inquiry and bloodlust

There are a bazillion articles out there detailing just why adopting a dog rather than getting one from a breeder or pet store is the right choice and a fair amount on why you should consider adopting a dog who's past the puppy phase. I agree with the majority of those arguments, of course, but they're all so serious and legitimate. I mean, you're inviting a big-fanged carnivore into your home. Let's not be purely logical; let's get stupid.

I present to you five decidedly awesome advantages of adopting a non-puppy.

#1: The Backstory
Not only are you adopting a dog, you're adopting a protagonist. My girl Opal lived in the woods with her mom and littermates before joining my pack. Kinda badass. My boy Benny, on the other hand, is a mystery. We know he was adopted once before us, but before that? It's a blank. I choose to believe he was an experimental government project attempting to create the perfect dog. Unfortunately, they let one variable get out of hand: LOVE. So he broke out in search of the perfect home et voila. My faithful mutt.

#2: The Excuses
"Oh no, what is he doing? I've trained him better than that! He must've learned it from his previous owner/other dogs on the streets/that Russian circus he starred in."

#3: The Toys
Dogs, like people, have preferences. My dogs, for example, ignore rubber toys. Well, Benny ignores toys completely, but that's not the point! The point is that I had no way of knowing this until I offered them a rubber toy. You want to have the happiest dog possible, right? So you really should just get one of pretty much everything in the toy aisle. You know, to test the waters. It has nothing to do with how cute that dragon plush is. Really.

#4: The Ego-Boost
You weren't there for those formative months. This dog met you as a mature pup and its mature brain loves you. How neat is that?

#5: The Brainular Superiority
People love babies. The big heads, big eyes, tiny little toes... our brains are wired to gobble that junk up. We also love what we, well, love, though. Your dogs will probably end up looking cuter to you than any others in the world. (This doesn't apply to me, as my dogs truly are the cutest in existence, but I've seen some other poor fools stuck in their delusions.) This "cuter than" deal includes puppies. That's right - the awesomeness of your dogs can overcome your brain's innate wiring to love babies. Don't think about it too hard; just go with it. Dogs trump brain. Suck it, gray matter!

Bonus: Why You Should Adopt Two Dogs: A Diagram

carolinecrane owns my soul. She wrote the best fic in the history of ever. Seriously. "Like a Chord on a Harp". And then jengeorge did a sequel, "Your Time Here is Fleeting", which is also great, so I guess she owns a bit of my soul as well. I gotta get more soul to give. They deserve it.

Other awesome things I've encountered lately:
- Nick and Jess tapping
- The Disney Princess Designer Collection
- The most badass drum solo you've ever seen
- Crocheted minions!

My mom brought that last item to my attention and requested some, so I'm planning on tackling those after I finish the crafts I currently have underway. Namely, a [ITEM REDACTED SO MY MOM WON'T KNOW HER XMAS GIFT] and a felt plush version of my Dimetrodon.

For now? Gold rush research to do for fic. Then sleep. Maybe. Maybe.

These ask-tumblrs for Kurt and Yosuke are awesome and now I want awkward Kurt/Yosuke friendship. And Souji, Kanji, Puck, and Finn being bros. These fandoms, they should not mesh, but... but... I want!

This LA Times op-ed makes my atheist and scientist selves happy. My writer self wants me to get back to fic already, while my artist self insists I instead reread pterawaters's fic so I can get cracking on the art. My tired self tells them all to shut the fuck up for a minute, jesus christ, and let me drink my milkshake in peace.

I got a weird stonework-ish mug at the thrift store that says YACHTING. That's the only text. I love it dearly.

On top of everything else, I so want to try this. It will do nothing but make me cross-eyed and cause a huge mess, but I'm compelled and I have no clue why. Hm.

How to end this post, how to end this post... oh, I know! Chris Colfer. Guh.

With one small exception (Sam/Mercedes is flawless), TLo expressed everything I felt about the Glee finale. Seriously, go rewatch last season's finale. This one was a complete disappointment. Bleh.

Glee last night. Ahem. ( Pro and cons of BTW, cons and cons of Blaine, plus Puck/Kurt and sexy!Kurt picspams! )

He's actually up for voting now, so I'm gonna post about this again:

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There have been quite a few good games this year - FFXIII (though that was 2009 in Japan), Heavy Rain, No More Heroes 2, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Kirby's Epic Yarn... but there's one game that stands triumphantly above the rest.



Boom. Done. No room for argument. Best game of the year.

Is anyone else getting an error message instead of the Voice Post Settings page? I want to do that pronunciation meme everyone's posting, but I can't remember my pin number and I can't seem to find a place I can reset it that will actually load.

Anyway, I had kind of an amazing Friday night. I'm usually the homebody type - I went to exactly one party through all of high school (where we watched the Final Fantasy anime, played Silent Hill, and had nothing stronger than Mountain Dew to drink) and two during my undergrad. I really wanted to see Black Swan, though, so I did the manly thing and asked Jaime out on a date. And then invited Kiri and Kaisa along. And then Jaime suggested Olive Garden, and Kiri suggested Kaisa and I split some wine, and somehow this ended up being a whole magnum of red house wine shared between Kaisa, Jaime, and me. I had 3.5 glasses - my second drunkest night ever! Go me? Also, for about a week I'd been meaning to insist that Jaime take me to Breadstix on our next date. Turns out I didn't have to ask after all. I may have pointed this out about halfway through dinner and giggled. Anyway, the wine was enough to make us all smiley and pleasantly warm, and after a long and leisurely dinner, we walked to the movie theater just in time for the 10:45 showing.

It was awesome. I definitely liked it better than Requiem for a Dream. On its own merits, it's a very evocative, beautifully staged movie with lots of inventive aesthetic touches. Jaime wasn't sure about the up-and-down pacing, but I thought it was a nice reflection of the main character Nina's mental state. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that the movie's about a ballerina with psychological problems. It felt very true to me; all the little details (the box of rosin she steps into before dancing, the mirrors everywhere, the practice outfits complete with shrugs over leotards) pinged me just right. It all made for a really engaging experience. Of course, being a past dancer with psychological problems, you might want to take my praise with a grain of salt - it's a movie that was probably a lot easier for me to connect to than most. Granted, my life's never had that level of physical distress or sexual intrigue, but still...

Oh, and by the way, from IMDB's trivia page: "Nina's name in the original screenplay was Alexandria." Shudder.

Why is everyone jizzing themselves over Ryan Reynolds being single? Frankly, he looks like a douchbag, and he hasn't been notable in anything good enough to give him that overlooking-all-physicalities charm. Not hot. So that got me thinking about who I (the only person whose opinion matters, natch) have been finding hot lately. ( Tiny picspam, my friends. Enjoy the pretty! )

What about you, other only-person-whose-opinion-matterses? Whose poster are you kissing before you go to bed at night?