To · Make: · Fill · with · Sugar · and · Spice

Old news, but still. The New New Doctor?! He looks like a vampire.

...which could be an interesting turn of events. Still, I was rooting for Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Okay, so I turned in my resignation later, which was mostly professional, with only a tiny snipe at the end, and I'm kinda glad I did it that way, because my boss was equally professional about the whole thing. Resigning is always awkward, in my opinion. It's only not awkward when you storm out in an angry huff, yelling about how things are gonna burn.

So. I got my notice of appointment, have sent my passport to the consulate to be visa-fied, have my ticket, most of the clothes I ordered offline, MY NEW SONY READER, which is so sweet I could cry. A separate review on that later.

Okay, so go over to lettrsfromkorea and friend me there, and I'll friend you back. I will still be maintaining this lj, but most of these things will continue to be the personal observations/random thoughts/occasional pieces of art/writing/what-have-you and will continue to be a majority of friends-only posts.

For my new Letters From Korea blog, I'm going to try to do that blog-every-day thing, and there will be a lot of pictures to accompany my life in Korea (and hopefully travels to other nearby countries like Japaaaaaaan). So go there, do that. :*

So, I've been reading rather sporadically lately (remember that plan to graduate from college and spend a month reading all the books I never got the chance to read? Remember how that DIDN'T happen?) Anyway, NaNo obviously sapped my free time, but now that I've got loads to spare, I find I have a reading list to match!

Anyway, I've been pondering buying a reader. The Amazon Kindle looks sort of spiffy--especially with the addition of being connected to Amazon. However, whenever I go into Border's, I see the Sony Reader. Of course, the Sony reader is cheaper, but the Kindle seems to have more to offer, at least in America, where you can connect to the Amazon wireless network. However, it seems rather advantageous if I go to Korea (still in the interview process, but I have high hopes) for one thing, I can't take loads of books, and although I know there're a couple of English bookstores in Seoul, I don't know:
a) how close they'll be to my residence and
b) how much more I'll have to pay because they'll be imported (probably a lot more?)

Also, I can apparently hook my Kindle up to my computer and download books from Amazon that way, so it doesn't matter too much if my Kindle can't connect wirelessly (unless I get stuck on a metro for four hours and suffer a literary emergency, but that's only happened once... uh, twice... uhm, okay, maybe I should download a couple of books at a time...)

What would really be hot was if Kindle could connect to any old wifi. Hm.

Yeah, I think I've kind of sold myself on the Kindle. IF I buy a reader. Should I buy a reader? :/

56k, yo! And I'm done!

...except the book is nowhere near finished!

Yesterday, the United States of America elected it's first black president in a landslide victory. Today, it was what everyone was talking about at work. One of my coworkers, a white, registered Republican, has been an Obama supporter for a long time now and I enjoy talking politics with him because he's got an outrageous sense of humour. Today we took a moment to talk gleefully about how glorious last night's victory was. He talked about how, when it was announced, he flipped from channel to channel, watching the coverage. "One thing I noticed though," he told me. "On almost all of the channels, they had lots of footage of black people, and they were all crying."
I laughed a little. "I cried too," I admitted. "A little."
"Really?" he asked me, apparently surprised--I guess I don't look like the crying type (I hope I don't). "I don't get it," he said. "I mean, I know it's a historic moment and all but why was everybody crying?"

He wasn't the only one to say something like that throughout the day. So I guess I'll try to put it words, although I don't know that it will be adequate:

We never thought this would happen.

When you are a little kid, still learning the names of all of the presidents and your multiplication tables, your teachers are quick to tell you that if you study hard and memorize this and learn that, that you can go to college and be anything that you want to be, like a firefighter, or an astronaut! It was pretty much the standard response for one or more black students to murmur quietly (or not so quietly) "Not president" And of course, if the teacher heard, she would say "Well of course you can be president! Why not?" Why not, indeed. Let's start with the fact that in two hundred and fifty years, there had never BEEN a black president. Not once, in all of the history of the United States of America. How can you believe in something that's never happened before? Sure, it was a POSSIBILITY--there are black people, and they are citiziens, and they're over 35, and therefore physically capable of becoming president, but that didn't really help any of us to believe it was actually going to HAPPEN.
Imagine that a leading scientist announces to the world that he has found in the human genes the capability for flight. Every human can fly, he says. Okay, so, let's say that he's not crazy. Now everyone knows that it's a POSSIBILITY that one day you might step off your front porch and start flying, but it doesn't happen. Ten, twenty years go by--everyone knows that humans are technically capable of flight, but no one's ever done it, ever seen it done. Imagine what would happen a hundred, two hundred years from then? Human flight would be this 'technical possibility'; something that COULD happen, but no one really believes will EVER happen. Imagine what would happen if one day, someone just started flying? No wings, no jetpacks, just flight. They have taken what is 'TECHNICALLY' POSSIBLE and turned it into REALITY.

And that's what Obama did for black people.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CONGRATULATIONS PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA!!!

Word Count 8,530

( Exerpt )

The Beyond by Me @ deviantART


What's behind door number three?

The Firestarter by =DoubleKrossed on deviantART 

A bookcover.  I'm not sure if it's finished or not, I think it needs a little touch-up, nitpicking, but someone elses' nitpicking.    

In other awesome news, I can apparently hit a button on stuff I post to deviantART and it will automatically make a livejournal post for it!  The internet is becoming more creepifyingly integrated/awesome everyday.  

My very first piece of customized 3d clothing! LOL, I'm excited about it. The next one is going to have some lace around the neckline, I think. In case you actually use Poser, it's a custom transmap + bumpmap + texture for the V4.2 MFD

Click through and see the big version of the picture; the details are much better!

My first car was a "Pebble Beige" '95 Nissan Maxima. My mom gave it to me when I was sixteen (around 2000), and I loved that car. That car was my baby and my ticket to freedom. I didn't have to buy the car (or pay insurance) but I did have to work for it. Grocery shopping, picking up the drycleaning, toting my little sister to all of her various activities, dropping off my mom at the Metro when she didn't want to drive into DC, all of that was done with a smile on my face, because that car was my FREEDOM. At last, I didn't have to rely on my mom, or my friends' moms for rides... I could go anywhere I pleased!

I loved that car so much I shelled out over $200 of my own money on new hubcaps that just made my car look COOLER (that's a ton of money when you're in high school).

Less than a month after I bought those beautiful new hubcaps, that car was totaled when a Maryland prick in a penis-mobile ran a red light at the Key Bridge and slammed straight into me. I wasn't hurt, aside from whiplash, but the suspension was completely severed and the work to replace was higher than the value of the car, so the insurance company gave us a check and a little cardboard box with my plates and personal items and $250 for my "inconvenience" which I was hardly satisfied with--I was moving to college that same week, and have you ever tried to pack with whiplash? OW.

Anyway, one year later, my mom bought me a '96 Nissan Maxima, this one black. Two years later, my sister totaled that one all by herself. ;)

Oi, it's been forever since I've done this, but I figured I should get back in the habit. Anywho, I should've posted it on Friday but I forget. Forgive me. :)
So anyway, on to the reviews:

The Other Boleyn Girl: F-

Ugh, the only thing this movie has going for it is the costumes, which are simply lovely. Everything else about this movie was terrible. It's expected that a complicated plot will be simplified for a movie, but this was poorly written and directed. Certain parts of the story are "fast forwarded" where they shouldn't have been, but they draw through some scenes that don't need to be shown, really. On top of that, they mangled history in a horrible way. The courtship of Anne Boleyn by Henry was a well-documented, eight-year, chaste love affair. The movie is none of that. It's like Diet History Lite, with three times more added fiction! They say "historically based" but they should really call it "historically inspired". Now, you may be protesting that maybe that's what you want to see. Well, folks can tell you, I can suspend my disbelief with the best of them, but even as a completely fictional story, it's still a waste of your money. Mostly because it only makes the slightly modicum of sense if you back it up with history. But then, if you back it up with history, it still doesn't make sense.
Just all around, a terrible movie. But the costumes were fab.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age : D

This was a wretch of a movie. The acting was weak, the portrayals flawed, and the history was mangled. Blanchett played well, but I just wasn't feeling it. Mostly, I felt like she suffered from a terrible lack of good writing--the writing also was not horrible, just not suited to screen. If I had seen this same script on stage, I believe it would have suited quite beautifully. The costumes were quite nice, however I've seen better for that era. It would have been mediocre all around, except a few bad scenes dropped this movie from a C to a D.
If you're looking for an Elizabeth movie, I would highly recommend the HBO miniseries Elizabeth I.

Speaking of which:

Elizabeth I : A

Okay, it's long. I think about six or eight hours altogether? It is a miniseries, so it's in two parts at least, maybe it was three, but I saw it altogether, so I can't be sure. However, the writing is very good, the acting is divine, especially if you're a fan of subtleties and nuance. And the costumes, ooooh, the costumes. The Golden Age, despite being a made for screen movie cannot compare to the costumes, the blatant realism of this movie/series. All around, beautiful.

Sweeny Todd : C+

Not too bad, not too good. Strange, is the first word that comes to mind. Johnny Depp plays well, but I felt the movie teetered from dark comedy to serious drama too steeply. In my mind, it's fine to waver back and forth, but when the teeter-totter teeters or totters too hard in both directions, the movie starts to become confusing. What are you supposed to be feeling here? Is a time to laugh, or be repulsed? The ending doesn't quite satisfy either.

Enchanted : A

It is what it is, a Disney movie, so I can't blame it for that. I never thought Disney could take itself so lightly either, so I was quite surprised. A sweet, lighthearted comedic fairytale that will leave you smiling at the end.

I will add a few more titles later. :)

Fanspeak

This article is quite a few years old, but it's still very interesting, and I bet it's still mostly true with a lot of the older fans. Unfortunately, I think the younger "fans" that you find at cons won't match this profile, simply because they are less literate (and I don't mean that as an insult, but simply a truth) than the old guard.

Anywho, it's short and interesting. Give it a read.

I had another entry that I was working on, but it turned out to be too elaborate to be completed by the deadline. I'm not terribly worried though, they're both good pieces for my portfolio.

If you like it (or even if you just like me) it'd be nice if you could register and vote for me at www.powerofthepens.com/competition. Right now I'm on the front page, but if I slip to another page, you can find it on the artist search under Chloe Saint Claire.

...even the writers write fanfiction. :D

A very sweet, very heartwarming Doctor Who fic story.

Read it in The Telegraph online