With Love from the Link(wo)man!

Tomorrow is Valentine's, dear reader, and since I will be unavailable for most of the weekend due to out of town-ness, I bring you the following links of love and entertainment to keep you busy whilst I am away.

~ Any Valentine's Day perfume review round-up from around the netosphere would have to include this blog event from a group of lovely perfumers and bloggers who came together this week to offer the proverbial dozen roses for Valentine's Day by recommending rose-scented products to their readers. I could give you my list of roses, which would be long, but instead I'm going to give you my thoughts on their lists:

• I really like this list from Gaia at The Non-Blonde. I like the way she broke her list up, and I enjoyed the inclusion of "Vintage and goners" if only because they remind me to appreciate the perfumes I have; they won't always be available. The list is really good, too! Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Vermeille, Le Labo Rose 31, DSH Perfumes Rose Vert, and Aftelier Perfumes Wild Rose--oh my! I'm adding Providence Perfume Company Rose Boheme to my "To Try" list.

• Scent Hive has a great list, including one of my personal favorites, DSH Perfumes Dirty Rose.

• Ayala Moriel's SmellyBlog contribution includes a few familiar lovely delights--Rochas Tocade, Agent Provocateur--and a few items I am adding to my "To Try" list, in particular Jo Malone Rosewater & Vanilla and Velvet & Sweet Pea’s Purrfumery Kashmir Rose Whipped Body Butter.

• Perfume Shrine has the list that is probably the most similar to mine, and includes L'Artisan Parfumeur Voleur de Roses, Juliette Has a Gun Lady Vengeance, and L'Artisan Parfumeur Drôle de Rose, which I have full bottles of, and Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chyprée, which I really should buy since I reviewed it glowingly twice.

• Ines of All I Am A Red Head, one of the loveliest reviewers I know, comes in with a list I am less familiar with, which makes me want to try them. I do like Worth Courtesan, though. It was one of my earliest rose loves.

• EauMG has an intriguing list that covers everything from perfume to tea to bubble bath to flavored syrup. I'll add yet another endorsement to Aftelier Perfumes Wild Roses which I can't believe I left out of my own Valentine's post, and Frédéric Malle Lipstick Rose.

• Katie Puckrik Smells also has a list with a lot of variety, including Jurlique Rose Hand Cream, which I love. Love, love, love. I need to order some more, in fact.

• Last but certainly not least, Roxana Villa of Roxana Illuminated Perfumes' contribution offers up a list one could only get from an all natural perfumer, and I love it:a list of her twelve favorite rose essences, as well as this curious link to a book entitled, How to Eat a Rose.

~ Also, because I myself have crashed my share of these organized events, I'm including The French Exit's list of rose scents for Valentine's Day. Thanks to Elisa for adding a few more "Must Trys" to my list!

~ In other perfume news, I f**king love this post from Angela at NST! about "Awful Perfume You Love." If you ever wanted to know my secret perfume shame, check the comments, dear reader. I confessed all.

In non-perfume related posting:

~ First up, I give you this hilarious (and yet somehow still creepy) video of Twin Peaks brought to you in the form of LEGOS! Yep. That's right, reader. Twin Peaks in Lego form. "Directed by Duplo Lynch and music by Angelo Brickalamenti." SPOILER ALERT if you have not seen the series.

 ~ In YA entertainment news, it appears Emma Roberts is set to play Lena in the Fox adaptation of Lauren Oliver's Delirium series.

I really like this series, both in concept and execution. I recall Emma Roberts was about as good in the Nancy Drew movie as she could have been given the material, so I'm hoping this pilot results in a pick-up for Fall.

~ Speaking of YA on the small screen, I saw that the CW's jettison pilot for Kiera Cass' The Selection is getting a reshoot. I haven't read the book yet (on my To Read list despite the epic GoodReads controversy/fiasco -- Google it if you're interested because I don't really want to link to/go into it), but I'm surprised it's getting a reshoot for a couple of reasons.

• First, CW's ratings for Vampire Diaries have been taking a beating lately. (I feel like I'm a Hobson's choice when it comes to ratings, live viewing, and Community vs. TVD scheduled head-to-head.) FN1. With Gossip Girl retired, The Carrie Diaries premiered to disappointing ratings, and the ratings for 90210 have also been weak. We all watched The Secret Circle crash and burn last season, and Life Unexpected ate itself as well 2010-2011. I'm wondering how much time and money the CW is willing to give teen-oriented material considering the success/failure rate.

• Second, Arrow has performed--for a CW show--better than expected and Beauty and the Beast is likely to be renewed based on its current ratings. Both of those shows tend to skew older than TVD and TCD. The backdoor pilot for TVD spin-off The Originals is already in the pike and I expect it to skew toward that same slightly older demo. If The Originals is a hit, I am doubly skeptical they'll be willing to sink money into a teen drama for Fall 2013.

• Thirdly, Cynthia Hand's Unearthly series was in development with the CW, but that project has since fizzled, and it is a wildly different series from The Selection. I get the vibe that CW wants to find another YA-novel-series-to-TV hit. I think they can't figure out what they're looking for, and they are kind of hitting all over the grid. If the real commitment is to trying to hit the moving target of 'of the moment' taste, that doesn't make for a high probability The Selection will make it, because I don't know how committed the developers of the series or the network execs are to making it work.

• Last, I also think the CW execs are critically underestimating that sometimes it isn't the source material that makes a show work; sometimes its the TV writing that makes the show work. (Cough! TVD! Cough, cough!) Just because Dystopian books are sohottrightnow doesn't mean making a dystopian-book-based series is going to work. It has to have good writing and a committed cast. You don't have to take my word for it; just look at the difference in performance between TVD in its target demo vs. Moonlight, both of which launched in the midst of Twilight-renewed vampire mania.

Wow. I did not know I had so many opinions about the CW programming at the moment. Moving on.

~Speaking of CW programming, my incredibly sweet friend Cara pointed me toward these virtual CW Valentine's cards featuring their male stars.  And while I'm all for upgrading my relationship with Ian SuperSmolder to "It's complicated," I'm a little peeved they didn't have cards featuring their female stars, too. Lovers of ladies don't deserve V-Day images? Does CW think it's only objectification if women are involved? Because new flash: you can definitely objectify men, and doing so does not mean we've reached 'gender equality.' As a lover of women as well as men, I'd have appreciated a Claire Holt option...or a Candice Accola option...or a Willa Holland option....

~ Did anyone see how #TellAFeministThankYou trended for basically an entire day on Twitter this week?  All trolling aside, it turned out pretty great.

~ In radio-oriented entertainment, I was introduced to the hilarious and hilariously named Irrational Public Radio. If you have any familiarity with NPR whatsoever, you are going to laugh so hard at this. They completely nailed both the tone as well as the voice acting.

~ In feminist things that delight me, let me direct your attention to The Hawkeye Initiative. What is THI? I'll let their explaination tell you all you need to know: "A blog with Clint 'Hawkeye' Barton being placed in the same provocative, female poses that are featured in superhero comics." Yeah. That is happening, and it is awesome.

~ Last, because it's Valentine's Day, I'll leave you with this animated short from Disney, Paperman. Paperman is a small romantic treat, like a satisfying piece of candy. Watch it and consider it my V-Day gift to you.

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FN1. As I wrote this, TVD, Arrow, and Supernatural all got renewed early. YAY for TVD fans everywhere. But seriously? Supernatural got another season? I, for one, am shocked. Not because of the ratings, but because I feel like they ran out of story about a season ago. I loved the early seasons, but at this point Sam and Dean's bickering over their trust issues feels like a character development fail. It would be nice to see them do something--anything--else.

I've been lying too long; I was right when you were wrong.

Spring Time Reflections, Some Perfumey and Some Not

View from the Oregon City elevator

In an  "everybody else is doing it so why can't we?" mindframe, I’m was going to do my top ten scents for Spring 2011, for my own since of personal scent development archiving and because I can. But I already did a pretty hefty Spring scent list over here already. So instead, I’m just gonna record, for your entertainment and mine, some random thoughts for Spring, perfumey and not.  Also, some random pictures from a recent adventure I took following brown signs to historical sites around Oregon City, Oregon.

Bands/Artists I can't get enough of: The Watson Twins, Neko Case, Rilo Kiley, The Decemberists, Fitz and the Tantrums, Fleetwood Mac, Muddy Waters.

Surprise go to Scent this Spring: DSH Perfumes Lush Honey, bought unsniffed and so loving that I will buy another bottle while I still can, before it is discontinued.

Houses I need to try more of: Dior, Hermes, Annick Goutal

Best scents I bought for under $15: A tie between Coty Stetson and Worth Je Reviens EdT.

On the "soon to be purchased" short list: Miller et Bertaux no. 3: Green, green, green and green (finally), Tauer  L'Air du Desert Marocain (also finally),  vintage Evening in Paris (go, go ebay bidding skillz), CB I Hate Perfume At The Beach 1966.

If I had a million dollars: A huge bottle of Roxana Illuminated Perfume GreenWitch, which is so amazing I can barely stand it.  At $175 for only 7.5ml, is just sadly well beyond my price range, as my ideal would be to have twice that much at least. Carefully hugs her tiny 1gram $30 sample vial. Truly one of the most beautiful green scents I've ever smelled, and deserving of a lengthy review as soon as I can get to it.

End of the Oregon Trail
Interpretive Center closed in 2010.

Happiest stumbled upon scent love of Spring: Hermes Un Jardin En Mediterranee. Who knew I liked figs? I certainly didn’t. Want to try more figs now.

Best newly discovered indie perfumer: I am so glad I found Ellen at Olympic Orchids Artisan Perfumes. Not only is she a really nice person, she makes great perfume and is doing us PNW perfumistas proud

Notes I’m weirdly over right now: vanilla, sweet florals, roses. I think I burned myself out.

Notes I can’t get enough of: weird fruits, anything green or herbal, moss, civet, cedar. If you’ve got recommendations in this area, please provide them.

Spring, in general and as part of college life: My least favorite season. Maybe it’s a time of adventure and renewal for everyone else, but for those of us who live on a college campus, it’s an ending time. This year is particularly difficult because, thanks to an early retirement program, forty-five life-long members of my beloved campus community are retiring. Yes, you read that right. Forty-five. So much for institutional memory. It really reinforces my feeling of not belonging here anymore; it’s strange to feel like a relic of someone else’s adventure in your own life.

Among those retiring is one of my favorite people in the entire universe, Stephen Dow Beckham. If there is a person in the world who inspires me to never give up or think something is out of my reach, to push myself harder and always believe I can do anything, it is this man who has done everything and still keeps on trucking. He is the first person in my collegiate career who ever implied my work was valuable, that my ideas were worthwhile and my voice, worth hearing. I had a lovely advisor before Dr. Beckham, who was a great and special man who believed in me, but Dr. Beckham is the one who took everything I did in stride as a matter of course and demanded more because he knew I was capable.

I’ll never forget the day after I did my radio interview as spokeswoman for a statewide campaign against parental notification for abortion. FN1. I ran into Dr. Beckham on my law school campus; he was there to interview dean candidates for the law school. He stopped me, and I felt this terror swirl though my stomach. Here was this educated, established, well-off white man who I loved and admired and wanted to think well of me, but whose politics I had never been all that sure of. “I heard you on the radio,” he said. I nodded, and said something perfunctory about the interviewer having ties to my alma mater. “ I heard your voice, and I thought, ‘I know who that is’” he replied, his eyes twinkling. He didn’t come out and say he was proud of me, but I could tell he was. Dr. Beckham knew one of the things I was most ashamed of in my life, and he was proud of me for standing up for what I believed in. That was the moment I knew doing the campaign was the right thing, and I felt, for the first time, we might win.

It was a huge moment for me personally, and I think it says evverything about how much a teacher can shape your life, helping you long after you've left them to know you're on the right path.  I pity all the students who won’t get to have him as their teacher. He’s the kind that can change your life.

What about you, dear reader. How is your Spring going?

"I can't hear this anymore.
It's time to leave.
I've closed the door.
Did you ever believe in me?
In you and me?"
"U-N-Me," The Watson Twins
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FN1. Yes, I had an abortion. No, I don’t regret it. No, I don’t feel the need to justify that to you. Yes, I did radio(NPR)/television (all three networks; yes, even Fox)/newspaper interviews where I talked about my experience, which included a photo of me on the front page of the widest circulating paper in the state. Yes, people said things to me, good and bad. Ultimately, we won, thus keeping Oregon the state with the least regulation on choice. I know anecdotally that at least some votes were changed because of my story. I’m glad I did the campaign and would do it again.

Let me also say, that as a woman who had an abortion in Texas, I am appalled by the recent news that the Texas Legislature has passed a bill requiring a sonogram before an abortion can be preformed.  This will not stop a woman who wants to have an abortion; it just adds unnecessary time and expense.  Society spends a large part of its energy policing women's behavior through shaming, particularly around issues of sex.  Well, guess what?  You've already made your feelings clear about our choices.  But they are our choices.  And you won't stop us.  You never have.