Cash for Clunkers and Potty-Training

My father and I were having an interesting conversation this evening. He has been teasing me because I have been posting so many articles about potty training on Examiner. I started talking about trying to keep myself up in ranking, and how people will write about any hot topic, then throw in some random line to make it fit their category, such as a Christian writer (who is actually very talented, and I like her a lot, don't get me wrong!) writing about Cash for Clunkers. He told me I could do the same.......

Parents give cash for clunkers when their children potty train.....

Give them money every time they clunk into the toilet.....

ROTFLMAO!!!!!

Thoughts on Lars and the Real Girl

I obviously had heard of the movie Lars and the Real Girl a couple of years ago through all of my awards season coverage. Frankly, the idea of a movie about a guy who pretended that his blow-up doll was his real-life girlfriend just looked stupid to me, and I didn't want to waste my time watching it. But, Ryan Gosling was up for numerous awards for his performance, and critics liked it, so I figured at some point I should try it.

Finally, tonight it premiered on Showtime. I'll admit that in the beginning, when Lars purchases his doll and starts carting her around as if she were real, I almost didn't want to continue watching. I was also a little creeped out as Lars kind of reminded me of a guy I dated over a decade ago. As I was working on writing blog posts and articles, I just kept it on anyway.

And then I got sucked in.

To support Lars and his delusions, the entire community ends up banding together to pretend that Bianca is real. They take her to get her hair done, give her a job, talk to her and serve her food, drive her around town, and take her to events. All of this is designed to make Lars happy, and help him through whatever psychological dysfunction he is experiencing.

I found it to be surprisingly moving, and in my usual fashion, I even shed a tear or two.

It's not a movie that I would necessarily ever want to own, but I am sure I will probably want to watch it again some day.

Fulfilling my Duty

So, there have been a lot of developments in the writing world since my birthday. I'm honestly too tired right now to get into all of them. But I will mention one.

I joined a writing site called Women Who Write Online. I'll have to look up the address later. It was started by one of my writing friends, and is a great networking idea.

For the month of August, we have a challenge. We must write one article and/or blog post per day. So, here I am sitting down at 11:50 p.m. to churn out a blog post before midnight arrives. I wasn't going to, because I am still coming down off a migraine, but I would feel guilty. And the fact that I still managed to put up an article yesterday with the migraine full-blown kind of negates my laziness today.

Is this cheating? Perhaps. But that's okay.

Alright, one of my fun things since my birthday is I have joined up with a website called Bookpleasures. I know, it sounds dirty, but it is a legitimate book reviewing website. I want to say I have received at least a dozen books so far from them? And Norm works with a lot of the big publishers. I've been reading a variety of books, and I'm enjoying trying to maximize any exposure and money involved. No, I do not get paid to review these books. But the free books are nice! And just the experience of writing reviews.......anyway, you can read the reviews on Bookpleasures, or on my blogs at http://andisbookreviews.blogspot.com and http://andiskidsbooks.blogspot.com. Then some of them get reviewed on my other websites. If I remember, I will try to go back and link all of my reviews from my blogs.

AND I will always provide links through which you can purchase the said books directly from Amazon. Good times.

Ok, the Tylenol PM to knock out the last remnants of this migraine hangover is really kicking in. I'm going to pass out to Beverly Hills Chihuahua now. (GREAT cheesy movie!!)