From MSNBC: Museum displays big and small family jewels

HUSAVIK, Iceland - Sigurdur Hjartarson is missing a human penis. But he's not worried: four men have promised to donate theirs to him when they die.

Hjartarson is founder and owner of the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which offers visitors from around the world a close-up look at the long and the short of the male reproductive organ.

His collection, which began in 1974 with a single bull's penis that looked something like a riding crop, now boasts 261 preserved members from 90 species.

The article describes the museum as "part science lab, part trophy room." Trophy room, eh? Here's what I want to know - is there a day where people decorate the mounted cocks with sunglasses, paper streamers, and party hats? Because that would be pretty loltastic.

Also, this museum would make a pretty...interesting...set for a porno movie.

ACEN tomorrow!

-Reileen
so put your hands down my pants, and I bet you'll feel nuts

(First read on Making Light. Also on Firedoglake.)

In response to Obama's overwhelmingly popular platform of change, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) unveiled its new campaign slogan: "The Change You Deserve."

Barring all semantic issues with the phrase (ranging from images of fat cats tossing a nickel to a homeless person begging for change to the illogic of "wait, but your party's incumbent right now, so...?" and other such exercises of morbid imaginations), it's also problematic because the phrase is already being used to market the antidepressant Effexor:

The Change You Deserve™

Are these symptoms of depression interfering with your life?

• Not involved with family and friends the way you used to be?
• Low energy, fatigue?
• Not motivated to do the things you once looked forward to doing?
• Not feeling as good as you used to?

Not exactly inspiring, is it? Especially when you consider that the drug's been under a Black Box Warning for promoting suicidal tendencies since (oh, the irony) 2004.

-Reileen
there's no escaping because my fate is horror and doom

From ColorQuiz.com. Italicized the things that are especially relevant.

-

Your Existing Situation
Easily affected by her environment and readily moved by the emotions of others. Seeks congenial relationships and an occupation which will promote them.

Your Stress Sources
The situation is regarded as threatening or dangerous. Resentful that what she has striven so hard for is being menaced, and disparate because she feels powerless to prevent it--fears that she is going to miss out altogether. Unable to view the situation objectively, but extremely agitated and cannot rest in her attempts to remove this threat to her desires. Over-extended and feels beset, possibly to the point of nervous prostration.

Your Restrained Characteristics
Emotionally inhibited. Feels forced to compromise, making it difficult for her to form a stable emotional attachment. Feels trapped in a distressing or uncomfortable situation and seeking some way of gaining relief. Able to achieve satisfaction through sexual activity providing no turmoil or emotional agitation is involved.

Your Desired Objective
Wants to make a favorable impression and be rewarded as a special personality. Is therefore constantly on the watch to see whether she is succeeding in this and how others are reacting to her. This makes her feel that she is in control. Uses tactics cleverly in order to obtain influence and special recognition. Susceptible to the esthetic or original.

Your Actual Problem
Has a fear that she might be prevented from achieving the things she wants. This leads her to employ great personal charm in her dealings with others, hoping that this will make it easier for her to reach her objectives.

Your Actual Problem #2
Depleted vitality has created an intolerance for any further stimulation, or demands on her resources. This feeling of powerlessness subjects her to agitation and acute distress. She attempts to escape into a substitute world in which things are more nearly as she desires them to be.

-

I've taken this quiz before, and I'm pretty sure these weren't the results I got back then. And the quiz was still pretty accurate back then, too.

*goes back to reading Frank Rich's The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth in Bush's America, even though she probably should be sleeping*

-Reileen
the emptiness fills her soul with sorrow

From Daily Kos, by the inimitable, tireless, and courageous dogemperor: When the spiritual advisor of a presidential candidate (Republican John McCain) runs a church that pings nearly every item on at least four different respected "checklists for coercion" and is basically on the same level as or even worse than the churches run by Scientology or the Moonies, you have a BIG FUCKING PROBLEM.

Did you know that there are demons for handwriting analysis and anal fissures? No, seriously.

(If you're interested in finding out more, be sure to check out DE's main Daily Kos blog - he's posted a number of entries recently regarding the infiltration of one of John Hagee's church retreats by one of Rolling Stone's journalists. It's true that Taibbi's article has a bit of a snarky tone to it, but DE, who grew up in this type of atmosphere for at least 25 years before finally breaking away from it, was able to confirm Taibbi's observations about what went on at the retreat and what it did to people.)

***

I was out today with Melissa and Lauren for our usual "Beat-the-ACEN-mob-to-the-Pocky-and-other-snacks" trip to Mitsuwa Marketplace, a Japanese marketplace up on the North Side. Intrigued by Kagura's (from Gintama) fascination with sukonbu, I went and bought some, but it looks like I bought the konbu for making soup stock with, not the snack kind. Whoops. Well, now I have something I can possibly experiment with using my meager cooking skills.

Did you know that there are apple-flavored KitKats? No, seriously. I bought one. Haven't tasted it yet, though.

-Reileen
I remember when rock was young

Found in a .txt document of random notes I'd saved on my desktop:

The Liars' Club - "Where the only truth is that everything here is a lie."

There's an establishment in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood that I used to pass by all the time whenever I drove up to DePaul, and it was, indeed, called "The Liar's Club." For a while now, I've had the seeds of a short story set in a fictional Liars' Club (note the subtle change from singular to plural here) told from the POV of a Mostly-Innocent Bystander (perhaps a bartender at the bar, or related to a bartender, or maybe a fly on the wall who gets swatted at the end of the story) who barely bats an eyelash at the well-groomed businessman talking about his exploits as the most-expensive whore this side of the city one night and then boasting about his religious belief in chastity the next. This Liars' Club is a place where you can bullshit all you want and no one will call you on it - and if they do, it's seen as a challenge to be even more mendacious and outrageous.

***

Venus of Dreams by Pamela Sargent is an intriguing novel, first in a trilogy, set in a future where Earth is actively trying to terraform Venus. There's a lot to chew on here, ranging from the fact that the dominant ruling ideology has shifted from Christianity to Islam (o noes how unpatriotic!), to how Sargent handles changes in Earth's society and how these changes have affected the cultural attitudes of her characters, to the fact that, hey, the Earth is actually trying to terraform motherfucking Venus.

-Reileen
I've got a fast connection, so I don't have to wait

I read this book a while back, but I just found my scribbled thoughts on it again today while clearing out some papers, so I figured I'd type them up in more detail here.

Back cover summary:

Artemesia spent her childhood on a pirate ship, and she's sick of practicing deportment at the Angels Academy for Young Maidens. So she escapes, and sets out to find her mother's crew and breezily commands them out to sea. Soon, the young captain - now called Art - shapes her men into the cleverest pirate band afloat. And then they meet the dread ship Enemy and her beautiful, treacherous captain, Goldie Girl. The Seven Seas aren't large enough for two pirate queens. Art will have to wage the battle of her life to win her mother's title - and the race for the greatest treasure in pirate lore!

Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking - total setup for an original Mary Sue, right? You've got the "spunky" teenage girl with tomboyish tendencies who:

1) Completely says "FUCK YOU" to the societal conventions of her time (in this case, it's an alternate universe Earth in the year 1802)
2) Has a distinctive beauty feature (it's a streak of orange in her hair that was supposedly the result of the accidental cannon explosion that resulted in her amnesia about her past)
3) Knows how to rig/sail a ship and fight with a sword, even though the closest she ever came to it was years ago as a young child...on a freakin' theatre stage
4) Seems to know exactly how to stun naysayers into silence, or if she doesn't do that, she still manages to somehow remain cool and unruffled through it all
5) Is a 16-year-old girl who has somehow managed to convince grown men to be her subordinates
6) Has managed to completely plunder a number of ships as Piratica without killing a single person or maiming them (the piratical Robin Hood, anyone?)

It'd be a recipe for disaster...and only the overall thespian conceit for this novel saves it from being so.

You find out early on that Art's mother, who held the title of "Piratica" prior to Art taking it for herself, wasn't actually a real pirate queen - she just played one on TV stage. And the entirety of Art's pirate crew is composed of the actors who accompanied Art's mother onstage. And I think that, by framing this as a significant part of the story and as part of Art's character, Lee is successful in convincing readers to understand and enjoy Art's adventures not as any representation of reality, but as a feel-good, celebratory, almost mythological story. It's utterly fantastic and theatric. Art herself is larger than life. So while we might not be able to empathize with Art, necessarily, you definitely want to cheer for her. As long as you can put aside the logistics that allow a young girl trained only in stage fighting to hold her own in a real fight, among other inconsistencies, this is a thoroughly enjoyable novel, and it's one of my all-time favorites. Art is Piratica, and not just within the context of her own world as a famous piratess: to us as readers, she's the theatric, magnificent character that her mother once played on stage.

***

On a tangential note, I also recommend checking out the four-book series of the Claidi Journals (Wolf Tower, Wolf Star, Wolf Queen, and Wolf Wing) by this same author. They were the first things I read by Lee, and I remember enjoying them greatly. Of course, this was years ago, when I was in junior high, and I haven't re-read them since (though I plan to do so!), so you may want to take this with a grain of salt.

On another note, I've also read the sequel, Piratica II, and found it immensely lacking. I'll still read the third book in the series when I can find it, though, since I'm fond of Art's character, as impossible and Sue-ish as she is.

-Reileen
you think this torment is romantic

Nick Mamatas (nihilistic_kid) writes about the trend of "fantatwee" in recent fantasy stories:

There are two major families of fantatwee, the first being the retold unreconstructed fairy tale. These stories recite a fairy tale, generally something from Grimm and very very often a retelling of Snow White (and sometimes Snow White with vampires). The second type of fantatwee are stories about how awesome fantasy stories are.

At the risk of engaging in a little biocrit, many young people find solace in fantasy stories. It's escapism, which isn't all that dirty a word. Plenty of realist literature is escapist as well — one simply escapes into the world of aspirational middle-class problems in which one's relations drink and then sit on a sofa to weep as opposed to drinking and then balling up their fists to smash your head in because the rice was burnt. There was escapism in the Gulags too. Escapism is not, by itself, an evil. It is no surprise that these young readers, when they grow up, attempt to recreate the joyous bits of their childhoods by writing stories with this same escapist quality.

Unfortunately, fantatwee is all about second-order escapism. Many great stories have elements of escapism, but also a twist of a thematic screw that lets the reader know that not everything is strawberries and cream. Hard choices get made. Misery abides. In the film version of Return of the King, Frodo may have had a big pillow fight with his friends and then moped about the house for a bit. In the book, he was a shattered man, utterly alienated from his communitarian society. That's what you get for saving the world from doom.

On that note, I've received Mamatas' novels Under My Roof and Move Under Ground, which were being sold as a set for about $7 directly from his publisher's website. I'm...not sure why I thought this was a good idea, since I probably could have gotten two manga volumes off Amazon for that price that I could have added to add to some of my still-incomplete series, but hey, I like Mamatas' blog, so why not support him, and anyway, books!

-Reileen
passion turns pain into ecstasy

The Good: I show off my geek cred by making 1upcakes!

The Bad: They got burninated, though. I think I'll add more green food coloring the next time around (with maybe a dash of yellow), and I'll pick up red food coloring so I can make Super Mushrooms as well. And if I decide to be even more ambitious, I'll mix up purple cake batter and orange frosting for Poison Mushrooms! XD Or, as dantaron suggested, intentionally botch a batch and then color them the same as the Super 'Shrooms.

The WTF: My brother is being sued by the other party involved in an accident back in December in which the only known casualties/injuries happened to the things made of metal, fiberglass, and rubber - all of which should have been covered by insurance. What the fuck does the guy think he can get from my unemployed teenage brother, seriously?!

-Reileen
listen up y'all, 'cause this is it

Here there be full court transcripts of JKR vs. SVA/RDR Books for the three-day trial. The snark, it is strong with JKR's side! And thus, the Reileen is amused.

The Reileen is also amused by this gallery of Disney males as gay pinups. I feel dirty, but I can't look awaaaaaay. o_o;;

-Reileen
you are beautiful, no matter what they say

By way of Angry Asian Man, Joss Whedon is returning to network television with an original drama called Dollhouse:

The show is another sci-fi-themed series about an elite team of secret agents who have "the ability to be imprinted with custom personalities and abilities for special assignments. When they return, their newly acquired memories are wiped." The show follows Dushku's character Echo as she "takes on a variety of assignments”, some romantic, some adventurous, some uplifting, some illegal, "and gains awareness of her role and confinement."

Sounds badass enough already, but here's the kicker:

Sierra
20's, Asian or any ethnicity - certainly not Caucasian. Strikingly beautiful. A Doll like Echo, she has every personality in the world but her own. Is not as self-aware as Echo, but is instinctively drawn to her as a friend. Series Regular.

I only hope she doesn't end up as what Disgrasian calls a "Mutasian":

A recurring archetype in movies and television who does not have speaking lines. Also known as an Ornamental.

Well, okay, if she's a series regular, she's bound to have some lines, but I just wonder if her character will get shafted to the side in favor of Echo's.

I don't know how much I'll be following Dollhouse, since I never watch TV and I don't (yet) have a working TV in my room (all I have is a giveaway computer monitor I got from the old manager of the Gamestop I used to work at), but seeing Whedon's name pop up reminds me that I have to watch that DVD set of Firefly I got for Christmas.

-Reileen
all the things she said

reileen: Doing NaNo is like finding really crap source material that you can then write really awesome neurotically fleshed-out fanfiction about.
reileen: ...or at least that's one way I'm viewing this process of actually writing original shit. XD
reileen: You can take the fan out of the fandom, but you can never take the fandom out of the fan!

...yeah. For some reason, I can't seem to make the transition to original fiction all that easily, even though some of the stuff I write for my usual fandoms are only a couple of name changes away from being original fiction. So I have to make some sort of connection to writing fanfic in order for me to write original fic. This most likely defeats the purpose of me writing original fic in the first place, but hey, whatever gets the job done, right? :D

Anyway, I finished doing the outline notecards for Glass Houses. I'm not sure what I want to do from here with this thing. I might try to pull together what I've learned about the main characters into a single comprehensive character file, and/or work on a rough map of the relevant areas that would just establish things like "Neliam is north of Thorlith" and stuff like that. Or I could just go back to my fanfiction for a while. *can never seem to concentrate on one project at a time, which is no doubt going to drive her even more crazy in the future*

I'm also working through All You Need to Know About the Music Business by Donald S. Passman. mugging_hipster lent it to me after we had a talk about our dream careers. I'm not even halfway through the book yet, but already I know I'm getting a copy of the latest edition for myself once I get some money. I probably won't even break into the bottom of the muzak biz until my 30's, but I might as well start laying the groundwork now, yeah?

-Reileen
I wore the time like a dress that year

Recently I've been doing some work on my NaNoWriMo 2007 novel, tentatively titled Glass Houses after the name of the counter-terrorist organization that the main character gets roped into. (Don't worry, I'm taking great pains to find an infinitely better name, trufax.) I'm taking a revision suggestion from No Plot? No Problem, written by the founder of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty, and breaking down the scenes of the novel onto notecards, making note of the action that happens in the scene, the characters that appear, and why the scene is possibly important to the story (it may not be). It was a little awkward going at first, especially considering that I have so many incomplete chapters and dangling plot threads, and I didn't even come up with a climax for the story (I fail so hard at plotting and pacing, you have no idea), but I'm slowly reaching a point of productivity.

What has me spazflailing a bit is the realization that, with the way I wanted to set things up, I might have to break Glass Houses down into a trilogy of novels. It's just as well, since the novel is divided into three parts anyway. Certainly it would resolve a number of issues, such as allowing for space for Ryker and the other main characters to interact with each other and grow. On the other hand...are you fucking kidding me? When I signed up for NaNoWriMo, I only wanted to write one novel, dammit! What's this "trilogy" nonsense all about, huh?

I suppose we'll see how things turn out when I get around to doing the second draft. I'll continue to write and plan things as a single standalone novel, and if I'm still having issues, I'll take an axe to this thing.

-Reileen
well, my hands are cold tonight

Guest contributor to Racialicious, Kate Harding, posts about racism fatigue and the issues that it brings up, with regards to responses to a racist cover for Vogue featuring LeBron Johnson and Giselle Bundchen.

I'm going to dump a long quote on y'all in a moment - I've tried to snip some parts, but insights are packed into nearly every sentence, so it was a bit hard to do. Nevertheless, here we go:

And it can be especially important to talk about the subtle things, because that’s where privilege reveals itself most clearly. Any white person who’s neither an idiot nor an asshole can see and deplore the racism in, say, this image. But we can’t all see it in the Vogue cover. So when we start talking about the Vogue cover as part of a long tradition of racist imagery that casts African-American men as aggressive apes, we get a much more useful conversation going. Instead of just a bunch of white liberals saying, “That’s horrible!” and a bunch of white supremacists saying, “No, it’s right on!” we get to see all the grey areas of privilege brought out in the open: those of us who try to be anti-racist and educate ourselves accordingly but still missed the racism there until it was pointed out to us; those of us who sorta see it once it’s pointed out but still think people are making a mountain out of a molehill; and most importantly, those of us who missed it in the first place and, on the basis of that, continue to insist it is not there.

We’ve been talking a lot around here recently about that last category of people, with regard to sexism. And as a woman and a feminist, I can tell you those people are FUCKING INFURIATING. The people who actually live as the subjects of discrimination and hatred are not oversensitive; we are sensitized to the more subtle manifestations of those things, because we’ve seen how they’re wielded against us, over and over and fucking over. So many people have trouble grokking the concept of “privilege” and will respond to having their own pointed out with laundry lists of the disadvantages they’ve experienced in their lives. But privilege, in this sense, is not just about obvious advantages. It is about the luxury of not seeing the subtle shit.

As a white person, I haven’t been sensitized to covert racism by a lifetime of experiences. Unlike a person of color who has no choice but to see and feel it every day, I actually do have to “go looking for it”; my privilege could otherwise allow me to go through life believing it doesn’t exist. Because I care about being anti-racist, I do go looking, do make an effort to educate myself about patterns of racism I wouldn’t automatically recognize–and to question myself when my kneejerk reaction is, “Oh, come on–I’m supposed to believe that’s racist?”

But because I’m white, I also have the option of not looking any time I don’t feel like it. That’s what privilege is. It’s the option to ignore nasty shit that doesn’t directly affect my own life, my career, my relationships, my bank account, my social standing, my housing situation, etc. And I won’t lie to you–I take that option plenty. [. . .] I spend most of my activism energy on feminist issues and fat issues, things that affect me directly.

And you know, I don’t even feel guilty about some of that. Each one of us can only do so much, and I’d wager most of us spend more energy on things that affect us directly than on things that don’t. Even among those things, we pick and choose. [. . .] In the big picture, that’s fine. No one has to save the world single-handedly.

But those of us who care about social justice have no excuse for not being aware of issues that don’t affect us directly, or for not taking people seriously when they tell us something that’s hidden behind the screen of our own privilege really is there. None of us has an excuse for wanting to maintain that privilege regardless of whom it hurts. And for my money, there is no better education in privilege for those who need one–and that includes all of us who have it, no matter how many times we’ve read “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”–than these heated conversations about the more subtle forms of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, sizeism, ableism, what-have-you. Because that’s when it really comes out. That’s when people start making the “I don’t see it, so IT IS NOT THERE” arguments, and the “You people are just looking for things to get pissed about!” arguments. There’s a lot to be learned from those.

I don’t have to go looking for instances of sexism and sizeism to get pissed off about; I’m a fat woman, so they find me. But I do look for instances of other forms of bigotry, because in so many cases, if I don’t look, I won’t see them. And those of us with privilege need to look. So the problem with a Wesley Morris telling us certain instances of racism should be beneath our notice, or a Charlotte Allen telling us pretty much all of sexism should be, is that it gives those who really need to look a handy excuse not to. And it’s a hell of a lot easier to look for excuses not to care than to look at experiences outside our own.

But if you've got time on your hands, go read the whole article.
-Reileen
baptized with a perfect name

Vienna Teng updates her scrapbook with a short update on the status of her 4th album, song recommendations, insights from other musicians about their creative processes, and a beautiful instrumental loop she composed a while back that mixes the ethereality of "Drought" with a vaguely islandic-sounding beat.

It's simultaneously inspiring and de-motivating (if that's the correct term).

-Reileen
this is my elegy

I once described my current position in life to vyctori as trying to build a house of cards taller than two levels, where every time I got anywhere near the second level, it only takes a tiny jolt of the table to topple everything over.

At least the cards all collapse into a neat (if pitiful) little pile as opposed to flying all over the place.

***

I've got a partially-filled application for Kohl's on my table. The only missing section is the chart where I have to fill in my hours, because we still don't have a second family car and thus I need to discuss with the parentals what times would be all right for me to steal the van, or for them to drop me off at the mall.

I also (hope that I) managed to clear up some issues with my Direct Loans. They'd already put me on a payment plan because I'd left school back in October, but I called their helpline and got someone to send me both an economic hardship deferment form (because I'm not working at the moment and I don't know how well a hypothetical job at Kohl's will work out, if at all) and then an in-school deferment form, to send in once I return to school in the fall. I currently owe about $8000+ in loans, oy.

-Reileen
two AM and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake

Wltx.com: Cheerleader, Other Girls Beat Up Teen Girl, Tape the Crime

I first saw this on WGN Channel 9 because the kitchen TV was set to that station, but I couldn't find the news story on their site after a quick search, so it was Google time.

What confuses me and pisses me off even more than the six girls ganging up on this one girl (and laughing about it in prison afterwards!) is the mother of one of the assailants, for two reasons:

1) She's the one who lured the girl to the house in the first place, and
2) She was on WGN live saying that "this situation was blown out of proportion" and that the victim shares some of the blame too.

Holy fucking hell, the idiocy here is so gigantic it's visible from space ten light-years away! This is the second time in mainstream news (that I know of) where a parent has knowingly and willingly engaged and indulged in their teenager's adolescent revenge games, the first one being the mother who posed as a "hot guy" on MySpace who befriended her daughter's old friend and then convinced the friend (as the guy) to commit suicide. Guess that goes to show that some people don't ever grow out of high school.

Just...dude. What could the victim possibly have said or done that would have warranted a beating in which a mother, six girls, and two guys (acting as lookouts) participated in? Here's part of your answer:

Lindsay "embarrassed these girls," Garcia [mother of Mercades Nichols, one of the assailants] told News Channel 8. "She said she was going to kick their you-know-what's," and called them "slutty."

What? That it?

Even if the victim really did threaten and talk trash about her ex-friends (and considering how they behaved towards her in reaction to this alleged "slight", it's no wonder the victim considered them "ex-friends" even before this incident), what kind of mother, upon hearing the violence her daughter wants to commit, says: "Oh, sure, I'll help you out"? I think we can figure out where some of the girls learned their morals from. No, there is absolutely no justification for this sort of thing.

(Oh, by the way, if you do decide to actually stomach the video, you should know that apparently what's shown isn't the worst of what happened. Yeah. It gets worse.)

On a different perspective on the situation, the parents of the victim are of course blaming YouTube and MySpace, since apparently the intent of filming the crime in the first place was to try to humiliate the victim by posting it on those two sites and having it become a popular video. To the parents: I think you should be directing your ire more towards the questionable parents of the girls, especially the one who essentially said your daughter had it coming to her. To the girls: I don't think ganging up on a single girl is something you want to become famous for - although it's a bit too late for that now. Enjoy your orange jumpsuits; they probably fit you better than your cheerleading uniforms.

-Reileen
yeah, yeah, she thinks she's the victim

63*F outside right now. Hellz yeah!

***

'21' Discriminatory Casting Unjustified

This is making me wish I hadn't gone to see the movie. I already knew that there was some controversy about this, but I was really attracted to the idea of math geekery being used in such a badass, glamorous manner. Taken on its own merits, I still think the movie earns the 'B' grade I gave it a while back, but in terms of battling the marginalization of positive, strong images of Asian-Americans or Asians in general in the mainstream media? F for faaaaiiill. I mean, I don't think you even saw any Asians on the MIT campus! And the two Asians on the team, as I mentioned in my review, were pretty much token characters, especially Liza Lapira as Kianna.

Okay. Um. Going to attempt to impose order on the chaos of my room, brb.

-Reileen
welcome to my breakdown - I hope I didn't scare you

Haha, wow. Here I was wondering how long my music muse was going to stick around, and then - through one of sannion's oracles - I find out that Dionysos would like it if I didn't neglect my music and has, in fact, asked me to compose a song for Him as an expression of my gratitude for the advice He has been giving me over the past year or so. (Well, a further expression of my gratitude, since I already did an offering to Him and to Artemis a few weeks ago.) I'm sure composing that song will be quite the experience, in between pondering whether I seriously would like to write both "Professional Procrastinator" and "This Song Sucks."

Additionally, I've been trying to think of where in my crowded, book-and-clothes-and-general-junk-stuffed room I could possibly set up even a tiny altar to Artemis.



Folks, what you are looking at is a partial collection of my many unread books. (The others are stacked on top of the dresser.) If I could clear out this space (by reading all these books! ...or the majority of them, at any rate), I could find a small shelf or a table and then stick it there, and then decorate the altar appropriately. There've been a few Artemis statues I've been eyeing on eBay, let me tell you. (Such as this one or this one or this one.* I personally rly rly liek this one, but holy hell, 17.5 inches? I'm not having that while I'm still living in my parents' house. I effing love this cameo pendant, though, and would also like to get my hands on this. Never mind that apparently it's been "pre-blessed"...)

The fact that this space is pretty much in the center of my room could have interesting implications for the significance of my spiritual path in my life.

Or perhaps I'm just staying up too late thinking too hard about things, as usual.

-Reileen
don't you mess with a little girl's dream

---

*Or maybe even this one!

Yahoo!TV: Ramiele Malubay is axed from American Idol.

Well, it was nice while it lasted, but it looks like Malubay wasn't able to get her act together to wow the crowd. C'est la vie...

In more amusing news: Super Smash Brothers Brawl, in the style of the Hellsing manga. OH MY GODS, THAT KIRBY WILL HAUNT MY DREAMS FOREVER and that Pikachu is lolariously manly
***

Finished major work on "Between the Lines." I know this because even despite my usual aikido-style wrist-stretching exercises that I do nearly every day that have allowed me to bend my wrists and fingers in slightly oddtastic ways, I have still ended up with sore wrists. REST TIEMZ NAO. On the other hand, both vyctori and dantaron have given the song favorable reviews, so the sore wrists are totally worth it. And hey, I composed a song in less than two weeks. Not bad for someone with my lack of experience in songwriting.

Additionally, I fixed the middle transition part of "Triskaidekaphobia" so that it sounds marginally more interesting.

-Reileen
why am I walking barefoot upon this road with no one around

An absolutely fascinating website on Aztec Reconstructionism, which one doesn't see a lot of amongst the neopagans. Probably because, according to the author of the site, the Aztec deities do demand blood, and Lady knows real pagan deities are all benevolent and whiteness and light and if they demand something from you, especially icky icky blood, that means they're Very Bad! [/sarcasm] No, They're not looking for human sacrifice, at least not in the same way it was practiced in Ye Olden Mesoamerican Tymes (although you should check this guy's essay on how to bring back the concept of healthy sacrifice in today's society - I have to say, it's got some interesting implications), but voluntary drawing of one's own blood is a necessary part of being an Aztec Recon. 'Cause if you don't do it of your own will, the Gods are going to take it from you. Yeah, it sounds harsh, but They're Gods, so They'd have every right to do so.

Of course, being who I am, I'm thinking about this topic not just in terms of how it might apply to my own worship (Artemis, after all, has demanded both human blood and human sacrifice in her mythos), but also in terms of how I can incorporate this into my creative endeavors, particularly for world-building. I'd love to use the idea of "healthy sacrifice" in a sci-fi society.

Related to my own personal worldbuilding: John Scalzi tackles the practical issues surrounding polygamy in modern America. Be sure to check out the comments too; they bring up some really mind-boggling points. Holy shit, the legalities, they are over 9000! (And yet I'm tempted to incorporate some of this into Ryker's society, since I have the impression that, at least in one city he was in, polyamory was alive and well. But I hadn't decided yet whether that acceptance was realized in legal form in that particular city.)

Related to worldbuilding in general, yanked from the awesome ysabetwordsmith: A Collection of End of World Scenarios. Already I can hear my characters shivering in fear at my amazing authorial powers of doom! Ohohohoho.

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Perhaps this just shows what an elitist whore I am, but I'm really dismayed at all the American-based "How to Draw Manga" books that have been coming out lately. I'd like to think that it's not so much that I'm not Super Special Awesome anymore in my love of Japanese comics and animation as it is that the art that often accompanies these books looks like the shit I drew in 6th grade - when I first started out in anime style. Seriously, y'all, what the fuck is this? This is a marked improvement, but it still can't compare to this. YMMV, of course.

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Read through vols. 1-4 of Tokyo Mew Mew after I received them from a trade on garagesalejapan. I've been finding myself wanting to revisit the magical girl genre lately for some reason, but instead of returning to old-school Sailor Moon on crunchyroll, I decided to branch out a bit (though I still do want to return to Sailor Moon, omgnostalgia).

Well...I got TMM in a trade for some of my other manga, so I don't feel like I wasted money or anything, and I still want to read vols. 5-7, but the series seems lacking to me. I could have overlooked the outlandish premise ("Rich high school kid tries to fight invading aliens by injecting Earth animals with the DNA of endangered species, but he totally misses and hits five middle-school girls instead!"), since that's pretty much requisite for any magical girl series. And I could have overlooked the generically cute art that sometimes hovered at a "just technically competent enough" point (although it made the fight scenes boring as hell).

But I was not willing to overlook the one-dimensionality of the characters. In fact, these characters are so commonplace that I can describe them in terms of other popular anime characters.

Ichigo
Otaku-speak: Sakura Kinomoto, only much less cute and endearing.
Translation: The goodie-goodie middle-school girl who just wants a normal life and to have a boyfriend, and is always unselfish, etc. and so forth.

Mint
Otaku-speak: Tomoyo Daidouji with Rei Hino's personality minus Tomoyo's 'cesty crush on Sakura and her love of dressing Sakura up.
Translation: Snobby rich girl who in reality Just Wants to be Loved.

Lettuce (I kid you not, that's her name)
Otaku-speak: Fuu Hououji crossed with Usagi Tsukino.
Translation: A professional doormat that keeps on slipping out from under people's feet.

Pudding (yes, that is really her name, too)
Otaku-speak: A bite-sized Shampoo with Mokona tendencies.
Translation: A hyperactive Chinese acrobat.

Zakuro
Otaku-speak: Rei Hino (or, if you're going by the live-action Sailor Moon, Makoto Kino works here as well) with the looks of Arashi Kishuu.
Translation: Super-gorgeous girl who is cold and distant for some reason that I haven't yet been able to discern, and is initially antagonistic towards joining the Tokyo Mew Mews.

Let's not even get into the love interests, which include Masaya, the requisite Nice Classmate Who Has No Fucking Clue What's Going On (a.k.a. the Houjou of TMM); Ryou, the Jerk That Needs to Get the Hell Offa Mine Side But Is Really Cute/Hot (Inuyasha crossed with Tamaki, in this particular instance); and Kish, the Conflicted Baddie (Nephrite). I admittedly have a weak inclination for shipping Ichigo with Ryou, but that's because I have a general preference for that sort of dynamic in the romances I read about. Otherwise, I'm scratching my head over what these guys see in Ichigo. Is it her Sakura smile? Her pink hair? What?

The plot is even more confusing and vague. TMM follows a monster-of-the-week formula, which would be fine by me, except that these monsters aren't even remotely amusing or even scary. The aliens who sent/created the monsters in the first place are marginally more intriguing, if only because it's revealed that apparently they used to live on the Earth a long-ass time ago and now they want it back 'cause they're pissed that us stupid humans have fucked it up with pollution and shit. I have to admit that I (or a certain Huntress, at any rate) was amused at the environmental angle that TMM takes in setting up the core conflict of the story.

Overall, I might have liked TMM back when I was still a Sailor Moon Maniac. At the very least, I wouldn't have been bothered by the numerous problems I've just pointed out. But I wouldn't recommend it to other SM fans my age or older; it's best left to those of Ichigo's age bracket.

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And finally, people think that deviantArt's little icon switcheroo deal for April Fools' this year is akin to rape! Oh, internets, nevar change.

-Reileen
I can't believe that I would keep, keep you from flying