Livejournal writing...

You know, a while ago, I was thinking about what or how I wrote my livejournal and read others livejournals. angela had a post regading this - how did people use their livejournals? In that post she referenced someone else's livejournal, which also asked the question - but a little less nicely:"did you write for an audience or were you still under the delusion that this is a private journal yet had readers" or something to that effect.
Then - on Sat, poised to post my own little ramble on the topic, along with rambles on numerous other topics - I discovered much to my chagrin, livejournal was down and out for the count. Arrgh. Now, I suppose I could have tried to post these thoughts on a discussion board or in an email to a friend, but somehow - that doesn't quite work. I could have just wrote them in Word and saved to my hardrive. Or in my own private highly unorganized spiral bound notebook. (Oh I start out with the intent of being organized, but as time wears on, it becomes a hodgepodge of assorted bits and pieces of thoughts jotted down willy nilly. )This got me to thinking - why didn't the above three possibilities work? Why do these rambles work better in a livejournal posting box? Several reasons - first, when I write in these boxes, I am a little more self-critical, more self-conscious of my words, I might even hunt down a word I'm using in the dictionary (something I do not do when writing in a private journal). Writing in livejournal reminds me a great deal of letter writing, and actually my posts are very similar to the letters I used to write people way back in the 1980s and early 90s when people still wrote letters. For me, livejournal is sort of a combo correspondence club/writers support group. A place to play with one's writing, and share one's thoughts with others.

Discussion boards - tend to be limited to certain topics. Also they are much more public than livejournal. Posting to a discussion board can at times feel like blowing a horn on a highway. Or lighting a fart in a crowded room. Depending on the post. When it is ignored? Sob. When it is flamed? Ouch!
When it is applauded? Yippee! (Also worse than crack cocaine to a frustrated writer.)

Email correspondence - you expect a response. When one isn't forthcoming? You start to worry. Also when do you stop? And it tends to be directed towards one person - so there are things that are (ahem) just inappropriate within the context of corresponding with that person.

Private journal - no sharing is taking place. Just basically jotting down thoughts for future reference, no need to worry about things like syntax, writing style, or grammar. You are only communicating with yourself after all.

Livejournal? Is basically writing a letter and sending it out to those people you've friended, and whomever else might locate it. You don't necessarily expect a response, but part of you secretly hopes for one even though you tell yourself you don't care. And - there's the thrill, that unlike email or
letter correspondence, you haven't a clue who that response will come from. Plus, the added bonus of being able to read others open letters and responding to them. An interactive letter writing group - with no cold trips to the post office to get stamps.

Did I miss LJ when it went down? Sure. But I also got a lot of things done this weekend, and I admit part me was secretly hoping it would stay down, because it might force me to work on that damn story I keep flipping over and over in my head - as opposed to writing these crazy entries that I'm not entirely sure anyone reads anymore. (I seemed to get more responses last year for some reason...not sure why. Did I write better? Or was the topic just more accessible to the reader? Possibly the latter. After all, half of my flist was all equally obsessed with the same thing last year, now, we're sort of all moving past it in different ways.)

Subject heading escapes me...a bit on everything(food, anime, etc)

Yes, I know, it would have saved space on everyone's flist if I'd included this with the last entry. But I hate writing long non-sequitor entries. Highly unorganized, you know. So you'll just have to deal with getting more than one
entry from me today.

Snarky as I sound, I'm actually having a good weekend. A quiet one. Saturday was my girly day - I got my hair-cut. First time since, I think June. (Must have been June, since it was before the Liberty Mutual Interview - after that I sort of gave up and let myself go.) The hair cut looks a lot like Cordelia's bob in Season 2 Angel- (no highlights), to her chin, with wisps of hair framing her face. Or Buffy's in Gone. (Actually Cordy's is closer, since it curls under and is dark not blond.)Also got a manicure - first one since...okay, you know it's been a while if you can't remember the last time, right? Best part? Cutting away those bothersome hang-nail (cuticles). The manicurist asked - "Do you want color?" Me - "not really." Manicurist, (sighs) and puts on clear polish. Then asks again. Looking pointedly at a wall filled with nail polish colors. Okay, I think, humor the woman. It's complimentary after all. (Well sort of complimentary - stupid me didn't realize until after everything was done that I had to choose between the $10 coupon and the complimentary manicure. Luckily the manicure was only $9...so wasn't a hard choice.)I ended up with light mauvish pink. It looks good with my skin - that's all you need to know. Friday - I bought make-up. Spent a godawful amount of money on it too. Yes, I got sick of looking drab and feeling cruddy.
(Honestly - men don't know how good they have it.) Felt good to be pampered though. I normally despise getting my hair-cut, but this place was nice. They
gave me a scalp and face massauge when they washed my hair, and a hand-massauge during the manicure (which was not painful in the least.) Left in a sparkling mood. Even though the haircut wasn't exactly what I'd expected. It never is. I asked for below the chin - I got at the chin. I asked for - out of my face, I got drifts into my face. I asked - no middle part, hmmmn, appears to part in the middle. Oh well. It's easy to take care of and makes me feel young and pretty. And that's all that really counts, right?

Then off to play foodie. Now, I'm not the foodie that quite a few of the folks on my flist are. Definition of "foodie" - folks who literally make you salviate when you read their live journal entries. They go into precise detail on the different meals, deserts, beverages they've had, often explaining how it was cooked, what ingredients were used, and why one ingredient is better than another. These people are *very* picky about ingredients. That apparently is "foodie" - a new slang term I learned. (I'm sure it's been around a while, I just tend to be oblivious to stuff like this until it's been pounded into my head.) I remember when we merely called them connosieurs, although I guess connosieur has been broadened to include other pursuites - ie. TV, Movies, etc. At any rate - I went to the local gourmet market - Pacific Green - picked up some "BlackPepper Pate", Dried Peppercorn Sausage, Shitake mushrooms, fresh raspberries, strawberries, sliced mango, sliced melon, Wasabi Oat Crackers, and salad greens. Then two cinnamin roles - freshly backed at Marquette Pastries, a chocolat mousse. Off to the Italian Bakery to pick up a loaf of Italian bread. At home - I had fresh mozzerella cheese, New York Sharp White Cheddar. I grabbed a Brooklyn Lager. Most of the stuff I didn't get around to eating until Sunday.

On the way home - I picked up three DVDs: Shaun of The Dead, Cowboy Bebop, and
The Princess Bride.

Saturday night - I had a meal of baked chicken marinated in miso and lime vinagrette with shittake mushrooms and red onions (in tin foil), aspergus, sparkling water, and for dessert? raspberries, strawberries and mango with a little whipped cream. Turned out tastier than expected. I tend to treat cooking like a chemistry experiment. Having little to no patience for recipes and figuring out measurments.

Watched: Cowboy Bepob (had been forewarned that Shaun of the Dead was too gross to watch while eating). Interesting flick. Possibly the best of the three. It does drag a bit though and the little girl got on my nerves at times. But the animation is amazing. Precise, beautiful, and makes Disney and Dreamworks look amateurish. Interesting mystery. Ghost in the Shell, 1 and 2 is better - I think in it's character development. But Cowboy is fun. Adore Anime. I actually bought the DVD player - so I could see more Anime, since most of it is no longer available on VHS. If you are an Anime fan and know of some good anime flicks to recommend - please let me know. I've seen: Castle Calistroga, Battle Angel ?, Vampire Hunter D, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Princess Monoke, Spirited Away, Lupin III, Witch Hunter Robin, Battle of the Planets, and a bunch of other ones in the 90s (went on a huge Anime kick in law school in 92-94).

Shaun of the Dead - might have been a mood thing, but I didn't find this as funny as others appeared to. The main characters sort of grated on my nerves. What I found funny - was the absurd situations they were placed in.
In case you haven't noticed by now - absurdity makes me laugh. Humilation? Makes me cringe and leave the room. There really wasn't much humilation here - mostly absurd humor. But, the characters talked a lot. Very gabby bunch. Saying the same things over and over and over again. I reached a point in which I was, sort of rooting for the zombies, just to shut them up. Outside of that? Worth a rental just for the quirkiness and the fact that it does a marvelous job of spoofing all those other zombie flicks - especially 28 Days and Night of the Living Dead.

Sunday - I took a leisurely shower as the bathtub (actually more stall than tub, I can't lie down in it - so baths are out of the question - not that I haven't occassionally attempted it - with somewhat amusing results, ie. getting stuck in the tub. Suffice it to say - it's a tub built for someone who is 4'11 or 5'ft not someone who is 6'ft.) filled with water (at some point I am going to have to ask my landlord to snake that drain again - it is taking it 15 minutes to drain the water from the tub.) Got a nice warm bowl of cream of wheat (which took some finagling - first try too milkly, added more cream of wheat, next try - too dry, added more milk - too milky again, finally gave up.) Plus some fruit. OJ. And a heated cinnamin role. With hot lemon zinger tea. (I don't do coffee. I love coffee, but my body is allergic to it. Can't handle decafe either. Tea? Yes. Chocolat? Yes. Coffee beans, Coffee? No. No clue why. You do not want to see me on coffee or coke or pepsi.) Then watched, the Princess Bride.

The Princess Bride - Not as good as I remembered it. The book is better, as long as you skip the added chapter - Buttercup's Baby, which drags out the joke a bit too long. The joke is that William Goldman is abridging Morgenstern's 18th Century literary magnum opus. And at one point, I was beginning to wonder if Morgernstern actually existed. (Yes, I'm one of those poor people who have looked up guillible in the dictionary to prove to some sad prankster that it is actually word. The result being, that I'm more skeptical and less trusting than I used to be. Age does that to you.) But William Goldman does prove an old fiction teacher's point - writing fiction is about telling lies, and the best lies are based on a kernal of truth. If you start to believe the lie, just a little, then the writer has done their job well. The problem with Buttercup's Baby - is that while it is plausible Goldman is abridging the book, it is not plausible that he is fighting Stephen King over the right to abridge the sequel. Or that King actually hails from Florin. That is stretching things just a bit. Getting back to the movie - odd experience, I remember liking this much better in 1987. Now it seemed cheesy, forced, and the acting lack-luster. Admittedly, I liked Mandy Pantikin better in 1987, now the actor just grates on my nerves. Also the TV versions I saw seemed better. Course - in the past ten years I've only seen the last half hour 100 times, I keep missing the first half hour. This is the first time - I've seen the whole thing since 1987. Isn't it interesting how one's tastes change over time? Something you might have adored ten years ago, doesn't interest you at all now.

After that, I dropped off the DVDs, came home, picked up my laundry, an Entertainment Weekly, Fortress of Solitude (the book), and hightailed it to the laundramat for two hours. The mag was pretty good - some cool stuff coming up in movies and TV shows:
1. Bewitched (interesting - this is based on the 1950s tv show which in turn was based on a 1940s black and white movie called I Married A Witch with Douglas Fairbanks and some blond. Now the movie is about filming a movie version of Bewitched with a comic actor and without anyone's knowledge, an actual witch. Should be interesting. Downside? It's written by Nora Ephron and I'm not a fan of her movies. The only ones I half-way liked might have been
When Harry Met Sally and I've Got Mail. The rest? Skippable.)
2. Batman Begins - Can't wait for this one. The cast is perfect - Michael Cain as Alfred. Christian Bale as Batman. Also they are going back to
the Frank Miller - Batman Year One Comics. Telling the tale I wanted to see way back when Burton was doing it - how Bruce Wayne became Batman.
3. Revenge of the Sith - Star Wars III - how Anakin becomes Darth Vader. This is the one I've been waiting to see since Lucas first told us
he'd do prequels and I saw Empire Strikes Back.
4. Harry Potter and the Globet of Fire directed by Mike Newell and starring Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort.
5. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
6. Willy Wonka and the Chocolat Factory by Tim Burton with Johnny Depp in the lead and not a musical.
Ones they didn't mention - but I've seen elsewhere: Domino, Sin City, and V is for Vendetta.

On TV front - Nip/Tuck (late summer). Empire Falls (on HBO damn-it), Their Eyes Were Watching God (on ABC oddly enough). Point Pleasant - this week. Oh and Medium and Lost are apparently doing better in the ratings than Alias, 24, ER, or West Wing. Interesting. Normally shows I like don't do that well in the ratings. My favorite show on TV so far wasn't mentioned at all, of course, and that's Battlestar Galatica. This is the best sci-fi I've seen since the Farscape Marathon and mini-series. The miniseries of Galatica was so-so. The series is *really* good. (May do a separate post on that sometime. This is getting long as it is.)

Came home - ate a tasty lunch, had the chocolat mousse. Watched some of the replay of the Battlestar Galatica mini-series, which trust me is not as good as the first two episodes of the series were this week. They actually managed to iron out the kinks - which surprised me. Had a nice conversation with my mother about Dorothy Dunnett's Pawn in Frankinscense. Then hopped online.
Gotta love long weekends.