Sometimes, such as when dealing with the last few weeks of pregnancy or the first few of new-baby-hood, fandom is a real sanity saver. I'm not only revisiting an old one by slowly working my way through Buffy again, but am also enjoying a new one with The Office (US--saw the UK one years ago, and yes, it was great too). We're just about done with season 3, and the silly show has wormed its way slowly into my heart.

I like that it seems on the surface to be almost pure parody--surely no one in real life is as awful or clueless as Michael or Dwight?--but runs deeper into true-to-life human nature before long, even for the worst of the characters. Both Michael and Dwight, for instance, have done sweet turns for someone and gained my temporary approval here and there. (See: Michael at Pam's art show, or Dwight finding her crying and demanding, "Who did this to you? Where is he?")

Relationships! Hurray! Naturally I'm a huge Jim/Pam shipper, and have been from episode 1. I'd crush on Jim too, in her place. But the writers make things bearable and interesting by making Karen likeable as well. And even Roy isn't always a prat. Jan/Michael is wrong and hilarious. Dwight/Angela is so twisted it's occasionally almost hot. Kelly/Ryan--well, he got himself into that mess, so I just laugh.

As a side plus, my husband seldom laughs so much at television as he does at Jim's pranks against Dwight. It's good to see him cheered up from our stressful existence. And good to know I married a man whose sense of humor aligns so closely with Jim's.

That's all I have time for today. Amazing I have any time at all! Thanks again to the husband, for taking the older boy out to play while I sit with napping newborn. Hope I have time to check in again once he returns to work in another week...

( Baby pic! )

Toby (officially Tobias), born June 30, 8 lb 1 oz. Whole family is doing well. (Actually, the big brother may have some different opinions on the subject, but he'll adjust.)

You can stop at the cute baby picture there, but if you want them, ( the gory birth details are here... )

As a follow-up to the Buffy v. Twilight discussion of a week ago, this is a great video remix introducing the two (Buffy and Edward) to one another, with predictable consequences:

http://blip.tv/file/2261825/

Really well mixed, and oddly satisfying. ;)

In other news, Happy Father's Day!

In still other news, yes, I continue to be pregnant. And yes, I'm ready for that to stop.

I should start by saying this ramble comes from someone who hasn't read the whole series yet. I only just started book 3 (Eclipse), and the fact that I picked it up at all after the many annoyances I found in book 2 (New Moon) is at least one compliment I can pay Stephenie Meyer. I do want to know, at least on the surface, in a soap-opera way, what happens with these characters. There's also the desire to obtain the whole picture so I can ridicule it, or at least critique it, better. I admit that. But both desires are there for me, conflicting and warring and sparkling absurdly in the sunlight. I haven't had such a bipolar reaction of being compelled to read more and wanting to smack the author and the characters every other chapter since discovering Thomas Hardy about ten years ago.

As I've recently discussed on Facebook and elsewhere with dirae, kenshi, and others, the "vampiric death = sex" metaphor shines glaringly clear the more you read of the Twilight series. (And it was immediately and almost hilariously obvious in the film, with Robert Pattinson using all his considerable James Dean angst to convey vampire-Edward's difficulty in keeping his hands, teeth, and other body parts off that jailbait girl-crush of his.)

But Edward's way of dealing with it is the dull, mildly religious-conservative route: abstinence only. In some ways I find it refreshing, I suppose; a book for teens that's free of sex, drugs, or swear words. On the other hand...is that really the teen life any of us knew?

When Joss Whedon introduced his teenage heroine (Buffy Summers) to a "nice" vampire (Angel), and later a not so nice one (Spike)--well, I wouldn't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer yet (which everyone should), but much more dramatic things happened. Believe me, the subtext of "vampires=sex," and the correlating "sex can equal death," rapidly became text. Buffy's interactions with Angel and Spike illustrated it loud and clear, and with about fifty times as much fascination, humor, and heartbreak as the chilly Cullens have inspired in me so far.

Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite veered other directions with their vampire series. Rice's vampires were, she claimed, chaste, but please; every scene was about how sensually obsessed they were with each other. Brite just went ahead and made her vampires all promiscuous lovers, having them use sex to draw in mortal victims as well. You want a really sharp, horrifying picture of the "vampire sex as death" thing, even involving teenagers, go read Brite's Lost Souls.

For that matter, going back farther, anyone over the age of about 16 who reads Bram Stoker's Dracula can clearly see the Victorian horror of female sexuality inherent in the story. Demure young women get forced to taste blood, and they turn into red-lipped, heaving-bosomed seductresses whom one must stake and decapitate as soon as possible. Yet there's a thrill in it too--everyone knows that Dracula and his she-vampires are considered sexy and alluring, at least in the lives they've taken on outside the book. Within the book itself they're not exactly painted in the most flattering terms. But the fact remains, Stoker isn't afraid to let more bad things happen to more good people than Meyer seems to be. When Stoker writes about his vampire sneaking into a young lady's bedchamber, that vampire isn't there to "watch her sleep." He's there to bite her neck, feed her his blood from his bare chest, and Make Her His.

Speaking of watching her sleep: again, anyone over about 16 who reads the Twilight books is a bit troubled by the stalker-like, semi-pedophiliac nature of Edward Cullen. For whatever reason, it hasn't occurred to young teens on the whole, but a man sneaking into your bedroom night after night, without your knowledge, just to watch you sleep, is scary, not romantic. Call the freaking cops if this is happening to you. Furthermore, we adults immediately find it weird that 100-year-old immortals would want to attend high school over and over, instead of, say, college at least. But you know who finds the scenario just perfect? High school girls, that's who. And that's part of the allure of the Twilight series as a whole: we are entirely locked into Bella's first-person, impulsive, obsessive, honest, female-adolescent point of view. Even when she annoys the hell out of me, I find it weirdly interesting to read what is, in effect, her diary. I just wonder if the books might not benefit from the point of view of an actual adult once in a while too.

(Yes, I hear Meyer's writing a new one from Edward's point of view. But he's not exactly your usual adult, so we'll see...)

On a note unrelated to sex and death, but still related to realism in the teen world, there aren't nearly enough cell phones or computers in Meyer's books. The kids mostly call each other on land lines and pass each other handwritten notes. It's almost as if...gosh, as if the author is someone my age who's remembering how things were back when she was in high school. I still don't text-message, so I feel her reluctance to fake it in fiction. On the other hand, teens are eating this series up despite the anachronism. Goes to show, there's no predicting what will fly and what will crash in the world of fandom.

All the same, vampires have been done to (sexy) death. Guess I'll have to try my hand at making Greek gods, fairy folk, ghosts, or selkies the next hip thing instead.

Sometimes Amazon makes me laugh. From the listing of The Ghost Downstairs today:

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

89% buy the item featured on this page:
The Ghost Downstairs

11% buy
Luvs Premium Stretch Diapers, Size 4 (22-37 Lbs), 180 Diapers

Hmm, diapers or a book; it's always the quandary I face when browsing Amazon. Just like 11% of the population, apparently.

I do like the items that have shown up (and sometimes vanished again) on the Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought section: What Does Mrs. Claus Do? by my sister Kate Wharton, of course; the DVD of the Colin Firth Pride & Prejudice; The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick; and the DVD of Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Getting lumped with Joss Whedon, even by a computer, for one day once upon a time, is a high honor.

...MS Word's spell-check "errors" include the following:

texted/texting
oooh
hottie
snog
laddie
ick
yay
ringtone
Spidey
raincheck
crackhead
indie
wifi
kissyface
hickie
ew
ain't
fanboy
eyeshadow
jangly
sucky
bleh
yuckiness
offed (oneself)
Googled
aww
nutjob
microwaved/microwaving
snarky
creeped (out)
wowsers
chitchatty
sexeh
YouTube
stalkerish
winky (emoticon)
righto
grody
iPod
earbuds
spaz
skank
Chapstick
hiya
freakin'
sluttiness
sniffly
hyperdrama
cluelessness
buttload
tard
blissed (out)
slimeball
woohoo
neato

LJ doesn't like most of those either, incidentally. But it allows some of them to pass without the red underlining, so it's apparently a step hipper than MS Word.

Ordinarily celebrity baby news doesn't merit posting with me, but when it's Buffy gals, that changes things:

I just found out I was sharing pregnancy time with Alyson Hannigan, who has recently given birth to her first baby (a girl), and am still sharing pregnancy time with Sarah Michelle Gellar, who's due in the fall! Congratulations to Alyson & Alexis and Sarah & Freddie. Young babies, your parents shall know how to kick butt.

If, like me, you occasionally find yourself standing at the fridge with your newly bought bell pepper and wondering whether it really should go in there, or whether it might be happier living on the counter, dither no more!

This site has a rundown of where to store your fresh produce, and includes a handy chart you can print and stick to the fridge.

I have learned that I've been doing some fruits and veggies wrong. For instance, all fresh herbs except basil go in the fridge--ah ha, no wonder the basil kept turning black in there. Also, I tried her suggested way of keeping herbs fresh: snipping their ends and putting them in a glass of water, like flowers in a vase, then slipping a plastic bag over the top and refrigerating them. The cilantro I bought has stayed fresh for over a week now with this method--much longer than it does when trapped in its original plastic bag in the produce drawer.

Others I've been wrongly refrigerating when they should be on the counter: peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes. (Until you slice them up at least, presumably.) Meanwhile, plums and cherries should go in the fridge, when here I'd been storing them in the fruit bowl. They did seem to rot awfully fast that way, come to think of it.

Furthermore, keep those darn apples and pears and bananas away from other produce: they emit ethylene, which ripens other fruits and vegetables at an accelerated rate. However, you can use that to your advantage if you want to, say, ripen an avocado quickly for your guacamole.

Anyway, only a chef or a Food Sciences major could keep all this straight, so print the chart and enjoy your happy produce.

(And happy Memorial Day!)

To reward those who are actually checking LJ on Memorial Day weekend, today's giveaway:

2000 Fleurs, by Creed, a 1 ml sample vial, tested but mostly full, from The Perfumed Court, donated by laleonaenojada. Their description: The essence of 2,000 flowers ~ to name a few ~ violet, magnolia, rose, and lilac, with a touch of green tea and sandalwood. Creed's 2000 Fleurs Eau de Parfum is a floral lovers delight.

To enter to win the sample, just comment on this post. I'll choose a winner by random number next Sunday. International entrants now welcome! Non-LJers too, as always, though you'll have to leave me some way to contact you.

Good luck. Now go back to your lazing around!

The third trimester, to my annoyance, is feeling a touch like the first trimester lately--fatigue and touches of nausea and too much smell in the world--though thankfully less on the tired/nauseated and more on the heavy/sore. Standing too long makes my feet hurt, so I sit. Sitting too long makes my back and rear hurt, so I stand. Eventually I'm exhausted, so I lie down. Lying down on my side squishes that arm to death, so I turn over. Then the other arm gets squished to death, so I try to lie against a pillow at an angle sort of on my back and sort of on my side--which makes my joints or stomach or *something* hurt. When I get tired of having been in bed all night without getting much sleep, and besides am getting hungry, I get up. Repeat cycle.

Also, the baby kicks like crazy when I lie down, at least for a while. Those little movements are so gentle when you first feel them around 4-5 months; they're like the motions of a goldfish flitting around in a baggie of water. By 7-8 months they're sometimes more akin to those of a cat trapped in a pillowcase (which you are forced to hug against yourself for some reason).

I console myself with knowing I only have 4-7 weeks to go and then I'm DONE.

I also take comfort, as always, in amusing myself in odd ways. For instance...

I'm not a Twitter user--how can one such as I, who so loves to ramble, confine herself to 140 characters?--but I heard this idea of condensing classic novels into 140-character posts/Twitters, and had to try it.

So here's a few...


Les Miserables:
Jailed. Escaped. Stalked by creepy cop. Now foster daughter is dating revolutionary. Everyone I know is going to die. God, I'm tired.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:
Hot widow with kid moved in nearby. Serious man issues. What's up with that? OMG, she let me read her diary! Think I'm in there.

Middlemarch:
Tried to be do-gooder. Married old guy, then he died. Got screwed over by will (because I want Will). Happy ending plz Eliot? Thxbye.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles:
If I get called a hussy one more time I'm going to kill someone just to prove I'm the victim here.

Vanity Fair:
I'm only friending you for your money, lol. No, seriously.

A Room with a View:
Charlotte's wrong, it means nothing nothing nothing that George kissed me in the violets, and...OK fine, it does mean something.

Jane Eyre:
My employer is totally hitting on me. Yummy. Wait a sec, WHO'S living in the attic??

Lolita:
The last few weeks have been amazing. You'll never believe it--I've been...you know what, I'd better not say.

Go ahead, add your own!

In belated honor of Mother's Day, as well as this great review for THE GHOST DOWNSTAIRS ("just what a light-hearted ghost story should be. It’s delightful, funny, and intriguing, with just enough chills to give you goose bumps"), I'll do a different type of contest/giveaway this week.

Your prize: a pink matte pastel bistro mug, 16-ounce, with the Wild Rose Press logo - looks like this. I have one and it's a great mug--holds plenty of tea, has a nice smooth feel to it, and is an attractive rosy pink rather than a sickly Pepto pink. I'll even stick a tin of chocolate-covered Altoids in it.

To enter, just comment here. Non-LJers, be sure to include an email address so I can reach you if you win. I'll select the winner on Sunday by random number generator.

Huzzah! Good luck!

...none of you posted about Robert Pattinson kissing another man and doing gay sex scenes for an upcoming movie. It's called Little Ashes, and (making matters substantially odder) he plays a young Salvador Dali, and I bet I'll be able to keep from snickering right up to the moment when he starts wearing the crazy up-swooped mustache. But in that kiss photo linked above, at least, and thus presumably in some of the film, he's clean-shaven.

I just have to chuckle, since a role like that is such a perfect way to discombobulate shallow teen fans. They're used to their heartthrobs doing predictable chick-flicks, action films, and heartwarming family dramas, not moving straight from Twilight to a biopic about an eccentric Spanish painter. For that, RPattz, I give you bonus points.

Released today online and free:
http://thehuntforgollum.com/

LOTR fans, go watch! This is a short film, slightly over 30 minutes, made entirely by volunteer fans on a non-profit basis. And given the shoestring budget, I must say it looks, sounds, and feels amazing. If it weren't for the different cast, I'd believe it was a long extra sequence from Peter Jackson's extended DVDs. And actually, the guy who plays Gandalf looks so much like Ian McKellen that I might not have noticed the difference there, at least for the first few minutes.

Basically it covers the little sequence mentioned in the Council of Elrond, and the Appendices, in which Aragorn goes out hunting for Gollum, before the main events of LOTR take place. The filming and writing is very much in the style of the New Line movies, complete with a brief dream-sequence by Arwen and some amusing grumbling by Gollum. I'll be keeping my eye on this production team to see what they do next.

Thanks to Dave in the UK for emailing me about this project! Might not have reached my radar otherwise.

These can be applied to anytime during pregnancy, really, as no two women ever experience the same torturous miraculous process.

1. Drink three times as much water as you think you need. Just do it; you'll feel better.

2. Any of the following now count as exercise and entitle you to sit down and rest a while after doing them:
a. Unloading the dishwasher
b. Folding and putting away laundry
c. Carrying groceries from car to house
d. Walking one block to put something in mailbox

3. Given strenuous caloric requirements upon your system, it is fine and advisable to buy Oreos and Cheetos and ice cream in one grocery store trip. You need the energy.

4. Start planning now for your birth and post-partum experience. It is important that your whole family be aware of your preferences; namely, who will bring you your first shot of hard alcohol after the delivery, what that alcohol will be, and how it should be served. (Honestly, how unfair is it that we can't drink? Who needs it more than we do??)

FYI, the online ebook superstore Fictionwise has now added THE GHOST DOWNSTAIRS to their catalog:

http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/eBook86349.htm?cache

And since it's a "new" book in their system, it's 15% off for the time being. Get it while it's hot!

I'm honored to share the New Book At Fictionwise category with J.R.R. Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS, which also is out this week for the first time as an official ebook. :)

If you have a Kindle reader, Amazon.com now carries my title in that format as well. And there's a free Kindle application for iPhones and the iPod Touch, so you can always try it that way if you're one of those folks newly wedded to their iPhones.

---

In other news:

Young men of the world, let me discuss for a moment how stupid those long, baggy basketball shorts look on you. I was walking behind a young man wearing those the other day, and had some time to observe the effect. The material was so satiny, so loose and flowing, and so long, that it honestly looked like he was wearing a skirt. So, if the effect you want is that of walking around in a pretty, silky, rippling spring skirt, then carry on. If you want to wear something manly, try, I don't know, pants that fit.

I watched the Buffy episode "The Prom" (season 3) during breakfast this morning, while playing with my son. When Angel has his dream sequence about marrying Buffy, my son looked at her in her big poofy veil and low-cut wedding dress, and said grinning, "She's not dressed yet! She's just got a towel on her head."

As a side note, I get misty when the Class of '99 presents her with the Class Protector award. And how odd is it that it's Jonathan who presents it? Guess he has a tough few years between then and season 6, sufficient to change his mind about being on Buffy's side (well, mostly).

It's...return of the perfume giveaway!

Today's offering: Ambra Nera, by Ortigia Acqua di Colonia. As before, it's a little 1 ml sample vial from The Perfumed Court, tested but mostly full.

Description: From a Sicilian line of fragrances, Ambra Nera features notes of spicy exotic woods, vetiver, patchouli, and cedar over an amber base of labdanum, oak musk, galbanum and resins.

If you like dark, mysterious, incensey amber, this one may be for you. I'm not sure of the concentration, but it's definitely strong, so probably at least EDP.

Enter to win this sample by leaving a comment here. I'll select the winner at random in one week. If you're not an LJ user, leave an email address where I can notify you if you've won. LJ users ought to be able to find out via the usual comment notification. International entries welcome. Good luck!

Despite Saturday attendance at LJ being historically low, I feel like posting a Buffy ramble. Been too long, right?

I'm rewatching the series slowly, and just saw "Enemies" from Season 3. Though it's an excellent episode, I think it has some of those typical Joss "please ignore that illogical bit" plot points. The mayor hires the blue-shrouded demon with glowing eyes to steal Angel's soul, but at the end we find out blue guy was actually in Giles's employ and thus on "our" side. Fine, and of course I love the line, "I introduced him to his wife," but how did they ensure that the mayor call that particular demon? Was it just luck? Oh, well. Ignore that detail and it's fine.

Of course, a similarly illogical detail hangs at the very crux of one of the best plotlines in the series: Angel becoming Angelus in Season 2. As probably ten million other fans have figured out, Angel's curse makes no sense. Having his soul reinstated so he can suffer forever remembering all the mayhem he committed as a vampire--sure, that makes sense; that's a good curse. But having his soul taken away again is no punishment whatsoever. The second he becomes Angelus, he loves being Angelus. As Angel, he loathes the possibility of this happening, but until it really does happen, he doesn't know it will happen because the gypsies never told him about that Moment Of Perfect Happiness clause.

The curse would have worked a lot better if they had, since then he'd carry around double torture: "I'm doomed to remember all the terrible things I once did, plus I can never be truly happy or I'll turn into a monster again." As it is, he doesn't even realize the second half of that sentence until after Season 2. It's almost like the gypsies planned for him to 1) find out by trial and error, and 2) get his soul reinstated by someone, somehow, so that 3) he could then live in the full torture they intended, with some nice new regrets about how he treated his new friends.

Yeah. No sense. But dang, it sure was a compelling story to watch.

Moving to the "Angel" series for a moment, let's take a minute of silence for poor Andy Hallett. He, as Lorne, and Glenn Quinn as Doyle, played two of the most lovable characters on that series, and now both actors are dead. If I were Amy Acker I'd be worried, since Fred was the only other lovable one. (I rate the rest of the cast as highly likable and/or interesting, but only those three as lovable.)

And then a note on the Buffyverse as a whole:
naill_renfro and I have been discussing the shows in email, and he points out that Joss's characters have some serious father problems. As Naill puts it:

"There's Buffy and her absentee deadbeat dad, Angel and his verbally/physically abusive father (who, as Angel later says, "tasted like chicken!"), Wesley and his abusive father, Kate Lockley and her emotionally paralyzed, criminal father, Xander and his horrible father, the demon father Doyle never met and whom he wishes had never existed, Giles' rejection of and attempt to escape the destiny his father imposed on him... I'm sure I'm leaving some out, but there seems to be a pattern emerging here."

Good point. Add to the list the long-drawn-out Series of Dysfunctional Events between Angel and Connor. We also mustn't forget John Ritter as the disastrous robot suitor of Joyce's, who sure didn't give stepfathers any better a name. We never see Willow's dad to my recollection, and Spike's father was, what, dead his whole life or something? Spike might view Angelus as a father figure early in his vampire career. That's not healthy. And though Giles makes an admirable father figure for Buffy and the gang, it sometimes feels a little un-familial and almost romantic. (Or am I just projecting? Hmm. Moving on...) In all, the Mayor of Sunnydale comes off as the nicest dad figure, in his interactions with Faith, and that whole relationship is, of course, demonic parody.

In fact, aside from Joyce, mothers don't turn out much better. In all the above cases of abuse by fathers, the mothers don't seem to be of any help. We only see Willow's mom once if I recall, and it's when she and the other moms try to burn the town's daughters at the stake in "Gingerbread." Spike's sweet mum had to be staked before she did something really icky to her son. Principal Wood teaches us that Slayers don't make good moms either. Lorne's mother gives him a memorably discouraging (though hilarious) greeting when he returns home. And Darla--well, yeah. At least she was merciful enough to remove herself early from the picture.

Fred's parents may be the only sweethearts in the series, come to think of it.

But then, this isn't necessarily any psychoanalysis of Joss himself. It's just a staple of good drama, going way back to myths and fairy tales. If your parents are always around and always loving, you can't get into many interesting adventures.

Rambling concluded. Go dye some eggs or scarf some Cadbury.

Drawing time!

From now till Easter Sunday, leave a comment here to enter yourself into the running for a free PDF copy of The Ghost Downstairs. (Non-LiveJournalers, just leave an email address where I can reach you if you win.) There's a touch of an Easter theme in it, just briefly at the end, so it's fitting. Of course, it's an even more fitting story for a Halloween giveaway, which I'll probably do in October as well.

Anyway--enter away! And remember you can read the first chapter on my site if you want to see whether it intrigues you or not.

May you have a Good Friday indeed.

Just starting the third trimester (eek!), and have gotten around to a sort-of belly pic. Plus Z in his stylin' purple pants made by Grams.

Since I definitely have gained more, sooner, this pregnancy than the first one, Steve and I like to make remarks about how similar I'm looking to a sea mammal. When I appear on the beach, local blogs take photos. Authorities remind everyone to be whale-wise and keep 200 yards away. If I wear black and white I am an orca, Molly of M Pod. And so on.

But anyway. Congratulations to ekatarina for winning last week's perfume drawing! I'll have another soon. And probably even an ebook giveaway too. Stay tuned.