Say it ain't so!

Oh, but it is my friends. Yes, as a special treat to help make up for putting off Ep4 for so long, Episode 5 of Dreamfall is now available, a mere three days after I posted the last one! Cool, huh? :)

I also have some other fun things to share...

A funny YouTube video guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of any Star Trek or Monty Python fan.

And another interesting video for the writers out there...I think I want to be like him when I grow up. (NSFW)

Also, is this not the coolest sounding game? Almost makes me want to buy a PS3. (Almost.)

Finally, I suggest this podcast for anyone who wants to get in shape, or who needs a way to stretch out all the aches and pains of a physical job. (Such as cashiering) It's done wonders for me, and I've only been watching for the past three weeks or so. (I love my shiny new iPod with it's video capabilities, oh yes I do)

Also, I saw Hellboy 2: The Golden Army this past Sunday. (three cheers for having a short shift at work on a Sunday! w00t) Condensed verdict is that I really liked it, though there are a couple of things that bothered me. One I can't tell you about because it's a spoiler. The other is that Abe Sapien is no longer voiced by David Hyde Pierce! This makes me very unhappy. No offense to the new guy, but it really took away something from the character, at least in my opinion. He wasn't nearly as funny or sharp-witted as before. Instead he ended up being kind of bland and neutral, which is a shame, because Abe is probably my favorite character after Hellboy himself. But it was still a good movie.

That said, I can tell I've been spoiled by the hi-def plasma TV screen my mom bought for the family last month. When I got to the theater I couldn't help but notice how blurry and grainy the picture was, (which KILLED me because the graphics/costumes/etc. were SO EFFING COOL) and the sound was up so loud it was truly painful during action sequences. I can't wait for Hellboy 2 to come out on DVD so I can watch it at home and get all the gorgeous detail I missed in the theaters. From now on I don't think I'm going to bother seeing movies in an actual theater, unless it's so I can go out with friends. Everything looks better at home. (It's cheaper, too, and you don't have to put up with all those other people in order to watch your movie, even though the crowd at Hellboy was pretty well behaved.)

/ MAJOR LINK DUMP

Have a good day, everybody! =D

After working another long week, (38 hours this time) I finally have a little room to breathe. I've got the next three days off to rest and recuperate, plus I'm taking some time off next week to go laptop shopping with my mom. We've both finally saved up enough money and I am SO excited to be so close to getting myself the laptop I've been wanting for over a year now. :) Plus, after I'm finished purchasing my lovely new Apple, I can start saving up for the other pieces of technology I've been craving, such as an Xbox 360, a new iPod, and of course lots of video games/music to go along with them. *squee* My poor 20-page-long Amazon wishlist has been sadly neglected over the past couple of months! It'll be nice to get back to shortening it.

Also, words do not describe how happy I am that the new Hellboy movie is finally coming out. I saw previews for it last night and I'm still squeeful. Unfortunately I haven't seen any of the other cool movies that have come out this summer, which is just terrible, but such is the danger of working life. (And not having a car) That's OK though, since I think we're going to go see Iron Man next week after laptop shopping has concluded. I'm amazed at how many interesting movies are coming out this year. Last year it seemed like we had hardly anything worth watching and now my list is so long, I can't keep up with it. On the bright side, maybe now we'll go see more movies since I can finally afford to pay for my own ticket, which makes it a little less expensive. (Though not if gas prices keep skyrocketing)

My writing hasn't been going so great, again thanks to my job. I'm so exhausted when I get home that trying to do anything creative is just too much for me to handle. I have managed to do a little work, though, and Episode 3 of Dreamfall is almost finished. I swear it's forthcoming, plus I'm going to use the extra time off this week to see if I can't get Episodes 4 and 5 done as well. No promises, though, because I've also got to spend time on other things, like catching up on chores and another project I've got going that I'm keeping under wraps for the moment.

The job hasn't been that peachy, either. All but a handful of my friends have left. Yesterday is probably the last time I'm going to see one of my best friends there, and it seems my superiors have decided that they just can't be bothered to train me for anything new and different, which means that I get to be a cashier stuck doing the exact same job day in, day out, from now until doomsday. I am not the sort of person who deals well with monotony. Especially not minimum wage monotony that's so exhausting and painful it's keeping me from my real work. Writers: don't quit your day job, but don't let your day job take over your life, either. Mine is dangerously close to doing so, not to mention I've developed a creeping depression because of it. Things will change soon-- I'll make sure of it-- but I am sad that a job I once enjoyed has so quickly turned sour. And I miss my friends. Not all of them are gone, but the ones I was closest to have moved on, and it makes me sad. Bright side: all this emotional turmoil will make for a wonderful story someday.

And that's your window in to the life for Amanda Cales for this week. :) Have a cookie.

I hereby swear the blood of my firstborn to anyone who goes out and buys me a copy of Tomb Raider: Anniversary or Tomb Raider: Legend for my birthday. =D (PS2, please. My PC can't handle it, alas.)

*dies in a fit of fangirly joy*

...that woke me up at 5am. Obviously I need to stop eating cheese before bed, because I think I spent pretty much the whole night having bad dreams. Naturally of course I couldn't remember a damn thing about any of them, except that Hoshi and Detective Goren may have been involved, though not together. (Do not ask me why those two are running my head at night, because I don't know. All I can tell you is that I was watching Enterprise before bed.) It might seem strange to be frustrated by not being able to remember a nightmare, but I find it so because I like to analyze my dreams afterwards, to help me deal with them. A lot of nightmares that seem scary at first turn out to be completely ludicrous and silly when you think about them properly. But no joy tonight. All I can remember is a lot of darkness, death, torture, fear, and destruction. I stumble around for a few minutes getting water, tripping over the dog, ejecting my cat from my room because he snuck in, making enough noise to wake the dead, etc., lay back down, and promptly realize that I can't get back to sleep. Insert profanity here.

So I grab the nearest book at hand, which is saying something since they're currently taking over the desk next to my bed. (When are books ever NOT taking over the desk next to my bed?) Turns out to be So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane, which I decided to reread yesterday because it's been a very long time since I've gone through the series and, honestly, at 5:30am in the morning after a nightmare, the last thing you want to read about is Dog Law or a depressing tale involving Dragons. It's fun. I remember now why I bought the whole series, retail, every time a new one came out in paperback, and haven't regretted it once. I wonder why more books don't have overly curious talking white holes that appear at random. And then, ( this happens. )

And now I realize I don't really have anything else to say. =D (Actually I could probably rabbit on a great deal about last night's Heroes, but that's been done by so many folks already I think I'll skip it for now.)

THIS HAS BEEN AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD FANGIRL. THANK YOU FOR TUNING IN AND HAVE A GOOD NIGHT!

OK, this is me, screwing up my face and mentally willing Alton Brown to pass through Knoxville as he tapes for the new season of Feasting on Asphalt.

Here I go.

*wills*

I'm probably way too late already, (he was approaching Memphis yesterday) but it never hurts to try.

*wills some more*

I like David Tennant more and more.

Also - Torchwood advert! Yay!

OMG YAY! Billie Piper as Sally Lockhart? YES. And a thousand times again YES. I am so pysched about this. I just hope it's not going to take like 3 billion years for it to show up on American television. XP *glares at PBS*

On a similar front... September 29th, baby! Mom finally gets to see David Tennant doing something other then stalking and murdering young women! Hurray! I have to say, that Secret Smile movie thing really freaked me out...even had to change my Tenth Doctor wallpaper...*shudder* Just goes to show how good of an actor he is, I guess. Eep.

October 22nd is the new release date for Torchwood. I'm super-psyched about that, too. Can't wait! =D (And of course the second I write that, the Doctor Who theme comes on iTunes. I SWEAR IT WASN'T ME IT WAS iTUNES SHUFFLE.) Unfortunately chances of them bringing Torchwood to American television is like, nil, which is unfortunate since mom really liked Jack and was pretty upset at how he got left behind during The Parting of the Ways. Poor mom. I told her he would have his own show now but I don't think she believed me. :(

Anyway. Did I mention I was excited about the whole Ruby in the Smoke thing? Heehee. I read Tiger in the Well ages and ages ago, when I was like ten or eleven or something. I LOVED it. Phillip Pullman is one of my favorite authors of all time (His Dark Materials own you and everyone you know) and I am SO EXCITED that they'll be adapting his Sally Lockhart stories for television. And because the BBC is doing it, and not some craptastic American company, (American book-to-television things are always shit) I know it'll be good. Haha. And Billie will do great as Sally, I know it. She's a fantastic actress. Not sure if I'll be able to believe her as being sixteen years, but you can't have everything. And who knows, maybe it'll work. =D Actually I wonder how old Ms. Piper really is...

Work on TSW goes forth, albeit slowly. I actually made good progress on the revised outline yesterday. Got all the way up to Chapter Five and got a lot of nasty set up/character intros out of the way. Every now and then I'll get stuck on something, or I'll realize something I just wrote contradicts something that happens several chapters down the line, and I'll get pretty frustrated. And there have been several times when I've found myself staring at the screen blankly for half an hour, just trying to plot something out, or answer a question about a character's motivation or purpose in being at Place A instead of Place B. I pick myself up off the keyboard and get on with it most times, but It's a lot harder then I expected it to be. Apparently for me, writing is the easy part. (VERY easy, if my end word count is anything to go by - god I'm a windbag) It's everything else that trips me up. Although I have to wonder how much of my difficulty is because I'm dealing with an old story that's been revamped so many times that it literally has four different outlines. (The new one I'm working on now is #5) Also, because I started it out as an RPG, I didn't do much backstory for it because I didn't need to. There was a plot, some fun places to move around in, and that was it. Now that I have to turn it into a novel, though it's in need of a lot more detail, which makes things difficult. I'm really looking forward to getting this monster finished and I truly hope that if I do get published, nobody asks me to do a lot of rewriting or editing. =( That would really kill me. Especially if my editor told me to split it up into a trilogy or something...ugh. Probably won't happen. Hope it doesn't happen. Really, really hope it doesn't happen. Ugh...

Ohmygosh look what I just found. =D I now have large sticky notes plastered all over the monitor and speaker and anything else that doesn't move, covered in dates and times for all the different Miss Marple plays. Squeee.

They have Doctor Who as well, but right now all they're playing is Storm Warning, and I've already listened to that. But, according to who_daily, the Eighth Doctor will be returning with a new companion (Yay! Charley was all right to start with but I was getting sick of her by the time Scherzo rolled around - no offense, India) sometime this Christmas. So basically this year I am going to be spending the entire winter season sitting in my cold basement squeeing like an idiot as I OD on Doctor Who.

Yeah, I can think of worse ways to die of hypothermia.

Hel, your country rocks. You have audio plays. =D And you have entire websites devoted to said plays. I SO wish we still had those here in America. Then again, we probably would if War of the Worlds hadn't sent half the country into a mindless panic... *grumble*

I am so totally not procrastinating on my writing right now. Not at ALL.

*ahem* Anyway. I'm bored with this LJ layout. I want a new one that shows off all my shiny tags and doesn't wig-out when I try to edit it. Suggestions on where to get a new one?

Continuing on the LJ front, I still want to weasel one of you (and by "you" I mean one of my close friends who is reading this) into sending me enough money to buy an LJ paid account so I can feed my Doctor Who icon/mood theme addiction. Because David Tennant's cropped, layered, and re-colored face is so much better at expressing my mood than I am.

Furthermore, I really must stop watching older Doctor Who episodes, because I'm temporarily moving on from the Sixth Doctor and watching stuff with the Fifth Doctor in it, and Five is awesome even though I thought I wouldn't like him because he's a blond pretty boy and generally I don't like blond pretty boys but it somehow balances out with the fact that he is a super-genius and has a piece of celery permenantly attached to his lapel now I am getting confused as to which Doctor is my favorite because they are all so friggin' awesome OMG. /pointless, breathless fangirl rant that has no basis in reality

Done now.

...on PBS. Quite an enjoyable episode, if I do say so myself. Creepy and suspensful, with good acting and strong characters. My parents liked it too. As the show comes to a close, PBS starts their usual round of advertisements, blathering on about some Bob Dylan show I'm not interested in. I wonder why anyone likes that man. Then, Miss Marple previews for next week. I start to reflect on how annoying it is to have the films split up into two parts over the course of a week, since it's really difficult to keep hold of the details of a mystery for that long, especially ones as subtle as Agatha Christie mysteries. Mom, having successfully finished baking a loaf of bread, comes back into the room as the previews for "The Moving Finger" end, and in a joking manner starts twitching her finger. I ask her if she's familiar with the book, she responds no, she isn't. "It's shocking how little you two have read," I say. She laughs and says she stopped having time to read once I was born. I pout a little, resenting this slightly but she reassures me and we laugh a little and I say I can just read all the books for her and feed her the information.

And then, all of a sudden, a familiar voice coming from the TV attracts my attention. I look up, and who's lovely face meets my gaze? Why, it's Mr. Tennant, the last person on Earth I thought I'd ever see on PBS!! His appearance sends me instantly into gasps and loud proclamations of "Oh my god! It's him!". Seems they'll be airing Casanova on PBS this fall. Mom and dad, of course, having not yet viewed The Christmas Invasion and knowing next to nothing of Mr. Tennant, are greatly confused by my sudden and explosive exuberance, and are more impressed by Sir Peter O'toole's presence on the sceen. (Which is most definitely impressive - dad, of course, thought he was dead.) They both turn to me after the preview ends wondering why my face is all red and I'm practically vibrating on the edge of my seat about to come apart with joy, and of course I am quickly questioned on why I find this strange man so exciting because all they saw was some brown haired weirdo jumping around and looking rather devilish. "It's David Tennant!" I cry. Nothing. I go for something I hope is more enlightening. "The Doctor!" They nod a little and seem partially satisfied, but still doesn't do much. So I explain why I like him and about how I saw bits of Casanova in that Doctor Who Confidential that I downloaded, and how I thought it looked brilliantly funny and how David Tennant is an amazing actor whom I admire very much (and whom I may or may not think is gorgeous). I still don't think they fully understand but that's OK. =) I'm still really, really excited. My excitement was somewhat dampened once I found out online that Casanova was made in April of last freaking year and I have to wait until friggin' fall before I get to see it, but still. Positive news. And hey, getting to baffle and partially freak out my parents was kinda fun. ;) There was also an Inspector Lewis preview, which looked funny, though not nearly as interesting since I never did care much for Inspector Morse. Oxford is very pretty, though. I admire their lawns. Then Texas Ranch House started and dad started flipping channels, eventually finding his own fanboy-ish bliss on VH1 classic channel, in the form of some band's really bitchin' drum set. :) Whatever makes you red-faced and giggly, I guess!

It was an awesome sensation. I felt like I was just made of sunshine afterwards. Creepy to say that, but it's true. Probably the result of increased blood flow due to a significant rise in blood pressure. I really don't know what came over me, though. I was acting like a complete fangirl. I mean, right down to the high pitched fits of giggling and exuberant bouncing. That has never happened to me before. It was quite thrilling. And of course if asked to think or say something serious I could have easily done so, but it was fascinating to finally understand some of the obsessive excitement that has always baffled me about fangirls. I suddenly feel like a real person. :) Very nice. Of course, having looked over Mr. Tennant's wikipedia entry and similar profiles about him on the web, I feel rather silly since he was right in front of my face during Harry Potter, and I didn't even remember him afterwards. In my defense, was probably too outraged by the butchering of the book to notice. What they did made me pretty mad, and all other considerations flew out the window in my blind "WHAT THE HELL DID THEY DO TO RITA SKEETER?!" rage. If it pops up cheaply somewhere on Comcast I might rent it again. Probably not, though. I like Mr. Tennant a lot, but considering his small role in the movie I'm not sure it's worth $4 to watch that piece of crud again when I could spend that same money on something I haven't seen yet, like Mirrormask. *shrug*

Excellent night. Pretty good day, too. I cooked a lot of stuff in two hours. And I got to watch two episodes of Midsomer Murders. =D Good day. Very good day. Still ticked off I have to wait until fall to see Casanova, but I guess it's better than nothing. You know, it's funny. I always used to rather dislike British television. Their cameras always seemed a little funny and their plots never seemed as interesting as ours. But lately I find myself more and more intrigued, down to the point where I'm starting to think they've got better TV than we do. I blame Doctor Who. =D But that's a good thing, because now if I ever visit and have to watch the telly, I feel perfectly confident that I will find something interesting to watch. Unfortunately I can't guarantee the same should any British friends of mine come to America. Actually, I can pretty much guarantee the opposite - that our television programs will repulse, disgust, and horrify you to points which you probably were not aware you could reach. *sigh* Oh well. At least it won't cause you deadly epileptic fits, like Japanese shows.

I'm going to go grin like an idiot and play Stronghold now. Did I mention the giggling?