jenna_marianne

So, I haven't posted in a really long time! Not much has been happening, which is good because the first half of the year sucked. A lot.

I just let me paid LJ account expire. I'd forgotten how few icons you're allowed (15) and about the ads, which reminds me that I need to download Ad-block on one of the computers I regularly use.

Went and saw two movies this weekend: Hotel Transylvania and Wreck-It Ralph. The first I went to see only because my mother really wanted to see it. My husband and I had been anticipating the second for a long time.


( Hotel Transylvania was awful. )

~~~~

( Wreck-It Ralph was lots of fun. )

Well, I'm back at home (have been since Sunday) after my adventures in Arizona helping with things after an in-law's death.

Things were really intense, but I feel like we really helped out by being there while arrangements were made, and helping sort paperwork and the apartment out.

We also visited with the extended family for a bit. It was a whirl-wind tour. My hubby is having an ear problem (actually seeing the specialist for that today), so we had to drive there. Such a long drive, especially going there when we did it in one long trip (~13 hours); coming home we cut it in half, so much better.

It was incredibly hot. No surprise, it being Arizona in July, but we highs of over 110*F almost every day we were there. Being accustomed to a more moderate climate (averaging in the 70s), it was astonishingly hot. You know it's been hot when you're super relieved to hear the forecaster saying it'll be a high of 104* that day.

Once home, we did some laundry and vegged out. Watched Moonrise Kingdom and it was really fun, totally worth seeing in the theaters.

Then I sat down at my laptop with a bowl of cereal Sunday morning, and SPLASHED MILK INTO THE KEYBOARD! Yikes! It seemed to have fried out the modem, part of the keyboard, and who knows what else. Thankfully, hubby is like having a built-in tech support center. He took it all apart, cleaned it up, inspected it, reattached everything and it's working again! Seriously, no more cereal near the laptop! That's how I destroyed the charger on my last one a couple years ago. :P

Back at work, wishing I was on a vacation-vacation.

Amusing conversation I had with hubby.

Him: What is that word when you expect the world to be better than it is?

Me: Disappointed?

Him: What? No! Optimistic!

Tagged by ericadawn16. She had two sets of questions, so I copied those. I struck through the stuff I'm too lazy to do, like tagging other people or adding more questions.
Rule 1- Post the rules.
Rule 2- Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and then make 11 new ones.
Rule 3- Tag 11 people and link them to your post.
Rule 4- Let them know you’ve tagged them!

1. Pick up the closest book, turn to page 42 and write the first sentence that you come across.
"When decorating a nursery, a good first step is to pick a theme, style, or color scheme." (God, this is depressing)
2. How did you get come to join LiveJournal?
I found LJ by following authors I like, then in searching for new stories discovered fic search comms (which are great for recs). Finally decided to join up to comment on comms and track stories.
3. Favourite place to go, and why.
I love going to the movies, or long walks in the neighborhood with hubby after work.
4. Your life is a movie - what album is your soundtrack?
Is it sad that I don't listen to albums/music enough to be able to answer that? If we go by CDs in my car, I guess I'd have to say the first Gorillaz album?
5. What’s one place that you’d like to travel to?
If money was no limit, a tour of Europe.
6. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
An artist.
7. What do you consider as your greatest achievement to date?
Clawing my way out of the depths of depression.
8. What is your highest played song?
Not really applicable, since I don't listen to music much. I do play a Gorillaz CD in the car a lot, also I really like "If I Had You" by Adam Lambert.
9. Are there any books you’d like to see adapted into films?
IDK, I was recently having a conversation about how it'd be cool in 20 years (after George Lucas is gone), if they rebooted the Star Wars series AND not only redid the originally series, but then followed it up with film adaptations of Timothy Zahn's trilogy sequel.
10. If you could recommend/force everyone to watch one tv show/film, what would it be?
Star Trek: Original Series

1. Pick up the closest book, turn to page 42 and write the first sentence that you come across.
See above
2. What was the first death you cried over, including celebrities and fictional people?
I'd have to have a good enough memory to know this...probably a Disney movie...maybe the mother in Bambi or the dog in Old Yeller? Both were pretty traumatizing.
3. What is your thoughts on Transformers?
The crappy movies or the 80s cartoons or the many subsequent revamp cartoons? Well, obviously I thought the movies were pretty crappy; the first one was dumb yet mildly entertaining, but I had no interest in the sequels. I really liked the 80s cartoons, and loved playing with my brother's toys. Didn't really watch any of the rest of the cartoons.
4. Favourite place to go, and why.
see above
5. What is your highest played song?
see above
6. Who is your favorite mythological figure?
IDK, most mythological figures are pretty jerky (at least in the Greek pantheon...and the Norse pantheon), or maybe I'm just familiar with the jerky ones? So, none?
7. Do Yetis exist?
Um, NO. Duh.
8. Who's your favorite villain?
Kahn
9. What's your favorite plot twist ever?
I liked the one in Sixth Sense and the one in Psycho is pretty classic. There's probably others, but I'm blanking.
10. Which Hogwarts house would you want to be in?
Either Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw.
11. What's your morning routine?
Get up, race through bathroom, throw clothes on, drive hubby to work (since his car was stolen last month), hang out there 30 minutes eating a bagel and surfing internet, drive to work, slap on lipstick and eyeshadow after parking, walk across campus to work.

Some people find DW promotion obnoxious, but in light of the frequent (dis)improvements and changes to LJ, I thought I'd let people know that DW account creation is free through the rest of the year.

From their news post:

Open account creation

Earlier this year, we decided to try out a "no invite codes needed" week to see whether we could do it semi-regularly and still keep the same level of service (and of spam protection) that the invite codes let us stick with. The results were pretty good, so we've decided to try it again, and for a little longer this time!

For the rest of the year, creating a Dreamwidth account will not require an invite code: just visit the Create an Account page.

We do reserve the right to switch invite codes back on if open account creation is causing problems -- invite codes let us carefully balance the site's resources and keep spammers from overrunning the site -- but with luck, that shouldn't be a problem.

Basically I'm on LJ for the comms and people. I'll stay for the comms & people, though if anyone knows any great DW comms (particularly fic search & rec comms), please let me know!

We went to see Ghostbusters (1984) at the local theater yesterday night.

( In which I talk about Ghostbusters a lot )

Still really not liking the new delicious. I do have to say that after doing some bookmarks yesterday there (for the first time since right after the new site came up), they have made some good fixes to the interface (Yay tag auto-completion). It's just that it's still inferior to the previous incarnation.

I really miss the old network view. Are they ever bringing that back? I don't think they've answered that.

Bundles are back, but last I checked the site couldn't handle my larger bundles (like the Stargate bundle, which possibly has several hundred tags for fandom-specific pairings, genres and fic series) and it just never loads.

I'm really liking pinboard more and more. Sadly, the site was down for a few minutes. But how can you get upset, when if you click on Maciej's twitter, you're seeing real-time commentary on him working to get it up and running (he and Linux are "going to have to have a little chat"). Also, he had a temporary page up with the text "Pinboard is Down. We are working to fix things. Please check our Twitter account (@Pinboard) for the latest status updates." and a picture of boxer being knocked out by Ali. :D

Also, there are some new opt-in privacy settings to both "Let people see if I subscribe to them" and "Let other people see my entire network." You can see my network, if you're interested in how it looks, here:
http://pinboard.in/u:jenna_marianne/network/

I can't wait to see what pinboard rolls out next!

Contributing to OTW helps support all the great things they do: Archive of Our Own, Open Doors, the Fanlore wiki, and the Transformative Works and Cultures journal.

WIP. Links to discussion about nu!delicious fail, alternative bookmarking options (pinboard & diigo), and bookmarking in fandom.

( Bookmarking Sites: )

( User Migration Tracking: )

( More Linkspam: )

( User Reactions & Discussions on LJ/DW/etc: )

( A few tumblr posts: )

( Reactions outside of fandom: )

( Official Delicious/AVOS information: )

So, I was looking at someone's icon journal and stumbled upon a post of Suckerpunch icons and it reminded me of the GIANT HATE I have for that film. The icons were all nice, but the IRE they induced was a shock.

I watched Suckerpunch at a second-run theater for ONE DOLLAR and it was still too much. I wanted that bit of my life back. A group of people walked out, and they'd only paid a buck.

There are so many bad things about that movie: its terrible sexual politics, fake girl power, and the glimmers of what could have been.

( Spoilers and triggering content )

The thing that always makes some films stand out in awfulness is when they are almost good. There is little glimmers of brilliance. It makes the bad that much worse. The opening sequence if brilliantly done and the fantasy action sequences (with samurai robots, Nazi zombie cyborgs, dragons, and women kicking ass) being most notable. I want to see the movie that could have been. Throw out the trash that was what happened in the insane asylum and brothel and give me the action movie lurking underneath.