Shannon

MARILYN.
JUDY.
SYLVIA.
TELL 'EM HOW YOU FEEL, GIRLS!
WORK YOUR BLOND, BENET RAMSEY,
WE'LL HAUNT LIKE LIBERACE.
FIND YOUR FREEDOM IN THE MUSIC.
FIND YOUR JESUS.
FIND YOUR KUBRICK.
YOU WILL NEVER FALL APART, DIANA,
YOU'RE STILL IN OUR HEARTS.
NEVER LET YOU FALL APART.
TOGETHER WE'LL DANCE IN THE DARK!

Umm... yeah. I just had to get that out. Because it's basically the most kick ass name-dropping pseudo-rap ever, yes/yes?

In other news, there's this Amy Adams movie coming out called Leap Year about this girl who goes to Ireland to propose to her boyfriend because of some leap year tradition or some such nonsense BUT, of course, along the way, she falls in love with the scruffy Irishman who is giving her a lift there and then she's all CONFLICTED AND SUCH. Anyway, I've seen the trailer for it so many times now and the only thing I think every time is a. does the world really need another predictably sappy romantic comedy and b. I don't think I know the actor playing that Irishman but he looks SO FAMILIAR and he is actually kind of adorable in a rugged way. So then... a couple days ago, I'm reading Entertainment Weekly and there's a review and it mentions Matthew Goode and I'm like, "WAIT, WUT?!? CHARLES RYDER IS THE SCRUFFY IRISHMAN?!?" because he was seriously the last person I would've thought of. I mean, after I found that out and I saw the trailer again, I could kinda sorta see that it was him but he seems SO DIFFERENT all scruffed up and with an Irish accent. Anyway, that served no point except to say that I was shocked. And I'm still not seeing the movie. No matter how adorably messy he looks. (And I actually haven't found him very good-looking at all before this so... yeah.)

Well, now that we're on the subject of actors who played in Brideshead Revisited and all, BEN! OMG, Bright Star is coming out on DVD in a couple weeks and I am SO EXCITED to finally be able to see it! I don't even care whether I like it or not; I kind of just want to own it because it's got the Ben (I did this same thing with I'm Not There a few weeks ago; granted, I bought it because it was the two-disc edition for only ten dollars and I do enjoy the movie but IT WAS MOSTLY FOR THE WHISHAW, OKAY?). So if I can find it in a store as soon as it's released I think I'm just going to grab that bad boy up right then and there.

Okay, now I have to go do something productive. Like work on writing reviews for my 2009 list (which is halfway done, along with other good songs from the year, here!). Or watch Adam, which I just got from Netflix and have been anxious to see ever since I saw the trailer before (500) Days of Summer even though I've heard that it's kind of Lifetime-esque. Or, you know, play Sims or sit around and waste time doing nothing. You know me.

First of all, a few weeks back, I got in an uber-organizational mood and decided that I was going to attempt to completely re-organize all of my Sims downloads... and we're talking completely re-organize, as in they were barely organized at all to begin with, just hundreds of files dumped into vague folders like "clothing" and "hair". Not to mention, most of the file names were completely cryptic as to what exactly they were or where they came from. Somehow, though, I managed to figure out what almost everything was (and the stuff that didn't have any clues in the names and I had no idea what the fuck they were in image previews I figured were better off deleted anyway) and now every last piece of custom content is organized into sub-folders with their creator and title so that I will never not know what they are again. It was terribly frustrating at times but I feel good about it now.

But no, that wasn't quite enough for me. Then I decided, "Oh, what the hell?!? I've already done this, might as well do everything else I've been too lazy to attempt now as well!" So over the past few days I've been trying to impose some sort of quality control on my clothing, most of all, because I had (and still do, really) way too much and I've also managed to townify and correctly bin it. Then I moved on to the hair and deleted all of the ages that certain ones didn't work on. After many boring, repetitive hours and a few panic situations (One: after townifying all my teen boy clothes, their skin suddenly turned white with every full outfit; after much painstaking taking out, putting in, restarting Bodyshop ad naseum I narrowed it down to a few random outerwears. Two: Bodyshop randomly crashing on one hair, only in the toddler stage, that it had never had troubles with before - also resolved through much trial and error.) I think the transformation is complete. These are the results, all Sims generated by rolling the die in Bodyshop, with absolutely no altering done by me, and I am very happy with them:

( OM NOM NOM! )

Finally! I can have townies with decent fashion taste! Previously fashion-forward Sims will no longer transition into disgusting outfits on their birthdays! Hopefully, once I actually start seeing the results in game, I'll think it was all worth it. (It's scary how much I care about these things but my tolerance for images that are not pleasing to the eye is very low.)

Onto the actual Newbury part of this post, with all of the deleting of content, a lot of their clothes, hair, and make-up got messed up so I've been having to go into the spare houses to make sure everybody stays looking good - just because I'm not playing them doesn't mean I shouldn't be keeping them well-groomed for potential walkby situations! And here are a couple amusing things I happened in on while doing so...

( Crazy, you want some? )

Meanwhile, because Bodyshop is retarded and doesn't let you give a Sim new hair if their old one happens to be deleted, I had to recreate Onyx and Xander in a different neighborhood so that I could fix them up and export them all nice and shiny.

( DEJA VU! )

Stepping out of the Twilight Zone and into the real Newbury world, over at Penny and her fiance, Morgan's apartment, I had forgotten that the last time I was there she had already managed to get knocked up.

( Cute chilluns up ahead! )

Alrighty. Anyway, I spent far too much time on this. Bye now.

P.S. I totally forgot this one! Here's Nico, Miranda's second-to-last child, all grown up and non-fat (Is it just me or does the male fat body look more like they're pregnant?!? The female one is kinda cute but the male is just gross.) since we never got to see him again after he was exiled in the college bin.

( Piccy. )

He still looks kind of permanently stoned. Which is kind of awesome.

Oh my God. I so win at Google. I just found this movie to download and I am so excited. You see, the reason these finds are so monumental for me is that apparently my Internet connection doesn't agree very well with torrents (and I'm too stupid/lazy/easily frustrated to try and make them work) and it is extremely hard to find full downloads of obscure movies and the like that are not torrents. Or maybe that's just me. But still. I am so happy! And apparently, it is a rather disturbing film. I enjoy rather disturbing films (though I mean more in the psychologically disturbing sense than in the blood-and-guts gorey disturbing sense). And as is painfully clear by now, I enjoy Ben Whishaw. Therefore, it will be totally amazing.

Also, I was trying really hard to hold out on watching that Criminal Justice miniseries until it was completely done downloading because I knew that I would get all into it and then have to agonizingly wait for the rest... but I couldn't help it. I was bored and didn't have anything better to do (or I did but they were things I really didn't want to do) and I started watching it. And now I've watched 4/5 parts and still have most of the 5th part to download and I AM SO IMPATIENT FOR IT. I've been seriously on edge for the entire thing because I feel so sorry for Ben's character (who is also named Ben... which makes it even harder to separate the actor from the character) and he's so vulnerable and scared and so much bad stuff happens to him and oh my God, I just want to give him a big hug and never let go. Anyway.

Yes. Basically, I am completely insane. I don't think I've ever been so obsessed with someone before that I've gone to so much trouble to find things they are involved in. Or well, maybe it just seems like I'm crazily obsessed because Netflix has such a small selection of his work that I have no choice but to desperately try and watch everything else through other means. No. I'm just crazily obsessed. And I'm totally okay with that. I feel like my obsession is completely justified - I mean, he's unbelievably talented and so magnetic on screen and also terribly good-looking and any person who has any taste at all would be in love with him, right? Right? This is how I get when I'm obsessed. I get to the point where I get personally offended by anyone who doesn't agree with me - but I haven't really run into much of that yet with this particular obsession so I'm good for now.

Anyway. I am starting to not make any sense (if I was ever making any in the first place). All I really wanted to do was to pat myself on the back for my mad interwebz skillz and also share these pictures that I happened across on one of my mad Googling sprees (which has sadly made up the bulk of the last couple days for me). THEY ARE SO COMPLETELY AWESOME. MY MIND IS OFFICIALLY BLOWN.



It is getting late. That's probably why I'm acting like this. I'm having, like, an insomnia-induced breakdown or something. So I should probably stop here. At this point, I fear I shall never recover from posting such pointless, asinine things and am destined to never have an intelligent thought again. My mind is just so full of fangirly feelings right now that I think I may possibly be permanently stuck this way. Stay tuned for futher developments.