Pandonkey

A momentous occasion

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 03:44:54 GMT

I'm so proud -- I was just called a douchebag on the Internet for the first time in my long and lustrous online career. I've been a late bloomer, but at long last, this greatest of milestones has been reached.

TV fangirling of the worst sort

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 03:00:15 GMT

I was going to make a coherent post about something relevant, but then I watched Heroes.

I realize that I am being played upon, not gently, as by a skilled violinist, but quite enthusiastically, as by a high schooler in a garage band. But I don't care. I ♥ Mr. Bennet and Claire forever. I am also very cozy with the idea of Matt and Mohinder raising Molly in a happy little alliterative surrogate family. Molly has two daddies! At least it gives Matt something to do while Mohinder's busy infiltrating the Company and making ridiculously unsecure cell phone calls.

And the Petrellis! Angela's got a death note, Peter's got a crate, and Nathan's got a... beard? And a hidden hideous scar? And has maybe caught Niki's crazy? Or is someone else entirely. Whatever! I'm on board.

I am going to be very sad if that's really the end of George Takei on the show.

Nervous Breakdown Scenario #45 (in the key of E)

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 05:14:10 GMT

So today was a bad day at work.

On the way home, I imagined how my nervous breakdown will go: I will snap one day and realize that I have Never Achieved My Dreams. I will sneak out of the office (I'm not the storming type) and set out to follow my star. Scrambling for what exactly My Dreams are, and here I'm going with the assumption that my mind is a hat full of slips of paper listing my various desires, I'll dig around a little and pull up one from my childhood. This will be the very early one involving riding horseback across the country along the side of various interstates. I found this particular fantasy to be quite useful on long car trips; it lost its shine a bit when I was old enough to realize that riding a horse along an interstate would be smelly, unpleasant, and highly dangerous. But in this nervous breakdown scenario of mine, I forget all that and decide to do it.

So I would steal a horse and get out on the road. Please picture a nearly thirty-year-old woman in business casual attire, her eyes wild, bumping along I-40 on the back of what's most likely a stodgy old Quarter horse from someone's backyard. Tack consists of a faded nylon halter, let's say purple, with a mismatched lead line and probably an old Western saddle that's seen better days (and they wouldn't get much worse than this one). I would probably be singing.

Some kind soul would call my husband, and he'd turn up in the Outback, driving slowly alongside me with his hazards on. He'd roll down the passenger-side window and lean across to try to talk some sense into me. I'd ignore him, bent on reclaiming my joy, grasping happiness, and Achieving My Dreams, dammit.

At some point, he'd pull out the fact (entirely made up by me for this breakdown scenario) that according to a very old law, horse theft is still punishable by hanging in North Carolina. Good news, though! The law only takes effect if I take the horse outside of the county. Finally, somewhat disheartened by the threat of being hung by the neck until dead, I rein in my faithful steed just before the county line.

...So anyway. That's how I think it might go.

Quote Meme II: The Reckoning

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 04:10:31 GMT

1. But why'd I have the bowl, [name]? Why'd I have the bowl?!

The Simpsons, from this exchange:

Milhouse: Wow Bart, Laddie's great, way better than your old dog.
Bart: Really? I guess I was the only one that loved him.
Milhouse: You got that right. Remember the time he ate my goldfish, and you lied to me and said I never had a goldfish? Then why'd I have the bowl, Bart? Why. Did I Have. The Bowl??

2. I hated her SO ... much, that it... flames, flames, on the side of my face, breathing, breathless ... heaving breaths...

Clue, Mrs. White (the fantastic and fabulous Madeline Kahn)

3. What are you, a wizard, a genius? ...You stupid...hotel manager!

Best in Show, Parker Posey's crazed weimeraner-owner character. Best in Show is another movie I could quote all day long.

4. Close it! Close it! Close it up again!

Yosemite Sam in the Bugs Bunny cartoon Knighty Knight Bugs:

Sam: Open that bridge, varmint! Open it, I say!
[the drawbridge drops on top of Sam]
Sam: Close it! Close it! Close it up again!
[Drawbridge opens, leaving a flattened Sam]

5. Black eyes, like a dolllll's eyes.

Quint (Robert Shaw) in Jaws, a movie I've loved deeply since I was nine years old. When I was a kid, I had a crush on Richard Dreyfuss's character (I can offer no comment on that at this time), but I was fascinated by Quint. Farewell and adieu, you fair Spanish ladies...

6. You're bastard people, you're just bastard people!

Corky St. Clair (Christopher Guest) in Waiting for Guffman.

7. Smell baaaaaad!

Ludo in Labyrinth -- this is recognized nearly universally by people (well, mostly women) of my generation. Of course, maybe I've just got a particularly Henson-inclined sample to draw from.

8. Diagnosis? Bad babysitting.

Dr. Hibbert, again from The Simpsons.

9. We'll be reaching speeds of three!

The MST3k episode "Space Mutiny," one of my all-time favorites for sheer ridiculousness. Features Sting, Debbie Reynolds, and God.

10. Nojo on the rojo.

Mulder (David Duchovny) in the X-Files episode "Little Green Men." I don't remember the rest of the episode, I didn't even particularly like the line, but I'll be damned if it didn't lodge itself deep in the language center of my brain.

An important question.

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 03:43:13 GMT

Love triangle kidnap pampernaut preps wingnut defence

Great headline...or greatest headline?

Top ten things I say that make coworkers look at me funny.

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 05:07:21 GMT

Another 12-hour day at work. Only positive: tasty chocolate chip cookies from Trader Joe's that remind me ever-so-slightly of Grover's cookies, my very favorite cookies in the world. Grover was a friend and coworker of mine in New York, and he made the best goddamn cookies known to humankind. We haven't been in touch since Doug and I moved. He was a clarinetist -- I hope he's got a chair now in an orchestra someplace quirky and affordable.

I thought I'd have a go at this meme that's going around.

Ten references I expect my nearest and dearest to get (at least some of): This is really more accurately a list of things I say all the time without really expecting people to get them, but some of them are pretty well known. I'm leaving out anything from The Princess Bride, 'cause I could easily do a list with nothing but that.

1. But why'd I have the bowl, [name]? Why'd I have the bowl?!
2. I hated her SO ... much, that it... flames, flames, on the side of my face, breathing, breathless ... heaving breaths...
3. What are you, a wizard, a genius? ...You stupid...hotel manager!
4. Close it! Close it! Close it up again!
5. Black eyes, like a dolllll's eyes. [On seeing a very hideous home in Virginia a couple of weeks ago, Doug and I somehow co-paraphrased: "He had a pink house...like a dolllll's house."]
6. You're bastard people, you're just bastard people! [I usually misquote this as "You people are bastard people!"]
7. Smell baaaaaad!
8. Diagnosis? Bad babysitting. [Insert any given word in place of "babysitting," and Doug and I say this constantly.]
9. We'll be reaching speeds of three! [often accompanied by "I could go faster, but I'd have to drop the waxing compound!"]
10. Nojo on the rojo. [This isn't even close to one of the best lines from the source, but for some reason, I say it all the time.]

They told us in health class that would happen.

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 04:00:14 GMT

I saw two movies this weekend. Comments on Superbad aren't really spoilery (if there's such a thing as "spoilery" for a movie like that), but the comments on Stardust are, for both the movie and the book.

Superbad made me very happy. I'm a sucker for raunchy, fun, friendship-oriented movies. My god, though -- it really does bring back how awful high school was, even in the relatively few scenes set at the school. I continue to love Michael Cera, even though (or maybe because) he's playing what amounts to a just slightly more worldly version of George Michael.

Also? Seth Rogan is an adorable cop. And his partner reminded me a bit of Hot Fuzz's Sergeant Fisher.

I've seen some commentary about the gender issues in the movie, but I didn't feel it was as bad as some reactions would suggest. There was one gag I really didn't like, but otherwise, while it did obviously have its roots in the high-school-boy viewpoint that women are strange and unknowable creatures, the female characters were...normal. Flawed. Human. I didn't feel that they were belittled. There were few of them, and yeah, they were to varying extents treated as sexual objects, but again -- high-school-boy viewpoint. I have to admit I'd really, really love to see a movie like this about high school girls, though.

A story: A coworker, having seen the trailer a few months ago, told me that "the kid who calls himself McLovin" looked like he could be my little brother. This caused me some mild consternation, but for the record -- yeah, while he looks nothing like my actual sister, he kinda does look like he could be related to me. And I did come out of the movie liking the character, so... all's forgiven, coworker. But it might be worth looking into some "What Not to Say to Women" training.

...Some space before the Stardust comments...

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There's some space between and beneath these, if you'd like to read one without seeing the other.

I'm very sorry to say that I was disappointed. I tried not to be, but between my love for the book -- it was my first and remains my favorite of Gaiman's -- and all the critics' comparisons to The Princess Bride, I think it may have been inevitable. I could understand many of the changes from the book; softening or outright dropping the darker elements of the book worked for the The Princess Bride, after all, and I can't fault it for that. But it felt like much of the magic had been drained out of the story. The magic of the market in the field beyond the Wall, the brief romance between Dunstan and Una, the unusual beauty of the glass flower, the general fairytale feel of the land beyond...it was all lost. (Speaking of the fairytale realm, was it meant to all be Stormhold in the book? It looked like it was in the movie. I don't remember ever having had that impression while reading, but I can't find my copy of the book to check.) I don't know -- all of this may be unfairness toward the movie for not being the book on screen, and I know that isn't possible. I just felt like many of the nuances that made the story work were lost. Just one example: where the hell did the unicorn come from in the movie? And where did he go? I asked my husband, who hasn't read the book, and he shrugged and said, "I guess it just showed up. And then died in the fire." The unicorn's killing by Lamia was one of the most striking moments in the book for me, marking it as genuinely grim, in the original tradition of fairytales. (I'd like to go off on a tangent about why are they always killing unicorns in books I love?, but I'll restrain myself.)

I found the effects bothersome, too. Some of them did work, but the glass flower looked like something you could buy at Michael's (and where was the delicate music?), and the star's glowing looked like a bad Photoshop filter. And (back to the unicorn again), I hate the cheap "horse with a horn stuck on" thing. They did that in Legend, in the '80s -- seems like it ought to be possible to do at least a little better now.

Now I'm feeling like one of those curmudgeonly "Movie bad! Book good!" types, but honestly, I tried. I really wanted to love it. I'd love to have another Princess Bride, but there's no comparison -- I can't think of a single quotable line from Stardust. Dammit.

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I feel just a tiny bit awful for having loved the one I did and not loved the one I didn't.

Weekend in Virginia

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:56:24 GMT

Got out of work early today (yay!) and have just finished packing up a few things. The mister and I are heading up to visit his family in Newport News for the weekend. His two brothers and their wives are stationed at/living near the Air Force base up there (although one of my sisters-in-law is in Iraq right now, and I'll be missing her!), and his parents will be up for the weekend, too. One thing is guaranteed: there will probably be a lot of good food and a fair bit of ambling about a mall or outlet stores. I'm hoping there will be some interest in seeing Stardust -- one niece is still home from college for the summer, and I'm pretty sure she'd want to see that -- 'cause I love opening weekends. (This is because I'm crazy.)

Current reading: The Grey King, Susan Cooper
Current knitting: Ravenclaw scarf (Azkaban movie style). I've gotten hung up on figuring out how best to carry a color up the side, which has slowed me down a bit, but I'm hoping to get a bit more done this weekend.

First real post

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 04:03:45 GMT

It strikes me that since I'm friending people, I probably should have some material in this journal. So here's a little bit of an introduction to what I'm doing here -- the rest you can get by reading my info page.

I joined journalfen a few years ago, back when free accounts were more readily available, in order to follow fandom_wank. Whatever one might say about it, f_w has a very diverse and entertaining following, and it's almost always fun to read. (Possibly a bit less so lately, with all the SRS BIZNESS, but I don't tend to mind that very much.)

I'm becoming more active on JF partly because of all the kerfluffle on LJ, but mostly because it seemed like a good time to branch out. I'm trying to increase my opportunities and motivation to write (and I mean write anything), and I think this can only help.

So, if you're friending me back, welcome, and I'll try very hard to give you something interesting to read, at least now and then!

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 02:45:02 GMT

Oh, so that's it!

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 02:44:27 GMT

A multijournal posting test. Definitely not working the way I think it should...