. Metal, shell, and bone beads & decorations can go on dreads before boiling, but if at all possible you should try to get them around the entire dread. (Only a few strands per bead frequently leads to the dread splitting around the bead, unless you finagle in some macramé knots to keep it all close.) Wire-wrapping the dreads is a workable option as well.

I would recommend keeping your glass beads aside until afterwards, as they can crack during the sealing process. It’s that or dunk them into the boiling water gradually and carefully, and hope they don’t have any air bubbles. I’ve had higher-end glass beads do well; I’ve had lower-end glass beads blow up.

Twist braids are a slightly different story. The beads can go on wherever with those—the tightness of the wrap will hold them in place. I’ve found that these are also the best for attachments involving jump rings or larger danglies. Thus:

Sealing:

Like I said above: water’s boiling point isn’t enough to completely melt acrylic, but it’s enough to make weird dreaddy things out of your big pile of floof. Get a decent-sized pot, fill it with water, and bring it to a roiling boil—as high as you can get it. I’d also recommend you put a towel down on the floor (my methods are never low-mess) and have something handy to hang the dreads over as you finish them, like the handle for your oven, the edge of a cardboard box, or a shower bar.

So! All those little balls you made? You’ve got options for them. If you twisted & wrapped ‘em tight, you could theoretically toss them directly into the boiling water and let ‘em sit for a bit, then fish them out with a strainer and let them cool down in a colander. This will make curly dreads with slightly messy ends. The downsides here are the messy ends, the fact that you can’t control how tight the wrap stays, and how it’s a gigantic pain to unravel a contracted, steaming knot of boiled yarn before it cools down—and not fun at all once it’s cold and fully contracted. Then sometimes the bundles refuse to come unraveled. If that’s the case, you can put them back in the boiling water so the fibers soften back up, then pick at them quickly before they cool and contract very much again.

The results, in close-up:

Remember that this method will lead to your dread being a lot shorter than you originally measured. Between the curling and the nature of the material, I’ve seen the shrinkage be from about five to about eight inches on what were originally approximately 30” dreads.

(Do we need a pic of balls of yarn in a pot of boiling water? I don’t think so. They’re awfully unexciting.)

The second option is to untuck the one end, straighten the (still-twisted) dread out, and dunk it (carefully) in the boiling water. For the looped ends, it’s easiest to stick a chopstick or utensil handle through to be sure it doesn’t contract too much. For the other end . . . well, get a grip on it as close to the end as possible without losing any of the twist. Hold it in the boiling water for a few seconds; then take it out, hold it over your towel, and pull it taut. Water will go everywhere, but that’s okay—you really wanted to clean your kitchen floor anyway.

PS: Don't scald yourself. Steam is really hot. If you've got something that'll grab the dread's end so you can avoid putting your fingers by the boiling water, use it. I'm okay—the government built me to be heat-resistant.

To seal the ends properly, hold the already-boiled part of the dread close to that end and swirl the entire thing into the water. The swirly motion keeps the end mostly together—if you just dunk it straight in and let it sit it’ll separate into its separate threads and be a really messy end.

This method will make straight dreads with relatively clean ends. The downside here is that it takes a while to do dreads one by one, the ends untwist a little and take some extra attention, and it’s easier to scald yourself.

The results, in close-up:

Don’t forget the twist braids! If you don’t boil them as well, they won’t match the rest of the dreads—plus they’ll look more like yarn than they would otherwise. Also remember to pull them taut when you’re done, to avoid shrinkage.

But wait! There’s one more step. Take the white glue and pour some into a bowl with warm water at about a half-and-half ratio. You’ll want to mix it around until it has the general look and handfeel of . . . well . . .

Glue and water, of course. The hell were you thinking?

Anyway! Your next move is to work this into your still-wet dreads. Acrylic dreads without glue seem to split and get fuzzy more easily than ones with, so I always make a point of adding it. But watch how much glue you use, too--we’re trying to avoid having crunchy hard dreads that feel like your hair was soaked in . . . well . . .

Yeah. So don’t completely soak them down in the glue—the dreads will come out really stiff. That’s no fun—we want ‘em to be soft and movable and not knock out your neighbor if you spin! ~~Unless you really wanna knock out your neighbor—in that case, add a ton of big glass beads to the ends and go nuts!~~

A friend has used glitter craft glue with interesting results. Sadly, I have no pictures of this.

If you let your dreads dry out before doing the glue step, remember to add more water to the glue mix. Always remember that you can add more glue later, and expect to use approximately a third of a bottle per arm-length fall.

Once your glue bottle is about half empty, you can just fill it the rest of the way with water, shake it around to mix, and spray the dreads with that instead of using a bowl of glue-water. It doesn't seem as intensive & exact as the hands-on approach, but is less dribble-on-the-floor omg-my-hands-feel-disgusting messy.

But isn’t there another/better/safer/easier way to seal these things?
Probably, but I don’t know it yet. I tried with a hair straightener and only succeeded in drying the dread faster. I tried with a lighter and only succeeded in making the dread ugly, with icky brown burnt/melted spots. I tried with that little as-seen-on-TV clothes steamer, to modest-at-best success. Do you have a better method? Let me know!

The “How do I attach these damned things?” post is here. The dread repair one will happen once I decide mine need worked on. As for now . . . Questions? Comments? Trepidations? If not, have fun!

dreadfall attachment options

2008-07-15T23:42:31Z

Moderately pic-heavy how-to under the cut. Sorry, Lj people!

Temporary dreadfall attachments, the Random method v. 1.0:

You will need:

Single-ended dreads on a string

Enough hair to make at least a short ponytail

A hairband or two

You might want:

Hair sticks. (Actually, you probably will want at least one set of these.)

Hair pins, if you’re determined.

A big wide (tribally) headband to cover more of your own hair, should the falls not quite match

Big boofy flowers/other decorations for extra coverage

This is just my method. Someone else’s method may work better, and if it does, more power to ‘em. (In the interests of research, I’ve linked to a few other options below.)

First, put your hair up near the top of the back of your skull. If you can make a bun, do so. Smaller and flatter is good because that’ll be less hair for the dreads to hide. If you can’t make a bun but can still make a stumpy little ponytail, you’ll need those hair pins.

Next, get your dreads. Fold their string in half so you’ve got roughly half the dreads on either side of its bend, and make a loop at the end. This will make two parallel rows of dreads. (Some people know how to make one gigantic dreadly boof on one little part of one string. I don’t yet. If I ever find out how, I’ll link to or post about that as well.)

Put the two rows over the top of your bun. Run the ends of the string through the loop and pull them tight. Tie the loose ends together if possible—if not, wrap them around the bun again and pin them down.

(Yes, my hair is wet in these pics.)

Flip your head over and check and see that the fall isn’t set so far up that it looks funny, or so far down that it ~~also looks funny~~ is gonna drag itself out via gravity. Also remember that a big mass of dreads looks . . . well, like dreads, but there's nothin' that'll help you not look like you're wearing a giant yarn ball on your head unless you match colors well and/or hide the rest of your hair. To help hide everything, grab a handful of dreads and wrap them up and around the base of the fall to cover where it attaches to your head.

Hair sticks can be added here. If your fall’s a heavy one you’ll want them, as they’ll help take its weight off your head. Try to get them through your real hair & against your skull without jamming them through the middle of the dreads themselves. (It’s taken me forever to get this up—the repairs/construction tutorial could take a decade!)

Headbands and flowers help as well. Some people glue the flowers onto their headbands or make special attachments; I chopped a set of JoAnn’s sale lilies apart, melted their plastic ends until they worked like hair sticks, and used them as such.

Voila! And I hide.

About a billion other installation methods can be found here, but I don’t know if the kind of dreads I make would do well with being worn for weeks & put through the shower. Also, a neat (if sometimes dizzying) four-piece full-head-coverage fall attachment vid by Glamourbomb can be found here. More may come as I pick up more information; otherwise, here’s to me getting the damned how-to-make-‘em tutorial up sometime this month.

Operation I Has a Rock: Pre-Marital Lulz

2008-07-14T00:01:28Z

"Oh hooooney," I called. "I need a hand."

Zen knows the drill by now: I go rock-hunting, load my trunk a little too much, and require assistance dropping my findings in the yard without wrecking my car any more. So he put down his video game & came outside, I opened the trunk . . . and he started swearing.

"Pick it up," I told him.

"Are you kidding?"

"Pick it up."

"How the hell did you get this in there anyway--" He reached out, hefted it a little, and stopped. "Oh."

Sandstone: All the look of granite at only about seventy pounds per bear-sized boulder!

I planted a little baby oregano in front of it and am filling in the surrounding area with shale, ornamental grasses, and coffee grounds for mulch. Here's to hoping it doesn't do something awful when the weather turns. :D

randomsome1 @ 2008-07-13T13:03:00

2008-07-13T17:16:52Z

We went out to Philly yesterday for a friend's wedding and, as I told the boy, because I had one last bouquet to catch. (I got it.) I was midway into scaring people away from the garter ~~fuck you this has nothing to do with a playing field~~ with my tale of "Yeah, the last wedding we were at, some other guy caught the garter--then I punched him in the face" when one of the groomsmen overran the entire deal with his rendition of the Soulja Boy dance.

(Note: There shall be no no NO Soulja boy played at our pirate affair. Or any songs over thirty years old.)

But yeah, the entire point became moot when the drunken dance-off began. (There's still a fairly good chance we'll have a drunken dance-off too.)

We have our invitations printed, burned, aged, rolled, and in their t00bs; we get to address and mail 'em today. But upon skimming the second already-printed page, I noticed I'd put an apostrophe in Lowe's. Checking the internet now says I did right, but for a little bit I was pretty certain I'd done wrong. Cue grammarian spazz-flail--the closest thing you'll see to me doing anything bridezilla-y.

But! But but but. But then we found out--the hard way--that our friends had given us an address for their chapel that didn't exist, and that their directions for the reception involved a completely wrong turn.

I don't feel so bad now. :P

went on a new book hunt . . .

2008-07-09T22:02:40Z

Picked up Danielle Steel's Rogue and cracked it open on a whim, just to see how bad it was. It was phenomenally bad. Sweet Jesus, her narrative is about as exciting and emotionally charged as a comma-heavy encyclopedia article written by a depressed octogenarian. It's poop, I tell you, utter poop--as if you didn't know already. :P

Started Steve Perry's The Musashi Flex and ended up putting it down. Perry's actually trained in Filipino knife systems and it shows with his fight scenes, which work pretty well (as opposed to the half-assed & barely described "knife dancing" in Karen Miller's Empress). He makes me wanna dig out my karambit and play with it. Unfortunately, his sentence structure clunks along sans semicolons and the big typo on the first page didn't really endear me to the work. I may go back for it later--just not now.

Gave up on Elizabeth George's Careless in Red around a sentence that rolled something like "running up and down his arms like the chilly fingers of a dead baby." You guys know me--it triggered a few dozen dead baby jokes and that was pretty much the end of that. Oh, Elizabeth . . . And I had such hope.

Started reading The Feminine Mistake. I think it needs more citations & a little less bias, but I'm still wading on through because I'm interested in a possible explanation for the sort of culture that'll make a runaway bestseller of Stephenie Meyer's wildly misogynistic & blatantly anti-feminist trainwreck. We'll see how this one goes.

(C. S. Lewis wrote the Christian fantasy epic. Pullman wrote the atheist fantasy epic. Meyer wrote the anti-feminist Mormon epic. Rowling wrote the boy wizard, and Paolini wrote the shameless Star Wars ripoff. I wonder what mine'd count as. Neo-pagan? Hmm.)

(I should really, really work on that first draft of BF&B more. But between that and the NYAF stuff and the wedding mess and random ficcage and the lolSue story clamoring for headspace, I really have no idea what the fuck I'm trying to create from one moment to the next.)

Next victim: Gideon Defoe, and his uber-cracky Pirates! novels.

Gregory Maguire's third book in the Wicked series, Lion Among Men, is due out later this year. I want to have a release party. I'd paint myself green and wander about with the uber-cute Ty lion. I think my store's higher-ups would be amused at the green-ness . . . but not enough to warrant a midnight release. Bah.

Oh well. If they won't give me a midnight release, I shall crack into the boxes myself and read it early, out of spite. :D

isn't "angry hippies" a bit of an oxymoron?

2008-07-06T05:31:23Z

I <3 the bellydance community. Their personality blends tend to be reminiscent of hippies vs. ravers--very down to earth, sometimes weird & a little stinky, but for all intents & purposes all about the music (and shinies) and the joy of dance.

Until you piss them off. :D :D :D

Lovetoknow.com put up a post in their plus-sized lingerie section about the joys of bellydance costumes. Said post was exceptionally focused on bellydance just being for titillation, humping along on how "sexy" it looks, how plus-sized women could be alluring for their S.O. while still covering themselves, and how the movements are all about being erotic and enticing.

Cue a flood of pissed-off posters from tribe.net. It's a bad idea to put bellydance on the same level as stripping, or to completely objectify any dancer, or to tell people who spend hours on their costuming that it's the same as sewing sequins onto a sports bra, or to drop wording that's pretty insulting to larger women. It's also really shitty to mis-type the entire art form as only existing for women to be sexualized. (Which forgets about the guys, btw.) Cuz yeah, when someone propagates the idea that bellydance is just about being sexy/pleasing your man, it kinda shits on the practitioners who spend years perfecting their form & who want to be seen as more than a jiggly pair of tits that may or may not be willing to give any random person a "private show."

Is this to say bellydance isn't sexual in any way? Of course not. But well-done dance of any sort is going to be attractive, no matter if the person's clothed or not, large or not, or if they're bellydancing or waltzing. I think it's a physical prowess thing. Just because it's attractive, though, doesn't make this sort of misguided blabbering justified.

The site posted an apology, moved the article to plus-sized living and reworded it completely (though sloppily and still erroneously--spending under $25 to make your own full costume is in all likelihood not gonna happen, at least not if you don't want it to look like absolute shit), and potentially deleted some of the comments. It's not perfect and it's a little after the fact, but it's still a step.

Now to fight with the sewing machine again, for my next more-than-$25 outfit/accessory. :D Pics may happen sometime this weekend--or maybe even that dread tutorial I've been threatening forever.

49

2008-07-05T15:20:38Z

To do:

get wedding license

finish costuming

~~mail invites~~

~~garden,~~ lots

clean house, lots

get extraneous food stuff (week of)

pick up the pig (day before)

get dog crates for honeymoon travels(?)

~~cakey things~~

Done:

tent rental (arriving & being set up day before)

his costuming

printed invitations

my ring (bought, in transit)

pig reservation

honeymoon house/vacation setup

lanterns, torches, pyro-type thingies :D

mid-work post

2008-07-03T23:51:24Z

Cnn.com says Obama & McCain are running pretty much neck&neck, so I figured I'd throw my tiny political weight around here by sharing what NARAL has been freaking out over since McCain got the Republican nomination.

McCain is way, way, way anti-abortion. Like he's voted against letting it be legal in cases of rape & incest. Like he's voted against reproductive health care plans. Like he's voted against choice 115 of 119 times. Like he's not for enabling health care coverage for pregnant women but he's against those same women's access to birth control.

That makes him anti-reproductive rights. This makes him anti-woman.

Honestly, I don't really like Obama either--but in this case I'll certainly back the lesser evil.

randomsome1 @ 2008-06-29T11:03:00

2008-06-29T15:19:01Z

I think I found the worst sentence in the entire world.

Granted, this was on the first page I opened to, so the book may contain a whopper or six yet. But I showed it to one coworker, who went into shrieking gales of laughter and then demanded I find something worse to show her come Monday.
Likely? Not really. Bah.

~~

Current objective: get more stuff on etsy, get invitations printed, get red ribbon, and get t00bs addressed.

randomsome1 @ 2008-06-26T22:37:00

2008-06-27T03:40:11Z

Must . . . stop . . . playing . . . with ebay . . .

The alternative, though, is to scratch. In the epic battle of me vs. the poison ivy plant, there are no defined winners. ~~Yet. I'm gonna pour bleach on the fucker.~~

I tried to be semi-scientific about how to fix this mess. Pouring bleach on myself is out of the question, as the one patch is around my eye. Thus far I've found that rubbing alcohol doesn't help, eucalyptus oil doesn't help, window cleaner doesn't help (Hey, I was desperate), and the Burt's Bees soap I have doesn't do much. But in the case of the latter, I may have mixed the bars up and be washing with the face soap.

Thus far, what's worked has been tape, hydrocortizone cream (to an extent), and straight peppermint oil. Peppermint oil + bare skin let alone eye area, though . . . Not my favorite of things, though anyone who's had poison ivy knows that the itching tends to drive you to acts of desperation. I put it on very carefully with a q-tip and didn't cry.

Next possibility: nail polish remover.

I've made close to thirty aluminum maille anklets in the past few days. I'm a little tired of helm weave & my little flower pattern, but I can't quite get full Persian weave to work properly. Still, lots of noisy anklets are gonna make it to etsy sometime (hopefully) soon.

randomsome1 @ 2008-06-24T13:10:00

2008-06-24T17:18:50Z

The better half turned up at work yesterday to tell me that I'd gotten a package from Singapore addressed to R. Andom. I didn't remember who I knew in that area, or who'd address the package that way. Confusion resulted. I got home later that night (having been assured that the package was neither leaking, smelling, twitching, nor ticking) to find a huge box from lil_monk, complete with a card, weird squishy candy, shiny earrings, and a big nifty oceany vase.

Thanks, lil_monk! That's our first official wedding gift!

(Yesterday was the two months left mark. Oh god! We've gotta get these damned invitations out.)

randomsome1 @ 2008-06-21T00:04:00

2008-06-21T04:41:19Z

Overall, life is still good.

zen_of_nihilism somehow managed to get a few hundred extra dollars on Friday the 13th. He went to Wal-mart and spent it on a PS3. Wal-mart gave him a $100 gift card for buying the system--and like a proper common-law wife, I snagged it for food.

So I went to buy food today, saw a yard sale on the way home, paused out of curiosity--and found a heavy-duty Singer sewing machine (& carrying case) for $35. The thing's older than I am but does what I need it to, & does it well. I shall sew and embroider until my little fingers fall off. So that $200 machine offered to me a week or so ago becomes completely unnecessary. :D

I'm not doing wedding things or writing things because I'm doing NYAF things and Etsy things. This probably isn't good. (And for some reason, I still don't get why I can't do it all at once.)

I need someone with a PS3 to come help fangirl over MGS4's Raiden, who somehow made being a somewhat effeminate spandex-wearin' mecha-ninja-gothy-Frankenstein's-monster-bodybuilder look rawkawesome . . . and kinda disturbingly hawt. A decent quality vid can be seen here. (Otherwise, MGS4 was way more movie than game and I probably wouldn't recommend it unless you're really devoted to the series and/or are really really obsessed with anti-gravity physics-defying boobies & gratuitous ass shots of the female characters.)

randomsome1 @ 2008-06-19T16:35:00

2008-06-19T20:46:51Z

I like to tell people that bookstore customers are overall better, more intelligent customers. Then I get the crew out to prove me wrong.

The girl who came in (with her mother) to search for the book "Dan's Mackabee"--meaning Hamilton's Danse Macabre? Epic fail--but all things considered, almost expected.

The girl who later tried to compare her teen girl drama to The Grapes of Wrath? Worse. And no. And . . . grah.

(It's the Grapes of fucking Wrath, are you fucking kidding me?)

(But I didn't kill either of them. I think that's how I got to be Employee of the Month.)

. . . Of course, there's always straight-up misbehavior on my part. A harried customer today asked me what I wanted. I told her: "A pony."

I still don't have my pony. :(

To do this weekend:

crop & upload pics for dreadfall temporary attachment tutorial

finish taking pics for dreadfall-making tutorial

get invitations printed (got paper, got layout, need second sheet)

~~start plotting numbers/$$/items/costumes for NYAF (oh god, math!)~~

~~return the borrowed sewing machine that I've had for weeks~~

~~hit Joann fabrics with my shiny pretty 50% off coupon :D :D~~

me me me me me

2008-06-19T04:05:13Z

SFX magazine recently published a top 100 list of those authors its readers consider to be the cream of the crop. And like any good internet denizen, I want to make a meme of it.

So here's the rules: Copy & paste the list to your journal. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you'd recommend, strikethrough the ones that you didn't like so much (or couldn't get through/into), asterisk the ones you intend to read sometime in the near future, and put all those little bits of elaboration alongside if need be.

Sorry, Lj people.

100. James Herbert
99. Gwyneth Jones
98. Sara Douglass
97. Charles Stross
~~96. Terry Goodkind~~ (granted, I liked him when I was fifteen and didn't know better--but even then, spiny namble cock was a little much.)
95. Brian W. Aldiss
94. Ken MacLeod
93. Olaf Stapledon
92. Michael Marshall Smith
91. Jon Courtney Grimwood
90. Christopher Priest
89. Jonathan Carroll
88. Scott Lynch
~~87. David Weber~~
86. M. John Harrison
~~85. Jacqueline Carey~~
84. Kim Stanley Robinson
83. Theodore Sturgeon
~~82. J.V. Jones~~ (The first case of my outright hating a novel, and also the first case where I was able to ignore a book after throwing it away in disgust. I swear, the woman hated/hates women.)
81. Joe Abercrombie
80. Joe Haldeman
79. Simon Clark
78. George Orwell
77. Samuel R. Delaney
76. Charles de Lint
75. Julian May
74. Edgar Rice Burroughs
73. Robert Silverberg
72. Susanna Clarke
71. Stanislaw Lem
70. Larry Niven
69. Alfred Bester
68. Katherine Kerr (I'd bet her series made more sense if you read it in order.)
67. Jack Vance
66. Harry Harrison
65. Marion Zimmer Bradley (I'd recommend The Mists of Avalon. Not so much the side stories and definitely not the ones Diane Paxton's "co-written.")
*64. Richard Matheson
63. Dan Simmons
62. Elizabeth Haydon
~~61. Terry Brooks~~ (Liked him in my teens, but I just can't get into him anymore.)
60. Richard Morgan
59. Stephen Baxter
58. Jennifer Fallon
57. Mercedes Lackey
56. CJ Cherryh
*55. Harlan Ellison
54. Jasper Fforde
53. Octavia Butler
52. J.G. Ballard
51. Robert E. Howard
*50. Sherri S. Tepper
49. H.P. Lovecraft
48. Mervyn Peake
47. Jules Verne
46. Alastair Reynolds
*45. Neal Stephenson
44. Clive Barker
43. Jim Butcher (It's a little predictable and fluffy but it's overall fun.)
*42. Tad Williams
41. Kurt Vonnegut
40. Trudi Canavan
39. Michael Moorcock
38. David Eddings
*37. Alan Moore
36. Orson Scott Card
35. Stephen Donaldson
34. Gene Wolfe
~~33. China Mieville~~
*32. Raymond E. Feist
*31. Lois McMaster Bujold
30. Roger Zelazny
29. Anne McCaffrey (Liked her main works in my youth, but can't stand the spinoff works done with her son.)
28. Steven Erikson
27. William Gibson
26. Guy Gavriel Kay
~~25. CS Lewis~~
24. Diana Wynne Jones
23. John Wyndham
22. Philip Pullman
21. Robin Hobb
20. Stephen King
19. Ray Bradbury
18. Arthur C. Clarke
~~17. Robert Jordan~~ (Liked him when I was younger until his plot stopped progressing, which left me with a few 800 page shufflings of terribly flat characters.)
*16. JK Rowling (Only some of Rowling.)
~~15. Robert Heinlein~~
14. Frank Herbert
13. Peter F. Hamilton
12. David Gemmell
11. Ursula K. LeGuin (Earthsea, her SF/F, not necessarily her literature. I'm still looking for the lost commas from her last book.)
10. Robert Rankin
*9. HG Wells
8. Philip K. Dick
7. Iain M. Banks
6. Isaac Asimov (Once, sometime.)
*5. George RR Martin
*4. Douglas Adams
3. Neil Gaiman
2. JRR Tolkien
*1. Terry Pratchett

plotting . . .

2008-06-18T04:13:22Z

Whoever's in charge of artists' alley for NYAF looked at my group's stuff, decided we were too professional, and has stuck us in the dealer's room.

I am Jack's overwhelming sense of terror.

NYAF has about fifteen thousand attendees. That's more than five times Tekko's numbers. And since we're gonna be there as dealers instead of just artisans, we get to sell whatever we damned well please.

I am Jack's cutthroat retail plotting. Ebay and Fire Mountain, look out!

~~

Y'know, I have this nasty habit of being a glutton for punishment. A coworker and I started talking today about Ren faires, Pennsic, and how we should make it to both (word has it Zoe Jakes is gonna be at Pennsic, any any seminars done by her would automatically make the entry price worth it) ~~the fact that I firmly believe she's my long-lost sister is beside the point~~ and long story short, we decided that we needed a Ren faire/Scadian war/Vaudeville carnival/uber-bellydance-collective/fairy party, and that we needed it done (and promoted) right. Which means we would have to do it ourselves.

And frighteningly enough, this might be something we could get off the ground. We each have enough people and enough contacts to pull off something at least amusing if not grand & terrifying. Ideas are still in the hatching stages right now . . . So help hatch! If you were going to a gigantic bizarre bazaar/brouhaha, what would you like to see? Camels? Giant puppets? Fire breathers? Dance/drumming/zill seminars? Bonfires with crazy dancing hippies? Scadians making war on the fairies? Let me know--next year may see it happen!

~~

Alpha on a ch2 for Field Research, if anyone's got time.

randomsome1 @ 2008-06-16T23:00:00

2008-06-17T03:33:09Z

newageamazon and I went trundling out to Amish country yesterday, in search of a good bottle of wine and some awesome cheese. We found both. If anyone has the ability to get out to Windgate Winery (and also to the little cheese shop that's about a half a mile before their turn) then srsly, do so. Om nom nom (glug) nom. Windgate makes some awesome wines (I think we settled on Concord, which tastes like extra-happy grape juice) and the cheese place features a little grab bag of fresh awesomeness including the mysterious "farmer's cheese," colby & cheddar, pepper jack, garlic, and bacon cheddar, with big slices of pepperoni for extra glee.

I haven't been in a really Amish area for years, so seeing more horse&buggy combos than cars (and more deer than pedestrians!) was different. Driving discussion invariably went to what the Amish would & wouldn't allow--cars & modern dress aren't allowed, but one woman was pushing a blue plastic stroller--and long story short, I ended up finding the Wholesomewear site. Ph34r. Lots. (But not as much as how Amish women aren't allowed to wear bras.)

But as with everything, human nature eventually shone through. On our way in we passed what looked like a little Amish kids convention--more than a dozen young boys in black pants, white shirts, and brown hats. On our way out the convention had broken up and the kids were heading home. I was driving slowly, since the road to Windgate is gravel and it's not nice to spray the little kids with gravel, and thus we got to see them in their natural element. One was charging along the side of a barn, pushing another in a wheelbarrow. Another two trudged along the side of the road, watching us. So we watched them back. They kept watching, so newageamazon gave a little wave. The one started to wave back--then pointed at his butt instead.

We think this might be the Amish version of flipping someone off. Any ideas? :P It's pretty weird to not know if you're supposed to be insulted.

randomsome1 @ 2008-06-14T23:53:00

2008-06-15T04:19:52Z

Way back when, a video hit youtube of a marine pitching a puppy off a cliff in Iraq. Some people called hoax; some people flipped their shit. Then the military finally got a hold of it. The marine has since been kicked out.

Our military members don't seem to be making the best name for themselves over there.

(This dog, though, still seems to feel the need to retaliate.)

Tomorrow I shall nab newageamazon and we shall adventure somewhere in Amish country. Work sucks, bills suck, having too much to do sucks, and it's time for a change of scenery. ~~I wonder if I can find a pet goat.~~

Has anyone on my f_list ever worked with a Kenmore sewing machine? I have an offer for one--a woman found one amongst her late parents' things, still in the box & with a $600 price tag still attached. She'd sell it to me for $200. This would be invaluable if I stick with the current tribal costuming thing, especially if I intend to make belts and belt bases for AnimeExpo (a group of us have artists' alley tables for there, though apparently the guy in charge wants to put us in the dealers' room)--but then again, money's tight so $200 is a big investment.

On that note, as well, it doesn't look like we're going to AnimeNext this year. There was entirely too much cockery with the artists' alley tables, and with all the mess & upcoming events Zen & I decided it'd be better for us to hold off and then clean up at ~~AnimeExpo~~ NYAnime festival. (Don't mind me, I'm lost.)

randomsome1 @ 2008-06-11T12:40:00

2008-06-11T18:19:36Z

Gah, plotbunnies.

I went in on the WIP to fix the fourth chapter and was doing a-okay--I started looking at it differently and mentally sketching out a map, which helped fix the disjointed feeling a little. But for whatever reason yesterday I started mentally picking at the started-and-rejected fantasy cracktasm . . . and what do you know, throwing in another few main characters, a dose of semi-subversive gender commentary, and a (huge) baby legendary beastie made it work.

I've got half an outline for that one already.

But I have other stuff to do, damn it! D: D:

So I got food, perused the new Steve & Barry's (What is this? I like Sarah Jessica Parker's clothing line!), am gonna go try to ~~not get sunburnt~~ garden some more. It seems I have a color theme again this year. (Besides green, of course.)

Here's to hoping all these goofy things are still blooming/blooming again/have bloomed by late August. Spending $300 on a bouquet is absolute madness.

Thoughts on del Toro's The Orphanage

2008-06-08T23:01:59Z

In general right order, and in such a way that they probably won't make sense without your having seen the movie:

want

that

some

least

use

NUZZLE

Overall impressions: Yes, it was really damn creepy, and focused more on emotional horror than on cheap screamer moments. But if this were a book, I might've put a hole in the wall from throwing it--at least, until I started making parallels to The Turn of the Screw. If you watch the entire thing as the woman just being bugfuck insane, the wallbanger moments lessen a whole lot and the inconsistencies and hideous sweeps of forgetfulness/illogical prattlings become almost logical.