There's a DOA icon...

...that dances by bouncing up and down while moving its fists to the left and to the right. I'll have to download it and stick it here because that's about how I feel right now. One of Jareth's outfits and two pairs of Jareth's shoes are arriving this week! Right now I'll settle for raising my arms in victory: \o/.

Why is there no timer on my compooper?

It comes with a calendar and a clock. Why not a timer?

Anyway, I just found SnapTimer, a simple, self-contained, low-memory .exe that's intuitive to use and customize. It even displays custom popup messages when the time is up. Mine is "Get off the Internet now!"

I should make my alarm sound a .wav file of Jareth saying "Time is short." ^_^

I just remembered...

I've been a dollmaker for years already. I just haven't made any in a while.

I've actually scratch-built a doll before...in summer, 1998. Frustrated with the lack of figures of Frank from Rocky Horror, I decided to make a 1:6 scale version of my own.

I made the head and neck out of peach Super Sculpey, sculpted on top of a dowel for the spine. Of course I sculpted a smirk! I colored the head with ballpoint pen [!] and glued curly black doll hair on it with regular white glue [!].

I created a simple wire armature for the arms and legs, probably gluing them in the appropriate positions on the spine. I think I somehow stuck polyfill onto the armature, then cut body shapes out of pantyhose [!!] and glued them over the stuffing to create skin. I used mitten-shaped sandwiches of peach felt with finger demarcations drawn on in ballpoint pen [!] for hands.

I distinctly remember cutting up an old magenta bathing suit of mine for his outfit. Some sort of black material made his underwear and shoes [which had cardboard soles], and there was black tulle for his fishnets. I procured little plastic pearl beads for his necklace and some cheap expandable rings for his anklet. Finally, I noted the date of his creation and stuck a label on the bottom of his shoe.

The end result did not accord with my grandiose, movie-accurate visions. I created a microcephalic, flat-faced doll with disturbingly thick, tubular limbs and, despite the wire armature, negligible articulation. Glue featured prominently in his overall look. Come to think of it, I constructed him primarily of glue and swear words.

Nevertheless, I was so damn proud of that doll. I displayed him on my shelf for a while, and he appeared on my RHPS site in the fan art category. And I still have him, after all these years. I'll have to dig up a picture or two of him.

Kinda surprised that my first doll wasn't a Jareth. Then again, in my mind, Jareth and Frank are two aspects of the same character, so it's all the same.

:p to Soom

Isn't this nice? Soom is rereleasing some of their Super Mega Gem [65cm] and Idealian [72cm] male sculpts. Included in the list of options is Photon, who I'm attracted to because he just needs a little sharpening to be a good Jareth. Well, the head does. Unfortunately, the Idealian body is extremely muscular, thick and heavy. It's a well executed sculpt, but I really dislike that body type.

It would be very cool to put a Photon head on a slenderer [and lighter!] body, but Idealians are really big. Photon's head circumference is 24cm, his neck circumference 13.5cm. For comparison, Dollshe's "old" [original, ~2006] sculpts have a head circumference of 23.5cm, a neck circumference of 11.2cm. Like I said, they have really big heads and really thick limbs. The Super Gem body offered in this rerelease has a neck circumference of 10.5cm, so I'm not sure a Photon head would look good on a Super Gem body. Blaaaah.

I'm not getting a Photon anyway. My Jareth doll is much closer to what I want, and I made it, so I'm much more attached to it.

EDIT: Not Super Gem, Mega Gem. Mega Gems are apparently ripped like the Idealians. Siiiiiigh.

K.C. Doll responded re Katyusha!

This is what she said:

The basic dolll's price doesn't include emotions, but you can order
all of them with the basic doll. Each emotion faceplate comes with
make up (you can say your wishes about it) and each costs about 160-170$.
So you can decide do you want all of them or only some. The cost of
all emotion set is about 1700$. The basic doll price (include doll
with make up of your wish, wig you prefer and nails coloring) is 900$.

Jodi Picoult is a cheating cheater who cheats.

I just finished Vanishing Acts, and it enraged me, just like every single book of Picoult's does. I'm so pissed that it's difficult for me to articulate why I find her work so narratively offensive, but I'll try.

Let me first give you my idea of novelistic success: a story motivated by characters' actions, featuring robust, believable people who just happen to live on paper. In the best novels, characters act according to their nature. Their actions are not propelled by the plot; they propel the plot with their actions. Even if what they do is surprising, it's exactly what they have to do because that's who they are. They are psychologically consistent people whose actions provide insight into their heads.

Picoult does not start her stories with robust characters at all. Instead, she starts with abstract concepts. In the case of Vanishing Acts, she's got Memory, Divorce, Alcoholism, Parent/Child Relationships, argle bargle bargle. Upon such a Procrustean bed of Big Important Themes, she throws the generic skeletons of her "characters," or, more precisely, "authorial puppets," who then twitch according to her grindingly blatant plot machinery. And we're supposed to accept this as a story?! Your average car commercial on TV has more genuine, compelling drama.

Now I enjoy a cleverly and neatly turned plot as much as any reader, but that's not what's going on in Picoult's work. What's going on is plot-driven melodrama trying desperately to pass itself off as a Significant Work of Our Times. You can tell it's Significant because there are [obvious, boring, unenlightening] Parallels Between Characters! There are Appropriate Poetic Quotes before each section! There's a Magical Negro Indian character who exists solely to fulfill the whiteys' epiphanies by infodumping Hopi mythology [which then becomes nothing more than a metaphor for...Lord knows what, as I was skimming at this point] and then conveniently offing herself! That makes this book Thematic and Deep, right? Right? Why are you laughing at me???

Picoult's books are all essentially diagrams of checkers games put into words. I was going to say chess, but that's too sophisticated. Maybe Connect Four is a better analogy. She's a cheating cheater who cheats because she tries to pass these diagrams off as stories.

I have really got to stop reading her books. It's like eating something that tastes good while you're chewing it, and then you get a little indigestion several bites in. You ignore it because you want to finish your portion. You continue, and your aches and pains increase. By the end, when your stomach is full, you feel bloated, heartburned, constipated and utterly unable to contemplate anything but the sore state of your digestive system. That's about how I feel right now, literarily speaking. Ooog.