I can sympathize with Galadriel a lot these days. We're both worried about the future, and if I had a Mirror to look into, I'd be peering into it half the day, probably. But the Mirror was stubbornly refusing to give her anything more specific than "a darkened room" and vague colors; even Lyra's alethiometer was refusing to give her anything but the same symbols over and over again. But she was ever more convinced that two needle-stops at "hourglass" had to mean death.

( NO! STOP IT! NO BABBLING! THAT IS ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY! OH MY GOD! )

Tags: dolls, his dark materials, lord of the rings, sparkle motion, the secret life of dolls, twilight
Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: Aqualung - Strange And Beautiful (I'll Put A Spell On You)

Okay. I've been asked about performing and/or recording various Movies in Fifteen Minutes scripts before, and I've gotten three requests in the last two weeks alone, so I feel like I need to set this down where people can see it, and where I can link back to it when necessary.

I've had probably two dozen requests or more over the years, so this is something I've had to come up with a policy for, and this is it:

1) Don't sell your performance for profit. A school fundraiser-type talent show or something, I consider that charity; that's fine.

2) You can shorten the script as much as you need to. I would just ask that you not add significant amounts of your own material, because people then get confused as to who wrote what; I understand if you have to come up with a line or two in order to bridge a large gap caused by having to leave something out. You can change or leave out curse words, but please do not get creative with your alterations. If it says "Oh, shit!" and you want to say "Oh, crap!" instead, I understand that. Please do not, as one group wanted, substitute "Oh, poopy!"

3) You have to credit me. Please, you have to. I need this to be in print ("Written by Cleolinda Jones," "from the parody by Cleolinda Jones," "adapted from the parody by Cleolinda Jones," etc.) if there is a sign, marquee or program, and if not, I need it to be verbally acknowledged in some way. If it's a video, it ABSOLUTELY HAS TO be in the video in some way, like on a title card or in the credits, and not just linked in the YouTube description or something, because the video could be reposted without your knowledge. In fact, this has happened before.

Here's why I'm so uptight about this: I gave a group permission to perform and record "Phantom of the Opera in Fifteen Minutes." They did not clearly, explicitly credit me in the video or on the YouTube page (the YT page may not have even been theirs; someone might have taken their video and uploaded it, which is why the credit needs to be in the video). What happened then was, a girl claimed she had written the material for the video. She then "sold" "her" "script" to her younger cousin (for something like $12.47, if memory serves), who then wrote her own, very close version of it and posted it on fanfiction.net. When confronted by readers of mine who discovered this and reported her for plagiarism, the younger cousin was very angry and defensive, because in her mind, she "owned the rights" to the POTO/15M material. Because she had "bought" it... from someone who didn't actually own it or write it. If my name had been in that video, it would have been a lot harder for the girl to pull that shit. The way the whole thing went down, even considering that the cousin had been deceived, was extremely frustrating and insulting ("I've never run into anyone I had to ask to take something down who then turned around like, NUH-UH, IT'S MINE! I DO WHAT I WANT! I ALSO DEMAND AN APOLOGY!" Yes, this was the "you accusatory squirrel-like person" incident), as far as I'm concerned. I really do not want to go through that again.

So #3 is, basically, "Do whatever you have to do to make sure that people understand who wrote this material and it doesn't escape into the wild where people have no idea where it came from."


Any additional questions?

Tags: faq, m15m

Been having a really hard time the last few days. Don't even really want to talk about it, although suffice it to say that it's not just me feeling pitiful, it's me actually trying not to get sucked into a number of different people's dramaz and not entirely succeeding. I'm trying to space the entries several days apart, but if The Secret Life of Dolls seems to move at a brisk pace over the next week or so, it's because I find working on that to be both comforting and distracting.

Linkspam--before we get into the grim stuff: ICE CREAM DEATHMATCH! If you'll excuse me, I have a container of Heavenly Hash I want to crawl into now.

( Three deaths to start out with )

Tags: 9, alice in wonderland, bad days, cameron!avatar, coco avant chanel, conventions, deaths, depression, disney, harry potter, heath ledger, ice cream, inglourious basterds [sic], let the right one in, magazines, makeup, movies, nightmare on elm street, om nom nom, public enemies, runaways, sparkle motion, the last airbender, the princess and the frog, tv, twilight, vampires
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard - Agent of Chaos

It's always a three-ring circus here at The Shelf. ( The rooster is but a creature of myth and legend now )

Tags: chez jones, dolls, his dark materials, lord of the rings, pirates of the caribbean, sparkle motion, the secret life of dolls, twilight, van helsing
Current Mood: complacent
Current Music: Cake - Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

First of all, new Secret Life back thataway.

Second of all, I ended up adding/revising a bit on the Michael Jackson entry (you can skip down to "He was formally accused"), because ( Read more... )

Third--I have no way to segue from something Profound and Philosophical, so this is necessarily going to sound frivolous and selfish. But: my hair is a wreck. It's brittle and bone-dry, which is making it tangle at the ends, which in turn is making it break off. I know that there's nothing really to fix that except to get the split ends lopped off, but I'd like to try to save the rest of my hair. And also, I'm afraid to go back and see my stylist because I know she'll chop off half of it, and it'll be so damaged I won't be able to argue. So I'd like to get some deep conditioning in before I try to get a trim. The problem is that my hair is naturally very fine and limp (not "thin" exactly--there's plenty of it), which means I have some wave put in about twice a year some to give it any body at all (read: my dirty secret, the Dread Word Perm).

So here's my actual question(s): please, please tell me you know of some kind of really good deep conditioning mask or treatment. The less expensive the better, and if can be made from common kitchen/produce section items, fantastic. Also, I generally use Pantene shampoo and conditioner, which I like, but which my stylist told me is full of protein, which can further dry out your hair--so if you know of something that's good for dry/processed hair (even though "hydrating curls" is the Pantene formula I already use), let me know.

Tags: deaths, hair, music, questions

So, when last we left The Shelf, Faramir Two's day of reckoning had finally come, and... it had not gone well. We sat around waiting for the other shoe to drop (particularly me, waiting to see if I was going to have to take another sword to the cheek for him), but actually... ( Read more... )

Tags: dolls, his dark materials, lord of the rings, pirates of the caribbean, sparkle motion, the secret life of dolls, twilight, van helsing
Current Mood: sleepy

Michael Jackson, Pop Icon, Is Dead at 50.

( Let's go ahead and say it all now )

Tags: deaths, music, music discussion
Current Mood: sleepy

1) Farrah Fawcett Dies of Cancer at 62.

2) Michael Jackson dies of a heart attack? (TMZ); Report: Michael Jackson suffers cardiac arrest (CNN). TMZ's awful, but they're awful because they resort to the tackiest means to get the truth. Which means... it's likely to be true.

ETA: LA Times reporting death, CNN not confirming. "Updated at 3:15 p.m.: Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by doctors this afternoon after arriving at a hospital in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told The Times." Wolf Blitzer's currently on CNN going on and on about comas, which was the LA Times report five minutes ago.

ETA: Everyone's confirming it now, and the entire internet has gone down.

ETA: ONTD seems to have been locked down so as not to take all of LJ down with it. I assume it's a temporary suspension for that reason, but I don't know. (Okay, I'm hearing now that it is a temporary measure.)

ETA: No one died climbing in New Zealand, okay? Not Jeff Goldblum, not Harrison Ford, not Zac Efron. If there's the least grain of truth to it, TMZ will have it and then CNN will finally get someone to talk to them an hour later.

Tags: deaths

1) House rules: Don't fight on my journal. Don't. Disagree, discuss, that's great. But you will be civil and non-snippy to me and each other on my own journal. Take it somewhere else if you can't.

2) My stepfather decided to buzzcut the Angry Jasmine again. The jasmine then got so much angrier, in fact, that it disgorged a swarm of yellowjackets that stung him upside the head several times. I'm not even making this up.

3) Yesterday, I opened the front door to take Scout outside on his leash, and there's a dead bird toes up on the doorstep. A fairly large bird, too--you know, the size of a pigeon, rather than a sparrow. We have no idea what it was doing there, because it was under the little porch overhang fairly close to the door, so it couldn't have just fallen out of the sky or something.

( Linkspam )

Tags: 9, alice in wonderland, awards, barbie, batman, cameron!avatar, coco avant chanel, dark shadows, deaths, dogs, dolls, harry potter, i am never making it up, inception, makeup, movies, narnia, o snap, oscars, pirates of the caribbean, public enemies, robin hood, runaways, scout, sparkle motion, terminator, the box, the fighter, the last airbender, true blood, tv, twilight, vampires, watchmen, werewolves, why we can't have nice things
Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Garbage - Push It

... my feeds before I went to bed.

Full 'Last Airbender' teaser trailer.

Tags: the last airbender, trailers
Current Mood: exanimate

Check Out These Images of Tim Burton's 'Wonderland'! Yeah. That'll wake you up in the morning.

Also, something I posted Saturday on Twitter: The movie we've all been waiting for: Buffy vs. Edward.

Tags: alice in wonderland, sparkle motion, twilight, video
Current Mood: unsure of what to have for breakfast

WHAT IS THIS


THIS IS APPALLING


I AM APPALLED


( IT ACTUALLY SPARKLES )

Tags: barbie, dolls, sparkle motion, the secret life of dolls, twilight
Current Mood: DID I NOT TELL YOU IT WOULD SPARKLE?

You know what happens when you cut my jasmine back too far?





THE JASMINE GETS ANGRY.

Tags: chez jones, picspam, yard safari
Current Mood: IA IA JASMTAGN!
Current Music: Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes

It's been a bad week, in terms of the depression thing. I'm just at a point where I'm afraid to talk about it. I finally let my mother in on the severity of it, and she immediately went into I JUST WANT TO FIX IT mode. And she knows she did, and she knows she can't. BUT OMG IS THERE ANYTHING SHE CAN DO TO FIX IT? NO REALLY, IS THERE? I've made about six different attempts at this paragraph and backspaced them all. My inner Elinor is flaring up and I'm afraid to say anything about how I feel now, because mostly I feel moldy and selfish and unmotivated on the best of days, and hellaciously cranky/stupidly weepy on the worst. And I am so, so afraid that if I don't post regularly enough (mmm, aged news! Delicious), readers are going to wander away, but I know I have to hold off if that's what I need to do. And meanwhile, I want to talk about this the way I usually talk about depression, but I just--can't. I don't know. Maybe I'll do a voice post or something--I feel like y'all would need to hear from my actual tone of voice that I'm not falling to pieces over this. It's just... heavy.

And please know that even when I'm not posting, I'm flagging stories for later, not all of which I even end up using. So really, I am keeping up with things, and if I don't compile a linkspam, you can still see what's going on there, if you want.

Re: Tonner SDCC exclusives: They're apparently going to be selling whatever's leftover on the direct site, so I think I'm going to try that (or eBay) rather than ask an unknowable number of readers to try to track down a slightly variant Tonner Edward. As much as I appreciate y'all offering--and, I mean, I did ask--I'm just not sure how that would not end up being a total clusterfuck, since no one would know if anyone else had managed to get one, and we'd end up, with, like, seven.

Also: they're going to have a Black Canary exclusive as well.

Also-also: I think I have found the Uhura I want.

( Linkspam: Yes, I *did* hear about the getting kinda-hit by a cab thing )

Tags: 9, american idol, batman, books, conventions, crazy, depression, dolls, fame, harry potter, indiana jones, inglourious basterds [sic], iron man, movies, music, pixar, public enemies, remember me, robin hood, sherlock holmes, sparkle motion, star trek, thirst, tonner, twilight, vampires, werewolves, wtf, zombies
Current Mood: blah
Current Music: Eleanor McEvoy - Whisper a Prayer to the Moon

Just a short bit, because I liked the question: I always related a lot to Jo March as a kid, since I was a writer too. So many people identify with Elizabeth Bennet--probably because she's just that well-written a character--but more specifically, I always identified with Elinor Dashwood (my sister is very much a Marianne); I tend to choke a lot of things down. And Jane Eyre and Sara Louise in Jacob Have I Loved appealed to me a lot for that sense of outsider-ness, of not fitting in.

(As a side note, I try to find something I can identify with, or at least understand, in every single character I write. It's a useful way to prevent cardboard villains, for example. You know, what beliefs do they hold, or habits do they have, or what do they really want, and can I identify with wanting that, even if I don't want it for myself?)

Tags: books, jane austen, jane eyre, little women, livejournal, writer's block, writing

Made of Fail fans--Dayna/sweetdragon's cat Snuggles is at the vet hospital with a high fever and respiratory problems, and it's going to cost $500 for tests and treatments--and they're already not sure how they're going to make rent. (When Sister Girl's puppy Pete ate a sock, it cost $700. We're still paying that one off. Vet bills do, in fact, suck this bad.) Can you spare a dollar or two for Snuggles?

Tags: animals, pets

Hey, remember the Secret Life of Dolls? Yeah.

So Bella was baking her cranky little heart out in an Edward(s)-free zone, and yet our problems were far from solved. (I did manage to raid our pantry for supplies, and if you were to ask me, "Wait, how do you use real-people ingredients to make plastic doll food?," I would reply, "LOOK! OVER THERE! TEEN HEARTTHROB OF YOUR CHOICE!" just before I ran away.) ( In which Faramir's doom is at hand )

Tags: dolls, his dark materials, jane eyre, lord of the rings, sparkle motion, the secret life of dolls, toys, twilight
Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: U2 - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me

I am having a gigantic crankiness problem lately, particularly in real life. I can tell I'm being really irritable and snappish, but noticing it tends to make me... more irritable. At least I can hide it a bit better online, but I'm still losing my patience way more often than I should--I get really pissed off about things I know are stupid, about things I know never used to bother me, but--it's completely involuntary and irrational. And I've been like this for weeks now, if not months.

I'm trying to work on it--I cut out caffeine again (a long while back) after I noticed it was making me cranky, I've been trying to eat better but more often, drink more water, get more sun--I already take a B complex and a multi-vitamin (and antidepressants, for those of you just coming in; I've been doing really well as far as the drugs + vitamins regimen goes, and for a long time now). I just don't know what else it is. Stress, maybe--stress of the uncertain and the unfinished, I guess. People around me dumping their stress on me, possibly. To be honest, I think a lot of it started six months ago when I began getting really emotional about turning thirty but not being what and where I wanted to be by this point in my life, and I don't think I've gotten past that yet.

I think I need more alcohol in my life. Perhaps something with fruit.

( Linkspam )

Tags: awards, batman, books, clash of the titans, conventions, crazy, disney, dolls, harry potter, inception, john carter of mars, london boulevard, movies, nora roberts, oh dramatize, remember me, sex, sexism, shutter island, sparkle motion, star trek, the da vinci code, the time traveler's wife, tonner, true blood, tv, twilight, twitter, wanted, watchmen, where the wild things are, why we can't have nice things, writers, wtf, x-men
Current Mood: hungry

Really tired--I think it's because we've had monsoons for about three days now. Time to test out the full spectrum lamp, I guess. So I'm pretty much over here working on, uh, Secret Life-related crafts, drinking iced tea, not doing much. So I might as well go ahead and post these two things now:

yuki_onna (Catherynne M. Valente) is having some financial trouble at the moment, so:

Starting Monday, I will start posting chapters of a full-length novel version of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. I will be writing it in real time, posting every Monday. It will be free to read–but please know that the sheer calories to make my brain create it require funding, and I would very much appreciate your support. Pay whatever you like for it, whatever you think it’s worth. It’s kind of like an old-fashioned rent party. There’s a button at the bottom of the post to start things out.

Meanwhile, fans and friends have set up adoptingcat.

Also-meanwhile, coffeeinhell (you may remember me raving about the marshmallows from Polidori Chocolates) is between jobs herself, so if you've ever wanted to order a dark chocolate S'mores kit or H.P. Lovecraft truffles, the time has never been better. (Someone had sent me pomegranate marshmallows of hers--I don't think she's currently selling those--and I pretty much just sat there and ate the entire bag of six in one sitting. They are big and fluffy and AWESOME and I'm going to try the vanilla ones as soon as I can.)

Tags: chocolate, om nom nom, writers
Current Mood: blah

Re: the SDCC exclusive Tonner Edward variant: I think my problem here isn't OMG IT'S A TWILIGHT DOLL I MUST HAVE IT; it's that I love incorporating stuff into the Secret Life stories. And "stuff" often gets expensive, although not always--some of the best bits have been small reader gifts (The Littlest Cowboy Hat, for example), or stuff I found around the house (the dessert fork for pitching the ponies' grass), or old toys from my closet (the ponies themselves). I mean, there are dolls I want for myself that I haven't bought because I couldn't justify the cost (even crazy-fantastic bargains) by thinking of a way to incorporate them--but I see something that makes me go HOLY SHIT I HAVE TO PUT THAT IN THE STORY and it's like my brain just shuts down. I mean, I saw Super Special Exclusive Legolas with Cloak on eBay and fought for that thing to the $40 death AND STILL GOT IT FOR HALF WHAT IT USUALLY GOES FOR, SUCKAAAAAS. It's kind of my equivalent of "SQUIRREL!"

But I am trying to talk myself down off the Gratuitous Edward Variant ledge because: Alice. I have to have Alice. I can't not have Alice. I have to bring Alice's awesome to The Shelf. I can't blow this kind of money on a character I already have in a slightly different shirt and afford an Alice. So there's that. I... I'll have to see a picture of the variant Edward, I guess. *hangs head*

Oh, by the way, we have a reader question about dolls--where to find good sites for accessories for 4" figures?

Oh, and my mother has found someone who wants to buy the plates. Not the mugs yet, though.

( Linkspam )

Tags: 9, bad ideas, bond, conventions, deaths, dolls, empire, harry potter, iron man, john carter of mars, lord of the rings, mission impossible, movies, nightmare on elm street, pirates of the caribbean, pixar, runaways, shutter island, sparkle motion, spider-man, the daily show, the hurt locker, the lone ranger, the time traveler's wife, tonner, true blood, tv, twilight, vampires, wank, x-men, zombies
Current Mood: a touch sunburnt
Current Music: Joan Jett - I Hate Myself For Loving You