LiveJournal

[2017/11/02 12:00 am]
My name is Elizabeth, and I am a neurotic housewife. This journal is somewhat less interesting than the average, since I don't enjoy having fun, but the spelling is likely to be better.

My old LiveJournal, defunct: [info]psychodyke42
My DeadJournal, also defunct: beware (the lazarus joint)
My website, in dire need of updating: the sibyl of cumae

If you'd like to add me to your friends list, you should know two things:

1) I often miss being added until well after my new friend gets impatient and defriends me, and
2) I also frequently manage to add someone to my friends list but not to the proper viewing filter.

Therefore, if I don't add you back or comment on your journal, don't take it personally, because it may well be that I am a moron.

Current Mood: grumpyCurrent Music: Silverchair, "Tomorrow"

[2010/03/09 10:54 pm]
Today I achieved a long-term goal in the weight room: my bench press and my squat are now equal to each other!

I know, I know, my squat should be much higher -- and my deadlift is -- but I have such a hard time keeping my back in line that I just don't want to push it. I'd much rather suffer the embarrassment of wimpy numbers than a back injury.

A little while ago somebody on [info]gymrats posted a link to StrongLifts 5x5. I am not doing that routine because I can't even do one jumping pullup, but I tried the 5x5 idea today and it really worked well for me. While I lost a lot of progress over the winter, lately I've been more honest with my lifts by using better form. I'm closing in on my previous numbers, and now I know I'm actually doing it.

...well, let's check. From September 29th of last year, one of the last times I did any serious lifting:

Hit personal records in three of my lifts this week: squat 75, bench 90, deadlift 115, all three sets of five.

Today: squat 80, bench 80, deadlift 115, all five sets of five. And that September bench was achieved with roughly 75% of my body's muscles. Total cheating.

I'M BACK, BABY!
[2010/03/06 8:10 pm]
It was over 40 degrees today, so we went out for a bike ride. Rather, Charles went out for a while and then called me, and I met him over at the teeny Mexican place. A bit cold, but I saw at least a dozen bikers plus assorted joggers and walkers -- everybody seems to have had the same thought.

Afterward, I made a dinner that would've been vegan if I didn't put Romano on everything, and then I rearranged the bedroom. It's about a 10x10 space, with windows on opposite corners of the two outside walls, so there's only so much to be done, but there were about two feet of dead space to clear up. Charles hasn't seen it yet; I hope he doesn't hate it.

Watched To Die For and Road Warrior last night. The former was very good, but Van Sant has a bit of a heavy touch in places, aided and abetted by Danny Elfman occasionally turning the Burton Soundtrack dial up to 11. The performances were uniformly excellent, however; we agreed that it's probably harder to play dumb than smart, since playing dumb well requires that you not wink at the audience. I maintain that you don't have to be smart to play a smart character -- you just have to be able to act like you know what you're talking about. The problem with countless "hot scientist" types in action movies is not that the actresses are dumb -- though they may well be -- but that they can't act well enough to sell the lines.

I guess when you get to the bottom of it, playing dumb requires the same type of selling, in that you have to convince the audience that you actually believe the stupid shit you're saying. Like I said, though, there's a specific problem of making sure the audience doesn't know you're in on the joke, whereas you might be able to get away with that if you're playing a hot scientist in a particularly stupid action movie.

The latter I had somehow never seen -- I'd seen Mad Max and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but not the middle installment. So weird. I guess it's probably the best of the three, but Thunderdome is way more quotable. The action sequences were very good but the film was overcranked too far in several places, which made everything look weird -- a problem, I'll note, that was somehow avoided in Death Race 2000. (Probably because they weren't as ambitious with their action -- but Corman isn't usually a mark of subtlety and finesse.)

Oh, and tomorrow a friend and I are going to a gay pride masquerade party! It's at a bar I've never been to before, which has taken over (officially? unofficially? I'm not sure) as the town's spot for young gay people ever since the Zoo shut down. I have noooo idea what to wear -- a lot of my fabulous stuff either doesn't fit at the moment or just doesn't appeal to me. I have a tux, but it's not my best look, and I'm feeling like I want to go girly instead -- but with what? Argh. Can't rock it Morocco-style because I don't have a top hat, a white bowtie, or a white cutaway vest. I lack hats for most every costume I would want to do, but I don't have to do a costume, but most of my stuff is boring. Sigh. First-world problems, y'all.
[2010/03/03 11:17 pm]
My OCP shirt was ruined in the laundry. BAAAWWWWWWW.

I don't even understand! It has bleach stains but nothing else does and I haven't done a bleach load in like two weeks! WTF?

(At least, I hope nothing else does. I haven't gone over the laundry with a fine-toothed comb.)

At least I can buy another one from the same place, but goddamnit, I only got to wear it like twice.

New topic: Monday at the gym I caught part of a Law and Order: Something Something episode involving juggalos and a girl who claimed to have soap-opera amnesia. Anyone watch that show? Can you fill me in on what happened? Google gives no love. And no, I don't want to watch it, I just want to know if the juggalos did it and whether the girl was lying.

Loved how the show called all horrorcore fans "juggalos" but never mentioned ICP by name. I don't think that's quite right.
[2010/02/25 4:15 pm]


Hello Japanese speakers, can someone tell me what adorable mister business cat is saying? All I got was that he introduces himself in the first frame. Also I think the background music is singing about salty tuna guts, which would make sense, in the way that things from Japan ever make sense.

Every time I run across this video I watch it like ten or eleven times. This is [info]girlvinyl's fault.
[2010/02/24 11:39 pm]
I got my copy of Daniel Cohen's A Natural History of Unnatural Things in the mail on Monday, and literally squealed when I opened the envelope to find it was exactly as I remembered. I had this book as a child, and it inspired a lifelong interest both in modern horror and the tales that inspired it. For instance, I know a ridiculous amount of vampire lore, mostly provided by this book.

It's obviously written for a young audience, but Cohen doesn't shy away from using advanced vocabulary, and he cites a great deal of historical evidence. One of my favorite parts so far is his excellent debunking of Margaret Murray's witchcraft scholarship, using a combination of evidence and straightforward common sense. He also has a wry, understated sense of humor that I just love.

He goes into pop-culture representations of various monsters, and I wish he would come out with an updated version, because there's so much missing. For instance, he combines the mummy and the zombie into one chapter, and the latter gets one page, because the book was published in 1971. Night of the Living Dead came out in 1968, but that movie very properly refers to its monsters as "ghouls," so I expect that Cohen wrote the book before Romero's creatures really came to be called zombies. A full chapter comparing the original zombie myths with the pop-culture translations would be excellent. The werewolf chapter, which ends noting that "very few [people] say they are werewolves," could use some updating about furries and otherkin, because that statement just isn't true anymore.

As a historical work focusing on the ancient origins of these myths, though, it's just first-rate. I love it so.

---

I'm having pain in the balls of my feet on the elliptical again, which is seriously obnoxious, because it kicks in way before my legs get tired. I know that being overweight contributes to foot pain, but a) it's the elliptical, for Chrissakes, it's supposed to be low-impact and b) I'm not that overweight. Also, if that is the problem, I kind of need to do something to LOSE WEIGHT so. Walking doesn't bug, but given snow outdoors and 30min treadmill limits indoors, it's not the best option at the moment; jogging, same thing, plus it fucks with my knees. Anyway, I like the elliptical a lot. Whenever I see people complaining about the notion that cardio is the only route to weight loss, they always say something like "you should do interval training instead because slogging away on cardio machines for hours at a time is sooooo boring and awful," but I like those long slogs.

I'm wondering if my bad posture might not be contributing to it -- I do carry my weight far forward because of how I slump -- and, if so, whether a chiropractor would be of any use. While I don't believe half of the claims made for that discipline, I should think that spinal manipulation would do something for problems directly related to the spine. I'm sure my muscles have no idea how to assume proper posture (given that they hurt whenever I try) so if the chiropractor could suggest exercises to remedy that, it'd be great.

---

Tried a new beer tonight, from a brewery in Marshall (of all places). They call it a "black ale," because it shares properties with stout and porter without really qualifying as either. I quite like it -- very strong flavor, without the thickness of stout.

Charles has proposed a beer tour of Michigan, because there are so many microbreweries in this state. I hear people talk about "wine trails" all the time, but this sounds like way more fun. I'm just not sure how we'll manage the driving -- MI microbreweries love their high ABV.

---

Now it is time for bed, except I can hear the neighbor's television AGAIN. Seriously! I know there's only about six feet between our houses and the walls aren't terribly thick, and the noise is just at the lower end of my hearing (i.e., the most annoying level), but I SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO HEAR YOUR TELEVISION AT ALL. I once tried a retaliatory blast of Aphex Twin but it had no discernible effect, and of course I can't do that now because Charles is already in bed.

Haaaaaate.
[2010/02/19 1:11 pm]
My brain likes to map lyrics from one song onto the melody of another. It's worse than just getting one song stuck in your head.

A while ago it was MC Hammer and NWA:

Music hits me so hard
It makes me say, Oh my Lord
Thank you for blessing me
With a gat that's pointed at your ass

Today it's Lady Gaga and Depeche Mode:

It's just time to pay the price
For not listening to advice
Cause you know that baby, I
I'm your biggest fan
I'll follow you until you love me
Papa, paparazzi

It's so annoying. Does anybody else do this?
[2010/02/18 7:05 pm]


what is this i don't even
[2010/02/16 7:01 pm]
Charles's dad went to the Dominican Republic over the weekend and left his car in our driveway instead of paying for long-term parking at the airport. Today, I went to pick him up from his flight.

First off, there were like fifteen or twenty Mennonites there -- that is, I think they were Mennonites, since the women were wearing white bonnets of the sort I haven't seen on women of other conservative Christian groups, but obviously they were of a sect that allows plane travel. Anyway, as the first people came off the plane, one of them remarked, "Man, I wish I could get a welcoming committee like this! I need a better family!"

To which one of the young men in the group responded, "Well, hey, welcome home, man!"

Then Charles's dad got off the plane with the bishop and a woman -- another layperson, I think -- and, while we were waiting for the luggage, the woman's husband came in to meet her with a dog carrier. You see, they had new puppies, and he thought it would be nice to bring them to greet her.

Yes, two Cavalier King Charles spaniel puppies. Yes, I got to hold one of them. Yes, the airport basically stopped functioning for a few minutes as everybody crowded around to make woogy-woogy noises. THEY WERE SO TINY AND PRECIOUS OMG

So yeah! Best airport trip ever!
[2010/02/13 11:25 pm]
I kind of thought this was adorable. Let it be known that the "pet food" mentioned in the chili recipe is not Alpo from a can; rather, the site on which it appears notes that "[m]any of our grass-based farmers are now packaging a blend of ground organ meats (even including the udders!) and meat scraps as pet food."

a) I'm pretty sure this is exactly what goes into hot dogs, sausage, scrapple, and Spam;
b) People have been eating various organ meats since, oh, forever. Liver, kidney, intestines (chitterlings), and pancreas (sweetbreads) are perhaps the most common, but there's always haggis and similar concoctions.

I'll admit to not being thrilled about the idea of testicles bobbing about in a stew, but if they were cut up I probably wouldn't even notice. As for the organ meat, there was a time in my childhood when I would eat liver, but I grew out of it rather quickly. Since it does have a strong taste and unusual texture, I should think grinding it up and spicing it well would be the best solution possible.

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