So, last night was the Oscars, that gleaming bastion of class and merit, where they will give a woman an Oscar for directing the best film of the year and then play “I am Woman” before throwing to commercial. In keeping with this grand tradition, Hollywood takes the opportunity to go all-out, lining up for the fashion police in a glittery, flawless parade.

I am kidding. It was a disaster. This face says it all:

And when Kristin Stewart speaks for all of us, you know something is wrong.

It’s a sad, sad day.
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The first time I saw it, I realized I was in the presence of something truly beautiful. And now, for all of you, this valentine:

via Ironic Sans

Whether or not you celebrate Valentine’s Day, know that Carl Sagan loves you every day of the year. Cosmos is, in fact, a heavily-coded love letter written just for you. (But you knew that.)

So, two things about this year’s Golden Globes:

1. The wrong people won a lot of important awards.
2. It rained.

That second thing disrupted the event in a way that the horrible results seemed not to, which means that people were running through the drizzle with the sort of look generally reserved for the otters you see in the oil-spill commercials. Style this year was largely related to how nonchalantly you could hold an umbrella.

We’ll get to that.

“It’s dial-up madness in here!”
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My digital camera is the same one I bought my senior year of high school. I hardly ever use it, because there’s rarely anything I want to photograph so it never occurred to me that it might not be of sufficient quality to record moments like The Apartment Ceiling Leak of 2008.

However, having looked at my photos of France on my computer, I have to say, something’s up. Either France was suffering a constant low-level earthquake the entire time we were there, or my camera’s a little behind the times.

This means that my nice photo post about France is reduced to a few workmanlike shots in which things are vaguely in focus. The rest of my pictures are just Blurs of the French Countryside, like so:

THRILL to the merest outline of some windowsills in Rouen!

GAZE at the vague interior of Saint-Catherine’s Church, Honfleur!

ENJOY what might be a fresco from the monastery at the top of Mont-Saint-Michel!

So, I’m putting together what I hope is a decent picspam. In the meantime, I’ll be buying a better camera and/or cutting down on the caffeine.

DO: Make your daughter Anne of Avonlea! Remember, puffy sleeves mean you love her more than Marilla does.

DON’T: Put your eleven-year-old in a saloon girl costume, okay? Just, really not something an eleven-year-old needs to be.

DO: Make an owl costume for yourself or your child!

DON’T: Make EVERYONE an owl, for god’s sake. I said OR, not AND. Just look at what will happen. Every single member of that fake family is smiling through their tears

DO: NOT EVER DO THIS.

DON’T: EVER.