What I've Been Up To

I have been working on Part Deux of what I'm referring to in my head as "A Week in the Life" since...well pretty much since I put up Part the First in...(checks blog) oh my God, January?! Yikes. In my paltry defense I have been having a doozy of a time with the ending to Part the Second (tentatively titled "Monday's Minotaur" which...yeah). I've re-written the pivotal transition scene five times and I'm still not satisfied. It starts out on a bus and I want to keep the action on the bus in order to keep the story condensed, but (in typical Cell fashion) the characters have gotten all carried away and now want to do things like "walk around the city" and "pretend they're detectives" and...ugh.

So, I'm onto my sixth attempt at finishing this piece and I am thisclose to just crashing the bus they're on and being done with it. "Rocks fall. Everyone dies."

In the meantime I've been doing other things, paramount among those was the reformatting of my computer which was infected with Loki's Own Virus and needed to be completely wiped in order to be useable. The fun part about the "Google Redirect Virus" (also known as "Alureon" which is an awesome name for a craptastic thing) is that it doesn't let you use Google. You go onto the site, it doesn't recognize your Google ID, then when you click on links, it takes you to some scam pages. The virus also disguises itself as a driver and hides in your registry, pushing out little tendrils of evil into your machine and just really mucking everything up.

So. Full-on reformat it was. A three day process. But it's done now and I can finally get back to work. Or, you know, as close to work as I ever get. So, rather, Endless Procrastination and WoW.

What I was doing prior to deciding I needed to write something this Spring Break.

I've also been watching movies and TV Shows because, why not. So. A running list:

•  Chronicle: the found-footage movie about teenagers getting super powers and then Screwing Everything Up. I saw this with the Captain on Valentine's Day this year and it was very, very good. I thought I was getting tired of the found footage movie but this one was masterfully done and the story was so engrossing that I was riveted the entire time. Although (spoiler) I was kinda upset that the black guy died first...as usual. He looked like the famous Jett Jackson so, bummer.
• Sherlock: the BBC series with Benedict "Voice of Smaug" Cumberbatch and Martin "I'm F-in' Bilbo" Freeman. So amazing. They've thrown Sherlock Holmes into the modern era complete with Google searches and cellphones and all the problems those bring to a retelling of Sherlock Holmes. Yet the raport between Watson and Holmes is excellent and the show shines even as it exists in the murky shadows of London's streets. Plus:

Look at this excitement. A murder's just been announced, after all! ;)

• Being Human: the BBC version. I watched the first three seasons of it on Netflix last year while I was wracked with insomnia and enjoyed it tremendously. The show is pretty much everything I like wrapped up into one foul-mouthed, gory show. Urban supernatural? I'm all over it. Well-acted? Done. Character development and plot-driven story-telling? And how. While season 4 is a completely different animal (now there's a Prophet Child and Plans for World Domination) at its heart, even with a new cast, there's still just enough of that "three supernatural friends try to make it in a world that doesn't believe in them" that I'll keep watching. And there's the fact that it's very often hilarious:


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• The Woman in Black: I saw this in the theater with the Captain and I'm pretty sure I gave him a bruise. I don't scream in scary movies, instead I gasp and cut off the circulation of whomever I happen to be sitting next to. When Bilbo turns into evil, troll Bilbo in Fellowship of the Ring, I squeezed my brother so hard, he had little finger-shaped bruises on his thigh for days. But yes, this movie was everything I like in a horror movie - it had the Victorian gothic sensibility, the creeping fog, the over-bearing air of Evil and the threat of Terror around every corner. Plus a few fun mind games and creepy children. Mixed into all of this was a more modern horror element and the mix of the traditional and the new worked together to really make this movie absolutely wonderful. I'd watch it again. Preferably with the lights on, though.
• Downton Abbey: oh this show. I'm so addicted and I have my mom, sister, and dad hooked on it too. With a little time and judicious application of the war scenes, I'm sure I can get my brother into it, too. Little did I know when I heard the guild whispering of it on Thursday nights that this show would take over my brain as it has. Attempting to describe it is like trying to describe that book Ishmael. The one about the talking gorilla? You say that and people automatically tune out even though the book is excellent. Explaining that it's essentially a soap opera set at the turn of the 20th century in an English manor house and what happens to the family and the servants is a really good way to turn people off. But. It's amazing. First season's on Netflix. :) Also? Dame Maggie Smith. You can watch for her alone:
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• The Adventures of TinTin: I missed the first part of this movie, but I really loved the part I did see. It's so pretty and the story is rollicking and I just had so much fun. Completely awesome. I'll have to procure it at some point in the future so I can see how it starts, but regardless, it was really entertaining.
• Immortals: I have a color-theory about this movie that is very long and needs its own blog post to describe, but I enjoyed it. A gorgeous movie in the slow-mo style of 300 and that ilk. But though the story isn't quite up to par, it's certainly worth watching for the pretty. (And the color theory) (And what they're saying about man and bestiality and the horror of war). Umm... I only enjoyed this movie because I analyzed the heck out of it, apparently...

I've also been to the ballet to see the ballet I'm named for ("Giselle") and now I want fanfiction...I know, I'm a horrible person. And, in other news, the 6 Nations Rugby Tournament is back. I'm probably going to get around to writing out the rules for those in my family who refuse to believe it has any.

So that's what's been occurring in my life these past few months. I am utterly failing at New Year's Resolution number 3 (keep to a blog-writing schedule) but I'm going to do my very best to do better.

Until next time when I'll (hopefully, please God) be bringing you Part Deux of The Story That Isn't Working.

Back I go... to the pain...I'll let Elijah speak for me:

BzzAgent Review: Covergirl NatureLuxe Makeup

I was very impressed with this foundation. As someone who can't go a day without seeing red, blotchy patches on my face, it's a continual struggle to find a foundation that not only covers the redness but also doesn't make me break out. I've had the best luck with mineral-based foundations in the past so I wasn't expecting much from Covergirl's latest brand. But Natureluxe actually provides a good amount of coverage, matching my skin tone really well and staying on for hours.

The brand's claim that it is the lightest makeup you will use is absolutely true. Even my tried and true mineral foundation starts feeling like it's cracking around 4:30 pm, but the Natureluxe is absolutely light and airy and fresh all day long. My only complaint is that it definitely starts to wear off a lot sooner than would be useful, but I use it when I'm just going to be around the house or running a few errands rather than going to work where I rely on my "real" makeup.

A good product from a good brand; I even like the way it smells! All around goodness. I enjoyed it immensely and suggest it for people who don't like it when they can feel their makeup on their face. I can almost verify that you won't feel this one.

Time for an Angry Geek Girl Post...

It's been a while since I've had a geeky subject to rant about, but I think this particular situation deserves a little anger. For all of my aspirations to be in the publishing industry eventually, there has been all sorts of crazy drama lately. I'm not going to go into the Wicked Pretty Things anthology and all of its ridiculous shenanigans mostly because Cleolinda over on el-Jay did a much better job than I ever will. Click her name for the link to her overview of the haps.

What I want to rant discuss today, however is the very interesting (and by interesting I mean awful) use of demeaning language in an article by the New York Times. An illustrious institution, to be sure, but that's certainly no excuse for the callous and really insulting article they published.

The New York Times review of HBO's new series Game of Thrones (found at the link back there) starts inauspiciously with the interesting title: "A Fantasy World of Strange Feuding Kingdoms." Right off the bat, I'm on the offensive. Strange? That's a...strange choice of word for a review title, but I suppose it could work...

But the author of the review, Ginia Bellafante, takes this article as an opportunity to show how very little she appears to know about this show, the book series it is based on, and girls in general.

Let me clarify before I go further and explain that I do not like George R.R. Martin's Westoros (the land where Game of Thrones and its book series is set). I have tried on more than one occasion to slog through A Game of Thrones, the first book in the series, and I just cannot do it. I do not like the characters, I do not like the setting, and I have just not been in the mood to push through a book I do not like.

I want to like you George R.R. Martin, really I do...

This dislike of the series, however, does not make anything that Ms. Bellafante wrote any better.

She begins her article with speculation on how much the 10 episode mini-series cost to produce, referring to its "quasi-medieval somewhereland" setting and its "sweeping 'Braveheart' shots of warrior hordes." Already she has forced me to defend HBO's right to spend money as they see fit and the show itself (I don't want to do this. HBO spends a lot of money that could be used for other stuff). Quasi-medieval sounds pretentious in the best of settings. In this case, coming as the second sentence of her intro, it just seems mean. I get the feeling from the outset that she isn't going to give the show a chance, to judge it on its own merits, rather she has already pigeon-holed it as something she will definitely Not Like, and so her review is tinged with this repulsion from its inception.

And what, pray tell, is wrong with quasi-medieval, anyways?

Not a really good way to write a review, I think. But I mean, I get it. She doesn't like this kind of show. She concludes:

“Game of Thrones” serves up a lot of confusion in the name of no...relevant idea beyond... notions that war is ugly, families are insidious and power is hot. If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort. If you are nearly anyone else, you will hunger for HBO to get back to the business of languages for which we already have a dictionary.

And that's fine. If you know anything about me and my blog, you know I'm critical of movies and their plots, and that I have no qualms about telling folk why I didn't like something. Ms. Bellafante is more than entitled to her opinion on this show, and I am glad she is privy to such a grand platform where she can share it.

The problem occurs when Ms. Bellafante attempts to make her review about something else: feminism. In a weird turn of events, Ms. Bellafante claims that the show is attempting to pander to a female audience by including sex and sexual-intrigue in this "boy fiction." She speculates that all of the sexual exploits (something I'm pretty sure HBO is known for doing...they can show skin so they do...) are something "tossed in for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps that no woman alive would watch otherwise."

Whoa... That is...wow. That is a huge claim right there. No woman alive?

Besides the fact that a statement that all-encompassing is a little nuts, it's highly demeaning to attempt to use feminist rhetoric for something that is so non-feminist. The series, so far as I remember and have come to understand from other reviews, is full of strong women doing their thing and doing it well. It's got its problems, yeah, but most things do. Ascribing to it a sense of pandering isn't really fair to it, and is also problematic in another way. By assuming that the sex is what's been added (not the case, btw: one of the reasons I stopped reading was because I couldn't take the sex in the book anymore...my delicate sensibilities and all) Ms. Bellafante is insisting that is what draws women to a show. Not the plotlines or the war scenes or even Sean Bean. It's romance that supposedly draws us, and by positing this, she's made her supposedly feminist-point rather soundly anti. Women only like shows/movies/books if there's love? Sheesh. This isn't the 1800s, we're allowed to like more than the Domestic Sphere.

If I were going to watch, it'd be to see Sean Bean be all scruffy and quasi-medieval.

Let me back up and comment on some of the other troubling turns of phrase Ms. Bellafante resorts to in her review:

In a sense the series, which will span 10 episodes, ought to come with a warning like, “If you can’t count cards, please return to reruns of ‘Sex and the City.’ ”

[On the climate of Westoros] "you have to wonder what all the fuss is about. We are not talking about Palm Beach."

The series claims as one of its executive producers ... author David Benioff, whose excellent script for... “25th Hour,” did not suggest a writer with Middle Earth proclivities. 

 I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first.

Do you see what she's doing? She's saying that "Middle Earth proclivities" are something to be ashamed of, that women don't read books like The Hobbit in public, and Heaven help a group of them who might be wanting to do so... She even posits that Sex and the City is the best choice of show for you if you can't understand the plot line...

We say that we as a country are moving forward, that we are losing our tendency to pigeon-hole and sort, to say that If you are a Nerd, Then you cannot be a Girl. There are a host of Geek Girls on the web who would love to take anyone who continues to think so erroneously to task.

But Ms. Bellafante is doing the exact same thing in her article that we accuse intolerant characters of doing. She is embracing something that isn't really a societal norm anymore (in this case poking fun at the "lowly geek") and asking us all to come along and help her in her fun-poking...

And by expressly saying more than once that no "real girl" would be caught dead watching this show, Ms. Bellafante is essentially belittling all of us Geek Girls that love fantasy-esque shows. The saga of Katie the Star Wars Girl really showed how big the online geek community is and how many of us have felt small and inconsequential in the span of our lives for what we like. I'm not trying to say Ms. Bellafante shouldn't have said these things, I just feel there has to have been a nicer way to go about it that doesn't involve essentially insulting anyone who has leanings toward the fantastical.

Someone with such an inherent dislike of fantasy and how it pertains to our real lives probably shouldn't have been asked to write a review on a show based on a series that is beloved by so many. I mean, did you see the Internet explode when it was revealed that the last book in the series finally had a release date? Pure, joyous chaos.

Book 5 in the series. This is FTW according to a lot of the Interwebs.

Ms. Bellafante's conclusion deals with the idea that HBO's strengths in original programming lie in, as she says, "its instincts for real-world sociology" as it has accomplished in such highly recognized shows as The Wire, Big Love, and Rome. She argues that shows with more fantastical leanings, like True Blood and now Game of Thrones feel "cheap."

What I think Ms. Bellafante fails to understand is that the point of fantasy is to make us consider our own lives. Well-written fantasy is one of the best explanations of real-world sociology there is, with the fantastic stepping in to really show the problems that we sometimes don't see in our day to day lives.  A book like Harry Potter isn't solely about the trials and tribulations of a boy in Wizard School. It's also about prejudice and judgement, love and family and trust, true friendship and the overwhelming terror of true evil. To only see the fantasy elements and miss how the book is merely couched in these to say something about overarching concepts, is to miss the point of the book.

So to say that fantasy does nothing but provide an escape for those who have no other way to do it (what I felt Ms. Bellafante was doing) is to completely misread the point of fantasy.

And if Ms. Bellafante doesn't understand that, she cannot be expected to understand the appeal of this show. I am left with the question, then, of why she was chosen to write this article. I can only hope that in the future there will be a modicum of tact used in reviews. By all means, slam something that is awful, just don't slam its fans (or all the tangential fans), especially when it hasn't even come out yet.

Game of Thrones premieres on HBO tonight, Sunday, April 17th at 9 pm Eastern. I won't be watching it for reasons I've already mentioned (plus, it's got all sorts of crazy sex...oh my delicate sensibilities lol) but if you're interested, by all means please prove Ms. Bellafante wrong.

BzzAgent Review: CoverGirl Lip Perfection

I recently joined BzzAgent and got my first free sample, CoverGirl's new Lip Perfection line of lipsticks. I got two colors: Fervor and Sweetheart.

Fervor is the color I requested as it's the one closest to my own lip color. I don't often wear lipstick (gloss is more my speed... chapstick is even closer) so I was excited to try it.

Here's my sample stick. It lives in my bag with the chapstick, I like it so much.

Overall, I've been very pleasantly surprised by the quality, color-last, and even taste of this lipstick. If I apply it in the morning, the color lasts all the way through lunch and is pretty much still there even after I eat. And maybe I am new to the world of lipstick, but the fact that the lid clicks into place is awesome. Checking the price on Google, it looks like they're going for around $5 which is a steal for a lipstick that works really well.

The CoverGirl claim, that you will have more beautiful lips after 7 days, is the only thing I haven't really been able to confirm. I have been wearing the lipstick consistently, but, like all lipsticks I wear, I've found that ultimately my lips dry out and crack leading me back to my gloss as opposed to reapplying Fervor. I don't know if that's just a by-product of my stupid-dry skin or if I'm the 1 out of 10 the claim isn't true for, but this isn't enough of a  reason not to use Lip Perfection.

Overall, I give this product 4.5 out of 5 stars. The quality, color, and clicking lid more than make up for the product's shortcomings.