We heard that rice expands, exploding pigeons, [entries|friends|calendar] Jollification for weeks on end "I'm a gypsy in spirit only," she confessed. "I travel in gardens and bedrooms, basements and attics, around corners, through doorways and windows, along sidewalks, up stairs, over carpets, down drainpipes, in the sky, with friends, lovers, children and heroes; perceived, remembered, imagined, distorted and clarified." - "Another Roadside Attraction" by Tom Robbins About the author Minions Milemarkers The Burping Troll PostSecret tag Ow! My childhood! [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

Photo post the second: very image-heavy! [25 Sep 2009|12:32pm] [ mood | chipper ] Heeswijk (moo) Brussels All images property of Hayley Wozny ( Lots and lots more photos from the non-digital camera (all developed, hooray!) are behind this cut. Seriously. LOTS of pictures. You've been warned. ) 12 comments|post comment

Photo post the first: image-heavy! [23 Sep 2009|04:49pm] [ mood | chipper ] All images property of Hayley Wozny A small smattering of photos behind the cut from the digital camera (hopefully-better photos from the better camera are being developed) ( Castles, green rooms, and don't forget Neil Gaiman ) 8 comments|post comment

Book review: One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding [23 Sep 2009|11:47am] [ mood | busy ] I posted this review on my Facebook bookshelf a few months back, but don't think I ever posted it here. Please note that I am largely doing a commentary on the marketing and sociological aspects that the book is focused on, and my views here are not intended to be slights against shoppers or people who like tradition or the traditionalesque, so much as slights against the vendors, marketers, etc. One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding by Rebecca Mead (a contributor to The New Yorker, which quickly makes itself apparent, as I’ll get into later) is nothing if not, first and foremost, unsurprising. Did I need a book to tell me that the Wedding Industrial Complex (WIC) is out to sell an engaged woman everything she could ever possibly conceive of needing or wanting, no matter how trivial or unnecessary or – in many cases – utterly contrived? No. The WIC is a business; to be shocked that they’re trying to make money from customers is tantamount to being surprised that the Pope is Catholic and that Lance Bass is gay. This is not to say that the book is not a worthwhile read. On the contrary, I did find parts of it very interesting. To start with, as mentioned, the concept of a business trying to sell as much as possible to potential clients is hardly surprising. What is rather interesting though is the way in which the WIC is selling its wares. To quote one particular wedding vendor, a bride-to-be is the “drunken sailor” of a customer; everyone wants to get her into their store, because she’ll buy anything and everything once they’ve got her under the magic spell of white polyester and a handful of silk flowers and a $250 tiara shoved on her head as soon as she’s got that dress on, because damn it they are not going to let her get away with the audacity of only buying a dress when the crown just "makes her look like the bride" (and that $250 pressured tiara is the sell that actually “pays the bills” as one boutique consultant points out). Think you're nontraditional and can shop there without feeling that pressure? Think again, as Mead writes that, "One of my favorite pieces described how to market to the 'nontraditional bride' and warned readers that this kind of woman is dangerously apt to 'forget the wedding and prepare for marriage.'" Heaven forbid. The wedding industrial complex isn’t messing around here. They’ll go after that drunken sailor until they’re blue in the face. But, Mead asks, “Who’s pouring the drinks?” To back up a moment, I should mention that the WIC isn’t just peddling tradition with some tiaras on top. What they’re peddling may have the sticker that says “traditional” but in reality, what they’re selling is the “traditionalesque” – things that are not, in fact, traditional at all, but are dressed up to look and feel like the real thing. Disney is particularly good at this. As one Disney wedding official told Mead, "Disney prided itself upon its traditionalism when it came to weddings; but the traditions that were most determinedly upheld at Disney were those established by the company itself.” And speaking of "traditions" being marketing as being old as time, let's not forget that De Beers created the whole diamond engagement ring thing. Diamond engagement rings are far from traditional in the time-sense. To quote Mead at length: "The wedding industry has been assiduous in working to establish the trappings of the lavish formal wedding as if they were compulsory rather than optional. One of the most vivid instances of the wedding industry inventing a tradition -- the phrase derives from a celebrated essay by Eric Hobsbawn, the Marxist historian -- is the positioning of an engagement ring as an essential piece of matrimonial equipage. Americans started giving and wearing diamond engagement rings in the latter part of the nineteenth century, after the discovery of diamond mines in South Africa made the stones much more easily available than they had been hitherto. But it was in the 19030s that the advertising agency N. W. Ayer began to create on behalf of De Beers diamond company a decades-long advertising and public-relations campaign to convince the American consumer that a diamond ring was an indispensable token of romantic love's measure. Crowning N. W. Ayer's achievement was a phrase coined in 1947 by a copywriter named Frances Gerety that Advertising Age magazine was later to call the best advertising slogan of the twentieth century: 'A Diamond is Forever.' Thanks to the efforts of Gerety -- who never herself married -- the imperative for a diamond engagement ring is today so well established that the current De Beers's marketing campaigns have focused not simply upon the necessity of a diamond, but the necessity of a really, really big diamond. (One recent advertisement shows a large stone and a smaller one side by side, the caption under the smaller reading, "Where'd you get that diamond?" and the caption under the larger reading, "Where'd you get that man?") The convention that a man should spend two months' salary on his bride's ring was also created by the jewelry industry, and the De Beers Web site, adiamondisforever.com, provides a handy calculator for figuring out two months' salary from an annual wage, helpful for any would-be groom who can't divide by six. (Where'd you get that man, indeed.)" 1947? Hardly a timeless ancient tradition. The Apache Wedding Prayer Blessing is a good example of the “traditionalesque” in ceremonial form. The prayer (“Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter to the other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other. Now there is no more loneliness, for each of you will be companion to the other. Now you are two bodies, but there is one life before you. Go now to your dwelling place,to enter into the days of your togetherness. And may your days be good and long upon the earth.”) is by no means a traditional blessing at all. And it’s certainly not an Apache one. Rather, it’s as American as they come, right out of the James Stewart film, "Broken Arrow," which is a cowboy film written by non-Indians for Hollywood (and the blessing was written specifically for the film). So, I suppose if one is looking to have a Hollywood feel to a ceremony, the blessing would be a good choice. But traditional Apache? Not so much. (An actual Apache wedding involved the man and woman each eating some corn meal mash.) But it’s touted as traditional, because it feels traditional, and looks traditional, and sounds traditional. So, that’s what it’s "sold" as (not literally, but figuratively). And eventually, as the years go by, I suppose it will become traditional in the sense of people using it over the years and years and years. But not stretching back so far as ancient Apache times, as seems to be the way it’s being described. There's nothing wrong with the blessing itself -- it's quite pretty. And plenty of people use readings from poetry and books and even movies in their ceremonies, and there's nothing wrong with that either. It's the spirit in which it is being published around as a traditional blessing that's a little bewildering. The book provides interesting statistics showing what people have spent in the years gone by versus what they tend to spend now, citing the statistically flawed methods used by the WIC; they tend to group many expenses outside of the wedding in with the wedding itself, so they can say people spend, on average, $28,000 on a wedding, when in reality it may not be that much, and the fact that they’re pulling these averages from their own pool of people who respond to their magazine surveys, which means that they people spending that much are buying their magazines, which says something already about the type of wedding that the people surveyed are planning – they aren’t going to pull data from people going to the courthouse, or people planning online without the aid of glossy magazines, they aren’t pulling data from people who might just be using what the church has available without, again, the glossy magazines; their pool of people surveyed isn’t as large as they’d like us to think. But why enlarge statistics? Simple. If a woman is convinced that people on average spend that much, she’ll become more and more comfortable with it as “fact” and will simply feel there’s no way around. Out comes the cash. The one thing that particularly bothered me about Mead was her snobbery – she was aghast that people would spend 30k on a wedding, just as aghast at those who would spend 15k or 5k (when she herself says she threw a party and didn't just go to the courthouse). And what about those people who said they didn’t have any help from parents in paying for a wedding? Definitely not hard-working people. *Obviously* those people were all people who had parents pay for college and were given jobs early in life – those people were all obviously fooling themselves if they thought they should be proud of themselves for paying for it on their own! They should have been ashamed, it seems according to Mead, since obviously the only way to afford to pay for your entire wedding yourself is to be fed with a silver spoon for everything else so you can save up the money. Courthouse weddings? At some times in the book, she seems to applaud them (she had one herself, though then later threw a large party for guests at home) but then at others, again seems to drift to the idea that they’re still spending too much if they throw a party that’s lavish later (even though she did…). It comes across as a little bit snobby. And what's worse, you can't seem to win with her! You're damned if you throw a big party, but damned if you throw a tiny one, too. But then, she’s a staff writer for The New Yorker, so it’s sort of par for the course, I suppose. As for the part where we’re supposed to be shocked that David’s Bridal has its dresses made overseas in Chinese sweatshops (which Mead visits personally to see women getting paid for the weight of pins they pull out of dresses, and by the skirt – something 40 cents a day – and lean over to carefully hand-bead yard after yard of fake white silk so that when it gets to David’s they can slap that sticker on that says “hand-beaded!” as though someone in the back room lovingly stitched it with a cup of tea and some Mozart playing on the cd player)…I think at this point it’s fairly common knowledge. Thus is the name of the game of capitalism. It’s sad, but…such is the name of the game. Again, it goes back to business; why would the WIC be any different from the thousands of other things being made overseas in sweatshops? It’s a special day, but not that special. Product is still, at the end of the day, product, whether that product is a basketball shoe or a wedding dress. On the whole, I’d recommend this to anyone interested in seeing behind the scenes for the marketing aspect, although the sociological aspect is what really drew me to the book and I was not disappointed there either, as the marketing is in part what has lead to the bridal culture being what it is (the WIC has created the bridezilla and it keeps them in business). Snootiness aside, it’s really worthwhile (and being a bit of a snooty snob myself from time to time, it didn’t really bother me that much). The insight into how the business has commandeered the word "traditional" is a very interesting read in and of itself. It gives a good solid look at the wedding industrial complex from a large variety of angles -- it's a business first and last, and essentially, the name of the game is money, not matrimony. 2 comments|post comment

Let us mourn the loss of a friend. [31 Aug 2009|08:48pm] [ mood | sad ] WTF Tropical Smoothie? You discontinued my favorite wrap. The one wrap I loved, the one wrap that doesn't have an ingredient of grossness to me on your menu. The one wrap I dreamed about on bad days, the one wrap that could cure any foul mood, the one wrap that stole my heart. RIP Mango Chicken Habanero. I will never love again. 2 comments|post comment

"Burned" review -- spoilers ahead, scroll on by if you want to avoid [12 Aug 2009|10:25am] [ mood | tired ] Pattyn Von Stratten's story, told through journal entries written in verse, is undeniably a story that drew me in. It's a fast read, and a page-turner. However. I've got to admit, I've got some qualms about this book. The book starts out with Pattyn blossoming as a finishing high school junior taking tentative steps out of her secluded Mormon (we'll talk about this in a second) family's rules by reading books from the school library. She devours Le'Engle, Tolkien, Austen, knowing that she's got to hide them, as her father forbids them. Sex dreams follow, which come with confusion and guilt and questioning how much she can control things like this when God disapproves -- how can she control herself in her sleep? Again, Pattyn takes tentative steps to questioning her faith. But when she asks her mother about her role in life and gets the answer that it's essentially to make babies, Pattyn becomes defiant. This isn't the life she wants. Neither does she want to marry a nice Mormon boy as she's expected to -- not when her father is an abusive man who spends a good portion of his time a) drinking (he confesses to the Bishop regularly, then continues) or b) beating his wife. Seeking solace, Pattyn takes to shooting out in the dessert, practicing with the rifle that she's learned to use (with her father's help -- he had 7 daughters and always wanted a son, and while Pattyn certainly isn't the son he wanted, he was content to at least teach her to shoot). But it's not enough, and as the dreams continue, and Pattyn continues to question her faith, she also finds herself falling for a boy in her class, Derek. And when her dessert wanderings slowly become dessert trysts, trouble lies ahead. Caught, Pattyn is sent to live with her Aunt J in Caliente, Nevada, where life is suddenly heaven. There are horses to learn to ride, cows to herd, and best of all, Ethan -- the boy who lives just down the road, and who quickly falls just as hard for Pattyn as she does for him. This is no tryst in the dessert, Pattyn realizes. This is "forever love". But the heaven of Nevada with Aunt J and Ethan can only last but so long. There are stories of the nuclear tests that have ruined lives, brush fires, and cougars. and there are dark secrets that Aunt J reveals to Pattyn; secrets about the death threat that Pattyn's father made to Aunt J and her lover when they were young, the violence that tore Aunt J's heart and life apart. But, there's still this "forever love" that keeps everyone together... Until the end of the summer, when the shoe drops. Pattyn receives a letter from one of her younger sisters, Jackie, a plea for help as Pattyn's father has turned from beating their mom to beating Jackie. Rage builds as Pattyn struggles with what to do. She wants to stay with Aunt J and Ethan, wants to never see her family again (Jackie is the only one who's made any contact with her all summer after Pattyn's exile in shame and disgrace as punishment). Finally, Pattyn breaks down and tells Ethan about her father, and about what he's done in the past, the death threats he made to Derek and Aunt J's lover, and the death threat he'd surely make to Ethan if he and Pattyn's love were to be discovered. As she packs up and leaves, everything begins to spiral out of control. Ethan gifts her with a handgun to protect herself with, in the event that the abuse and death threats come to fruition, and they're back to her home. Pattyn gets home, and the new in-love, horse-riding cattle-driving brave Pattyn stands up to her father. Her father is out of control, and the beating she receives brings her down. Determined not to let this control her life, Pattyn makes the decision to get out and away, and calls Ethan, begging him to take her away. But when icy roads and a daring escape go wrong, Pattyn's life is left shattered, and the book ends with her on her way to shoot up the sanctuary of her church to avenge the lives that have been ended. (I say "lives" because in addition to Ethan dying, Pattyn and Ethan's unborn child is also killed -- yes, the standard condom-broke-pregnancy also shows up in this book.) ... Okay, so, first: This book is a fast and easy read, and the poetic verse format that it's written in is interesting, and conveys the emotions of Pattyn throughout her ordeals palpable However...first, this book portrays Mormonism as being a religioun of abusive, mean and unforgiving people. It leaves no room for any sympathetic Mormon character -- every single Mormon character is in some way bad. Pattyn's "friends" from church betray her by telling about her and Derek in the dessert by gossip. The women of the church tell Pattyn that her role in life is to be a baby machine. Her father is an alcoholic abuser. The church Bishop tells Pattyn that she's sinful for having dreams, accidentally breaking a window, and for falling in love. The morning meeting leader for the youth just plain doesn't know anything enough to answer a simply question from Pattyn about sex dreams. Jackie, Pattyn's younger sister, is sympathetic because she's being abused, but even she's said by Pattyn to be falling right in line with "propaganda." I just feel like Hopkins might have done well to present even one good Mormon character, considering how much flak Mormonism gets all the time. Keep the negative characters, that's fine, but don't portray this all as the norm. It never gives Mormonism a break in the book. EVER. It's all like this. Apparently, Hopins (a Lutheran) has stated in interviews that that "the references to the Mormon religion are accurate" and that "every religion can be home to extremists" -- sure, every religion can be home to extremists, but the problem here is that Hopkins never makes ANY attempt to show that this is extremist. In the novel, this is portrayed as accurately normal for Mormonism. Secondly, the story is written in poetic verse. I'm a fan of this format, but I do take issue with the contrived way that so many of the pieces are written. At first, it's interesting when Pattyn writes about crying and the poems are in the shape of tears. But after the 50th time, it gets a little old. I feel like Hopkins could have branched out a little more from the set patterns she made in the story. Although on the other hand Pattyn's young, and it could simply be Hopkins's way of showing that Pattyn's not a brilliant poet or anything. So maybe the jury's out on this one. It annoyed me after a while though, in the end. Third (I know, I know, I'm complaining about this book a lot here, aren't I? I just can't give it a glowing review): This story is incredibly predictable, and the ending of Pattyn solving her problem by planning (and presumably carrying out) a killing spree is...a bit much. I think Hopkins was going for a story in which we see the downward spiral of a girl who eventually pulls a Columbine, but having recently read Dave Cullen's Columbine, I'm skeptical and feel like the book is a little ham-fisted and heavy-handed, and adheres more to the myths surrounding Columbine's killers and what could cause that downward spiral, rather than relying on factual evidence. It's predictable -- the gun shows up time and time again, with shooting and killing being major things on Pattyn's mind, and she consistently cannot understand how someone could kill a human, until suddenly her lover dies (and the abuse to her sister, but the catalyst does clearly point to this death) and she's ready to go kill a whole bunch of people. And speaking of the killing-spree ending, it takes two poems for Pattyn to arrive at the idea and get to the point where she's gearing up to go in shooting. Two poems, as opposed to the five-hundred-ish ones to get us to that point. It comes so fast at the end that I had to re-read them. Though I guessed at about halfway through the book that it'd end with Pattyn killing people, the actual end result seemed incredibly rushed, as though Hopkins had an editor who told her that look, you can't actually go into detail about a killing spree in a YA novel, so they just cut it down to two poems entailing her intent, and that's it. In the end, I have no idea if Hopkins intends for me as a reader to feel sympathetic towards Pattyn or not. And considering the ending here, I think that's an issue. Am I being asked to laud her, or not? This is not a morally ambiguous issue if she's going into that church to murder a whole bunch of people as she alludes to. This story doesn't make me understand Pattyn. To understand the whole Columbine thing, Dave Cullen has it hands down, factually, etc. Hopkins seems to be writing about something that she's sort of...taking from the myths surrounding Columbine, rather than the actual details about Eric and Dylan. It's capitalizing on the way some people seem to think that the boys were abused in school and were standing up for themselves by their murdering spree, and I feel like Hopkins is buying into that...I don't know, I just don't feel comfortable with it. The author's note at the back? Tells me that Hopkins hopes that this book has made me fall in love with Nevada the way she has, and that the stories of fallout testing are true, and says NOTHING about the whole shooting-spree thing at the end. La de da, Hopkins? She's playing with fire here, and I just take issue with the ending and the lack of any clear intention about how the reader is intended to react. Finally, one last issue: the book begins with Pattyn reading Le'Engle, Tolkien and Austen (among others). If someone (and I've known radical conservative Christians in my lifetime who would and HAVE said these things) wanted to say that these sorts of books lead to evil, well, a story that ends in a killing spree starts with the protagonist reading these and taking baby steps from there. Sure, anyone who could put pieces together could see that it wasn't the books that lead her in any way towards her end. But at the same time, A leads to B which leads to C which leads to D which leads to E which leads to F... I do not like this. The thing is, ultimately, I was drawn into the book. I really was. I didn't put it down during my lunch breaks. But in the end, I just have a lot of issues with it, and I'm left not really being a fan. Here's Hopkins's letter references above in full from her website: I want my readers to know I am not anti-religion. In fact, I go to church (I happen to be Lutheran) regularly, and even sing in the choir. However, every religion can be home to extremists. Pattyn's family is an extreme (not to mention dysfunctional) example of the LDS faith. I do know fine Mormons, with a strong focus on family that I respect. Still, my personal feeling is that any religion that considers women "inferior" deserves a hard look. The references to the Mormon religion are accurate. I worked with a great, great granddaughter of Joseph Smith (founder of the LDS church), who left the church in her early 20s because of concerns like Pattyn's. Truly, I didn't start out to write Burned about any religion, but about a girl who winds up in a Columbine-type situation. I needed to bring her to a place where that was the only option she could consider. As I wrote the character, she happened to resemble a Mormon girl who I knew. I once visited her apartment. She and her boyfriend had stockpiled weapons and explosives against the coming "End of Times" forewarned by her church. The character of Pattyn von Stratten was likely born on that visit. That said, Burned is a work of fiction. Pattyn is damaged not by her religion, but by her father. I give reasons for her father being the way he is. They involve war. His own upbringing. His own damaged past. In the face of his abuse, Pattyn begins to question her place in the world. And her religion is a big part of her world. I just can't take Hopkins seriously here. This isn't a Columbine-type situation, except for the fact that there's a character with a gun who plans to kill. That's where the likeness ceases. If Hopkins actually liked and respected Mormons the way she claims to, she wouldn't have been so unrelenting, and she would have made it clear that her portrayal is extremist. There's a difference between taking issue with the tenets of a particular faith and exploring them, and putting everything that religion entails under a big blanket of evil, and showing all followers of that faith to be blind sheep, stupid, abusive, neglectful, etc. Big difference. The fact is, she presented Pattyn's family and church as being the norm. And finally, I take issue with her "I HAVE BLACK FRIENDS, I CAN'T BE RACIST!" Internet-argument style (replace "black" with Mormon here, etc.). If she used that argument in thequestionclub or sf_drama she'd be called out faster than a really fast thing. Sorry to be a negative Nelly, guys. 4 comments|post comment

Young Adult literature review: The Hunger Games [30 Jul 2009|01:06pm] [ mood | busy ] The Hunger Games is definitely a book that combines a number of different elements. You’ve got a futuristic plotline involving the nation of Panem, you’ve got children being pitted against each other in fights to the death, you’ve got a government that’s watching every move and often choreographing things to their own liking, and you’ve got boy/girl tension on several levels. Ender’s Game meets Lord of the Flies/Battle Royale meets 1984 meets any number of YA boy/girl tension books. Suzanne Collins is certainly ambitious! According to a Publishers Weekly interview, Collins "cites the Greek myth of Theseus, in which the city of Athens was forced to send 14 young men and women into the labyrinth in Crete to face the Minotaur. 'Even as a kid, I could appreciate how ruthless this was,' Collins recalled. 'Crete was sending a very clear message: Mess with us and we'll do something worse than kill you. We'll kill your children.'" And kill them Crete-turned-Panem does. But to back up a moment, a little bit of a synopsis is probably in order. Through an unexpected and courageous turn of events, 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen finds herself a contender in the nation of Panem’s annual Hunger Games competition. Essentially, the Hunger Games are a televised gladiator-esque competition in which two children (one boy, one girl) between the ages of 12 and 18 are drawn from a lottery from each district of the nation. These children and teens are then groomed at the Capitol and shown in a series of interviews, are given ratings according to their weaponry, fighting skills and tactics, and then finally all brought into the arena, where they are forced to fight each other to the death over the next several weeks. The arena is essentially a terrain containing woods, lakes, and streams, so it’s rather large, and conducive to hiding, plotting, and seeking each other. They are also conducive to death with the mines, flames, and an endless number of weather changes (freezing temperatures, sweltering humidity, floods) that can randomly occur, since the Capitol (just as everywhere else in Panem) has eyes everywhere, and the goal of the games is for there to be one left alive at the end. But Katniss is nothing if not smart, and together with the boy who “won” the lottery (Peeta, a baker's son), they form a plan to win the crowd’s favor. If they can win some favoritism, they have a good chance of winning, since support can come in the shape of food, water, and medicine delivered to them in the arena. Why not pretend to be star-crossed lovers? With Katniss and Peeta playing up their woeful, doomed love for each other, they can buy some time, and hopefully some help from viewers and “sponsors” outside the games. But what happens when other contestants begin to die and their numbers dwindle? There can only be one winner. And what happens when Katniss and Peeta’s charade of playing two desperate teens in love begins to get confusing? At first, I thought this book would be predictable, and in one sense, I was right. As an adult reading the book, there were many times when I thought Collins was using the bait-and-switch method of storytelling a little bit too often. She directs you to expect one thing, then turns it on its head. In one respect, it’s brilliant storytelling because if one thing is certain, I was not putting this book down, because I wanted to see if what she was predicting for the plotline would indeed turn right around. On the other hand, once it became apparent that the bait-and-switch method was going to be used more than once, it did make it fairly easy for me to predict what would actually happen. But even though I did generally do so, the end result was still that I was engrossed in this book because of the fluid storytelling. In addition to the confusing romantic intrigue and the political horror of The Hunger Games, though, there’s also (of all things) a fair bit of dry humor. Despite her situation as a forced fighter in the games, Katniss still manages to make readers smile with her remarks about the stylists in the Capital, the frou-frou lives they seem to live, and their accents. Katniss is a likeable protagonist, in addition because she’s empathetic to her teammates, and has a good head on her shoulders, is self-sufficient in that she can provide food for both she and others as needed. Her empathy is often what drives the plot, and it’s interesting in part because while she holds so much empathy for the others, she’s also in a situation where she’s being asked to kill them. As I neared the end of the book, I did begin to get more and more anxious, because pages were becoming fewer and fewer, and things were not closing up properly, there were things I still wanted to know! I definitely wanted more closure to the book, which means I am anxiously waiting for the second in what appears to be a trilogy, Catching Fire, which comes out in September. Roundup: I’d recommend this for readers: ages 12+ Similar (in various ways) to: Ender’s Game, Lord of the Flies, Battle Royale, 1984, The Giver Genre(s): Dystopian, boy-meets-girl, war Will this eventually be turned into a movie?: I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that according to The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate Films has picked up The Hunger Games and thankfully Suzanne Collins will be writing the film adaptation. I have great faith in Lionsgate, and great faith in the film since they’re letting the author have some control. Would I read this more than once?: Yes 2 comments|post comment

JAM, please? [21 Jul 2009|09:25pm] [ mood | hopeful ] WANTED: One person going to the San Diego Comic Con who'd be willing to pick up a bottle of one of the Who Killed Amanda Palmer? Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (BPAL) scents that'll be for sale there. I: -am desperate -have PayPal (or can send you cash, or can write you a check, or money order, or whatever!) -would love you forever and ever and ever, amen (Scent so desperately desired: Blackberry Jam and Scones) Comment if you'll be my Comic Con Shopping Buddy and we can figure out details. I know this is a long shot, but hey. 1 comment|post comment

[04 Jul 2009|05:12pm] [ mood | lazy ] Dear City of Richmond, I think it's fantastic that you finally scrapped the idea of a new baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom. Fantastic! But did you really need to come up with another let's-build-a-new-stadium plan, like, two days later? Heads up, city: YOU HAVE A STADIUM. THE DIAMOND. HOME TO THE RICHMOND BRAVES. OH WAIT. Your baseball team LEFT. The Richmond Braves, as I understand it, ran away from home. You know, last year... But you, Richmond, like a confused and troubled parent unsure why said child has run away from home and has yet to return, are...talking of building the child a new bedroom. In addition to the bedroom they ran away from. It's like you're trying to woo that runaway back home by giving them something they already have, but better! Except let's be real here, Richmond. Once the kid comes back to their Brand New Bedroom!, are we going to go to their games? Or are we going to just let them stew in the new bedroom and let the old bedroom rot, and go right back to square one? Newsflash: let's fix up the old bedroom (hint: The Diamond) and revitalize the area around it so people WANT TO GO. We can move the Greyhound bus station that's right across from the Diamond and we can -- in the process -- move the bums who live on the sidewalks there. The area is already getting nicer -- Movieland (a Bowtie cinema) just moved into the abandoned factory down the street and it's pretty posh. We can then add some nicer sidewalks, maybe some grass, maybe some nice fountains and birdies, add a fresh coat of paint to the Diamond, and a Starbucks (maybe a Trader Joe's right where the Greyhound is?) and voila! You're in business! We can use the money that would have been spent on building a whole new stadium somewhere else that would entail flattening neighborhoods and land and getting rid of the old stadium, and instead spend MUCH LESS (I would assume...?) city money on FIXING WHAT WE HAVE. Repaint the bedroom, don't just leave it to rot while you build a new one. But first, before we build or fix anything, I think that we need to re-examine the need for baseball fixings right now in the first place. If our team were to come home, would any more people go to the games than they did before? Even if a new stadium were built across the James, after the hype settles down and it becomes a normal everyday part of the city, are more people going to go to (hypothetical) home games, or is it going to dwindle down to the same ten people who were going to the Diamond? Seriously. This is just silly, Richmond. Maybe, at the end of the day, we should call off this dream of stadiums, and, hell, build a monument for Monument Ave. of a stadium that could have been. We can put it with that other really bad idea. You know what I'm talking about -- that Arthur Ashe statue that makes it look like Arthur Ashe is beating children with a tennis racket and a book as the children hold up hands to defend themselves from the beating. Seriously Richmond, who gave that the okay for production? (The same person who's doing this stadium stuff?) Bemusedly yours, Hayley, your new self-appointed city planner Anyway, it's a nice lazy second day of the three-day-weekend. :) Went grocery shopping, read some more of A Little Princess (a very charming read!), and am watching The Duke of Chutney flop lazily about as well in his cute bunny way. 3 comments|post comment

Ummmmm [02 Jun 2009|08:49pm] [ mood | giddy ] "Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed," West said. "I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph." -- Kanye West. sauce This may be the first time someone has tried to sell a book by saying they're a "proud non-reader of books" and that they are not a fan of books. (Also the first time someone's brought up the idea of asking a book for its autograph. Maybe he just tried once and he got tired of waiting for it to respond? Maybe he's just bitter, guys!) Interested marketing strategy... By interesting I mean stupid, mostly. But stupid can be interesting. 7 comments|post comment

I definitely did not do this during my work hours on Paint *whistles* [15 Apr 2009|05:43pm] [ mood | chipper ] For nobleplatypus (You still up for our epic project?) (I was also sort of thinking...would you be interested in changing it to something original? We could write a fantastic prim novel drawing upon all the fantastic prim novels that have come before...just with our idea...thoughts? I'm still cool with the original idea too though -- just thinking that original work might be easier to work with...but that takes more work too...anyway, yes?!?! Both have their merits! I just don't want to start blogging something and then be told we can't because of some copyright issue we missed!) :D 8 comments|post comment

Oh, Kate Chopin [17 Feb 2009|02:55pm] [ mood | amused ] Many of them were delicious in the role; one of them was the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm. If her husband did not adore her, he was a brute, deserving death by slow torture. Her name was Adele Ratignolle. There are no words to describe her save the old ones that have served so often to picture the bygone heroine of romance and the fair lady of our dreams. There was nothing subtle or hidden about her charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and apparent: the spun-gold hair that comb nor confining pin could restrain; the blue eyes that were nothing but sapphires; two lips that pouted, that were so red one could only think of cherries or some other delicious crimson fruit in looking at them. = evidence that Kate Chopin was a master at writing Mary Sues in her day, Y/Y? 4 comments|post comment

The souls of dead knights live on where, exactly? [25 Jan 2009|10:18pm] [ mood | tipsy ] Patrick and I have realized we're starting a collection of Arthurian films. So far we've got the woooooonderful Excalibur (did I say wonderful? I don't think that's the word I was looking for....maybe I meant hilariously awful...that sounds more accurate), Merlin, Merlin's Apprentice parts 1 and 2*, The Sword in the Stone, The Mists of Avalon (thank goodness, something enjoyable!), and King Arthur (the Ioan Gruffudd/Horatio Hornblower one). We watched King Arthur this evening, and to borrow words of wisdom from Family Guy, the film insists upon itself. Now, don't get me wrong, I adore Gruffudd, but....dear sweet Jesus, they open the film essentially saying this is all based on a true story, according to archeological evidence (Patrick nearly choked on his drink before the opening credits were even over because of this). So then we learn that Merlin is a pagan guy who does nothing (but acts as a wedding officiant for Arthur and Gwen later, so at least we know he has some sort of trade beyond being a lost member of the Blue Man Group in the forest), Gwen's a pagan who got locked in a dungeon and found by Arthur, Arthur's.....well we're not sure if he grew up as a boy being trained to be king, or if he grew up a peasant, but he did pull a sword from a barrow. Lancelot was taken as a boy from a mongul family or something, along with a bunch of other boys all trained to be knights for Arthur. Camelot does not exist in this movie, and neither does Avalon; neither are ever mentioned, and the film takes place around Hadrian's Wall. There are a bunch of random battles, and Arthur and Gwen start to get it on, and then there are more battles, and then Lancelot dies, and Arthur becomes king at his wedding at Stonehenge and the deaths of the other knights of the round table -- and we only see this table once -- are okay, because they live on in the souls of horses I KID YOU NOT. The last shot...is of running horses. Fade to black. In short, wtf movie. This makes Excalibur look like a feat of cinematic awesomeness. And that's saying something. *These movies have a character that is a pot-bellied pig sidekick. Just warning those who haven't watched it. Srsly. 23 comments|post comment

[12 Jan 2009|02:01pm] [ mood | creative ] [ music | Masada String Trio - Tahah | Powered by Last.fm ] ( Just a few lulsy photos from Synthetic Nightmare's Hot Topic Sellout Debut...with a Lisa Frank + 80's OTP Clothing Line...and tutus? ) 9 comments|post comment

Obligatory band girlfriend post :P [07 Jan 2009|02:56pm] [ mood | busy ] [ music | Hevein - New Hope | Powered by Last.fm ] So, Patrick's band (Synthetic Nightmare for those new on my flist) is going to be having CDs, stickers, shirts, and posters at a local Hot Topic this Saturday (they're selling out, oh my how cute!) (lol). Bonus lols: the band be there with Guapo the Amazing Sleepy-Time Disaster Ape (the band's, uh, guy in a monkey suit). Date: Saturday January 10, 2009 Time: 6-8pm Place: Hot Topic at the Virginia Center Commons Mall, 10101 Brook Road, Glen Allen VA ( just two of the posters behind the cut -- including Guapo's own special poster ) I was talking to Will last night and he mentioned how he was so proud of that Guapo poster, and how he hadn't felt that artistically driven in years. And suddenly we realized that...his muse is Guapo. Some people have the Greek goddesses. Will has a fat kid in a monkey suit. Lols were had. 2 comments|post comment

BPAL wishlist [04 Oct 2008|08:38pm] [ mood | hopeful ] WISHLIST FOR SWAPPING Bottles that I want (in general order of want within each category, if that makes sense) GC (Panacea): Elixer X: Grr GC (Panacea): Elixir IV: Quietude GC: Queen Alice GC: Dirty GC: Dana O'Shee GC: Absinthe GC: Lady Macbeth GC: Shub-Niggurath GC: Tombstone LE: Snow, Glass, Apples (PIPE DREAMS, I know...I was *so* close to getting one and then it fell through!) LE: Chaos Theory V: Dorian (depends on notes though -- check with me!) LE: Sugar Cookie 2008 LE: Eggnog 2007 (backup) LE: Fearful Pleasure (backup, low priority) LE: Black Lace (PIPE DREAMS!) TP: Sugar Slathered Candy Apple (pipe dreams) LE: Eggnog latte (in my wildest dreams...) Cinnamon Sugar Cookie & Egg Nog (you can laugh, it's okay) I would like decants of these (LE/GC unimpables) LE: Snow, Glass, Apples CD: Carnival Diabolique CD: The Illustrated Woman CD: Wulric the Wolfman LE: Black Lace (PIPE DREAMS!) TP: Sugar Slathered Candy Apple (pipe dreams) LE: Eggnog Latte (in my wildest dreams...) Cinnamon Sugar Cookie & Egg Nog (you can laugh, it's okay) I would like imps of these (GC) The Apple of Sodom Bon Vivant Chimera Embalming Fluid Glasgow The Hesperides Jazz Funeral Juke Joint Lolita No. 93 Engine Prunella Sudha Segara Swank *I'm open to partial bottles instead of bottles/decants/imps as well, if that's what you've got...heck, if you've got full bottles for stuff I want imps of I may be interested as well. Just ask! I'm easy to haggle with! **I'm open to suggestions, but do know that 90% of florals don't appeal to me too much -- they all turn to drug-store perfume on me, or as my SO will say, "They all make you smell like my mom." I'm much more of a foodie! Wine works well though...I'm not a big drinker, but damn does my skin like the booze! Bad, bad notes: patchouli, lily, hay, Snake Oil (I know! It just doesn't do anything for me though), jasmine, chocolate Good notes!: booze, wine, berries, FOOD, vanilla (except for Snake Oil), rose post comment

Moot report [18 Jul 2008|10:20am] [ mood | awake ] I'm back from mooting between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Littleton, Colorado with the Burping Troll gang, and have pictures of our fantastical adventures. I've culled some of my favorite shots behind the cut, so as not to fill up your flists and slow down your connections with my awesomesauceness. Teaser from the botanical garden: ( Let's open up a restaurant in Santa Fe... ) 10 comments|post comment

[08 Jun 2008|07:19pm] [ mood | rushed ] If you're in or around the Baltimore area any time until August 31, you should check out the show - some of the spiritual secrets are really quite interesting and touching. I remember sifting through secrets to find ones that would be appropriate for this show, and feeling overwhelmed sometimes with the sheer number of people who struggle silently with spirituality, and the poignancy of their words, at times. It's one thing to read a few spiritual secrets along with the vast number of others, but when you put them all together, it's a whole new level of interesting. 2 comments|post comment

Sunburned shoulders mean summer [04 May 2008|08:56pm] [ mood | productive ] [ music | Nightnoise || Wiggy Wiggy ] It's been a busy day. I went to the craft show in Byrd park to pick up something from an Etsy seller, then got smoothies with Patrick, then went to Quidditch practice in Monroe park (see picture below), then did Drop & Run, then went to Goodwill and the Central VA Foodbank to drop off the stuff from Drop & Run, then tried to get rid of my migraine while watching POTC1, which only sort of worked, and then went to Ellwood Thompsons (thank goodness for hippie grocery stores that sell that stuff I couldn't find anyplace else!) to get some Bay leaves, Peppermint leaves, and crystalized Ginger, and some Feverfew extract because I am determined to figure out how to prevent these daily migraines. I don't want medicine to make them better once I get them. I want to not get them in the first place. I'm also thinking of going back to the doctor, because I'm just concerned that I'm getting them and although I wrote down everything I ate for about two weeks straight, there didn't seem to be any sort of connection with the migraines, and I'm just a worrier. I'm really tired of these taking over my whole life - like, it's a good day if I just don't get a migraine. D: Anyway though, I'm sitting here with my homemade tea of Bay and Peppermint leaves ground up and put in my tea-spoon, and Feverfew, so we'll see how this prevention goes. Anyway though, the fun of Quidditch: I'm sunburned already! (And I'm the only girl in the picture - in case ya couldn't figure it out.) I've still got to study for my Victorian poetry final tomorrow afternoon at 1, and I'm going to German tutoring at 11, and studying again for German with a friend after my Victorian poetry final before I have to go to work. And other finals need studying for too. Ugh. Anyway though, Patrick's birthday is the 9th which is also the last day of finals, so we shall go to dinner and there will be much celebrating all around. 6 comments|post comment

The water is rising [28 Apr 2008|06:55pm] [ mood | gloomy ] [ music | Jorane || By foot from... ] It's been a gloomy past couple of days. So much dripping dark green is outside, thunder-rainy, and I fall asleep listening to the sound of leaking water dripping into pots and pans on the floor, falling, falling, falling, torture, everything is dripping, everything is rainy, and I wish I could stop the floods, stop the floundering, stop the drowning, grasp and pull hands (hearts) from the drumming tumbling rapids. The water rises. The pots fill up. I wake up at odd hours to empty them, dimly seeing in the dark that they're overflowing. 5 comments|post comment

[18 Apr 2008|06:53pm] [ mood | calm ] [ music | Azure Ray || Sleep ] I rode my bike home from classes this afternoon. The sun was out and the street that I love riding down - a little one-way street lined by townhouses that are oldoldold and ornate and it's the sort of road where pink petals from the trees have fallen everywhere and mothers leave their children's toys out by the porches because they're rich enough that they don't care if the stuff gets stolen - was so warm and Huxtable-perfect and children were playing four-square in the street as I rode by, and everything smelled of grass and summer and weeds, and I let my hair down and it waved and whipped in the wind behind me, and on a longer stretch of road by the grocery store, I stood and peddled and peddled and peddled and let the wind rush over me, and the sun shone down, and it smelled like summer when I was 12. It was beautiful. It's that time of day in warm weather when the sun never sets, it's just that golden color forever, and you feel like it's never going to set. I'm in the house alone now, music flooding the place, windows open, and I am happy. I'll let the dog out in a minute to run through the weeds in the backyard - we need to mow the lawn, it's knee-high, but it all smells like city and wisteria mixed, that lazy hazy heady city purple-on-fence smell. 1 comment|post comment

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