So, um, an update.

[hermionesviolin]

Saw Christine on the train coming back from Boston today. Awkward isn’t the word for the superficial catching-up kind of small talk us graduates do because i’ve ceased to expect anything more from these encounters. I think the best descriptor for them is “neutral.”

My Steve Maddens are totally falling apart, which makes me so growly. Usually i buy a pair of shoes at Payless for about $10-15 and then buy a replacement pair a year later when they’re falling apart. This year it was the wrong season for the kind of shoes i wanted when mine were falling apart, so figuring it was worth dropping some extra money on shoes that would last since i’ve been getting the same style for years. So i bought a pair of Steve Maddens and a pair of Mudds (i couldn’t decide which pair i liked better and figured it was good to have more than one pair of shoes). Each cost approximately $30. It turns out that with any serious walking the Mudds eat up my feet. And less than three months after purchasing them, my Steve Maddens are totally falling apart. We are not amused.

Speaking of money, recently it occurred to me that i think $9 for a movie is obscene but i spend $2.50 round trip to buy a $3.95 fruit smoothie that i finish by the time the subway hits the third station. Guess we all have our quirks.

Got my I Bificus CD today. It seems to have taken the scenic route through the USPS (it was postmarked July 20). Turns out i ordered the American version, having forgotten that there are two versions of that album and that the one i had was the Canadian one. And it’ll cost me close to $15 to get another copy of the Canadian version. Damn what the hell happened to my CD? I have the case; the CD just seems to have vanished. Not that it’s the end of the world having the American version. It does have 2 songs the Canadian one doesn’t have (though i liked the Canadian CD’s bonus tracks of remixes of “spaceman” and “lucky”). However, when i put it into my computer (which is how i listen to almost all of my music) it wants to install HyperCD, so i haven’t actually listened to it yet and thus don’t know if the versions of the shared songs differ markedly (the listed track times are slightly different). Hopefully i can use the CD to make a mix CD without having to install HyperCD.

I really haven’t been doing much besides going to work, reading books, and watching videos.

Lost in Translation was so very underwhelming. Why do i see/read things just because everyone and her roommate said it was good?

I was surprised at how much i liked Empire Records and Chasing Amy, though.

The Incredibly True Story of Two Girls in Love is not the greatest movie ever made, but you’ve gotta respect a movie that takes on the portrayal of the awkwardness of adolescent relations so realistically. Plus, “Unshelter me” is such a hot line.

Reading The Importance of Being Earnest i kept feeling reminded of Christopher Durang and had to keep reminding myself that of course Durang came after Wilde. (I also read The Picture of Dorian Gray, and was struck by how much Harry’s philosophy reminded me so much of Sade.)

I read My Sister’s Keeper (Jodi Picoult) because SheOfTheManyUserNames insisted. It’s a story i wouldn’t have thought of. Very well-done. I’ll never think of that Chicken Soup for the Soul story about the little boy who agrees to give blood for his sister, thinking they’re going to take all of it, the same way again. Joanne said she didn’t like the ending. It didn’t feel entirely right to me either, but i’m not sure there’s any ending that would have been *right* -- which only makes sense, i suppose, given the book.

Endless Nights came in while i was working Wednesday morning, so i brought it home. Because i’d read Dream Hunters, when i see Endless Nights talked about i keep thinking i’ve already read it. I was unimpressed at first, but by the time it got to “The Heart of a Star” i was again reminded of why i love Gaiman so much.

I was not particularly enthralled by this year’s Smith summer reading book. This may be a theme.

I enjoyed The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen quite a lot. *hearts on the referentiality* (and the hotness, and the snark)

buffyverse1000
1000 Buffyverse Pairings
Because our fandom's the sluttiest of them all, dammit

dorrie6, have you or any of your people heard of drop_the_u? rhipowered posted mentioning it and i thought about the recent talk on your journal about Americanisms and Britishisms in fic. (The reverse -- though HP-centric -- exists in the form of hp_britglish)

And continuing with the text theme... a while back, carpdeus posted this year’s Bulwer-Lytton contest winners. I actually liked some of them.

Runner-Up:
The notion that they would no longer be a couple dashed Helen's hopes and scrambled her thoughts not unlike the time her sleeve caught the edge of the open egg carton and the contents hit the floor like fragile things hitting cold tiles, more pitiable because they were the expensive organic brown eggs from free-range chickens, and one of them clearly had double yolks entwined in one sac just the way Helen and Richard used to be.
Pamela Patchet Hamilton
Beaconsfield, Quebec
Canada

Dishonorable Mention: Children's Literature
As he entered the room within which so many a wild night of their sweltering love affair had been spent, the White Rabbit regarded her with benevolent eyes, her posture such that he suspected something was wrong, but before he could speak Alice unburied her face from her trembling hands and between her intense sobs he made out the words, "I'm late . . . I'm late."
Cory Gano
Camas, WA

Runner-Up: Dark and Stormy Night
It was a dark and stormy night--actually not all that dark, but more dusky or maybe cloudy, and to say "stormy" may be overstating things a bit, although the sidewalks were still wettish and smelled of ozone, and, truth be told, characterizing the time as night is a stretch as it was more in the late, late afternoon because I think Oprah was still on.
Gregory Snider, MD
Lexington, KY

Winner: Fantasy Fiction
Gringran Roojner had only gone to see the Great Warlock of Loowith to get his horoscope and he couldn't believe he'd been sent on a quest for the legendary Scromer of Nothleen to ask him for the answer to the Riddle of Shimmererer so that he could give it to the Guardians of Vooroniank, thereby gaining access to the Cave of Zothlianath where he would find the seldom seen Cowering of Groojanc, whose spittle was an absolute necessity in the making of the Warlock's famous pound cake, the kind with raisins.
Sandra Millar
Gowkthrapple, Wishaw
Scotland

Winner: Historical Fiction
Galileo Galilei gazed expectantly through his newly invented telescope and then recoiled in sudden horror -- his prized thoroughbred's severed neck, threateningly discarded in a murky mass of interstellar dust (known to future generations as the Horsehead Nebula), left little doubt about where the Godfather and his Vatican musclemen stood on the recent geocentric/heliocentric debate.
Don Mowbray
San Antonio, TX

Runner-Up: Fiction for the Erudite
The cat's whiskers twitched like the wings of a butterfly, not a large butterfly like a monarch, but a small one, like an Eastern Pine Elfin, which camouflages wonderfully with the bark of trees, not just pine trees, but also elm trees, whose slender twigs wave in the early spring breeze, looking like the twitching whiskers of the cat, which I have just mentioned.
Megan Z. Dinerman
King of Prussia, PA

Dishonorable Mention:
He heard a bang, well not really a bang but more of a crash with metallic overtones of platinum-encrusted steel alloys, hammering against unyielding iron and iridium plates; or maybe it was the clash of huge nickel-zinc rods hitting molybdenum fused sheets of tantalum, then he felt a stab of pain and heard another bang, and wished, instead of using his extensive metallurgy skills to try and analyze the sound, he would have run like hell when he first saw the gun pointed at him.
Ken Loomes
Winnipeg, Manitoba

Runner-Up: Purple Prose
She was a tough one, all right, as tough as a marshmallow--not one of those soft sticky ones used in s'mores, cooked to a turn over a good campfire, or even like the stale chewy type covered in yellow sugar and found at the bottom of a three-week-old Easter basket--no, she was tough like a freeze-dried marshmallow in kid's cereal that despite being shaped like a little balloon and colored a friendly pink are so rock solid that they are responsible for the loss of more baby teeth than most older siblings.
Bridget Lyle
Walworth, NY

Dishonorable Mention
Students often said that Dr. Storm's lectures were duller than dishwater, not the dishwater after a holiday meal with brightly colored vegetable bits and shimmering glosses of vinaigrette, but the dishwater after a Wednesday night macaroni dinner, when the cheese has disintegrated into slime and the macaroni has become mush clogging the drain.
Alaine Sepulveda
Las Cruces, NM

Winner: Romance
Looking up from his plate of escargots, Sean gazed across the table at Sharon and sadly realized that her bubbly personality now reminded him of the bubbles you get when you put salt on a slug and it squirms around and foams all over the place, and her moist lips were also like the slime on a slug but before you salted it, though after all these years Sharon still smelled better than slugs, but that could have been the garlic butter on her escargots.
David K. Lynch
Topanga, CA

Dishonorable Mentions: Vile Puns
As Reynoldo lit the votive candle at the grotto for San Jose de los Platanos and prayed for the healthy delivery of his first child, he heard a disembodied voice say, "Your daughter will be 17 inches long," to which Reynoldo replied, "do you know the weight, too, San Jose?
Tom O'Leary
Covina CA

Alas, all he wanted was to be the best barber in the world, even if only by a hair, but, alas he found his ambition thwarted by a headlong rush of fate and an unexpected side effect of his tonsorial skill -- everyone he served became strangely calmer and less argumentative, and he discovered that people were coming to him only for his kinder cuts, this barber of civility.
Alan B. Combs
Austin, TX

Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions
The day dawned much like any other day, except that the date was different.
Geoff Blackwell
Bundaberg , Queensland
Australia

Africa: a land of deserts and jungles, a land of wars ancient and recent, ravaged by disease and famine and yet the source of nine-tenths of the world's diamonds, a land of gigantic waterfalls and the great Rift Valley, the very source of all humanity, a land 6000 miles away from where this story takes place.
Jason Dias
Colorado Springs, CO

Stamp, stack, stamp, stack, stamp, stack, Rodney was going insane from the monotony of the job and the cruel irony of being guest of the New Hampshire penal system forced to read the words over and over: "Live Free or Die," "Live Free or Die," "Live Free or Die."
Denise Hendsbee
Santa Cruz, CA

Maynard Fimble was told that "you can't compare apples and oranges," but, he thought, they are both eatable, grow on trees, are about the same size, are good for you, have a peel, come in many varieties, and are approximately round in shape, thus, to his horror and guilt, he realized that he was comparing them and wondered what punishment awaited him and on whose order.
Charles Jaworski
North Pole, AK

"Call me Ishmael," Joanna finally began, a scant fourteen hours before her book report was due, and she sympathized with him and reflected on the likeness of the vast paper tome in front of her to the cetacean antagonist immortalized within, or at least she would have if she'd had any idea what the book was about.
Don Laursen
Grand Rapids, MI

Keith's popularity as the first openly gay daredevil was rising quickly; in fact, it was said he ate danger for breakfast, followed by a light brunch of lemon scones, quiche, and the occasional Mimosa, and then he was back to eating danger.
Nathan Murray
San Diego, CA

Johnny's first kiss with Melissa knocked him back on his heels like the bass line of the "Theme from Peter Gunn" -- an odd sensation since Johnny wasn't born until 1972 and Peter Gunn was over because Blake Edwards, who created Peter Gunn, had begun the Pink Panther movies starring another Peter, Peter Sellars, best remembered for his performance as Chauncey Gardner in "Being There" but whose truly great role was in "Dr. Strangelove" co-starring Slim Pickens who rides an atomic bomb to earth where it explodes -- and that was what Melissa's first kiss was really like.
Kent Neely
Edwardsville, IL

It was a dark and stormy night, not so dark that one couldn't see a hungry Wallaby in a patch of wild gooseberries at fifty paces, nor stormy enough that a severe weather watch had been issued by the National Weather Services Department, but a dark and stormy night nevertheless.
Allan Newell
Toronto, ON
Canada

I will tell you a tale of great adventure like in "Treasure Island," with some smiles and some tears like in "Lassie Come Home," some treachery and some heroism, again, like in "Treasure Island," some romance and some betrayal like in lots of Shakespeare ("Romeo and Juliet," for example), and even -- if the reader doesn't mind -- some philosophy, but like the Chicken Soup books not like Spinoza or Plato or anything.
David Wyman
Goffstown, NH

Comments

[rhipowered.livejournal.com]

The third one from the bottom of the page is by someone from my hometown. I don't know him, though.

[dorrie6.livejournal.com]

Hey thanks for the link to drop_the_u! I'd known about hp_britglish and have used it as a resource many times when I've had questions while writing HP fic. I hadn't known there was an equivalent for Americanisms. Interesting title for the community, though... I wouldn't expect British writers to use American spelling in any case. Lord knows I don't attempt British spelling when I write. Heh. Anyway- cool community! I've joined up in case I can help anyone out.

[oatmilk.livejournal.com]

ha. number 2 is a killer!

[lilithchilde.livejournal.com]

Yay, I'm glad you liked Empire Records! That movie needs more love. Also, pretty much my opinion on Two Girls In Love as well. *nod* (I really love the part where the redhead falls off the bed saying "I sing the body electric!" Okay, so maybe I just like the film because I think she's incredibly cute. :p)

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Evie is beautiful. Randy's not really my type, though. (I tend to go for femmey girls.) You know she grows up to be Justine on Angel, right? (I forget if we had this conversation.)

[lilithchilde.livejournal.com]

Evie's pretty, but not my type. I like femmey sometimes, but andros are my favorite if I have to pick. :) And we did have that conversation, yeah, I know, it's just *weird*. She got uncute, sadly.

[hedy.livejournal.com]

what's i bifcus?

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I Bificus is the an album by Canadian singer Bif Naked (http://www.herroyalmajestysrecords.com/bif/). My copy of the CD seems to have vanished from its case, so i ordered a replacement copy from half.com

[Damn, looking at the website i wanna buy more stuff. DVD of videos? Her early spoken words CDs actually available?]

[samfeasor.livejournal.com]

Plus, “Unshelter me” is such a hot line.

Omigawd, yes. Best. Line. Ever. When it first came out (no pun intended), I was the same age that the protaganists (Evie and... Randy?) were, and so I'll always love it just for existing for me as a movie about angsty silly teenage girls-in-love instead of angsty silly teenage straightish kids like every other movie.

[bella-loki.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you liked League! (*grins like a madwoman and refrains from hugging her poster* It's on the wall and at this point I want it to stay on the wall)