Last week, during what I started thinking of as The Week of Loveliness I was going to talk about all the reading I do lately to get the scoop on beautifying my mug. I started a post, got distracted, and wandered off. Just like I do all the time! So now I’m getting back to things. I haven’t updated my blogroll in quite a while and there’s quite a bit of stuff over there I don’t read and need to purge in favor of other things. But there are two beauty blogs there and not my at-home bookmarks, so we’ll start with those.
I forget how I found Temptalia, but it’s one I definitely read every day. Christine is a prolific, fun blogger. And though for a while there her site was exceptionally cluttered and hard to navigate, she’s written her ass off the last few months with a series of posts called The Scarlet Season, describing and swatching all her red lipsticks. It’s glorious!
And then there’s The Next Best Thing to Going Shopping Yourself, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Karlasugar swatches like she was born to do it! I have a great time looking at her new posts every day, comparing colors and reading about textures and finishes. She even posts great, complex look tutorials from time to time.
And then there are the blogs not in the sidebar blogroll, because I’m lazy and also there was a strange feeling of not wanting everybody to necessarily know how much time I spend contemplating eyeshadow. Which is silly, don’t you think? I do. So here goes.
Karen’s Makeup and Beauty Blog is awesome and hilarious. She might be my favorite beauty blogger. I’d love to take her out for lunch, because she reads like she’d be totally cool if you just said, “Hey, let’s go to lunch and talk about Benefit and cats.” Her cat blogs, and she’s constantly editing pictures of fantastically attractive men with hilarious speech bubbles while swatching, describing, tutoring, and dishing like she’s your best friend who just happens to be massively stylish and awesome and normal all at the same time.
Beauty Blogging Junkie is kind of the opposite of that. Everything is rarefied and sophisticated and so very New York. But what do I know about how to look glamorous in New York? Not a thing. But she writes a lot, so I’m learning.
Scrangie is, in my opinion, pretty much the best nail polish blog there is. I’m pretty sure she has more than two hands. Or maybe just a preternatural ability to organize editorial lead times. Whichever. Point is: gorgeous swatches, honest commentary, near-daily updates. Excellent!
Beauty and the Blog is Sephora‘s corporate blog, so what you lose in honesty is made up in frequency. It’s great reading for finding new products and new incarnations of existing products.
The Beauty Look Book seems to concentrate on rarer brands, and also pick a brand and exhaust all exploration possibilities before moving on to a new one. But I’m still getting to know it and how the author works, so I could be wrong there. She also posts fantastic product sets– pictures of all the products she used to create any given look. It’s very inspirational.
I’m also new to Chic Profile, but I give her mad props for the first two posts as of today. The first one is on a hot pink Essie nail polish that, worn without base or topcoat, is not long for this world, and saying that it’s not worth the money you’d spend on it. And then, in the next entry, talking about how great La Mer face cream is. For $110 or so per ounce, it best soothe your skin, clean your house and give you an orgasm.
All Lacquered Up is another nail polish blog. There are fewer swatches, but more information on upcoming trends and releases.
Just getting to know Spoiled Pretty, but I really like her voice. She seems very genuine and very down to earth and honest about the products she’s using and recommending. She’s also got a great Ask a Makeup Artist feature.
I spend a whole lot of time contemplating eyeshadow. And even more on lipstick. And lately, a ton on nailpolish. I’m very serious about my silly!
I like Mac people. I know plenty of Mac users who unapologetically use Macs to do things. I’ve used Macs to do things. I prefer Macs to do something things. The idea of trying to do non-linear digital video editing on a PC kind of makes my skin crawl. For no good reason, really, but it crawls nevertheless. So I don’t hate Macs or Mac-users, really; I often don’t even vaguely dislike them. But I do find anonymously scorning Mac evangelists to be a zesty enterprise. Just like Charlie Brooker, who writes after Gus Serrola’s own heart:
The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal “adventure” in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-’em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac’s relationship with “fun”.
Speaking of games, I’m lately really enjoying BioShock. That shouldn’t be a surprise, as it’s an Underwater Objectivism FPS. I like electrocuting things, then beating them the rest of the way to death with a crowbar.
I also signed up to write Left 4 Dead fic for the Yuletide Rare Fandoms ficathon. Or I tried to. I haven’t received my confirmation email and I’m a little worried. Anyway, if I get assigned a person with a Left 4 Dead request, I’m going to build a whole story around the phrase, “Now that’s what I call a big-ass machine gun!”
Christopher: Sarah? Me: Yes, dear? Christopher: My bear ran away. Me: Did you forget to feed him? Christopher: No. I did get him killed a couple times. Me: Time to tame a new bear Christopher: Macewan Two, Electric Boogaloo!
In this era of ever-more complex games, sometimes it’s nice to just get out and shoot things. Pretty soon we’ll have the chance, with a brand new Serious Sam having just been announced.
It’s unclear what we can expect in the next Serious Sam game, but miniguns and mayhem will probably feature prominently as Sam closes in on his arch-nemesis, the alien warlord, Mental.
I hope they keep the finding naked booty with the sniper rifle. And the Serious Bombs. And the Canon. Nothing quite like a zillion bad guys flooding at you and firing the canon and waiting three seconds for the boom-and-recoil. Good times!
Christopher is sitting across the room from me, wiggling his fingers and saying, “Come back! Come back to World of Warcraft!” He’s all, “You used to game! And have a great time gaming! Come on! Come play!”
He’s chatting with Miranda to give me the hard sell. I love Miranda. I love Christopher. I am wilting under the force of their peer pressure.
Help, help!
Christopher says that Miranda says, “We need to get you a firefly.” He added, “It’s a summonable pet.”
This may be it, y’all. After a year gone cold turkey and totally off the awesomesauce, the pressure may be too much.
Miranda: “There are two quests where you get to ride A HUGE DRAGON. On one, you throw fireballs at other dragons. On the other, you get to drop bombs on these creatures in a pit.”
I do not know if I can take it. HAYULP.
ETA: P.S. “If she doesn’t want to do all the leveling, she can roll a Death Knight and kill one of her family members.” – Miranda. ETA2 “She may be too busy leveling 75 to post right away.” – Christopher.
I’ve started to experience some frequent and annoying pixelation on my monitors. If it were just one, I’d say that that CRT was about to give out. But it’s the same blown pixel streaks in the same places on both monitors, so I think my video card is about to expire. This has inspired Christopher to upgrade my whole system. He was getting a little too excited about overclocking (“What would you do while I overclocked your computer? Read fanfic on my computer. Well, no, won’t let that happen. Anyway, I think I can get the Core2 Duo….”) so I sent him this:
You know there’s something about a game when people post on the forums going,
“How come the Demonologists’s pets don’t have nipples? I paid for an M-level game and that’s what I want!”
The sentiment seems to be that there’s a lot of parental complaint. They want their kids to be able to play the excessively violent video game based on a movie that’s all about violence, with some sex on the side. Players, on the other hand, want a game that sticks with the universe created by the movie. Further, they want the game they paid for, nipples and all. One poster summed it up particularly eloquently:
“It’s not tits! It’s the trust!”
I haven’t played yet, but I can report that the textures are gorgeous and the physics are pretty realistic, given beheadings and gouts of blood.
I watched Conan the Barbarian Saturday night. And by “watched,” I mean, dozed on and off while my friends had better manners than me and manfully stayed awake the entire time. I think I saw most of the important parts (Arnold having sex, James Earl Jones shooting things with snakes). I would not have chosen to watch it, but we were with guests and when our host suggested, “Conan!” my husband shouted, “Yes!” like it was his favorite movie of all time. I pulled a face, and Irish Cavalry said, “There’s boobs. You like boobs.” I do. I wish there had been more boobs.
And then yesterday Christopher went out and bought Age of Conan, the MMORPG. I was tempted to roll my eyes, but then thought, you know, are there any boobs? Turns out, there are!
No matter how waning your interest may be in multiplayer RPGs, Conan the Barbarian fiction, or any combination of the two, I bet you still know this much: Age of Conan equals digitized jugs.
I think you’ll agree with me when I say, totally without irony, “w00t!”
But! As so often happens, this much awesome nudity has spawned controversy. Turns out some dweeb out there doesn’t want hot chicks getting in the way of his gaming and has started a petition for a no-nudity mod that would toggle the boobs on and off. I know I just saw Conan for the first time three days ago, but even I get that nakedness is half the point. The other half is violence.
So march on over to that link and see all the great suggestions for what to replace glorious naked breasts with. Here’s hoping someone’s started a petition to ban the No Boobs Guy from playing, and to buy him a copy of Kingdom Hearts or something. Cos, dude! Boobs!
When we first created Blood Elf characters, in all their Malfoy-lookin’ glory, I made Christopher promise never to dance in public. And then after a while, I made him promise never to dance at all. I take it all back.
Notably missing is the capoeira dance the Trolls do– they should’ve cut in a few scenes from Goblet of Fire. Also the Human Female dance, but wow, we should all know the Macarena when we see it.
I'm Sarah. I'm a dying breed, who still believes, hunted by American dreams. You can contact me at Sarah &c anytime you like to talk about anything you like. I like words, spaceships, wizards, and lots of other things.
