Archive for: August, 2009

Monday Afternoon Soft Core

Aug 31 2009 Published by Sarah, etc. under Recovering English Major

UPDATE: Now with porny animated gif Macro in teh comments!

I read a lot of erotica. Most of it doesn’t even qualify as literature, so it’s more like just plain smut. So I was really surprised reading this book this weekend and actually feeling a little hubba hubba about some of the more descriptive sections.

“Drink.” he said raggedly, and I sucked hard. He groaned, louder, deeper and I felt him pressing against me. A little ripple of madness went through me, and I attached myself to him like a barnacle, and he entered me, began moving, his hands now gripping my hip bones. I drank and saw visions, visions all with a background of darkness, of white things coming up from the ground and going hunting, the thrill of the run through the woods, the prey panting ahead and the excitement of its fear; pursuit, legs pumping, hearing the thrumming of blood through the veins of the pursued…

Bill made a noise deep in his chest and convulsed inside me. I raised my head from his neck, and a wave of dark delight carried me out to sea.

This was pretty exotic stuff for a telepathic barmaid from northern Louisiana.

From Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. Or as I like to think of it, Another Reason I’ll Never Have to Read Twilight.

8 responses so far

Free for All Friday 35

Aug 28 2009 Published by Sarah, etc. under Uncategorized

Not so huge as usual! And kind of listy.

Vets Like Bacon!

7 responses so far

Crap! Nicole!

Aug 27 2009 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

I deleted Nicole’s comment! “There is no Dana. Only Zuul.” And another one before that. And there is no undelete. Crap! Yes, I’ve had a few drinks. HEY LOOK OVER THERE IT’S VENKMAN.

No responses yet

Thursday Update is Thursday-y

Aug 27 2009 Published by Sarah, etc. under Reflexive

I think the threaded comments work again.

  1. What’s your favorite Ghostbusters quote
  2. I’m 32 years, nine months and 8 days Twilight free.
  3. There’s still tweaking to be done on the new template, but I hurt, so I choose to spend my time munching on tylenol right now.
  4. There were 87 Advil in the bottle. Now there’s 30 left. I ate 47, so what happened to the other 10?

15 responses so far

How Are We Supposed to Get Through This?

Aug 26 2009 Published by Sarah, etc. under Geekery

The chompers? WELL SCREW THAT!

4 responses so far

Impractical

Aug 25 2009 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession, Decontextualized

So, last week, Honu Girl and I were chatting, as usual. I had, among other nice things, accused her of using “scientician voodoo” on me. I am just that good a friend. Then she put her mind to helping me decide that I don’t need to cut all my hair off, I just need a trim and maybe a flat iron. You would correctly conclude that the moral of this story is that I am awful and she is wonderful and you would be totally right. But the conversation took another turn. I was complaining at her about having eaten too much (an afternoon snack of a whole croissant– so tasty, so dense!) and that I will never learn (from my mistakes, not to eat too much, that there’s no such thing as scientician voodoo…). She said that she had faith in me*, and I replied that that made one of us. Again proving how much better a person than I she is, she said that that was all it took. Like so:

She: I have faith in you that you will be able to apply that knowledge.
Me: That makes one of us.
She: Isn’t that all it takes?
Me: Yes, but it’d probably be more practical for me to be the one. Not that I’m complaining!
She: It would probably be more practical for you to be the one, yes. I didn’t think of that. I’m not thinking clearly, obv.
Me: I mean, between the two of us I’m the impractical one.
She: Seriously, you are FAR more practical than I am.
Me: Seriously HOW? :D This whole time I thought you were more practical than me!
She: Huh. I’ve thought you were more practical than me! At least better organized! The internet will decide!

And that sets the stage. She tweeted it so that the internet could weight in: which of us is more practical. Lady Glutter was the first to check in, saying that I was more practical because I didn’t have kids. Then she changed her mind and said no, Honu Girl was, because she had kids. Then Doc broke it down: “Simple test: How many varieties of lip-gloss/lip-stick do you currently have?” Lady Glutter declared that Honu Girl never stood a chance.

So this is a testament to my impracticality. Let’s begin with things that are generally clear and work our way up, shall we?

My lip current lip balms
Burt’s Bees x2, Nivea lip moisturizer (great for winter running, meh otherwise), and Benefit Dr. Feelgood silky lipbalm (great for summer sleeping, meh otherwise)

My non-MAC glosses
These are my non MAC glosses. From top to bottom: Bonne Bell Enticemint (a straight-up dupe for MAC’s clear gloss, usually less than 1/4 the price), Cover Girl lipslicks that I hijacked off my mom in some nude color I can’t be bothered to look up, Clinique Almost Lipstick in Black Honey (the most universal shade of gloss ever created!), Tarte dual-ended gloss in Rhett and Scarlet, and three nameless, brandless glosses I got for Christmas in a motherlode of nameless, brandless glosses.

My MAC glosses
These are my MAC glosses. I specifically set them upright yesterday morning so I could get a good shot of what levels I have left. They’re combination of lipglasses and lustreglasses and I love every single one of them so much. From left to right: Wonderstruck, Ripe’n'Ready, Palatial (pink w/ green shimmer!), Venetian, Beaux, Prrr (the first tube of MAC gloss I ever bought!), Love Nectar, Lychee Luxe (the first tube of MAC gloss I ever received as a gift!), Lovechild (MAC’s most universal shade; also, this is an empty, if you can believe it; saving it for Back to MAC), Ornamental (this is my second tube of this; the first went to Nicole; and this one has actually turned, so I need to pour it out and add it to the Back to MAC pile), 4N, and down in front: Frostlight.

My lip current lip stains
In between lipgloss and lipstick there are lip stains. Top to bottom: Laura Mercier Scarlet (less like a stain, more like a massively pigmented, long-lasting balm), Nars Lipgloss Stain in Sayonara (this shit lasts), Revlon ColorStay Ultimate Lipcolor in Top Tomato (“long wearing” doesn’t begin to cover it– I can, with a little mindfulness, make a coat of this stuff last 13 hours!), Cover Girl Outlast Lipstain in 415 (pinky-nude, lasts about 2 hours, Queen Latifah lies).

My non-MAC lipsticks
Now for the few lipsticks that aren’t MAC based. Nars KISS (claims matte finish but is really more of a glitter), Nars Matte Velvet Lip Pencil in Cruella (LOVE this), and Arbonne lipstick in Frankly Scarlet. At the end of the entry, we’ll play “Count the Scarlets.” There might be prizes!

And now? The MAC attack, organized by finish:

My MAC lipsticks, lustre finish
Lustre finish: Lightly Ripe and Adore It

My MAC lipsticks, frost finish
Frost finish: Racy, Sci-Fi Diety (I would’ve bought it for the name alone! Luckily, it looks fabulous on), “O” (yes really with quotation marks)

My MAC lipsticks, various creme finishes
Brave Red (Cremesheen finish; I love this color but the finish bleeds like a bitch) and Berry Boost (Amplified Creme)

My MAC lipsticks, mattene finish
Mattenes are demi-matte, very pigmented, and rich, with almost no shine. Here we have Composure, Classic Dame (and you can see all there is left and they don’t sell it anymore and OHNOES) and Rapturous.

My MAC lipsticks, matte finish
And here we have the matte finish and the lipstick that started it all for me. From left to right, Viva Glam III, Diva, Chili, and the one and only greatest lipstick ever: Ruby Woo! (My second tube thereof).

Not shown: MAC lipliners in Soar (originally purchased to go under Love Nectar, now my most used shade), Chicory (originally to go with Chili, but so warm and versatile), Cherry (red, duh :D) and Mahogany (originally to go with Brave Red– it needed some warming on me– but I find that when topped with Wonderstruck it looks just gorgeous; Benefit D’finer D’liner, which is a clear anti-feathering liner for keeping your lipstick from bleeding. I only wish it worked on the Brave Red cremesheen; A CARGO gloss quad in Tijuana that I hardly use because I can’t carry it with me and the color lasts maybe 40 minutes tops. And the lipstick and balm I keep in my desk for just-in-case purposes: MAC 5N (a dark purple-beige lustre), and Juice Beauty lip moisturizer in “Playful.”

Want to hear the rest of the impracticality? I have my next two purchases plotted out. Resolutely Red (COS I NEED ANOTHER RED!) and Midnight Media. Not quite sure how I’m going to rock that black, but I am going to do it!

And you know what? Writing this out has made me realize that there’s a gloss out there that I really want, that I haven’t purchased. When I had surgery, I said I’d buy myself a lipgloss for every 20 pounds I lost. Most everybody said that that was reasonable. I quit somewhere around -140. I won’t say that I was all glossed out, but yeah, I have plenty. Nevertheless, I have always wanted, but never allowed myself, Misbehave by NARS (sheer cherry red with gold shimmer). Maybe one day. Right now my pocket money is going toward a new pair of running shoes. How’s that for practical?

So, internet? What do you decide?

*Yesterday she told me that she had faith I did have a cucumber left in the crisper drawer. And she was right!

16 responses so far

Gormenghastocabulary XI

Aug 24 2009 Published by Sarah, etc. under Lexpionage, Recovering English Major

We’re coming into the home stretch, y’all. There are only a few more words left from Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake and then… then we’ll be able to read the next book in the series, Gormenghast. And maybe explore some different new words, from different books. Michael Chabon, anyone? Neal Stephenson?

Let’s start with double the bang for your non-existent buck: wodges and raddled:

What need is there for all the cumulus of dull, surrounding clay – the slow white hinterland that weighs behind it as it swivels among the doughy, circumscribing wodges like a marble of raddled ice.

“Wodge” is something like British slang, meaning “lump.” It’s young, too, a whippersnapper of a word, dating to the turn of the 20th century. And there’s no certain etymology but Dictionary.com thinks maybe it’s a variant on “wedge.” That makes sense. Like wad + wedge becomes, when speaking Britishly, “wodge.”

Speaking of British, Honu Girl and I had a decent length conversation this morning about British words, mostly focusing on synonyms for “breast.” Just thought you should know.

And raddle is all over the place. It’s probably something like interwoven, but it could also be red. It’s probably both– interwoven red and white, which makes this a superefficient word. Strange, too, because Peake never used one word where 15 would do (see next example). Regardless, the primary definition is interweaving, as with sticks, from the mid-17th century. There are dueling etymologies. One says that it’s from the Anglo-French reidele meaning “pole.” Another says it’s possibly Middle High German reidel meaning “rod.” Or it could be a variant of ruddle, which comes from “rud” and back to Middle English “rudde” to Old English “rudu” and all those mean red. There is so much going on in this word. Wow. I’m going to come down on the side of yes, it means all these things. Raddled is interwoven with red.

You know how I told you to look at the next example? Here it is. The word we’re focusing on is osseous, which is not that big a deal and not new. I just like its use here as an adjective. What’s really a big deal is that this? Is all one sentence:

Mr Flay, presented with the doming back and the splay-acred rear of the chef, is on edge to see his master who has rung his bell for him, and is in no mood to be thwarted, nor to be terrified at the white mass before him, and although for many a long stony night he has been unable to rest – for his is well aware of the chef’s determination to kill him during his sleep – yet now, presented with the materialization of his nocturnal horror, he finds himself as hard as ironwood, and he jerks his dark, sour, osseous head forward out of his collar like a turtle and hisses from between his sand-coloured teeth.

Can you believe that? INORITE! Flay! Murder! Massive excitement! Osseous means bony. Even if “oss-” wasn’t clear (osteology, ossified, etc.), we already know that Flay is all kinds of sharp bones and angles. I like the use of “osseus” with the turtle simile, too. Flay, for all his simmering, really is quite slow to rise to any occasion not involving Lord Groan. I think the description of him as a turtle that has just had enough really give a lot of flavor to what comes next, which I won’t spoil for you but to say: exciting!

The etymology of “osseous” is straightfoward, PIE root *os. The etymology dictionary lists a large number of deritivatives in a number of languages, a few of them across the Centum-Santum split. Check it: Sanskrit: asthi Hittite: hashtai-; Greek: osteon; Avestan: ascu- (“shinbone”); Welsh: asgwrn (“bone”).

What do you think? Of the words, or that massive sentence, or even of how weird Welsh is with all its Ws.

One response so far

Free for All Friday 34

Aug 21 2009 Published by Sarah, etc. under Free for all Friday

Oh, honeys. Look what I have for you today. I’m starting you off with something that may leave you ruined for life. And by “ruined” I mean “insensate with awesome.”

  • Vodkapundit’s Greatest Thing in the History of All Stuff Ever. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Sarah, please stop linking to conservative web sites.” But what I am telling you is that it is GIRLS IN BIKINIS READING STAR WARS!!!!!1!1eleventy
  • Via Zooey Glass, Sarah Rees Brennan’s take on Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Nonsensical Interpretation of a Very Complex and Moving Fine Fuck It Half-Blood Prince:

    NARCISSA MALFOY: Snape, I’d be ever so thankful if you’d swear to protect my son Draco.
    BELLATRIX: Nonsense Cissy, he’d never do it. He’s not MAN enough to take the Unbreakable Vow.
    SNAPE: I am totally willing to do anything you two want me to do. By the way, do you fancy drinks?
    SCENE: Two grateful ladies. One lonely Potions Master.
    SCENE: *discreetly fades out*

  • New Married to the Sea t-shirts. I don’t know which one I like best. Probably the one about armadillos, but the Dutch Oven one is pretty funny.
  • J C Penney’s opens a store in Manhattan. Cintra Wilson flips her shit:

    This niche has been almost wholly neglected on our snobby, self-obsessed little island. New York boutiques tend to cater to the stress-thin, morbidly workaholic, Pilates-tortured Manhattan ectomorph. But there are many more body types who vote with their hard-earned dollars, who appreciate a clean new space in Midtown to buy affordable clothes in hard-to-find sizes, as well as attentive service from attitude-free professionals.

  • Cute, funny video: don’t send a man to the grocery store. Or a seriously left-brained man. Or a man in a hurry. I recently sent Christopher to the store on his own and he did splendidly, even though he is a left-brained man.

  • From Honu Girl, Zombaritaville.
  • From Lady Glutter, What kind of Republican are you? Chances are you’re the kind that likes to watch hot babes in bikinis read cheesy sci-fi!
  • Also from Honu Girl, get in on a government Kash for Kittehs program.
  • This may seem out of place, but it is far, far, FAR too wonderful to be relegated to a list of bacon items at the end of the FFAF, because I’m pretty sure you all just go “blah blah blah BLT chocolate soup teh end.” So I’ve moved it here, to the middle, so you can aim laser concentration at Because Everything Should Taste Like Bacon:

    FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SEND ME THINGS THAT TASTE LIKE BACON!!! I am stranded in a country where everything tastes like eels and lamb kidneys!!!

  • When Nat Hentoff is again’ it, you know something’s wrong.
  • < homersimpsonvoice >Ooh, erotogenic peptides!< /homersimpsonvoice >

    Carl Spana, PhD, CEO of Palatin Technologies, Inc. has been quoted as stating that bremelanotide aroused female rodents “so quickly they started mounting males” and that it may “easily” be made into an oral form.

  • Lego Kitchen Storage set
  • From those saucy folk at Counting Cats, Reason to Love America #27436: Tailgating. In the video, the tailgaters appear to be eating hot dogs with baked potatoes for buns. This seems extraordinarily efficient!
  • The launch of World of Warcraft magazine leaves out an extremely crucial question. Namely, are there cheesecake photos of Night Elves, Blood Elves, or just plain Girls in Bikinis (with or without Star Wars scripts)?
  • Mom! My sandwich is endangered!
  • Alabama episode of Man vs. Wild = Made of Fail.
  • Would you buy Viagra-laced “Sex Pistol” flavor ice cream from these people?

    …[T]opless women donning thigh high black leather boots and dripping with melted ice cream sit in silver caned thrones compete with crowns and scepters all over their website.

    I WISH I COULD EAT ICE CREAM!!

  • Deviant Art Video: Use the Right Head. This is probably NSFW. But it is very funny.
  • From Skillzy, It’s Hip to Be Round. I’m all for men having whatever kind of bellies they want, but hate the way the author consistently says “Ralph Kramden” instead of “pot belly.” Makes it sound like their toting some kind of auto-erotic device around under their shirts.
  • Via Stephen Fry’s tweetstream, another video: Music is Life.
  • The Squirrelizer!
  • From Andrea (and speaking of auto-erotic devices), The Vamp (or Twildo, or Twidildo). It’s obvs NSFW. It’s an alabastery-pinky color, with realistic veining, and in the sunlight, it sparkles! It’s also made to retain temperature, so you keep it in the fridge for an “authentic” experience. Dlisted has some hilarious commentary:

    Toss it in the fridge?! They better add a disclaimer, because some ho is going to sue after her chocha gets freezer burned.

    Then they conclude:

    Personally, I’m not wasting my coins on this, because I’m holding out for an Eric Northman Real Doll.

    That’s hot. That’s really, really hot, although I don’t know if Eric would be my first choice to sex up in Bon Temps. If we’re going strictly on physical beauty, there is no man there so crazy sexy as Eggs. But if we start taking personality and whole package into account, I would have to lean toward Sam. Or, damn, who’m I kidding? I’d do it with Hoyt!

  • And finally, from Poptart: Robots Evolve, Learn to Lie and Cheat. This is going to make try to appease them with Slurm and girl robots in bikinis really difficult.

Just Bacon, No Babes in Bikinis. Sigh.

7 responses so far

Thou Shall Keep Flogging Away at It

Aug 20 2009 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession, Reflexive

Tenor of things has changed around here lately, don’t you think? I was reading through some archives this past weekend, and I kept coming back to the same thought: I used to be interesting. I used to do more than just make snarky remarks and tiptoe around topics I’m pretty sure most of you don’t care about. So I asked myself for whom I’m really blogging. Am I doing this as an exercise for myself, or because I want to connect, or because I feel beholden to an increasingly known group of people. And I answered all three, in different ways. But the last part distressed me. Why should I feel compelled to entertain you? I like doing it. I like making you happy. But I very much need to quit the idea that you (and all y’all) and I share some kind of emotional economy. Not only is that pitiable, but I think it ensures neither one of us will ever be satisfied.

I’ve had a lot of reason to think about the process of writing lately, both fiction and nonfiction. I had a great night last night where I sat and wrote and made slow, good progress on an old story while chatting with Doc for the first time in what seemed liked forever but was maybe all of 10 days. The ease with which the words flowed hadn’t happened in a while. Most of what I’ve written in the last several months has seemed like hard work, and I think that that came across in the tenor of the stories– they seem a little shaky and distracted, like they’d very much rather be doing something else. I have no explanations for this. And I get disgusted with flowery language about mythological forces of inspiration. I just managed to find my groove is all. Maybe Doc is the secret. I wouldn’t put it past him.

Then I read The Ten Commandments of the Happy Writer. I clicked on it from a makeup blog, so it seemed incongruous in a morning spent reading about lipgloss textures and amortizing the cost of a quad of eyeshadow, but that incongruity worked, because number ten struck me:

10. Keep writing. Didn’t find an agent? Keep writing. Book didn’t sell? Keep writing. Book sold? Keep writing. OMG an asteroid is going to crash into Earth and enshroud the planet in ten feet of ash? Keep writing. People will need something to read in the resulting permanent winter.

I realized that, even with the ugly, hard work and even when I put things out there and they get ignored (and oh, do they!), and even when I spend more time hitting “next” on iTunes and playing Free Cell than I do actually typing anything that might ever entertain anybody–and that’s a lot!– I still get more out of writing than I do out of doing much of anything else. I do it because I like to do it. It feels good. I do it because I want to connect with you, even if you don’t want to connect with me. I do it because it gives me a little zing of joy to tell a story. I do it because yeah, I really get off on people responding to those stories. It’s a miracle, when you think about it. It’s a miracle to thrust yourself into the void and not merely touch, but connect and not just to one person, but to many, who then also touch and connect.

There was, before last night, and before this morning, a dark and subtle tickle in the back of my head that had begun to intimate that it was time to hang it up, if for no other reason than the personal ego-economy of things was not trending favorably. But I’ll believe that people need something to read. And if you choose to read what I write, brilliant. I need to read, too, and I often like what I have to say.

5 responses so far

History Continues*

Aug 19 2009 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

Since his death in February, my grandfather’s estate has slowly migrated south. Little pieces of it trickle down I-65, as if given orders to go east and turn right at Peoria. The trip, from my perspective, has been sublime, ridiculous and everything in between. Makes sense, though, considering I am the end point on a thousand mile wander.

My mother is an only child, so it went to her to dispatch all her father’s possessions, as well as those possession left from when my grandmother died in 1997. My sister and I spent a strange, surprisingly not terribly morbid day with her labeling what we wanted. She presented each of us with a pad of post-it notes and told us to write our name on whatever we wanted. We did some negotiating until just about every large thing sported a green flag. We left, bought donuts and life continued apace– a drive back to Fort Dodge, a drive back to Kansas City, a flight back to Nashville, a flight back to Birmingham.

This past weekend I think I received the very last of it: a box of clothes for Christopher, who is a little taller than Grandpa was, but could still use socks and t-shirts and other things that had been purchased for a man who had enough socks and t-shirts and was dying anyway. After the funeral trip in February, I brought back several things, including a couple aprons that had been my grandmother’s. I wear them, because I am a mess-maker, and because it’s easier to wipe my hands on toweling tied around my waist than it is to mangle a towel, which eventually gets wadded up and left to stagnate on the counter. Both my grandparents smoked heavily, so I did a few extra loads of laundry this past weekend to get the clothes Christopher had inherited to the point where we could stand them. As I was going through the t-shirts, checking to make sure they were right side out, I noticed that all of them had writing on the tag. In my Grandma’s deliberate, fancy capitals, was “EGS.”

So there I stood, a thousand miles and probably 30 (or more) years from when she’d written that, looking at her handwriting and thinking that those undershirts no longer belonged to EGS. They were now property of CMJ, who she met once, for 40 minutes, and was too distracted with pain and despondency to pay too much attention to, I’m sure. Still, I was wearing her apron, looking at her handwriting, and wondering what made her do that? What in her gave rise to the urge to write my Grandpa’s initials on the tag in his t-shirt as if he were going off to camp? No one but she would ever see them. There was no danger in his laundry getting mixed up with someone else’s.

I missed her then, more than I ever have before. She wasn’t warm or pleasant. I knew she loved me, but it was mostly intellectual. But standing there in her apron, taking on the role she’d set out decades before– be a wife, make a home, care for your man– I was connected to her. I thought of her and the home she made. I tried to think of her parents, who she never really knew and my Grandpa’s parents. I tried to think back, past that, increasing squares exponentially, to all the people that contributed to me. I concluded nothing, because what is there to conclude? They lived, and raised children in whom they put their hope for the future, and then they died. Just like we live, and hope for the future, and die. They didn’t have permanent markers. Maybe their t-shirts, or other, pre-polyester and elastic undergarments, went missing.

Maybe this is what my Grandma was thinking of. Maybe that label, completely unnecessary in the practical, carved out a bit of space for her. Maybe it was a subtle, unconscious notification to the past and the future that she was there, doing laundry. I have no idea. Three decades and a thousand miles later, I– a small part of her lasting contribution to the world– wore her apron and did her wash. And I only now wonder about ten decades and thousands of miles from now, and who might think of me.

With apologies to Georges Duby.

8 responses so far

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