So, given that the next movie's coming out, thought it might be a good time to finally do a post on the Twilight books.

( This review is not a positive 'Oh Edward how I love thee let me count the ways' one, so if you don't want to read, feel free to skip. )

Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby have a fantastic-looking book out!! You can check it out here.

Also, here's Kate's blog: Shapely Prose.

Drama and horror and whatnot is all well and good, but when it's 10:30 and Chris is at work and I want to watch something that will not freak me out or depress me . . . yeah. ((this is, by the way, why I'm not currently mainlining the rest of Season 3 of Supernatural))

So I thought, well, maybe I'll read a book instead. What have I gotten recently that I haven't had a chance to read . . . oh look. A Simon Clark, a Richard Laymon, and a Supernatural novelization.

I think I'm becoming predictable.

I need to find some kind of option on amazon.com that'll let me order a season of That 70s Show and get it to me within the next twenty minutes. That'd be useful.

It's at least two hours before Kaylee's going to go to sleep. She's being helpful about the movie search-- she yanks down every DVD in reach and scatters them around the room so they're easier to see. Thank you, kid. At least she's leaving the books alone. For now. . .

Maybe I'll watch Earth Girls Are Easy. Hard to get much sillier than that. :-)

"I guess after the picture came out the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it ... no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn't exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved," she {Lynndie England} was quoted as saying.

And gee, if you and your dumbass buddies hadn't done something that nasty in the first place, then the media wouldn't have had anything to report, right?

Now I certainly have my issues with the media, but I do hate this kind of crap. "Oh, it's the media's fault for paying so much attention to this!" Not, of course, the fault of the people who do things they shouldn't be doing in the first place, oh no. Just blame the eeeevil media for pointing it out and stopping their harmless fun and games!

Idiot.

And in less blood-pressure-raising news, Chris is over at a friend's house with Kaylee, so I have a bit of time to write, and to type out a list of her books so I know what she does and doesn't have for next time we visit a bookstore. Yay organization.

Self: That is not the best book to be reading right before you have to go sit in a doctor's waiting room, okay? Okay.

Other than that, a severe case of the Distractions hit at about 5:00 today. As in, I cannot get anything done because my brain flits off to considering something else 0.3 seconds later. I keep opening one Word document, closing it, opening another, reading part of an essay before scooting off to another one. And I think I've sent Kath about fifty crack-addled emails in the past hour.

Okay, aside from the fact that a good part of it was spent sitting on the couch watching The Stand. And now I'm reading the book again-- haven't done so since the seventh grade, but now that I have the 'complete, uncut and illustrated' edition. . . :-)

On the getting-stuff-done side, though, Kath and I just finished the first draft of a new novel. Now comes the editing. lol I got one run-through done on a series of ours; now I only have fifteen pages of notes and new scenes and changes to make instead of fifty! Getting there.

Finishing an edit on that series is one of the things on my 'get done before the baby's born' list. So was going through my CDs and weeding out some stuff, which I got done this morning. Other thing is to go through old bills and financial papers and get stuff organized, which may or may not get done depending on how motivated I can get to go upstairs and sort through the Desk Drawer of Cluttery Doom.

I think this is why Bill O'Reilly exists-- to provide amusement and eyerolling opportunities.

On his Fox News show last night, Bill O'Reilly joined in the fray, asking if Dumbledore's outing was part of the "gay agenda" of "indoctrination" of "children."

…O'Reilly argued there are "many parents" who are "worried in America about the gay agenda and indoctrination of their children to see homosexuality in a certain way."

See? I rest my case.

Though he does have a point-- I mean, that fact about the character was just all over every single book, could barely get through a page without some reference to it. It's not like it was revealed during a Q&A or anything.

This does remind me, I need to get the rest of the series. I only have the first four books.

In other news, I think that for NaNoWriMo this year I might just try to post something in LJ every day. Seeing as I've been a bit stingy with the updates lately. ;-)

This might turn out to be a good idea, or you might get some really, really weird things.

And speaking of weird-- have a drunk squirrel.

Heart-Shaped Box, by Joe Hill

This was one of my rare 'I really should wait for the cheaper paperback but it looks so cool and I want to read it now' purchases, and I'm really glad I listened to my Impatient Inner Voice. ;-) It's one of those "maybe someday if I keep working my butt off I will write a horror novel at least partly this freaky/good".

The cover blurb:

"Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman's noose . . . a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or dreadful as his latest discovery, an item for sale on the Internet, a thing so terribly strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet.

'I will sell my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder. . .'

For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn't afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts-- of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed. What's one more?

But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. It's the real thing.

And suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door . . . seated in Jude's restored vintage Mustang . . . standing outside his window . . . staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting-- with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand. . . ."

Made a decision about my livejournal, so far as the Virginia Tech shootings go. I know as this story develops, we're going to hear all the "oh, maybe video games are responsible", "you know, his writings were really dark and disturbed, obviously all kids who write dark things should be watched!!" "it's because he was a foreigner/Asian/insert racist twaddle here". Latest news I heard was that he had a history of stalking women and was looking for an ex-girlfriend. If that turns out to be the case, I will not be surprised, nor will I be surprised when the media yet again ignores that nice little sexist entitlement complex in order to focus on much more important things like whether or not the neighbors thought he was a quiet kid.

Point being, this entry is the last time I'll talk about him here. I will not refer to him by name. As stories about the victims come out, I'll talk about them.

In conclusion, an excerpt from Gavin De Becker's The Gift of Fear--

"Getting caught for some awful violence should be the start of oblivion, not the biggest day of one's life.

But it was the biggest day in the life of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who was paraded in front of the waiting press surrounded by FBI agents, rushed to a motorcade, and then whisked away in a two-helicopter armada. We saw this even more with accused Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, whose close-up appeared on the covers of Time, U.S. News & World Report, and Newsweek (twice). The cover text of all three described Kaczynski as a 'genius'.

Reporters usually refer to assassins with triple names, like Mark David Chapman, Lee Harvey Oswald, Arthur Richard Jackson. One might come to believe the assassins actually used these pretentious triple names in their pre-attack lives; they didn't. They were Mark, Lee, and Arthur.

I propose promoting the least glamorous incarnation of their names. Call a criminal Ted Smith instead of Theodore Bryant Smith. Better still, find some nickname used in his pre-attack life--

Federal agent: 'His name is Theodore Smith, but he was known as Chubby Ted.'

Our culture presents many role models, but few get as much hoopla and glory as the assassin. Those who have succeeded (and even some of those who failed) are among the most famous people in American lore. John Wilkes Booth survives history with more fame than all but a few other Americans of his time.

The tragically symbiotic relationship between assassins and television news is understandable. Assassins give great video-- very visual, very dramatic. Assassins will not sue you no matter what you say about them, and they provide the story feature most desired by news producers: extendability. There will be more information, more interviews with neighbors and experts, more pictures from the high school yearbook. There will be a trial with the flavor of a horse race between lawyers (made famous just for the occasion), and there will be the drama of waiting for the verdict. Best of all, there will be that video of the attack, again and again.

The problem, however, is that that video may be a commercial for assassination. As surely as Procter & Gamble ever pushed toothpaste, the approach of television news pushes public-figure attack.

Way back in 1911, criminologist Arthur MacDonald wrote, "The most dangerous criminals are the assassins of rulers." He suggested that "newspapers, magazines and authors of books cease to publish the names of criminals. If this not be done voluntarily, let it be made a misdemeanor to do so. This would lessen the hope for glory, renown or notoriety, which is a great incentive to such crimes."

We really need to get the gas gauge on our truck fixed. It's stuck on empty. Been that way for a while now, but yesterday we finally overestimated how much gas was in the tank and ran out about six blocks away from the gas station. Fun times. :-)

Chris bought me a couple of books I picked out for Valentine's Day-- a dessert cookbook and a book of baby names. Both of which I have way too many of already. Name books and cookbooks are addictions of mine, I swear. I'm going to be getting him a pair of steel-toed boots for a present after I get paid.

Might go see Hannibal Rising tonight; haven't decided yet. I'm about ten pages into the book.

Speaking of movies, finally got to see Oscar and Lucinda, which I loved. It ended a lot differently than I expected (I was anticipating something sad, because it's a general law of Ralph Fiennes movies that at least one thing will happen to depress the hell out of me), but the way they went about the last half of the movie was a surprise. And I loved their characters so much; the scene where they're having a race to see who can finish scrubbing the floor first is adorable and cute and utterly grinworthy.

In non-grinworthy news, it's looking like I'm not going to be voting for John Edwards. Too bad, but if he won't truly stand up for Amanda, that doesn't give me much hope that he'll stand up for anyone else. I would have absolutely loved it if he'd pointed out these quotes--

“As for the alleged abuse, it’s time to ask some tough questions. First, there is a huge difference between being groped and being raped, so which was it, Mr. Foley? Second, why didn’t you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn’t allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?”

"Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, okay? And I'm not afraid to say it."

-- among others, and then said, "Go ahead, Mr. Donohue, let's talk about offensive language." He would've had my unending loyalty for something like that.

Well, the running-around for the day is done . . . went to visit my parents, my grandmother, and Chris's family. All before 2:00, because that was when Chris had to be at work.

And we're probably going to be unconscious for a good long while tomorrow, because we stayed up until 3 in the morning last night (Devin brought over Dawn of the Dead and The Hills Have Eyes for nice cheerful holiday fare). Pictures from last night and this morning under the cut.

( 'Twas the night before Christmas and my brother was reenacting a scene from Trilogy of Terror because he's a freaking psycho )

Watched a movie called Land of the Blind the other day-- had no idea what it was about; just saw Ralph Fiennes and Donald Sutherland on the cover, which was more than enough of a recommendation for me. Turned out to be a very strange political satire. One of my favorite parts, though, was when Fiennes recited part of William Butler Yeats's "The Second Coming". The man just has a voice made for reading poetry, I swear. The fact that I've always liked the poem in question was a bonus. ;-) For those who haven't read it:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

One of my fondest memories of college history class was when we spent an hour discussing T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". I don't always know what every poem I like means exactly, but most of the time that doesn't even matter. Just the language of it, the turn of phrase. I mean, you've got "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me" and "She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes" and "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest, to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old lie-- dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" and "I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death" and . . . yeah. *happy sigh*

So tell me some of your favorites, if you have any. A particular line, a full poem, a poet. :-)

Had a lazy day yesterday. Chris worked on a puzzle-- the guy's an addict-- while I read him some short stories by William F. Nolan and Jack Ketchum. Then we went out and rented some movies. He hadn't seen any of the Highlander movies in a while but he'd liked the series as a kid, so we rented the second and third ones (nobody had the first) and ohmygoodness. Scenery-chewing and dorky eighties-movie special effects and just so much fun. :-D

In holiday-news, I was thinking about doing that meme where you think up ten things, big or small, that you want and see if anybody sends/makes them for you, but I could only think of two-- fanart for Karavan's Mirror, or donating some money to any of the charities on my sidebar. So instead of scrambling frantically for eight other items to pad the list, have a stocking to fill. *s*

( my xmas stocking )

I also got a Christmas icon from iconseeyou. Hee.

ETA: Here's the post where I got my icon: over 200 of them; something for everybody. :-D

And a relocated bookshelf! Pictures behind the cut.

( Stephanie falls up the stairs, Stephanie falls down the stairs )

In other words, nothing we didn't already know. Hee.

I've seen a couple of people do those 'voice posts' recently . . . I've never tried that, debating on whether or not I should. Other than the fact I'd have no idea what to say.

Only one more week of LOST, and then nada until February. Eep.

Flushed Away is going to be in our theater tomorrow. We'll probably go see it.

I'm reading Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Maberry-- it's pretty good so far. Might have to buy more of his stuff later.

I really want to go to After Dark Horrorfest, a showing of eight new scary movies, but the nearest one is going to be over an hour away, Chris works that weekend and I would get lost on the way there, and a ticket to all 8 costs $75. Darnit.

Now I'm just trying to see how many times I can change the subject in one post.

I like mint chocolate chip ice cream.

(okay, I'm off to do something productive now, honest. Probably)

I rent low-budget horror movies all the time, in the hopes that in the midst of all the bad acting and worse writing and cliche plots, I can find something better, something honestly creepy. Once in a great while, I do (example: Session 9. The setting alone is reason to rent it).

Go through the same thing with books. My dad got into his reading habit when he was a kid with sci-fi novels and comic books; mom with mystery and romance; mine with scary stories. I have several authors on my 'if they wrote it, buy it' list: Richard Laymon, Jack Ketchum, Simon Clark.

And I just found someone else to add to that list.

From the back cover of David Morrell's "Creepers":

"On a cold October night, five people gather in a run-down motel on the Jersey shore and prepare to break into the Paragon Hotel. The once-magnificent structure is now boarded up and marked for demolition.
They are 'creepers': urban explorers with a passion for investigating abandoned buildings and their dying secrets. Reporter Frank Balenger joins them to profile this highly illegal activity for the New York Times. But he isn't looking for just another story, and soon after they enter the rat-infested tunnel leading to the hotel, he gets more than he bargained for."

The website. (thanks to semiotic_pirate for the link)

I had to pick this up, of course. I've always had a fascination with abandoned buildings . . . my friends and I made our way into an empty silo one Halloween, a jaunt which ended when we discovered some rats trying to get a closer look at our costumes (the sight of all four of us scrambling out of there in high heels must've been really funny). I'd like to get a look inside an abandoned house someday. And an abandoned hotel? Heaven. Since that's not possible, though, I'll settle for reading about it. It's a personal goal of mine to write a horror novel centered around a hotel somehow, though I don't know how in the world I can possibly compete knowing that this one and The Shining exist. Anyway.

Once in a while, I'll find a scary novel that actually does scare me. After years of reading them, it's pretty rare. (lying awake at night and expanding on scenes in my own imagination doesn't really count) ;-) A scene that makes me look around the room I'm sitting in and fidget.

There's one of those scenes at the end of Chapter Twenty-Six. One sentence, actually, which makes it even better, because it's one of those lines that you read and you feel like you just got punched in the stomach and your brain lets out this little 'eeeeeeeeeeee' and then you read it again just to make sure it says that and yes it certainly does, and are you very, very sure that the front door did get locked?

I wonder if it's healthy to love moments like that quite so much.

1. One book that changed your life: The Glass Teat by Harlan Ellison. It's a collection of essays-- My Lai, animal testing, discussions of amoral news anchors, etc. Got me thinking about a lot of stuff.

2. One book you've read more than once: Heh. Good thing it says 'one' book, or we'd be here all night. The Gift of Fear, by Gavin De Becker.

3. One book you would want on a desert island: That's just being mean. Hm. Probably a dark and twisted horror novel, something by Richard Laymon or Jack Ketchum. That way I could read it and go, "See? Things could be worse." ;-)

4. One book that made you laugh: Where the Sidewalk Ends. I loved that book when I was a kid. *s*

5. One book that made you cry: The last book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

6. One book you wish had been written: "How I Effortlessly Became a Multimillionaire", by me.

7. One book you wish had never been written: Can't think of one. I think they all serve a purpose, even if that purpose is only to point and laugh.

8. One book you are currently reading: One of the In Death series, by J.D. Robb.

9. One book you have been meaning to read: Ariadne's Web, by Fred Saberhagen.


I tag whoever wants to do this. :-)

So this lady-- Jan W. Butler-- writes in to the Romance Writers Association complaining about how there are OMG gay/lesbian/anything she doesn't like novels included under 'romance' and how there should be standards. To add to the fun, she complains about her First Amendment rights when people disagree with her, but when they post comments on her blog, somehow those comments get mysteriously screened and never show up. Hmmm.

But anyway, the best part . . . Nora Roberts comments on it. An excerpt:

"I don't generally read erotica. I don't generally read inspirationals. I don't generally read YA romance. I don't generally read gay romance.

But, not for a minute have I ever considered, because they don't suit my particular reading tastes, that any of these categories aren't a legitimate spoke of the big wheel of the Romance genre."

*hugs her Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb books*

Good weekend in El Dorado/Wichita-- bought several wok/stir-fry cookbooks for Chris (yay for used bookstores) and later today we're going to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2. :-)

Here's another thing that got done this weekend--

A Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet Cake made from Ashley's (rosevaughn) grandmother's recipe. It has cream cheese frosting, and I made the candies for it (it's for her dad's birthday today).

( Read more... )

Okay, that's it, I'll admit it-- I'm still mad over the whole Rescue Me thing. Or rather, not so much the show as some of the reactions I've seen. Because I've seen fans say that they think it was a rape, but that 'she deserved it' and 'she wanted it' and 'look what she's done to him; can't blame him' and that is what is pissing me off.

So I am now going to snarl for a few paragraphs and get this off my chest and then go through some more emails and hopefully find a better mood. . . .

It's not about behavior. Gavin de Becker says truthfully in his excellent book The Gift of Fear that it's impossible to turn a decent man into a violent rapist by irritating him.

It's not about looks. No Evil Stepmothers are going to shriek in rage because my face shows up in the mirror anytime soon, let's just say. ;-) But I've gotten my butt pinched in a grocery store. Can't even count the catcalls. On one memorable occassion, I had a guy standing outside the car I'd locked myself in, knocking on the windows, angrily slurring that he "only wanted to touch me a little".

I wasn't dressed 'provocatively' any of those times. For one of the catcalls I was dressed in jeans, wearing my husband's coat, and my hair was soaking wet. Oh baby. ::eyeroll:: You know what the factor was? They saw that I was female. I was prey, not predator. And they reacted to that.

At various times, I've been "the drunk girl at the party". The "girl in a deserted area with a guy she doesn't know". You know why I wasn't attacked? Because the men I was with at the time weren't rapists. The times that I was nearly attacked? I was playing a game of basketball with a friend at an elementary school playground; and I was sitting in the front room of a trailer while another friend talked to her boyfriend in the back room. Not high-risk situations, right? But the guys who were there. . .

My father generally makes the analogy that you don't douse yourself in steak sauce and then walk around near a lion's den, and you also don't put on a tight outfit and go walking around at night in a bad neighborhood. As much as I agree with him on other things, this always has been and always will be a point of contention (until the day I succeed in changing his mind) because men are not lions. They're human beings capable of making decisions. A woman can be drunk and/or passed out and thisclose to naked in a room full of men, and she will be just fine if the men in the room are decent. A woman can also be inside her home, wearing incredibly 'modest' clothes and completely sober, and still be attacked if a burglar breaks in and decides to take the opportunity.

That's what it is. Opportunity, and sometimes whether or not you fit some 'type'. The awful thing is that what you wear doesn't matter, your past history doesn't matter . . . until after the fact. The very things that the rapist took peripheral notice of in favor of whether or not he thought he could overpower you are the very things other people will focus on entirely and say, "tsk. Look at the length of that skirt. What was she thinking?"

And so it all comes back to the victim. Tell me, exactly what are we supposed to do to avoid 'asking for it'? 'Deserving it'? Skirts don't cut it; they're easy access. Jeans don't; too form-fitting. Shorts? Form-fitting and show off our legs. Loose blouses just make guys wonder what's underneath and I don't even need to get into what's wrong with tight or low-cut ones, right? Going to parties, especially ones where people will be drinking? Incredibly bad idea. Walking around alone? Just making yourself an easy target, you know, best to have company. Male company. Make sure it's someone you know very, very well, though, because if someone you trust attacks you, then that's going to be on you for trusting instead of on him for breaking that trust.

So, it looks like we're down to-- "Lock yourselves in your homes at all times and do not interact with any men. Ever."

This is the message society sends, with its constant refrains of, "Well, this is what she was wearing and what she did wrong and who she shouldn't have been around and where she shouldn't have been and she just provoked him anyway." Its ideas about how we all know men are basically wild animals that can never be trusted, so women should always be on guard and blamed when something goes wrong, because it's not like guys should be focused on, right? We all know that their behavior will never be changed, because they can't help it, the poor things.

And some people call feminists man-haters.