Selkie

Is it heretical to say I was thoroughly disappointed by Rent? I think I would have liked it better as a play, but I still don't think even then I would have liked it. A story about creative, free-thinking people who love and support each other for leading independent lives that don't conform to society's norms is something that couldn't have been more programmed to appeal to me, but I felt utterly unmoved. Even more Taye Diggs couldn't have saved it, in light of the fact he was playing a loathesome one-dimensonal plot device who doesn't sing or dance.

I'm difficult to spook at movies, but "The Thing" does it nicely for me.

{{{{{{{{{Claire}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

Charlie, you have my sympathies. Just keep focusing on the wife, child, and dog who love you, and the support of STHers around the world, to the exclusion of all the ugliness around you.

Not all crank calls need be international, either. And I'm looking for an excuse not to deal with relatives or black Friday and your workplace (et al.) can't be more than a short drive away ..... :ph34r:

So is now a good time to mention I popped some entertainment in the mail for you and Laurie yesterday? (Boy, that sounds wrong, doesn't it?)

I just had the coolest artistic revelation....

I've always been an animal sculptor. Not necessarily a great one, mind you, but animal bodies - and especially faces - made sense to me in a way human ones never have. My technique for sculpting animals makes trained artists cringe in horror, but it works for me. I've seen many lovely, step-by-step instructions, beautifully illustrated, and proven to work. Not for me, though.

Except people. Can't do people. Never have been able to do people. Took a class with a really top notch doll artist on sculpting people, and her system is one of those proven to work systems that I kinda, sort could do. I've been using it on the Lucifer sculpt I mentioned here a while ago. It was far and away the best human sculpt I've done, not that that puts it in very distinguished company, but it was something, right? I struggled over every lump, every crease, every angle, and although I could copy something else to my heart's content, the face as a whole didn't "make sense." The fact that I've been sweating over this tiny lump of clay and it still wasn't right was entirely my fault.

So last night I was screwing around with a lump of old clay that had to be used or putched soon. Figured I'd practice on face for a 12" figure rather than this tiny 6" Lucifer. Carefully applied the technique I'd been taught, did the first bake, and came back to it tonight.

Well, it looked AWFUL. Seriously abysmal. Like something out of the X-files crossed with the stereotypical grey skinned deformed fetus-like big-eyed alien from popular culture. Which is fine if that's what you're aiming for, but I wanted a realistic human face and this didn't even look mammalian.

So there I was, stretching out on the sofa, greyhound resting her head in my lap, staring at this godawful abomination wondering how I could have misapplied the carefully selected, carefully taught system I'd set out to master.

Then, I had an epiphany. All of those disparate parts I've been struggling to understand? Made absolute sense as a cohesive whole. I whipped out a broken Exacto blade, hacked at it for maybe three minutes, and there it was. A really good human face. Just like that. Boom. Oh, it needs a lot of detail work and refinement - that requires time no matter what - but it all makes sense. I could whip out entire heads in a fraction of the time I spent on Lucifer's right upper eyelid, and by using my own method, not someone else's.

Amazing how sometimes knowledge comes all at once, in a rush. EUREKA!

Off now, to go do some detailing while the Kiln Goddess continues to smile on me.

Inca, glad you didn't burn the house down!

I'm learning to hate conducting business on eBay. I've had a number of transactions go south on me recently. I've been whining to a friend of mine (who buys the kinds of items I sell, and understands the market I'm working in intimately) about the details of some of them, and her response to the latest episode was priceless:

OMGoddess, WTF?? How on EARTH do you attract all the freaks, snots, weirdos, and people that should rot in he!! ??  I'm very sorry :(

I've had non-paying bidders call to threaten me to retract feedback and NPB strikes. I've received e-mail threats and general nastiness from underbidders on items I've won. I've had so many items I've bought shattered from unspeakably, obviously lousy packaging that I rarely buy even the best "deals" I see, whehter for myself or for resale. Now I've got another NPB filing for my contact information, which is never a good sign. - epsecially because, with my mother's health and my own, there's a REASON I don't want to conduct business by telephone.

I am sick of this abuse, but for the forseeable future, it's still the only way I can earn money. :icon_evil:

Happy to report that all my Solstice/Christmas/Hanukkah shopping for the year is done, except for one item I simply need to order; I'm waiting for Black Friday to see if I can get a better price.

Other than that, done shopping. Finis. Everything's bought and compiled, and many are wrapped or packaged for shipment a little closer to the holidays. Haven't decided whether to send holiday cards this year, but am leaning toward not. It's one thing to send them during good years, but this has not been a good year by any stretch, and it's hard to think of upbeat topics to write about in the accompanying letter.

Happy birthday, Ben!

(can't believe it took me this long to figure out the subject of this thread)

Don't we get to see this bear we're naming?

Personally, I'm fond of Bear.

Am I the only person willing to step up and say that I really liked a lot of the Books of Magic series? Maybe it's just that a lot of the themes were relevant to events in my own life at the time I was reading it, but I quite enjoyed most of the first six TPBs. After that, well, things got a lot dicier (and Names of Magic and Hunter., the Age of Magic are best not mentioned in my presence) but the series is still a lot better than most people seem to give it credit for.

I myself just picked up the second Lucifer TPB, and once again am kicking myself for not getting into the series sooner. I had tried the first single of Dalliance with the Damned, didn't think much about it one way or another, and more or less ignored all the positive buzz on the message boards thereafter. My mistake. Half priced copies of the first and fourth trades completely hooked me, and now I'm probably going to turn into one of those scary recent converts with more enthusiasm than manners.

Hey, does anyone have any interest in a separate movie trailers thread?

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Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire looks amazing (the Yule Ball alone is worth the price of admission), but the plot must be borderline incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't read the book. Believe me, I'm not a purist about the books, and this one in particular. I thought the source work was in desperate need of an editor with a giant pair of scissors, and indeed, a lot of the extraneous material was omitted. Unfortunately, a lot of more necessary material went with it.

I can sympathize with the challenge of adapting this particular installment to the screen. The previous books each contained one big visual set piece. GoF has five, and each of them contributes something important to the character development or plot. The end reulst was a series of giant set pieces strung together with very little connection between them. Big scenes either cut at odd moments, or lost their emotional resonance because a lot the small but important build-up was missing. Yes, technically all the major points were there in some form or another, but they were often stripped of something important - significance, depth, whatever.

From here, spoilers regarding digressions from the book. Minor spoilers, to be certain, but if you're allergic, stop here.

I thought Cedric's characterization was disappointing. Instead of being a gifted athelete but basically nice, normal guy readers could relate to, and feel sympathy for the death of. Instead, he's played as the sort of "golden boy" it's not difficult to be irritated by.

 

I almost wish the falling out between Harry and Ron hadn't been included at all. Because the events were so heavily compressed, we never got the sense of prolonged estrangement or powerful reconciliation. Seemed more like a temporary snit than a serious event in the relationship.

 

The Tri-Wizard maze? Not remotely scary enough. Not by a long shot. Running from foliage doesn't begin to compare to running from foliage while dodging blast-ended skrewts. And where were the adults during all the contests? Harry's dragon BREAKS FREE OF ITS TETHER, endangering not only Harry but all of the spectators, and no one lifts a wand? In fact, no addressing of the "safety measures" aside from the age line  that persuaded the powers that be that holding the tournament made any degree of sense at all. In previous movies the adults have come across as negligient or inattentive; in this one, they came across as outright sadistic and criminal.

 

No SPEW! Thank Og, no SPEW!

 

I used to lurk and post on TwoP's Veronica Mars forum, but by the end of last season there were 80-100 pages written by the time I'd got the episode downloaded and watched, and it just got a bit silly.

 

But I still check the site daily for recaps of a number of shows.

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I hear you about the difficulty of keeping up with TWoP. Sometimes the recaps are so long they're difficult to get through, let alone the ginormous discussion threads they spawn. The one board there I did have a fighting chance of staying on top of got closed down a couple of weeks ago for insufficient traffic. Figures.

That, and the 50,000 obscure rules for each forum, keep my actual posting down to a minimum. Heck, just generating an "acceptable" username at TWoP that conforms to all their rules is a challenge. Judging by the threads I read, there seems to be a lot of inconsistency about what is or isn't acceptable post content. I was just warned off by a moderator about not being "friendly" in a post in which I was explicitly agreeing with the poster I was quoting (and who hadn't been warned about her post from a few days ago being unacceptable) - which is the first time I've ever had a mod caution me about one of my posts on any MB anywhere.

Still, there are times when I just can't live without my dose of snark, or recaps of episodes I've missed. The Buffy people are great, so I spend a lot of time on that board.

Thanks Selkie, you reminded me to check out their America's Next Top Model recap for last episode, when one of the cracked-out models purposefully pissed in a diaper.

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I can only imagine such an incident being run through TWoP's snark-o-meter. Off to check it out myself....

I will not be bound by moral standards established thousands of years ago! Ahem...

Other boards at which I share my charms:

Televisions Without Pity's Buffy and Rome forums.

The Straight Dope's Cafe Society.

For the occasional fling, Toy Buzz

When I must, (more duty than pleasure): Breakables

My old lover for whom I feel warm and fuzzy nostalgia but never call on any more is Polymer Clay Central

I was impressed with how gory that scene actually was. Made Gladiator look a bit like a school play, really.

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So I'm also the only one who found the gore so over the top it was funny rather than horrific, too? Judging by how easily their limbs were hacked off, those gladiators must not have had any bones in their bodies.

So I'm the only one who was hoping Pullo'd bite it in a bloody shower of gore, wasn't I? I should have known. And now he's taking Vorenus down with him ....

... except I suspect that this action will be what allows Vorenus to survive after what's happening to Caesar in the next episode, so at least that's OK.

Woo hoo! A fortuitous BIN on eBay yielded a lot containing a Darkman, some BtVS figures I never thought I'd be able to afford (these have some problems, but at this price I'm thrilled to have them), a few more figures I wasn't specifically looking for but am happy to have, and a few more "we'll see" pieces, all at a great price.

(dances the happy dance, and tries not to think where she's going to display all this loot).

but the concept of some little foreign being living inside me and feeding off of me? Eeewww.....

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...like 'Alien'?

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Yep. Or a parasite - your choice.

I forgot that I am afraid of small furry creatures with sharp teeth.

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Note to self: Never invite Charlie to my house!

As for mine: you guys have all read my crazy fish-keeping stories over on "What's Going on With You", right? So you know that there aren't many critters that I'm scared to handle? Except....

(whispers oh so softly...)

Bears.

That's right, bears. I'm not scared to see a bear, or to be around a caged bear, or anything along those lines. But if I were to see a wild bear, I'd instantly go into irrational panic mode, no matter what the circumstances. I know most of the time the bear has no interest in harming a human, but try telling that to the panic monster in my head. I'd be more scared of a bear than any of a number of other animals much more likely to want to munch on me, like, say, a crouching cougar overhead or a seriously pissed off diamondback rattlesnake as thick as my arm ready to strike.

Slickevil, if it's any consolation at all, I find the idea of being pregnant deeply creepy. I'm not scared of pregnant women, but the concept of some little foreign being living inside me and feeding off of me? Eeewww.....

Happy birthday, John!

You know, something entirely different occurred to me when reading this topic.

 

Whenever I've heard the words "family-oriented" or "family-friendly" mentioned in conjunction with a company, it's usually to reference that the company supports an outlook that is conservative in nature . . . the white picket fence and all that. A "family-oriented" company of this sort might frown upon things that are deemed inappropriate for children (ex. a "family-oriented" movie company not airing Unrated or NC-17 films), and sometimes going beyond that to a general disdain for anything deemed traditionally leftist, non-Christian. So, for instance, a wiccan lesbian might find herself not being happy at this type of "family-oriented" company.

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I suddenly feel deeply stupid for not even thinking of your interpretation, Wolfram.

What Mark said. You know, Selkie, if a company gives benefits to parents, like reduced workload for the first period after childbirth, or company-paid daycare, the money can come from (at least) 3 sources: The other employees, the shareholders/owners or the government.

In the U.S. it comes from either the shareholders (ha ha ha) or the other employees. When a childless employee's bonus, profit-sharing, medical coverage options, and other benefits are reduced because of "the high cost of health insurance," we're paying in part for the private choices of other employees. Those situations are far from hypothetical; I've worked jobs where that's been the case.

If what you're claiming is that since employee A is single and childless, and employee B has a kid, and the kid gets free nursery school paid for by the company, employee A is automatically lsoing something, I disagree.

Employee B is being paid more for doing the same work solely because of a choice that employee made in his/her private life that has nothing to do with job performance. The company doesn't people take care of my elderly parents, for example, nor would I expect them to, but one could argue that that sort of benefit would be at least as "family-oriented" as subsidized daycare.

For instance, I have never needed extra tuition in school, this doesn't mean that the ones that HAVE gotten extra tuition are somehow leeching off me.

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If it's company-paid tuition we're talking about, then it at least presumably relates to job performance. If we're talking academia, that's a whole other situation.

I've never encountered anything like this, anywhere, and I've never heard any mention of anything like it from any of my friends. What sort of companies are operating like this? I can't imagine any union worth it's salt accepting a situation like that.

Both of my last full-time permanent positions had these kinds of deals; one a national company, one an international. The small local company my mother currently works for has one too. In the case of the places I worked, I knew the hiring managers and was privvy to more of the details than the average, and believe me, these people were most definitely working part-time for generous full-time salaries. That the arrangements existed weren't secret, and were deeply resented by the childless employees who often wound up working lots of extra hours to compensate for no additional pay. That resentment would have skyrocketed had they known all the details I knew.

Presumably the parents aren't getting the benefits, the children are.

The benefit of the insurance itself, arguably yes. The benefit of the company paying a generous portion of hte premium that the parent would otherwise have to pay? That's a benefit to the adults in the equation.

I don't have a problem with a company or government giving more benefits to families in aggregate than I as a childless person get, as long as I'm being paid and treated well. This argument of benefits being taken away from people without children could easily be used to eliminate public schools and tax exemptions and credits for dependents.

That's the government sector, not the business sector. In my mind, those are two very different entities operating under very different rules. I expect government programs to be about being for the good of the people as people, not as economic units.

A different interpretation COULD be that "family-oriented" corporations are ones which provide day-care facilities for the kids of employees and other things to facilitate the working days of the employees with kids. This is a good thing, IMO. (Selkie, it's typically american that such progressive measures in the US is perverted by making it a conflict of interests with the single employees. The businesses that do this in Norway, for instance, take the money and resources for it from their own budgets, not that of the employees. The whole idea is to be an attractive emplyer, and it's mostly used by "brain-heavy" businesses to attract qualified staff)

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Red, are you saying that in Norway single employees are never compelled to put in (almost always unpaid) overtime to compensate for time taken off by parents? Or that parents are sometimes paid forty hours for thirty hour workweeks, whereas single employees are expected to put in forty hours work for forty hours pay? (I can't count the number of arrangements like this I've encountered - I'm not talking about an occasional day off, I'm talking pre-arranged, employee X works thirty hours a week because she has to take care of her kids, whereas single employee Y makes the same amount for working forty hours) Or that parents don't get disproportionately more company-paid benefits by virtue of having kids, which are in effect subsidized by the singles? That company-paid daycare is coming out of someone's pocket - are the parents paying anything for it? Because if not, the single employees are, in effect, making less because they're not receiving the same level of benefits that the parents are.

I've got to get out of this country!

Grrrr! Why do I continue to watch this show, when almost all it's done this season is irritate me? The pacing, the endless flashbacks, the random "let's throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks" events, and most of all, those irritating tail section survivors. I knew Shannon was history as soon as she slept with Sayid. Consensual sex = death if you're a female television character. I expected more from "Lost"!

Assuming Shannon's death wasn't a bit of misdirection, that is. I'm told that during that sequence, if you look very carefully you can apparently see a member of Michell Rodriguez's group being abducted way in the background.

In which case, I get to bitch about the marketing of "Oh look, we told you someone was going to die, and we fooled you into thinking it's someone important and instead we killed Redshirt #37." Still, I'd rather bitch about marketing than creative decisions.

Derailed, although better than the critics would have one believe, is still a terrible waste of Clive Owen and Vincent Cassel.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was great fun. If it sounds like something you'd like, you probably will. If not, you probably won't. Succeeds at what it sets out to do, but it's not going to be to everyone's taste.