And one to grow on.

[mrissa]

1. If you are writing a web interface, do not specify a font color but not a background color or vice versa. This is what we know as sloppy and bad.

2. Clothes shopping online to replace things that have worn out. What did we say about pencil skirts for at least the last six seasons? Together now, in a weary drone: mrissa is not shaped like a pencil. Puff sleeves: do I look like Anne of Green Gables to you? (If yes, check again: red hair? No. Freckles? Only very pale pathetic ones. Best friend who would put a cake ad in my fiction? Not hardly. Earnest assumption of all humanity's goodness? Guess again, bucko.) It's a faux-denim faux-A-line skirt? Great! Then I'm faux buying it! And if you could pick out of all the possible women models in the world, and you couldn't make your shorts look any better than that, why are you selling them? Pick out the stitching, cut up the fabric for a quilt or a pillow or something and hide your shame. Some people would feel better that the shorts they tried on earlier in the season looked on them just about exactly as they did on the model. Me, I feel sorry for the model, because I took the things off and departed the scene as swiftly as the vertigo would allow, rather than standing around letting somebody get photographic evidence that I'd ever worn the wretched things. And the ones I tried on were brown; the model's are in periwinkle pinstripes! There are very few occasions that call for periwinkle pinstriped shorts, in my experience. Perhaps I'm missing out and you're all having parties for which they would be just the thing and not inviting me. Good. Carry on with not inviting me. Periwinkle pinstripes. It's self-mocking!

3. How being a little-known SF and fantasy short story writer is better than being a candidate for PotUSA/VPotUSA (selections from long, long list): the people you deal with like to teach you things, and some of them even like to learn. If someone tries to appoint you to a committee, you don't have to pretend to like it. You can do whatever you want with your hair and it does not affect the success of your career: shaved off? Longer than your butt? Dyed blue? Looped up in dozens of little loops with sparkly butterfly clips? Nobody. Cares. Also if a member of your family gets pregnant, the only people who have opinions on this event are people who have known her name for more than a week. Also if you try to get something stupid published, nobody cares as long as you don't succeed. And when there are good sushi restaurants in the cities where we have our conventions, we eat there.

4. Post-travel vertigo: the less said, the better. But oof.

5. I can tell I'm ready to start really serious writing on The True Tale of Carter Hall, because interesting tidbits about four other novels have popped into my head. I wrote them down and closed the files. Focus is our friend. Our elusive, popular friend who is never around when we want to catch up over a cup of coffee.

6. The vertigo is still making reading nonfiction less fun than it ought to be, but at the moment I feel compelled to be stubborn. We'll see how that goes.

Comments

[talimena.livejournal.com]

Okay, I can imagine faux denim being denim colored non-denim cloth, but what in the world is a faux A-line skirt? I do have a fondness for pencil skirts, though, despite not being remotely pencil shaped. Of course, I don't generally wear them, but a fondness nonetheless. And thank you for reporting on the wackiness of the shopping options - you've helped me feel better about delaying the clothes replacement I need to do.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

A faux A-line skirt appeared to be...a straight skirt. How it was faux A-line, I could not tell from the picture. "It'll look like it's a flattering style that fits many body types! But really it won't be!" Bah.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Focus is our friend. Our elusive, popular friend who is never around when we want to catch up over a cup of coffee.

This made me laugh. It's so true!

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

I for one speak in favor of pencil skirts worn on non-pencil-shaped bodies. (Still, I acknowledge that they may still not be your thing. But oh, what they can do for a nice posterior.)

As for the rest of the fashion rant, I am there with you in my own way.

I like the sparkly butterfly clips idea.

Focus is exactly that friend. Damn him, anyway.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I would not hate pencil skirts quite so much (though frankly I am still too much of a Northern Girl to be happy adjusting my walk to them when I'm not vertiginous and taking smaller steps anyway) if they made them to fit me. But it's a style I can guarantee will not fit; they just don't make the right proportion of waist-hip-thigh for me in that style. And a pencil skirt with a gaping waist flatters no one.

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

Hm, yes. Nipping in the waist would be possible, of course, in a more ideal world.

I shall envision for you the perfect walking skirt with a lovely kick-pleat tail, I think. What fabric would you like?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am feeling autumnal, so gingerbread-brown wool, please.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

J. Peterman used to make skirts that looked like that, in their catalog anyway. I was always so in love with the graceful lines of their line drawings that I was afraid to actually order anything for fear it wouldn't be that lovely in the actual cloth - and certainly not on me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think the purple silk dress I got from them looked like it was supposed to, except their idea of extravagantly long sash ties and mine are...divergent. Theirs were adequately long. I was hoping for extravagance, actually.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Their current skirts (I just checked) are in a word, swishy. Also expensive. I would call them practical since they'd be easy to walk in, but I suspect they are need drycleaning. And anyway, I further suspect the waists would all be too small for me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I agree on the drycleaning. I'm less sure on the waists, unfortunately for me: the dress I bought was none too nipped in there (although the ties helped).

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

... well, the day job of a little-known writer may care about what she does with her hair and whether she dyes it blue, but I told them it's been that way since 2003, whereas the job hired me ten minutes ago and may leave my life as quickly, thank you, and we compromised on my taking out my nose ring upon entering the premises. Which still makes me feel as though I'm working there cleverly disguised as somebody else, but. (This is of course not the sf/f related day job, who give the impression that one facial piercing may not be enough for their aesthetic.)

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Did the entire Repub convention really refuse to eat at the good sushi place?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Approximately, yah. Miyoko wasn't sure she was going to be able to use all her food while it was still fresh, because they weren't eating there, and the St. Paul downtown exits were blocked and so on, so the normal customers weren't eating there either.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Ugh.

It should be, like, a rule for having those things, that the delegates and candidates and hangers-on and so forth are obliged to eat at the good restaurants.

[prettymuchpeggy.livejournal.com]

I will have to make sure that I eat there in the next couple of weeks. I generally eat there on the way to having my hair cut. I bet they could use the business as well.

"Mrissa is not shaped like a pencil."

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

> Best friend who would put a cake ad in my fiction?

=v= Someone left it out in the rain, apparently.