Consolation Post

Well, kids, I had planned to regale you today with tales of unexpected mosh pits and made-for-TV grade horror attempting to pass as something truly horrifying--intentionally so, that is, and not just the horrific badness that I'm sure was unintentional. But my job actually required me to do stuff all day, so these things will have to wait for another time.

So for now, I'll just direct you to TV Week's Pilot Previews, which I've not yet had a chance to view myself.

And then I'll leave you with this, because it made me chuckle:



Happy weekend, everybody!

Going dark

Cross-blog note: I'll be out of the office (hooray for personal days!), and hence away from my computer, for the next couple of days, so don't look for any new posts Tuesday or Wednesday.

"Cube De-coder"

This month's Cube News 1 features Cubical Circus, and Cube Girl to the rescue with job-saving translations for boss-speak.

Not the funniest episode ever, but still a pretty good Monday morning pick-me-up. Enjoy.

Blue Sun Propoganda: "Visit Tranquil Miranda"

I would very, very much like to own a full-size, framed copy of this poster. If I can get ahold of one, it will have a place of honor in my living room. When I have a living room worthy of hanging unabashedly geeky yet nevertheless beautiful posters in, that is.

Tomato Knitwit

Hey! I made today's The Vine! It's been so long since I sent my e-mail I forgot I even asked Sars anything. I suppose my question's kind of moot now that I've decided to take down the knitting blog, although I'd still love to get ahold of that knitting book if I can find it. And I s'pose I could still do something with the illustrations in my Etsy shop.

Anyway: Yay!

~~~

Oh, and as long as I'm (sort of) self-pimping, I should probably mention that I've finished the reformatting of Growing Up... (formerly Growing Up Money), and have recommenced posting over there.

A black as black as the midnight abyss of your soul.

Hey there, emo kids! Are the cheery sky blues and sunny yellows and racist band-aid colored flesh tones of your current Crayola box just not cutting it in terms of accurately coloring the world the way it really is in all of it's empty meaninglessness or allowing you to fully depict the deep, unfathomable recesses of your soul? Then you should check out Emo Crayolas with its exciting new array of colors such as Mournful Gray, Unloved Gray, Sorrowful Gray and Wrist Slit Red! Color your world the way you see it. Don't let the uncaring and unfeeling fascists of this world dictate your color choices. Happy coloring!

Link via Scalzi.

~~~

This reminded me to go check and see if Hope is still Emo. She is.

Samurai Sark!

David Anders (alias Sark) has been cast to play the ancient samurai warrior Kenzei on Heroes. (Article contains BSG spoilers toward the bottom.)

Yay! But also, wha...?

I remember when George Takei rallied a huge protest over Jonathan Pryce getting cast as the Vietnamese lead in Miss Saigon. Given his involvement in this show, I'm guessing that the fact that Anders is a white guy actually plays into the story somehow. I guess if Tom Cruise can be a samurai....

Link via Asking the Wrong Questions.

ETA: On a hunch, I looked up the word Kensei, which turns out to be not so much a name as "an honorary title given to a warrior of legendary skill in swordsmanship. The literal translation of "kensei" is "sword saint". Thus, the term is considered by some to imply a higher degree of perfection (possibly also encompassing a moral dimension)...." Interesting. I think that leaves room for inclusion of warriors of non-Japanese descent.

Buffy has physics?

I kept meaning to blog this one yesterday, but forgot until I saw it turn up again on Whedonesque this morning: Ficlets interviews Jennifer Ouellette, author of The Physics of the Buffyverse (affiliate link). Because why simply suspend your disbelief when you can fill an entire book with science wank that makes it all seem plausible?

My husband is a bit of a science geek, and we've had plenty of discussions about how stuff works in the Buffyverse, usually ending with me declaring in frustration, "It's magic, okay? Let it go!" I think we need this book.

Someday soon Big Brother will start and give me something to talk about besides Buffy.

Actually... my mom has been TiVoing Traveller and telling me that I absolutely need to watch it. I think by now there are about five or six hours' worth of it saved up. Anybody been following this show? Is my mom right, and is it worth a big chunk of my Saturday morning?

The Long Way Home

With the first four-issue story arc out of the way, Pink Raygun recaps and reviews Buffy: Season 8 so far. It's a pretty positive, occasionally gushy review, and a good recap if you can't bring yourself to pick up a comic but would like to know what's going on in the Buffyverse these days. I only have two nits to pick: one, I'm pretty sure the spell on Willow and Kennedy that was referenced was when Amy turned Willow into Warren, and not something more recent; and two, I take exception to the statement that Willow is everybody's favorite character. I know too many Willow haters for that to be true. I only find her mildly irritating, myself.

I read issue #4 the weekend after it came out, and I'm not sure how it escaped mention here. My review can pretty well be summed up in two words:

Like, whoa.

I have plenty more to say, of course, but it's all spoilery, so I'll keep it in the comments. Feel free to join me there.

~~~

Unrelatedly, out of curiosity I checked The Wayback Machine to see if any of my old blog designs were still up, and they are. Including this one, my personal favorite, which just might enjoy a comeback if I can figure out how to convert it to New Blogger format. I'm pretty fond of this one, too, for its cheery colorfulness and simplicity. It's just nice to be reminded that I used to actually know a thing or two about web design. I miss Web 1.0.

Didn't miss (you) much

An entire week without posting here, and nary a twinge of sadness about it. Interesting.

Even so, I've decided I'm not going anywhere, but there will be changes, here and in the rest of my blog network. Here, the changes are pretty much already in effect: this space will focus on my various geeked-out media obsessions and various frivolities that grab my attention, which is basically what it's done for the past several weeks. I may still post the occasional paid post, because I'm still poor and I need the Paypal boost, but if/when I do it'll be stuff that fits with that focus.

As for elsewhere...

JMbauhaus.com, the essay blog that sports all of two essays, will come down, for obvious reasons. Ditto JeanJeanie.Knit (but my Etsy shop will stay).

Growing Up Money and Jean Writes Genre will both stay, but will change slightly. The first is going to have "Money" dropped from the title and will expand to include topics on organization, motivation, and health & wellness, in addition to finances; mainly because these are all focuses for me right now, and they all tie together and affect one another. For me, these things can't really be separated.

Jean Writes Genre will pretty much stay the same, except I'll also discuss my working novel and post progress updates from time to time.

So that's it. You're now officially reading a spastic fangirl blog, and shouldn't expect much of substance outside of that realm. I'll let you know here when the more substantive blogs open back up, so if that's more your thing, bear with me while I get them up and running, and watch this space.

I Blog, Therefore I Am

I seem to be having a blogging identity crisis. I've been in its throes for a while now, and it doesn't show any sign of resolving itself quickly. I'm prone to bouts of blogging ennui--I think we all are, from time to time--but this is more than that. My life has changed pretty drastically in the eighteen months or so since I started this particular blog incarnation, and so have my interests and priorities. I think my attempts to focus on those new interests and priorities elsewhere have been hampered by my devotion, first and foremost, to LiSM.

But here's the thing: I started LiSM as a journal, as a way to keep in touch and dialogue with a small and particular group of people and keep them informed about my life. That it has grown from that to a still tiny, but larger than anticipated, audience of strangers, some of whom have proven to be pretty critical and judgmental, is kinda neat (except for that last bit), but also more than kinda uncomfortable. I used to have no problem making my life an open blog, so to speak, but, I don't live there any more. Now I'm thinking that a general personal blog maybe isn't so much the right venue for me, and maybe, neither is LiSM anymore.

So here's what I'm going to do. Nothing drastic. I'm thisclose to being entirely caught up on my work backlog, and I anticipate finishing by the end of the week, which leads me into a three-day weekend. So I'm officially declaring a hiatus for that length of time. It might go longer, but for now, I'm just going to plan on those five days.

After that, when I come back to work all caught up and facing a slow workload during the summer, I should have plenty of free time on my hands. I'm not nearly focused enough to spend all of that free time on my novel, so a good portion of it can be spent figuring out exactly what I want my online presence to be, and indeed, if I want an online presence at all at this stage of my life.

Meanwhile, those of you whom I haven't already contacted who have reason to care about all of my personal life blather can contact me about possibly getting access to my friends-only journal. I warn you, though, that previous experience has left me a bit paranoid, so if I don't know you in some context and am not reasonably certain I can trust you not to abuse your access privileges, I probably won't respond. Not that there's much to abuse--it's pretty boring over there.

Whatever decision I come to, I'll keep you posted here, so don't go deleting those feed subscriptions just yet. In the mean time, have a good week, folks. Thanks for reading.

Cheap DVDs!

All FOX Television DVD sets are on sale for $19.99 at Best Buy. It says FOX TV, but it must include 20th Century Fox productions that aired elsewhere, because Buffy and Angel are included. Angel Season Five, you will at last be mine!

(Psst! And if you buy them at the store in person and use this coupon, you can get them for only $9.99!) Never mind. I didn't realize when I linked it that it's not an online coupon, it's just a scan of a hard copy somebody picked up in the store. I'm pretty sure printing copies and trying to use them isn't kosher.

Found via Whedonesque.

Zuh

I woke up this morning with the mother of all neck cricks, extending down into my shoulder and making it impossible to do the little things, like turning my head or lifting my right arm or moving at all, without becoming nauseated and nearly blacking out from the pain. Good times.

Despite this, I tried to soldier on. I dragged myself into the shower, thinking that the hot water would loosen up my muscles a bit, and ended up huddled in the bottom of the bathtub, my head propped up on the side, the shampoo still in my hair dripping into my eyes, where I did my best to stay conscious and not cry or throw up, praying and wondering how in the world I was going to get out of the shower by myself, and not being able to muster the strength to shout for my husband to wake up and come help me.

Eventually, I managed to sit up and rinse my hair and then drag myself out of the shower, into some clothes, and down the stairs to the community kitchen. I've done this whole weird dizziness and near-blackout thing before, and eating usually helps [note to self: ask doctor about low blood sugar]. I had to take a lot of sitting down breaks on the way, but somehow, I got myself a glass of milk, then fell down into a comfy chair and curled up with my milk until all of the dizziness and stomach ishiness went away.

Not a fun way to start the morning, lemmetellya.

Despite all that, I was only ten minutes late to work (yes, I came to work. I wanted to call in sick, but I have a big job to handle today, and I didn't feel right about pawning it off on CAG unless I absolutely had to). Of course, I had to bring my makeup with me and put it on once I got here, and my hair's pretty hopeless; but I'm here. I'm still feeling pretty weak, and my neck and shoulder still hurt like a hurty thing, but at least it's not nausea-inducing pain anymore, and the dizziness seems to be of the past. I think I'm going to survive.

Ow.

O HAI. I HAS A WURK.

Apologies for the slow turn the blog has taken lately. Work is busy (not in the "OMG everybody needs me NOW how'mIgonnadothis" kind of way, but in the actually having time to clear some of the neglected piles of non-urgent stuff off of my desk and out of my inbox way--it's nice), and the novel's going great--which, if it's going at all, that's pretty great right there--and between the two, I have very little time or mental energy left for blogging. Don't worry, I'm sure it won't last.

On a completely unrelated and random note: I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? is a great tool for whenever you need to scrub out a disturbing mental image. "Oh my Lord that's disgust--oh, lolkitties! Ha ha!"

Speaking of meditating on not-impure things (oh, come on. What's more good and pure than fluffy kitties?), any Christians in my modest little readership might enjoy reading Internet Monk, a Christian School teacher who's got some thoughtful, thought-provoking, and downright soul-convicting things to say about the state of post-modern evangelicalism. His entire blog's a good read. And he's got a podcast, too!

KAE BAI!

Seeing Grey

If you agree with my (spoilerificent) rant about Grey's Anatomy, then this blog post by Shonda Rhimes, about her reasons behind some of the last season's creative choices and where it's all going, might make you feel better. About some things, at least. But probably not so much about Izzie.

I still liked her better when she was an alien.

End of Season Pop Culture Round-up

It's a bit late, but here's a smattering of the things that have held my attention over the last couple of weeks.

NOTE: I'm avoiding spoilers up front, but feel free to be as detailed and spoilerific as you like in the comments.

OTHER NOTE: If you don't want to get spoiled, don't read the comments.

OTHER OTHER NOTE: Or the Gray's Anatomy commentary at the bottom.

In Theaters: Bug - this only held my attention because I paid money to see it (or my husband did, anyway) and I was kind of stuck there with nothing better to do until it was over. Dear Lord in Heaven, I can't remember the last time I felt so ripped off by a movie. We actually sat in the theater after it was over debating whether there was a chance that the theater would give us our money back, since we stayed for the whole thing, and decided probably not, since it's not like it was the theater's fault that the marketing for this movie was a CAMPAIGN OF LIES.

I can't really say that this movie sucked, because for what it is, it's technically well done and features some excellent performances. I can give it that. But what this movie is is TOTALLY NOT A HORROR MOVIE, you LYING BASTIGES. Seriously, I spent the entire movie waiting for a payoff that that the movie's marketing led me to expect and that never came, and it pissed me off too much for me to be able to say anything objective about the actual film. Just know if you decide to give it a chance that you'll be seeing a not-that-thrilling psychological drama about domestic violence, conspiracy paranoia, and craaaaazy Okies ('cause we're all craaaaaazy, donchaknow), with some dark humor that may or may not be intentional, depending on how much credit you want to give Ashley Judd's acting skills, and that doesn't contain a single, solitary mutant monster bug. Because did I mention this isn't a horror movie?

Sigh.

Rentals: MST3K: A Touch of Satan. I didn't mention the last Mystie title we rented, Hellcats, a movie so abominable that not even Joel and the 'bots could infuse it with entertainment value. After that, AToS was like a breath of fresh comedy. It's a cheesy (what else?) early 1970s horror-movie-slash-love-story about a pair of witches and the salvation and true love that only devotion to Satan sorry - Mormo can bring. It has enough unintentional humor all by itself that the commentary is almost an afterthought. Also, "This is where the fish lives" is my new catch phrase.

Books: Finished White Night, the latest entry in The Dresden Files, and it deserves its own post, and will get one later. But I loves me some Harry Dresden. Started The Line Between by Peter S. Beagle, and read the sequel to The Last Unicorn contained therein, and cried and cried, and vowed to reread TLU later this year. Also started The Android's Dream by Scalzi. I'm not very deep into it yet, but it's a pretty entertaining read so far.

Television/TiVo: The Gilmore Girls finale made me cry, in the good way. I still feel a little cheated that they waited until the last minute to reunite Luke and Loralei, but their reunion was so perfect, and the entire episode felt so right. The Veronica Mars finale (and the four episodes leading up to it) made me sigh. I actually thought the last part of the season showed signs of improvement, and now I'm sad that the threads that were left hanging will never be resolved. And I still love Logan. What will I do without my Logan fix? Sigh.

The two-part Supernatural season finale also made me cry a lot, in addition to kicking about twenty different kinds of hinder. This is dangerously close to becoming my official favorite show. It's only real competition at this point is...

Heroes, whose season finale did not disappoint, and kicked an equal amount of hinder. And also made me cry. Do you sense a theme? I want to hug the Petrelli brothers. Among other things.

Gray's Anatomy (SPOILER ALERT!)

So let me get this straight: You have a couple who's getting married, and the bride is totally into planning the big wedding, and the groom would really prefer something simple and low-key, but he goes along with the hullabaloo in the interest of making his would-be spouse happy, and this is... completely normal; but if you reverse the genders on this equation, then it's a sign of a fundamental flaw in the relationship and proof that the one who wants the big wedding just doesn't love his intended enough to be down with her non-girly ways? Is that the message I'm supposed to be getting? Or is it that Burke's an artard?

But I can't pick on Burke, because I'm not any more irritated with him than I am with the rest of the entire cast. Except Alex, because he actually did the right thing choosing not to be a home wrecker, Izzie Stephens, and by the by, if you are truly George's friend, and you truly love him, then you do NOT burden him with your inappropriate (and still unbelievable) feelings and ask him to throw away his marriage so that YOU can have a stab at happiness.

Dear Marti Noxon (and company): Please don't make me hate Izzy. I finally made my peace with "Seeing Red" (see two posts down), but I'm not ready to give you so much credit that I trust where you're going with this George business. So just stop it right now, pleasekthxbai.

I guess really the only other people who suck right now are Derek and Meredith. Particularly Derek, because he knew she was self-absorbed going in, and he waited until a particularly stressful and horrific time in her life to decide he's not okay with it. Kind of reminds me of a certain Initiative soldier who waited until his superheroic girlfriend's mom had a brain tumor to decide he couldn't handle her independence and wanted her to be needier. And I will stop making Buffy comparisons now. Promise.

But I can't promise to stop blaming everything on Marti. Old habits die hard.

And I am officially caught up on my television viewing for the 2007 spring season. Now I'm eagerly awaiting July and the summer season, particularly Big Brother (yes. Shut up.) and Dr. Who. In the meantime, methinks my temporary Blockbuster discount card will be getting a workout.

Angel 2.0

David Greenwalt has been hired to executive produce CBS's Moonlight.

Er. Huh. They really are just doing their darnedest to bring back Angel, aren't they?