this year's trip to p-town was better than last year's. i actually got not one, but two chances to get sunburn which were taken advantage of, as a result i have a rather dramatic tan line on my thighs where i waited too long to take off my shorts while reading from dead to worse on the beach. only played tennis once, and it was a short attempt because while the sun was warm most of the week, the wind was harsh. oh and i actually got in the pool. just for a few minutes, and i found that i'm so unaccustomed to swimming - its been about two years i think - that i actually experienced an unexpected but mild panic when i went under. we went downtown thursday afternoon, and while there were some old shops that were closed, there were a few new ones too. not to mention a new trend in jewelry.



they're made from real butterfly wings. i saw some at a shop called sparks, they had a pair of earrings that were an iridescent blue. they were about $80, as you can see in the picture those are around the same price. the necklace was probably like $200, since its pretty much a whole damn butterfly.





i want them. its kind of creepy, yes, but at least they're prettier than fish scales, and i like those too.

so after about two months of it sitting in the netflix envelope, i finally brought myself to watch martyrs, which i had heard about through rich from fourfour. i was a tad disappointed in myself - many of the die hard fans of this movie say that it's best to watch when you know as little about it as possible, going in a virgin as the director said in his introduction. but they also said it was one of the most horrifying movies ever made, and i am bad with the horror movies as much as i love them, so i needed to be sure. so i spoiled myself by reading rich's post about it in full, and even though he had to tell the whole story to properly discuss it, i was effectively convinced that i needed to see it. and now seemed like an appropriate time for it. i've been reading a slew of vampire books, i've started reading j.g. ballard's crash, which the david cronenberg movie was based off of. sick and disturbing things seems to be the kick that i'm on, so i figured it was as a good a time as any.

and honestly, the gore and violence is not what effects you about martyrs, though it does make you want to dig your nails into your own skin to stop it from crawling. see, the reason why the ring had such a nasty effect on me was because it was so unnervingly scary but had no substance. its like being beaten and left out in the rain for no reason. but with martyrs, everything had meaning, every bit of blood spatter and gore and violence had weight behind it. there was nothing gratuitous about it, everything had a purpose. it is for torture porn what funny games was for family siege suspense thrillers, except while funny games made its point by taking away reason, martyrs does it by laying it on thick. and that's what's so disgusting, that's what makes you angry. and its what i'm looking for in my movies, especially horror. i was freaked out enough that i had a really hard time sleeping the night after but i didn't regret watching it at all - hell, i watched parts of it over again, though i restrained myself because i didn't want a repeat of that night. when i watched funny games, i was disturbed while watching but it went out of my mind as soon as it was over. that's a consequence of making a self-reflexive film (or meta, as the cool kids are calling it now), you point out what you're doing and it takes the viewer out of the film. but martyrs is all about dragging you in and keeping you there, making you understand what it is to be a victim in the first part of the film where you are dunked headfirst into a girl's severely damaged brain, and then what it is to be a martyr (as its defined in this story, which is not the typical use of the word, otherwise i wouldn't like this movie nearly as much) through the girl that tries to save her. in so many horror and torture porn films, the violence is purely for the viewer's benefit - they come up with creative and bizarre ways to fuck people up physically for your entertainment, to keep you guessing as to how far they're going to take it. this film doesn't try to do that, its not about getting your blood thirsty rocks off, its out to show you what it really takes to completely ruin someone, which as it turns out is not a hell of a lot. but it makes you understand the despair that it induces, its both in the moment, in that it spares you none of the graphic details, and in the aftermath at once. i don't know, its one of those movie's i really feel like i have nothing to say that the movie doesn't already (imagine what i'd think if i really had gone into a virgin). so if you feel like you can handle it, don't read anything else about it, just download it or put it at the top of your netflix queue right now.

and not surprisingly, i've managed to combine this input into my obsession with andre and the southern vampire mysteries. i really wish i could stop fixating on characters so much, i want to be one of those fantasy writer's that come up with elaborate worlds and stories where the characters are an afterthought - the kind of stuff that i actually hate reading, its a shame so many dragon's bait fanfic writer's are like that, but i guess that's why they write more than me. its so much easier to get a story on paper when you actually have a plot, as opposed to my situation where i have people in my head with all their motivations and angst but nothing for them to do. all i know is i want to play around with some combination of andre and draykonis' lorcan scamander (or is it malakai now?) and a girl with mylene jampanoi's eyes and who rides a motorcycle. witness indeed.

dad keeps on trying to lecture me on the not-so-secret secret, like the reason why i've spent the last year bumming around the house is because i don't get it. i've been sending vibes out into the universe since i was a little kid, and even though the idea took on several mutations, the core of it was the same. i know the kind of person i want to be, always have. the problem is that after 18 years of school, i still haven't the slightest clue as to how to be that person aside from just being really lucky. seriously, how does that happen? on the plus side, i've been falling back in love with literature and writing. so then i wonder if it would be completely useless to get a masters in media studies, and if i should just spend the next two years studying to be a physical therapist's assistant, and work and get married and make babies and one day when i get bored start writing again. but then that sounds completely useless as well. ah, if only my great and terrible ambition was to be in a field that was in constant need of fresh meat. like nursing. or porn. speaking of which, wouldn't sasha grey make a perfect sophie-anne leclerq? too bad the part already went to evan rachel wood, a casting that i'm liking less and less the more i think about it. oh well.

went to my cousin emily's wedding last saturday. as dad put it, it was the classiest wedding he'd ever been to. the reception was held at the branford mansion on the uconn campus in groton, which holy crap if i had known that a part of uconn looked like that i wouldn't have been as eager to get out of connecticut for college. i took a bunch of pictures which i haven't loaded up on the computer yet so i guess you'll have to use your imaginations. there was ocean view, a white tent, and a stone patio. very pretty. the ceremony itself was, well, catholic. mom liked the church but i thought it was a rather clumsily gaudy. no one will ever persuade me to get married in a church that's for sure. and while dinner was outside where it got cold and foggy really fast, the dance party was held in the mansion afterward. if only pictures captured the severe dorkiness of my extended family rocking out to "vogue."

starting saturday i'll be in cape cod, until hopefully the saturday after. and i will be able to see the true blood season 2 premiere and perhaps get a tan that will probably have to last me the rest of the year. i'm reading dracula now, its rather silly to be perfectly honest, but it makes me want to watch the coppola version again. the next books i have lined up are from dead to worse and j.g. ballard's crash. and i'll bring the novel and short story writer's market too and see if i can make some headway with it. i have a goal to finish the sophie-anne/andre fic i started by friday - yes, jen, i am writing one - but at the rate i'm going it probably won't happen, so i might change that goal to the end of vacation. oh and i hit 126 pounds last week, and was there consistently for a while. i've been back up to 127 for the past two days which probably has something to do with these horrible digestive problems i've been having. i still want ice cream though, so so badly. i guess i'll settle for a cookie.

this has been quite possibly the most active two days i've had in a while. i even rode my bike for the first time in years. i couldn't even push myself forward for a while, because i was so unused to it, i was riding on the lawn, and the gear was too high. eventually i managed to get it moving long enough to switch to a lower gear and road a couple laps around the house, making a point to double back a few times so i could remind myself how to do sharp turns - i nearly crashed into the house the first time i tried it. had a job interview yesterday morning, really hard to gauge though, i spent most of the time talking to the woman who currently has the position. she told me about everything from the kind of work it entails to her fantasy of retiring to a farm in ecquador. the actual interview was very quick. and then this morning i went up to danbury with dad to move out some of vidal's stuff before he officially has to be out of the dorm tomorrow. they apparently had a big party last night - i was still smelling garbage and beer even after we got back, i'm hoping it didn't get absorbed into my clothes.

and i finished the gargoyle. i was debating whether i wanted to write my goodreads review for it first, or my more personal one here, because for some reason i really want it to be established that i officially finished it, but i figure the more unhinged, disorganized review should go first. my feelings on it are a bit strange, because its really not as a good of book as it wants you to think it is, but i did enjoy it. i just didn't really get anything out of it. in the author's biography, its boasted that andrew davidson researched for seven years in order to write the book, and you can tell. unlike writers like donna tartt who have this amazing ability to use research and information like a single golden thread in a large elaborate tapestry, interweaving it in all the right places so that it is integral to the entire work but not obvious to the person looking at it, davidson seems to want to you to see his work. in fact, what gives this story life is all the exotic information it holds, because the rest is rather hollow. the narrator (who is nameless, which kind of irrationally annoyed me since i had read rebecca not long before, so in my head the character was named andrew) while possessing some sarcastic wit and cynicism, is not terribly complex. the story of his pre-life-altering-car-accident self i wanted to buy, but until it was spelled out that he was just so goshdarn guarded and never allowed himself to be attached to anyone, i kept on thinking, "so, wait, what was so bad about this guy?" and as result the whole concept of penance and redemption that the story rides on was kind of lost on me, nevermind that those are themes that don't really interest me. it made me realize why i like j.k. rowling so much - her writing is decisively godless and unsentimental. characters die suddenly and randomly, no redemption, no great final words. and if anyone's characters could use some salvation its hers, but when its revealed why davidson's character, marianne engel, must carve gargoyle's for hundreds of years it didn't really make sense to me. and as for the love story, well, its not as bad a twilight where i'm still bewildered as to why bella and edward give a shit about eachother, marianne and the narrator at least have chemistry. but i wasn't exactly feeling the great epic love either. as said, the narrator doesn't have much meat to his character, and while a ton of information is given on marianne, again as said, it doesn't seem to fit together properly (though she's supposedly schizophrenic so maybe that's the point). *sigh* they just don't write love stories for people like me, because i always want to understand why, but love is not supposed to make sense. but hey, anne rice can do it, her couples always seem perfect for eachother to me. i guess true wuv is as hard to write as a good ending.

and so for my other great excitement. i received iamx's newest album kingdom of welcome addiction in the mail thursday night, and since then i've been listening to it consistently. this was the first physical cd i've bought in about three years, so i almost didn't know what to with it after unwrapping it (which is another thing i seem to have forgotten how to do). my long unused stereo wasn't even plugged in. but it was good to hear the whole thing from beginning to end, in sequential order, filling up my little room for the first time. if the first album was synth heavy, the second guitar heavy, then this one is definitely beat heavy. with every song the percussion seems like the most prominent feature, making the album feel like a march, or at least a waltz. it's as different from chris corner's previous work as kiss and swallow and the alternative were from eachother, this time taking the ambiance of previous songs like "president" and "bring me back a dog" and smashing and extending them into eleven whole tracks. as a result, this album does not have as much variety as the alternative did, but this way feels more complete. there are more songs that feel like singles, such as the title track, "the great shipwreck of life" and "nature of inviting," but just because their catchy doesn't mean they lack weight, because they are nothing if not forceful. and then there are anti-singles like "you can be happy" which defies a thumping beat and addictive melody by replacing a typical chorus with a woman speaking and adding a haunting synth quality, giving it a creepiness that seems at war with the song's name. "tear garden" and "an i for an i" are songs that i keep going back and forth about, i can't actively listen to them, i have to be playing them in the background to realize that i love them. "the stupid, the proud" i didn't take to at first, but i could tell it would the type of song that i would become obsessed with later on, and i'm already acknowledging how much i like it. the big surprise was "my secret friend." when i heard that this album would feature a duet with imogen heap, i wasn't that impressed - i like the music of hers that i've heard, but i wasn't that interested in hearing iamx's sound meshed with anyone else's. what i didn't anticipate was how perfectly their voices are suited for eachother, or that they would find such a beautiful melody to showcase that. its probably my favorite song, though like everything else i'll probably go through phases. so, unlike the gargoyle, this album actually feels epic, even though there are less love stories than in the previous albums. it feels like music that marches through time with passion and love, and fortunately has on its way come to me.

an hour ago i had an idea to come on here and complain. adam lost, the eurovision high is finally slowing down, and i don't know if i'm doing anything right. yesterday i went to a fed ex recruitment thing with dad, a lot of signing my name and social security number over and over again. the thing that bugged me about it was that morning, an hour or so before i had to go, i got a call from accoutemps, the temp agency i signed up with, saying the had a data entry job that started that day. besides having plans, that involved seeking full time employment, i was pretty intimidated by the idea of running out the door for a job i knew hardly anything about. and i was groggy, the call was what woke me up thirty seconds before my alarm was supposed to. so i was fretting about whether i messed things up royally by turning it down until i got another call today about a much better possibility. not the same kind of get up and go situation, i will need to, you know, get the interview and whatnot, but it feels good that this start/stop thing that the job market has been is starting resemble a regular flowing stream again. its good to see some activity, know that i'm not wandering around in the ether.

so as much as i like the gargoyle, i'm finding myself really missing miss sookie. and i'm aching for true blood to start. i'm so tuned into it that i don't even have to turn around to know that a commercial for it is on tv, i recognize the music. i'm thinking i might get the first season on dvd, its the kind of thing i can see myself watching several times over. i wish goodreads was more like myanimelist in that there's features for listing your favorite characters and whatnot, because i think sookie would end up on there for me, along with will perry and milton's satan. goodreads isn't so much about the list obsession though, i've gotten used to it, but its really doesn't have that great of a format. but anyway, i wish i wasn't trying to finish the gargoyle just so i can move on to dead as a doornail as quickly as possible, but i can't help it, the gargoyle is plenty interesting and sick and romantic, but it doesn't have the same kind of addictive fire. i don't know what i'm going to do when i finish the series.

as for the idol finale last night, i know that it doesn't really matter that adam lambert is not the american idol, he's going to take over the world anyway, but it just would've been a nice cherry on top, the perfect climax to the season. and i feel for those that are hurting because of it, it does feel a bit like if someone as dominant, creative and engaging as adam can't win, then what openly gay person can? but as said, it doesn't matter much really except as a symbol. tonight i have the so you think you can dance premiere, and after that is the fashion show, which makes me miss project runway more than anything, but its still pretty good. what would i do without my competitive reality tv?

i'm feeling kind of grumpy this evening. that stuck feeling is bearing down again, and my current reading, the gargoyle, isn't really helping. not that it isn't a great book, when i sat down with it earlier today my nasty headache vanished after reading barely a paragraph. and that's not to say that my situation is comparable to that of the main character, a man who finds that he is no longer a gorgeous, wealthy porn star but now thanks to a car accident that was undoubtedly his fault he is a limping bundle of scar tissue and lives with a crazy woman. but it does feel like a kind of sick parable. and even though i know my current situation isn't permanent, it feels like it is, almost the way being scarred for life can be.

thankfully, there's eurovision, which surprise surprise actually came up with some good music this year rather than just entertaining performances. maybe i didn't thoroughly peruse the song list last year, but i feel like there's more subtlety and variety to the music of eurovision 2009, as opposed to 2008's flashy extravagance that i can't deny that i shamelessly adored. its why i was looking forward to this year's competition so much. but there was something very refreshing about this year. i think bosnia & herzegovina's entry was my favorite.



its in a language i don't think i've ever heard before in my life, but whenever the chorus comes in my tear ducts start to feel a little warm. its followed very closely behind by portugal and lithuania, the latter of which i think suffered from the double standard that if your song is in english it has a big advantage, but if it sounds too "american," it backfires on you. germany i think had the same problem, since it too didn't place nearly as well as it should've. estonia probably did the best considering its "disadvantages." besides being more alternative sounding, it also was the highest ranking song that isn't in english. and it has cellos *drools*. probably the strangest entry was from the host country itself, russia, a song that is the furthest thing possible from last year's first place hamfest. its strange, angsty and totally wrong for something like eurovision and i really really like it.

but of course eurovision did what it does best, delivering cheese upon cheese in the most delicious ways, and of course that came in the way of ukraine. i don't even know what to link you to first, the performance with the half naked men and some contraptions that look like something from cirque du soleil, or the music video that while ridiculously exhibitionist, seemed to be unable to decide what concept to go with. dipped in chocolate? strip club orgy? live performance? target commercial? hell just throw it all in, bitch is smokin so its all good to me. and yet she still only came in 12th. as usual the top places went to wimpy ballads and insubstantial pop tracks that will be forgotten in a few months. ah well. but seriously, once you get hooked on this stuff its hard to remember why anyone gives a shit about american idol (go adam).

hmm, i was planning on writing about other stuff that was going on, but that was a lot more work than i expected, and i'm not grumpy anymore so now all i really want to do is watch the idol finale and eat some raspberry sherbert. peace peoples.

been feeling kind of fuzzy. maybe its the pollen count. i just have a need to do something, which is odd because i'm actually doing more than usual. i've been exercising more regularly, i cooked a dinner that i came up with myself yesterday, go me. maybe i'll go shopping sometime soon, i do have a family wedding coming up in a little over a month and i need a dress. something to match my red shoes maybe. hopefully it'll be warm again this weekend so that i can go play tennis.

been reading the sookie stackhouse books, i've already gotten through the first two. i took the opportunity to download them when someone posted them on ontd_twatlight's sunday swap, which is convenient because i can plow through them pretty fast and i wasn't able to find them at the library. the inconvenience is i think the pdfs i got are unedited manuscripts, which makes charlaine harris' writing come off as even more clumsy than it already is. they're actually rather addictive, so i'm glad that there are many of them, even though i'll probably have them finished by this time next week. i was so surprised by how faithful the show true blood is to its source, even though it has very obviously lifted story lines from later books and fleshed out minor characters in order to fill out the first season. i'm looking forward to see how they adapt living dead in dallas for the second (june 14th, woohoo). what really surprised me though was how faithful they were in casting. i mean, with something huge like harry potter, they make sure the main characters look the part, but even that only stretches so far. so with a tv show, i wouldn't think that they take care to match the hair color of a background character to her description in the book, but they did. bill is pretty much exactly as he's described, as is eric, which is particularly extraordinary since eric is so far still a background character for one, but also enormous. not that its that hard to find a giant scandinavian man, but finding one that can act and actually wants the part is another thing. that show seriously must have the best casting directors.

i really dislike reading ebooks though. words do not express how good it feels to sit down with a book, to hold it in your hands and turn the pages. reading one through a computer feels deeply false, and it annoys me that it keeps me tethered to the living room when i should be outside tanning my legs on the porch. maybe that's where my restlessness has come from. maybe i'll start volunteering to do the yard work while i listen to jeremy irons narrate lolita on my ipod. or maybe i really will start running more often in the mornings. i felt kind of terrible after i did it last week, the first time in a while. but the after effects, the soreness, though painful felt really good. it felt like i was finally putting my body to some use. there's more than one kind of atrophy that i need to look out for.

i've had a good feeling lately that pops in and out. maybe its the onset of spring that finally made itself known this weekend, but there is a sense of coming out of a long dark tunnel going on right now. i hope its not just a feeling, i hope it amounts to something. its funny reading about other people's stress, because while i worry and fret i don't lose sleep over it. and i have very simple dreams about sex and breakfast cereal. the only upsetting one i've had recently was one where i was back at school, but didn't go to any classes because i had seemingly forgotten about them. i used to have dreams like that all the time in school - that there was always one class that i never remembered to go to or something. i was reading a few days ago that dreams about "unpreparedness" indicate issues of self-worth, which i suppose fits. lately in my dreams i've had incredibly long hair, so often in fact that i'm starting to see myself that way in my mind's eye.

the final trailer for half blood prince has been released - after many, many trailers, seriously is that normal? - and sent me into an hp tizzy. i watched order of the phoenix and when that wasn't enough i started skimming through every book after prisoner of azkaban, and i think i may understand now the weird effect deathly hallows had on me. it wasn't that i didn't like it, i thought it was a fantastic book, but then closing it just felt like "oh, well, ok, i guess that's that then." talking about it with other people didn't hold the same excitement as the afterglow of the previous books. the fandom seemed to have the same response - the usual flood of fic, art and essays seemed to immediately diminish to a trickle, its not till recently that things started to pick up again. it wasn't that i felt too detached from it, like what usually happens after completing a series - i think it was because i didn't feel detached enough. deathly hallows wasn't cathartic, the whole thing just felt like a slow burn that fizzled around in your head until it eventually faded away. usually that's a good thing for books and movies, it keeps you in that world, but when its the final installment in a seven chapter series, not so much. with all the earlier books, jkr takes you round and round on a journey and finishes things off with a nice bang (which, i've realized, is an onomatopoeia that jkr really likes to use) that leaves you somewhat disoriented but still thrilled. but with deathly hallows the bangs were more in the middle, and the final one just didn't have the impact of the rest. i mean, we all knew voldemort had to die, we just didn't know how. once we figured out how, the actual moment didn't mean much. no bang, no catharsis. just that epilogue.

and now my conception of the future hogwarts is getting all kinds of discombobulated, because i've been reading draykonis's fic, rock on, featuring the new cast of hogwarts students introduced in the epilogue, who she affectionately calls generation hex. her characterizations are so complete and interesting, the idea jkr might come back and make use of these characters is almost a painful thought. the days where fandom was scrambling for more fodder from jkr's brain i think is mostly over, it is a self-sustained entity now. and hopefully some of the fandom best writers like draykonis or themostepotente will use their talents for some original writing. and then the process starts all over again.

today was gray and cool, it made me think about writing. but that's all i could really do, think about it. i opened up a few stories, did some editing, but couldn't put down anything new. then i wanted to read something flat and stupid, so i read the article in vanity fair on gisele bundchen. she's irritatingly happy, by the time i got to the end i was just skimming it. its not just jealousy - even though the issue sparked a conversation with my dead about goal-setting - its just that happy people are not very interesting to read about. even her modest roots she talks about with glee. give me some angst, man, something to fight for.

speaking of which, i finished rebecca. i found that it was occupying my mind a lot, so once i got past the part that i was dreading, i just decided to plow through the rest as fast possible. the last hundred pages or so was a bit tedious - it was like a play, where everyone is in one room discussing things for an overly long period of time. it created a lot of tension, but felt flat after a while. as a whole, i can't really tell if i really liked it, all i know is that i want to ramble about it. a lot.

( so that's what i'm going to do - spoilers abound, beware )

it's a bad day. a cloudy, frustrating april fools. a crawl out of your skin, shave your head, do jumping jacks until you can't breath day. its a very immature kind of despair. i just want to shake something and say "why does everything have to suck so much?" as if there were anyone to ask, as if anyone knew. goddamn you george bush for making my first year of liberation feel like a prison. a year, in one month it'll be one year, a year that feels like just a blur of repeated moments. maybe it wouldn't have been much better otherwise, but i could've at least been doing something, anything.

i think its perfectly realistic to be optimistic in a climate like this. because it will get better, i think that's a fact. it won't necessarily get better tomorrow, but it eventually will. but on days like this - which actually have been rather few and far between lately - i want it to be better right now. if i had prisoner of azkaban i would watch that, it always seemed to correct my mind when it was going off center. instead i have velvet goldmine, and since my computer decided it didn't want to cooperate a half a hour ago, its now too late to watch it. i know i can't have a solution right now, so i'm just looking for a band aid but i can't seem to find one, everything seems to hate me. i wish i had the tennis channel, and that they would broadcast matches without commentary so i can space out while watching the ball bounce back and forth.

i watched taxi driver the other day. good, but a bit in one ear and out the other. i've been reading rebecca, its good, but not gripping and its hard to attach myself to the main character. i'll probably go read it when i'm done with this because nothing else feels right. i should do some writing, but i've realized that i should probably suck it up and plan out my ideas a bit first, which is a strange concept because i've never really done it before, and anyway its not something to attempt with a raging headache and hatred for fate. i can't make anything connect right now. its like when i was little and i'd have dreams where suddenly everything started disintegrating, i couldn't hold anything together, even when i was sleeping. better have someone else think for me at the moment, and just tag along for the ride.

i'm magically losing weight it seems. i've never been able to appreciate something like dieting because it never seems that i'm in control of the pounds i put on or lose. sometimes they decide to wander off unexpectedly, and then other times they sneak up behind me and latch themselves before i know what's happening. but for the past week or two i have consistently been around 128, and today in fact i weighed in at 127.6 (squeee). my mom suggested that it might be because i haven't had any of my beloved ginger ale in a while, which i dismissed because i thought the weight loss had started before the unintentional soda shortage, but now that it seems to be suddenly dropping a lot faster than before, there may be some merit in that theory. so i guess its a matter of what prefer - having my sugary, bubbly ginger ale or being 128 (or 127, or 126...). granted, 128 doesn't really feel that much different from 132 right now. it looks a bit different, my lower belly may just be flatter than it used to be if i'm not mistaken. but my ass feels as gelatinous as ever. managing to feel thin and healthy can be a lot harder than looking it i'm realizing. i remember when i first gained those extra pounds after high school, the moment i noticed that i really truly was no longer at a happy body place was when i woke up in the morning and didn't feel skinny. i had always counted on that feeling, because usually by the end of the day i felt bloated from eating too much or carrying around water, but i knew that i could go to bed and wake up the next morning and that feeling would be gone. then one day i woke up and felt just as fat as i did the night before. i'm hoping that sense of dissatisfaction will not be permanent, i want to be able to feel like i can move effortlessly, feel lithe and toned.

so i went to see watchmen opening weekend with my dad and surprisingly have very little to say about it. i don't really care about faithfulness when it comes to movie adaptations, i'm well aware that keeping to the script is not what makes a good film. so that wasn't my concern really going in to it, even though i loved the original comic, i just wanted to be entertained and stimulated. i was entertained at least part of the time, but not very stimulated. i liked the approach to the different back stories, but whenever the movie had to switch gears to focus on someone else i would briefly become aware of my butt going numb, so flow isn't snyder's strong point when dealing with a plot this complex. the film was very pretty, i think it treated rorschach and manhattan pretty well, and i liked the guy who played ozymandias a lot. i wish that it closed with more of the comedian actually, he's the catalyst of the story and is integral through the first part of it and also integral to who the rest of the characters are (and jeffrey dean morgan was fantastic and hot), but his presence fizzles out by the end and all we're left with is nite owl and silk spectre 2 who have to be the least interesting characters in the entire story. and the change at the end...it sort of bothered me. but all in all, my feelings of indifference are just too overpowering for me to really be upset about it.

i am hungry, and need to do chores. mom has been hounding me to clean the refrigerator shelves and i keep forgetting, so she left me a note to remind me this morning. not that i have anything against cleaning the fridge but being told what to do always makes me feel a little slimy so i'm going to eat my lunch first and then pretend that i thought of doing some cleaning all by myself.

my hair is getting long enough that its starting to annoy me. it gets in my face all the time, and makes me feel too warm. i've been tying it back the way i usually only do in the summer. that said, i still don't plan on cutting it any time soon, though it could probably use some styling. i want it long and big, with some highlights somewhere down the line, and this season is a good a time as any. i could use some brightening up.

so i did some research last week, and even though i still much prefer to stick it out, the way things are i have to consider grad school. the idea does not seem as unappealing as it used to, perhaps because i hit a breaking point, or maybe i just needed time to warm up to it. i'm liking the new school's media studies program - i won't have to choose between theory or practice, i get to study both, and there are opportunities to get certificates in screenwriting as well during my time there. and all the research courses are available online, which could be helpful if i'm not able to get residence. i think one of the things that was turning me off about grad school was i felt like i was trapping myself on a course, but i have a lot of options with this. i'll keep writing, and if that works out then i'll at least have studied something was interested in and maybe i'll get to use it eventually, and if film works out for me then awesome. and if neither, then i can get my phd and become the next lucia, teaching able minds to see frames within frames as a sign of voyeurism and entrapment and to gain an appreciation for mise-en-scene. i've always liked the idea, but it would always get shoved down by my more greedy side. of course, i've already missed the fall semester deadline, which was actually only a few weeks ago. the deadline for application for spring 2010 is october, which gives me plenty of time to get everything together (and procrastinate). in the meantime, i have pretty much a year before i'd be taking classes, and that's a lot of time to do a lot of things. i'm getting tempted to take uncle dan and ana up on their continual invitations to visit them in california. finding work is always the priority, but there's a lot of projects i could get going in the meantime.

i've already finished dexter in the dark. thank god it was better than the third season of dexter. and christina, quit complaining and finish reading it, its actually really good. sure, the sudden shift from serial killer psychology to supernatural demon mythology is weird, but once you decide to chill and go with it, its actually a pretty enjoyable ride. the callous disinterest of the second book is replaced by a much more emotional, very invested dexter. don't worry, it works in context. like the other books, the plot is kind of loose and the police work is pretty terrible (seriously, why does deb even have her job when she seems barely capable of stringing two facts together?), but dexter keeps it together with figuring out how to educate his two mini-psychopaths in the way of harry and the deterioration of the bit of sanity he had now that his maker is on his tail. the funny thing is, jeff lindsay is really not much of a writer, he just is really good at writing from a certain perspective (because its not like the dark vigilante character hasn't been done before) and creating a character that is both viciously inhuman and endearingly innocent (as opposed to brooding and byronic, which is the mold with these types). in dexter in the dark lindsay is actually trying for something a little different, a little ambitious, and i think it works. if he hadn't established dexter as just a straightforward sociopath then it would've been easier concept to swallow, but once you get it down, its actually a really interesting addition to the horror/fantasy genre. and from the way it ended, there will probably more where that came from, and i don't really mind.

so i had my first date ever this past week. met up with a guy i met on okc. i hadn't been talking to him that long, and in fact i hadn't talked to him about anything of much consequence. he's a rather terrible person to talk to online, no matter how many times i say it, he does not seem to get that when he says "what are you up to?" i'm going to say, "nothing much." but i agreed to have dinner with him at chili's anyway since he lives about two minutes away and i'm bored and a bit starved for human interaction. it was nice, conversation was decent if not a bit forgettable (i kept on getting distracted by these amazing crispy chicken tacos i was eating, guh, so good), and we have soft plans to do something again next week. but he doesn't excite me, doesn't move me, he hardly occupies my mind at all aside from some minor irritation when he takes a round about way of asking a question that requires much more directness, and then says its good to, you know, "get these things out in the open." but i'm just testing the waters, and so it should not be surprising that first encounters are with rather mediocre men. i couldn't help but feel a bit like an alien investigating human customs during that dinner. every time he referenced some dating trope, like that asking to split the check is considered a sign of disinterest or not wanting to tell me what he was ordering so i wouldn't feel "pressured," i would just stare at him blankly. i do not speak the date language, i don't know the code. i guess that's why i keep on watching the millionaire matchmaker, even though it is a terrible and slightly offensive show, i want to know how that world works. its almost like my interest in serial killers and sociopaths - i find it incredibly interesting, though i have a hard time imagining myself participating in it.

speaking of which, i just finished reading dearly devoted dexter. not as good as the first book, while dexter's callous wit is enough to carry the book, there isn't really much investment in the plot. dexter doesn't care, so you don't really care. even though the villain of the story is does some deeply horrible things, its regarded as not much more than a curiosity, so its hard to feel really disturbed by it. in the meantime, i downloaded the pdf of stephenie meyer's the host, and oh sweet jesus is it terrible. i think i'm somewhere around page 90 and i really don't want to go any further. its just so painfully stupid. its like a 6th grader's attempt at writing a novel. at least with twilight the stupidity was mostly contained within the characters, but with this smeyer actually attempts to some world-building, and the results are rather abysmal. ugh, i don't even want to think about it too long, lest my brain rots.

someone made a fucking remix of the hbo theme. my mind is blown. for those of you who don't remember the original hbo theme, it was epic, it made watching tv feel like 2001 (especially with the floating celestial logo). and adding a beat to it made seem so much more so.

so yet again, i have found myself with the latest kelly clarkson album via a leak (though this time i got it from ontd_twatlight instead of jim), and i have been listening to it pretty regularly the past two days. it lacks the messy personal touch that the last album had, which is disappointing even if this album is more polished sounding. there are four gems on it - "all i ever wanted," the title track, is amazing, the verses are upbeat and catchy and the chorus is that pure angst that kelly clarkson's voice delivers best, and i like the lyrics; "don't let me stop you" will probably be a single, its got that bland rock/pop sound that's her usual, but its a lot more catchy; "if i can't have you" is the most danceable and catchy track, its loud and addictive, i love it; and "whyyouwannabringmedown" is surprisingly enjoyable, being that i'm usually turned off by pop stars' efforts to sound punk and unhinged, and i was ready to dismiss the song as soon as it started, but the chorus is an awesome kick, so i like listening to it. the rest is pretty disappointing. there's a handful of forgettable contemporary songs that will probably be played on the radio so teenage girls can sing along to them while driving to the mall, the best of which is "long shot." there are a few stirring power ballads like "already gone" and "impossible," though i was turned off by the effect on her voice that is used the former. and then the rest is boring, "i want you" is annoying bubblegum crap that she was probably forced to do, and "if no one will listen" is probably one of the most uninteresting ballad i have ever heard. as rebound from her last album, this one is pretty good, and will probably sell very well, but its a telling sign of the kind of hold her record company has on her.

the funny thing about listening to this album, at this point in time, hearing kelly clarkson sing about break-ups and relationships that she's never had, it made me wonder what it would be like to actually be in that world, that mindset. whenever i hear people talking about the woes of their relationships, i always give myself a little inward high-five because i've never had to go through that. and i like it that way. its not that i'm afraid of the pains of commitment or rejection and all that. i view it as a kind of inverted abstinence - preserving your emotional self for the one. i would love to be able to say one day when i'm married that the guy i'm with is the only one that i have ever given myself emotionally to. i mean, like most abstainers i would probably have cheated a bit - what would the emotional equivalent of a blowjob be, do you think? cuddling? spending time on weekends, but remaining undeclared? or maybe that's the equivalent of anal - being in a relationship but not actually calling it that, agreeing that you can be with other people if you want, but neither of you ever do. its funny that this weird sense of virtue is so appealing to me. they were talking about abstinence and sex education on the view a couple days ago, and elizabeth was making the point that we should not be afraid to encourage the ideal of abstinence until marriage in our kids. but i don't view that as an ideal at all, i think its straight-up tragic honestly. this is my ideal, and its probably just as silly and unrealistic, but i guess that's what the fairy tales are about, right?

the past couple of weeks have been pretty good mentally. angst has only fluttered past every once in a while, and it has been easy to swat away. being less emotional has helped me look back on the way i was made to be the way i am more objectively, and i can't help but grieve for all the possibilities my younger self had. on okcupid, i took the iq adventure test and was surprised to find that my highest score was in spatial. and in the description of my result one part stuck out at me.

An interesting trend we've observed in our data: high spatial scorers who have found an outlet for their natural creativity, even if it's not their full-time pursuit, have a very high overall 'life-satisfaction' rating, while high spatial scorers without that outlet—like those who have become lawyers or accountants—have the lowest rating among our entire user base.

its not a huge surprise, just a confirmation of what i have been suspecting. this whole getting by thing, getting a practical job, leading a sedate life is not going to work for me. ever. my parents have always appreciated my writing interest and my artistic inclinations, but i guess they always saw it as just a hobby. you'd think that after years and years since i was eight years old of saying how much i wanted to be a writer that one of them would have the balls to say, "yes, you will be a writer, and you will be great," but no one ever did, and if i could wish for one thing it would be that someone, any authority figure that was in the position to support me when i was young, had said that or something like that. all i ever heard when i told people that i wanted to be writer was that i would need to find a real job first, and even though i consciously dismissed it and rebelled against it, subconsciously it got in there. and now here i am, a college grad, in a position to do something stupid and drastic but i'm too damn scared because that's not what i'm supposed to do. i don't want to be like its all everyone else's fault, because its up to me to get what i want, i know that. but i mean, if my parents want to help, why don't they try to help me with researching the writing market, or look for jobs in the publishing industry, instead of making inane and useless career suggestions that i have no interest in and have the only merit of its "practical." the one thing that gives me some reassurance is that out of reflex i probably will end up doing something very strange and impulsive eventually. there's only so much of this crap you can take.

this extended cold spell - days and days of weather below 32 degrees, snow on top of snow on top snow - has got me pining for spring. when the sun is strong its like a tease, and then i remember the reason why the house is so full of light is because the trees are bare and the sun is reflecting off the snow on the ground. i want sun on grass, on the white rails of our porch that we can stand out on when its warm. my favorite holiday colors are those of halloween and easter - black and orange for the fall, and baby pastels for the spring, the colors prisms make. its days like these where i'm glad i painted my room lavender and have white lace curtains. i once tried to write a prose piece that captured this spring-time urge, based on a dior ad i saw. but it was just prose - rambling and self-indulgent. i keep on listening to lifelike's "adventure" over and over again, because it has that aura to it. it makes me want to watch italian movies. maybe that's why more and more i'm liking instrumental electropop, because you can paint your own universes while listening to it, ones that are sparkling and warm.

watched dead ringers yesterday, despite some hesitation. having gotten the gist of cronenberg's style of using gore and overall strangeness, i wasn't sure if i wanted to watch a movie by him that was about twin gynecologists. but all the reviews said it was his masterpiece, and jeremy irons was in it playing two roles, so how could i say no. and sure enough, my fears were confirmed with what is probably the most shudder-inducing opening credits ever, thanks to illustrations of bizarre and alien-like surgical instruments. going to bed last night i was afraid i was going to end up having nightmares about them. the movie itself i liked, even though at times it did feel like it was dragging a bit. jeremy irons is really what makes it great, he creates two very separate and really interesting characters, both intriguing, sympathetic and detestable in completely individual ways. in reviews on imdb and netflix, a lot of people argued about it being labeled a horror movie, and compared it to jacob's ladder in that both really are more like dramas. but to me, dead ringers and jacob's ladder are what horror really is, or what its supposed to be. the rest are just slashers, thrillers, torture porn, or whatever. what goes on in dead ringers is what's truly scary - losing your sanity for one, and being trapped in insanity by someone you cannot and do not want to free yourself from. its more haunting and disturbing more than it is scary, and while it didn't stay with me the way crash did, i would definitely say its a great film.

i'm still in the mood for creepy things, but i can't get the craving for something flowy and romantic out of my head. maybe i'll watch lolita again, or one of those european films that netflix has been recommending to me.

so the family computer died quite suddenly. i got up a couple mornings ago to only find a black screen with a cursor to greet me, and no matter how many times i rebooted it, i still got the same thing. so the whole things been wiped, yet again, the only thing of value that i lost (other than all the gifs that i had been collecting from ontd_twalight) was my writing - a bunch of unfinished stories, some fan fiction some not. *does inventory in head* ugh, there goes that hannibal fic, i think i had a good four or five pages. and i had the beginnings of the new chapters for twilight and dragon's bait fics. damn. thankfully there wasn't a lot of original stuff lost, just one story and i was thinking of restarting it anyway. and now i gotta look for a new desktop wallpaper. arg all my bookmarks are gone too *headdesk*. i should probably invest in a memory stick.

there's been some family drama centered around grandma victoria. she fell twice last week and was in the hospital for a couple days, and has just been released to a rehab facility. no broken hips or anything, but she was extremely disoriented for a long while afterward. she seemed to think she was either back in the tailor shop or the factory my grandpa used to run. she would sew in her sleep, and try to wriggle out of her gurney when she was awake. it was upsetting for my dad and his siblings needless to say, and now they're kind of panicking over the possibility of her needing long term care. which bubbles up the drama from a few years ago of how sonia took grandma from her house after grandpa died even though she was happy where she was, and may have caused her some psychological damage in the process. paranoia about sonia seems to be at the center of her delusions - before her second fall, grandma was calling people at three in the morning, saying that sonia had lied to her about grandpa being dead because she saw him outside talking to someone, and that sonia had even changed the clocks to make her think it was late. the family is already planning for her 90th birthday party, even though its not until december. whatever happens, byron said, he thinks we should have it anyway. but i have faith she'll still be around when her birthday comes, because for her age, her body's doing fairly well. its her mind that's the problem, and its frustrating to think that if only someone had been paying more attention that may have been avoided too.

there was a report on npr about how in harder economic times, songs with a low beat variance are more popular. it doesn't matter if they're fast or upbeat or not, songs with a low beat variance are less intellectually straining apparently. but that kind of confuses me, because doesn't all pop music have a low beat variance, isn't that what makes it pop music? and even among non-mainstream stuff, i have a hard time finding anything that could be considered to have a high beat variance. so i'm curious as to what kind of music people were listening to during prosperous economic times and how different it is. it also kind of annoys me that it kind of implies that beat-heavy music is not as intellectually provocative, and it definitely can be.

two more cronenberg movies have been knocked off the list - existenz and the brood. i wasn't really crazy about either of them, though i liked the ending to existenz a lot. a guy i've been talking to on okcupid said one of his favorite cronenberg films was the brood, so i was really looking forward to it. it was interesting, and actually was pretty scary for a 70s horror film, but i didn't really get that much out of it. at least existenz makes you kind of give a little grin at the end, it makes its point with surprising effectiveness, even though it gets extremely convoluted at times. with the brood, the reaction more like a short "hm." not a bad movie at all, like i said its a rare example of a good 70s horror film, but its not as good as the other cronenberg movies i've seen so far. next up will probably be scanners and dead ringers, maybe spider. and once i'm done i've got to see repo the genetic opera. i don't know why but i've been craving big screen violence, something testosterone-ridden. i guess i just refuse to believe that anything so gratuitous isn't worth the brain-space. or maybe i just want to waste some brain-space.

my regular bout of woe-is-me seems to be coming on a little early this month (but then again, so are a lot of other period symptoms, so maybe my hormones are just a little whacky at the moment). i'm finding it rather difficult to just be a fan without being jealous, but i guess i'm at that point in my timeline where there are a lot of successful people that i admire who are my age or even younger. its disconcerting. my admiration for sasha grey knows no bounds, so when i found out that on top of all her other endeavors and ambitions she also has just put out an industrial ep, well lets just say i've had a lot more headaches since then. and i'm starting to blame it all on my first grade teacher too, having realized that before first grade i was actually rather extroverted and uninhibited. that woman beat any interest i had in drawing attention to myself out of me, leaving me with the residual instinct of ambition but a fear of trying to achieve it. i'm trying to do research on literary journals too and it is extremely overwhelming, especially when a lot of what i write seems to be between genres. the fact that i also don't have a large body of work at the moment is a problem. i have a lot of ideas but not a lot to show for it, as usual.

on a happier note, though not exactly a lighter one, my venture into the films of david cronenberg is underway. i watched videodrome last week, and the other day i watched crash, both of which i loved but the latter a little bit more. its funny because i can't really say why i like both movies so much, i'm not even entirely sure that i understand them, but after watching both i found myself incredibly pleased that i had seen them. i guess my reactions to a history of violence and eastern promises was kind of the same, though i didn't feel nearly as satisfied after those. i think i liked videodrome and crash because they were both such raw and unabashed films. they are purely fantastical, there is really no way you can reconcile the plotlines and the characters with reality, and yet they felt very real to me. its assumed in videodrome that the main character is deranged or hallucinating, but then clearly its not all delusion, so you find yourself forced to just kind of go with it, without any explanation or resolution. and crash, well, as much as i hate it when people say something is "basically porn" because porn is porn and everything else is not, crash is basically soft core porn. except it has a plot. a very very good plot. which is my kind of movie :D. there is no one in life that i will probably ever meet that is like the characters in this movie, who do the things they do, but i understood and related to the philosophy behind it. its like my interpretation of the word precision - an outpouring of all the right things that come together in just the right way, not a carving away of a raw product in order to make something more uniform. a naturally occurring wonder, negative capability. or at least that's what it felt like from where i was sitting. anyway, next on my list is existenz, and then after that dead ringers and the brood.

i really want a calendar. i didn't have one last year, i guess because i wasn't very interested in counting down to anything in 2008, but now i want to keep track of my days. they all seem to sliding together. i'm not sure if putting blinders on and just letting myself keep trucking forward keeps me positive or just makes me feel stupid for trying the same shit over and over again. i guess that's why i want to try this whole getting published thing, even though i may not be entirely prepared for it, even though it might be a painful process. i want to bust up the routine.

well whaddya know, it doesn't look bad



shall we do a comparison?

i guess this has been a holiday for breaking tradition, hasn't it? instead of seeing the fam on christmas eve, we see them the sunday after, and we arrive late (thanks to scheduling confusion) just in time to hear that two of my cousins are expecting (both with their third child) and are due the same week of july, and another cousin is engaged. it'll be a busy damn year. and then, we didn't get to see our annual new years' movie on news years day for a multitude of reasons, but we saw it today instead. we saw the day the earth stood still, even though i heard several bad things about it. i just didn't want to see any of the other big movies of the season (benjamin button sounds too much like forest gump for my taste). it wasn't all bad, it started out with a lot of steam, like it was revving up for a two and half hour epic, and then suddenly realized it wasn't that movie and slapped on a poorly thought out ending and a nonsensical resolution. it could have been a great movie in more ambitious hands, hell, i found myself rewriting it in my head as i was watching. which is a funny thing that i've just recently noticed about myself, though i've done it forever. when i read i of course visualize what i'm reading like a movie, complete with transitions, editing shot composition, etc. and when i watch a movie or tv i have a tendency to novelize what i'm watching in my head as well. no wonder i'm so undecided about which field i prefer.

i also finally got to see oldboy. it came in the mail from netflix a couple weeks ago, but i hadn't been able to bring myself to watch it because i just didn't want to ruin my day. not that i expected it to be bad, just really dark and disturbing and i didn't want it to infect me. that is generally the standard i hold my favorite movies to - whether they keep my head buzzing days later - but ever since blindness got its slimy paws on my brain and wouldn't let go i've been weary about welcoming that kind of experience again. but it was not the kind of movie that hooked itself into me - as interesting as it was, it faded from my mind pretty easily. i kind of wish i had watched it in film class or something, because i feel like i can't seek my teeth into without some help. there's a lot about it to look into, it would make for a good paper. but i guess i'm finally showing the signs of being out of the academic bubble for a while - i watch it and think "i should know what this means, i should understand what the director is trying to do here, but for some reason i don't." or perhaps i'm being a little bit too hard on myself. i still thought it was a great, original movie, that had characters that made sense despite the extreme scenarios and a storyline that followed a fulfilling trajectory. and i am extremely worried and offended at the idea that stephen spielberg wants to do an american remake of it and put will smith in it. you really want will smith to have sex with his daughter and cut out his tongue on the big screen? do you, mr. spielberg, really?

christmas this year was more sedate than usual. we didn't go see the family on christmas eve because of the bad weather, so we sat around and watching the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. mom invited sergio to come by christmas day, but after a very awkward conversation it seemed that he had no intention of taking her up on the offer. but he ended up calling back and saying he would come by for new years' instead. go figure, i actually get to see my cousin for the first time in years despite the fact that he's been in groton for a while now.

so the christmas haul - a new set of pajamas, a black suit, and some velour lounge wear. and then a wii for both me and vidal. its a bit of an all-around gift, to be honest, mom and dad have been wanting one too. actually, mom and dad were the ones that made out this year with the christmas gifts, particularly mom. vidal and i got them some pretty good gifts (i got them a spanish cookbook, vidal got mom west side story and fiddler on the roof on dvd) and uncle dan and ana showered mom with even more comfy track suits she can wear around the house. she was very pleased. as for me, i will be using the money i got from grandma and uncle dan to buy me some skins for my iphone, for starters.

and now for the third holiday of the season - new years. i feel thankful that its finally here, that small arbitrary initiator of change, and i'm not worried the way i was last year. i mean, what's to be worried about now? i knew 2008 would be difficult, and even then it exceeded expectations. i was so geared up for it that even now 2009 is some strange shadow that i only know will come because of the promised dates for movie premieres and the inauguration. once again i have no plans, but i do have some ideas. i don't know if i can call them resolutions exactly, moreso expectations of myself. there's of course getting a job, and not just any job but a full-time $30,000+ job. i don't expect to get it right away, i'd be very glad to get a retail job right now, but by the end of the year that's what i expect. there's also moving out - its not a dire wish, i don't mind living at home right now. but i don't intend to be here by this time next year.

then there are other ideas, bigger ones. i want to get some short stories published, one by at least the end of the spring, several by the end of the year. i want to learn spanish - its funny that now after nearly four years of spanish in the academic world, its not until now that i'm interested in really learning to speak it fluently. i hope that i can, even though i will be learning late. then there are things that may just be up to luck - i want to go to the us open, maybe take a vacation out of the country. i've never had much of a chance to carve out my own corner of the world, have my own space, my own life, satiate my own cravings and live my own dreams. that's what i want to accomplish, and its not a promise to myself or a goal. it is simply a statement of fact of what i will one day have.