I do not know how to move forward in a world where anyone can shed fake tears and accuse me of the most heinous offenses -- purely out of spite and malice -- and others will believe the lies without question. If anyone ever says anything kind about me, I cannot believe it -- not because I think the person is necessarily lying, but because I know that it would take very little for that person to retract the statement and brand me a murderer, rapist, stalker, et cetera: the speaker need only hear that opinion from another or listen to a particular 911 recording. And because the individuals who regard me so poorly are not in short supply -- and because 911 calls are public and accessible to everyone (for a $50 fee, you can get a CD recording of my own sister howling about how I've tried to kill her multiple times and am in the process of thrashing her fatally even as she makes the call; the recording will not include her laughing and gloating about said call afterwards) -- I am convinced that even a person who sincerely thinks well of me will not hold that opinion for long. (more...)

So, most of you know that I work -- ha, ha, ha... work -- as a freelance editor. I'm not going to talk about it at length here; I just mention it because it's part of the setup for what I do want to post! See, given that much of my work -- ha, ha, ha... work -- is done through a third-party service, I'm required to give brief critiques explaining my changes to the customer.

And I bloody hate writing these things, because they effectively consist of me saying, "I MADE YOUR WRITING BETTER," in various different ways, for an entire page or more. Yes, I make specific changes -- lots of them -- but aside from grammatical fixes there's not a lot of explanation I can supply. "I adjusted the order of your paragraphs in the interest of improving the structure of your document." I MADE YOUR WRITING BETTER. "I rearranged this sentence and removed this unnecessary clause in order to render the statement less awkward." I MADE YOUR WRITING BETTER. Sometimes my changes have to do with stuff like readability and flow -- which really have no concrete or measurable basis** -- and meter, which I think should be somewhat observed in prose even though it's really more important for poetry. I MADE YOUR WRITING BETTER. (more...)

Of course, the title refers to mine -- not the TV show or Romy and Michele's -- since my ten-year high school reunion was this weekend! If you're interested, all of my photographs from the event can be seen here. Upon browsing them, Stefmax commented that I have the same face in all of the photos... as if my face should somehow morph and appear different in each picture. I'm not Man-E-Faces or Catherine Weaver, darnit! 😛

My extended comments and observations from the event follow, and I've placed them under subheadings for organization and convenience's sake. I've also withheld names -- unlike I did with my five-year reunion post -- for no reason in particular. If you attended the event and find yourself mentioned, you'll probably know I'm talking about you... and if you don't, that's probably good as well! That said, I hope that you find my comments to be clever, creative, and/or amusing, but not wholly ridiculous. (more...)

This one's just bloody fantastico. (Have I mentioned my newfound love of that word?! Thanks for sparking that, Lady Gaga.)

Mrs. Gloria Young Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 12:27 PM
Reply-To: [email protected]
Subject: Beware Of Internet Fraud........ My Experience

Wait, stop right there. This e-mail is telling us to beware of Internet fraud! Clearly it is on the level -- I mean, why would fraudsters tell us to be wary of them? That clearly would not be conducive to their success! (more...)

I know I've seen a few movies in recent memory that I didn't absolutely despise -- Private Parts was, um, interesting; I rather liked G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra despite its numerous shortcomings; and I enjoyed Iron Man (though I still don't think it approaches Spider-Man 2 greatness) -- but it seems like most of the movies I've watched as of late have outright sucked.

"Sucked" is italicized above, of course, because most of the movies I've seen recently have been vampire movies. I'm not even including Twilight among these -- yeah, that wasn't great, but I can't really call it bad. It was just derivative emo teenybopper fare that seemed cribbed from early "Buffy" season developments (not to mention the entirety of "Roswell"), with the only original contribution being the vampires' glittering in sunlight instead of burning. And that was stupid. (more...)