What's Going On

Quotes

  • Heather Havrilesky:
    "Unfettered whining is a banana split for the motherfucking soul."
  • Kay Reindl:
    "There's no rule that says you have to be fulfilled doing a particular, socially acceptable thing."
  • Stephen Eley:
    "It's a strange thing to discover when you're an adult that you've been somewhat misadjusted to the world your entire life and didn't know it."
  • K.C. Cody:
    "If you can get past the occasional imbecile-induced bike folly and the fact that Davis seems to perpetually be in the path of some giant, bipolar tornado, you may come to realize that this city is a great place to live."
  • Wil Wheaton:
    "I see a bookshelf, filled with different books from different authors, all acting as portals to different worlds and different times. The author may give them birth, but it's the readers who keep them alive."
  • Tycho:
    "Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."
  • Kameron Hurley:
    "I like writing about characters who are drawn to each other but aren't necessarily good for each other. Nyx walks back into your life and you see everything you love destroyed, but some vital piece of you, something you can't name, something you didn't even know was missing, is somehow there again. Whole. Full. Like a missing piece of your heart that chokes you."
  • Taylor Swift:
    "I believe that love will find you when you're not looking for it. So I've been actively not looking for it for about three years now. I'll let you know how that works out for me."
  • Kethrai:
    "I found that writing for me was a thing of the hands--hands need to produce art--and whether it's written or made, it feeds the need to produce art."
  • Kameron Hurley:
    "When somebody loves you, they love you for everything you are, good, bad, butch, brutal, bad bowler. And I'm all of those things and a lot more. Pretending I'm not, hiding it, covering it up, pretending that *all* I want is the garden and the house and not the midnight fucking in Marrakech, is a lie. It's gutting half of myself. It's sacrificing one to get the other. I shouldn't have to sacrifice it. Those parts of myself should make each other stronger. Gutting one guts the other. I can't live a life that's half a person. I can't live half a life. Now how do I get the house and the garden and the fucking in Marrakech? This is the real question."
  • Pamela Ribon:
    "Love is a choice. I fully believe that. Also, I think it's controlled by the same part of the brain that makes you actively choose to pretend you don't know how the stove works. Choose wisely."
  • Anton Strout:
    “A lot of people ask me for advice on writing. To this I will clap my hands at them, and say “Write, monkey, write!”
  • Libba Bray:
    "I hope that within these roughly 2,000 pages is a tale about women searching for their place in the world, coming to terms with themselves, fighting for change, accepting their power, dealing with issues of friendship, family, responsibility, sexuality, and identity, struggling with fears and doubts, hope and longing, oppression and desire. I hope. And yet, it seems as if the prevailing sentiment is, The only thing that matters is the man/is having a man. Am I mistaken? Am I reading this incorrectly? I’m asking."
  • Ira Glass:
    "Why does my job exist? It exists because I willed it into existence. When the day goes badly, I can remind myself that I have asked for this job by name and thought to create this for myself, and I can only blame myself for the whole thing."
  • Jeremy Darling:
    "I'm Pluto. I'm cold, distant, and alone."
  • Gustavo Arellano:
    "Dude, I was a nerd from the day I was born. I was reading in kindergarten. I got humungous glasses that covered half of my face in second grade. I’ve been living the nerd life ever since."
  • Michael, "Burn Notice."
    "People with happy families don't become spies. A bad childhood is the perfect background for covert ops--you don't trust anyone, you're used to getting smacked around, and you never get homesick."
  • Madeleine L'Engle:
    "I sometimes think God is a shit--and he wouldn't be worth it otherwise. He's much more interesting when he's a shit."
  • ZachsMind:
    "Sometimes though, you don't get to choose what kinda fame you're gonna get or how much it'll cost ya."
  • Jane Espenson:
    "So here's what I think we need to do if we want to write a sci-fi or a fantasy show and give it appeal way beyond the normal boundaries of sci-fi/fantasy fandom. We need to start with an empty page of notebook paper, write "The Chosen One" across the top and start brainstorming. At least, that's what I plan to do."
  • Andrea Nemerson
    "Personally, I believe neither that you're attracting nutty people because you don't want nice ones nor that the universe will deliver someone really neato as soon as you deserve him or her. It would be nice if things worked out that equitably for everyone, but in my experience, the universe is kind of shiftless and lazy and just doesn't bother."
  • Elaine Hatfield:
    "When you are young, passion and hope are so strong that's it's almost impossible to stop loving someone. After you've been kicked around by life, however, you start to have a dual response to handsome con men: 'Wow!' and 'Arrrrrrgh!' It takes not will power but painful experience to make us wise."
  • Cary Tennis:
    "Be of service. Go where you can help. If you're an artist, be of service to your art; don't have it the other way around. You have to put aside your dreams of being a hotshot and learn to be useful. ... You step up everyday, get a nice clean hit, and you're done."
  • "prefer not to say:"
    "Being an old maid rocks. You don’t have to be pretty. You don’t have to have the same markers of social or financial success as couples feel pressured to have. You don’t have to have children but people are happy to lend theirs out for awhile. Your career options are wide open. You can finally wear comfortable shoes. Your furniture and your dishes don’t have to match. You are allowed to have eccentric hobbies. There is time for a quiet cup of coffee on a Saturday morning. You make your own travel plans. You can keep up with a much wider swath of friends. And I never wanted to get married until I met the man (and he existed) who would let me stay an old maid, even if we did get married. It hasn’t been easy (my future-in-laws think I am about to become a wife, and it has taken a lot of strategic deafness not to respond to those expectations) but it’s an interesting challenge and kind of fun with someone smart enough to give it a try. This isn’t a post to say, “Oh, honey, you just need to meet the right man.” Instead it’s a post to say — stay committed to being an old maid and happiness in the form that you need it will follow."
  • Piet Hein:
    "Whenever you're called on to make up your mind. And you're hampered by not having any. The simplest way to solve the dilemma you'll find, Is simply by flipping a penny. No, not so that chance shall decide the affair; As you're passively standing there moping. But as soon as the penny is up in the air, You'll suddenly know what you're hoping."
  • John Mayer:
    "I'm not normal by conventional social standards, and I'll never be, so maybe I should stop worrying and just embrace the insanity a bit."
  • Ethan Rayne, Buffy season 8 comic, #3:
    "You are always dreaming every dream you could dream all the time. Even when you're awake, a part of your brain is stirring that brew. Which one you choose to remember in the morning is based on wishes, anxieties... It's a vast and fascinating place. Everywhere you turn, a part of you."
  • Uhura:
    "People use the word “selfish” to insult women all the time-I think it’s because the essence of womanhood is selfless sacrifice- even to the detriment of themselves."
  • Yuhri:
    "Her weirdnesses have the quality of life in a trailer park during tornado season. Someone's shih-tzu just blew in through the window? Pfft. There's a Buick parked on the ceiling? Bah. Old man Parsnip just got blown right into the anal cavity of a standing cow? C'est la vie. Her life is managed in clusters of riot, interrupted by the occasional, errant moment of calm."
  • Dan Renzi:
    "Most women accept the fact that they can be, occasionally, somewhat crazy. I don't know any women who believe they are always handle situations with rational thought. They all know they slip off the deep end from time to time. It happens. But men? They really don't get it. They really think they are never wrong, what they want is what's best. Why wouldn't it be? It's what they want. Why shouldn't they have things their way? And it's there that lies the problem: men are inherently crazy because they don't think they're crazy at all. It's the definition of insanity, really."
  • Anonymous at Post Secret:
    "Oddly enough, she can handle having a lesbian daughter much better than one who is still single at 30."
  • LCG:
    "I am way more afraid of forgetting how to be happy alone than I am actually ending up alone."
  • Last words of Robert Anton Wilson:
    "Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
    Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd. "
  • Frank, in Little Miss Sunshine:
    "You know Marcel Proust?...French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh- he gets down to the end of his life... and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered- Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you're 18... Ah, think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school- Those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that."
  • Richard Crawford:
    "In order to defeat your evil villain, you only need remember this: every problem can be solved with sufficient explosives."
  • Aeire:
    "People say that they have a 'purpose' in life and some list big things like curing cancer, or fighting crime, or a myriad of other functions - I've sort of decided, quietly and to myself, that the reason I'm around is to "make people do" - I don't really care what it is you do, but if something I've done effects you to the point that you've broken out of the 9-to-5 everyday routine, if something I've said sparks you to feel something that you wouldn't ordinarily feel, if you've laughed or gotten horribly pissed off or disgusted, then thank you kindly for reading, and I'm glad I could affect you in one way or another."
  • blonde avenger62:
    "What is it about a 20-something, unencumbered female that people can't stand?"
  • rodotmoe:
    "This is why I hate math & fire."
  • Penn Jilette:
    "I really like to be proven wrong as often as I can because that's when I'm learning something...I am astounded by my own stupidity every single day."
  • Graciela, in "Tomorrow They Will Kiss:"
    "Send me the right man," I prayed, "or take away my desire to find true love."

May 13, 2008

Project Rooftop

Welcome to the superhero fashion site.

Candylicious

Skittle bag prom dress. Take that, duct tapers!

So cute

Knitted guitar.

Edward sounds like the new Mr. Darcy.

"One evening my roommate came into the living room and said, “What page are you on?” I said, “page ##.” She said, “I just finished that part, and Katherine, no man is ever going to love us that way. This is why I hate boys.”

Spoilers for A Shepherd's Tale

Here.

FARK said it first:

"Drunk, wearing a tuxedo and driving a riding mower is no way to go through life, son."

Oh, you Fug Girls

Perfect description of this picture.

Oh gack.

I hate that Britney makes HIMYM a hit. Next thing you know she'll BE the mother.

Vague Lost spoilers

Here.

The new Highlander (um, not so much)

"one day someone will do a story on why According to Jim is the Show That Cannot Be Killed. Why oh why is it so damn unkillable?"

"I think that Jim Belushi is a Highlander; norhing short of beheading is going to finish this thing off."

TV Squad takes a poll to see if anyone is happy to see it come back...or if anyone even watches it.

"If you read the comments here, though, it's not as though anyone is particularly happy about it. "WTF" and "you've got to be kidding me" are common reactions to this news. So, I have to wonder: if so many people seem to hate this show, despise it so much as to make it the brunt of many TV-related jokes, and to be shocked -- SHOCKED, I tell you -- that the network could continue to allow such an atrocity to linger on, then who is watching it?" According to the poll...not a lot of people.

Here's some of the positive! comments about it:

  • "It's not THAT terrible of a show and beats ET or Wheel, IMHO."
  • "I've seen an episode or two, and there was nothing particularly annoying about it, but it wasn't funny enough to make me want to watch it."
  • "The show isn't that bad - it's a non thought show"
  • "It reminds me of the family friendly sitcoms of the 80s that are pretty much extinct."
  • "u know i dont know how long this show has been on but at first i was anti jim. but u know what the guy that plays his best friend. hes really funny and their stupidity together does make for some laughs. and the kids so its not that bad."
  • "However, the bits I've caught are not awful, just predictable and boring (but consistent). I think many people can get into that."

Um, wow. You sure sold me on that show.


"Looking back, Calhoun and Noble may not have been the best two people to create that memorial."

(Again catching up from the weekend...)

A Mom-umental Failure: The spectacular flameout of the mother of all D.C. memorials. (Washington Post) This is kind of a hoot to read about, especially the character of Daisy Calhoun. And it just gets funny in general at times.

"There's arguably a creepy, smothering, borderline-necrophilic tinge to Mother's Day as envisioned by Anna Jarvis. She suggested that the carnation be the symbol of the holiday, as "the carnation does not drop its petals, but hugs them to its heart as it dies, and so, too, mothers hug their children to their hearts, their mother love never dying."
Woodrow Wilson signed Mother's Day into law in 1914, but whatever joy Jarvis felt at her accomplishment was soon overtaken by rage, as the holiday quickly became an excuse for merchants to peddle posies and greeting cards. Jarvis spent the rest of her life trying to undo the damage. She lashed out at sons and daughters who would rather buy a card than write a letter. She formed something called the Mother's Day International Corporation and sued retailers and festival organizers who she felt violated her copyright. Like all good wild-eyed visionaries, she died penniless in a sanitarium. Naturally, she was buried next to her mother.
As for children, she never had any.

Margaret had children by both men, and the testimony as to what sort of mother her mother was depends on which branch of the family you talk to.
"We never speak poorly of her at all," Andrew Drury, Calhoun's grandson, told me. "My mother absolutely loved Daisy, thought she was an absolute blast, always very affectionate. I never heard of any problems there at all."
The widow of Andrew's half-brother, Charles Waring, has a different memory. "She was a horrible mother," Jane Waring said of Calhoun. "I mean, she was the antithesis of what you'd want for a mother."
Margaret, Jane Waring said, was raised by nannies. "Her mother was always gallivanting around, having her fine ideas. I find the whole [Mothers' Memorial] thing ironic."
Jane Waring summed up her mother-in-law's opinion of Calhoun with an anecdote about a phone call she received from Margaret: "She called me and said: 'Jane, tell your husband to come get the bitch. Daisy fell off the wall. That damn portrait came within inches of killing me.'"

Noble spent the next three years trying to pry money out of Daisy Calhoun and the Woman's Universal Alliance. On August 7, 1929, it looked as if he was finally going to get paid. He agreed to meet with the Calhouns in his lawyer's office in the Munsey Building at 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. A check for $30,000 was produced, and Noble was told it was his if he signed a document agreeing not to publish charges derogatory to the character of the Calhouns.
Noble thought that odd, but he signed. So did his third wife, Emilie, their lawyer, James Bird, and two people who had entered the Nobles' orbit in the previous two years: a businessman named Stephen A. Armstrong and a nurse named Anna Hillenbrand. Hillenbrand was the head of a women's group called the Alma Mater that was supposedly interested in building Noble's design. Washingtonians with a good memory might have recalled she'd once been accused of coercing an elderly woman she was caring for into changing her will, making Hillenbrand the beneficiary.
These, then, were the characters assembled in the conference room when, at a prearranged signal from an undercover officer the Calhouns had brought along ("Quick, get my glasses"), three deputy marshals burst in. Bird, the lawyer, started ripping up the agreement, but a deputy grabbed it from his hands. As Noble and his supporters were arrested for extortion, Daisy Calhoun jumped up and down, clapping her hands and shouting, "We caught you just like mice in a trap."

 

"Mrs. Calhoun said her husband is a Southerner and shoots to kill. She said if I tried to collect my debt from her, he would shoot me. I told her if he came to my house with a pistol, I'd punch it down his neck, and that, anyhow, he didn't look like he'd carry a very big gun."

This being the Post, there's a chat about it.

John Kelly: "I wrote in the Magazine yesterday about what I found: no physical memorial, just traces in archives, libraries and morgues of What Might Have Been. And probably What Shouldn't Have Been. (The memorial design was pretty hideous.) But what characters: A flaky debutante! A boxing art student! I got kind of fond of Daisy Calhoun and W. Clark Noble."

"Upper Marlboro, Md.: What is this hatred of parents or rather, a desperate need to be hip, that the Post shows every mother's and father's day in the Post magazine? Why did they think it appropriate to print this article on this day? For the past several years, every Mother and Father's Day, one can depend on the magazine running articles on how horrible someone's parent, or step-parent was, how they abused, or misused, or ignored, or otherwise screwed up their childhood, and how the author felt ambivalent about the person at separation or death. The contrivance has been used enough! Let it go! It's okay to have a well-researched story about a pretty freaking good parent for a change!!!"

"John Kelly: I don't think my story was anti-Mother. I love my mother. I just thought it was such an interesting tale, and one I hadn't seen before. Yes, the characters weren't exactly the best parents. But not all parents are. And I think that maybe explains why this thing imploded. Did they REALLY want to honor mothers? Or were they trying to do something else?
What did Tolstoy say? Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I also believe that sentiment I ended the story with (if you got that far): We don't need memorials to remember our mothers. Or we shouldn't, anyway. As for why it ran on Mother's Day, well, that's the whole point."

Good idea.

"I wish we could call it 'unconditional love' day, because I know that's what we value most in the concept of motherhood--the love that does not demand, just appreciates and gives."

"Realish."

How to solve the "memoir" conundrum.

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT! (FBOFW)

Pardon my delay on this, I was sick yesterday.

"Warren returns....and Liz shows him The Ring which glows and lights up her whole hand...and Warren screams and recoils from it like a vampire from a cross..."

"Speaking of tedious romantic storylines, I have to admit that today’s FBOFW made me crack up. Sure, it’s a reinforcement of the horribly retrograde idea that the strip’s been going on about for some time — that if some guy you don’t like is coming on to you, all you can do is wring your hands and whine weakly about it unless you have a bit of finger hardware purchased for you by someone else with external genitalia. But the sight of Warren recoiling in horror from the second-cheapest ring from Zales (or its Canadian equivalent) as if it were filled with deadly radon gas is so hilariously over the top that Foob, Inc., has to be in on the joke. Right? Right? Right?"

  • "I got engaged over the weekend. At work today I did enjoy the double-takes and congratulations I got when people noticed “the token that says ‘I’m taken.’” But so far, no one’s recoiled in horror, clutching one hand to his head while protected his chin with the other, while letting out an AAAAHHH!

    … What am I doing wrong?"

"I think this answers a question his last appearance raised. We all asked ourselves if Liz actually told him about Anthony and the life they'd built? The answer is "No". She punked out and stupidly, inadvertantly let him think he still had a chance. She pulls stuff like this all the time. Anthony knows about Warren but not Paul. Warren and Paul know about each other but not about Anthony. Her being coy makes her look like a mean-spirited little tease."

"Liz, looking like a morphine addict, says that it never started. Direct Speech. WOW! Lynn must have been paying attention to our snark about her never using it to men. "I'll show them", she said."

May 10, 2008

Tae Kwan Leap (Boot to the Head)

Live action!

Unicorn ram!

Cute!

May 2008

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
        1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Search Google

  • Google

    WWW
    fullmoon.typepad.com

Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews