If I linked, that would make me a spammer. Even identifying the tent would make me feel sleazy. But I found a cool cabin tent! Claims to be over 7 feet tall, sleep almost a dozen people, and have over 150 square feet of floor.

I could put a kitchen in there. And a machine shop. Working on a personal cooling system, but it'll never work. So, to whom it may concern: There's Even a lam logjam in the Aced yam.

This bothered me: An AP article on Monica Seles looking back on her career, and of the stalker's attack that wounded her and sidelined her from tennis for 2 1/2 years, had the headline "Monica Seles faces stabbing as inducted to International Tennis Hall of Fame."

I get what the headline writer meant: Seles spoke about dealing with that attack and its consequences, which sadly affected so much of her career, at her retrospective. But the headline makes it seem that she's about to get stabbed again.

(The headline above the embedded video report isn't much better: "Monica Seles faces pain on day of celebration." A little closer, but still unfortunate. Also, I don't know if the Associated Press or ESPN came up with these headlines, so: who to blame?)

It's insensitive. It doesn't help that the grammar is bad, too. Here is where the word-dropping that usually happens in headlines muddles the meaning: "as she is inducted" would've taken more space (but what big thing? It's the Internet), but been clearer and had a better grammatical flow. But still still, a bad headline, for more than one reason.

What could've been better, asks this veteran headline writer? "Seles reflects on triumphs and pain of her tennis career" would've been generic, but not as likely to rub salt in wounds.

I like Monica Seles. I remember being shocked at her attack: her yell of pain and shock got caught on video, and that's uncomfortable and sad and shocking without the visual. And she deserves better than that headline.

One more thing to add: I admire Seles's sense of humor in grunting at her induction ceremony, "[f]or old, good time sakes."

Over on Twitter (which I’ve joined) I’ve been contributing to the madness that is 1st Draft Movie Lines:

*Sun- and Earth-rise over moon to tune of "Yummy Yummy Yummy I've Got Love In My Tummy"*

"HE is Keyser Soze!" (Oy, I actually can imagine a sequel w/ that as the tag line.)

And the it-all-falls-apart third film: "SHE is Keyser Soze!"

I want to do a James Bond line for 1st Draft Movie Lines, but every idea seems too easy. "It's a boy, Mr. Bond!" Like that.

"Yeah, guess you're right. I *am* funny. No biggie." *snuggles puppy*

(And my favorite so far:)

"That guy's Spartacus." "No, that guy is!" "That guy!" "That guy!"

Yes, I live in the desert.

Generally I am okay with the heat. After all, in the winter you don't have to shovel sunshine! This weekend, however, Loki must have turned up the thermostat. We've been seeing 114+ temperatures here, which is a mite bit warm. It's even nastier when you're riding on superslab highway and you feel like you're being baked alive with moto gear atop you and a hot motorcycle and blistering tarmac beneath you.

It's times like these you start thinking that being kidnapped and having your kidneys harvested wouldn't be a bad idea in exchange for a nice soak in a bathtub full of ice cubes.

--B.

They're showing the Stains the Dog episode on Animal Planet's It's Me Or The Dog. Damn I love that dog. Look at that face; those eyes.

Via The One True B!x: Guess what just was done in Woodlawn Park in NE Portland? Star Trek in the Park! Local actors re-enacted the Classic Trek episode "Amok Time," where Spock goes mad with mating lust and Kirk has to fight him.

Star Trek in the Park. I love this town.

In a radio spot, an announcer just called Tigard as "Ti-guard." It's pronounced "TI-gerd." He also seemed to emphasize both syllables, not just the first one. Odd, and overpronounced.

So. NOT a locally-produced ad.

"TI-guard." Sounds like "Tigh guard." Guarding Tigh from his flask? Good luck with that.

For like the three people on my flist in this fandom who haven't seen this: Pundit Anonymous Kink Meme.

I'm never going to finish kink_bingo, am I?

Title: The Female PRT - Part 2. PRT Harder.
Characters: Tina Fey, Wanda Sykes, Ana Marie Cox, Rachel Maddow, Amy Poehler, Christiane Amanpour. Little bit of Christiane/Ana Marie.
Rating: PG13 for naughty language and sass.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Author Note: Back for more! Two of these were in OTs of the past couple of days and two are brand spanking new. I'm also attempting to start Ana Marie/Christiane (fierce girls always!) but have no idea if I've succeeded so please inform me if I'm single handedly ruining it all. It's also unbeta-ed. I suck at typing. Enjoy!

 

( Phonecall - In which Tina misses her best friend Amy. )( Marble Cake - In which Rachel and Ana Marie become the undomestic goddesses. )( Dark Side - In which Wanda enters enemy HQ and lives to tell the tale. )( Wait - In which Ana Marie worries about gung ho reporter Christiane. )

Title: Furtive Treason and Trenchant Foes 7/?
Series: TDS, TCR, Countdown w/ KO.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, Violence
Disclaimer: I do not own Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, or any known political figures who appear in this story.
Summary: Sequel to Fragile Truth and Tragic Freedom. Seven years later, two criminals from Keith's past escape. Their plan is not simply revenge against Keith and his family, but against the other man who helped the Regime fall.
Author's Note: Please comment. Feedback is good.

One /Two /Three /Four /Five /Six


( Chapter Seven )

Mom and I are mocking Twilight today, but owing to all my research and stuff, I can't help thinking how horrified my favorite security expert must be, given that teenaged girls are at *TREMENDOUS* risk in the misogynistic culture, blah, blah. Don't take care of yourself; let a guy do it.Listen with fascination as the dreamy new bf confesses all his kills...argh, I think I heard him scream, even in the mellow environs of Fiji. he's always busting Hollywood for reinforcing stalky behavior.
I sort of wish I could get sucked into the Edward thing, but I guess if you like Vince Chase, where everything is easy, you're not going to like Edward Cullen's "Woe...everything is hard, and I hate myself so."
Maybe I'd just be mad at him for stealing my material, but if a guy implied that I stank, I don't think bemused fascination would be my response

I just saw a picture of Mandy Moore and was all "Fuckin' tease."(Not that she isn't altogether too frickin' adorable to be one of my favorites anyway, in that nose-wrinkling "America's Sweetheart" kind of way,) but I totally don't have to be mad at her on Vince's behalf, and wanting to is a bit crazy on my part.
Have to watch out for that kind of thing before I end up at some conference trying to find metaphor in Turtle's bong hits or something, you know?

I have a metric fuckload of Dreamwidth codes, if you are unable to get one from anyone else offering this morning. No one took my last batch, so I probably have like five or six.

You know the drill: email address in the comments. Expect lateness due to my internet situation.

Did drinks inspire my dreams? I can't answer that! But I can tell you I dreamed about visiting Walt Disney World and EPCOT Center*, which were full of visitors despite being completely flooded. As in Waterworld levels of flooded. I was riding around in a car (a car in Disney World? Just accept it and go on. I did), past all of these people and all these landmarks who were getting just fine even being underwater. Maybe they were all breathing the liquid oxygen emulsion from The Abyss or something. (Seeing Spaceship Earth surrounded by water was especially odd.) We saw more recognizable people as we wound through the park, as in actor-recognizable. Finally my car reached the Dream Disney equivalent of the suburbs, and I got out and was greeted not with a wall of water, but just a drizzle. Must look different outside of the car. Headed into a home (I can't tell you more about the home; I don't remember) and saw that the other houses were surrounded by movie props (I saw scale-model Teletubbies outside one), like at Universal Studios. This is like a movie studio you live in, I thought. (Now I think onezumi would love to live here! I also was riding with theloriest. I am not saying that as a complaint. ;-)

At another point there was a WWE wrestling match involving water. Man, it's gotta be hard to wrestle in water...

---

* Yeah, I know it's now Epcot Theme Park. It'll always be EPCOT Center to me. I visited it in spring 1984, by the way. Neat place.

Here's a comment I made that became long enough for a blog post, and one worth sharing, about last night:

***

I got a Facebook message from Bobbie, Fatboy's girlfriend, saying We're surprising our friend Ryan at the Moon and Sixpence for his birthday. I need a head count. I could go, and said so. I did go. Most of us showed up by 8 p.m. at the pub (good pub, by the way), and were given a bunch of napkins with letters written on them so that when Ryan and his significant other showed up we could hold up the napkins to spell HAPPY B-DAY. Bobbie related some of the shenanigans involved in arranging the surprise and not spoiling it, and I told her "You will use your powers only for good, right?" Ryan showed up, we gave him the birthday message plus presents and a bacon maple bar from Voodoo Doughnut, and just shot the breeze. Good visiting. I let myself have a pale ale and a snack of Welsh rarebit.

Good times. A little loud for my taste -- I'm not really a bar person -- but we were all smiling a lot.

Though, huh, for not being a bar person, I go at least once a month to the Bagdad and was at the Gypsy two weeks ago [for the Can't Stop the Serenity events]. I seem to be getting out of a comfort zone. I should keep this up. I can always be more social.

***

The Moon & Sixpence remains a good place. (I like their food.) Afterwards I left, happily wobbly, and lucked into perfectly-timed buses to get home. A #12 headed to downtown showed up about a minute after I'd reached Sandy Blvd., and as it headed into downtown I saw a #19 right in front of it and was able to get onto that. I rode that bus to within two blocks of home. Things broke right.

Thank you for inviting me, Bobbie!

Watching Man vs. Wild leaves me continually flabbergasted. Because they drop Bear Grylls into some Godforsaken wilderness with nothing more than a knife, and he uses that knife to make whatever he needs. He makes a little tent out of evergreen twigs. He makes an impromptu coat out of a dead deer. He makes a rotisserie for his fish to cook on.

And then, when he's done, he just leaves them there.

Every time, as he walks away, I'm like, "You built that! Take it with you! You might need it - and don't you want a souvenir of this time here?" But no; Bear walks away without a care, leaving the thing he made behind.

I cannot understand that.

I come from a family of hoarders. When we finally moved my Grammy and Grampop out of their house to bring them to the nursing home, it took three large dumpsters to clear the detritus. I remember clearing out old business correspondence from the attic with my cousin ("Dec 6th, 1952: This is to confirm I have to received your letter") and saying to her, "Well, they kept everything but the kitchen sink." And then, not ten minutes later, discovering two kitchen sinks in a back closet. One had a hole in it. But it might have been useful later on, you know. You could have patched that up.

So when Bear just walks away from that ladder he lashed together from twigs and vines, leaving it behind as if it's nothing more than a pile of twigs and vines, I'm aghast. "Don't you want that?" I cry. "You never know when you'll need a broken ladder!" And inexplicably, I feel sorry for the ladder. Bear made it, he gifted it with life, and now this poor ladder is sitting in the wilderness, never to be useful again. Never mind that it was never useful in the first place - it broke before he could climb across the river to the cave - but Bear never gave it a second chance, man. I imagine the ladder feels pretty terrible about that.

Then I wonder whether this is some bizarre function of human nature. I didn't grow up in the wilderness; I had the suburbs, where the only living nonhuman creatures were dogs and squirrels and little brown birds, and that was pretty much it. Do we have some innate instinct to look for life around us? In my vaccuum of wildlife, did I map a form of low-grade sentience onto my books (who wanted to be read) and my stools (who meant to bark my shin) and my videogames (who felt left out when I didn't play with them) just because my lizard brain couldn't comprehend the vaccuum of life surrounding me? Or is that my hoarder family instinct giving me an excuse - the world itself wants to be with me! I can't just leave it behind!

Bear Grylls doesn't care. The man has no trinkets, no nostalgia, no additional weight; when it's done, he moves on, leaving a trail of Stuff that instantly decays into detritus. I admire it, even as I can't understand it.

I have four Dreamwidth account codes, if anyone is interested. Lurkers, feel free to speak up!

I'm working on kb until the boy gets up and then I am leaving this house, if only to go out to lunch and buy a new battery for my car (poor car is dying a long, hard death). I'm giving the boy another half hour before I go wake him up myself.

KB which used to be Olivia/Peter has turned into Olivia-John/Peter-Nick-Olivia-John, because with Fringe there are never enough people in your brain.

I come back from a day at Readercon to find that we traded Church for Francouer?

Seriously?

You're welcome, Atlanta.

Off to Readercon again in twenty minutes. Maybe I'll come back to find that we've traded Santana to the Phillies for a cotton candy machine.