Stephen Colbert vs Steve Carell

The hits.

Um

Um, I mean... REALLY??? WTF?

One of the toughest things to find when you're going to an SF/F art show looking for art that features tough female heroines is finding tough female heroines who are actually wearing clothes and looking like physcially tough female heroines. You know, the sorts of heroines whose outfits don't make you burst out laughing.

Sigh.

Mixing In

My nephew practices his super ninja camouflage skills.

Yay!

It takes so little to delight me...

September Simmer

The good news about getting a writing job is that 1) it's a writing job! 2) it pays me more than 20K a year!

The bad news is, all that extra moolah needs to start getting funneled back into stuff that I couldn't afford to do back in March.

This month I'll go back to paying two regular student loan payments that I deferred back when I was unemployed, and starting October 1st, I'll be paying a "token" rent payment of $250 to my far more fiscally responsible roommates (this basically just covers my share of expenses and maybe some book money for them).

To be honest, being able to pay *all* of my bills *and* make a token rent payment again pleases me to no end. There's nothing I hate more than feeling like I'm not pulling my share. I want to be the strong, fiscally responsible one - letting other people take care of me when I'm down is one of the most frustrating, aggravating things about being sick and unemployed. Yeah, yeah, I realize people are supposed to take care of each other when they're down, and there's the karma thing, and when I'm successful, I'll take care of others, but it doesn't make accepting kindness any fucking easier.

I'm glad to be in the place I am right now, but fuck did I have to burn through a lot of scary shit to get here.

Have I mentioned how much the last year has SUCKED??

But there's a lot of light out here on the other side.

Visions of Tinkerbell

More here. But, predictably, this is as butch as they get...

Workaday Morning

First impressions and assumptions (from here):

The family picture is on his desk
Ah, a solid, responsible man
The family picture is on her desk
Um, her family will come before her career

His desk is cluttered
He's obviously a hard worker and a busy man
Her desk is cluttered
She's obviously a disorganised scatterbrain

He is talking with his co-workers
He must be discussing the latest deal
She is talking to her co-workers
She must be gossiping

Read the rest here

Still Funny

Oh so funny.

Boy, I'm easy.

The Dresden Files

Why do they cancel good shows?

No, seriously, why? What's the politics of this?

Let's take a show about a perpetually single guy wizard and his ghost-in-the-skull assistant who gets to help out these distressed-but-oh-so-not-weak, usually very kewl, romantically inclined female characters, throw in a tough female police lieutenant who he can work with and have lots of sexual tension with, and then....

Cancel it.

Let's do that, because, you know, too many good characters here, too many roles for Women Who Don't Completely Suck (no, it doesn't bother me that they're often hot on the geeky male lead - that's the genre. If it was a woman wizard [omg the kewlness!] I'd expect the same sort of men [and possibly ladies!] being romantically inclined toward her thing), too much fun and world building.

I mean, for fuck's sake, Buffy got seven seasons.

Granted, OK, I've only see the first disc of shows. But COME ON people.

This is why I don't fucking watch TV, because people keep canceling Firefly, Carnivale, and shows like The Dresden Files.

Fuckers.

The politics of these decisions are just baffling.

Damn

Hot damn.

Today's Song, Stuck on Repeat

Melissa Ferrick - "Every Three Words"

I can only hear
Every three words
So make 'em count
Cause I'm out here
Barely hanging on

There's no else I'd
Wait around this long for
Take this much no for
Makes me wonder what we're in for

So would you give me some hope
Ya give me a reason
To keep on trying
Come on buy me flowers
Smile me that smile
Cause I just need a little something from you
For the rest of my life

And I'm sure that I've got some kind of
Motive here and when I figure it out
I'll fill you in
But every body knows
That I'm a sucker for a hard sell
Ya look at me dancing
All the way into your slaughter house
Look at me dancing for you

So would you give me some hope
Give me a reason
To keep on trying
Come on buy me flowers
Smile me that smile
Cause I just need a little something

All I need is one crack of light
To see where the entrance is
Come on open the door baby
And let's expose the answers
Yes as to why we have been through
All we've been

So would you give me some hope
Ya give me a reason
To keep on trying
Buy me flowers
Smile me that beautiful smile
Cause I just need a little something from you
For the rest of my life
For the rest of my life

Why Do I Find This Shit So Funny?

OMFG

OMFG.

Seriously, people. SERIOUSLY.

Quote of the Day

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."
~ Samuel Beckett

The Family: Here, There and Elsewhere

Back in Washington, my nephew decides to borrow my mom's glasses and do a little light reading....


And my little brother, now in his MIB program at Portland State, teaches my nephew how to look stylish.


Here in Ohio, Ian and Steph acquire another four-footed friend for Casa de Dayton - Kimmy Lou.


Getting the girls ready to go out...


Kimmy Lou takes it easy...

The Brave One

Jodie Foster's boyfriend, Naveen Andrews (mmm Naveen Andrews... ah, sorry), gets beaten up and killed. Foster, sick of living in fear, buys a gun. And you know all those people who harass you on the street? The guys who bully and threaten?

Yeah, she goes out and starts picking them off....

And it's called The Brave One.

There are some delicious moments in here, of course, like when the guys on the subway bring out a knife and start threatening her with it, and she calmly pulls out her gun and blows their brains out. It had about the same appeal for me as that chick in The 300 gutting the guy who fucked her and then sold her out.

Problem is, you know, these are delicious movie moments, not ways to solve real problems, and certainly not any way to fill up the hole left in your heart when you lose someone you love, nor any way to assuage the fear you have after being menaced and/or attacked.

I had a lot of trouble with the obviousness of the plotting - Foster's character actively wants to get caught, and does everything in her power to get caught. There are some great things they *tried* to do, like her pseudo-romance/attraction to the guy who's investigating her case, but there were too many neat and tidy coincidences and run-ins and she was just so blatantly obvious in her murders, she wanted to get caught so badly, that even my thinly held suspension of disbelief began to flag.

I thought Foster was a great fit for this role; it reminded me a bit of her role in Silence of the Lambs - the fact that she's such a small, seemingly physically weak woman who's got this incredible sense of inner strength, of power, really works well here. You can see, physically, why she's intimidated, and you can see on her face, inside, there, where all the power is when she blows your fucking head off.

But at the end of the day, the movie avoids dealing with the really tough issues that it brings up. It doesn't deal with how you actually do overcome grief, doesn't fully explore that incredible danger we all court when we try and become strong and brutal in order to combat those things we fear (it's ever so easy to become the exact same thing you hate), and it doesn't adequately explore how you go on after losing everything, how you remake yourself, whether or not you can come back from becoming a monster; how you atone.

Mostly, it just sort of ends, and all of those cheesy coincidences and convienent plot clashes were a little too annoying.

But damn, it was satisfying to watch a woman being bullied fight back.

Indeed, if nothing else, this movie was a sort of good example of *why* violence doesn't solve or address anything, it merely opens up more holes (we should have seen more about how the loss of those people she killed tore up holes in others). It's not an adequate solution, and one that only belongs in the movies, but I don't mind getting that satisfying substitute on the screen so I can remind myself why, in fact, it doesn't work that way, and why I have to work so hard to find other solutions to fear, to intimidation.

There are better solutions.

Pirate vs. Ninja

Batteries.

For serious.

(thanks, Travis)

Coffeeeeeee.......

.... but I must admit, functioning on less than four hours of sleep never felt so fucking good.

Should Diabetes Be Considered a Disability?

Interesting discussion......

On the one hand, I'm dependent on something grown in a lab in order to survive, but if insulin grew on trees and you could eat it like food (cause we're all dependent on food), would I be considered able-bodied?

I don't know, cause it takes blood sugar testing too - it takes an external device, external means that can't be grown on tress, in order for me to stay alive.

On the other hand, there are definately some days where the joke about me being one of the "special" people with a "condition" hits a little close to home, like when you have 10 units of insulin left for the last 10 hours of an international plane flight....

Believe me, you start feeling real "special"....

Switzerland: Full of Cheese

I am back in the country (though stuck in Philadelphia), and finding it strange that I can now, once again, order a coke using fewer than three languages....