Gypsy Poetry

CulturePulp 52: X-Facts!

Everything you need to know about the X-Men when you go see X-Men: The Last Stand.  And the art’s great.

I’ll post a review of X3 in the next couple of days.  At the moment, I’m trying to write fanfic and get my Wolverine and Jean Grey Sims to get married. [cough]

Snitched from Estella’s Revenge.

Reading memories:

20 Years Ago: (age 6) I’d already been reading for about two years at this point. I was reading stuff off of signs and billboards when I was three or four, so by the time I hit kindergarten, I picked up reading really quickly. I remember really digging Dr. Seuss’s The Butter Battle when I was little.

10 Years Ago: (age 16) Fantasy. I read high fantasy novels all the time when I was a teenager. Hell, I read all the time period when I was a teenager. I think this was right around the time I got into the X-Files, too, so I started reading fanfiction.

5 Years Ago: (age 21) Reading was my escape at this point. I was unhappily married, and I read to get away from it. I was still stuck on fantasy novels, particularly Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, but I was also into fanfic big-time. I had recently shifted from Star Wars fanfic into the wonderful world of X-Men, thanks to the first movie. I had also recently started reading X-Men comic books, so I was pretty engrossed in writing Logan/Jean fanfic and reading as much as I could. I also discovered Harry Potter couple of years before this, so I was marathon-reading the novels that were out while at work. Ahh, escapism.
3 Years ago: (age 23) Still into X-Men fanfic, though not as much as before. I think at this point I had gotten into Pirates of the Caribbean fanfic a bit. Still reading Harry Potter. Reading a lot of non-fiction, too, along with The Lord of the Rings and its fanfic. I was also introduced to Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series by my aunt, and I read them voraciously until Obsidian Butterfly came out and the series jumped the shark. I got into LKH’s Merry Gentry series, too, which I’m still ashamedly hanging onto. I love the sidhe men, especially Doyle. Mmm. Darkness.

Last Year: (age 25) I hardly read at all last year, which makes me very sad. School was eating up most of my time, and I hardly had time to read for pleasure. By this point, though, I had discovered Neil Gaiman and read his stuff voraciously. I also spent seven straight hours reading the new Harry Potter book on its release day. :D

This Month: (age 26) I’ve been catching up on my lost reading time. I’ve read some smut, a couple of science non-fiction books, most of Salman Rushdie’s East, West, my own old fanfic (hehe), and I’m working on a book on queer theory and film for my honors thesis.
And another:
3 Favorite Reading Locations: in my bed snuggled up with my body pillow, on my couch with the blinds open, on the balcony of the apartment I lived in in Germany (unfortunately can’t read there anymore, dammit)
3 Reading habits: tea + book = happy Gypsy, my books have to be in alphabetical order on my shelves, I buy books compulsively
3 Things that distract me: people talking to me, music from other apartments, random noises outside
3 Characters I’d love to be: Jean Grey from the X-Men comics (hey, comics are too books), Lady Door from Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Tonks from the Harry Potter books
3 Three Characters I despise: Scott Summers from X-Men, Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter, Mr. Collins in Pride & Prejudice
3 Favorite Book Beverages: Earl Grey tea, Tazo or Stash chai, Columbian coffee with lots of half-and-half
3 Favorite bookmarks: I usually use receipts and toilet paper
3 Dead Writers I’d love to meet: Jane Austen (though I’d be afraid she would just use me as snarky character fodder), E.M. Forster, J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Alive Writers I’d love to meet: Neil Gaiman, Salman Rushdie, J.K. Rowling

And in non-book related news, X-Men: The Last Stand opens on Friday. I’m trying so hard to not be excited about it. The movie version of Goblet of Fire broke my heart, and I’ve learned to not expect much from sequels so that if they’re good, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. But I can’t help but get all giddy about X3. Even if the rest of it blows syphilitic goats, I’ll be happy with the Logan/Jean love.

Since everyone else has weighed in with their two cents, I might as well have a go, too.

This pre-pregnant stuff is creepy and presumptive. Now, it’s good advice to take care of yourself, whether you plan to have kids or not. I don’t like the assumption that every woman of childbearing age is just panting to get pregnant, though. They say that women should stick to what’s basically a pre-natal regiment throughout their childbearing years because half of all pregnancies are unplanned. Yep, many pregnancies are accidents, but you know what might help reduce the number of those? Easy access to cheap birth control and safe-sex education. Teach women to take care of themselves not only by taking vitamins, but by knowing how to better prevent pregnancies.

And this article makes some good points about how religious conservatism’s influence on the government is affecting women’s health care. For example: In fact, Glamour, has found that on issues ranging from STDs to birth control, some radical conservative activists have used fudged and sometimes flatly false data to persuade the government to promote their agenda of abstinence until marriage. The fallout: Young women now read false data on government websites, learn bogus information in federally funded sex-education programs and struggle to get safe, legal contraceptives—all of which, critics argue, may put them at greater risk for unplanned pregnancies and STDs. That chaps my lily-white arse. I’m all for everyone practicing their own morals. That’s fine and peachy-keen by me, but when you start shoving your morals down my throat in the guise of caring about my reproductive health? That’s bullshit.
And now, in non-political-ranty news, I’ve been reading. The hurricane book was awesome (Hurricane Watch : Forecasting the Deadliest Storms on Earth, in case you want to be an awesome nerd like me), even though I’ve read it probably six times. It follows the history of hurrican forecasting from when the first Europeans got smashed in the time of Columbus up to the late 1990s. It’s a very comfortable read, even for someone with next to no knowledge of meteorology, and that’s a great accomplishment for a science nonfiction book. Most of them try to appeal to the average Jane, but miss the mark. This one is actually quite pleasant to read. After I finished that, I read about half of East, West by Salman Rushdie. Actually, I got to the West section and got bored, hehe. “The Prophet’s Hair” is a beautifully written short story, and it showcases Rushdie’s incredible way with words. One of my favorite lines is this:

At dawn the next morning a flower-vendor was rowing his boat through water to which the cold of the night had given the cloudy consistency of wild honey when he saw the prone form of young Atta, who was just beginning to stir and moan, and on whose now deathly pale skin the sheen of wealth cound still be made out dimly beneath an actual layer of frost. (p.36)

And then, as the fickle reader I am, I got bored with the serious literature and decided to read some smut. I had picked up Emma Holly’s Strange Attractions at Half Price Books the other day, so I dove into it. Whew. There’s nothing like smut sometimes. This one is more erotica than romance, though I get the feeling all of that romantic lovey-dovey crap is going to show up sooner or later. I’m more impressed by the fact that Holly is writing both straight and gay erotica in this book. Way to push my buttons, Ms. Holly. The main female character is borderline annoying, just because she’s so damned spunky. I can only take so much spunk, no pun intended. The male characters are rather fascinating, though, and it’s fun to read an attempt to bring together the mysterious world of quantum physics with the magic of Really Hot Sex. No, I’m not joking. One of the guys is a big-time physicist, and he’s doing some kind of experiments studying sexual desire. No, I have no idea how that relates to quantum physics. But hey. It’s smut. Smut makes me happy.

I can see it.  I can see the light.  Unfortunately, there’s a creative writing portfolio right in my way.

I nearly forgot that I need to rewrite my story synopsis, which should prove to be a pain the butt.  I have no idea where the story is going, so it’s really difficult to summarize it.  I suppose I’ll have to pull out the old fallback and just make shit up.

I’m reading my nerdy books.  At the moment, I’m ploughing through a book on the history of hurricane forcasting.  It’s great.  I need to start reading some of the new fiction books I’ve bought recently instead of re-reading old favorites.  I have a habit of doing that, reading what I know I like instead of trying to find new stuff to like.

Tonight’s Lost night, and this ep had better be good, dammit.  They hooked me again last week, and if this one sucks, I’ll be one pissed off fangirl.

Because I’m writing a paper and need to distract myself.

• The New Adventures of Queen Victoria: A silly, hilarious webcomic featuring (you guessed it) Queen Victoria. The style reminds me a bit of Terry Gilliam’s animations for the Monty Python stuff.
• Cute Overload: Because you can never have too much cute in your life.
• DaFont: Because you can never have too many fonts on your computer.

It’s finals week. Ugh. At least it’ll all be over this Friday, but still. I keep finding grey hairs at my temples, and that makes the Baby Jesus cry. I’m in the middle of a paper for my Lord of the Rings class right now, and it’s making me want to tear my hair out. I’ve apparently run into a brick wall when it comes to paper-writing. I feel like all of my ideas are crap and not worth writing about.

Which is bad, because I’m running into that with my honors thesis, too.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to hide under my desk until 12:10, which is when I told myself I’d get back to that paper.