It’s Not an Illness If It’s This Organized

~ lobablanca

Yes, this is one of the several containers that my parents have in storage for me. Yes, every single bit of its contents could be tossed tomorrow with no serious repercussions…

…if having part of my soul recycled into dollar store toilet paper falls under the category, “no serious repercussions.”

Honestly, though, WTH am I ever going to do with calendars and TV Guides dating all the way back to 1995? Am I simply biding my time until I cross over into the age range in which it will not only become acceptable but expected for me to start decoupaging EVERYTHING in the house? I’ll just wile away my days, glugging sipping Captain Morgan and Dr. Pepper as I trim out Beverly Crushers and Dana Scullys for that extra special “Titian-Tressed Angels of Asclepius” medicine cabinet decoupage.

Okay, I need to stop, because that actually sounds fun…

Talk About Performance Anxiety

~ lobablanca

Oh but I do love those Kiwis.

This was a billboard erected (heehee) by an Anglican church in Auckland, New Zealand, for their Christmas service. According to this Guardian article, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy claimed that the billboard’s intent was to challenge the fundamentalist interpretation of Christ’s birth:

What we’re trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about. Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?

I bet this guy presides over a really fun group of parishioners. And if he doesn’t, he should.

I’m trying to envision how this billboard would go over in the States…say, in Bunnykill, Alabama. I’m not imagining anything nearly as amusing or provocative, and that’s a shame. I’d actually be very interested in hearing the sermon that goes along with this billboard. Of course, I also used to get yelled at by our high school Bible teacher all the time because I had to keep questioning him.

Silly girl…don’t you know questioning is for sinners?

50BC09: Book Number 49

~ lobablanca

And of course the first thing that I write after my big decision…a book review 😉

This was a diversion read, as I am still making my way through a different book. Not that unusual for me, actually. I used to read two or three books at a time. After a while, though, you start to get all muddled about characters and plots and the next thing you know, you’re trying to convince people that you really did read a book in which Major Kira and Frodo tried to save Piggy from the Lord of the Flies.

What?

So Coraline was a Christmas present from my parents. We all watched the movie this summer and loved it, so I decided that I wanted to read the source material. My dad took great joy in informing me that the store clerk had to find the book in the children’s section. Although both the clerk and I explained to him that, though this might theoretically be a children’s book, it most assuredly was not a typical “sugar and spice” type book.

You’d expect nothing less than dark and frightening from the brilliance known as Neil Gaiman.

And what a wonderful story this was! As I already said, I loved the movie based on this book. I think it’s one of the best animated movies I’ve seen in a very long time (“StopMo Rulz!”). I also think that the use of 3-D added a new and welcome dimension (ha! See what I did there?) to an already nicely layered story. However, what’s even better is the fact that you don’t have to watch this in 3-D for it to still be an amazing and captivating film experience. Too bad you can’t say the same thing for all the movies currently out in 3-D.

Hmm.

However, I do know that rarely does a book make it to the screen without major changes. And there are some significant differences between Coraline the book and Coraline the movie. Most notable is the addition of Wybie, the foil/helper/awkward tween crush for Coraline. Nary a sign of him exists in the book and, although I didn’t quite mind him in the movie, I didn’t miss him one bit in the book.

Also, there’s a lovely British flavour to the book that is replaced in the movie by what I would describe as an American brashness. Whereas the book’s inhabitants all have a sense of reserved dignity to them, the Americanized movie characters feel far more in your face and…well, slightly annoying because of it. I do believe I enjoy the English Coraline and Co far more than their American counterparts. There is something to be said for reserve, you bloody Yanks.

Final score: 5/5. Quick, quirky, dark, and deeply satisfying. I’d highly recommend this and its cinematic sibling for anyone who enjoys a bit of Gaiman. Also, Tim Burton fans will devour this story quite greedily, I think.

A SIMulated Life?

~ lobablanca

To the denizens who have threatened to send out an APB on Sammy and me if I don’t post soon…haha. Of course we made it home in one piece. Sammy is a wonder car. Not even I can change that truth.

The drive home was happily uneventful. Little spits and spurts of rain here and there, but nothing terrible. We arrived back in our neck of the woods to find that most of the snow had melted. I think this is the fastest I’ve ever seen snow of this magnitude disappear so quickly before. Usually, it would take a minimum of a month before we could see the ground again. Ah, that global warming myth…

So Sunday was the day of rest. And errands. And Sims3. I spent a mortifying 2 hours just designing one Sim character. It was around about that point that I realized there was something really off in my universe.

Don’t get me wrong. I love The Sims. I’ve been a huge fan of that game since it debuted almost a decade ago. I can’t even begin to calculate how many hours days I’ve sacrificed to my Sims addiction. Of course, such calculations would then require that I figure how much of my life I have given and continue to willingly give over to video games, be they PC games, PS2 games, or now XBox 360 games (friggin’ Aerosmith Guitar Hero and Mortal Kombat).

As much as I love video games, and as much as they make me feel like I’m still a kid when I’m playing them, the simple truth is, I’m not a kid anymore. Time continues to eke forward, no matter how little mind I pay it. And so I ended up having a bit of an existential freak out as I was trying to settle down and fall asleep last night. Instead, I began running through the list of things that I always thought I would accomplish in this life before shuffling off to whatever universal waiting room there is beyond this.

Truth is, I never really made any plans for leaving a large dent on this plane of existence. I suppose you could say I’m unassuming (or as unassuming as any one with Multiple Internet Personality Disorder can be). I did once have a dream though. Just one.

I wanted to write.

Words, as many of you have no doubt figured out, have always been my passion. I love the beauty of language. How words can be combined to form shear joy or utter despair. Swords of the sharpest edge can’t compare to words wielded by a skilled writer.

Writing is what brought me out of the shadows when I was in school. I was always satisfied with standing out of the spotlight, doing the work that needed to be done, making the grades that my parents would find acceptable. Doing all that I could not to make any waves that would draw attention toward me. But then our 6th grade English teacher introduced us to creative writing. And that was all I needed. I devoured each assignment she gave us with a passion that I don’t remember ever feeling for anything else in my scholastic career.

Even when that section of our coursework was over, I continued writing. Silly little stories, always about my friends, always about imagined adventures taking place at our school. I found those stories a while ago. Oh, were they awful. But at the time, they were like Pulitzer winners to me. After a while, I began branching out, leaving behind the comfort of my familiar friends, and began creating new friends and new places. And the themes grew darker and sometimes more frightening. What else would you expect from a horror fan?

The point, though, was that I was constantly writing. Constantly finding new places to set up residence for however long it took me to weave my latest tale. I spent a month with snow-stranded friends being hunted at a lodge in Vermont. Then I traveled down to a tiny Southern beach community, to spend month with new friends as they unraveled the story behind their mysterious new classmate. Then I was drafted into Starfleet. I spent quite a bit of time stationed on a Galaxy-class vessel, weaving, unraveling, and re-weaving stories there.

That was more than 10 years ago. And what have I done since then? I earned a degree in English, which I used to secure a job writing policy briefs, speeches, and whatever other linguistic minutia my federal agency clients require of me. I’ve heard my words uttered by well-known government officials. Each time that happened, a little spark within me fizzled into darkness.

Loba Disclaimer: I do still love my current job. It’s far different from those early days. Far more computer geeky, and far less gov-speak. But what happened to my dreams of writing? Not even dreams of becoming a famous author…you know, the kind who gets their name printed on their book covers in fonts sometimes triple the size of the actual book title. No, I never dared to dream that large. I just wanted to write.

Now I realize that I spend far more time living in other people’s worlds than I do in my own. Whether it’s The Sims or some other video game, or whether it’s my attempts to read 50 books in a year (which, by the way, I haven’t yet given up on). Always someone else’s worlds. No longer mine.

So take this as an early resolution if you must (although, dammit, I detest resolutions): I will get back to writing. Not only will I get back to writing, but I will complete something by the end of 2010. Hopefully, it won’t take me quite that long, but if it does, it does. I’m not going to let this die within me. I used to love to write. Hell, I still love to write. Why else would I keep coming back to this lair (besides all you lovely denizens, of course)? So time to return to my other worlds. Time to get reacquainted with all my other friends. True, some of them have been occasional traveling companions for some time now. It’s time to give them a more secure home.

Who knows? If I come up with something that doesn’t make my beta readers vomit, maybe I’ll even attempt to be published. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it…

Don’t Forget to Drink Your Ovaltine

~ lobablanca

I set out tonight, hoping to watch something with the parental units that was as un-Christmasy as you can imagine. Then I realized that TBS was yet again running their “24 Hours of A Christmas Story.”

Oh, how do you resist Ralphie? You simply can’t, can you? I think that A Christmas Story is to my generation what It’s A Wonderful Life was to its generation. Only A Christmas Story is actually enjoyable. 😉 So we watched it twice. And now the SyFy Channel’s Ghost Hunters marathon is playing. And I’m about to refill my wine glass.

Could this be a more perfect start to Christmas?

I wish for you all a wonderful day, regardless of what holiday or beliefs you may hold. In fact, I wish for you wonder and merriment every day. And I hope that 2010 holds amazements unimaginable for each one of you.

And here, before I depart, is a special holiday wish from my favorite dancing doctor. I designed this for two very special ImagiFriendsTM. I hope they don’t mind if I share it with all my denizens…but how can I resist?

50BC09: Book Number 48

~ lobablanca

It’s probably for the best if I stick with something simple for a while. Like book reviews. Although I’m sure you will all be happy to know that Sammy just received his Christmas Eve bath. I think I blasted enough mud and grass out of his wheel wells that I could build my own Smurf village. Yes, I went with the Smurfs.

So, anyway…Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel. This was another ImagiFriendTM gift. This is also another graphic novel, although I think it’s more appropriate to call it a graphic memoir, in both the literal and figurative sense of the word.

I’m amazed that two of the most powerful and moving memoirs have come to me in the form of the graphic novel. This, of course, falls as one of the two. The other would be the two-part graphic novel series Maus by Art Spiegelman. Both Bechdel and Spiegelman use the strengths of their artistic skills to bring to life their struggle to understand their fathers, and how the troubles and conflicts of their fathers’ lives carved out their own paths. Whether or not there is a positive lining to these truths is what ultimately Spiegelman and Bechdel are left to struggle with in their own unique ways.

For Bechdel, she is left to wrestle with the memories of her father, an erudite intellectual who invested far more time in the restoration and repair of old homes than he did in the strengthening and sustaining of his own family structure. The title comes from what she and her brothers used to call the family business: a funeral home her father inherited from his father. There are quite a few things going on throughout the telling of this tale, including Bechdel’s realizations about her sexuality and how these revelations become overshadowed by revelations of her father’s own sexuality and the “accident” that ended his life amidst the unraveling of secret sins that Bechdel and her family were left to process after his death.

Bechdel’s art work is gorgeous, clean, and intricate…sharp contrasts to the more primitive and raw imagery of Ollmann’s This Will All End In Tears. Thanks to the journals that she kept throughout her childhood, her storytelling is equally precise and intricate as she plumbs the depths of memory and tries to discover the truth of how her life and her father’s intertwined in such complex and ultimately bittersweet patterns.

Final score: 5/5. Too often I have heard fellow book geeks dismiss graphic novels as undeserving of attention or analysis. To them I say, you are missing some of the most amazing storytelling to come about in modern literature. Don’t let book snobbery keep you from discovering the depth of the materials such as Fun Home.

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby…

~ lobablanca

Want to hear how I temporarily closed down I-95 South and gave Sammy an early Christmas mud bath?

So today was a good day to travel, I thought. It’s the day before Christmas Eve, which I know is typically the popular travel day for people who travel for Christmas…which, thankfully, are far fewer people than those who travel on Turkey Day. I knew, however, that I should expect some rough riding at least until I was beyond the tenacious and ample mounds of snow that snaked up the I-95 corridor.

Truth. I sat for about 2 hours just trying to get onto I-95, then ended up in sluggish, sometimes stop-n-go traffic from the 495 merge until around about Kings Dominion. For those not in the know, that’s a hella long time. Thank goodness once again for my iPod and awesome podcasts.

Once I hit North Carolina, however, things were smooth as silk. The snow was gone, the temperature was wonderfully warm, and the sun was shining brightly and strongly down on Sammy’s sleek silver and salty frame. I cruised along at the lovely standard speed of 70 MPH (another reason to love NC!), listening to P!nk dissect her marriage and Suzie Plakson explain how she Didnwannadoit. Traffic had broken up and spread out, and I finally found myself all alone on my own personal stretch of the road.

This is probably the most serendipitous moment of my entire journey.

I noticed that a car was getting ready to merge onto the interstate, so I switched from the right lane to the left lane so that they would have a clean shot at the merge. Next thing I know, the driver is rocketing straight from the merge lane into my lane. While I’m right there.

Three things happened simultaneously at this point: I honked, slammed on my brakes, and swerved toward the left to avoid being side-swiped by the driver.

Know what’s kind of cool about I-95? Both north- and southbound lanes have these grooves on each shoulder that, when you run over them, they rattle your car just enough to shake you awake. Apparently, enough people were falling asleep at the wheel that TPTB decided this would be a good way to shock sleepy drivers back awake.

Sammy’s front left wheel hit these grooves as I braked and swerved, which startled me enough that I swerved back toward the right in what I have deduced in retrospect was a rather overcompensating manner, which started Sammy wagging his little tail like an over-zealous puppy. Cute on puppies. Not cute on cars.

The fish-tail motion started to increase and next thing I know I’m spinning. And angry. Not scared. Not panicky. ANGRY. Angry at the stupid driver whose ignorance has left me feeling like I’m trapped in the spin cycle of an industrial washer. Angry enough that I was saying things about said driver that I think would have made my Navy veteran grandparents blush.

Thankfully, my anger kept me focused enough that I did what I knew I needed to do: took my foot off the accelerator, turned into the spin rather than fight it, and started to carefully slow down until I could regain control. A couple of spins later and all was still. And Sammy was parked in the saturated sogginess of the ditch running along the side of the interstate. Facing the wrong way. But safe. As was I.

Of course, safe is a wonderful thing. But so is safe and not sinking into mud. Which I was quickly doing. Not even rocking Sammy back and forth was going to get me out of this. So after several increasingly frustrated attempts, I finally cut the engine and climbed out to assess the mess and call AAA. That’s when the awesome gentleman in the AT&T service truck traveling northbound pulled over and asked me if he could help.

I may not have always depended on the kindness of strangers, but this guy and the winch on the front of his truck were my heroes, fo’ shizzle. He told me to hang on while he went up and turned around so that he could come over onto the southbound side.

That’s about the point when I became the center of some very unexpected attention. While waiting for the service truck to return, I glanced back at the northbound side and realized that two state trooper cruisers with their lights flashing were pulling over across from Sammy. I also noticed that another car had pulled over further up the northbound side, and a Black woman was quickly running over toward me.

I only mention her race because this woman was about as pale as I’ve ever seen a Black person turn. Seriously, she was nearly as White as me…and that’s saying a lot. It wasn’t until she kept repeating “I’m so sorry…are you all right…I’m so sorry” that I realized this was the driver who nearly hit me in the first place. She had turned around at the first exit she found and came back, apparently calling the police as she did so.

I assured both her and the two state troopers that I was fine, just stuck in the mud and waiting for the nice AT&T guy to hook his winch up to Sammy’s bum and yank him free.

[Before any of you ask, of course I didn’t refer to Sammy by his name or his gender. I didn’t really need the added indignity of having the cops giving me a breathalyzer test…]

That’s when the county cruiser, the ambulance, and the two firetrucks arrived, blocking all lanes of traffic as they positioned themselves around my part of the interstate that was becoming increasingly crowded.

And that’s when I wanted to crawl under Sammy and hide.

This was also the point when I realized that, although I was semi-oblivious to the danger at the time inside my anger warp bubble, people around me witnessed something that they translated as “That’s definitely going to have a bad ending.” This woman who called the police must have told them to expect the worst possible scenario. What she saw in her rearview mirror as she drove away obviously left her shaken and afraid…and left me very grateful that I didn’t see what she and others saw.

I spent the next 10 minutes assuring her and all the officers and rescue people that I was fine, that Sammy was fine, and that all I really needed was the nice young man in the AT&T truck to do what he was waiting patiently to do. They quickly dispersed, probably equal parts happy to see that their expertise was not needed and possibly glad to have a little innocent excitement in the middle of their shift.

The AT&T guy and the county cop hooked up my car and pulled me out and helped me do a walk-around to make sure that Sammy was still really in one piece. I thanked them both profusely. I’ve also just finished e-mailing AT&T and letting them know that they hire some damned fine people down here in the Tarheel State. And then I was on my way.

Of course, anyone driving past that part of I-95 after the fact probably stared at the loop-de-loop streaks of rubber along the roadway and the big streaks through the muddy ditch on the side of the road and wondered what the frig happened there. Let me assure you, it was just Sammy leaving his signature across the interstate. Honestly, he’s turned into such a diva.

Seriously, though, thank you to whatever patron saint or universal glitch that’s out there, watching over white wolves and their anthropomorphized cars. Thank you to the stunningly fast response of the EMTs, firefighters, and police officers who, thankfully, were not necessary. Even thank you to the woman who started all of this mess. Thank you for coming back, for apologizing, and for caring, in stark contradiction to the opinion I had of you as I was spinning right round, baby.

And to the drivers who were caught up in all the excitement…believe me, I’m sorry. I know what I would have been saying if I’d been caught in the backup, no matter how short it may have been. So, sorry about that delay. I hope you all got to where you were heading without any further delays. I promise I will do my best to refrain from causing any further interstate altercations on my way home.

As for Sammy? He is almost perfect. Seems that his recent alignment is a little off-kilter now, but other than that, he’s just very dirty. So it’s a power wash for him in the morning, followed by a fresh tank of gas for lunch. As for me? I think I’m going to enjoy the next few days traveling no faster than my two legs can carry me. I’m quite through with my attempts at impersonating a dreidel, thank you very much.

50BC09: Book Number 47

~ lobablanca

motfv1

Ha! And you thought I was serious when I said that I wasn’t going to read anymore Trek this year.

Although, to be fair, this isn’t really the same as all those Trek novels I’ve been reading. This is, instead, more of a memoir of dorkery, a love note to the video documentation of a geek’s life at its most delicate, impressionable, vulnerable stages.

I mean, think about it…puberty is a bitch anyway. But here we have Mr. Wil Wheaton, being ravished by the puberty fairies on a nationally syndicated show, playing what would become one of the most reviled recurring characters in Star Trek history. Though, as we learn through Memories of the Future: Volume One, not completely his fault (though he does admit that he was a bit of a teen on the set…but really, weren’t we all?).

Wesley Crusher was written by people who apparently have no memories of their own adolescence. Either that, or they were some of the most abused nerds in the herd…which one would assume would make them a bit more sympathetic to our beloved Boy Wonder. Instead, they wrote him to be anything but sympathetic. I confess to embracing with open arms the “Shut Up, Wesley” crowd. I didn’t think he was at all deserving of such a cool mom.

As I’ve already written numerous times since, however, I have moved beyond that pettiness. I embrace Wil Wheaton in all his geeky glory. I’m not even miffed anymore that this volume of MotF is only on the first half of the first season. Wil is a self-published author now, which means he’s making his way all on his own. And as Cheers taught us so well, “Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.”

I’ll stop now since I’ve already blathered on about this book once before…before I even read it! The force is strong in this one.

Final score: 5/5. They’re pure fun, these memories of the future. If you’re willing to let go of past hatred for Wesley Crusher and embrace some honest and honestly funny reviews of that hella bad first season of TNG, then this is the book of choice for you, my geeky denizens.

And, just because I did this last time I talked about MotF, here’s another image from Wil’s Flickr account. It’s so wrong…so very, very wrong. But, strangely, it fits with my previous post, “Full of Evil Clowns.” I love serendipity…

[Loba Edit: Thanks to Marius for being the first to point out that I failed to finish my own blog entry. D’oh!]

“Full of Evil Clowns”

~ lobablanca

That might possibly be one of my favorite song lyrics EVAR, from an artist who has somehow made her way very high on my list of music awesome: P!nk.

To be honest, I’m not really sure how this happened. I remember barely registering her arrival on the music scene back in…good grief! 2000? That long ago? “There You Go” was probably the only song I heard from her debut CD. It was okay, but I wasn’t really sure how to process her or her music. Honestly, I don’t really think her record label knew what to do with her then either.

Thankfully, someone let her evolve naturally, and what she’s been coming out with in recent years has grabbed me in ways that most mainstream music simply doesn’t anymore. What really rocketed her into my consciousness was her video for “Stupid Girls,” which, simply put, is exactly how I feel about what’s happening with girls today. When did it become law that girls had to sacrifice their intelligence and their dignity in order to be popular? Oh. Never mind.

I’m so glad that I’ll never fit in
That will never be me
Outcasts and girls with ambition
That’s what I wanna see

So, yeah, P!nk. Let me say here that it should drive me crazy that she spells her nom de musique with an exclamation point, which is a bit too cutesy for her own damn good. But she’s just so adorably bad-ass that I can let this one slide. I love her voice as well. It’s got a Janis Joplin-esque rawness that she can temper into a surprising tenderness. Plus, she rocks the catchy hook like no one’s business.

And her music videos are fun. I find videos in which all they do is show nutrient-deprived, lethargic pretty people pouting their way through a bunch of boring undulations and lip-syncing….well, boring. P!nk is definitely not boring. Her latest video to make the OnDemand rounds is for “Funhouse,” the song from which the eponymous lyrics of this post come. Watch her bounce and kick her way through the remnants of a burned-down relationship. Watch her hair. Watch out for the evil clowns.

Actually, most of her videos are fun to watch. I’d highly recommend heading over to YouTube and checking out some of her others, like “So What” or “Sober,” which puts a whole different spin on the familiar message that you can’t really find true happiness unless you, um, love yourself.

And there you go. To quote Aerosmith, “P!nk is my new obsession.”

Heh. 😉

This Silver Lining, In 3-D

~ lobablanca

snow1

So I griped and complained about the snow all Saturday. Then Sunday came and went, and nothing. Why? Because I spent a large portion of that day, digging out from under all that you see to your right. When all was said and done, we got a little more than 2 feet. That might have just been the final measurements due to drifting, though. The numbers people on the telly were saying more along the lines of 16 inches. My arm muscles disagree…but that’s okay.

When all was said and done, I felt much better once Sammy was no longer being held prisoner by the snow. So Sunday evening was spent relaxing and being in a far more agreeable mood.

Then the news came from WaPo: All federal agencies will be closed on Monday.

I’m not a federal employee, but I help make federal employees look spiffy. So if they’re not there, we’re not really needed. Which meant that my company closed for the day as well. And the silver lining shone through brightly.

So where the heck was I all day? At the movie theater. Watching Dances with Na’vi Avatar. For 3 hours. My butt still hasn’t woken up. Which is why I’m getting ready to go exercise…and maybe even attempt to process how I feel about this movie. I’m still not sure. I did, however, make sure this was available as soon as I got back online. Seriously, Sigourney Weaver as a feline alien must become part of my collection. As soon as possible.

Oh, one more thing. Expect some serious 50BC09 posting in a little while. Maybe not now. But soon. And for the rest of…er…the year?