Random Items from the Junk Drawer of my Mind #25

1. Good Mail! Y'all know I loooooves me some Good Mail and yesterday was a Good Mail day. I got a cool little surprise envelope from Deborah with an ad she thought (correctly!) that I'd enjoy seeing pulled from a Texas magazine. Thanks, Deborah! And I got three books. Yay! In a contest Gena Showalter was running on her blog (not this contest - another one) I won a signed copy of her book "Oh My Goth" as well as a signed ARC of the same book, which will be fun since I can see how the book changed from ARC to final published version. Cool. Thanks, Gena! As it happens, I'd bought "Oh My Goth" and read it not all that long ago and liked it lots, but I'm really excited to have a signed copy. Now I'll want to find a new home for my unsigned copy so someone else can enjoy it, but I haven't decided quite how yet. I might have a little contest here or something, but I'm still mulling it over. Stay tuned. I also got another book that was sent to me to read and review. No details yet on that until I, well, you know...read and review it! But it looks really good. 2. Yep, there were snakes on that plane all right (spoiler-free zone) This past Sunday I met my brother and his teenage kids to have lunch and catch a matinee of "Snakes on a Plane." It was exactly as odd and cheesy as I thought it was going to be, like a big ol' wad of melted Velveeta. I enjoyed it immensely! So did Mark, Amber, and Josh. Of course our family can be a little, um....odd. But still. How would I describe it? Picture one of those Airport movies from the 1970's - you know with the ensemble cast and the soap opera-worthy interpersonal dramas, only picture the people with better clothes and hair. Now add a bunch of poinsonous snakes and one huge boa constrictor (presumably just because it looked cool), all of them hopped up on pheremones. Finally, mix in a cool m*th*rf*ck*r of an FBI agent, (played by Samuel L. Jackson, of course), and you pretty much have the idea of what this movie was like. HUGE plotholes, ridiculous dialogue, sex in the airplane bathroom, gross-out death scenes - it had it all. My only complaint is that I think they could have fit a few more stock characters into the story, like maybe a pregnant woman, or a blind man, or a nun who plays guitar. You can't tell me it wouldn't have been cool to see a snake slither out of the hole in the center of the singing nun's guitar! Maybe they'll keep that in mind for the sequel. I'll go get ready to burn in hell now. Heh. 3. Things that make you go "aaawwwwww" I followed a link from Liz Elayne's blog to the Kittenwar site (motto: "May the Cutest Kitten Win!"). Aaaawwww. They were adorable! I just kept clicking and clicking. I really wanted to submit a photo of EDKSky when he was a kitten, but the only ones I have of him as a kitten where he looks cute instead of obnoxious are a series of photos I took of him napping with our Golden Retriever mix, Tansy. And the Kittenwar site expressly states they don't take photos that include dogs, even if the main subject of the photo is a kitten. Boooo! Hisssss! However, I then followed a link from the Kittenwar site to the Puppywar site (motto: "Pick the Cutest Puppy." Kind of lame. They need a new motto writer.) They appear to be more open-minded about dog-cat mixed relationships, but that didn't really help in the case of the EDKSky pics because Tansy was grown up in those. BUT, I found a cute photo of her as a puppy and uploaded that: (all together now, "aaawwwww" - I know it's small, sorry!..but still...cute!) And I found one of my favorite pics of my favorite-ever dog Rebel when he was itty-bitty: ("aaawwwwwww!!") He looked like a baby Ewok, if Ewoks were actually as cute as George Lucas meant them to be instead of just being vaguely creepy and annoying. They aren't showing up on the Puppywar site quite yet, but hopefully they will soon and then I wanna see my puppies kick some ass!! Nicely, of course. Ahem. 4. Things that make you go "aaaawwwww", Part Two: Daily Art Thang I decided to turn that photo of Rebel into a virtual painting: "If Rebel Was a Painting" P.S. As I bet you can tell from this post, I'm feeling better today than I was yesterday. Thank you for the good thoughts and cyberhugs!