the most important difference between dead girls and ghosts
Important remix schedule change announcement.
Please comment on that post if you have questions.
***
Really good interview with David Simon in this week's New York magazine: Pugnacious D (thanks to
alethia for the link):
Why create drama, not documentary?
He writes a long note back. "We know more about what Huey Long represented and the emptiness at the core of American political culture from reading Robert Penn Warren than from contemporary journalistic accounts of Long’s reign. We know more about human pride, purpose, and obsession from Moby-Dick than from any contemporaneous account of the Nantucket whaler that was actually struck and sunk by a whale in the nineteenth-century incident on which Melville based his book. And we know how much of an affront the Spanish Civil War was to the human spirit when we stare at Picasso’s Guernica than when we read a more deliberate, fact-based account. I am not comparing anything I’ve done to any of the above; please, please do not presume that because I cite someone else’s art, I claim anything similar for anything I’ve done. But I cite the above because it makes the answer to your question obvious: Picasso said art is the lie that allows us to see the truth. That is it exactly."
***
Yesterday I had a moment at work (more like an hour, since it happened right before my boss went to lunch and I had to wait anxiously for her return) where I was convinced that I had royally screwed the pooch. She'd already told me I need to be better at following up on a particular thing (which, suffice it to say, given the arcane and esoteric processes of our finance department, I didn't realize was not actually moving ahead), and then she was like, "Why wasn't this paid for?!" and I was like, "I... have never seen that before in my life. I have no paperwork and no email and no information whatsoever." I sent her an email that basically said that and then hurried myself over to the AP people and was like, "WTF? HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THIS BEFORE?" and they were like, "Oh, it was paid on April 1."
So, you know, whew. And also, my boss was like, "If you didn't have the paperwork, how could you have processed it?" so it was fine, but man, I had a painful hour of anxiety.
So I bought an ice cream maker. I don't even know. It has pretty good reviews, and I've wanted one, and now that I have a place to put it... I mean, it's ICE CREAM. As long as it works, how can that be bad? Apparently it doesn't even require salt. Or hand cranking. (What? The last ice cream maker I used required both of those things. Needless to say, I didn't make ice cream very often.) Shut up.
If it arrives tomorrow, as it is supposed to, there could be ice cream this weekend! In my new pink bowls!
So if you have a good ice cream or sherbet recipe, you should share.
***
I have to say, this season of Criminal Minds hasn't been thrilling me. The Foyet episodes were pretty strong, but overall I have been kind of meh. Last night's episode, which also served as a backdoor pilot for the spin-off with Forrest Whitaker, continued that streak, but there were a couple of things I did like about it. Prentiss continues to be a BAMF. Seriously, is there anyone on TV right now who is more badass than Emily Prentiss (okay, maybe Kalinda Sharma)? She practically got hit by a car last night and she kept running after the suspect. Admittedly, it was the wrong guy, but that wasn't her fault. SO BADASS.
And I also liked how the daughter was smart and brave (if in no way actually 14) and knew how to play the unsub's game - when she said all that hateful stuff to the father, I said to mousapelli, "Wow. WOW. What a SMART, BRAVE GIRL." And I guess that's one of the things I love best about Criminal Minds. Yeah, it can be grotesque and depressing and occasionally humorless, and it does exploit sexual violence (though less often than a lot of other shows), but it also provides female characters with agency who are proactive in securing their own survival, where other shows would make them nothing but victims in need of rescuing.
Otoh, I could have done without the forced flirtation with British sniper guy. Meh.
On the third hand, ILLEGAL HOMELESS BOXING! I laughed hard and loud at that.
Speaking of which, I would love to see Veronica Mars with the BAU. Can you imagine her response to Hotch? Man, it makes me sad sometimes, when I think of what a fantastic character Rob Thomas had, and what a perfect first season of television, and then it all fell apart. I want to see Veronica crossed over into everything - Veronica as Peter Burke's probie; she can hook up with Cruz! They can roll their eyes forever at Neal. Or Veronica as a Middlerecruit! (or on the trail of a supervillain when she comes across the Middleman and Wendy!) Veronica and Kalinda teaming up as fiercely intelligent yet ethically challenged lady detectives! You know they would pwn all of Chicago, and then the WORLD if they got together. And I am always happy to read (and write) Dean/Veronica, because the sharp edges! The banter! The conflicting baggage! The ways Dean's coding as feminine and his performative masculinity rubs up against Veronica's coding as masculine and her performative femininity! And did I mention the banter? And the hotness?
You should totally be writing all of these for me.
Speaking of Dean, I heard "Stop Your Sobbing" by the Pretenders this morning and surely there is a Dean vid to that? If not, there should be. I would laugh and laugh.
And today's poem, which also seems fitting since it's new SPN day:
on the difference between dead girls and ghosts
Both dead girls and ghosts already have your number. But a dead girl won't call you. A ghost doesn't have to call.
The ghost is soul lingerie. You can see right through her. She slips through your fingers.
The dead girl is all bawdy. A dead girl is real. Heavy. Sooner or later, no matter how strong you are, your arms will tire, and you will have to let go. And the dead girl will say, I told you so.
You have to try hard, work harder, scrub and pray and do all sorts of things to get rid of a ghost (depending on, of course, who she is and why she's there).
Dead girls leave you. They've already left. Dead girls are past tense. You had good times. You made time. The time of your life. Once upon a time.
Ghosts are timeless. A ghost can be right here right now. But with dead girls, the biological clock is always ticking.
Science may try and assert that there's no such thing as ghosts. That may be true. However, sooner or later, half of the global population will be dead girls. Or already is.
The most important difference between dead girls and ghosts -- perhaps the only one you need to know -- is this: The dead girl still has a heart.
~Daphne Gottlieb
From Kissing Dead Girls.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/153439.html.
people have commented there.
Please comment on that post if you have questions.
***
Really good interview with David Simon in this week's New York magazine: Pugnacious D (thanks to
alethia for the link):
Why create drama, not documentary?
He writes a long note back. "We know more about what Huey Long represented and the emptiness at the core of American political culture from reading Robert Penn Warren than from contemporary journalistic accounts of Long’s reign. We know more about human pride, purpose, and obsession from Moby-Dick than from any contemporaneous account of the Nantucket whaler that was actually struck and sunk by a whale in the nineteenth-century incident on which Melville based his book. And we know how much of an affront the Spanish Civil War was to the human spirit when we stare at Picasso’s Guernica than when we read a more deliberate, fact-based account. I am not comparing anything I’ve done to any of the above; please, please do not presume that because I cite someone else’s art, I claim anything similar for anything I’ve done. But I cite the above because it makes the answer to your question obvious: Picasso said art is the lie that allows us to see the truth. That is it exactly."
***
Yesterday I had a moment at work (more like an hour, since it happened right before my boss went to lunch and I had to wait anxiously for her return) where I was convinced that I had royally screwed the pooch. She'd already told me I need to be better at following up on a particular thing (which, suffice it to say, given the arcane and esoteric processes of our finance department, I didn't realize was not actually moving ahead), and then she was like, "Why wasn't this paid for?!" and I was like, "I... have never seen that before in my life. I have no paperwork and no email and no information whatsoever." I sent her an email that basically said that and then hurried myself over to the AP people and was like, "WTF? HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THIS BEFORE?" and they were like, "Oh, it was paid on April 1."
So, you know, whew. And also, my boss was like, "If you didn't have the paperwork, how could you have processed it?" so it was fine, but man, I had a painful hour of anxiety.
So I bought an ice cream maker. I don't even know. It has pretty good reviews, and I've wanted one, and now that I have a place to put it... I mean, it's ICE CREAM. As long as it works, how can that be bad? Apparently it doesn't even require salt. Or hand cranking. (What? The last ice cream maker I used required both of those things. Needless to say, I didn't make ice cream very often.) Shut up.
If it arrives tomorrow, as it is supposed to, there could be ice cream this weekend! In my new pink bowls!
So if you have a good ice cream or sherbet recipe, you should share.
***
I have to say, this season of Criminal Minds hasn't been thrilling me. The Foyet episodes were pretty strong, but overall I have been kind of meh. Last night's episode, which also served as a backdoor pilot for the spin-off with Forrest Whitaker, continued that streak, but there were a couple of things I did like about it. Prentiss continues to be a BAMF. Seriously, is there anyone on TV right now who is more badass than Emily Prentiss (okay, maybe Kalinda Sharma)? She practically got hit by a car last night and she kept running after the suspect. Admittedly, it was the wrong guy, but that wasn't her fault. SO BADASS.
And I also liked how the daughter was smart and brave (if in no way actually 14) and knew how to play the unsub's game - when she said all that hateful stuff to the father, I said to mousapelli, "Wow. WOW. What a SMART, BRAVE GIRL." And I guess that's one of the things I love best about Criminal Minds. Yeah, it can be grotesque and depressing and occasionally humorless, and it does exploit sexual violence (though less often than a lot of other shows), but it also provides female characters with agency who are proactive in securing their own survival, where other shows would make them nothing but victims in need of rescuing.
Otoh, I could have done without the forced flirtation with British sniper guy. Meh.
On the third hand, ILLEGAL HOMELESS BOXING! I laughed hard and loud at that.
Speaking of which, I would love to see Veronica Mars with the BAU. Can you imagine her response to Hotch? Man, it makes me sad sometimes, when I think of what a fantastic character Rob Thomas had, and what a perfect first season of television, and then it all fell apart. I want to see Veronica crossed over into everything - Veronica as Peter Burke's probie; she can hook up with Cruz! They can roll their eyes forever at Neal. Or Veronica as a Middlerecruit! (or on the trail of a supervillain when she comes across the Middleman and Wendy!) Veronica and Kalinda teaming up as fiercely intelligent yet ethically challenged lady detectives! You know they would pwn all of Chicago, and then the WORLD if they got together. And I am always happy to read (and write) Dean/Veronica, because the sharp edges! The banter! The conflicting baggage! The ways Dean's coding as feminine and his performative masculinity rubs up against Veronica's coding as masculine and her performative femininity! And did I mention the banter? And the hotness?
You should totally be writing all of these for me.
Speaking of Dean, I heard "Stop Your Sobbing" by the Pretenders this morning and surely there is a Dean vid to that? If not, there should be. I would laugh and laugh.
And today's poem, which also seems fitting since it's new SPN day:
on the difference between dead girls and ghosts
Both dead girls and ghosts already have your number. But a dead girl won't call you. A ghost doesn't have to call.
The ghost is soul lingerie. You can see right through her. She slips through your fingers.
The dead girl is all bawdy. A dead girl is real. Heavy. Sooner or later, no matter how strong you are, your arms will tire, and you will have to let go. And the dead girl will say, I told you so.
You have to try hard, work harder, scrub and pray and do all sorts of things to get rid of a ghost (depending on, of course, who she is and why she's there).
Dead girls leave you. They've already left. Dead girls are past tense. You had good times. You made time. The time of your life. Once upon a time.
Ghosts are timeless. A ghost can be right here right now. But with dead girls, the biological clock is always ticking.
Science may try and assert that there's no such thing as ghosts. That may be true. However, sooner or later, half of the global population will be dead girls. Or already is.
The most important difference between dead girls and ghosts -- perhaps the only one you need to know -- is this: The dead girl still has a heart.
~Daphne Gottlieb
From Kissing Dead Girls.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/153439.html.
people have commented there.