Apparently you can be an internet nerd AND a girly girl. Now, pre-teen and teenage girls (and boys, if they so choose) can sign up for Stardoll.com, “a paper doll dress-up community site for everyone who enjoys fun, fashion and making friends. At Stardoll you can create your own doll or choose from our always growing collection of celebrity dolls and dress them up in our virtual fashions.” Basic membership is free, but you have to pay for extras, like new outfits and such. This sort of thing just makes me go uuurrrrggghhhh. It’s not the spending-real-money-on-virtual-items part so much as the wholehearted embrace and encouragement of the Cult of Celebrity. I guess I should just be glad they threw some athletes in there among the actors/actresses and singers and models and such. I also never would have found out that there was a Ronaldinho-based comic if I hadn’t visited this site. I’m not sure I needed to know that, but anyway…
If you’re suffering from writer’s block, why not get rid of all those distracting windows and irritating icons and do some work on a good old green-on-black workspace? If you’re still blocked up, BigHugeLabs has more fun for you–the Big Huge Thesaurus (Synonyms, antonyms, and rhymes (oh my!). They also have a list of–get ready for it–blog post ideas, like “Explain why your mother should have apologized to you.” Now you’ll never again have an excuse not to blog. (Though, if you’re anything like me, you have the opposite problem.)
A few more items: If you’re going to be in the Los Angeles area Dec. 16, MediaBistro is presenting a seminar on Writing the Young Adult Novel with instructor Kerry Madden, author of Louisiana’s Song and other books. This is a few days old, but Publisher’s Weekly has a good summary of the controversy over the Golden Compass movie complete with links to some good interviews with Philip Pullman. Lastly, if you’re suffering the rejection-letter blues, Fuse #8’s roundup of sculptures of beloved book characters should bring a smile to your face. Or at least a feeling of kinship with Eeyore. One of the two.
I have to admit: I’ve played Stardoll with my sister. She has a lot of fun with it. We played the FREE version, though, thank you. And there are blank dolls with hundreds of features so you can remake your essential avatar self — but with a better wardrobe. It was fun to try on wigs and noses and outfits without having to actually shop. However, I know you wouldn’t be as amused as we were; there were no orcs nor sheep to throw … just noses and wigs and eyes…
Actually, this seems like an appropriate time to sheepishly admit that when I was a young lass, I made paper dolls of Betty and Veronica, complete with an assortment of outfits. For a brief time between about ages 10 – 11 I wanted to be a fashion designer, and drew PAGES AND PAGES of models wearing ridiculous, very late-1980s outfits.
It just goes to show you, you shouldn’t judge a girl by her paper dolls.