State of the Cora
Jan. 13th, 2008 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraa...is pretty good, all things considered, though I'm really getting about ready to go home.
***
I have, to my mild shame, never seen Terminator 2. I'm told it's an excellent movie in addition to being an exiting action flick. (I have seen T3, which was entertaining if kind of stupid.) I will definitely see T2 at some point (yes, I know it's creepy and violent; I'm fairly sure I can deal, and Pav can tell me when not to look if it's relevant), but, in true Ask Livejournal fashion, when deciding whether to watch the first one first, I resort to a poll.
[Poll #1120891]
***
I am not currently stressing about the conference. This is an odd state of affairs. I sort of feel, perversely, as though I ought to be stressed, so I'm a little worried about not being worried. Still! Could be a lot worse.
***
I have aquired quite a collection of BPAL scents, and I'm in the process of noting down stuff about them and dividing them into 'OMG YES,' 'Nice enough to wear when the occasion is right,' 'Nice, but not for wearing (ie, use as a linen scent or similar),' and 'Eew.' (In general, I'm pretty sure the 'eew' scents are eew on me not because there's actually anything wrong with them but because they don't push my particular buttons, or because they don't work with my skin chemistry.) In the future, I'll probably be looking to give away the 'eews,' and maybe also some of the 'nice enough but not my favorite's, and also some of the duplicate imps. For now, though,
Tenative BPAL theories:
* Florals work well on me, especially rose and lily scents.
* So do herbals, and herbal + floral combinations are win.
* Certain kinds of spices and musks and incense-notes (including patchouli, cinnamon, ginger, sandalwood, etc) also work well, as do leather and tobacco scents. (Helllloooooo, Coyote.)
* I had never run into aquatics before trying BPAL, but the ones I've tried have been really nice -- though they tend to come out light on me. Ozone, water, grass smells are good.
* Foodie scents mostly work well. Vanilla, tea, honey, milk, nuts, coffee, some chocolates, work nicely, so long as they're not too sweet to start with. (But see below re: fruit, booze.)
* Fruit scents are beginning to be more iffy. Some of them (lemon, orange, pomegranate, and some raspberry, apple, and pear) work fine. Most berry scents and some other fruit scents ramp up the sweetness, though, and start to smell like jolly ranchers, fruit punch or, worst of all, bathroom air freshener. Ew. This is a shame, because I love fruit. (However, fruit scents significantly moderated by other scents -- such as Persephone, which mixes rose and pomegranate, or the lemony scents in Apothecary, which are mingled with herbal notes, tend to come out okay.)
* Boozy scents tend to turn out smelling like dishwasher liquid or laundry detergent, unfortunately.
* Pine scents make me smell like those little tree-shaped air freshener things. Again, ew.
Personal skin chemistry notes:
* My skin ramps up sweetness like crazy. This is probably why musks and aquatics work on me, even when other people on the BPAL forums think they smell very masculine (like Bow and Crown of Conquest, or Mechanical Phoenix) -- they turn sweetish. I'm mostly okay with this, because I like a little sweetness on my skin.
* The side-effect of this is that foodies that start out very, very sweet can get sticky. The other side effect, unfortunately, is that a lot of fruit scents turn to Kool-Aid. (Some sweet scents -- milky-honey-vanilla, for instance -- stay nice through the ramping, though.)
* My skin eats aquatics. They smell nice while they last, but they have to either be fairly strong and prominent, or have a nice secondary note that can come out to play after the aquatic has faded away.
* Plant scents (florals, fresh-herbals, and 'green' grassy or leafy notes) tend not to change very much on me. If it starts out smelling like rose or lily, it'll end up smelling like rose or lily. This is fine, since I like good fresh flower smells.
* Alcohol turns to detergent. Chocolate is iffy: if paired with something that will turn sweet, it's quite nice; if not, it goes all bitter and weird.
* My skin ramps up pine, too, and not just ramps it up but irons it all out into one flat, boring, air-freshener note. It's a shame -- a lot of the piney scents (Jersey Devil, Troll, etc) smell really pretty in the vial, and then go gross on my skin.
***
I have, to my mild shame, never seen Terminator 2. I'm told it's an excellent movie in addition to being an exiting action flick. (I have seen T3, which was entertaining if kind of stupid.) I will definitely see T2 at some point (yes, I know it's creepy and violent; I'm fairly sure I can deal, and Pav can tell me when not to look if it's relevant), but, in true Ask Livejournal fashion, when deciding whether to watch the first one first, I resort to a poll.
[Poll #1120891]
***
I am not currently stressing about the conference. This is an odd state of affairs. I sort of feel, perversely, as though I ought to be stressed, so I'm a little worried about not being worried. Still! Could be a lot worse.
***
I have aquired quite a collection of BPAL scents, and I'm in the process of noting down stuff about them and dividing them into 'OMG YES,' 'Nice enough to wear when the occasion is right,' 'Nice, but not for wearing (ie, use as a linen scent or similar),' and 'Eew.' (In general, I'm pretty sure the 'eew' scents are eew on me not because there's actually anything wrong with them but because they don't push my particular buttons, or because they don't work with my skin chemistry.) In the future, I'll probably be looking to give away the 'eews,' and maybe also some of the 'nice enough but not my favorite's, and also some of the duplicate imps. For now, though,
Tenative BPAL theories:
* Florals work well on me, especially rose and lily scents.
* So do herbals, and herbal + floral combinations are win.
* Certain kinds of spices and musks and incense-notes (including patchouli, cinnamon, ginger, sandalwood, etc) also work well, as do leather and tobacco scents. (Helllloooooo, Coyote.)
* I had never run into aquatics before trying BPAL, but the ones I've tried have been really nice -- though they tend to come out light on me. Ozone, water, grass smells are good.
* Foodie scents mostly work well. Vanilla, tea, honey, milk, nuts, coffee, some chocolates, work nicely, so long as they're not too sweet to start with. (But see below re: fruit, booze.)
* Fruit scents are beginning to be more iffy. Some of them (lemon, orange, pomegranate, and some raspberry, apple, and pear) work fine. Most berry scents and some other fruit scents ramp up the sweetness, though, and start to smell like jolly ranchers, fruit punch or, worst of all, bathroom air freshener. Ew. This is a shame, because I love fruit. (However, fruit scents significantly moderated by other scents -- such as Persephone, which mixes rose and pomegranate, or the lemony scents in Apothecary, which are mingled with herbal notes, tend to come out okay.)
* Boozy scents tend to turn out smelling like dishwasher liquid or laundry detergent, unfortunately.
* Pine scents make me smell like those little tree-shaped air freshener things. Again, ew.
Personal skin chemistry notes:
* My skin ramps up sweetness like crazy. This is probably why musks and aquatics work on me, even when other people on the BPAL forums think they smell very masculine (like Bow and Crown of Conquest, or Mechanical Phoenix) -- they turn sweetish. I'm mostly okay with this, because I like a little sweetness on my skin.
* The side-effect of this is that foodies that start out very, very sweet can get sticky. The other side effect, unfortunately, is that a lot of fruit scents turn to Kool-Aid. (Some sweet scents -- milky-honey-vanilla, for instance -- stay nice through the ramping, though.)
* My skin eats aquatics. They smell nice while they last, but they have to either be fairly strong and prominent, or have a nice secondary note that can come out to play after the aquatic has faded away.
* Plant scents (florals, fresh-herbals, and 'green' grassy or leafy notes) tend not to change very much on me. If it starts out smelling like rose or lily, it'll end up smelling like rose or lily. This is fine, since I like good fresh flower smells.
* Alcohol turns to detergent. Chocolate is iffy: if paired with something that will turn sweet, it's quite nice; if not, it goes all bitter and weird.
* My skin ramps up pine, too, and not just ramps it up but irons it all out into one flat, boring, air-freshener note. It's a shame -- a lot of the piney scents (Jersey Devil, Troll, etc) smell really pretty in the vial, and then go gross on my skin.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 07:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 07:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 07:23 am (UTC)Some assurance for the madwoman, if you please? ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 07:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 07:47 am (UTC)Now I'm wondering if I should try mech phoenix....hmmmm!
And you should absolutely see T1. It's a great flick.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 08:23 am (UTC)Terminator always seemed to me to be one of those kind of cheesy saturday/sunday afternoon tv movies, probably because i kept seeing bits and pieces of it on saturday and sunday afternoons :) It's kind of sad though because in a lot of ways it had a stronger story than T2. Some of the plot points were perhaps better developed in T2, and of course there were higher production values in T2, but 90% of the ideas in T2 were already present in Terminator. (The one big shift of course is that Arnold was the bad guy in the first one and the good guy in the second one.)
I don't remember any _especially_ gory bits from Terminator, though having mostly seen it in fragments i could easily be forgetting something. Offhand the only thing i can think of that might be a problem is the self-surgery scene, but i don't remember how graphic that was.
Sarah Connor doesn't start out as a kickass female character. She's a pretty mundane female at the start, after a certain points she becomes someone who is forced to rapidly try and learn how to survive. I'm not sure if i'd say that she's become a kickass character by the end, but by that point she's certainly at the very least decided that she is going to become one. (This would be another reason why the story of the first movie is more theoretically interesting even though the second one wins on flashiness.)
So is this an entirely coincidental query? Or did you watch the premiere of the Sarah Connor chronicles tonight? :)
Oh, and i said "no" in the response just cause of the not remembering which i saw first bit, and cause i'm amused by the idea of you watching the entire series in reverse order :) I don't actually know which way would work best for you though.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 04:10 pm (UTC)T2 is awesome. T3 was a travesty. Do your best to forget it; it will only diminish the others by association.
Speaking of awesome female characters, have you ever seen the first 2 Alien movies? They're not as gory as they're sometimes made out to be (apart from a few admittedly pivotal moments), though they are scary as hell.
I swear I'll stop editing this comment eventually.