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May. 25th, 2012 @ 01:57 pm Assertive Victory!
Current Mood: accomplishedaccomplished
Current Music: Trumpet Fanfare
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Let us celebrate this, the most joyous of days: I just got China to refund me for that stupid dress.

TAKE THAT, CHINA. Now I can afford chairs!
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May. 14th, 2012 @ 12:27 pm The Phantom Project: A Heart that Waits by Gabrina Garza (part 2)
Current Mood: bitchybitchy
Current Music: Emilie Autumn - Time for Tea
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You don't want to get back into this book? Too bad, neither did I, which is why it took so damned long to finish.

( I had to listen to angry feminist music after this book because it made me want to kill things with axes. )

So, do you see what I was talking about, way back in that intro I don't even remember writing because of the waves of remembered rage and bile? The entire book is a tooth-grinding, migraine-inducing paean to misery until the very end, where it both does awesome and interesting things and then makes me despair that that's all there was. It absolutely floored me with its few brilliant ideas buried in the muck of a massive, stinking midden of awfulness. It focused on Garza's most reprehensible characters and refused to allow them to change, grow, or develop in any meaningful way, and brought out her most interesting and compelling characters only to throw them away again. It is a cruel practical joke of a book. The grade made it up to a D for me on the strength of the really cool stuff at the end, but frankly I can't see it ever climbing any higher after the ordeal that the rest of the book represented.

Garza has since moved on to become a fairly popular writer of erotica; I'm actually quite interested to see if her later Phantom effort is more interesting or has branched out into something more like the end of this one, or if it'll be more of the same.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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May. 14th, 2012 @ 12:25 pm The Phantom Project: A Heart that Waits by Gabrina Garza
Current Mood: exhaustedexhausted
Current Music: Emilie Autumn - Fight Like a Girl
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Oh, lord - this book.


A Heart that Waits: The Phantom's Life After the Opera by Gabrina Garza, 2005
Grade: D

This fucking book. Finishing it felt like being rescued from a plane wreck in the desert.

This book is the author of my Great Disappointment, disappointment so heavy that it must be capitalized for importance. Garza almost does a lot of cool things - in fact, especially at the end of the novel, she suddenly decides to do a boatload of interesting stuff! - but always fails to follow through in favor of the most popular Olympic sport among Phantom sequel authors: worshiping a horrible douchebag of a hero.

( I don't even want to write this review, that's how tired I am of Erik and his whining. )

Argh, review too angry! Second part coming soon in a fountain of rage!

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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May. 8th, 2012 @ 10:58 am Musical Extravaganza!
Current Mood: bouncybouncy
Current Music: Vertical Horizon - Best I Ever Had
I should be doing other things right now, but instead I'm busy being too excited by all the new music I just got!

First, the new Nightwish album, Imaginaerum (okay, "new", it came out in January but I was poor then). I cannot wait to get home and blast this thing at unsafe decibel levels that scare my cats - it's my favorite symphonic metal band recording an album that they claim was primarily influenced by Neil Gaiman, Tim Burton and Salvador Dali, and which contains a thirteen-minute orchestral epic based on Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself". It is like an unopened bag of delicious candy for my ears.

Then, Emilie Autumn finally put out the first singles for her new album, Fight Like a Girl, which will be out some time in the next few months, she teases. I already love Autumn and her previous albums. This one she describes as "an operatic feminist treatise set inside an insane asylum". My glee is overflowing, and these singles will be fighting with Nightwish for equal playtime as soon as I get out of my office (where for some reason they are not big fans of classical industrial pseudotechno with harpsichords. Weirdos).

And finally, I just discovered that Vienna Teng, one of my favorite singers ever ever EVER, wrote a musical this year (The Fourth Messenger) and is working on getting people to help fund it for its inaugural run. It's about the life of Siddhartha Buddha, except set in the modern day with the Buddha as a woman. I want to donate all the donations, but instead I'll have to be modest within my means and enjoy the free audio clips on the musical's site. My excitement is at vibration level.

Workday, I need you to end now.
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Apr. 24th, 2012 @ 10:23 am First-world problems
Current Mood: stressedstressed
Current Music: Gavin DeGraw - Not Over You
Guh. This month.

Not that good stuff hasn't happened this month. It has. But it's insane around here. We're down to scarily low double-digits at the end of every paycheck, we have to drive to Boston (tomorrow!), I haven't been able to sit down and finish a Phantom book in weeks (and of course it's terrible, so that's not helping), and I can barely keep up with the number of story outlines I have to finish before I lose them, never mind actually writing the things. AND, ha ha, I have to send out wedding invitations as soon as we get back from Boston. And also probably run a marathon. Basically, I'm quitting.

Yes, I have all the first-world problems. Oh, pity me. I'm still going to be a basket case until some of this gets sorted out.
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Apr. 17th, 2012 @ 03:01 pm Truly dreaming the impossible dream
Current Mood: amusedamused
Current Music: Man of La Mancha - The Impossible Dream
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Today:

Me: Hey, babe, do you want to get engagement photos taken?
John: I don't know, it's up to you.
Me: Well, you'd need a free afternoon and you'd probably have to shave and stuff, so it's also up to you.
John: Those things are negligible to me. It's really your choice. It'd be like if taking out the garbage was my choice, except here I get photos at the end.
Me: I'm glad I found a way for you to compare having engagement photos taken with me to taking out the garbage. I'll call the photographer.

Indeed, he is my heroic gentleman caller.
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Apr. 13th, 2012 @ 03:53 pm Scion Backstory #17: Faruza Alinejad
Current Mood: nervousnervous
Current Music: Natalie Merchant - My Skin
Tags: ,
It's weird to put this disclaimer here, considering that I've frequently written about things like rape, murder, abortion, and ogres eating little girls' families' entrails in front of them, but at John's suggestion, here's a warning: this story contains themes and semi-frank discussion of stuff that for a lot of people (especially male people) (ESPECIALLY male people), is super weird and off-putting. It's the sort of thing that dudes who will watch the entire Saw franchise in marathon without batting an eye suddenly get really pale about in conversation and have to leave the room. Things are going to be discussed about womens' fiddly bits and reproductive systems, is what I'm getting at.

Anyway, on to Faruza, the newest addition to the rampaging number of characters sharing this universe. Like Mohini and Paniwi, she's a nineteenth-century period character from Ye Olde Mysterious Orient, which necessitated a lot of research on my part. She is a devout Zoroastrian, a schoolteacher, and an intellectual in an age when women often do not get to fill that role. She's also the daughter of Vayu, the Persian/Vedic god of wind, air, breath, life and death.

( Second Birth. )

( Cultural discussion! )

And that was the day I had to read all of an entire religion's scripture to know what was going on with my character.
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Mar. 29th, 2012 @ 05:39 pm Song Soup
Current Mood: lovedloved
Current Music: Vienna Teng - Fields of Gold
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I'm thinking a lot about music right now, which is not surprising since I'm trying to organize a wedding and arranging a lot of pieces for my awesome volunteer string section (Jessica, Susanna and Brent, you are angels of orchestral mercy). There are a lot of pieces that I love and I will probably list them in a later post, but today I'm hung up on an old favorite: Sting's "Fields of Gold".

I'm aware that the song ends in death. For some reason, people keep pointing this out to me, like maybe I'm not capable of decoding the lyrics to realize that there's a metaphor about the sun setting and days still remaining in there. But I think that may be one of the things that makes it one of my favorite wedding songs; it's not just a song about being in love now, but one about that emotion lasting through old age and death. It's not just a song about loving another person, but about pledging to commit to them and do better than in previous years. None of this is all that surprising, considering that Sting wrote the song for his future wife.

( Lyrics, for anyone who for some reason doesn't know this song. )

It's a gorgeous song, and it's not surprising that there are myriad covers and different versions of it. I'm sorting through them looking for my favorite, but I'm hampered by the fact that almost all of them are very good. Also I keep sniffling. (I do a lot more sniffling lately than I'm used to, it's very discombobulating.)

( There are a lot more covers than these, but I stuck with my favorites. )

Also, this song always makes me want to read Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind".

I need to go do something else before I disappear into a sea of maudlin sentimentality.
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Mar. 27th, 2012 @ 11:49 am Nerd rage
Current Mood: grumpygrumpy
Current Music: Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive
Today, this notice landed in my email inbox, from one of the university libraries I frequent in the area because the public libraries here remind me a little bit of intermittent burial grounds where unwanted books go to die and the other books stay away out of a sense of decency.

Dear Anne,

Due to recent problems with theft, the University Libraries are making changes to the borrowing privileges for Friends of the UNCG Libraries. We apologize for any inconvenience, but we are now adopting the following policies:

1) we are limiting checkouts to 5 items in total; members with more than 5 current checkouts will need to comply with this limit when the online renewal maximum is reached;

2) we are requiring Friends borrowers to show 2 forms of identification when they register, one a government-sponsored picture ID (such as a driver's license, passport, military ID) and one which corroborates the picture ID. At the recommendation of the police, we will make copies of the picture ID for our files.

3) membership payment by credit card may done through a website (now being created) for persons joining while in the physical library. Those joining by cash or check will have a 10 day waiting period before their borrower's card is issued.

If you have questions about these policies, please contact the University Libraries Access Services.

...five? I think I speak for all of us when I say this to whomever has been stealing university books to piss them off to this point:

Way to ruin it for everyone. You suck.
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Mar. 25th, 2012 @ 06:34 pm The Phantom Project: Phantom of the Orgasm, directed by Danni Ashe
Current Mood: guiltyhorrified
Current Music: David Guetta & Nicki Minaj - Turn Me On
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Oh, for god's sake. It's porn time again.

Out of deference to everyones' delicate sensibilities, I've had to put even the cover of this one under a cut, because it is bound and determined to broadcast boobs to everyone with eyes in its vicinity. In fact, boobs are a key element to this film all around - or, theoretically they would be, if all of the ones making appearances weren't obviously fake and most of the time entirely ignored in favor of areas south of the border.

Jeez, guys. You make a lesbian porn and then you don't do anything with the boobs? Is this supposed to be some kind of artistic statement or something?

( This is obviously not work-safe. Or safe for anything else, really. )

This film is actually very short, not even twenty-four minutes long, but it feels like eternity. In the end, it's much more entertaining if you imagine that this isn't Christine, and instead is some random woman that the Phantom is accosting, possibly in a long string of such behavior before meeting Christine (fan and footstool take on a whole new meaning!).

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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