( Books and Comics I read in 2010.Collapse )
FINISHED: 98
UNFINISHED: 2
TOTAL: 100

Key:
Read for the first time this year
*Read for the first time this year and then re-read (number of * indicates times re-read)
Re-read
*Re-read more than once (number of * indicates number of additional re-reads)
Started; did not finish
Started, but unfinished, some previous year; finished this year
Started, but unfinished, some previous year; picked up again this year, but still unfinished

My phone is broken. Please leave me your numbers; I will screen comments.

Because my screen is unable to display anything, I cannot call you from my phone. I will have to call you from some other phone somewhere if I need to get in touch with you. My phone is receiving calls, so as long as I am actually in a position to answer the phone the moment you call, I will. DO NOT LEAVE ME VOICEMAILS, I CANNOT CHECK THEM. DO NOT SEND ME TEXT MESSAGES, I CANNOT SEE THEM. I cannot even dial out now. Emailing me is probably a good way to talk to me right now, but I will only be able to check that when I am at a computer with the internet, and have the time.

Yesterday was a shit day. Everything about it sucked. It was one thing after another, and it culminated in me being cut off from my usual means of connecting with everyone. I kind of can't believe I didn't just cry at that point, but maybe it was just too ridiculous by then for me to bother.

NSFW NSFW NSFW

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

AFGYNA;OVFNIUARVTNAR;F XAEMJFR; A HOLY SHIT YES AWESOME IT IS SHAPING UP TO BE MORE THAN I EVER HOPED FOR NEED ALBUM NOW OH GOD WHY IS IT NOT NOVEMBER YOU GUYS RELEASE A SINGLE I NEED ICONS IMMEDIATELY

Me: You know how, whenever I see a burger with an egg on it, I think of Austin?
Nathan: Yeah.
Me: Well, they have one at [the place we just ate lunch] now, so I took a picture of that part of the menu and texted it to him. His response was "If you liked it then you should have put an egg on it."
[both laugh]
Nathan: That would have lead to a very different journey for Frodo.
Me: I know, right? I mean, first of all, if you're trying to get an egg all the way to Mordor, that shit's gonna break by the time you get there.
Nathan: And if that happens, it probably destroys half of Middle Earth.
Me: Exactly.

This comic is being referenced, in case someone doesn't get it.

On a social networking website, out of the blue, I get messaged by someone I do not know. The stats that popped up for them (this will tell many of you what website it is) was 24% match/friend and 75% enemy. ( Here proceeds our conversation:Collapse )
I didn't feel the conversation could have a more hilarious conclusion, so I blocked him at that point.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4-7 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

"I had the last shift," Duncan explained, "so my sister didn't see the end of S.O.R.E. But it doesn't matter. All that happened was that Coach Genghis had you stop running laps and let you go to bed. I thought that he might insist on getting your fortune before you could stop running."
"And I thought that the luminous circle would serve as a landing strip," Isadora said, "for a helicopter, piloted by one of his assistants, to swoop down and take you away. The only thing I couldn't figure out was why you had to run all those laps before the helicopter showed up."
"But the helicopter didn't show up," Klaus said, taking a sip of water and wincing. "Nothing showed up."

That's right, it's a conversation that doesn't make sense and is not funny out of context! It's from A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket.

You guys remember when I mentioned that I was voicing one of the main characters in a radio-play? Well, the first episode is pretty much done! It's pretty exciting, and I can't wait for it to go up. We're going to be podcasting it, so it will available for all of you! I'm trying to find places to promote it, LJ communities and stuff like that, to try and get the word out once it's up. Do any of you know about places where we could do that? Please give me any advice or suggestions you'd like.

I hope all of you will check it out once it's up, and I hope you like it! I have to say, I think it's pretty funny. There's this one line that made me burst into giggles, and my favorite part is how stealth-funny it is.

Comments? Thoughts? Questions? Random remarks about pie?

Hello, all! It's almost June, and therefore my birthday is now about a month away. I figured I should put up a wishlist for the people who'd like to have one to help them with present-buying. (Then there are people like Nathan, who will use the list only to make sure they don't buy something on it.)

Birthday Wish List

Rather than simply post my Amazon.com Wishlist (which contains 1532 items), I specially created a smaller list of things I'm particularly wanting just now. (This list only has 131 items.)

Now, if you will excuse me, I have not yet had nearly enough coffee.

P.S. Please let me know if the link does not work for some reason!

Alexa just performed V's introductory speech from the "V For Vendetta" film... as Ensign Pavel Chekov.

Definitely, definitely watch This Film Is Not Yet Rated, the documentary directed by Kirby Dick.



( movie posterCollapse )

TRAILER (embedding disabled)

ETA: RYAN NORTH YOU MAKE MY HEART SING.



ALT TEXT ALT TEXT ALT TEXT.

There is a hardcore porn parody of Twilight.

( cover imageCollapse )

Discuss.

This entry is long overdue. I commissioned philosiraptors to do a portrait of Nathan and me with his dog, Cassidy, and my cats, Tinsel and Angel Juan, and then I made a frame for it. She and I exchanged emails discussing the drawing and its subject matter, and I showed her quite a few pictures. (I also told her some stories!) I told her I wanted a steampunk feel, and she definitely got it. Austin helped me with (...gave me) the materials for the frame (except for the actual frame). I pulled a few of the pieces out of the engine of a broken down car in his parents' garage! Under the cut, you can see a scan of her drawing and a picture of it in the frame that I made.

( 2 imagesCollapse )

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to philosiraptors for her wonderful work. Neither Nathan or I could be more pleased.

Note: The following list is by no means complete. I typed these up mostly from memory, and have surely forgotten quite a few. I didn't keep a record as I went, like I am doing this year. I'm actually posting this entry several months into 2010, but dating it Jan 1 for later convenience. It's also possible (because, let's face it, I don't have the best sense of time) that some of these weren't read in 2009, but in 2008 or 2007; I am reasonably confident about the ones I've listed here, though!

( Books I read in 2009.Collapse )
FINISHED: 111
UNFINISHED: 6
TOTAL: 117

Key:
Read
Re-read
Started; did not finish
Started, but unfinished, some previous year; finished this year

Do you know what I hate? When the printer is like, "I can't print this! I'm out of cyan ink!" and I am like "This document is all black text, and you have plenty of black ink." and the printer just keeps saying "I'm out of cyan ink! How can I print?! There is no cyan!"

LISTEN, MOTHERFUCKER, I DONT' GIVE A FUCK IF YOU ARE OUT OF CYAN INK, OKAY, BECAUSE THIS TEXT IS BLACK SO WHY THE FUCK WON'T YOU JUST PRINT IT I HATE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

LiveJournal, why are you not emailing me my comments? >:\ >:\ >:\

Dear Bruce Springsteen,
You are awesome. Thank you for that.
Love,
me
P.S. I'm watching you, New Jersey.

Sex Is Not The Enemy is pretty amazing. However, I warn you that it is SUPER NSFW.

This is a super interesting blog entry! I recommend checking out the whole thing, and her other entries, but at least read the following:

...we are used to seeing straight men’s goofy, unrealistic sexual fantasies. They are everywhere, all the time. Beer commercials, magazines, Michael Bay movies, porn obviously. We’re used to having female characters flattened out, falsified, emptied out and filled up again with a boundless desire to satisfy men’s needs for no apparent reason. We’re used to the fact that straight male sexual fantasy scenarios (or, at least, sexual fantasies marketed to straight men: and, hey, a lot of dudes are buying them) are cartoonish, in poor taste, unsophisticated, weird. We’re used to expressions of desire, public expressions, aimed at women [that] the desire-expressers have never met and will never sleep with and will probably never even see in all three dimensions, outside of a movie screen or photograph or TV set – discussions of whether the men in question would, in fact, “hit that” or whatnot – and to the sale of those bodies, or at least images and facsimiles thereof.
...
But this is everywhere. We’re used to it. It’s part of the accepted context of straight male desire – it’s tacky as all hell, aesthetically, and that’s just how they do – and so criticizing it, in an aesthetic way, seems pointless. Congratulations, you went looking for art in a product intended to provide boners and came up empty. Surprise! But when girls do the exact same thing – when they prove themselves capable of the exact same sort of objectification, and the exact same goofiness or tackiness or unrealistic fantasy in the name of getting off – well, it freaks people out. It’s weird. Why are they acting like this? Don’t they know that Robert Pattinson is a person? Why are they treating him like a big chunk of meat? Why doesn’t Edward Cullen act like a real guy would? Etcetera!

Because Edward Cullen is porn. Weird, pre-sexual, socially conservative, deeply repressed and fucked-up porn, but in a world where ladies’ sexy feelings are fenced in with shame and warnings of danger from Day 1, is it any wonder that porn which consistently ties sex to death and fear and the urgent need for repression is selling to the girls? I mean, consider: Edward Cullen has no characteristics, as a person, other than wanting to “protect” Bella and being beautiful and gorgeous and perfect all the time. (And also an insufferable asshole, but that seems more like a mistake than a purposeful effort to give him a personality.) He has no goals in life other than being with Bella. He is over a hundred years old, and he’s never had sex with another person. He’s never wanted to have sex with another person. There is not and will never be a person or a thing or an event that is more important to him than (eventually) having sex with Bella. He is an object designed for the gratification of female desire. He’s the most ridiculous person who’s so amazing at everything, and he’s so beautiful you creamed yourself. And that’s it. And we’re used to dudes writing ladies this way, we’re even used to dudes writing ladies this way and passing it off as “literature,” but the idea of a female author writing a male character in this way, for the pleasure of other ladies, is profoundly disconcerting. Even to me! Because it’s backwards.

We can talk about objectification, as a concept, and whether or not it is good – I know it pisses me off, often – but we shouldn’t ignore the fact that women and men are both capable of it. We just happen to live in a world where straight men are expected to objectify, and given lots of opportunities to do it, and everyone else is supposed to keep it in their pants. On the girl side of things, mostly it is very young ladies and female dorks who break the rules, because they are less inhibited by socialization than the rest of us, but the fact is that sexual fantasy – which is, duh, always only about fulfilling your needs in the long run – looks goofy and weird and dehumanizing for a lot of people, women and men both. And probably we all need to grow up, and deal with the fact that everyone we meet in the world is a person with a complex inner life, and also be open to the fact that people are pretty in different ways and our entertainment only portrays one very limited slice of the vast spectrum that is human prettiness, and etc. But also? Be less weirded out by the fact that ladies are getting all freaky about Robert Pattinson. Or be MORE weirded out by the dudes getting all het up about various lady movie stars. Take your pick. Because ladies are people. And if there is one universal truth about people, it is that lots of us are kind of gross.
[Tiger Beatdown]

HEEEEEEEEEY I am really tired! I stayed up later than I said I would to hang out, but then afterwards, I stayed up some more because I am such a loser. So I didn't get much sleep at all.

I have the next two days off! \o/ Who wants to do something? Let's do something! YAY, DAYS OFF! I am open to suggestions! I am talking to my RL friends and my fandom buddies! If you're not here in person, we can PARTY ON THE INTERNETS. I feel like I've been out of contact with everyone for a while.

I sent out those virtual gift cookies to some of you on LiveJournal, and I hope you were all pleased by them. Let's have more presents and fun here in this post! That's what comments are for! Pictures? Videos? Music? Creative writing? LOLcats? Funny sparkle-text? Feel free to request! Check out other people's comments and mingle! It's a SLIGHTLY AWKWARD FORCED GET-TOGETHER ON THE INTERNET.

( Here, I'll start us off.Collapse )

OH. MY. GOD. Dinosaur Comics now has a SQUISHABLE T-REX GIANT PLUSH and what I want to know is WHY CAN I NOT HAVE THIS IMMEDIATELY?!?!?!?! Ryan North! Ryan North, you are so good to me. ;___♥ There was also an article about him/the comic in The National Post.

DO NOT BUY ME THE T-REX FOR A WINTER GIFT. I am going to buy it when I get paid the day after tomorrow. I could wait and see if anyone got it for me, and then buy it later if no one does, but I'm afraid that they will all be gone by then and I just can't risk it.

Hey, now that I say that, I wonder: Should I make a wishlist entry, you guys? Does anyone want me to? I mean, I know Nathan would never buy me anything I put on it because he thinks it's cheating if the person just went right ahead and told you what they want, but there are a few of you who have appreciated the help in years past. Let me know.

( T-Rex is the dude of my SOUL:Collapse )

In completely unrelated news, I have recently read the hi-larious Twilight parody-thing-a-ma-jig Growing Up Cullen, and it is fabulous. FABULOUS. I had to make this icon because I don't know if there is anything funnier to me at this moment that my mental image of Edward Cullen whining "NO ONE UNDERSTANDS MEEEEEEEE" with this ridiculous angry, pouty face as he presses wildflowers in the pages of his tacky, sticker-covered scrapbooks. In case I delete the icon from my account (which, let's face it: I will, and probably so I can upload more Amanda Fucking Palmer icons), here it is for posterity: ( icon.Collapse )


ETA: I am adding a meme because why not? I love music memes!

First! Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
Second! List (and upload, if you feel like it) 5 songs that start with that letter.
Third! Post them to your journal with these instructions.

Since I pulled this from an old entry of mine, and didn't actually get assigned a letter by someone, if you are commenting interested in getting a letter from me, then you should also provide a letter for me!