Friends

• 22:28 @ThePookybear Thanks Pooky! It was a good day. Be safe and be sure to get a picture of the sled in the snow for us Californians. Ha! #
• 08:55 @ThePookybear Good morning Pooky! ...You know, I'm from Texas and I now live in California so I have no real concept of snow. *laugh* #
• 08:56 @srtadaniel Maybe you could get her a manicure/pedicure certificate instead? #
• 08:57 @FilmGeekCentral Filmy looking very festive. *laugh* Good luck with movie day! Also, LOL on hot dog
  #
• 10:33 Fixin' to saddle up and ride on out of here for a busy day of laundry and @FilmGeekCentral home game watching. tinyurl.com/ycotcpb #
• 11:46 Man in white Escalade hawking CDs outside laundromat. "Hey senorita!" I turn. "I do speak English." He has the good grace to look sheepish. #
• 16:54 @ThePookybear Those pictures are great! Very cute neighbor kids. :) Snow seems like such a foreign concept to me--beautiful but terrifying. #
• 16:55 @frantic10no Life is sweet and all too short. Have another burger. #
• 16:56 @MediaRoomMktg Heck no it's not wrong. I would totally yell "whooo" #

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• 19:44 @ThePookybear Thank you! Yes, I am relieved but there is much still to be done. Your prayers and good wishes have been much appreciated. :) #
• 19:46 Thanks, everybody, for your prayers and good wishes on the unemployment and food stamps! Now, I hope peeps & I can make it till I find work. #
• 21:41 @FilmGeekCentral Excellent! Wish you'd been with us on the wedding trip, Ted's a hell of a guy. #
• 05:28 @cheesetony That's wonderful! Even though I only teach Sunday school I love that feeling when you know a kid's responding to your teaching. #
• 05:29 @JacksonFoley Good call. Still in mourning that he went to the Phillies and not, say, the Dodgers. WHO COULD USE HIM. But I'm not bitter. #
• 05:29 @ThePookybear Good morning Pooky! Thank you! You too. :) #
• 05:30 @jammer427 Oh no! Poor doggie. I love you. Talk to you soon. #
• 06:41 @unrealfred HCC: Bewildering, Unexplained, And Potentially Dangerous #HCC (But seriously, WTF. Somebody call OSHA!) #
• 13:45 @ThePookybear Oh no! Hope your power holds out. Take care. #
• 13:55 @FilmGeekCentral Oh, Scott, I hope nobody throws anything at you! *laugh* #

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• 18:29 @AndieTweets OMG that is awesome. But it would have been EVEN COOLER if he'd drawn Snuggies on the assembled stable animals. Ha! #
• 19:59 @ThePookybear Good night Pooky! :) #
• 01:05 Slept a little, then woke up & finished a novel I started yesterday. Nestled in blankets, reading when I should have been asleep-delicious. #
• 05:20 @ThePookybear Good morning to you, Pooky! I will! :) #
• 10:04 twitpic.com/twfjj - Shameful indulgence: a mint oreo frappe. Y
  um. #
• 10:53 @FilmGeekCentral Aw! Very festive. ;) #
• 10:54 RIP Chris Henry. What a terrible waste of a life with so much talent and potential. May the Source of Peace bring peace to those who mourn. #
• 12:10 Sent welfare office fax, chatted w/old friends at ex's office. Were old times as good as I remember, or were problems starting even then? #
• 14:55 Food stamp adventure, day 3: Caseworker called, said I'd been approved. Waiting to get card now. #scenesfromalayoff #
• 15:39 Card received. Very grateful: my degradation, then, has not been in v
  ain. My children, this much & more will I endure for your sweet sakes. #
• 17:04 Checked mailbox; received notice that I've been approved for unemployment. No check yet, but thank GOD, things are finally looking up! :) #
• 17:22 *Sarah strums Hunty's guitar, sings blues-song-style* "Gonna call my boyfriend, gonna call him on the Internet." #peeps #

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• 18:25 @frantic10no My plan exactly; I have a couple of stale half-loaves of challah in the fridge, so that will do quite nicely. ;) #
• 18:26 @AndieTweets And don't forget "Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas"! I always get sniffly at that. Shhh, don't tell the rabbi. Ha #
• 06:03 @FilmGeekCentral Looks great, Scott! :D Ooh, what to choose for my final FGC Home Game before the home game takes a layoff hiatus? Hmmm. #
• 08:32 Day 2 of food stamp adventure. Here bright & early for 10:00 appt so I can sit instead of standing. Line already long. #scenesfromalayoff #
• 08:53 Seated and waiting. Remembering long hours spent waiting in the county clinic as a child, until I learned not to complain of illness. #
• 09:30 Gave a bright-looking toddler girl a box of mini-crayons from my purse. Be strong, little one. You can endure this and bear witness as I do. #
• 11:15 Out of welfare office (still need to fax more docs), at mall to buy lip gloss & get tire fixed nearby. Sneezing from pet adoption station. #
• 11:23 Chatted up by middle-aged jerky vendor. Sorry pal, I might sample your beef stick but I'm not in the market for anything more. Ha. #
• 12:32 A girl
  talks excitedly on her phone about planning a wedding, now that her man's out of jail & sober. How beautiful & terrible hope can be. #
• 12:51 Tire has to be replaced. Got a good deal on new one-less than Sears quoted, and I got repair insurance too. Oh well. Will save $ on air. #
• 13:14 Local grocery has "wish tree" where you can write a wish on a tag and hang it up. Mine one of several wishing for jobs. #
• 13:16 Also seen: wishes for world peace, for a husband, and "I wish everyone would let Obama do his job." Amen to that, friend. #
• 14:58 twitpic.com/tssjw - L: my dad aged 6. R: Hunter. Genetics, won
  't you? #
• 17:04 @FilmGeekCentral Dang! Was hoping nobody would mention my pic-orientation fail. *laugh* And thank you. Hunter thinks he's hot stuff too. Ha! #
• 17:07 RT @unrealfred: HCC: I'll sample your beef stick, but no funny business. #HCC #
• 17:14 @frantic10no Damn straight. Cappers are the funniest, sexiest, baddest motherfuckers around. ;) #

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So I love Rankin-Bass fantasy cartoons. Yes, that cadre: The Hobbit, Last Unicorn, Flight of Dragons and even Return of the King. Among that rare Rankin-Bass insider, I don't need to explain myself. I don't need to explain why these strange little musicals are so ineffably charming and maybe even a little purely ineffable. Among everyone else, I have no idea how to describe why I think these are crypto-classics. They're not like Don Bluth's more idiosyncratic work - deeply bizarre, but (usually) beautifully done. The character design is unique if you happen to like it and ugly if you happen to not (it's almost as if the studio can't quite grasp what makes a drawing attractive, so goes for memorable exaggeration instead). They love beards and half the time don't quite manage to color those beards in all the way. Frame rate is not exactly their strong point and songs - there are always these songs. You get Glen Yarborough or America - Flight of Dragons has less of the singing, I guess. And, well, Where There's a Whip There's a Way (from Return of the King) is either the best musical number you have ever seen or the stupidest or maybe enthusiastically both.

That said. Their dragons really are a certain kind of wonderful. Some of those songs are unironically pretty good in my estimation (you can't tell me The Last Unicorn opening song is complete crap, you can't! -- but then again, likely because Peter Beagle himself was involved, Last Unicorn is far and away the most likely Rankin-Bass cartoon to be considered a classic). Some of the backgrounds have this care-taken painterly quality. And perhaps most of all, there's a certain warmth to their color palette that I crave in fantasy movies (I tend to dislike palettes that are cold in general unless they're presented with a certain kind of artistry it's too late to define), a certain easy wryness to their scripts paired with a certain earnest sincerity. I like them. I like them in all their rough edges and silly songs and it's possibly because I grew up with them. Maybe I am the only person in the world who read Lord of the Rings (and had my mind blown) after and I stress the after I saw that Return of the King cartoon and fell in love with it. So maybe I love these perhaps misshapen, definitely flawed pieces of work because Rankin-Bass introduced me to fantasy before I could even read. Maybe. But I also think that they're just that tiny bit underrated and it's hard for me to say why.

• 18:28 @frantic10no Oh, no! Hope you're all right, and didn't bust your ass or anything. ;) #
• 07:08 Tattoo your name across my heart so it will remain. Not even death can make us part. #
• 08:21 Today's #scenesfromalayoff adventure: "Nyssa Goes To The Food Stamp Office." In line to get inside. Y'all would not believe the urine smell. #
• 10:16 Waiting to be called by a caseworker. My children, my precious ones: what indignity would I not suffer for your sakes? #scenesfromalayoff #
• 11:21 Waiting to be fingerprinted like a criminal. Must return in morning with more papers. Will prob
  ably be denied-the state thinks I'm too rich. #
• 11:23 I have been here three hours. But no matter. Here among the forgotten, time has no meaning. #
• 12:31 Released at last, but must return tomorrow with shot records, rent receipt, etc. I am loath to bring anything more of my children here. #
• 15:51 RT @FilmGeekCentral: To raise Oral Roberts from the dead, touch your hands to the monitor. Go on, do it. Are you doing it? Pssht, dumbass. #
• 15:52 In sour mood. Gathering up documentation for tomorrow's welfare office revisit. What fucking business of theirs is Sarah's report card? #
• 15:53 Welfa
  re office procedures are designed to dehumanize & humiliate those already beaten down. How do they expect people to recover from that? #
• 17:08 @FilmGeekCentral I have been considering writing my memoirs for some time. As Walt Whitman once said: out of the cradle, endlessly rocking. #
• 17:09 @Rhube Thanks! :D I just keep telling myself: this too shall pass. God willing, I'll find a new job soon and can leave all of this behind. #
• 17:11 @frantic10no Funny you should mention that; was thinking of making french toast & bacon for dinner tomorrow since I bought eggs. OM NOM NOM #
• 17:13 @ThePookybear You're a good friend to do that! So you know what it's like. Whoever whines about "welfare queens" should get kicked, hard. #
• 17:31 @ThePookybear Ha! Well, it's always good to learn new things, no matter what the circumstances. #

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• 19:13 @ArchHallJr The little Halls are adorable! Shame you had to leave them in the woods like that, though. HA #
• 20:55 Spent a few hours making latkes for preschool and for peeps. May never eat another latke as long as I live. My hair smells like latkes. Joy. #
• 06:43 Traffic court today for that $450 ticket. Feeling very panicky. Need to make sure kids get out of house on time today. #
• 09:39 Traffic court anticlimactic. Was told that I could pay full amount now or make appt. to discuss it with judge in June. Hmm, let me think. #
• 09:47 @GersonK A
  re they from Cleveland? #
• 09:53 @ArchHallJr @GersonK Oooh, that's dirty. #
• 10:31 Catch your dreams before they slip away. Dying all the time. Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind--ain't life unkind? #
• 12:44 twitpic.com/tizdz - Hunter & best friend Ryan at preschool party. #
• 14:48 @cheesetony @ZBeebs42 I had to take remedial algebra in high school. Tragic! #
• 14:52 @ZBeebs42 Sorry about your job interview. I hop
  e someday to have some of those. #
• 15:00 The road just rolls out behind me. Be kind to me or treat me mean--I'll make the most of it. I'm an extraordinary machine. #musicmonday #
• 15:32 @FilmGeekCentral Definitely. And now I can afford to get my tire fixed/replaced. God willing, I'll have a job by June. #

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• 05:53 @FilmGeekCentral Daaaamn. Glad you and Misty are safe, buddy. #
• 06:10 Many thanks to the friend who sent such a thoughtful and much-needed gift. So shines a good deed in a weary world. <3 #
• 07:03 Dear gooseneck lamp in my bedroom: You know I can't afford to replace you so kindly stop falling on me. kthxbai #
• 07:04 Seriously, I woke up with it next to my bed, its lightbulb eyes gazing blankly as if to say, "Was it good for you?" Creeped me the fuck out. #
• 08:07 @ArchHallJr Ha, ha, no. Actually, I'm lucky none of the
  bulbs broke or anything. Last thing I need is another goddamn leaky air mattress! ;) #
• 08:08 In happier news, I crock-potted some pozole (Mexican pork & hominy stew) last night, the first time I've tried to make it, and it ROCKED. #
• 08:57 Got downstairs, tire w/nail was flatter than a goddamn supermodel. Was almost late after stopping to fill it. Excelsior! #
• 14:43 Okay, enough relaxing. Time to fry up more latkes! At least I borrowed a food processor so this batch should go a bit faster! #chanukah #

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After several false starts, a great deal of delegation (my mother is an ever-loving saint, I'll have you know) and two mild panics (one was a bad pattern translation, the other was "omg, do i have enough boning?"), the eve is almost upon us and I'm taking a break to report on the corset.

First of all, if you are going to be frugal and go the zip-tie boning route, MAKE SURE THEY ARE PACKAGED STRAIGHT. I just opened a pack of "boning" and discovered to my horror that they would not uncurl. It may be salvageable if I stagger curled bone with straight and the fact that the short patches exist.

Second, I'm a wee bit worried. I forgot to pick up eyelets. I have a failed project I can cannibalize for eyelet tape, but I'm a touch concerned it won't work. There's no time to go fetch eyelets, so it will have to work. Ugh.

*genuflects* St. Jude, I know I'm a slack-ass and a ditz, but this being a lost cause, I pray you will find it in the plan for me to not only have a functional costume, but a killer performance. And due to the nature of the performance, Mary Magdalene, I pray that my feet will be light, my grin will be big and my costume will be sturdy.

• 18:51 @ThePookybear No response yet, but the California situation is such that it takes a couple of weeks for them to respond. Thank you, though! #
• 18:54 twitpic.com/t53iu - Latke time! Wish you were here. #chanukah #
• 08:39 @rhube Latkes = fried potato pancakes. Amazingly delicious. Traditional for #chanukah, as are jelly doughnuts. #
• 09:03 @ZBeebs42 @cheesetony My hips don't lie either, and they say it's raining like a motherfucker outside. This has been confirmed by my eyes. #


• 09:04 Last week on @FilmGeekCentral: I challenge the boys to Jell-O wrestling over one of the films. Which was it? tobtr.com/s/808273 #
• 09:05 Still raining outside. It was raining when I went to bed. Doing laundry in the rain is going to be GOOD TIMES. Better hit the showers. Sigh. #
• 11:50 Fuckeration! What a goddamned motherfucking shitastic day this is. Also, it's raining. #
• 15:49 I hate the big decisions that cause endless revisions in my mind. I'm gonna watch the blue birds fly over my shoulder. #
• 16:13 Another day goes on by and he never speaks his heart. #

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• 20:36 @FilmGeekCentral Holy crap! Hope things improve for you, buddy. :( #
• 20:39 My text tweets get eaten sometimes. WTF. #
• 06:00 Two Guys, A Girl, And A Piece of Ass #sexysitcoms #
• 06:16 Desiring Women #sexysitcoms #
• 06:17 All Up In The Family #sexysitcoms #
• 06:19 The Great Bang Theory #sexysitcoms #
• 06:22 Breasted Development #sexysitcoms #
• 06:25
  Three's Company...In Bed #sexysitcoms #
• 06:35 Better On Ted #sexysitcoms #
• 06:37 It's Always Sexy In Philadelphia #sexysitcoms #
• 06:48 Sarah just announced her plans to become a director and pitched me an idea for a new video for Weezer's "I Want You To." #
• 06:52 Perhaps to no one's surprise, the video idea involves a wedding. I'm betting she would like to see ponies in there somewhere as well. #
• 07:46 No, I did not just sit in my car outside the preschool fighting back tears as "Piano Man" played on the radio. Why do you ask? #
• 09:08 Well, I have to say that phone call was incredibly angering and hurtful. Thanks for the condescension, buddy! #
• 09:10 RT @teambanzai: In California the ability of natives to drive falls exponentially as amount of rain increases. It's science! //God I hate CA #
• 09:24 @FilmGeekCentral Ha! I will. Hope you don't mind working some ponies into your scripts. And maybe weddings. With ponies. #
• 09:41 @FilmGeekCentral "I don't even know what the word 'independent' means." #
• 10:20 @thirdfloorwatch The kids really wanted the Weezer Snuggie. *sob* #
• 10:29 @FilmGeekCentral Yes indeed, my friend. www.weezersnuggie.com/ #
• 10:36 @neosquirrel I like the channel where they show the Tagalog game shows and the Mandarin dramas. #
• 11:38 @unrealfred Have fun! Hope you didn't eat much at lunch. *laugh* #
• 13:29 Hey Gentile friends! Sick of all the Christmas commercialism? Come to the dark side! We have latkes! And jelly donuts! #chanukah #
• 15:11 @AndieTweets Thank you! Wishing you a wonderful Christmas too. :D #
• 15:26 @FilmGeekCentral You're not missing anything, they're just weird. *laugh* I liked the Carolco one for sure. #
• 15:31 E-mail from ex-boss: she's trying to think of places that might hire me. That's nice. Won't pay my rent, but it's nice. #scenesfromalayoff #
• 15:54 Time to make the latkes. Come fry with me, let's fry, let's fry awaaaay.... #chanukah #
• 17:32 @ThePookybear Yes indeed! *laugh* Everybody love
  s jelly doughnuts. #

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1. Lying in bed next to Tim, listening to the cats snore
2. Strong Earl Gray tea, three sugars
3. The smell of woodsmoke
4. Blackberries in summer
5. Walking in the falling snow
6. Dancing for no reason
7. Red Virginia soil, glittering with mica
8. Leaves changing color
9. Cherry blossoms
10. Writing poetry in bed
11. Watching baby animals play

Since I am reminded by majic13 and I have a break in FINAL WEEK.

I have made a certain peace with Twilight. On the one hand, it irritates me. I hate vampires as a general rule. I want to say I don't like the sexification of predation, but that isn't necessarily true - there's something about dangerous people that can be a little heady, a little breathless. We don't want our sexy heroes to be wimps, dude. We want them to have at least some capacity to hurt us, which is to say, to hurt someone. Which is likely a large part of why Wolverine is so much more popular with the ladies than boy scout Cyclops, who wouldn't have any fanbase at all if he couldn't kill you with a glance (oh! Oh! So tortured!).

We all like Tom Hanks (for a given value of "all" and "like") but I don't know that Tom Hanks style characters meet anyone's top ten list for "sexy." I never liked Tom Cruise, but I have to think that his intense-stare-of-death had/has something to do with his appeal. And vampires are sexy because they can kill you, but they love you, or at least lust you. The threat of violence mixed up with the threat (or promise) of sex.

I don't know that this is just a girl thing, but probably more of a girl thing (although tell me, guys. Do you think women that can kill you are sexy? Let's get a poll). And I think I get it while finding it troubling. I'm enough of a feminist to go "Hey, uh, right, girls, you don't need someone to love you to be a happy person and having a life plan is a good thing and really, life doesn't end after 20 (believe me, you want to get older than 20) and you want a guy who doesn't stalk you or lord over you or scare you." And I'm enough of a Mormon to go "Hey, everyone, can we analyze some other Mormon-written stuff as Mormon stuff like, I don't know, Fablehaven?"

And I might write again about the appeal of Twilight or lack of, but you know - a certain peace. This is a romance. If I ever (ho ho) make it big, I expect that people may or may not go "This book is bad for girls because . . . " or "This book sets a bad example because . . . " But I don't write to set an example either and Twilight is pretty much what it looks like, a fluffy book about sparkly vampires who abstain from drinking blood (the metaphor) and the girls who love them. It probably makes some horrible societal comments and is an awful example, but, uh, a looot of romances are right there with it. It ain't my genre. And I can only say so much bad about Meyer. She's making money I'd sure like to be making.

That said. asathena and I got to chatting about the supernatural romance novel. So Bella is kind of a Mary Sue/author/reader stand in, Edward is not really a vampire at all, there's a lot of mooning about, the main romance is between the whitest bread possible, etc. Suppose I wrote a supernatural romance novel with a complex and troubling main character who might be kind of hard to relate to. The vampiric love interest was more a Russian style vampire, which are creepy as heck. Let's say that this takes place on a small Polynesian island a century or two ago - some infected Russian sailor stopped in, fed, and left. So now . . . let's you have a Polynesian vampire with a pretty tiny population to feed on. Now what happens? (Hey, to draw the parallel, I dream of Samoan men.)

Oh, and I guess there's a romance in there, between the new vampire and his girlfriend/new vampire and her boyfriend. But would something like that sell? Y/N.

They sucked me in with the hilarity and heartwarming of both Deschanel sisters on an episode of Bones. Fine. But, I still refuse to watch Fox after they've canned three of my favorite shows because of ratings that they ruined themselves. I'll start back on that boycott after this episode.

And I think the song that they have playing right now is by Regina Spektor. The voice sounded right.