Mrs. Audio's thoughts and ramblings

Oh my sweet God, no movie as stupid as 2012 has any right to be TWO HOURS AND THIRTY-EIGHT MINUTES. I drank HALF a smuggled 12 oz bottle of Coke (Tiny Coke, if you will), and nearly DIED. My bladder is BRUISED.

My mom's the disaster movie junkie--she hasn't seen a movie in the theater in six months (I think she last one she saw was Up), so I went for her sake. Man, I hate disaster movies. I worry about this stuff enough, you know? I'm not really into watching implausibly connected characters run and weep and do noble shit and die horribly for two hours (AND THIRTY-EIGHT MINUTES). I'm okay with watching shit blow up; I just don't want to watch the cast meeble on about it. And let me tell you, internets, shit does not start blowing up until FIFTY-SEVEN (57) minutes into the movie. If you think I give a shit about John Cusack's ex-marital problems, you are WRONG, Roland Emmerich. And even the next hour and a half has way too much wibbling about humanity. BLOW SHIT UP. BLOW IT UP NOWWWWWWWWWW. Seriously: go buy a ticket to this thing, walk in fifty-seven minutes late, watch John Cusack and family outrun an earthquake in a limo (because this part is THE MOST AWESOME THING I HAVE EVER SEEN, at the very least the most awesome thing I have ever seen involving either an earthquake or a limo), and then after they get to Vegas, LEAVE. If you've seen Deep Impact and The Poseidon Adventure, you've pretty much seen everything else. In fact, you can probably just watch Dodge the Freeway in the trailer; I didn't watch it, but my mother says pretty much all the awesome stuff is in there, and the rest of the movie is just a game of Guess Who's Gonna Die (a winner is me!). I was also able to call not one but TWO ridiculous romances, because it was that kind of movie. Honestly, earthquake in a limo and Thandie Newton's French: best things in the movie. Everything else I laughed at until I was seized with urinary tract regret for the entire last hour.

(OMFG THE WOLFMAN TRAILER WAS SO AWESOME IT IS WHAT THE INSIDE OF MY HEAD LOOKS LIKE. I was seriously just sitting there all a-squee, clapping my fists [so it would be quiet!] chanting "WOLFMAN WOLFMAN WOLFMAN!!!!!!" and my mother was like, You are so weird.)

I also grabbed a few sheets of printer paper to fold up and stuff in my purse--turns out that you can just squeak by on six pages and the back of the first page if you take notes sparingly.

(THIS IS THE THING OF WHICH WE DO NOT SPEAK. WE DO NOT JINX IT. IT MAY STILL NOT HAPPEN.)



(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

If you've been wanting to buy the box sets but the price was too high, now's your chance! Amazon is selling all four seasons (the new ones) for $32.49 each, almost 60% off!

I used to wear this belt all the time - I like the little bit of punch it can add to an otherwise girly outfit.

( Day 316 )

I know people for whom Friday the 13ths are actually lucky; I am not one of them. But--knock on wood--so far, things are going pretty well.

( SPARKLEMAS COMES EARLY THIS YEAR )


BREAKING NEWS: SHIRT-ALLERGIC JACOB KEN DOLL. ARE YOU FOR REAL. WHAT IS THIS. I DON'T EVEN. FUHHHHHH.


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

I'd initially thought of calling this the "non-Prabhas edition", but procrastination is better.

I'm moving tomorrow morning.

I have exactly one box packed.

Yep.

And here's a good procrastination song from Chukkallo Chandrudu. I don't remember what Siddharth is supposed to be doing in the movie, but he chooses to dance around playing with puppies and flirting with babies instead.

One of these days I'll do a big "why Siddharth is my favorite South Indian actor" post. Then you will all love him as much as I do. But not today. Because today I have to pack.

I just spent an hour on the phone with a reporter who wants to write an article focusing on the more disturbing aspects of New Moon, the ones that parents may not know about, and it was the best game of Horrify the Twilight Noob EVER. It may actually be the longest such game on record. She knew to ask about all the controversial points, but... not the entire width and depth of the horror, if you will. There was a lot of "Oh... wow." I apologized for going on at such length, but she did have a lot of informed questions about a number of plot elements--if nothing else, I give an interviewer plenty of material to work with. And a larger audience will now be made aware of rocking chairs. "You're probably the one who knows the most about it," she said, laughing. I... kind of don't know how to feel about that.

(I imagine it'll come out next week--probably run on the day the movie opens. I'll tell you more about who and what and where when it does. In fact, I may see if one of y'all can clip the article and send it to me or scan it. The Littlest Edward can totes scrapbook it for me.)

I was actually pretty complimentary about how the movies handle some of these elements, though. That said: while I highly doubt I would in any way be the focus of the article, this is going to be read by a wider, non-LiveJournal, probably Twilight-loving audience. They're only going to see my commentary on this specific angle, and not the more affectionate, even-handed snark. I am pretty sure that their outrage will be a complete novelty in my sheltered little corner of the internet. BRING IT. Because I totally won't read any of their responses and my journal doesn't have anonycommenting enabled. Have fun storming someone else's castle, kids!

Cleolinda Jones: Senior Sparkle Correspondent. HATERS TO THE LEFT.



(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

I pulled everything out of my kitchen cabinets yesterday to start packing. It's amazing how much stuff I've had shoved in there all this time, and never even thought about. I remember last spring how I made this big long list of things I Had To Have for my kitchen because I was going to be this super Domestic Goddess...and it's all just been sitting in a cabinet since then, gathering dust, while I live on omelets and fruit and chocolate chip muffins.

I have two angel food cake pans. Why? And why did I think I needed four regular cake pans and a frosting spatula? I couldn't bake a layer cake to save my life! Okay, I could, but it wouldn't be pretty.

Grease-spatter screens...I haven't fried anything in hot oil for years. Well, I did deep-fry samosas last weekend (don't be impressed, they came from a bag in the freezer section at the Indian store) but I didn't even remember that I had them, which is why the kitchen floor is now covered with a thin layer of grease. Two roasting pans. What was I planning to do with them? I think I used one of them once, to make some sort of vaguely Indian spinach-and-potato thing from The River Cottage Family Cookbook. That was really good, actually. I should make it again some time. Three loaf pans, two pie pans...

At least I'm not as bad as my sister. She has six sets of measuring spoons.

EDIT@08:16 UTC/GMT. Wow. That was ugly. I expected it to go for 30 minutes and have maybe 1 minute of broken connectivity. Instead it lasted over 4 hours and we had 10 minutes of downtime directly related to the load balancer upgrades and then another 5-10 minutes of downtime when our primary Pingback database server crashed and the secondary couldn't take over; which could have been indirectly caused by the network upgrade missing a self-VIP.

Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!!

Thanks mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!

---

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

Engage. Do not sit back and wait for something to interest you enough to force your attention- be in charge of your attention. Direct it. Think about things. Don't be a passive recipient. Life is not a spectator sport. It's your responsibility to be interested, not entertained.

Don't just survive. LIVE.

(read the whole post, which goes on to talk about raising children with this attitude, here at the blog of my favorite family ever. I haven't seen them in far too long and I miss them! ♥)

So someone else has run off and reposted my work (this time, it's Twilight in Fifteen Minutes. NO DOGPILING, Y'ALL). I don't go looking for this stuff, because honestly, if I started trying to police the internet--which I did try for a little while, back when I was first writing these things--I would never, ever get anything else done. But I feel like once you've brought it to my attention--I don't know that legally I have to do anything; this isn't an issue of trademark, which has to be defended pretty vigorously; it's a simple matter of copyright flowing from the pen, as the expression goes. I wrote this, it is verifiably mine, and I have the right to decide who does and does not get to run off with it. So morally--perhaps, more accurately, emotionally--you feel like you're not supposed to let it go.

( The problem with this one is that the girl's gotten defiant )


ETA: Okay. She's apologized. As for you guys? I have finally read most of the comments, and while I said NO DOGPILING, most of y'all were admirably civil. However?

The authors onto you, BTW: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/820888.html?#cutid1

Check out the number of commenters on that post - that's the number of people who hate you right now.

BAD FORM. You better hope I don't find out who that was.

Mistaken for someone interesting, I have been interviewed at blogcritics.org. (We did it in October, so mentally replace "next month" with "this month.") In what is probably a first, I am actually asked about The Secret Life of Dolls a good bit. Also discussed: The Third Man, nineteenth-century fancrazy, and my newest "hobby."


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

I'm just posting to use this icon, because it suits my mood for the moment. I got everything straightened out with the electric company and you know why?

Because my 10-digit electric company account number was lurking in the back of my brain.

Seriously, I have no idea where it came from. I guess writing it on checks every month stuck it in there somewhere, because as I was walking back from lunch mentally cursing electric companies and their complicated websites to the fires of Mount Doom, suddenly it came to me. And I pretty much ran back to my desk and created an account and requested the service transfer and now I don't have to worry about anything else with this moving thing except boxes because apparently someone just took all the empty boxes that had been piling up downstairs for their own move, so I'll have to find another source. Any ideas?

I will now stop boring you with this nonsense, and leave you with a recommendation: Sylvester by Georgette Heyer. It's very funny (the hero is cold-bloodedly looking for a wife who suits his requirements, his mother despairs because he isn't including love in his calculations, and he's about to meet the woman who wrote him into her popular novel as the villain!) and I wish I had enough free time to just sit and read it, and didn't have to work.

ETA: And also, hadippa because Netflix just emailed me that they're sending me Dil Bole Hadippa tomorrow! Yippee!

Okay, you know what? I've held out for nearly three and a half months now, but I am nearly at my breaking point (even though we are now in the home stretch). I am SICK of not having my own computer to work on. There are huge disadvantages to sharing a computer that you just really don't even think of until you have to do it yourself. I HATE logging out of everything every time I walk away from the computer, because the hell I'm leaving my email accounts vulnerable to prying eyes. And on your average day? I need to be logged into LJ, JournalFen, Yahoo email, Gmail (with Reader and Documents), Twitter, Delicious for bookmarks, Pandora, a couple of message boards, and my file storage account; my life would be infinitely easier if I could just stay logged in. So I HATE dumping the cache and the cookies and the browsing history and even the SEARCH history if I so much as duck out for a glass of tea, and I HAVE to do it, because you know why? You know why? Researching the @#$%*&@ e-book footnotes, that's why. If I didn't, you'd go to the Google drop-down search box and get "bella's felted womb," "dead from coke," "edward lipstick," "gq motherfucker," "total eclipse sex scene," 5000 Twilight articles, and "twincest." And there is NO WAY I am letting my family know I spent that much time looking up shit about Twilight.

I can't do a whole hell of a lot on this computer either, since it's like eight years old as it is--in excellent condition, but it's only got 30GB storage, you know? You can infer from that what the processor thingamawhatever speed must be like. It just can't do a lot. It can't handle Skype, for example. And I don't have any of my pet programs (Semagic for LJ, TweetDeck, ACDSee photo organizing, and probably a ton of others I've forgotten because IT'S BEEN SO LONG SINCE I'VE USED THEM), because the computer either can't handle a given program or it can't handle them all together. And we THOUGHT it had Photoshop, but apparently not, and while I'm pretty handy on that, I apparently am too stupid to operate MS Paint. People keep telling me how to crop and I just. can't. manage it. And then I go back to Firefox and accidentally hit "home" instead of "new tab" and I lose my entire LJ entry draft, because whenever it tries to recover a "saved" draft, it gives me the previous entry I already posted. HATRED.

And then I can't really save images (no room, plus other people looking at my shit) or watch videos (I hate being walked in on while I'm trying to watch whatever weird-ass thing someone just linked on Twitter. Mostly I just don't have time because I'm under the gun to get anything done before someone else needs the computer), assuming I could get the video to work at all. Because I physically can't get time at the computer as much as I'd like, my Google Reader news items just sit and pile up, so every morning I have "1000+," and one day I cleared 600 items and STILL had 1000+. I keep having to star things I want to go back and use in the footnotes or save pictures from, and I am TIRED OF IT.

If I didn't have the iBella--which at least has a camera, an mp3 player, and apps for Twitter, Pandora and my email that I DON'T HAVE TO LOG OUT OF--I would have gone insane by now. The day I figured out how to copy-paste links on my phone, I nearly wept for joy. Even there, I can't really answer emails or LJ comments at any length--if it's going to be a short reply, I can tap it out with a minimum of head-meeting-wall, but y'all know how wordy I am. We get to more than two sentences and I just can't manage it; I have to wait to answer until I get to the (shared) (family) computer. And then I have to log into umpteen thousand things all over again but then someone else needs the computer RIGHT NOW and I have to dump everything and hope no one noticed that I was at that moment searching "vampire sex toys." Oh, and blip.fm just doesn't work on the iPhone at all. RAAAAAAAGE.

Only one more week until [New Computer's Name] arrives. I will console myself with a peppermint chocolate chip milkshake from Chick-fil-A, I think.


ETA: THE MILKSHAKE MACHINE IS DOWN

WHY GOD WHY


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

Moving in a week is for the birds, I have decided.

Why is there always one random little thing that seems so easy and stress-free that turns out to be complicated and difficult?

The electric company used to just have a form you could fill out online to start, stop, or move service. It was quick and easy. Now you have to create an account using your account number, which I don't have on hand, since I haven't saved any of my electric bill stubs. So Carrie said, Here's mine, you can set up an account for me and do it that way. Only I can't because "we cannot process your request to stop or move service for the following reason: Frozen Rate". What the fish is that supposed to mean? So we're going to have to call them (which should be a whole lot of fun, since they'll probably want my account number anyway to prove that it's me) and ugh, this was supposed to be a five-minute easy thing.

I just want to go back to reading Sylvester and let someone else deal with all this responsible adult stressful stuff.

So I'm moving this weekend.

My sister and I have been living in the same building (her downstairs and to the left, me upstairs and to the right) for over a year now, and since we spend most of our time together anyway we decided it was stupid to keep paying almost $1200 rent a month when we could move in together and pay more like $700. So we went to the office yesterday thinking we'd just get put on a waiting list or something and they'd let us know when a 2BR was available.

Turns out there's one that'll be ready next weekend. They're putting in new carpet on Thursday, and we can move in on Saturday. And it's so cute! There's a little patio in the front, and a fireplace, and a back door that leads out to a courtyard and one of the pools.

It's a good thing I have Wednesday off this week since I'll be spending every spare minute packing and cleaning. Hopefully I can get some boxes from work, otherwise I'll be carrying lots of armloads of books across the parking lot!

I have been in a very bad mood for the past two days and I have no idea how to snap myself out of it. Phooey.

Current favorite pictures of Prabhas:




Okay, that might have made me smile a little.

Adorable song from Yamadonga:



NTR Jr has such pretty eyes, and I love his roguish smile.

But I'm still grumpy. Because I can be. So there. :-P

Depression, I have often said, is like an influenza of the soul. A spiritual hamthrax, if you will. I has it. Do not want.

It's actually starting to worry me a little, the intensity of this go-round--it's not the usual stone-cold ennui. Normally I'm not this bad off until after New Year's (well, except for the pity party I throw myself every year in the weeks leading up to my birthday), and, again: that's more of a seasonal apathy-funk. This involves a lot of dread and distress and, at times, actual panic involved. I have to think this is because things are just generally bad around here at the moment, and have been for a good while now. Two different family members are having job-related crises, for example. I'm having performance anxiety in terms of trying to write, I don't have a dependable place to work, I'm just generally very unhappy. But it's taking on a hysterical edge that makes me uncomfortable--I keep having urges to act out in some way. I don't mean harm myself or anyone else; I mean, like, throw a gigantic melodramatic fit du shit. I know I had that minor meltdown where I started throwing shit earlier this summer, but that is the ONLY TIME IN MY LIFE I have ever done anything like that. So I'm not used to having the urge to, like, flounce from the internet for the hell of it or something. And that's why I'm sitting here talking about it so calmly, because I feel like the only way to combat irrationality is with detachment. Take an overview of the thing, recognize what you're doing, shove it into the light of day. So... yeah.

(By the way, laptop has been ordered; money has cleared checking account. It will take about two weeks from November 3rd for Dell to build and ship it, what with the custom art and the crazy-ass 17" facial recognition screen. I don't even know. I spent a ridiculous, extravagant amount of money because I could, and it felt GOOD.)

A little Twi-spam for the hell of it, since Sparklemas is fast approaching:

( T-REX, VAMPIRES CAN HAVE KIDS AND LITTLE DINOSAUR VAMPIRES SOUNDS PRETTY CUTE TO ME )


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

( Day 308 )

From ladygoat

Incidentally, how do you pronounce "meme"? Is it meem or meh-meh or mee-mee or what? Does anyone even know?

1. If you inherited a million dollars, what would you do specifically with it?

Okay, let's see here... $1000 to pay off my credit card once and for all, $20,000 for a Mini Cooper, invest half so I'll have a decent amount to fall back on when I'm an old maid, and the other $479,000 I'd use for travel, maybe buy a house, buying things I can't afford right now, whatever.

2. If you could live the story of a book, which book?

Why couldn't you have said movie? I have plenty of answers for that, but books are much harder.

I guess I'll have to go with Northanger Abbey, since it's the only book that ends with marriage to Mr. Tilney. :-D

3. How do you see your life in 10 years?

I'll either be married or living with 14 cats. I would kind of prefer the first option.

4. What's the worst injury you've had?

When I was 4 I fell off a step-stool while brushing my teeth and hit my head on the corner of the toilet paper holder. I had to get several stitches in the back of my head. It was my brother's fault. He was 2 and couldn't leave the toilet paper alone (he liked to walk through the house unrolling it behind him), so my mom started hiding it in a cabinet instead of keeping it on the holder where it would have cushioned my poor head when I fell.

5. What are your thoughts on guns?

I think they're stupid and scary, but I suppose I'd be grateful for someone who had one if I was in danger from a wild animal or ax murderer or something.

"Where do you find hummus?"

"In the deli section."

"The deli?"

"Yeah, up with the fancy cheeses and stuff."

"Okay. Because I'm in the ethnic food aisle and they have cans of it for $5."

Hummus...in a can? That's just wrong!

Also apparently she and my dad have some extra money they're splitting between my brother and sister and I, and she was surprised to hear that I have a savings account (she wanted to know how early I would get to their house tonight, because if the bank was still open we could go open one for me with this money they're giving me). When will my parents get it through their heads that I am no longer 18 years old, living with them and spending all my money on dvds and books and clothes? I've been a relatively responsible adult for four or five years now! I save money on a regular basis! The only reason I never have a lot of spending money is because my apartment is more expensive than I can technically afford.

Oh, parents. I love that even at 27 I still don't qualify as an adult in their eyes. I mentioned going to cooking school in Oregon a couple of months ago and my dad got all, "Oh no you don't, you're not moving halfway across the country by yourself." Never mind that my mom moved from Pennsylvania to Kansas when she was 18 to go to school!

I thought it was the youngest children who were supposed to be the baby forever in their parents' eyes, not the oldest?