Perambulations in Verbiage
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Laura's LiveJournal:
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| Thursday, January 5th, 2012 | | 4:29 pm |
52 Pick-Up
So, in the best laid plans category, I botched my roll on 52 finished creations (one per week) for 2010. Moving house DID throw a rather large wrench into the process, so I'm trying not to be too hard on myself. But I have definitely decided that I like this goal, so I'm trying it again this year. Total count on things created and finished for last year: 12. Items included jewelry, clothing, a short story, and two computer-cozy-covers for new laptops for the teenagers. Which puts me at roughly one-per-month, rather than one-per-week. Which is at least 7 more things than I finished in 2009, so at least I'm gaining. Here's one of the computer cozys:  Green Lantern FTW! One of those finished things was not a novel, although it almost was - I fell short of my goal in December, and it's not quite there. We'll see how January goes. Geronimo! | | Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 | | 4:19 pm |
| | Friday, October 21st, 2011 | | 10:08 am |
Oh hey look, it's been five years!
Happy "5th" anniversary to my wonderfully awesome partner of the last fourteen years! Love you, Gareth! (Let's not wait until our "10th" anniversary to visit New York again, though. :) ) Current Mood:  happy | | Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 | | 1:01 pm |
| | 8:50 am |
| | Thursday, July 14th, 2011 | | 10:57 am |
Writer's Block: Subtitles please
Hero, Le Pacte des Loups, Vidoq, Queen Margot, Kung Fu Hustle, Strictly Ballroom, House of Flying Daggers & Cyrano de Bergerac, to name a few. And no. I'm pretty much against American remakes. It was a shame what happened to La Femme Nikita. I suppose you could use Desperado as an argument for American remakes, but that was more of a case of giving the creator more money and asking him to expand on his original low-budget idea. To be fair and balanced, I have heard good things about Let Me In, and the version of Let the Right One In that we saw was actually marred by ineffective subtitling. In general though, what's the point? Learn to read subtitles if you don't know the language, people. Enjoy the experience of watching a film or several from a different culture. When we went to see Le Pacte de Loups, the kid at the ticket counter actually warned us that it had subtitles and was in...FRENCH. *sigh* | | Thursday, July 7th, 2011 | | 11:43 am |
Kat-ma
Wherein I commit a breach of feline servant etiquette, and suffer the consequences. Last night, I got home from work with a short "To Do" list of housework rattling around in my skull that looked like this: Load dishwasher; Change bed linens; Wash sheets; Change cat litter. After a bit, the list looked like this: Load dishwasher; Change bed linens; Wash sheets; Change cat litter. At that point, via teh intarwebz, the husband saw that there was a Sporting KC match on, and we went off to our local bar/pub/watering hole to watch it. One game, some socializing and a couple of drinks later, we came home, watched the latest True Blood episode with Teenager 2: Electric Boogaloo, and went to bed. Except: Guess who disapproved of my failure to finish my list? That would be the little cat who decided to pee smack in the middle of our freshly-made bed while we were out. And our other nice sheets were still in the wash. Half-an-hour later, bed stripped, new laundry started, CATS LITTER FUCKING CHANGED, bed made with mis-matched sheets (alas!), we finally got to sleep. This morning, the saga continued. As I was leaving the house, I had to deal with the efforts of an industrious spider that had spun a web across our door during the night. I did not walk through the web (thankfully, massive freak-out avoided), but as I was clearing the doorway with a stick, I stepped on the now rain-soaked bag of old cat litter on the back step, which broke and spilled all over the place. So I got to clean it up AGAIN and haul it out to the trash can. *sigh* To finish off my morning, when I parked for work (now rather late), I realized that 1) It was raining, and 2) I had left my umbrella in my office the night before. For the rest of the day, I shall be concentrating on "What Can Possibly Go Right?!", as the answer to the opposite question does not bear thinking about. Kat-ma: 1, Me: 0 | | Wednesday, July 6th, 2011 | | 4:55 pm |
What I did with my summer vacation - July 4th Edition
More organization. After careful study and consideration, it has come to my attention that I need an iPod or other MP3 player. This announcement brought to you by a dining room table covered in cassette tapes and CDs. Gareth has most, if not all, of the music on these objects in digital form. I am the only one in the house who has no way to play digital tunes. This needs to change. The only problem is that I really don't want to ditch some of my taped stuff. Thankfully, yet again, Think Geek has got my back: USB tape player converts cassettes to MP3sAlso spent time with friends. Hooray for hanging out with friends! Had a lovely time with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) berkie, cartoon_goblin, matt_the_brit, sherwood21 and the LJ-less Kemme clan over the weekend. The only downside was trying to attend the "Taste of Lawrence" festival before fireworks on the actual 4th. The food was good, the company was great, the temperature was decent, but the humidity was devastating. Ended the evening with a few drinks and returning home to collapse from heat. I did discover that the new digs are close enough to our downtown area that I can watch the city fireworks from home, so that was nice. If we're in town for it next year, I may suggest an evening cook out and viewing from our roof. | | Friday, July 1st, 2011 | | 1:25 pm |
Origins Wrap-up
I need to be better about taking pictures at cons. I have a cell phone with a camera, AND a digital camera, and yet...no photos. This was my first time attending Origins, but my second time attending a con in Columbus in the last 12 months. Overall, I rather liked it as a convention. If I were looking to go strictly for fun, I'd probably even prefer it to GenCon. Origins seems like a large-size regional con, and strikes a nicely managable middle-ground between hotel cons which can be too small to keep me entertained, and GenCon which is now so huge as to be overwhelming. (You can't even really "do GenCon" anymore. It's simply too large for any one person to see everything, or get to do half the things you might be interested in.) From a vendor perspective however, I'm not certain that Origins is as neccessary as it used to be for exposure, unless you really want to cover the Ohio market. Highlights include: Spending time with the Brits who head up and write for Cubicle 7, as they are lovely people and we see them far less often than I'd like. Damned Atlantic ocean! Being introduced to "Rastamouse". Totally not kidding. It's a British kids show featuring a crime fighting Rastafarian mouse and the Easy Crew. (In the interest of fair and balanced reporting, yes, there has been some controversy over racism over it.) I just think it's a damned cute show. Plans are in the works to make Jamaican meat pies and drink dark&stormys and Red Stripe while watching a Rastamouse marathon. "Makin' a Bad Ting Good!" Coming home with a shiny new copy of "Die Profundis" 2nd edition. Playing Battletech in the Icarus! Some Battle-techie used his internet-fu for logos and names, and came up with the art we used in our old Firefly campaign for one of their pods.  Lowlights: Not getting to play Mouseguard. All the sessions were sold out. Alas! Spotting old-school wooden chess sets and vinyl roll-up boards at the Chessex booth, getting excited, and then forgetting to buy one! Ack! The virus/ear-infection/whatever-it-is that I picked up on the plane on the way there. It's now a week later, I'm home, I'm on antibiotics, and my ears & throat STILL HURT. Boo. | | Friday, June 17th, 2011 | | 1:58 pm |
| | 10:17 am |
52 Pick-Up (#4) and Creative Frustration
Ever hear the joke about the failed artist who threw himself off a building because he never finished anything and got hit by a bus before he struck pavement? I think I know how he must have felt. Right, so remember this post from me? 52 Yes, the one where I was all hopeful and determined and stuff? And then I managed about three things before I allowed myself to get sidetracked and then derailed by moving house. And now it's June, half a year later. I'm still not back on track entirely. Too much of my craft/art/sewing stuff is currently packed into our new cellar for me to be happy or use it easily. But I have been writing. A lot. Not every day, but normally at least five out of every seven. Lots and lots of words. More words than I have written in years. And I'm happy about that part. Not so happy about the fact that even with all those new words, I hadn't actually finished anything. Until last night. It isn't much as words go, but it's complete. There's a beginning, a middle, and most importantly, an end. I have to violate my 52-rule about sharing it here because it will be going up on another website, but I will share the link when it goes up. So, here is to my teeny-tiny story, and it's ending. I plan to give you more companions soon! EDIT: As promised, a link to my story here. Jade Ghost Story | | Thursday, June 9th, 2011 | | 3:29 pm |
Writer's Block: Happy birthday, savvy?
One film?...Nope. Can't do it. I have had an abiding crush on Depp ever since 21 Jump Street was new. I have too many favorites. Maybe a top five? I'll try that. Not in any sort of order: Benny & Joon - For his totally sweet dedication to becoming Buster Chaplin...Charlie Keaton...you know what I mean. Don Juan DeMarco - Yes, it's also sweet. And I love magical realism, or urban fantsy, or fairy tales, or whatever words you need to use to describe this film. Donnie Brasco - Depp does not belong to the Meryl Streep/Brad Pitt school of "I'm blonde and can do accents" school of acting. I think he does something a bit more subtle with his portrayals of real people, inhabiting them in a way that finds the thing that will make you care about them, whether they're drug dealers or addict writers or crazy directors or gangsters, or in this case, undercover cops. This one is so good that I don't really want to watch it again - it's just too sad. The Ninth Gate - This film is creepy and weird, and so is his character. Bonus, it's about books, and Satan! What's not to love? From Hell - Because this is a film based on a graphic novel and yet his character felt totally real to me. Brave little opium addict investigator. This is not to say that I don't love Jack Sparrow, or Sands from Once Upon a Time in Mexico, or that I don't think his performance as Edward Scissorhands was anything less than brilliant. I'm just hard pressed to choose even five of his films as favorites. And I really don't care for most of Tim Burton's work, even when it comes with Depp, alas. | | Monday, May 16th, 2011 | | 3:50 pm |
What a waste of Alan Cumming!
Warning - contains a review far longer than this film actually deserves. I just hope you find it funnier than I did the movie... When we decided to watch Burlesque this weekend, I was expecting a certain amount of camp. What we got was a certain amount of awful. And not even funny-awful. Here, let me share my pain with you: By any definition or in any era, I'm really not sure what the performances in this film have to do with actual burlesque. They largely seem to have been lifted from Chicago and cobbled together with bits of A Chorus Line and Moulin Rouge via a vague "plot" ( a la CATS - the loose plot bits, I mean, not the dance numbers). There is one Christina Aguilerra number with ostrich fans and striptease that might possibly qualify as an American burlesque routine, and another with Alan Cumming that might just be a reprisal of his role as the Emcee in Cabaret...hard to tell, since he doesn't even get a feature performance. And then - the plot, such as it is, reads like a kinder, gentler version of Showgirls. NOT EVEN KIDDING. There's the plucky young girl who wants to make it in the big city as a performer, the older female mentor, the envious older female rival, the potential (engaged to someone else) love interest with talent of his own, even the sleazy older businessman who takes an interest in our plucky heroines "career". Throw in Alan Cumming as the doorman, Stanly Tucci in yet another "gay best friend/fairy godmother" role, and the ambiguous financial threat of Cher's club owner possibly losing her beloved and wholesome burlesque (not really) club ( which is always FULL of people, so how are they losing money anyway?)to development and there's at least some potential for drama, right? However silly. Except... ( Behind a cut in case you care about spoilers but trust me you really don't ) *shakes head* To give it one marginally bright note: Since I like Cher quite a bit more than she actually deserves, I will admit that I did enjoy her opening song, "Welcome to Burlesque". But then, I'm also a big fan of "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves", so make of that what you will. To sum up - this was not the worst film I have ever seen, but I really kind of want those 90 minutes of my life back. And what a waste of Alan Cumming. Current Mood:  disappointed | | Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 | | 3:39 pm |
Humor from my childhood
Or, more acurately, my mothers childhood. Todays issue of "random things that get stuck in my head" is a tune that looks like this: They strolled the lane together, The sky was studded with stars. He walked up to the gate with her, For her he lifted the bar. She raised her brown eyes to him... But, there's nothing between them now. For he was just the hired boy, And she a Jersey cow. It's one of many funny little songs that my mom sang to us as kids. I don't know where she got it, but sometimes it just pops into my brain and sits there for awhile. Thought I'd share. Current Mood: amused | | Friday, April 29th, 2011 | | 11:35 am |
Can Haz Goal Back Naow?
So, haven't really had any major progress to report on the move that ate my life recently. A lot of books have slllloowwwllyy made their way onto a lot of shelves, but that's about it. That changes this weekend, as I am heartily tired of not be able to DO THINGS because there is a box in my way or I can't find something. 52 has been seriously neglected in practice, though it is never far from my thoughts. Make sure to tune in next week for Creativity, coming back to this space, ASAP! | | Friday, April 8th, 2011 | | 11:42 am |
Evolution...
Just thought I would embellish a tweet from gmskarka for fun: The Staple Singers - Respect Yourself Madonna's Express Yourself, linked because the video wouldn't let me embed it. Lady Gaga - Born This Way whattravissays - Gallifrey That's all for now... Be seeing you! | | Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 | | 4:25 pm |
| | Monday, April 4th, 2011 | | 1:23 pm |
| | Friday, April 1st, 2011 | | 4:20 pm |
| | 3:46 pm |
Freedom! (Not an April Fool's joke.)
Old house is empty and clean. Hooray! This week saw the last of the scrubbing and recycling and trash out the door. I finished up by giving the garage a good sweep, and it's done. I only pulled one muscle during the process - whatever the one is that wraps around my left ribcage and attaches to my spine. It kinda hurts a lot, but only when I breathe. This weekend, not only does the weather look promisingly Spring-like, we also get to focus on putting the new house in order. Double Hooray! I'm looking forward to knowing where my clothes are, and maybe being able to start MAKING THINGS again next week. Also, for your viewing pleasure, here is a link to Duran Duran's performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon from last night: Leave a Light On. DD has been on everywhere for the last two weeks - it's like I'm 14 again. squee! |
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