Chaos Theory

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."

• 'That first panel is fucking scary. So is the second. He lurks until she's coming home with her hands full? Offers to "help" in a way that will get him into her apartment? She turns her back on him? All this with a guy who has proven that he doesn't take no for an answer?
  For that matter, why would he find an engagement ring to be so horrific? Is that going to stop him when nothing else did? Is he going to run out tomorrow and buy a bigger, better ring?"
• "And Liz is the survivor of an assault, but she's so "okay" about Warren's behavior? Well, I'm so glad that little "incident" has so receded into the past."
• "Watch, tomorrow Warren will proposition her, and it will be seen as incredibly inappropriate, both by Liz and the Coffee Squawkers who had NO problem with Granthony going after her moments after her near-rape."
• "I notice that the "I'm engaged" information didn't come until AFTER she let Warren follow her into the house. A tease until the end."
• "Liz and Anthony really are so mutually passive that they go nowhere by themselves. Warren is a catalyst that's essential making them into Lizthony (the reaction is still endothermic and produces no romance). They're just too lame on their own." (Good point!)
• "Okay, unless that stone is the frackin' Hope Diamond, he should not be throwing his hands up like he's just been hit with a spotlight.
  Really, wasn't one assassination enough?  Do we have to dig up the body just to shoot it again?"
• "Lynn thinks this is drama. She thinks she's creating doubt about whether the wedding will happen. As others have pointed out, it's her last card to play."
• "Jumping out of the shadows is Warren Blackwood, the man who never calls to let people know when he is coming over. We saw him last in March, when his appearance caused Anthony to finally pop the question to Liz. Of course the question was, “Should we discuss marriage?” But, that’s beside the point. What will Warren’s visit cause Liz and Anthony to do this time? Can you say…”Set a date for the wedding”? Join us a few months from now, when Warren Blackwood mysteriously appears to Liz during her honeymoon, and causes Liz and Anthony to consummate their marriage, instead of having a long conversation about whether they should talk about having sex."

"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."

• "Why didn't you tell me, Liz?"
  "I was going to, but my father was too busy remembering bad things about dentistry."
• "He and I have cared for each other...."  "...a lot more..."  Still not hearing the word love."
• "I think the first panel is a milestone. Has Liz ever explicitly said that she's going to MARRY Granthony? I honestly believe this is the only reason Warren is here: to prompt her to say that."
• "Erasers! Lynn Johnston. Erasers!! They can make all the difference between great art and a big steaming pile of “I’m going to retire in September”.
  Aside from the art distractions, I simply love the way Elizabeth Patterson cannot bring herself to say, “that grew into LOVE”.  Instead it grew into a lot more.  That seems to be accurate, because really the next stage from friendship with Anthony Caine has got to be described as:
  a. The same way one would describe a mold or mildew left unattended for too long.
  b. “A lot more”, since “an obsessive love which cost Anthony his marriage”  just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
  c. The way one would interpret this logically, “friendship that grows into a lot more friendship.”
  d. A relationship where she marries the guy she knows the longest."
• "WHY is Liz marrying Anthony but has yet to say that she loves him?  To anyone?  Ever?"
• "I get the feeling that Lynn has not been able to say 'I love you' with complete heartfelt sincerity to ANYONE for a very long time - except in that oh-gosh-I-love-you-but-only-in-a-cute-and-flirty-but-oddly-inappropriate way with (GUESS WHO!) Sparky.
  She's trying to write a budding true love romance with the bitter bile of recent divorce after a long marriage in her throat. By all accounts, she THOUGHT Rod loved her and everything was hunky-dory, but either he hid his affair VERY well or the writing was on the wall for a long time and Lynn was too blind to see it.
  Any wonder we haven't heard the L-word around Lizthony. I'm sure Lynn's love-synapse is a write-off."

Tae Kwan Leap (Boot to the Head)

Live action!

Unicorn ram!

Cute!