PocketWatch Romances

Archive for January, 2005

…written Then, posted Now, for reasons that do not need exploring at this juncture.

Anyhow.

I was thinking about my blog, today, and I realized that when I started it over four years ago, I had no idea that I’d still be doing this now. I thought it would be something I’d do for a while and then I drift on, to other things, as I had with a number of other things (including, believe it or not, stamp collecting).

So here I am. My entries started out kinda bland and kinda lame, but, eh. *Waves a hand* I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. It also, among other things, tracks me through a rather unpleasant period in my life, where I started out desperately unhappy and just got more and more ose as time went by. Then I mentioned that I wasn’t so keen on life, the universe and everything after all, and got some help. Now, things aren’t -perfect-, but I’m a damn sight better than I was. And I can live with ‘not perfect’. It’s not what it was before, and that’s enough for me at the moment.

It’s not my blog’s birthday, yet — that’s at the end of June — but I was kind of surprised to figure out that my (current) LiveJournal is mostly kept so I can comment on other people’s LJ’s, though I do plan on putting it to use as an icon journal someday.

——–

And speaking of someday, I got a copy of No Opportunity Wasted: 8 Ways To Create A List For The Life You Want, which is of course by the illustrious and inimitable Phil Keoghan (and Warren Berger). It’s pretty good; doesn’t have a lot of fluffy crap to it. It has a lot of stories from random people from all over, including one about a couple of guys from Oklahoma that decided that Barrow (yeah, Barrow. AK.) was a good place to put on an ice-bike race. They lost to some Barrow-ites, but they had a grand time anyhow. (Fun Fact: The current mayor of Barrow is a recumbent-bicycling fan. In the summer, he apparently zooms around town on his; he’s also raced in a number of state-wide races.)

Some of the stories are fun, and about fun people, like Banana George. He seems like a great guy to get to know. (B. George took up waterskiing when he was in his 30s-40s; he took up snowboarding at 75. He also likes bananas and the color yellow.) Other stories make me like to fall out of my chair in surprise, then want to seek out the person — such as Etan Goldman, an Orthodox Jew and rapper. Yes, you read that correctly. I really want to hear his music, because it seems like such a wonderfully unlikely pairing and because… Well, why not? He can’t possibly be as bad as Mr. Jiggy-Fly (from the Geico ad), after all.

A good number of the stories come from his other TV gig, a show called N.O.W (appropriately enough). People send in letters, the show picks the ones that sound interesting, and the letter-writer gets three days and $3,000 (US) to do whatever it is they wrote to the show about. There are some TAR-related blurbs, but no behind-the-scenes revalatory gossip, unless you’re utterly moved by the idea of learning Phil’s pre-Race training regimen (it sounds horribly grueling, especially if all you see of Phil is his stint as TAR Host, in whihc he appears to just stand around and talk a lot. He apparently does more than that, but again, nothing ground-breaking is revealed.). (I wasn’t really expecting an expose of TAR doings, either, so.)

ANYhow. The list. It’s more like 8 themes to work with when considering things that you want to do, plus a nice helping of “Here’s Why You Don’t Actually Have The Excuses You Think You Do”, which is helpful. It also provides a few ideas to get you started, as well as tips on starting small and working up to big things, particularly when it comes to conquering fears. “Face your fear” is the first actual heading on the list. Other entries include “Break new ground”, “Aim for the heart”, and “Take a leap of faith”. (An aside: the thought of Phil reading Kierkkegaard, for some reason, amuses me. The theme itself also annoys me, but that’s between me and o’ Keirkkegaard -and- a long story to boot.)

I don’t have a list, yet, but I will. I want to finish the book, first.

=================

I’ve gotten a LOT of reading done in the last few days, and I have two books to praise. The first one is Meeting The Other Crowd: Fairy Stories Of Hidden Ireland, compiled by Eddie Lenihan and Carolyn Eve Green. Mr. Lenihan is a storyteller (and collector) of the highest order, and has lived in Ireland all his life, collecting the folktales and lore from people for ages (many many of his stories come from people over 80 when he learned them, and I don’t think the book was published until fairly recently). It’s very good, with a great introduction and foreword that explain how the book came about and who Eddie is, and then the stories themselves! They’re all short, no more than ten or fifteen pages at the longest, and each with a post-script about the theme of the story, who told it, who they learned it from, things like that. They’re all written in a fairly easy-to-understand version of the dialect of the speaker that told it (or perhaps Eddie himself, sometimes it’s hard to say), but with bits of slang and Gaelic left in (with explanatory footnotes where needed). I would tell myself ‘just one more, and then I’ll go to sleep…’, and then ten more stories would slip by. Reading them made me itch to write again, so I shall set my hand to it and see what I can come up with.

The other is The Wind Singer, by William Nicholson. I read it all at once today (1/28/05), and as it’s the first of a trilogy, I can’t wait to get my hands on the next one (Slaves Of The Mastery). It’s a YA novel, so it may seem a bit kiddy-oriented to some older readers, but I thought it a nicely-done fantasy with a bit of a twist. I’m still letting the whole thing kind of simmer (I read MTOC over a couple of days when I had other things to do, so it’s had time to percolate through my brain).

Linking to another web site for content and/or graphics materials is considered “bandwidth theft.” While bandwidth theft is not currently considered a federal, state, or local law, AtTWC.com does NOT allow such activity. (Emphasis mine.)

See? I want to send this excerpt and the address of the page on which I found it to everyone who has a warning about bandwidth theft being illegal on their sites. BitLaw, too, only mentions that directly linking to images hosted on another’s site is a breach of ‘net etiquette, but not specifically against any laws.

So there, you idiots.

…is okay. It’s not nearly as interesting as I remember AO: Shadowlands being, but it -has- been a while. And I think that a major part of it is that the comfy routine that I remembered from AO:NW/SL has been completely thrown out the window thanks to the alien invaders. I think I’ll have to look up a walkthrough thing and see if I can figure out where to find “alien spiders” because in the NW corner of the shuttleport they’re not. Blah.

Also, I KNOW I passed all the manditory tests in Jobe once upon a time, but I no longer remember how exactly I did the Psychic test… If you accept the Guardian Of The Earth Crystal’s task-offer, he turns your bracer into a Scourged Bracer Of Jobe and then Drake won’t take it back; I have yet to be able to find the young Silvertail in order to complete the Forest Ranger’s task. Aigh!

You can find me as Niahmaym or Vasmi on Atlantean, or Isepharr or Zebbri on Rimor. (Odd side note: on Atlantean, Niah’s female and Vasmi’s male; on Rimor it’s the other way ’round. I didn’t notice that until just now.)

Last night, I was reading Precious, which is a Japanese fashion magazine kinda like Vogue (as far as I can tell, anyhow). Near the back, they had a section called ‘Caught Up In 5 Minutes’, which is apparently a world-news-and-culture notes thing. Anyhow, they had a Movies You And Your Daughter Might Enjoy* feature, which had handy little icons indicating what kind of a movie it was (mom/kid, date, see it on your own), along with what age group it appealed to (mom/kid) and if it had lots of angst or a love story or whatever.

Well, -one- of the movies (I can’t remember which one it was, now, and it may have been a Japanese movie with Kanji I Can’t Read as the title) had a girl-icon smiling, and a mom-icon rolling her eyes. It was the most unexpected thing -ever-, and I nearly scared one of the cats out of their fur when I whooped. (They ran off before I could see who it was.) …It’s funnier if you can see the little graphic, honest. When I get a chance, I’ll scan it.

I have TRIUMPHED!

It’s a little more work for me, but I don’t care. Comments are now moderated, so you can leave me a comment, I shall approve it, and then you don’t have to wait for your comments to show up after.

And, of course, it goes without saying that only REAL LIVE HUMAN BEINGS will be approved. So, yay.

- to play FFXI on my laptop. It drives me crazy that The Sims 2, which has pretty much the same video hardware specs as FFXI, will run on my machine and FFXI won’t. ARGH. Failing that, I guess I’ll see about downloading Anarchy Online again, since they sent me three free keys for the holidays — I get two weeks of free play, and if I want to keep playing after that, I get the software free and pay only for my subscription, which is nice.

– to figure out what I am supposed to be doing and where I’m supposed to be doing it. I don’t even need a whole list of instructions; at this point I’d take a note that said ‘be at the corner of 4th and C at 2 pm on Wednesday, March 14th or be square’.

– the next volumes in my manga and anime series, particularly Under The/A Glass Moon, St. Marie, Cheeky Angel, Hellsing, Trigun, Cardcaptor Sakura and Fruits Basket.

———

My brother gave me a bumper sticker that reads “Anime: drugs would be cheaper”. How very, very true… I’m not going to Borders until after I get my projects done, but it’s kinda tough.

…I’d also really like to be asleep, but oh well.

Gillian, honey, what on earth was happening to you when this picture was taken? Was someone extinguishing a lit cigarette on your foot? Scratching their nails down a blackboard? Ramming a spike heel into your grandmother’s punchbowl? Oi… Your rather prominent ribs are another thing altogether, but not nearly as puzzling as the look on your face.

Drop me a line at cordialis @ NOSPAMFORTHELOVEOFGODhotmail.com if it doesn’t work and I’ll try something else. Like a really angry letter to 6apart.

Torrid has this lovely dress on clearance, unfortunately it’s not in my size. It certainly is gorgeous, though.

Oops, heh. I found Subterranea Britannica while looking for Subterranea clothing — two rather different things, I think.

Bleh. So far, all I get is this page (not helpful in the least), plus about a dozen others mentioning Subterranea in Anchorage. Which is cool, because it’s really kinda hard to find if you don’t know where it is (I walked past it, like, twice, the first time I went there), but NOT what I was actually looking for in this case.

And another pretty dress, this one also from Subterranea.

Once upon a time, I was told that my Ideal Career was ‘Assassin’ or something like that. I think that my bizarre love for shirts like this one helps bolster that theory — or perhaps the theory that I should be in charge of the assassins, rather than doing it myself.

Dear World,
Ponchos? are not a great fashion trend. Yes, they may be warm, and yes, they may be a nice alternative to sweaters, but please stop with the super-fugly ponchos! The 60’s and 70’s are DEAD, let them rest in peace!

I still like this top, for some reason. I like this one, too; but this monstrosity should never have been inflicted on anyone. (The huge rib-knit cuffs/waist, I mean, the color and the print are fine with me.)

Dear Torrid:
Chocolate brown is best A) on chocolate bars and B) in small doses. It also does NOT play well with pink (especially NOT in that configuration, ugh) or red. Buy yourselves a good color wheel or the services of a designer/decorator who has at least three years of experience in putting colors together.
Love,
Me.

I like the color of this sweater, but I don’t know if I like the other little details. Also, what does “has a Marilyn body” mean? I was assuming that it was based on something that Marilyn Monroe wore once upon a time, but maybe I’m confused.

Normally, I hate 3/4-sleeve tops, but I like this one. I think I’d have to try it on to know if I could stand it or not.

In what universe is this top “red”? To me, it’s orange, possibly red-orange if I’m feeling generous. (Not that I can’t stand the color; I rather like it. It’s just…not -red-.)

I don’t need any MORE jackets. I own at least 6 that I can think of off the top of my head, and that includes the new one I got for Christmas. Doesn’t stop me from liking this one, though.

I do not yet own this sticker, pin or shirt, but I shall. Oh yes, it WILL be mine. (There are also some new Emily kitty-posse buttons that I need.)

Let’s talk about flattery for a minute. Not the verbal kind, but the physical kind. There are all sorts of body types/shapes/whatever out there, and there are all kinds of clothes, too. The important thing to remember is that not all clothes look good on all bodies — not even on stars. (See FT’s Celeb Fashion thread for proof of this.)

So… Flattering clothes. A lot of pants, these days, are NOT at all flattering, particularly if you happen to be on the larger end of the sizing spectrum. Like… These. (Though to be fair I doubt those would look good on anyone.) Or these. Or these, these, or these. Note also that many of the models are wearing ridiculously pointy-toed HEELS with these JEANS. I know my one-person crusade to stamp (heh) out the scourge of this gross-looking combination is going about as well as Kerry’s inaug’ral ball-planning, but still. People, PLEASE STOP WEARING POINTY-TOED HIGH HEELS WITH PANTS. IT LOOKS STUPID. Ugh.

…and now I’m hungry and distracted (plus I have some projects I’m s’posed to be working on…oops…) So I guess I’ll go find something to eat and get to work. Maybe.

…well, new to me, anyhow: Shoe Trade, for people looking for new shoes or looking to get rid of their old shoes (or boots, or whatever). Fairly graphics-heavy, but active and full of shoes, shoes, shoes.

(I like shoes because, sadly, they’re often the only fashion offering that will fit me without looking utterly ridiculous; plus I only have to worry about it coming in a “common” size instead of a “plus”, -and- shoes in my size don’t cost any more than shoes in someone else’s size. *Sigh*)