Where IS everyone?

Cross-posted at femme_asylum.

Really really did not like "Coco Before Chanel." Audrey Tautou is gorgeous and I could have looked at her all day, but I found her character's motivations unfathomable, and I had no sense at all where Chanel's great talent and style came from, nor was there any sense of the force in design she would one day become.

This was nothing but an overblown romance that somehow reduced everything she did to being about some guy. Nauseating. I HATED it.

Beautiful, yes. But blech.

I wish someone would make the Chanel film that is in my head. Because this is DEFINITELY not it.

I can't handle the crowds on Black Friday, and besides, my holiday shopping, such as it is, is done. (We're buying for the kids only this year, due to the financial problems of one of my brothers).

So my sisters in law and I are going to see "Coco Before Chanel," while my brothers and their sons do their manly, boy-ly thing without us. And then this evening, not_yet_defined is doing a marathon of 101-102 and 512-513 over at qaf_marathons, so that's what I'll be doing when I get home!

See you then!

The Daring Bakers November 2009 Challenge hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

The post I wrote last night and didn't send 'cos I'd just posted something else and I always feel ridiculous making two posts in an hour:

I like the dressing. Rob makes the best turkey dressing in the world. He makes croutons from sourdough bread & italian dressing, and it's got sausage and ground beef and celery and onions, and chantrelles & crimini mushrooms and cherries and water chestnuts.

And Blossom came down from Wolf Creek and made cranberry relish; yaaay! and I made mashed potatoes, and Gail made apples-and-sweet-potatoes with the recipe Rob got from the WitchesWithBrains yahoogroup, and we had brussels sprouts and candied carrots, and pumpkin pie that Rob made yesterday. And turkey. And gravy made from the turkey drippings.

Mygods I'm stuffed. It's all really, really yummy food. And we'll have leftovers for daaaaayz. Including enough cranberry relish to make piroshkis tomorrow and maybe to have to take to work next week.

And I'm, like, DRUGGED. From the tryptophan. I want to sleep now and wake up... Tuesday. Instead, we have four extra people in our room who are watching the movie "Crowley" while I try to find new fanfic.

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284746.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far:

I put together a list of Pagan terms for use by nonpagans, specifically writers, at writing_religion: Pagan terminology for nonpagan writers.

It's about 2700 words long. I'd welcome any feedback or questions; part of me thinks it's okay, and part thinks it's about 1/3 done and needs at total rewrite--but if I waited until I thought it was "finished," I'd never get it posted. And there really isn't enough info available *about* Pagans that's not written for people who are joining/members of Pagan religions.

And incompleteness is not necessarily wrong, in this case. It's more important to me that nonpagans understand the complexity of the issues than that they learn the details involved.

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284671.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far:

We went down to Salinas to J's sister's new place, and holy crap is it huge. It's got a nifty layout, and infinitely more space than their old house. We hadn't seen Natalie since before she was walking so it took a while for her to stop giving J and I the suspicious eye, but by the end of the night it was lots of carry-me arms, and where Sophie is usually all about her Uncle J, somehow this time I ended up with her hanging on me more often than not. I suspect it was that I was wearing a pink shirt so that boosted my coolness rating. It's interesting to see the ways her personality has changed now that she's a big sister. Sometimes I wish we lived a bit closer in order to visit more often.

Anyway, we hung out, ate food, played with dolls, tried to devise a plan to steal their adorable pug, and at the end of the evening I got the bonus of belated b-day gifts. See subject. I have also increased my fuzzy scarf collection by one, so I should probably put out some of the ones I don't wear often out onto the curb.

The drive was nice, and J and I talked a lot about the ways in which we'd like to focus on our projects for school and general creative things. I'm back to having a solid idea of where to go with my current assignments so I'm feeling very rejuvenated about them. Which is good, as I need to be doubly-focused this weekend, since I didn't actually get any extra days off, and the lab is closed tomorrow which is typically my dedicated time to go in and work all day on my homework!

Current Mood: touched

First, Happy Thanksgiving to all!

A couple of new fandom friends don't know the origin of the name of the current celebration in qaf_drabbles , "Gusmas," so I thought I'd explain.

Once upon a time, four fangirls wrote a story together, and the unbelievable url_girl illustrated it. (Well, we didn't write it, exactly -- it was divinely inspired, so it might be better said we channeled it.)

It was the story of Assbaby!Jesus (Gus for short), and of course, it's his birth we celebrate during the Solstikwanzanukkamas Season, which runs from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.

Be warned if you choose to read this fic; you're sure to end up on the bus to the hot place if you do.

Assbaby!Jesus: A Brian/Justin Christmas story

Hmm. I'm not finding a couple of the blog posts I'd spotted yesterday, that aren't related to the adult privs checklist but were about child agency and the concept that kids, acting like kids, in public, is something the public should just deal with--kids are people, and age-appropriate behavior isn't something that should be kept out of sight of nonparents.

Some of these have fascinating comment threads. And by "fascinating," I mean "soaked in privilege and offensive as hell."

Related but not necessarily connected posts:
Nov 3, Noble Savage: On Child Hate and Feminism "Participating in child-bashing is participating in the oppression of a vulnerable group. … admitting that motherhood went from overrated to undervalued in 40 years flat isn’t something many of us want to acknowledge."

Oct 23, Look Left of the Pleiades: People who dance between tables "Having a need for age-specific support should not make anyone any less human."

Apr 23, Have A Lovely Time: I'm sorry, does my children's presence offend you? "HOW do you cope when your arrival leads to an immediate and sharp intake of breath from the other customers?"

Aug 8, Syracuse.com opinion blog: Discrimination against special needs is unacceptable "They had just as much a right to patronize that restaurant as anyone else. They deserved to be welcomed with respect and kindness. This was not the case." (Does not mention whether younger children without disabilities would be equally accepted.)

Adult Privilege Sound-off:
Nov 24, Dr. Helen: Your right to bring your screaming child on a plane ends where the rest of our ears begin. "If a kid does not understand how to act in certain settings, teach him or her or don't put them in that setting until they are older. The world will be a better (and quieter) place."

Nov 24, Tim Cavanaugh at Reason: No Child's Left Behind "here is (very unscientific) evidence that spanking is poised for a comeback" (With special bonus racism in the comments!)

April 8, Guardian: There comes a time when you want to live without children "To buy a property in the village, you have to be 45-plus with no dependent family in tow, and you must sign a contract agreeing not to sell property on to those with children."

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284210.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far:

I may or may not find time to make a coherent post about this anytime soon. This one's important to me; the way we treat children in this country ranges from atrocity to tragedy. But it's late; I have to be up in five and a half hours (because, heh, one of my kids does not mesh well with public school). As a placeholder, have some linkspam:

Nov 16 @ Shut Up, Sit Down: Adult Privilege Checklist

Reading a post by Elena Perez at California NOW made me think about privilege checklists (like the Male Privilege Checklist and the White Privilege Checklist, for example) and I came to the realisation that, as yet, nobody had written an adult privilege checklist. So with some help from my good friend Jenny, using some of Elena Perez’s ideas from the aforementioned post, I set about writing the Adult Privilege Checklist.

naraht

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flourish

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284122.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far:

bulletpoints!

- Although I managed surprisingly well on cards last year, there's no way I'm going to manage this year. I'm slightly bummed about this, but I think I'll just resolve to send more random letters throughout the year as that's way more fun to receive.

- I made adorable cupcakes at work again. I wish I had an excuse to make them at home, or a whole lot more people to foist them off on.

- The last two episodes of Fringe made me all excited and giddy, even with a brief Not Sure If Want moment in there. I need to get over my tendency to want to fit things neatly in canon and just write the smushy porn that I want to write.

- There is absolutely no way to reply to an anon thread with you as the subject without a) being a dick, b) encouraging the drama, and c) being a dick. I replied anyway.

- There is absolutely no way to blog/tweet/mention replying to an anon thread with you as the subject without encouraging the drama and being a bit of a dick, but it made me laugh. Oh, people.

- I had this big complicated adventure dream with JDM in it last night. It was awesome. Then I had to get up and go to work, which was less awesome, even though our new brunch cook made me Huevos for breakfast.

- Speaking of our new cook, she's been teaching J how to make stuff. Including this awesome grilled tomato salsa which is downstairs right now, calling to me. She's the best.

- I severely need a nap, but if I sleep now I'll wake up at the time which I should be going to bed. Conflict.

I'm in experimental recipe mood today! Breakfast came out well, in as much as it was just a hardboiled egg, mashed up with mayonnaise and mustard and a chopped green onion for faux egg salad, spread over a dinner roll, with a side of cottage cheese (dear self - 1% store brand cottage cheese tastes like ASS. v_v)

The real experiment is going to be what I'm cooking for lunches next week. Here's the recipe so far, as it's been popped into the crock pot:

1 lb. boneless chicken, chopped up into bite sized pieces
1 bag coleslaw shredded cabbage (which has shredded carrots in it too... eh, whatever)
1/2 cup cooking white wine
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 shot sweet tea vodka
3 Tbsp butter
dark brown sugar
salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder

In a small (2quart?) crockpot:

brown the chicken in a few tablespoons of oil. layer half the bag of cabbage on the bottom. Cover with chicken pieces. sprinkle chicken with spices. If you still have room, add more cabbage to the top of the pot. Top with cut up chunks of butter (mine was frozen) and a layer of brown sugar (I'm not sure how much - not too thick, just sort of loosely covered. maybe 1/4 cup loosely packed?) Mix the wine, lemon juice and vodka - pour over everything. Cover and set on low and walk away.

I'll go back later to stir it and see what needs adding for flavor. I'm anticipating a sort of sweet and sour and alcoholic lemon chicken. Maybe. We'll see! This is experimental, after all! More reports later, when I know what it's doing.

Edit #1 - ahhahaha, I forgot how much cabbage cooks down! Added the rest of the bag of cabbage in after stirring it around, as there was room. Plenty of sauce forming at the bottom. Sauce is surprisingly sweet&sour TASTY. Yay!

Edit #2 - mostly successful! The sweet vs sour wasn't blending very well - taking a bite was OMGSWEET! followed by OMGSOUR! aftertaste. No middle ground. So I dredged all of the chicken and cabbage out of the pot, poured the sauce into a pan on the stove, added in about a teaspoon of ground ginger and a dash of cinnamon and a glug (yes, that's my technical term =P) of thai sweet-chili sauce, whisked it all around, added some corn starch to thicken it up, and tada! Not really "lemon", per se, but a decent sweet and sour oriental sauce that I poured over the chicken and cabbage and put the whole mess over rice. Works for me. ^_^

So, I've been working on Directions today.... it's so good to feel the fic flowing again. :)

I am going to try to finish it this weekend and send it for beta, although I may need next weekend to get it done. I should probably wait until after the Thanksgiving weekend to post it, shouldn't I?

In other news, I have bunnies for a Xena/Gabrielle fic, a Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer fic, and a Michael/Ben fic, and NO ONE but me really wants to read any of those things. It makes me sad, yo.

Although I also have a Drew/Emmett bunny and I know at least Travis likes to read those!

In today's "Activism: Ur Doin It Wrong" department, we have accusations that slurs against pagan rituals are racist. Set aside, for the moment, that said slurs don't actually exist. That... give some insight into the mind of the commenter, but isn't, in fact, relevant.

What's relevant is that she thinks Wicca's being insulted, and she's "calling" the supposed insulter on her "racism." (In a community about public transportation. So, um, more than rather severely off-topic all around.)

I don't have an icon that's halfway between "facepalm" and "headdesk." (And I don't want one; that would mean I expect to find *more* stuff like this to post about. Which I'd really rather not.)

Oh, and the comment threads hit Godwin's law, ablism, classism and childfreekiness. And NEVAR AGAIN TEH BURNING TIEMS! A glory of fucktupitude all around.

(I got this from dot_pagan_snark, and it's been on stupid_free, so apologies to people who already know about it. Sharin' the pain, folks; sharin' the pain.)

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/283818.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far:

Hi, my name's elf, and I have a reading problem.

When most people say "reading problem," they mean "the letters look blurry to me" or "I've been assigned more pages than human eyeballs can absorb this weekend" or "ack, my comprehension of Russian is too low for me to get the right concepts out of this physics paper." It almost never means "I think I've been neglecting other parts of my life for reading."

Because reading isn't considered a dangerous addiction. It has no physical side-effects. It doesn't make the mind slow or incompetent. At no point, in the throes of reading, is one incapable of driving or performing surgery, should one's skills go in those directions. (Well, save for the "must put book down" part. However, after that immediate shift in awareness, one's reflexes and attention are both available to whatever tasks might be at hand.)

And it's not expensive. Nobody sells off his car and formal clothes to get books. Nobody hocks her wedding jewelry. Books--really good books--are available everywhere at prices ranging from "cheap" to "free." And the internet hasn't made that any less true. Entertaining content, informative & educational content, useful, delightful, important content, is free by the terabyte.

And oooh, I want to read it ALL.

( I read a lot. I could read a lot more. )

Spam! Wrote this not long after TDK came out but never posted it. Since the evil twin just wrote Joker/Scarecrow with similar elements, I knew I had to post it as the same time as hers or I'd never do it. Team Porn does Arkham. Arharhrh.


The Frayed Ends
Batman. Batman/Joker. R. ~1000 words. Nolanverse. Violence.
Darkness gathers into a swarm around them and Bruce doesn’t want to let the bastard take one more goddamn breath.


( Read Me. )

Current Mood: calm

Just a little something to get me in the groove for doing homework. Done without access to my usual brushes so there are several big things that make me go DDDD:, but I didn't want to spend more than an hour on this. Warmup means warmup, Pondy.

Avengers. Steve/Tony. G.



( Steve & Tony Warmup Drawing )

Current Mood: geeky

Hair is on its way to being its proper color again. Just have to sleep on it and rinse it out in the morning. (Brr. We often don't have hot water in the morning; our unit shares a hot water heater with two others.)

Windows Vista apparently doesn't come with an unzip program. I can't unlock ZIP or RAR files. (Somewhere in my portable apps collection is a nice unlock-anything program; I've forgotten the name of it and can't be arsed to figure it out right now, since I can unzip the comics tomorrow.)

We got Dish network. 250 channels, although I gather that some of those might be music channels, and too many of them are sports. Still, lots more than we've had. I watch DishEarth a lot, which is a satellite feed of the earth, with classical music. I like it, but I miss the snow channel.

It's been cold enough recently that both Rob & I wake up with our shoulders tense and knotted in pain. It doesn't go away. I'm taking drugs for pain (erm, Advil; I'm a drug wimp) and it bothers me--I hate taking drugs to alleviate symptoms instead of doing something about the base cause.

Phoenix's school counselors suggest we should get her some philosophy to read. (Her reading skills are off the charts, which I find entirely unsurprising. Also, she's prone to getting randomly existential at her teachers, which disconcerts them.) Any suggestions on good philosophy texts for a 14-year-old who loves Pokemon fanfic and the Poltergeist movies?

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/283213.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far:

The glory as I dreamed [Reference]
by Te
November 12, 2009

Disclaimers: No one and nothing here is mine.

Spoilers/Timeline: No real spoilers, takes place when Bruce is eighteen.

Summary: In which the two most obsessive people in the universe do what they do best.

Ratings Note/Warnings: Sexual content.

Author's Note: An AU 'missing scene' for ending *2* of A way so familiar. Will not make any sense without the other.

Acknowledgments: To Jack, Pixie, and Mildred for audiencing, encouragement, and putting up with me when the story veered sideways.

Story!

Current Mood: enthralled