Divisions and Precisions

I know some of y'all watch Oprah...

I usually don't, but we did this afternoon, to see the results of her Pop Star Challenge. It turns out, one of the men my mom works with is married to the winner, LaShell Griffin. Mom says he's one of the nicest, friendliest people she knows, and this could be an enormous break for the family (five kids!).

As we watched her sing I got weepy again (more on that in a minute). "One Moment in Time" is a horrible, sappy song and it always makes me cry no matter what. Well, I was a little embarrassed and tried to hide the fact that I was crying, until I looked over and saw my mom was bawling too. Then we started laughing. At least I come by my weepiness honestly.

It's good to see someone really nice and deserving win something. I hope she's tremendously successful and they all live happily ever after. :)

(On the weepiness, I don't know WHAT's up with me lately, but it's like I'm wearing all my emotionally-connected organs out on my sleeve. I mean, I cry easier than your average person, but lately I cry at the drop of a hat. It's never sad crying. It's always happy or sentimental crying. I cry at sappy things even while I sit there and think about how stupid and sappy they are. And it's not just a few tears. If I let it go, it'd be all out sobbing. I've been chalking it up to hormones, but I'm starting to wonder.)

Anyway, congratulations to LaShell and her family.

There I go, getting teary again

I stumbled across this a few minutes ago, and can't think of anything simpler to make such a powerful statement.

Electrolite: Our fellow Americans.

(Also, if you haven't seen the pictures from Justly Married that Patrick Nielsen Hayden used, you need to go there too.)

Playlist fun

Continuing my long and glorious tradition of seriously schizophrenic playlists, I felt moved to share the current one with you:

"In the Pines" -- The Stanley Brothers
"Down to the River" -- Alison Krause and some Baptist choir or another
"I Am Weary" -- The Cox Family
"O Death" -- Ralph Stanley
"Lonesome Valley" -- The Fairfield Four
"My Immortal" -- Evanescence
"Whisper" -- Evanescence
"Volcano" -- Damien Rice
"Weapon" -- Matthew Good Band
"Invisible" -- Switchblade Symphony

What do all these songs have in common, aside from the fact that I'm writing to them at the moment? I'm not sure. An intensity of feeling, a combination of moods that fits the story I'm writing. Or maybe there's just a perverse part of me that likes pairing up weird combinations of music.

Although I have to say, since I've gotten my hands on Fallen, I think I've written more to Evanescence than any other artist ever--with the possible exception of Loreena McKennitt and Dead Can Dance, both of which I listened to endlessly while writing for Tribe 8.

If I wasn't so lazy, I'd do that playlist meme that everybody from Neil Gaiman on down has done.

Is anybody surprised by this?

I'm just surprised that he waited until after he was elected to start promoting this.

CNN.com - Schwarzenegger: Let foreign-born seek White House

But of course, he says "he has not thought about running for president." Right.

The bitch of it is, I'm not entirely sure I disagree with his logic here, I just don't think he's a good one to be promoting the idea, and I definitely would hate to see him as a presidential candidate. Ever.