burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

A UCC church in Connecticut posted this set of churchy Valentines -- which I saw because our Associate Pastor shared it in our church's private FB group.

I tagged Thom in comments and said, "OMG, so many puns! 😂 Some of them are really terrible, but I'm genuinely delighted by a bunch of them."

Which led to this in private chat (I've added some annotations for the reader [in brackets]):

( Read more... )

Speaking of canceling Joss, I'd heard about Ray Fisher and Charisma Carpenter [Edit: Oh, and what Joss's ex-wife Kai Cole said], but today discovered "an entire horror story in a sentence" about Michelle Trachtenberg 😭

Yes, I know I shouldn't be allowed to get my hopes up regarding tv ever -- especially when it's on FOX.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles: trailer up on YouTube + Joss comment on the whedonesque page

Summer Glau's character appears to be made of awesome, and the young male protagonist is played by the actor who played Zach on Heroes.

8 hours of sleep last night.  Not so much happening tonight, huh?
I'm definitely fighting off a cold, but I think I'll win.

The AvonWalk commercial or whatever it is The Breast Cancer 3-Day commercial has one bald woman, and Mary Alice commented on how great she looks and she mentioned how Natalie Portman was bald in some role and looked great and I suggested V for Vendetta and she didn't know but IMDb-ing afterward I was right.  And I totally knew this thanks to your icon.

At dinner tonight my dad was talking about how hybrids that look funny sell well but hybrid SUVs that look like regular SUVs don't sell at all 'cause so much of the point of getting a hybrid is being able to advertise the fact that one drives a hybrid, and driving and SUV is totally anithetical to that image.

I watched snippets of the Olympic skating with my mom tonight.  Including a guy of whom I had seen icons earlier in the week.  ( spoilers? for men's skating tonight )

Amazon's having a 4-for-3 promotion on select titles -- though you still have to have specifics in mind or a lot of free time 'cause SFF is 220 pages and Teens is 179.  On the bottom of the Teens page?  Elmo Loves You (Big Bird's Favorites Brd Bks) (Board book) / by Sarah Albee, Maggie Swanson (Illustrator)

I feel like I should have more anecdotes, but today was a slow day.

Joy, however.  Got an e-mail, subject line: The Beauty in the Stones.  Body text: "Hey. I just read this and I had to let you know that is was one of the sweetest things I've ever read. // Sorry to bother you."

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My cunning plan for V-Day was to just ignore it, but clearly that hasn't happened.  [Though I was amused to realize as I walked into work that my all-black outfit could have been construed as a statement on the day.  It was honestly just because I had a meeting and think black looks professional; plus I like that outfit.]

"Valentine" by the Get Up Kids [sing365.com lyrics here] came up on random on my WinAmp and I thought I'd share for anyone who's feeling bitter.  And then "You Are My Joy" by Reindeer Section [stlyrics.com lyrics here] came up, so I'm sharing that, too, for those who are happily partnered.

Cat, this made me think of you.

Linda's from Arizona and said when she didn't feel like celebrating Valentine's Day she would celebrate Arizona's statehood instead.  I meant to e-mail Nao 'cause of that.

2 years; wow.

via illiterate, hp_hardcore valentines (and from 2005).  Much with the squicky, though I find some of them fabulous.

via wisdomeagle: a fabulous V-Day card (because of the surprise object of the letter)

Also: linguist valentines (via sineala)

I realized as the train pulled into my home station that I could have gotten flowers for my mom.  My brother sent her an e-card, though.  At least one of us wins :)

Actual update, forthcoming, but it occurs to me that it needs to be said:

Today's NYT interview with Joss about Serenity: "there's rather a major, if vague, spoiler in one of the interview questions" (as musesfool puts it). I say, if you haven't seen the movie, don't read the article. [If you have seen it, the link is here.]

Spoiler-free excerpt behind the cut (because it's rather lengthy): ( Read more... )

Dear friends:

Saturday, June 11, from 2-5pm, my mother is putting together a joint graduation party for me and my brother (who graduates high school June 5).

I can e-mail you directions to my house if you don't know how to get there.  You can also take the 1:20 Franklin Line from South Station to Norwood Central ($7.50 round trip) and i can meet you at the station.

Also, i need to see Laughing Wild at some point.  [It runs June 3-26 at Virginia Wimberly Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion (539 Tremont).  Tickets are $42, except "Last Row Orchestra" are only $14.]  Anyone wanna come with?

In actual updatey news, remember how i responded to a slew of craigslist postings last weekend?  Well i'm used to hearing back from the actual person who would be hiring me, but i keep ending up at staffing firms (like temp agencies, only more professional).  I quit after 3.  I expect they'll be quite useful, but i'm so glad i'll have a change of pace next week learning to bartend as i am weary of interviewing.

Interview questions you should be able to answer, especially for staffing firms.
-What are your strengths?
-What are your weaknesses?
-Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?
-What would be your ideal job?
-What kinds of work are you interested in?
-What kinds of fields are you interested in?

In case anyone is interested in registering with Boston staffing firms, here's the sum-up of my experiences so far.

-We've already established that i quite like Marc of Williams Lea, though i'm irked that it took them until just now to inform me that in fact i hadn't gotten the job i interviewed for on Tuesday.
-At Venturi i met with Caitlin.  She was helpful with concrete things like tweaking my resume to make it more professional and practicing interview questions.  She also said i need to invest in professional clothes -- black blazer, black dress pants, that sort of thing -- for interviews.  The idea of having to dress that professionally kinda wigs me out.  She said some places it might just be necessary for the interview and not for the actual job, but still.
-PSG seemed similar in that their materials include explanations of the different levels of professional/business attire that would be required for various jobs.  My overwhelming impression was just that they were really big.  I wasn't particularly taken with them.
-At Manning Associates i met with Catherine, and that was very low-key, and i suspect i'll like them best.

My weekend (and by weekend i mean Thursday/Friday :) ) was spent geeked out and which much thanks to Meredith, who did the obsessive-compulsive planning thing (for which i am so grateful).  I also got Meredith childhood nostalgia tours both nights.

Thursday we saw Serenity.  I also saw assorted of my people.  We sat behind Alle&co., and Allie generously shared the vast majority of her popcorn with me.  We also saw ahlksey and jettaprincess (who sat behind us i think).

Of the May 5th screening, dorrie6 said, "I'm really not going to say much about it, because it is my very strong conviction that everyone should go into that movie unspoiled."  I agree.  Dude, Meredith agrees, and she was always the one trying to spoil me for Buffy and Angel episodes.

I will say, though.  The opening talky bit from Joss?  It is so obvious how much he loves his show.

( Joss quotations from FireflyFans.net -- no spoilers )

On the T afterward, Meredith and i joined conversation with Phaedra, who was sitting behind us, and whom we had never met before but whom it turned out i had read fanfic by (well, one piece).  Meredith appropriately pointed out that i was the one of the two of us who does the fanfic thing -- her phraseology was something along the lines of "she writes crazy smut," which is true.  We had gone out the back entrance -- not meaning to -- so we missed out on the keychains, but Phaedra gave Meredith hers, which was kind of her.

Meredith and i discussed how well we thought the movie would appeal to non-fans.  Of course the solution is to make everyone watch the DVDs and then see the movie :)  (I think i need to use my $10 Amazon gift certificate to purchase the DVDs.) [Edit: I approve of this.]

I'm not entirely sure how i feel about this whole Advance Screening thing.  (Allie said, "it messes with the fun dynamics of all the crazy fans waiting with bated breath together, and then storming the theaters. I enjoy that social part almost as much as I enjoy that kind of movie itself," which i get, but there are spoiler-hos in every fandom, so it doesn't entirely hold up for me.)  I'm glad i'll have time to process the movie before i see it with everyone in September, though.  (And yes i'm returning to Northampton for opening weekend -- though it occurs to me that i'll probably have to purchase my ticket online and thus won't get to do the student discount thing.  Le tragedie.)  And there's definitely the addded incentive to get people into the show having seen the movie and knowing.

Having now seen the movie, i watched the trailer.  And i am very glad that i saw the movie without having seen the trailer.  It doesn't spoil much beyond the basic plot catalyst, but not only am i glad i went in not knowing what the plot was gonna be about, but a lot of the really hot scenes are in the trailer and i was glad i got to see them for the first time in context and surprised.

IMDb says, "According to an interview with Alan Tudyk, this is the first movie in a three-picture Firefly contract with Universal."  There is also a comic book mini-series coming out this summer which supposedly fills in the 6 months (or part of it, at least) between the end of the show and the movie.

And there's a post-"Chosen" pro novel i might actually read.

The OMWF sing-along on Friday was rather a different dynamic.

Tickets went on sale at 10pm, and they let us into the theatre proper at 11:40, so there was a lot of hanging out outside.  We met up with a friend of Meredith's and a friend of said friend and the cohort she had accumulated.  There was discussion of which scenes/lines scream "Joss" in movies he was involved with (X-Men, Waterworld, Titan AE) and there were also assorted rounds of Thunderdome.  It was decided that The Operative (Serenity) vs. Superstar!Jonathan (Buffy) would end with The Operative falling in love with Jonathan.  For Olaf vs. Jayne there was much discussion of weapons, and Jesse (one of the guys in the cohort) did such a good Olaf -- his reaction to various different possibilities and even tonal inflection.  And in a different context he did meerkat impressions.  And he likes Dawn.  I heart him.

The Queer Soup pre-show was disappointing.
They give you goodie bags with stuff to aid in the interactiveness and show the movie with the subtitles on.  Very Rocky Horror.
During "Mustard" they had people with drycleaning shirts and we threw mustard packets.
Wow you can see a lot of detail when it's movie-size.  Like Tara's earrings on the edge of the screen during her and Giles' duet.  And okay, her boobs as the climactic sequence of "Under Your Spell" begins.  The goodie bags included New Years poppers for the end of that scene.
And when she says, "Those boys really thought I was hot? " during "Under Your Spell," one guy yelled, "Yeah we do!"
After Willow said, "I'm not large with the butch," i yelled, "Not yet!" which i thought was better than the repeated yells of "she's evil" that greeted a lot of Willow.
After Buffy says to Giles (after "Standing in the Way") "What would I do without you?" there's a long pause, so i had to say, "start banging Spike."
After Spike sings, "You just love to play the thought that you might misbehave" during "Rest in Peace," i yelled, "I aim to misbehave," which was my favorite of the callbacks.
The theatre did neat flashing lights during the fire engine portion of the "walk through the fire" scene.
Having just seen Serenity, i kept seeing parallels, and when they all go out to 'walk through the fire,' i noticed that Xander has a brown coat, which i had never connected before.  (Speaking of, if you want your own browncoat...)
Oh, and there must be fanfic in which Sweet does take Xander, but i don't think i've ever seen it.

There were prizes for trivia afterward.  The complaint that it wasn't so much Buffy trivia as Buffy cast&crew/staff trivia was valid, but i still thought the questions were easy.

During a particularly bleak stretch on the drive home, Meredith and i discussed the possibility of a 4 cabbies of the apocalypse.  [The Four Horsemen are in fact War, Famine, Pestilence, Death.]  The moon was pretty, though.

Chatting with my brother about the kinds of heat/cooking things you're usually not allowed to bring to college, i mentioned Smith's alphabetical listing.  He pointed out that a wok is basically a big frying pan so you could bring it and just have it be useless, that it could add to the "tae bo... feng shui" of the room.  He was just struggling to find the correct phrase, but i'm amused by the idea of "tae bo feng shui."