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Pincushion Queen

i’ve been storing all my brain droppings and subconscious organizations on Pinterest. i just realized that looking at the boards, they’re pretty cohesive and i can spot exactly what piece of my brain i’m storing each picture for – and anyway, they’re pretty. when i’m too tired to write or read and it’s almost bedtime i spend a lot of fifteen minute spurts going “ooooh,” click, “ooooh,” click…

anyway. here’s a link to the page itself and to a few of the boards. they’re purty.

Main Page: http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/

Cipher Sister: http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/cipher-sister-a-collection-2013-thunderdome-press/

Brain: http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/brain/

Beauty in People : http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/beauty-in-people/

Ghosts : http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/ghosts/

Nefarious :http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/nefarious/

Regarding the Locals…

 

 

There’s a big honkin’ portrait of Jesus in the middle school. Someone asking to take it down isn’t a reason to sound a battle cry…. I throw in my two cents in a short opinion essay over at Manarchy:

http://manarchymag.com/2013/01/the-jackson-jesus/author-amandagowin

Another List

okay, fine, i want to do a Most Influential in 2012 List, too. i’m making it up right now but i’m sure it will still be fairly accurate.

TOP TEN, in no particular order:

1. Tom Hardy

2. Tom Waits

3. Justin Townes Earle

4. Kevin Corrigan

5. Sheri Moon Zombie

6. Eric Gowin

7. Craig Wallwork

8. Vincent Louis Carrella

9. Lady Gaga

10. my awesome zen demon cat Billie Idol.

music, pictures, ideas, conversation, companionship. YES!

 

 

 

To New Beginnings

places to go and people to see, strangers to meet and friends to excavate. words to find and words to make.

Happy 2013

The Woman in Black

All In the Family: 9 Family Values in House of 1,000 Corpses (in ManArchy Magazine)

I’ve been waiting YEARS for an excuse to have this conversation outside my own head, so click on over!!

http://manarchymag.com/core/2012/10/fireflys/author-amandagowin

 

 

Six Years

Six years ago tonight, it was the night before my wedding and I was very close to passing out. A few days earlier I’d broken out in hives and taken allergy medicine for it, which had exacerbated the hives and resulted in three solid days AWAKE. So the night before my wedding I got a shot in my ass to counteract the allergy medicine, and unlike every other bride in the history of the world I slept a solid twelve hours the night before my wedding day….

Less than two years later a beautiful monster appeared in our lives and made everything even better…

We’re all monsters. We’re wild things. We’re pirates.

Six years after my Night of Big Sleep, on the eve of my Wedding Anniversary, I’m sitting on the couch in my little house in the country with my husband and son, two horses and a baby mule outside, two big dogs, an evil cat, while the newest addition (a guinea pig named Pete) cautiously watches the goings on in this monkeyhouse. My son is gluing chopped up pieces of construction paper together to make an Autumn tree.

 

Life is good. Insanity is good. Happy is good.

Love is good.

 

 

Happy Anniversary, Eric.

New Favorite Things

new favorite song:

El Camino by Elizabeth Cook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKZkM437TiY

 

 

 

 

 

new favorite site:

http://fuckyeahtomhardy.tumblr.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

new favorite news:

LADY GAGA IN MACHETE KILLS!!

Words I Like To Say Out Loud

1. matryoshka

2. wunderkammer

3. forsythia

4. hydrangea

5. parlour

And you?

Branch of the Storytelling Tree…

Curiouser and Curiouser (Mad, Mad Interview Blog)

i like to ask questions.

there are seven thousand author interview blogs, so why shouldn’t there be one more? the sister blog to Miss Ohio will be Curiouser and Curiouser, and i will ask many questions to many authors (25 in the line-up so far) and few of the questions will pertain to anything regarding writing. i can google bibliographies and birthdates and where people went to school, but maybe i want to know if a particular person wears shoes in the house or likes David Bowie or has ever been stabbed. maybe i just want to know what’s in your pockets.

there’s a ten question cap to keep me from getting out of control with the interrogations - and judging by the interviewing i’ve done so far, these brave and wonderful writers should thank whatever deity or synapse made me commit to ten. with the answers and stories and unexpected candidness, these would be Neverending Interviews without a cap – a dialogue that went on until my question mark finger dropped off or restraining orders were filed….

so! on with the useful information. Curiouser and Curiouser will post its first interview on TUESDAY MAY 1st. every following tuesday will be a new interview with a new writer – some questions will be different, some will be the same, some of the writers will be strangers and some will be names you know. i can promise you one thing: NONE of the answers will be boring.

the writers who have graciously agreed and even volunteered for this project are apparently incapable of being boring or average. i cannot thank them enough for participating. the interviews are spectacular based on the quality of the pictures they draw, not the frames i provide.

TUESDAY, MARCH 27th i will release the 5 Author Interview line-up for May.

for now, you can like the Curiouser and Curiouser Facebook Page and recieve a very, very conservative amount of updates, mainly to announce the Interview of the Week as those Tuesdays roll around:

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Curiouser-and-Curiouser/304516562938553

the Curiouser and Curiouser site itself is still under construction, and the link will also be released on TUESDAY, MARCH 27th. the easiest way to be reminded of this is to like the Facebook page.

I’M SO FRICKIN’ EXCITED!!

you should be, too. it’s a bit insane that these people have agreed to talk to me and be so receptive to such questions.

i’ll see you on the sister site on Tuesday, May 1st, and until then hopefully on the Facebook page.

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER!

Adam Loves Gaga and It’s Almost His Birthday

i know this is going to sound stupid and I DON’T CARE. my kid has asked for lady gaga to come to his birthday party the last two years, convinced that somehow MAYBE she’ll get some free time and intuit his very real love for her and come. there’s no reason for me to NOT get all over twitter and post links of him and photos of him expressing Gaga love and trend #adamlovesgaga in an attempt to get her to somehow see any of these tweets and send him a birthday message.

so, for the happiness of a kid that is AT THIS MOMENT listening to Gaga (his girlfriend that lives on the moon, he calls her), for his birthday, if any of you can find it in your very large hearts to retweet these links and this message and help me trend this and tag it to @ladygaga also, i would very much appreciate it. my twitter is “@mandajoon”

this was a very weird/difficult post to make. “help me get lady gaga to tell my son happy 4th birthday.” it’s a strange request. so have mercy on me and HELP. his 4th birthday is February 6th, so we have 3 weeks!!!

<3 amanda

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo VS. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

yes, yes, i realize everyone’s already done this, and most are more well-informed since i haven’t even read the book – but i don’t really want to talk about Rooney Mara’s ass or Daniel Craig’s inability to seem vulnerable when judging the American version against the Swedish version.

just want to talk about Lisbeths. just want to talk about Noomi Rapace vs. Rooney Mara. just want to talk about something very, very different in these two performances that i haven’t seen mentioned yet (and if it’s all over the place and i’m regurgitating, forgive me):

Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth: sociopath

Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth: psychopath

both women play the role admirably, but the interpretations are sooo different. Rapace’s Lisbeth is a coiled snake – a tightly wound ball of rage and vulnerability and intelligence. NEVER does she seem to be anything other than in complete control and completely aware of what she’s doing, be it testing her attraction/feelings for her male companion or carving a bloody tattoo in a rapist’s chest. there’s never a snap or a click when you feel she’s floated away and given in to her rage and it is driving her.

The opposite is true of Rooney Mara – in the same scenes (mainly the violent ones, of course) Mara goes distinctly different behind the eyes and seems absolutely consumed. She’s a different Lisbeth when she commits these acts, she is Rage, she is Not There. you see the blink and suddenly smart and guarded Lisbeth has become the creature that carves names on people’s chests and asks permission to kill, because she’s incapable of making such a decison.

for this, i respect Rapace’s performance, as well as her Lisbeth, more than Mara’s. I don’t know if it’s an American preference – we want people (especially a female we want to like) to lose it before they do horrifying things so we don’t have to blame them? i don’t know.

it’s Lecter vs. Gumb for me – the Aware will always be more compelling.

 

Eve

no matter how much of a bitch i become during the holidays, or how much i feel like imploding or running in circles, by dark at New Year’s Eve i feel like this:

i wish for you to become positively infected with hope – so that it itches under your skin like hatching spider eggs, forcing you to run into the sunlight and do so much wonderful shit that you can’t help but love the baby hope spiders and blow them on their gauzy threads to the four corners of the world to burrow into the skins of the ones you love….