the greatest gwar song ever written.

My mom and I are taking over a thrift store a friend of ours owns.And it's not one of those "vintage" shops.It's a honest to goodness 50 cent shoe and 2.00 dress type thrift store here in the hood.I have always had a passion for cheap thrift stores so I'm excited.
It's yet another job for me to have and thrift stores and vintage clothes have been one of my passions since I was a little kid.
And it's a great established business that is secure money wise and also allows time for my art.Plus I get to run around in a store full of creepy old discarded clothing.
As soon as I get a breather I will be posting details,info on the store ect.
Just what I need more work.This will be me soon.
"One Job?!?!You LAZY GOAT!"

A friend of mine does all the video work for Pearland Roller Derby and submitted this video for the Dorritos commercial for the superbowl
http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/?gclid=CIi3kpGs650CFRQpawodgihpMg#/video/1470

I think this video is amazing as I've dealt briefly with a Houston Roller Derby shoot and I have to imagine the Pearland Derby girls are even harder to get to stay in one place or organize.

In other videos that are funny, heres a song that everytime I hear gets stuck in my head for days to weeks.

Yes, a song by GWAR! they made as a novelty has me humming randomly for days more often than the Cruxshadows or Covenant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Behind

Uhg. I am sick of ppl I dislike infiltrating my circle of friends/aquaintances.

Next thing you know she'll be fucking my ex lovers.

Oh well, at least one of them (and you know who you are)will break her heart.

*sheepish grin*

A German reader of Gothic Charm School emailed me today, saying that they thought I should be a guest at the next Wave Gotik Treffen, especially since it will be the 20th anniversary.

Oh, don't I wish. I have wanted to go to WGT for YEARS.

The letter-writer went on to say that they don't actually know any of the WGT organizers, they just thought it would be a nifty idea. Over the next couple of days, I might do some poking around the WGT site and see if they even ever have non-music guests.

But yes. I would love to go to WGT, and to Whitby Goth Weekend in England. Quick, someone convince the organizers of those events they need to have me attend as a special guest!

(I figure I have nothing to lose by making this sort of general request to the universe at large. Who knows? It might actually work!)

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/for-those-who-read-this-blog-for.html

(Serena Altschul and some author in July, sitting on the trampoline after two days of interviews. None of which, oddly enough, were done on the trampoline.)

Mr. Neil,

I DVR'd yesterday's installment of Sunday Morning and after zipping through it back and forth multiple times cannot seem to find you, though the description indicated the correct episode. Was it bumped to next week? Have you been sucked into an alternate Neil-less universe?

A concerned reader,
Mary

I'm afraid it was bumped by the Fort Hood Massacre.

I checked: The profile CBS did of me is apparently still going out, probably some time in December, although no-one seems certain when. I was told that we could help ensure that it is broadcast (and possibly make it come out sooner than December) if CBS think people would actually like to see it. Which means that if you do want to see it, you can help the process along if you write or email CBS and (politely) tell them so:

ADDRESS:
CBS News Sunday Morning
Box O (for Osgood)
524 West 57th St.
New York, NY 10019

E-MAIL: sundays@cbsnews.com

...
Dear Neil Gaiman, I ask for half-a-moment of your time (I would not presume to ask for more). This Spring 2010 I am teaching a Topics in Literature class on YOU at Winona State University (Eng 225: Neil Gaiman). Easy enough to select representative novel (American Gods), short stories (Fragile Things), children and YA (Graveyard Book), but here's the rub: I will likely only assign one Sandman graphic novel to students. I have been debating which is most representative, most worthy of inclusion, most amenable to class discussion and student scholarship. Then I thought I'd ask you. I know you suggest above that, for questions of this sort, we consider you a dead author, but I know you're not. When I came to a similar impasse about which of Ursula Le Guin's works to include in another class, she actually replied and offered her input. I extend the same offer to you: which of the Sandman volumes would you like to see on the syllabus?
Thank you for your time,
Nicholas Ozment, English Instructor
WSU

It's a hard one. I think if I were teaching I'd either go for Season of Mists or Fables and Reflections, because both of them have stuff to teach -- those nice chewy bits that people can like or dislike, argue with or discuss. I know a lot of teachers like to teach Dream Country because a) Midsummer Night's Dream won awards, and b) it's short and c) it has a script in the back. Your call. And good luck.

...

I mentioned recently that there were some beautiful new Polish and Russian book covers for my books that I'd seen at signings, which got me thinking. The International Cover gallery on this website is incredibly out of date.

It's at http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Works/Books/International_Covers.

And though I get a lot of foreign editions in, and will at some point head down to the basement and rummage around and scan some (this week's mail brought the two-volume Japanese edition of Anansi Boys, on the cover of which Fat Charlie is not only Very White, but also Very Thin, and the complex Chinese - ie. Taiwan and Hong Kong - edition of The Graveyard Book) I thought that blog readers, being, as you are, all over the world, might be a better resource for knowing where to look for foreign covers.

Was your basement finished when you purchased your home or did you have it finished for your basement library? If you finished it yourself, how difficult was it? Also, I thought I saw a dehumidifier in one of the Photosynth pictures. Do you need one because of the books?

I'm asking because we have a full unfinished basement that we would like to have finished. We are running out of room for our books also. I don't think we don't have as many as you do though. :)

Any other suggestions for such a project would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
C.

No, when we got here the basement had a clay floor that puddled when it rained. We hired some nice builders and spent a lot of money finishing it, putting in drainage tiles, underfloor heating and all. There's a dehumidifier there in the summer and a humidifier in the winter, because after the first few years I noticed that binding glue and leather book covers were both cracking and flaking. There's now the equivalent of a large house in basement rooms beneath this house, filled with books and CDs and suchlike stuff.

And finally, a few photos from the China trip, taken by Ian Ford (or in one case, on his camera). Ian's a travel guide who now lives in China who helped organise my travels, and came along with me for part of the journey.

Amanda and I in the silk clothes that my publisher had given us as a thank you for coming, and because they are terrific.

I'm holding the Galaxy Award for this year, given to the foreign author most popular with Chinese reader-voters. This was my second year of winning it, so I have retired from the competition and said that they have to find a new favourite foreign author now.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was 13, and not yet into politics, so it didn't mean much to me at the time (although I'd briefly met President Reagan the year before, coincidentally at a White House dinner that dmorr attended for the same reason I did).

Let A Thousand Nations Bloom has a link roundup (or as we call it, a link archipelago!), and Michael Strong has a reflective post:

Decent, responsible graduate students were not to be seen going to a libertarian lecture, even at Chicago: it was that simple. Meanwhile, discussions of whether violent revolutions were necessary for the (obviously desirable) transition to socialism were entirely mainstream academic conversation. Within academia up through the 1980s, discussions of revolutions in which violent death is routine were acceptable, but envisioning a society without legitimized aggression was disreputable. I wondered: Were these people insane?

On November 9, 2009, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is appropriate to reflect on the extraordinary human capacity for delusion...

This past weekend was good, filled with seeing people and Getting Stuff Done. If only the Getting Stuff Done part had included more writing accomplished, but oh well. I managed to finish one of the things that needed writing, and am now just waiting for some final feedback. ::nudges jaborwhalky gently::

(Oh dear, the deadline for the next Steampunk Tales is Sunday. Whoops! Guess I know what just got put in the top slot of the writing priority queue!)

Part of the problem is that I have this huge and enticing stack of new-to-me books to read:

(Yes, most of them are vampire-type books. Don't try to act shocked, you're fooling no one.)

So of course I am distracted from writing! But I think I'm going to have to re-institute the rule of only reading during bath-time, otherwise I will never get all the writing done that I need to.

---

trystbat mentioned wearing one of the MAC black lipsticks over a deep fuchsia pink color, thus achieving a nice black cherry effect. "Ooooh!" said I, and promptly started rummaging in my makeup stash to see if I had a deep fuchsia lipliner. I don't have quite the color I want, but did achieve a similar effect with a pinky-red lipliner under Midnight Media. I'm very tempted to see if there are any MAC counters near me that still have Black Night in stock, so I can swap 6 empty containers for a new lipstick. And then find a good fuchsia lipliner from Wn'W or NYX Cosmetics.

---

Skirts! So, remember me burbling about the Raven skirt by Morrigan? (clicky-link!) I was lucky enough to get one in black and silver! It is stunning; the detail of the screen-printing is astonishingly delicate, and the skirt construction is very well done. I can't wait for her to announce her winter line.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2009/11/keep-a-close-eye-on-candidates-looking-at-issues.html

I'm imagining a scene from the wedding of a political candidate:

Officiant: Do you pledge to love, honor and cherish, and to be true and loyal as long as you both shall live?

Candidate: I'm taking a look at that idea, yes.

Sparking this fantasy is a radio interview I heard Sunday night with state Sen. Kirk Dillard (R-Hinsdale), one of seven candidates in the February GOP gubernatorial primary.

"We need to look at every (economic) incentive the state of Illinois offers," he said at one point during the hourlong program on WLS-AM 890.

Dillard also mentioned that he's "looking at the full gamut of jobs that are around" as he makes plans to turn the state into "a better financial center."

And in response to a question about whether a state drowning in red ink should be funding the arts, Dillard said the Illinois Arts Council "clearly needs to be -- like everything in state government -- on the block to be looked at."

Of all the campaign promises and declarations you will hear in the next several months, the flimsiest will be the ones containing the assurance that the candidate is taking a "look" -- even the emphatic "hard look" -- at an idea.

It's designed to tell you what you want to hear. If, for example, you are opposed to state funding for the Illinois Arts Council, you hear in Dillard's words above a determination to subject that line item to the flintiest possible scrutiny.

If you're a believer in state funding for the arts even during tough times, you'll hear the escape clause and sense of low priority in Dillard's answer.

And if you're a realist, you'll know that, if elected, Dillard will, true to his word, look at the Illinois Arts Council. For three seconds.

Then he'll remember that Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan's wife, Shirley, is the chair of that agency and he'll decide to put some other expenditure "on the block."

And by starting with these examples, I don't mean to single out Dillard (or Republicans) as "lookers." Democrats, too, are forever giving the prospective once-over to proposals.

"It's something we seriously have to take a look at," said then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich about state-owned casinos in 2004.

"I'll take a look at all my options," hedged Gov. Pat Quinn when pressed recently about what he planned to do if two holdout University of Illinois trustees didn't resign.

"We need to take a step back and look at the possibilities," said Ald. Toni Preckwinkle, 4th, a Democratic candidate in the primary race for Cook County Board president, on what should be done with the Michael Reese Hospital site now that Chicago didn't get the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

The eyes have it.

When candidates and officeholders say, "I'm looking at that issue," remember to translate: "I haven't really thought it through yet and don't want to give a definitive answer or take a stand that might offend someone or that might one day come back to bite me as a broken promise."

Yet also remember that this is not always an indefensible dodge.

Sometimes we forget that it's not necessarily a virtue to be thunderously certain and closed-minded on every issue. We've had more than our fill of elected leaders who refuse to adapt to changing circumstances and who govern by rereading their old bumper stickers.

In the end, a candidate who's "looking" is better than one with blinders on.
 -------

ONLINE EXTRAS

Here's Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ed Scanlan quoted at Jeff Berkowitz's blog Public Affairs:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says we are paying 12% more for comparable labor compared to the private sector…we’ve got to take a look at that.

Here's GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Ryan at last Thursday's seven-way debate:

   (It's) time to take a look at vouchers.

Here's Gov. Pat Quinn  in July talking about where the state budget can be cut:

We’re going to take a look at everything under the Department of Corrections

Here's Ill Sen. Randy Hultgren (R-Winfield), who is running for Congress in the west-suburban 14th U.S. Congressional District, asked on Public Affairs if he would have voted to let AIG fail had he been in Washington:

I might have. I would have looked at it.

GOP gubernatorial hopeful Dan Proft, on education, also at Public Affairs:

You have to look at how we provide these services and they need to be overhauled.

I'm glad to add other examples (they're needles in the news-archive haystack given how common the words "look at" are) if you have citations.

 Public Affairs blogger/cable host Jeff Berkowitz weighs in with his views on the above:

As in the Catholic Church, there are the mortal sins and there are venial sins in politics. You are upset with pols who equivocate with the expression, "I'm looking at that." Yes, it would be much better if they would be more specific. But, that is a venal sin. The mortal sin is not showing up at all. As Woody Allen said, 90% of life is showing up. Pat Quinn, Dan Hynes, Andy McKenna, Jr., Cheryle Jackson, Pat Hughes, Alexi Giannoulias, Mark Kirk and Ethan Hastert just to name a few. don't show up on my hardhitting political TV interview show, "Public Affairs," and thereby avoid any tough questions. Yet, you choose to leave those folks mostly alone, and you go after Scanlan, Hultgren, Preckwinkle and Dillard for not being sufficiently specific on a few questions when they have shown up and answered 90% quite specifically. You might have good aim, Eric, but you are targeting the wrong issue and wrong pols.

One of my Facebook friends points me to something  Dan Proft said at last week's GOP debate:

(This is) not the time to “look” at stuff, especially if you’ve been there for 20 years

Note -- This column is a revised version of a blog post from early Monday, when some of the comments below were posted.

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2009/11/this-wont-take-long.html

If you know or know of CLTV political ace Carlos Hernandez-Gomez, the subject of Carol Marin's column today, head here and leave an uplifting message for him. He needs it and deserves it.

My friend Tony's commercial for Doritos featuring members of Southside Roller Derby in Pearland Texas:

http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/?gclid=CIi3kpGs650CFRQpawodgihpMg#/video/1470

Not too shabby

By way of ernunnos, the dollar is now the currency of choice for carry trades.

Poll #1482906
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 37

Do you know why this matters?

Do you care?

Apparently Gackt has now given up and simply told someone that he's 36, instead of 469. I would like to take this opportunity to gloat and say I already knew that -- it's possible to figure it out from stuff in his book, and I did. I'm of the opinion that it's a neat little largely self-contained example of what I call "the Sherlock Holmes trick" in action, so I present it here for your entertainment and edification:

It's fairly easy to get a lower bound on his age. Gackt joined Malice Mizer as their vocalist in 1995, and has been ridiculously famous ever since. He changes haircuts about every four minutes, but otherwise he doesn't look all that different from when he started. I have this feeling that he didn't look like an idiot teenager even when he was one, but for the sake of argument figure he was, at minimum, 18 or so when he got to start looking terrified on TV, sitting between the guitarist in drag and the keyboardist in full clownface and a Pierrot collar.

There are other things that suggest a range of 10 years or so for his adolescence. He put quite a bit of effort into being a complete cock as a teenager, as many teenage boys do, and describes himself as a "Yankii", which is a specific type of delinquent punk. (For anyone who's seen the anime Yu Yu Hakusho -- Yuusuke's pretty much the definition of Yankii brat. Their fashion sense is very much like the "rockers" and "Teddy boys" of 1950s and 60s Britain, the James Dean-ish look and attitude poignantly recorded in the picture of 16-year-old John Lennon used on the cover of his album Rock 'n' Roll.) The Yankii style of rebellion has gone in and out of fashion, but there was a resurgence maybe 15-20 years ago. He's also a Gundam fan; the first of a long, long line of Gundam TV and film series came out in 1979. Neither of these are really definitive, though.

Gackt mentions working as a casino dealer and host before joining Malice Mizer. I'm not sure whether he means a host in the Las Vegas sense, as in the guy who sits at the casino desk to greet guests and give directions, or a host in the Japanese sense, a guy who works at a club of some kind being charming and flattering women for money. I'm guessing it's the second one; a Vegas-style host would almost certainly have a uniform in Japan, and he recounts buying a lot of very expensive suits around then, and in any case the huge jump in income he talks about is more consistent with the "host club" kind. Hosts are paid according to how many and what kind of wine/champagne bottles their tables order, and they're expected to drink with their clients. Theoretically, at least, he would have had to be of legal drinking age to get the job, so he must have been 20 before 1995.

He also mentions working as a session drummer and general dogsbody at a recording studio in Kyoto while he was trying to break into the music industry. It was difficult, at the time, he says, because visual kei was in the middle of a pretty big boom, and everyone and their brother wanted to start a band. Visual kei as a genre was effectively invented by a band called X Japan, and the earliest such boom he could be talking about was the one in the early 90s that produced a number of other influential bands and artists who are still doing quite well today, like L'Arc~en~Ciel. He says he was still in high school at this point, so he couldn't have graduated before 1989, when X Japan first became a runaway hit.

This gives a fairly narrow range of dates. He couldn't have been born after 1975, or before 1970. (The Japanese school year ends about Easter-ish, and his birthday is in July, so he would have graduated before his birthday in the year he turned 19, not after his birthday in the year he turned 18.)

What really pins it down is the bit where he talks about futzing around with computers as a kid. He gives a specific model name, "6001 Maku II", which darcenciel in her translation guessed was a kind of Macintosh. It makes sense; he's an unofficial Mac spokesperson and enthusiastic iWhore these days, as are many other vis-kei artists. (Miyavi was beside himself a while ago when his "Kuro-Makku" had to go in for repairs, and more recently Ju-ken recounted the adventure he had going down to Akihabara one weekend in an attempt to leave again with a replacement Macbook mouse AND NOTHING ELSE. As Akiba is basically one gigantic, sprawling, somewhat shady electronics mall, he should have known that this would not work.) The only problem is that there has never been a Macintosh with the model number "6001", and certainly never one of the Mac ][ series of machines. What he's actually talking about is the NEC 6001 Mk. II, which was released in Japan in the summer of 1983. He recalls being "nine or ten" when they got it.

Normally, this would just give me a new upper bound on his age; it tells me that he couldn't have been 10 before 1983. But he also mentions that he lost interest in the computer-futzing because computers just couldn't do enough back then. Not that his computer couldn't do enough, but computers in general. He's using the equipment he had available to judge the state of the home computer industry at that point, which means that the Mk. II must have been a pretty shiny new thing when it came into the house, not a low-end model or an older computer he inherited. (You could entertain the notion that he didn't know enough to realize it was a a lesser machine, I suppose, although it's not likely if he still remembers the model number all these years later.) (And you can also, incidentally, derive from this that his family was reasonably well-off, at least middle-class -- home computing was an expensive hobby to pick up back then, and a computer wasn't necessary for everyday life the way they are today.) Computer models don't stay "new" for very long, generally speaking. So if they got the Mk. II new, the year he was "nine or ten" must have been 1983, giving a birthdate of July 4, 1973 and making him 36 now.

His name, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. I have seen surprisingly little conjecture. It's not at all unusual for visual kei artists to keep their real names under wraps for a decade or more; I've never even seen a guess for Mana, although being a professional transvestite he's probably pretty unrecognizable out of makeup anyway. They're generally very good at keeping a lid on things; the only two I know of who've been officially uncovered were outed because they got married to another artist whose real name is already known, and someone had the wit to look up their marriage licenses. (Actually, I think Miyavi just cut to the chase and outed himself in the wedding announcement. He wasn't really all that dedicated to keeping it hidden, in any case -- he readily admits to having a brother who's a J-List boxer, and presumably they fight under their real names. His wife, Melody., is a J-Pop artist who's originally from Hawaii, and never bothered trying to hide hers.) The way Gackt talks about his family in "Jihaku", I would be very surprised if his original surname wasn't a very old one, and obviously Okinawan. So far, none of the guesses I've seen are. He may well not really want it back; even his friends evidently call him "Gacchan" these days, and I get the impression that he was a fairly miserable outcast kid.

Originally posted at my blog.

I’m selling this Betsey Johnson tunic or mini dress on Ebay, click the picture to go to the auction.

It was previously owned by Liselotte Eriksson and it’s been used in some of her photos.

You can comment at my blog or here.

It's weird wearing a suit and tie. I don't, as a rule, preferring the dot.com engineer chic of jeans and a shirt or t-shirt.

But every now and then I wear a suit to the office; just to mess with people.

Today though I am on a commuter train (not 'communter', although that is a good word to describe people going in to the office on a Monday morning after a big night out). I've got the charcoal Italian wool suit and the expensive wrist watch, the hand-made silk tie - Venom & Bootle, obviously, and a pair of battered Doc Martens because we're the *client* at this meeting and they're not to forget it.

* * *

NaNoWriMo continues apace, although quality has dipped slightly over the weekend. I've rather lost the direction in the story and have gone off on a bit of a tangent - in many ways what I wrote over the weekend belongs in a completely different story! But such is the nature of NaNoWriMo. I've hit one of those blockers, at the end of Act I, where you have to introduce a character, but really don't know how they are going to get on with the others. For example, two characaters who were supposed to hate each other have already made a kind of peace. I am not sure why they did this, I am not in control of their behaviours though!

Right, enough wittering, I need to find my way from City Thameslink to Salisbury Square by 10

Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com