Kath

The Best Of It - Part 1 of ?
Synopsis: Paris outs herself and Rory during a televised argument with Michele Bachmann. Peskiest of all is the fact that Paris and Rory aren't actually dating. A documentary crew wants to make Paris And Rory: Love In Stars Hollow anyway. Meanwhile, Rory goes slowly and quietly nuts. (And doesn't like Paris like that -- why would you even suggest such a thing?? Not that ... anyone did.)

“Now, now, now,” Taylor says. “Not so fast. There are serious potential repercussions here that need to be addressed. Such as: what if the Tea Party declares war on Stars Hollow?”

“Then it’s a good thing we’ve got such a valiant troop of Revolutionary War re-enactors!” Rory says as perkily as she can.

Happy Buffy's Birthday, everyone!

It's a little freakish how much I've been enjoying winter so far. I even shoveled. On purpose.

I finished Stephen King's Desperation a few days ago and now every Canesten commercial I see fills me with revulsion. It was truly his most viscerally grotesque book, and I say that having read most, but not all of his books - it can only be tied in grossness, never surpassed. And I have read some disgusting shit!

I found it reasonably compelling, and the kid at its centre was endlessly fascinating as a character. The end felt rushed, though, and almost forcibly expels the reader from the inner journey of one of its main characters, whose thoughts and POV have been prevalent all along. That was odd.

It was no 11.22.63 or Under The Dome, both of which I read in the past couple of months.

Despite my lukewarm review, Desperation's companion book, The Regulators, is in my virtual to-read pile for sometime later this year. I've never read a Bachman book before, so that should be interesting.

Right now I'm nearly done with Charles Portis's True Grit, which is a fantastic read, although a bit redundant if you've seen the Cohen brothers movie. They stayed so close to the book it's almost uncomfortable. I've seen the movie 4 times and I can almost anticipate the end of the sentence I'm reading when I turn the page.

I expect I'll be adding that one to the list tomorrow. But for now:

2012 Books:
#2: 2012-01-06 to 2012-01-16 - Desperation, Stephen King

Mission already accomplished! Yaaaay.

2012 is starting out very well, with lots of shoes. I received 2 pairs of Fluevogs today from the Man Himself (Ida Clarks in black and beige, and vegan Raquels in orange corduroy that I got on sale) and I've got another one coming from a very fortuitous eBay win (Lovers in a discontinued burgundy/beige). Yes, I know that sounds completely insane, but, well, I've always been a collector. After this, I'll have a pair for each day of the week, so that'll be convenient, right?

Anyway, ( meet my dog Ramona )

Annnd... here's the start of my 2012 Book & Movie Cultural Extravaganza!

Movies
#1: 2012-01-02 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
#2: 2012-01-03 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Books
#1: 2012-01-03 to 2012-01-04 - The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin

As the last person to see the Potter films, I have very little in the way of a review. The Le Guin book is awesome, as was to be expected. Stephen King's Desperation is next!

You guys, I am banned from checking my flist until I finish my NaNoWriMo words for the day and go shopping. This is because, due to NaNoWriMo and the total shake-up to my schedule while waiting for the new job to start, I FORGOT YESTERDAY WAS NEW COMIC BOOK DAY. D:

The store called me at seven last night to tell me my holds were in, and I was like, "It's WEDNESDAY???" They laughed at me. Whoops!

And well, it's not that I don't trust you guys to cut your cutables, it's that I don't trust me not to click them. *whimpers*

Meanwhile, NaNoWriMo (that hated awful-sounding acronym) is going pretty well. I've been keeping almost-a-whole-day ahead the whole time, and my goal for today is to break that "almost" and carry around a full day's buffer.

I partly credit the awful NaNo stats page for my good progress. I have no idea what moron thought it would be a good idea to tell people who were ahead in their word goals that they were having an "unsuccessful day" just because they'd only added 500 words today to their bank of 12,000 from yesterday. Not to mention the fact that it tells you first thing in the morning that you're having an unsuccessful day so far! Congrats, it's 7am and you've done nothing yet, failure!

( Deeper into stats. )

All this to say that, um, the annoying stats issue has actually fuelled my rage and caused me to do well. But not in any way that makes me want to keep the stats the way they are. Negative feedback? Seriously? In the least negative program this side of... damn, I can't think of anything more positive and encourage-y than NaNoWriMo was before this year. I'm sure even Up With People had its seedy underbelly.

I keep having thinky thoughts about that controversial Marie Claire article, despite the fact that the controversy is *so over* that the backlash has already come and gone. So I don't really want to talk about the article itself. Its very publication is going to go down as one of the great mind-boggling mysteries of the modern age, but the outrage is long over.

( So I'll address the article's subject, instead. )

I'm writing a novel-length fic for NaNoWriMo! I decided it might be a good idea to participate in some way, the better to stomp this awful block I've been wrestling with since last November's epic fail, but I knew that 50,000 original words was not the way to go right now, after a year of cluelessness.

So I spent all weekend thinking up a list of hilariously bad ideas (omg so bad), and finally hit on one that didn't make me roll my eyes five minutes into planning it! Yay! In fact, I started typing out a few thoughts and before I knew it, I had 2 single-spaced pages and had followed the basic plotline all the way to the end.

o___O

And then I info-dumped all over donnagirl and arabella_hope (hey, are you still spice on DW, by the way? Because that makes us too adorable for words, I'm just sayin'...) which is a sure sign of commitment on my part. Or so my track record would indicate. Also a good sign: having two weeks before I'm technically allowed to start isn't frustrating me the way it normally would. I actually am psyched that I get to plan in deeper detail between now and then.

It's got all kinds of themes I love crammed into it, which helps. Like robots! Yay, robots! Not that I'll be spilling much of it here until it's all the way done (actually, if all goes well I'm hoping to post it as a big bang next spring). I just wanted to spew a little bit of my overly earnest excitement at you.

Yaaaay.

I'm queer. I mostly like girls, but sometimes I like boys, and sometimes I like people who are neither, or both.

Now this is a holiday I can feel good about, as opposed to the incoherent muddle that is Thanksgiving, which we never seem to celebrate anyway.

...

We're having a comment party at penny_lane_42's LJ and everyone who likes to write or read about ladies is invited! All fandoms welcome :)



...

Went to Geek Night at a local revue theatre yesterday. They were showing The Shining with what had to have been an original 1980 print - you should have seen the light damage and wear & tear on this thing. It had entirely forgotten the meaning of the word black. (Unfortunately, it hadn't forgotten the meaning of the N-word, which I'd forgotten was spoken multiple times in one scene. Even though it's being said by a crazed homicidal ghost and could probably be explained away as the character's word choice, not the filmmaker's, there's still something deeply uncomfortable about watching that scene nowadays. Just goes to show you how much the world has changed.)

Anyway, they do trivia contests for prizes on Geek Nights. Which means it's essentially "give Kath some prizes" night when you consider they're asking horror movie questions. I stopped after one prize, because I'm not that much of a dork, but yeah, I think Geek Night will be a thing from now on, if only for the cool prizes.

How do you like my new shower curtain?

It's way better than the flowered one I last used. I have vowed not to warn anyone ahead of time when they come to visit. Muahaha.

So, yeah. If you need someone to out-geek all your horror geeks, call me. Seriously, it's kind of my thing.

Ugh. I have an icky throat almost-sick thing going on today, and the backs of my thighs are killing me from ripping up turf all day Saturday. Being doubled over for hours: I don't recommend it. Also, there were worms that bite and are unkillable!

Stupid hot tub. What good are you if Future!me hasn't time traveled back to say hi and offer Present!me a trip to next month and a nice relaxing soak?

I really will just keep making that same joke over and over. Sorry!

In other bad comedy news, my dad and I had this conversation yesterday:

Dad: "Aw, man, I meant to mow the lawn this weekend, but now I won't have the time."
Me: "You know if you think about it in terms of averages, we did mow the lawn. I mean, we mowed half the lawn a whole lot, and the rest not at all."
Dad: *stare*

Well, I thought it was funny, but maybe only because I was severely exhausted from ripping up a huge patch of turf with my bare hands.

Sometime this week, I have to message someone at whedonland and see what my status is there. I am thinking "shunned" is a good guess. I'm also thinking, "But I kept posting to you long after I stopped posting anywhere else!" isn't going to make a good counter-argument to the shunning. It's been months, and I totally defaulted on the giftgiving thing, and I don't even know if I got a gift myself (crap, did I get a gift? I'm scared to look.) I really need to make it up to... someone. Anyone? Everyone? Is there such a thing as landcomm community service? /o\

Oh, and: Otis sends in an elevator expert to tell us all what to do if we are stuck in an elevator with the devil. Thank goodness they got an expert's advice on this pressing issue!

As promised (or threatened) to donnagirl and arabella_hope, this is going to be a Big Emo Post of Doom (tm). It may be that in title only - I'm not sure, I haven't written it yet, but here goes:

I have been soooo absent. Up until August, I was reading but not posting. I felt mute (for various reasons, a large one of which I will confess in this post). Gradually, I even stopped reading my flist, which is something I had never done, ever, in the eight years I'd had my journal. And I *missed* it! I missed you guys so much! I missed posting, I missed having a blog, I missed comments (omg I missed commenting SO MUCH). But I just couldn't bring myself to check my flist. I was... going through some shit.

When I was in the second grade, I had this best friend. She now works in my building and I do printing for her on a regular basis. She's never acknowledged that she knows me, or that we ever watched Spaceballs on Betamax a million times in her hippie dad's shag-carpeted basement swing den. I'm pretty sure this is because we had a sort of violent bff break-up. I don't remember what caused the break-up, but I do remember that the last thing she did in the friendship was accuse me of being emotionally stunted. I couldn't argue - I knew even then that it was true.

My issue with this journal basically boils down to embarrassment. A lot of it is completely irrational. I've felt embarrassed about what I like, what I don't like, who I know, what I do, what I don't do, what I have done, who I am, how I feel. It's this really generalized, crippling embarrassment. It might even border on shame - it's that powerful, and I'm able to direct it at virtually any area of my life. Apparently, I am nothing if not a master of self-sabotage.

Or at least, I have been. Welcome to my plan to snap the fuck out of it by discussing the very subjects that make me most avoidy, regardless of whether you know about them already. Actually, more power to me if you know about them already - do you know how many times I've just let my friends come to quiet conclusions about me instead of using my words? That is not cool. Even if the conclusions were right, that is just not rock and roll. And one of my more minor embarrassment issues is that I hate telling people things they already know, so if you already knew all of this, then I can consider it killing two birds with one stone. More homegrown therapy for me!

So here's my biggest stumbling block, laid bare for you.

( The history of my heart, cut to save your sanity. )

The most important thing is not to be mute anymore. I feel like this silence started during those months at the start of last year, when I lost my actual voice. It's like I got a taste of erasure, and it fit with how insignificant I felt inside, so when I got my voice back, I didn't use it. I just kept shutting up, literally and figuratively. Now I'm at this messy spilling point, just the natural end to a year or more of relative silence, I suppose. And I am so ready to yell.

I have this up on the forum, but I know I should also store somewhere more "mine", so here it is:

( BPAL wishlist )