anagram of brat

Just finished row 14. I don't know if this project is actually going faster, but it sure feels like it is. Probably has something to do with really short rows, especially in comparison to the last thing I did - 74 across as opposed to 170. So getting to see more progress after an evening's work is definitely a plus. Especially when said progress is a break in the boring stuff and finally getting to the top of Vulpix's pretty head-curls.

1064 / 4864 beads. 21.9% done!

Starting to regain my faith in humanity finally, though did have a minor setback on that front when an ad for a local market car dealer aired during the news. They apparently thought a low budgeting marketing tie-in with The Lone Ranger was a good idea and did this with some bargain basement Native American stereotyping. Because yay racism! But then after beading myself out of a GRR RAWR, watching a couple of episodes of Orange is the New Black with cell23 (unsure what I think yet, or whether I like it; giving it a few more eps to decide) and witnessing Twitter being collectively awesome I think I'm back down to the general dull roar of "well, all right, I'll shoot y'all last during the apocalypse." Mostly.

in other news, holy flaming asshair of Satan, it's hot this week. Stupid heatwave. Almost can't wait for the Vineyard next week purely because the temperature will not top 80 all next week there. Ocean air and all. Whew!

Super Bowl had its share of annoying ads (ugh, GoDaddy...) but of particular one was a long montage of pictures/video of vintage rural Americana overlaid with a voiceover of a speech about how God made farmers.

I could see why people liked it, I guess? but I think this rebuttal from Funny or Die nailed why it rubbed me the wrong way.



Other thing of note about that ad? Blatently stolen from a youtube vid made by Farms.com.



Good job, Dodge.

I can't talk about Newton, CT, really - I have a jumble of layered feelings in relation to it, but I will say that I find it a little... disturbing...? that I found myself trying very hard to hide my sniffles and leaking eyeballs at Paperman/Wreck-it Ralph tonight, while earlier when htl_1126 informed me of the death toll as of then (up to 27 dead, most of them children) I felt almost nothing other than "...again?"

I may well have turned the corner into complete sociopathy, y'all. Not okay about this level of numbness.

But positive things. Not just because I'm selfish, but because good news on a dark day is a good thing right? cell23 took me out for a date tonight, which did all sorts of squirrely blushy things to my face and bad things to my head and other bits, seeing as he'd had to dress up for work today and left the suit on purely because he knew I'd like it. We did indeed see Wreck-It Ralph tonight and much as I expected, I loved the shit out of it. Yeah, about a month late but it meant that we sat in an empty theater while everyone else went to The Hobbit. I wouldn't know where to begin squeeing about everything I loved in that movie, all the little details and nods and winks that Disney snuck in that you'd miss if you blinked, because there were many of them, but the main thing I actually take my hat off to Disney for is that other than the gender stereotyping inherent in the licensed characters appearing in the movie, the movies was pretty refreshingly light on the gender bias. (Hell, now that I think about it, it even passes the Bechdel test.) Mainly the thing I appreciated regarding this was that the audiences' window into the player experience of the movie's world was a girl - She never gets a name, but you see her roaming the arcade trying to play everything regardless of genre, and her game of Hero's Duty leads to some... amusing commentary of game violence. But the thing that really got me was when she tried to go on to play Sugar Rush, which I swear, all the scenes set in the that game gave me diabeetus of the eyeballs, wow, she was barred by two older boys monopolizing the entire cabinet.

Seriously, in a world where I get annoyed by having to remind my MIL that her granddaughter likes LEGOs just as much as her grandsons, that consideration makes me happy.

The main consequence of this is a burning desire to shotgun all four seasons of ReBoot! the last year and a half I've actually never seen even, which is crazy to me because there was a time when that show and its awesomeness (well for 1994 - that animation, while groundbreaking at the time, didn't age well... would not say no to Mainframe Entertainment redoing the first few seasons to look more like the last one) was My Major Fannish Thing. Case in point:



BTW, greasepaint is balls.

I think one of the things that annoyed me in all the conversations, blogs and reddit posts about Wreck it Ralph is the mistaken assumption that it's the first example of something attempting to portray the video game experience "from the inside." I'm not saying ReBoot! did it better - some aspects of that show were made of laughable fail (cough, Enzo, cough). But it did present some interesting concepts that worked within its internal continuity, like games being contained in cubes that would drop on the city randomly and if the citizens trapped within couldn't defeat The User (or Player One, if you will) that section of the city contained within the game would be destroyed.

Hilariously, Disney was the cause of ReBoot! pretty much ending its run in the US, seeing as they bought ABC while it was airing and wiped out their preexisting Saturday Morning Cartoons block to make room for its own programming. Seasons 3 and 4 eventually aired on Cartoon Network, but it never got the same amount of exposure its early episodes did, which is a pity, as once they were no longer so rigidly constrained by Standards and Practices, the show went from being okay/reasonably good to OMGWTFAWESOME. Alas, no one saw it. :/

Wellp, I have a working DVD player now, and the box set at last check, was only $47. Maybe it's finally time to drop some cash on getting it. I'll save some space for Wreck It Ralph on the shelf next to it, as it deserves.

BOOKS:

Still plugging away at my goodreads challenge, though the last few weeks I've shoved books aside for beading. I may have to give up and switch to audiobooks if this keeps up. Or take more bus trips. I can't bead in a moving vehicle. Well, at least not one that isn't reasonably stable. I could probably manage it on a train. But I digress. Books.

43. Grave Mercy (His Fair Assassin, #1) (LaFevers, R.L.)

44. Bossypants (Fey, Tina)

45. The Winter Sea (Kearsley, Susanna)

46. How to Be Black (Thurston, Baratunde R.)

47. River God (Ancient Egypt, #1) (Smith, Wilbur A.)

48. Ready Player One (Cline, Ernest)

49. Incarceron (Incarceron, #1) (Fisher, Catherine)

50. Summon the Keeper (Keeper's Chronicles, #1) (Huff, Tanya)

51. The Forest of Hands and Teeth (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, #1) (Ryan, Carrie)

52. Shadow and Bone (The Grisha, #1) (Bardugo, Leigh)

53. Beauty Queens (Bray, Libba)

54. The Gray Wolf Throne (Seven Realms, #3) (Chima, Cinda Williams)

55. Going Solo (Dahl, Roald)

56. A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel (Larson, Hope based on the work by L'Engle)

57. Are You My Mother? (Bechdel, Alison)

58. Home (Morrison, Toni)

59. The Oracle's Queen (The Tamír Triad, #3) (Flewelling, Lynn)

60. Unwind (Unwind, #1) (Shusterman, Neal)

61. Lion's Blood (Lion's Blood, #1) (Barnes, Steven)

62. The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1) (Lynch, Scott)

Goodreads likes to inform me that I'm 5 whole books behind right now, but this can be easily remedied by shotgunning through a few kids books next time I'm at the Jones. There are a few AG series I haven't read, for example, and they're very short.

Of the above list, all were pretty good to excellent. Of particular note, How To Be Black had me in stitches while skewering some painful racial truths, The Forest of Hands and Teeth was surprisingly terrifying for a zombie novel aimed at tweenagers, and Unwind was... HIGHLY DISTURBING to the point of giving me very bad dreams for a couple of days after I finished, but a good read none the less. The last two books on the list perhaps suffer from a little bias since I read them recently, but both Lion's Blood (an alternate history novel dissecting the American slave trade if Northern Africa had become the dominant culture instead of Europe) and The Lies of Locke Lamora (a heist/caper/revenge story set in a Renaissancey fantasy city) both came HIGHLY recommended and did not disappoint. My only criticisms of the above books would be that Beauty Queens, while damn funny at points, was sledgehammer heavy handed with its point, A Wrinkle in Time, while beautifully drawn, did not really bring anything new to the familiar story, and Home, while pretty good as a novel on its own merits, seems like a lazy forgettable effort on Toni Morrison's part; she can do so much better.

Also I just got wind that there is a new Vorkosigan book out! MUST. READ. I don't care that it's more Ivan Vorpatril than Miles. I like the dumb fuck, a him-centric book should be entertaining.

TV:

NBC: Jesus fuck, NBC what the HELL are you doing to your Thursday lineup? That said, the only show that seems to be maintaining its quirky excellence would be Parks and Recreation, which has not disappointed. It remains hysterical while both maintaining its political commentary and allowing for the growth of its ensemble. Well, except maybe for Jerry. Poor, poor Jerry. Also ( spoiler )

Alas, 30Rock by contrast, is definitely slipping and I'm rather glad it's ending this season, before it entirely jumps the shark. While it still once in a while gets a WTF laugh out of me ("I ordered a Black Coffee - by that I mean a Sunkist!") it's clearly past its sell-by date.

Don't get me started about the delay of Community.

BBC: Oh it HAS been a while since I made a TV post, huh? Yes, we did see the most recent half season of Doctor Who. Overall? Ehhhh. I did NOT like the finale, honestly. I loved the concept of it - New York City has enough creepy gothic statuary around that a Weeping Angel story set in the city should have been terrifying, but instead it just seemed kinda goofy in an old horror movie sort of way. "Asylum of the Daleks," by contrast, was suitably Dalek-y and the plot twists well done. "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" was a fantastic bit of fun (Can I have me a Nefertiti?), and aspects of "The Power of Three" were good, namely the various talents of the Cubes and the way the month names were embedded into the scenery - a nice carryover from Sherlock, I thought. But overall... ish. The second half of series seven hopefully will be better.

The third season of Downton Abbey was a little bit less of a hot mess than the second. The series does seem to be at its best when upstairs is fretting about money and downstairs, namely Mr. Carson, is fretting about the placement of plates at dinner. I like that Edith seems to finally be getting some development besides plain, bitchy sister, someone needs to severely beat Robert about the head and shoulders with something heavy and I continue to want to nibble on a scantily clad Michelle Dockery while wanting to be the Dowager Contess when I grow up. Oh Maggie Smith, how I love you.

Other TV: cell23 has finally managed to get me to sit down and watch through Adventure Time with him, and holy shit, this cartoon and its incredibly adorable surface masking a deeply disturbing, nightmarish reality. Not quite caught up to air yet - still have to watch season 4. But those of you who know? THE STAG HOOVES. DYEEEEAHHHGH! That's all. Also I kinda want to weight train so I can cosplay Susan Strong. Is that weird?

The most recent addition to my TV watching list is American Horror Story, which cell23 marathoned a bit over Thanksgiving and which I caught up to over the past couple of days. Man, what. This show. We're only seven eps into season one, so no spoiling, but... yeah, there be some fucked up shit up in that show. But I'm surprised to find myself enjoying it. It seems to combine all the things I liked about Beetlejuice, The Ring, Twin Peaks, The Sixth Sense and American Gothic, which I realize is an odd amalgam of work but trust me, watch it and you'll see what I mean.

Still haven't caught up on either Mad Men or Sons of Anarchy - I may fix the latter over the next couple of days as I look for beading background noise.

Seeing as renegadethumper and deliriumdeva gave us the blu-ray collection of Rome for a wedding present, we're throwing a viewing party on Sunday for the first two episodes and recurring it until we get to the all too soon end of the series. It will be my fifth go through of watching it, but I love the series THAT MUCH okay. Still mad HBO cancelled it, but Game of Thrones is making up for a lot of that. Speaking of which:



Cannot. Wait.

MOVIES:
Haven't been doing much of these owing to time and money, which sucks because there is actually stuff out already and coming out that I REALLY want to see. Wreck it Ralph. Rise of the Guardians. Life of Pi. Skyfall. The Hobbit. Les Miz. On The Road. Django Unchained. ARRRRGH. Cannot wait for this job to start so I can do at least the $5 tuesday shows again, man.

I did manage to see Lincoln, as I mentioned in my big long thanksgiving weekend post. It was an excellent bit of movie; I thought Daniel Day Lewis did a great job in making this often weirdly imposing historical figure human and relatable. However the movie, in my opinion, was completely stolen out from under him by Tommy Lee Jones, whose forceful and wickedly funny Thaddeus Stevens was a performance. I mean, Lewis made the most out of a mostly quiet and nuanced character, but I think it does get overshadowed by Jones' likeable gruff blowhard. Really, if there were more instances of calling Representatives on opposite party lines slow-witted nincompoops, I'd voluntarily watch C-SPAN.

I did come into the movie with a fair amount of bias, actually - I wasn't initially intending to see it in theaters, mostly due to various columns I had read due to its opening basically condemning the film and its subject matter as a lot of white people patting themselves on the back for abolition. Well, that's an oversimplification, but once pointed out, it is rather impossible to not see how narrow the focus is on this film and how by focusing so tightly on lincoln and several key politicians during the passage of the 13th amendment, you completely omit the contributions of others who helped get that passed, leaving the only role for black people in the movie open is that of the freed people staring adoringly up (or down, depending on shot and location) at their white saviors when in truth, black people were doing a HELL of a lot of work towards their own emancipation, thank you. It is hard to put that glaring omission aside in the course of the movie and one could argue that it shouldn't be put aside at all. At any rate, it did leave me with some conflicts regarding my own enjoyment of the film, ones that are probably important ones to have. There are other columns that have expressed this far more eloquently than I have, I direct you to Kate Masur's piece in the NY Times and Corey Robin's blog post about it.

MUSIC:
I've been listening a LOT to boston.com's fairly new online radio station, Radio BDC. It is a good station overall, plays a lot of slightly off the beaten path alternative and generally runs screaming away from the autotune abuse that is the current pop scene. On the bad side, it does tend to shove quite a bit of Mumford and Sons down your throat. Successfully so, as I have managed to take a begrudging liking to "I Will Wait" just by dint of it getting LODGED in my head for hours on end. On the other hand other bands that tend to get heavily played over there are Metric, The Cure, New Order and Muse. Yeah, not going to protest too heavily about that.

I find myself trying to find heavy female vocal-centered groups to listen to to counteract the fact that Florence + the Machine have grown on me like a fungus. I like her stuff, but I've seen the vids for "Dog Days Are Over" and "No Light, No Light" and they plus the entirity of her new song "Kiss with a Fist" make me headsmash in the same sort of way that the multitudinous Amanda Palmer clusterfucks do. Art is seriously no excuse to not think about the imagery you're playing with, folks, fucking seriously. People have suggested Bat for Lashes to me and I've liked what I've read and heard of her so far. I also quite by accident picked up an unholy addiction to playing Grimes' Visions on loop, with special emphasis placed on "Genesis" which is a creepily catchy electronica track. I also keep meaning to check out Kimbra, as I love her vocal in "Somebody I Used to Know" (gods, is that song a personal kick to the feels), but more cause I'm curious as to if she does the weird hand dancing on everything she does. It sort of reminds me of the people that would stand in the corners of the dance floor at Haven and do flowy goth para-para instead of, well, dancing.

Also it's after thanksgiving. BRING ON THE CHRISTMAS MUSIC, BITCHES. I have a feeling I'm going to be playing "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" a bit this year, seeing as it's one of the few songs comfortably in cell23's actual range and he brings the full on baritone realness to it and I turn into a small puddle. Who'da thunk I'd find lines such as "Your hearts a dead tomato squashed with moldy purple spots," so sexy... I mean, I also kinda want to jump him when he's singing the Trololololo song too. I like low ranged men, okay? sheesh. Allow me my strange twitterpations. Could be worse, I could be reading 50 Shades with no irony whatsoever. Oh, maybe I should shotgun through those too. For the lulz, of course.

I have gotten sucked into the AAAGH MY CHILDHOOD trap of watching Sesame Street vids on Youtube due to a friend posting "my name is you" on FB and OH MAN did it go downhill from there. Captain Vegetable. The Haircut Song. The Ladybug Picnic. "One two three FOUR FIVE six seven eight NINE TEN eleven twelve." And then there are the Yip-yips.



I find it impressive that this has been making me laugh nigh unto peeing myself for more than 30 years at this point. Seriously, the blue one goes "OHHHH! Chicken!" and I just lose my ever loving shit. Jim Henson, man.


In other notable news, I had dinner with htl_1126 tonight at the Hangar, which essentially is like us going to church to catch us some boneless chicken Jesus and we hadn't done it in a while. So much food, oh god. And endless "ha ha I'm drinking for 3" jokes. So glad to see her though - way too long!

Ana Tijoux - "1977"


First heard: a recent episode of Breaking Bad.
My Spanish is spotty, so all I had really was the rhythm and sound of the words along with the sampling to go on. That and it went very well underneath the scene it scores.


( 5 more )

Just kinda amuses me how much of my "new" music comes via TV shows and ads these days.

Temperatures for the next little while are expected to stay between 60 and 70 F. There are peeper frogs out at night. The cat is going more apeshit than usual and spends hours either at the open back patio door or in the newly de-plasticked living room window. Or trying to make a break for it when we open doors. Expecting her to resume her rocket powered charge through the patio screen at any moment.

Met with Lesley Arak last night to talk wedding photography. Have some lists to make.

It's pi(e) day. I don't think I will get any tasty pie today, but it's only 10:30am, who knows what lovelies the day might bring.

I took a mental health day yesterday to rest up and deal with the brain weather, though that was quickly explained by the onset of ladytimes. Feh. Thankfully the cramp fairy has the month off, but her spot seems to be filled by the EAT EVERYTHING fairy. I tell you what, this whole having an appetite thing is awful. I just want to eat ALL THE THINGS all the time. I would appreciate a happy medium between pig out and nonconsensual fast.

I baked cheddar biscuits though. Nom nom nom.

Anyway, the brain weather seems to have settled a little bit, though I clearly still have some ex-related angries that need to be either put to bed once and for all (not likely) or cheerfully beaten back into their little boxes until later (probable). No real point to stressing myself about it until I find some way back onto my wellbutrin.

Somehow after swearing that I wouldn't freelance anymore I found myself helping one of the campus cops with his photography web site after work on Monday. Oh well. Extra money is never a bad thing.

I have a date tonight with CuteGirl - we are seeing The Artist. We'll see how I do w/r/t terrified lesbian sheep tendencies.

Still struggling with creative projects and the actual working on of them.

I have accidentally an aloe plant. One of the techs upstairs was putting this pot of aloe shoots out with a "TAKE ME HOME" so I was all what the hell, I used to be really good at growing aloes. Actually I have to get cracking on this year's gardening projects. Now that it's warming up I need to empty out and wash out last year's pots and decide what things I want to grow besides tomatoes. Also repot Spidey, he's looking a little sad.

cell23 and I are into the fourth season of Breaking Bad now. OMG this show. I can't even.

I have also broken my resolution to only have three books out from the library at a time. I met Lesley at the Jones last night and the temptation was just too great. Right now I have parts 3 & 4 out from Bujold's Sharing Knife series, Justine Larbalestier's Liar, Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest*, and Justin Cronin's The Passage out right now. Also reading Stolen continents : the Americas through Indian eyes since 1492. Occasionally I have to break up all the YA and fantasy stuff, and this book so far is pretty good. *sigh* because I really have oodles of time to read. Feh.

I feel like I need to use the time between now and PAX hermited up until I get more stuff finished, or at least until I feel like I have. Except the damn weather's all COME OUTSIDE AND SPEND TIME IN ME. I suppose I ought to enjoy these precious few days of springtime before the trees all wake up and start filling the air with their abominable itchy fornications.

* intrigued, as this series seems to have the same cover artist as the first three Kushiel books.

...there really are not enough ellipses for this.

So during Morgan Freeman's Cecil B. DeMille award montage on Sunday's Golden Globes, they sneaked in a clip from his stint on The Electric Company:



NEGL, I let out this sound that was somewhere between a scream, a giggle and a squee. I totally remembered this song, even though I was probably a little younger than I was in the icon the last time I saw it.

Okay, the awesome that is Morgan Freeman aside (and no, no one was tickled, damn it) what the hell was with children's educational programming in the 70s and the whole vampire thing? was there a study conducted that showed little kids learn better if the lesson is delivered in mock-Transylvanian? Or, like everything else, should we stick to blaming drugs?

It seems I only had spoons and brainspace for the cooking bits of my aspirations for this weekend, but that's okay. After the frenzy of chopping and cooking tornadodom early yesterday afternoon I seemed to need the downtime and rest while stuff was actually doing the whole cooking thing, so I have no real regrets other than the usual nagging "I have to work tomorrow and the house is a mess and I haven't gotten anything done!" litanies, and since the last item is blatantly untrue (WTF, brain, were you absent all weekend?) and the house is actually better looking than usual owing to cell23 and I cleaning the kitchen, picking up around the living room and getting the bags of recycling out of the house yesterday, I'm cheerfully ignoring the little voices and resting on my laurels.

The tomato sauce came out the pot this morning after seventeen hours of cooking (!) and was quite yummy, though had more of a chili note than a pasta sauce underpinning to the taste. More wine, garlic and sugar needed I think. A jar of it is in the fridge in anticipation of a pasta night later this week (maybe) and several containers of it are in the freezer. I then cleaned out the pot and filled it with the split pea soup components I'd assembled yesterday, three large smoked pork neck bones (yeah yeah, insert your favorite southern black stereotype here) and a couple quarts of chicken stock; eight hours later there was some seriously delicious soup waiting to be boxed up and frozen for lunch. That came out perfect - other than swapping out turkey neck for pork, it tastes pretty much exactly like Ruthy's. (Maybe better, but don't tell her that! Or Dad for that matter!) Even dinner last night was damn tasty, being my usual OJ chicken fancy dinner standby, and I think I've finally solved the dilemma of getting the gravy for that to thicken up in a reasonable amount of time (how long have I been making that? five years? sheesh) and since I made a whole tray of breasts a couple of those are portioned out and boxed up for lunch too. My goal really is to quit nickel and diming money on food, be it lunches, dinners or snacks; it adds up alarmingly fast (I do like to eat when intestinal drama permits it) and when I do the math at least 3/4s of where my money disappears is down my throat. (shut up.) Need to cut that shit out if I'm ever going to a) save b) pay down anything. Hopefully between the split pea and the potato leek soup, the chicken and pasta, I'll get that in better control, at least for the next couple weeks.

Still need to figure out what I'm going to do with the last few tomatoes, cause I need to do something and no bites on anyone possibly taking them. I ended up freezing the carrot greens; maybe I'll just blanch, puree and freeze for later? I suddenly wish I'd paid attention when Carole was teaching herself to can vegetables. :/ A project for next summer maybe, depending on whether I decide to do the whole tomato vines in pots thing again. Also kinda wish I had a juicer.

I wasn't cooking QUITE the whole time this weekend - cell23, deliriumdeva and I did make a trip down to the diner late last night for coffee and light fare and shooting the shit with lysscat, which there was plenty of because the diner was dead for a Saturday. You guys, there's this Greek coffee frappe on the menu that not only is delicious, but had so much caffeine that I was sorta seeing funny auras around stuff after drinking half of it. *chuckle* not that lysscat didn't try to warn me that I'd probably start vibrating after drinking one, but at the time that seemed like more of a recommendation than a deterrent. Still is. Whee.

Speaking of interesting effects on brain chemistry, I am current buzzed nigh unto tipsy; in celebration of getting a prodigious amount of slow cooked stuff done, I cracked open one of the licor43 nips and had that celebratory cocktail I'd been craving since first having this stuff at Christmas. And oh.... dear fates, it's just as good as I remember. And as potent. I now know why two glasses at Stanley's had me more than a little wobbly for a while - this sweet sneaky shit is 62 proof, which is murder to a lightweight like me and yeah, I notice that my already miniscule tolerance to alcohol has vanished along with my weight so I'm being good and only having one tonight. I'll save the other nip for when I need a treat with a punch.

cell23 seems to be on a "so many drugs were involved in the making of this movie" jag on Netflix - over the past few days I've sat through most of both Hunter S. Thompson movies (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Where the Buffalo Roam) and today, Cannibal; the Musical. (I don't necessarily blame drugs for that one - Trey Parker and Matt Stone kind of naturally excrete crack into their bloodstream from some gland or another.) Also rewatched Hot Tub Time Machine, since cell23 had never seen it and it's just amiably silly enough to survive a second watching a year or so later. Currently behind on all of my TV watching other than Doctor Who. Still need to make a media consumption post at some point. Argh.

I think right now I need to eat something to soak some of the Cuarenta y Tres out of my blood though.