I just got an email from Borders: - reserve the new HP and the DH and choose from one of two stickers that say "Trust Snape" and "Snape is a very bad man." What, like we can't trust him in this matter and think he's a bad person?

I bet they've had this email waiting to be sent out for months and just needed to fill in the date of the release.
After my post complaining about Drew's sleeping habits he went and gave me the bird by sleeping for 11 hours last night, while only getting up twice to nurse and then immediately going back to sleep. Given a bit of luck he'll prove me wrong again tonight.

***

About three weeks ago a gal came into my Mommy-n-Me session saying she was a casting rep for Baby Einstein and handing out flyers asking for photos of 2-5 month old babies so they could consider them for a new video shoot. I didn't take a flyer, as Drew was only 5 weeks at the time, but the lady encouraged me to take once since he'd be 2 months by the time of the shoot (And let's face it - Drew's a cutie. Not that I'm biased or anything. But I so totally am biased). I took the flyer and thought about sending a photo, but time got away from me and I never got around to it. Today I found out that TWO babies from our MnM group are in the new video. And one of the moms, whose daughter is just a couple of weeks older than Drew said she thought she was chosen since there were so few young babies to select from. Damn! I should have sent in the photo! And the gal is somehow also in the video herself, which meant that they paid her baby and her for their appearances. Double damn. Ah, well. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

I'm cracking up a bit that the gal had to sign a non-disclosure agreement about what was filmed. What, are there competitors out there just ITCHING to snipe their babies-playing-with-toys idea? Is there a Baby Aristotle group that is trying desperately to pull the rug out from under the Baby Einstein clan? She sort of violated her non-disclosure agreement and told us what the new video is about, but I'm not telling. So nyah.
RE: BLOGGING I'm really surprised that so many people did not consider themselves bloggers in my last post. I wonder if my having posted that blurb about the lecture I'm going to above the question skewed the results. Because occasionally people ask me if I have a blog or if I'm a blogger, and I always answer yes. Probably it just means that I'm full of myself. 

*

RE: THE SHOWER: I knew that having my mom and my mother-in-law jointly throw our shower would be interesting, and I sort of thought neither of them knew what they were getting into, but I had no idea how the friction would manifest itself. Well, this morning my MIL called Bryan to say how frustrated she was - and this was after the first real planning conversation. To put it bluntly, my MIL is all about casual entertaining for large crowds, and my mom feels that traditional is better, and though my mom means well, she tends to shoot down ideas if she hasn't had personal experience with them - for example she told my MIL that no one plays games at a baby shower. Oh, okay. If you say so. She also said no to every food idea my MIL presented other than cold cuts and rolls and whatnot, saying that people wouldn't like it. Oy. Unless someone point blank asks me to get involved I'm staying out of it and letting the two of them work it out on their own. I had enough of the negotiations with the wedding, and I just don't really care anymore.

Also, I wanted to check the dimensions of the changing pad we registered for last night so I hopped on line and imagine my surprise to find that even though inivtations haven't been sent out yet and something like six things have already been purchased from the registry. Could have bowled me over with a feather. If anyone is inclined, I'd love a critique of our registry (think we selected stupid stuff? too much practical, not enough fun things? are we just waaaaay off with thinking what we need?) at Target. It's under my name and we're in CA. If you don't know my full first/last name please let me know via email and I'll send you the info (ves.heill at gmail dot com). *ETA- In a response below I indicated the "big" things we were already given by various people.

*

RE: THE HOUSE: The room we need to complete to finish the interior of the house is the nursery. We'll be done with that as of next weekend, when we'll lay down the FLOR carpet tiles and put up the closet structure. It has been almost three and a half years of planning, purchasing, and physical work. We're not officially done with the house (we've still got to replace almost all of the doors in the house, each of which takes almost a full weekend, and a couple of things need paint touch-ups), but we're so incredibly close that I can taste it. We're finally putting together furniture that we've been storing for the last three or so years, and going through boxes that contain things we haven't seen since we packed them up in the apartment back in July of 2003. It's like sorting through treasure - books I'd forgotten about, decor items that I've been missing, old files and paperwork that I can shred due to obsoleteness... Soon. Soon we'll be done with this massive undertaking. And then I'm vowing to never, never rennovate again for as long as I live. Or at least for another year. Which ever comes first.

*

RE: HOW I'M FEELING: I know in reality I'm actually a tad-bit on the small side for being over 30 weeks pregnant, but I feel like a whale. Which is why I haven't posted any pictures for a long while. I look in the mirror, and the face looking back at me isn't mine. It's someone who looks sort of like me, but has acne and fat cheeks, and it wearing sort of funny clothes because nothing really fits right any more. Ah, well. Just over 9 weeks left.
I'm going to a lecture next month at my university which will be about how society views online forms of blogging differently. Specifically, the lecture announcement states: In the popular imagination, there is a distinction between "blogs," which are assumed on some level to be doing public work, whether political, techincal, academic, or journalistic, and "online diaries," which are primarily personal, if not exactly private. These personal blogs are too often dismissed as the narcissistic rantings of teenage girls and other hysterics, a nonsensical--and not incidentally, hyper-feminine-- form of "oversharing." Such a dismissal, however, overlooks the important work that such personal blogs are doing in the construction of an emergent literary form...

My question to you is:

Do you see yourself as

a) A blogger

b) Someone who just happens to have an online journal/ diary

c) Neither/ other (explain)

Just curious...
You know the drill - where'd I pull these quotes from - and no googling for cheats!

1. I want to kill everyone. Satan is good. Satan is our pal.  - The Burbs

2. Look around you - can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?

3. Over the mysteries of female life there is drawn a veil, best left undisturbed.

4. Husbands should be like Kleenex: soft, strong, and disposable. - Clue

5. I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conslusion is uncertain. - The Shawshank Redemption

6. I am removing the superfluous buns. - Father of the Bride

7. Then please, my dear, encourage no one else. Marriage is so disrupting to one's social circle. - Emma

8. You  remember the day I went out for cigarettes and didn't come back? You must have noticed!

9. I'm not like you, Philip. I'm not one of those people that's only good on the phone. In person you just blame everybody. You made a mistake at the office, you gave out the address! Did I blame you? No! I blamed the Santa Anas! I don't even know what the Santa Anas are!  - Mixed Nuts

10. Now you listen to me! I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself "slightly" killed. - North by Northwest

11. Do you realize what you've done? You've taken a woman who loves you - one of the great women in the world - and thrown her away. I lost her, too, but I will get over it because I am shallow and self-centered. But you, you won't, because you are "complex." You will feel terrible anquish for the rest of your life. This is turning out to be a pretty good day. - The Money Pit

12. Son, in 35 years of religious study, I have only come up with two hard incontrovertible facts: there is a God, and I am not him.

13. You want I should wipe the dead bugs off the windshield, ma'am?

14. From now on we live ina world where man has walked on the moon. And it's not a miracle - we just decided to go.

15. Don't let him know, though. He must be anxious enough as it is, knowing what lies ahead. Then again, we all are. - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It was a given I'd choose something from that, no? ;)

This is the AFI list of 100 top movies of all time. I bolded the ones I've seen and I italicized the ones I own (or have owned - we had a fire and I've never recovered all the ones I used to own and left with my mom when I moved out). I have 52 left still to view. I need to get on the ball with others before I don't have time to see them. Damn.

1.CITIZEN KANE (1941)
2.CASABLANCA (1942)

3.GODFATHER, THE (1972)
4.GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)

5.LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)
6.WIZARD OF OZ, THE (1939)
7.GRADUATE, THE (1967)

8.ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
9.SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993)
10.SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952)
11.IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)

12.SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)
13.BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE (1957)
14.SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)
15.STAR WARS (1977)

16.ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)
17.AFRICAN QUEEN, THE (1951)
18.PSYCHO (1960)
19.CHINATOWN (1974)
20.ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)
21.GRAPES OF WRATH, THE (1940)
22.2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
23.MALTESE FALCON, THE (1941)
24.RAGING BULL (1980)
25.E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)
26.DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)
27.BONNIE & CLYDE (1967)
28.APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)
29.MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939)
30.TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)
31.ANNIE HALL (1977)
32.GODFATHER PART II, THE (1974)
33.HIGH NOON (1952)
34.TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962)
35.IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)
36.MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)
37.BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE (1946)
38.DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
39.DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)
40.NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
41.WEST SIDE STORY (1961)
42.REAR WINDOW (1954)

43.KING KONG (1933)
44.BIRTH OF A NATION, THE (1915)
45.STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, A (1951)
46.CLOCKWORK ORANGE, A (1971)
47.TAXI DRIVER (1976)
48.JAWS (1975)
49.SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937)

50.BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)
51.PHILADELPHIA STORY, THE(1940)
52.FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)
53.AMADEUS (1984)
54.ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)
55.SOUND OF MUSIC, THE (1965)
56.M*A*S*H(1970)

57.THIRD MAN, THE (1949)
58.FANTASIA (1940)
59.REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)

60.RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)
61.VERTIGO (1958)
62.TOOTSIE (1982)
63.STAGECOACH (1939)
64.CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)
65.SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE (1991)

66.NETWORK (1976)
67.MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, THE (1962)
68.AMERICAN IN PARIS, AN (1951)
69.SHANE (1953)
70.FRENCH CONNECTION, THE (1971)
71.FORREST GUMP (1994)
72.BEN-HUR (1959)

73.WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939)
74.GOLD RUSH, THE (1925)
75.DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990)
76.CITY LIGHTS (1931)
77.AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)
78.ROCKY (1976)
79.DEER HUNTER, THE (1978)
80.WILD BUNCH, THE (1969)
81.MODERN TIMES (1936)
82.GIANT (1956)
83.PLATOON (1986)
84.FARGO (1996)
85.DUCK SOUP (1933)
86.MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935)
87.FRANKENSTEIN (1931)
88.EASY RIDER (1969)
89.PATTON (1970)
90.JAZZ SINGER, THE (1927)
91.MY FAIR LADY (1964)
92.PLACE IN THE SUN, A(1951)
93.APARTMENT, THE (1960)
94.GOODFELLAS (1990)
95.PULP FICTION (1994)
96.SEARCHERS, THE (1956)
97.BRINGING UP BABY (1938)
98.UNFORGIVEN (1992)
99.GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967)
100. YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942)

We just admitted someone to a Ph.D. program with full scholarship plus a VERY healthy stipend (and no teaching obligations attached). She's 18. And oh, did I mention? She's already been published in several peer-reviewed journals, has a shockigly good academic record, and is far too nice for someone who's only 18. But even so... she's still only 18

All I can say is that she's way the hell too young. She was too young to see The Goonies or Top Gun or Dirty Dancing at the movies. She never saw MacGuyver or Quantum Leap or even FraggleRock when they were on the air for the first time. She doesn't know who Gargamel is. She probably doesn't even know what Robotech was. She never sang "We Are The World" in school and probably never even cared that the cans of tuna she was eating may have snared innocent dolphins along the way. She doesn't remember when the Challenger blew up, and never heard those stupid "NASA stands for Need Another Seven Astronauts" jokes. She never used an ATARI or a Commodore 64. She probably never even had Superwoman Underoos. This makes me so sad. It's just not possible that she's getting a doctoral degree.

Any "The Usual Suspects" fans out there? You'll get a kick out of this.

The person who replaced me in my old job is a gal named RC. Prior to becoming my replacement RC worked at a law firm where Christopher McQuarrie, the screenwriter for "The Usual Suspects" had worked. The law firm had a lawyer named Kaiser Sume (pronounced sue-may), and when McQuarrie decided to write a script for a new movie he decided to name several of the people in the script after the people at the firm. Edy, Gabriel Byrne's love interest in the film, is named after a legal secretary who had been working for the firm for something like 40 years. RC says everyone in the office whose name McQuarrie used had to sign a waiver for the use of their name, but Kaiser Sume was out of the country, so they changed it to Kaiser Sose.

Here's an excerpt from an interview that McQuarrie gave:

Q: What was the genesis of "Usual Suspects"?

A: Get comfortable. I saw an article in Spy magazine and it had a subtitle of 'usual suspects'. So then we started designing this poster with five guys who keep getting arrested. Brian forgot about it until we needed a movie to make cheaply. So he called. I told him I had a poster.... I was working in a law office and started smoking. The smoking room looked like an interrogation room, sort of dingy and it had this bulletin board. And there was an attorney named Kaiser. I told him his name was cool and he would be a villain in my script. He said, "Yeah, sure kid."

How freaky would it be to go up in the courtroom against the real Kaiser Sose? Ha!

Have you guys seen the TOM CRUISE KILLS OPRAH animated gif? It made my day like you wouldn't believe.



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