http://somethingpositive.net/sp05032008.shtml

What made me the most pissed about the X-men book was the flashback panel showing Pixie's happy school days at Xavier's. The one where she's playing baseball in a long sleeved ribbed leotard and no pants.

(And then, really, that's only if you count 'made me pissed' and 'made me roll my eyes' as the same thing.)

(The Drawn and Quarterly book was really good, as was the collection of old EC comics!)

stolen from ignescent

I don't usually do these because I am all like, "wah! No one will do it and then I'll feel lame and stupid!!!"

so um... help that not happen please and thank you.


Leave one memory of you and me together. It doesn't matter if I know you a little or a lot, anything you remember! Next, post this in your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you.

it when I wake up and it's all pretty out and there are things that I want to do like go pick up some soil from Kathy for my herb garden. (Which is already yellow and limp even though I water it faithfully. I am going to go on the Morticia Addams school of gardening -- arranging dead stems and calling it lovely.)

I don't like it when I wake up and it's a beautiful day with things in it to do and all I have to do is take a shower and go out, but instead for some reason I sit for two hours at the computer, reading archives of Separated by a common language and, like, the Wikipedia entry for Pepper Potts and stuff.

Blablablagrumblestupid.

HELLO!!! HAPPY GOOD MORNING! I AM GOING TO TAKE A SHOWER NOW! I AM GOING TO USE MY FANCY EXPENSIVE SHAMPOO FROM AVEDA!!!

************

Iron man is really good. If you're not doing anything today you should probably go see it. Renee is awesome and so brought airplane bottles of Hennessy, so we drank every time Tony S. mentioned weapons (and also, you know, any time he looked particularly cool in his Iron Man suit and any time there was an especially impressive explosion).

My grandmother had an antique Chatty Cathy doll. Her speaking mechanism involved a series of small plastic records that were inserted into her back. My grandmother only had one of the records though - a collection of maxims and proverbs. I played with that doll non-stop and never got sick of her tinny chirping. "A watched pot... never boils." I remember her saying, complete with the random and meaningless pause between pot and never.

This has nothing to do with anything really, but I left D&D early because Eisley was playing at the Cat's Cradle, and I had to leave when we were fighting an abolith (sp?) and everyone was nearly dead, and I was nearly dead and charmed besides, but I had to go because I called the Cradle and they were like, "we're on the third band and Eisley is the fourth." So I emailed an "Am I dead? Are we dead?" to the group, and I can't accept that I won't receive a reply before morning. It is too cruel.

But Eisley was good. They pulled another sister on stage for half a song, proving again that they are a bottomless well of siblings, and the guitarist sang a little which made me glad because she always sings along un-miked anyways.

And now I really am going to bed.

After checking AOL one more time.

At the Carolina for Retrofantasma last night, I ran into darklordmoeser and the perpetually lurking lexman1978. Had just enough time to think, 'Huh. who knew they were Cronenberg fans?' before realizing that, duh, they were there for The Yeomen of the Guard. I'm glad I did run into them because I would have completely missed the obvious fact that the two events were occurring simultaneously, and since I *did* realize, I was able to, erm... well... sneak into the theater between films and catch a glimpse of tribalkittykat and kibarika (right after a sextet went on about "rapture rapture doleful doleful"), and saw that they were both very pretty and adorably twinful.

Meanwhile, plans need to be made to see The Secret of Nimh among other UA movies, yes?

I kill an herb garden every summer. It's a ritual. This year, I've hung the container over my balcony on the theory that the shade of the balcony roof is why I so consistently fail. Still, I don't feel *very* confident. Confident enough to buy the stuff and fantasize about picking my own cilantro and parsley from the porch though.

*******edit***********

There is a bird corpse on my porch. As though the bird just keeled over there. Um... Maybe my gardens die because my porch is poisonous? I do paint minis out there... Or maybe it froze?

Jesus H, how do you remove a bird corpse? Without, like, touching it or really going near it?

Pretty accurate, though I think the strength and con scores are a bit inflated due to my high alcohol tolerance and the physical aspects of my job. (I use power tools. fun!) Man, I love memes of this nature.

I Am A: Neutral Good Half-Elf Druid/Bard (3rd/2nd Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-13

Dexterity-13

Constitution-11

Intelligence-13

Wisdom-13

Charisma-15


Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.


Race:
Half-Elves have the curiosity and ambition for their human parent and the refined senses and love of nature of their elven parent, although they are outsiders among both cultures. To humans, half-elves are paler, fairer and smoother-skinned than their human parents, but their actual skin tones and other details vary just as human features do. Half-elves tend to have green, elven eyes. They live to about 180.


Primary Class:
Druids gain power not by ruling nature but by being at one with it. They hate the unnatural, including aberrations or undead, and destroy them where possible. Druids receive divine spells from nature, not the gods, and can gain an array of powers as they gain experience, including the ability to take the shapes of animals. The weapons and armor of a druid are restricted by their traditional oaths, not simply training. A druid's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast.


Secondary Class:
Bards often serve as negotiators, messengers, scouts, and spies. They love to accompany heroes (and villains) to witness heroic (or villainous) deeds firsthand, since a bard who can tell a story from personal experience earns renown among his fellows. A bard casts arcane spells without any advance preparation, much like a sorcerer. Bards also share some specialized skills with rogues, and their knowledge of item lore is nearly unmatched. A high Charisma score allows a bard to cast high-level spells.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Regarding the cheese-steak shop with thePlease Speak English signs -- It makes me want to open a neighboring shop with signs that say, "Hell, just point. I'll take your money."

I am the kind of person who would rather pay to have my car battery replaced because it just died and wasn't my fault then have it be jump-startable and only dead be cause I left the dome light on or something. I've left the dome light on *enough* times in my short life. I would like to think I've moved beyond it.

So when the triple-A man's little electric reader thing said "replace battery" instead of "charge battery" this afternoon, I was just a little bit satisfied.

Then after he replaced the battery though, the car came back to life, and the mother effing *hazard* lights were on. *bug eyed hands-to-heavens foot stomp* How?!?!?

"You do put your foot on the dash." said John, which made me angrier. I do not put my *right* foot on the dash; how would I drive? Don't be ridiculous. I don't know how the hazard lights come on. I just know that somehow it was my fault.

But anyway, there is no nicer feeling than having your car start when it very recently wouldn't start, so I feel better anyway. And our game today was awesome in a we 'made it out of a "surrender or die" scenario (of the sort where the DM doesn't bother to make up what would happen if we win and so has to wing it) without doing either' kind of way. So that was nice. I shot perfectly and did great flipping wads of damage. And tomorrow is the Midtown Dickens show, and then my birthday. And Renee and I are going to see Duran Duran at Walnut Creek this summer, so I'm really not in a bad mood at all.

I am just $116.00 poorer. Damn.

I am feeling right self satisfied about emptying the dishwasher while home for lunch, boy howdy. Even though the sink is totally full of dirty dishes because the clean ones in the dishwasher were from, like, Friday or something. I will re-load it *after* work.

Also impressed with the 'home for lunch' portion of my achievement because the temptation to debit $10.00 for Chinese buffet was *SO* present this afternoon. I work next to the yummiest Chinese buffet IN THE WORLD. It is also the strangest, given that it has tacos and tamales on it. You wouldn't think so, but eventually you get to where egg rolls and tacos are a normal and in fact preferred lunch combination.

I avoided the temptation by calculating that the Dansko Lolitas that I covet are worth about twelve buffet lunches.

It is easy to feel all gold-starry and halo-ed if you treat yourself like a person with severe limitations and so reward yourself when you make even the most basic efforts. Still, I guess the alternative is to go "Gah! Do the dishes? Fuck that daunting and monumental task!" and do nothing which is the only other thing I can imagine I would do.

I would just like to say, for the record, that I feel nerdier about listening to NPR than I ever do about playing D&D.

That's all.

To be fair to myself (or, more accurately, to be overly lenient with myself... as usual) I have gotten a lot done today. My kitchen is filthy, the dining room table is a paper avalanche waiting to happen, and I haven't vacuumed in you-really-don't-want-to-know-how-long, but I *have* been productive today.

Laundry is happening in great glorious loads. Some club at the high school is having a garage sale for charity, and so I did an end of season sort and purge that was *dramatic*. Frightening, really.

Also I cleaned out my car. Sort-of-ish. I mean, I brought some stuff upstairs and threw out a ton of trash. Go me.

Today's best "chore" was ordering my new glasses.

( Ok, from here on out, I pretty much talk about shopping for clothes and eyeglasses. Seriously, if the search for pants that flatter my butt does not sound like an interesting topic to you, DO NOT CLICK THIS CUT!!! )

My boss called to tell me that Gary Gygax died this morning. I was kind of broken up which was hard to explain. I mean, not hard to explain exactly. I just had to apologize, "I'm sorry, I wouldn't have expected me to react like this either." Which, actually, maybe we should have. I am not exactly steel in the face of sad news.

Slightly amused by AOL news' D&D-for-the-layperson reporting. Quotes follow--

"The game known for its oddly shaped dice became a hit."

and

"Dungeons & Dragons players create fictional characters and carry out their adventures with the help of complicated rules."

Yep.

Kim, I wish I were with you so we could make a proper toast with our Mountain Dew.

John decided last night that The Lantern sounded really good and so we should celebrate my birthday a couple of weeks early (which makes sense since the weekends surrounding the day itself are already looking pretty booked).

I think Monday nights must be when The Lantern trains new staff. Either that or they've had a great amount of turnover recently. It suited me well as I appreciate enthusiasm and earnestness and sometimes feel like a bumpkin in the uber-schwank Lantern atmosphere. (They had a sign on the door saying "Due to drought conditions we are required to serve water on request only", and you could just imagine "though it *pains* us" added at the bottom.) The service wasn't bad, but the bar staff were less choreographed than usual. OK, and one server poured water in John's beer glass. John said, "Oh! That's beer!" But too late, and the server got this really funny-cute look on his face and said, "um, not anymore..." (he brought another.)

And they brought us a dessert because we had to wait quite a while for a table. Cocoa panne cotta with cherry sauce and *pocky*. (I am sure the cherry sauce had a special-er name than just "cherry sauce" Also, I think they had added another coating of goodness to the pocky.) Occasionally intimidating (not really) or no, that fact that The Lantern considers pocky an acceptable ingredient on their hojillion star menu is why they will always be my favorite restaurant.

...or anyone up for an interesting article about moral instinct. (Or up for illustrations by Optic Nerve's Adrian Tomine. His story telling hasn't grown as much as it might have in the last ten years, but he sure can draw human people, boy howdy.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Spent the weekend pretending to be a much more energetic person that I am in real life and benefited from it greatly. I had intended to sit Nevermore out as the only time I could go was Sunday afternoon and I had Big Party Plans for Saturday AND Sunday night and because Zombie Love (that would be the musical, Cait) wasn't even showing on Sunday. *But* Chris' new girlfriend called on Chris' recommendation looking for someone to go with, my brain glitched, and I thought, "Why aren't I going to Nevermore? It makes no sense."

So my full weekend schedule (keeping in mind that my weekend starts Saturday evening. Yay retail.) was as follows:

Saturday Night: Renee's birthday party at Sushi-Thai and then Legends (and then, after seven celebratory beverages, Renee's couch). Sushi-Thai makes awesome sushi. They make less than awesome tempura. Greasier than Fair food. Yuck. We ran into an old favorite employee from back in the Body Shop days at Legends. She said such sweetly earnest things about the influence we had on her life (she was 16 when she worked for us some 8 years ago) that it pretty much dragged me out of the black cloud I've been moping under. Then she bought us shots that we were far too gone to have been wise in accepting. Still, how can you say no to "Oh my god y'all! I'm going to do shots with my bosses from when I was Six-Teen!"

Sunday morning: Drive home. Yep. Breakfast with John. I made French toast.

Sunday Afternoon: Nevermore films Paperdolls and Frayed. I wanted Paperdolls to be so much better than it actually was. Memo to indy filmmakers: make me a good Bigfoot movie please and thank you. Possibly with a gay couple. The movie I expected and so half wrote in my head would have been awesome. Frayed more than made up for it, though. It should be on DVD soon.

Sunday Night: One of John's former students hosts a really swellegant Oscars party every year. I got to wear my prettiest dress and eat wonderful food (and drink juice with seltzer because Oh Em Gee last night). Also, I won a gift basket of Coen brothers films. So the fact that no movie that I cared anything about won anything barely stung. (I need to see Juno. I will get to seeing Juno, I promise.)

Disney is making a new 2D movie, and it's a princess movie, and the princess, Tiana, is black.

http://davidgilson.free.fr/petitpoulet/Tianafirstlook.jpg

Did everyone know this already? I don't get TV, so sometimes I don't realize how far out of the loop I am.

I'd like to point out that I've been saying since Disney shut down their 2D studios that they should make another princess movie, and that it should be "Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters" which won the Newberry medal when I was in grade school and the pictures from which stuck with me so fast that a quick googling of them just now knocked me back to the fifth grade in a way that nothing else could have.

The plot was less memorable -- sort of a mash up of Cinderella and a three trials fairy tale. As much as I loved (and still love it turns out) the illustrations for MBD, it wasn't the story itself that made me think it was the best candidate to bring Disney's poor 2D efforts back to their former glory. I thought that Disney's princess movies were the best of its 2D class (Save Lilo which is in a class all its own) and that it was about damn time for a black princess.

Which is an odd thing, sort of, because me? Not black, actually. Not that I think that one has to be to notice the sort of glaring hole in the D.P. lineup. Do you remember when "Atlantis" came out? I never saw that film (what can I say? I like *princesses*) but it had Disney's first ever animated black character. I remember there was an article in the N&O, and Disney was all like, "Uh... yeah. We're not really... focusing on that..." And I was all, "Right you're not because you ought to be ashamed! It is the late nineties, y'all!"

Anyway, I am not sure where I am going with this because race, like so many things, is one of those things that is just too big for me to say anything definitely about. I will never know enough of any side of the story to make even one statement. But. Something I love is trying to do something right, and that makes me happy. God knows they might not get it right, but I hope that they do. Onward and upward excelsior all of us. Let's do our best.

(I should point out that kibarika had some interesting thoughts about the princess lineup recently, and that I am interested to hear her elaborate on them. I almost linked to her post until I remembered that her journal is friendslocked, so everyone who could see it likely already has.)

********************

I have a whole mess of unpleasant doctor things tomorrow morning. Lots of prodding and bloodletting and what have you. I should have had it done at my physical last month, but they kept me rotting in the waiting room and then the examination room for over an hour. So when my doctor mentioned the tests, I said, "I am too frustrated and not in a good head space for them. We'll have to have them on another visit."

(I do very poorly with needles and with, um, prodding. Was I being strong or weak by insisting on a new appointment?)

Anyways, any and all "poor, poor baby"s that you'd like to offer up to the comments section would be greatly appreciated.

I recieved your package today and I'm so pleased!!! Your picture fills me with a sense of calm everytime I look at it.

I will be sending a package to you sometime next week. Keep an eye out for it :)

Fuck AIM!

Sorry! Sorry-sorry :(

heart,
shizuku

Usually when I write about movies it goes something like "So I really liked this movie, but it did have these flaws..." Sometimes, though, I can't find find anything to complain about in a movie. Go see "Persepolis". I feel confident that some part of it, whether it's the narrative or the animation, will blow you the eff away.