Unfix the Gamine

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:08:21 GMT

Really taking advantage of my Netflix lately.

Having only just seen the movie and having never read the book, the biggest problem for me with Atonement was that we don't ever actually see Briony's discovery of her error. That moment, I think, is crucial. When in the five years did she figure it out. Was it a single epiphany or a series of memories filtered through maturity's lens? Was it mere girlish jealousy? The allusion to that is neither strong enough nor insignificant enough to make sense. The performances by all the Brionys (particularly Romola Garai's, I thought) and by James McAvoy as Robbie were really fantastic, to be sure. Whatsername Snaggletooth was perfectly adequate, but I can always take her or leave her. Ultimately, though, I was unsatisfied because it is Briony's story despite the longing gazes of the lovers and big 'ol chunk of it just ain't there.

Now, back to a week of Weeds.

What's that whooshing sound outside my office window?

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:41:37 GMT

Oh, right, it's my life passing me by. Get up, Ellie!

Someone in the house just got a new computer.

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:47:29 GMT

Yay! Adorable Mac Mini!

Someone in the neighborhood is getting a new roof.

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:46:49 GMT

Yay! Noise!

Another short list of things that a lot of people seem to like but that I think are absolute crap:

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:33:57 GMT

1. Lolcatz speech (I can't even talk about this one.)

2. Mara Davis (Never has one so witless and so obvious of observation thought herself so clever.)

3. The Tonys (Okay, I don't think the Tonys are crap exactly, I'm just over all the people in the Atlanta theatre scene who get all worked up over them and start calling the people on the New York theatre scene by their first names as if they know them. If only they put as much passion into their work locally.)

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:32:18 GMT

It started this afternoon about 1:30. I was taking a nap when I heard, you're not going to believe this, emergency sirens going off. In this part of Decatur? I didn't know we even had sirens here in the ghetto. I remember thinking, "Well, we're in tornado country," and starting to fret since the recent Atlanta tornadoes are still so fresh.

Lulu began scratching at the door frantically which usually means another neighborhood dog is in the yard. There were people walking up and down the street, which isn't so odd, but when I tried to let Lulu out on her lead, she balked and began trembling. I noticed two men standing at the end of the driveway. They looked slightly threatening, I guess, but people in this neighborhood always do. Lulu skittered back inside and I closed the door thinking it was the sirens making her nervous. I popped the TV on and surfed for a while. I began to notice that the basic cable networks were on, but the local stations had all gone to static. I called Comcast, but got some sort of message saying that all circuits were busy. I called D. Same thing. I was confused more than anything when I heard the noises outside. Again, I thought it was a dog, maybe getting into the trash. But when I went to the door, there was a man standing on our carport. We've had a couple of numbskulls wander up in the yard before. A contemptuous, "Git!" usually does the trick.

When I opened the door a crack to order the man away, he turned. His face. His face was missing, half of it, at least. He moaned. I thought for a moment to help him, but his meat hooks were up and around my throat before I had time to make a move. I don't even know what I did. I reacted in some sort of animal survival response sort of way. I slammed the door on his arms, I think. I don't know, but they snapped like twigs and he let go. But, he didn't stop. He stumbled into the dining room, still coming at me.

I ran to the bathroom. I don't know where Lulu went. She is positively useless in a fight. I heard him coming down the hall. I emptied the shelves looking for a weapon, something, anything. As it happened, we had to replace the bathroom doorknob last night. There was a hammer and a screw driver and the remains of a busted doorknob. I could hear him clawing at the door. I didn't know whether to wait for him to get through or try to surprise him. I froze for a moment, but then I suddenly heard a scratch at the bathroom window. It was another one. I knew I had to do something.

I counted to three and flung the door open. I raised the hammer as high as I could and brought it down on his head or rather what was left of it. I brought it down again and again and again. He collapsed. There were hands on me again. On my arms. Another one. I began swinging at its? her? head as hard as I could. The hammer caught her in the temple, slammed her head into the wall, and sunk into the drywall. It collapsed. Were there more? Where was Lulu? Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, the side door was still open! I leapt over the bodies, ran to the dining room. To my infinite surprise and joy, Lulu was holding another one at bay in the doorway. I've never seen her so frighteningly vicious. I swung the hammer overhead and sunk it into the thing's forehead. It got stuck! I pulled and kicked the thing in the chest. Lulu went at its crotch. It put its filthy, putrid hands on me. I couldn't get the hammer out. What if this one survives?! Finally, with my foot on its sternum, I yanked with all I had. The hammer flew at my own head along with all sort of slime and tissue. The creature collapsed. The hammer hit me square in the nose.

Mercifully, there were no more to be seen. Lulu returned to her shaky nervous self hiding under my desk, and I dragged those stinking things out of my house. Dumping them on the carport as fast as possible, I locked the doors. I was gagging on the smut on my face. I was bleeding. I turned on the shower and got in fully clothed. I spat and cried and hacked and scrubbed. I saw myself in the mirror. My nose is broken.

I tried to call the police but got the all circuits busy message again. Mercifully, no others have come into the yard. There have been some walking the streets... or maybe they were just the meth heads who normally inhabit our neighborhood. The sirens are still going off. CNN went off the air, too, a few hours ago. I'm reduced to Fox News. They're only talking about a "disturbance" erupting in cities all over the country. They're saying Atlanta may be hardest hit because Hartsfield-Jackson has been offline and completely incommunicado since about 4:00. No news source is able to get any reports from the ground in Atlanta.

I don't know what to do. I don't know if I should leave and chance it. I don't even know what this is. It's like... like the walking dead or something. It's hard to believe that just this morning I was walking around Kirkwood salivating over the house where D. and I had that first spark. Now, I don't know where he is. He should've been home by now, if it were a normal day, which it isn't. I've dialed his number a thousand times. All circuits busy. I don't know why the internet is working, but it is. Please, if you read this, tell him to come home if he can. If you read this, please send help if you can.

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:38:33 GMT

Yesterday, driving home from the movies, looking for "For Sale" signs, I suddenly had the urge to take a little detour to go look at this old house I once knew (partied in, crashed in, fell in love in). It's gorgeous, completely dilapidated, unwieldy, old, huge. I don't know if it's even for sale; it appears to be undergoing much needed repairs. I can think of a thousand reasons why we shouldn't even consider pursuing this house. But, I'm not going to think of them. Instead, I'm going to walk the dog in that neighborhood today. Yes, I'm stalking a house.

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:38:05 GMT

Being fat does not make one a bad, stupid, or otherwise unsavory person. It just makes one fat.

Grammar Cop

Sat, 31 May 2008 17:59:08 GMT

Words in the English language are pluralized by adding "s" or "es" to the end of the word excepting words that are the same in their plural and singular forms (e.g., deer). Stop using the apostrophized "s" to pluralize words. It makes them possessive not plural.*

"Niece's" means "belonging to a single niece" not "more than one niece."

The only exceptions to this rule that are ever perceived as even a little correct are numerals, letters, and words used as words (e.g., 3's, Q's, and no's)

Sun, 25 May 2008 23:42:09 GMT

One day I hope to live in a place where there isn't the constant thump-thumpa-thump of outsized woofers blaring from the trunks of old Oldsmobiles rattling my windows and making me think terroristic thoughts. :::sigh::: I know, I know, it's a holiday.

Sun, 25 May 2008 11:47:25 GMT

Medea
Lady Macbeth
Blanche DuBois
Nora Helmer

Thu, 22 May 2008 11:24:14 GMT

So, just as gas prices run over $4.00 per gallon, I accept two, count 'em, two gigs in Cobb County. One, a show at Theatre in the Square in Marietta, the other, teaching at Kennesaw State. These will last from July to December. The play commute will be about 60 miles round trip from where I live in outrageous traffic, and the teaching gig is even farther. What have I done?

We're looking at houses. Maybe we look in that northwestern I-75 corridor. Anybody got an agent they'd recommend to first timers?

Did I also mention that the gigs conflict with pretty much every job I have... or want to have (I'm interviewing at a big deal place right now)? I'm an idiot.

Tue, 20 May 2008 09:25:24 GMT

Notice the time.

http://www.crackunit.com/2008/04/30/10-things-i-learned-from-mental-detox-week/

For Mother: Mom needs a break

Sun, 11 May 2008 16:20:35 GMT

With thanks to jackbabalon23, the photog and original poster.

Sat, 10 May 2008 02:10:40 GMT

Thanks for the birthday wishes. Always nice.

And now, a letter to the editor... of Maxim Magazine.

Dear Mr., uh, let's see here... Ah! Kaminsky,

Why am I receiving your magazine, your little bit of pop culture detritus, in my name at my home? Why would I, a heterosexual female and feminist, order a subscription to a magazine that makes its money peddling the hypersexualized, airbrushed, not-quite-but-almost-totally-unclad flesh of female pop stars and too-long-out-of-the-public-eye actresses looking to hook into the ADHD-addled brains of the American mainstream? (Shame on you, Gillian Anderson!) I don't see this as something I really would have done. I anxiously await your explanation.

Breathlessly,
Ellie

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:54:02 GMT

'Spell Checker Blues'

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

Anon

(Source: http://torch.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/spellchecker.html)

Turns out I'm not a finisher

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:36:50 GMT

"Here are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish."

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Iliad
The Time Traveler's Wife
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Thu, 01 May 2008 11:14:11 GMT

Dear Universe,

I realize it's important to knock a person down once in a while just to make sure she knows who the hell she is dealing with. I know it's important to make sure that I don't get too damn cocky as I am wont to do what with all the tremendous good fortune, you know, the money, the fame, the respect and admiration of all who cross my path. Yes, yes, I get it. But, do I have to get it all in one week? The car and the ankle on top of this unbelievable schedule all leading up to a Very. Important. Interview that I would like very much not to blow. Look, I'm not saying I have it as bad as some. Atlanta is not Darfur. My ankle is not cancer. My car woes are not the same as being, say, homeless. Yes, you're right on those scores, but I get it. I'm humbled. Could you please back off just a bit?

Thanking you in advance,
ellie

The Van Gogh Cafe Opens This Weekend

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:31:59 GMT

The Van Gogh Cafe
Adapted for the stage by Lauren Gunderson from the book by Cynthia Rylant
Directed by Clint Thornton with Musical Direction by Bryan Mercer
Synchronicity Performance Group
at 7 Stages Backstage Space, 1105 Euclid Ave., Atlanta (L5P)

Friday, April 25: FREE Preview at 3:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 26: Soft Opening* at 1:00 p.m., Hard Opening at 3:00 p.m.

Tues-Thurs mornings and Saturday and Sunday afternoons through May 18th.

Featuring Ayesha Ngaujah (Angela's Mixtape), Edwin Link (Night Travels), Patrick McColery (Fix Me So I Can Stand), Katie Merritt (The Ghastly Dreadfuls), Tim Stoltenberg (Indulgences), and Kara Cantrell (Pecos Bill and the Ghost Stampede).

Tickets are $15 reg / $12 for children 12 and under. Click the image below to view box office policies or purchase tickets online.

*Regular ticket pricing applies.

x-posted to my LJ

We've got baby!!

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:19:03 GMT

Last night,

yamguitar's sister, Dee, gave birth to a "strong and healthy" baby girl! That is all the news I have because they are still reeling from the birth in Colorado as you do from a birth, but those of you who remember Dee and Arpad's struggles with the birth and death of Roka just one year ago will know that this is a wonderful moment for our whole family!

A Running List

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:48:29 GMT

Things I think are pretty crappy that other people (a lot of other people) seem to be to think are great:

1. American Idol
2. Disney (the movies, the parks, all of it, in fact, I think it's rather evil)
3. South Park
4. Chris Farley
5. 50 Cent

More ass shakin'

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:18:55 GMT

http://www.groovygrooves.com/dancing-videos/the-ultimate-lindy-hop-showdown/

Just a catch up

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 21:07:38 GMT

Strike? What strike are y'all talking about? Oh. I must have had extra life this week.

Speaking of which, the luncheon on Tuesday was great. The interview on Thursday went pretty dang well, I think, and the audition on Friday by phone yielded my first ever paying VO gig (though it's still unclear if I'll be Woman 2 with one line or Woman 1 with 43,612 lines. Pays the same either way.) Thanks AQ!

I want to buy a house. I want to plant a garden. I want to make a baby. I want to make a company. I really should get a full-time job or...

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:04:03 GMT

Goddammit, George Bush, where the hell's my cheap gasoline?!

Atlanta Tornado

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:29:12 GMT

The tornado that hit downtown this weekend was the result of a huge line of storms that swept along the I-20 corridor for the most part. The main tornado touched down in downtown Atlanta on Friday, March 14, and a second line of tornado-spawning, hail-riddled storms swept through about 24 hours later. Strong thunderstorms are not uncommon in the South and as the tail end of tornado alley, we expect a few twisters each spring, but one of this magnitude is pretty rare for us.

A collection of links to archival photos/video of the events of this weekend for my own remembrance and for out-of-town readers:

A collection of aftermath photos from wiebke 's friend Tom:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomhaney/sets/72157604123859300/show/

A photo of touchdown from 11Alive News:
http://www.11alive.com/news/graphics/big_MG_6751.jpg

A video of touchdown nearing downtown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5THCsnxRVQ

A collection of aftermath photos from photognome :
http://pics.livejournal.com/photognome/gallery/0003t2f9

A post in the atlanta group with the NWS report. It was an F2.
http://community.livejournal.com/atlanta/2774399.html

An explanation of the fscale for tornadoes:
http://www.tornadoproject.com/fscale/fscale.htm