Just found out that the role Clay Aiken will be playing in Spamalot is Sir Robin.
How amazing.
I kind of have this embarrassing love for the song "Invisible."
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
3191 with kittens
Love this 3191 today. Makes me miss my kitty, and all the other kitties there have been throughout the years.
It's so sensory. I can just feel the almost-splinteriness of the wood deck in the sunshine, the slight warmth that you can tell is there, the fragility of the kitty's ribs and featheriness of her fur.
I want my life to be like that.
It's so sensory. I can just feel the almost-splinteriness of the wood deck in the sunshine, the slight warmth that you can tell is there, the fragility of the kitty's ribs and featheriness of her fur.
I want my life to be like that.
DFW is a genius...
I've been meaning to post these bits for a while but forgot this book at Laurel's house. Here are two excerpts from David Foster Wallace's amazing essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction," which is in the book A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.
So how then have irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling int he culture today's avant-garde tries to write about? One clue's to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It's not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As Hyde (whom I pretty obviously like) puts it, "Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage." This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It's critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony's singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. This is why Hyde seems right about persistent irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly fun to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I've had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300-page novel full of nothing but trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow... oppressed.
Think, for a moment, of Third World rebels and coups. Third World rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical rebel-skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves - in other words, they just become better tyrants.
And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don't really mean what I'm saying." So what does irony as a culturual norm mean to say? That it's impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it's too bad it's impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today's irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean." Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like a hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.
This is why our educated teleholic friends' use of weary cynicism to try to seem superior to TV is so pathetic. And this is why the fiction-writing citizen of our televisual culture is in such very deep shit. What do you do when postmodern rebellion becomes a pop-cultural institution? For this of course is the second answer to why avant-garde irony and rebellion have become dilute and malign. They have been absorbed, emptied, and redeployed by the very televisual establishment they had originally set themselves athwart.
...
It's entirely possible that my plangent noises about the impossibility of rebelling against and aura that promotes and vitiates all rebellion say more about my residency inside that aura, my own lack of vision, than they do about any exhaustion of U.S. fiction's possibilities. The next real literary "rebels" in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that'll be the point. Maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today's risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the "Oh how banal." To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law.
So how then have irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling int he culture today's avant-garde tries to write about? One clue's to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It's not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As Hyde (whom I pretty obviously like) puts it, "Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage." This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It's critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony's singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. This is why Hyde seems right about persistent irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly fun to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I've had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300-page novel full of nothing but trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow... oppressed.
Think, for a moment, of Third World rebels and coups. Third World rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical rebel-skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves - in other words, they just become better tyrants.
And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don't really mean what I'm saying." So what does irony as a culturual norm mean to say? That it's impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it's too bad it's impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today's irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean." Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like a hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.
This is why our educated teleholic friends' use of weary cynicism to try to seem superior to TV is so pathetic. And this is why the fiction-writing citizen of our televisual culture is in such very deep shit. What do you do when postmodern rebellion becomes a pop-cultural institution? For this of course is the second answer to why avant-garde irony and rebellion have become dilute and malign. They have been absorbed, emptied, and redeployed by the very televisual establishment they had originally set themselves athwart.
...
It's entirely possible that my plangent noises about the impossibility of rebelling against and aura that promotes and vitiates all rebellion say more about my residency inside that aura, my own lack of vision, than they do about any exhaustion of U.S. fiction's possibilities. The next real literary "rebels" in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that'll be the point. Maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today's risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the "Oh how banal." To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Not Fade Away
"In case there's anyone who doesn't remember, Corning did not begin with the fiber optics business. In the 1950s, Corning manufactured plates and platters and Pyrex pans. What the company was best known for, though, was casserole dishes. Everybody had them, remember? Their trademark was an abstract blue flower.
Since my dad worked for Corning, my mom had every casserole shape ever made. We had one for stew. We had one for soup. We had one for potatoes. If they'd made one for individual spaghetti strands, we'd have had that one too! I can still see the metal cradles that the dishes sat in at the table...
But wait -- why am I going on about casseroles? I think it's because the approach of death has made me realize that there are no unimportant details in life. That childhood sense of wonder is somehow coming back to me. How can I put it? Things, and the meanings that they have, are being reunited in my heart.
Those old casseroles -- maybe they're just chipped and battered pans, but for me they're connected with incredibly precious things, giant notions like Mother, Kitchen, Family Meals.
So cut me some slack if I get nostalgic now and then over trivialities. The thing is, they don't seem trivial to me. I've come to feel that the big things in life are best understood by way of small things. Ignore the small ones, and the big ones just seem like fancy words, slogans without the truth of something you really know, and really feel."
Just an excerpt from the book I'm reading right now. I already wrote about it on my Goodreads profile, but the story is that this guy at work keeps recommending it (he forgets he recommended it before, so he's done it about 3 times), so I finally bought it remaindered for about $4. I don't normally read memoirs, especially memoirs or stories about cancer, because, well, as the author of this book notes, cancer is like this thing with a life of its own... once it's in the picture, the picture isn't about anything else. And it makes me think of crappy movies like A Walk To Remember. But anyway, this is sort of different, and I'm reading it now, and it's simple and good and I admire the guy who wrote it, partly because he's such a dad, the way my dad is a dad. I don't know if that makes sense. But the other thing I've been thinking about while reading this is what he talks about here: the little insignificant things that matter. I have lately felt as though I've lost memories of little things, and in my reading of this memoir and Jonathan Franzen's The Discomfort Zone, I've felt more and more like I need to start writing the little things down. So I don't lose them forever.
Also, I had, or am in the middle of having, a conversation with Justin about our grandparents, and those stories become the kinds of stories where the little things matter a lot. And then on a meta, writing, authorial level I realized that my feelings about this may be different an interesting if I just write them down... and then I thought, as I have thought a lot recently and failed to put into action, I can write about this. So perhaps I will.
I'll report more about this book when I've finished it.
Since my dad worked for Corning, my mom had every casserole shape ever made. We had one for stew. We had one for soup. We had one for potatoes. If they'd made one for individual spaghetti strands, we'd have had that one too! I can still see the metal cradles that the dishes sat in at the table...
But wait -- why am I going on about casseroles? I think it's because the approach of death has made me realize that there are no unimportant details in life. That childhood sense of wonder is somehow coming back to me. How can I put it? Things, and the meanings that they have, are being reunited in my heart.
Those old casseroles -- maybe they're just chipped and battered pans, but for me they're connected with incredibly precious things, giant notions like Mother, Kitchen, Family Meals.
So cut me some slack if I get nostalgic now and then over trivialities. The thing is, they don't seem trivial to me. I've come to feel that the big things in life are best understood by way of small things. Ignore the small ones, and the big ones just seem like fancy words, slogans without the truth of something you really know, and really feel."
--Peter Barton, Not Fade Away
Just an excerpt from the book I'm reading right now. I already wrote about it on my Goodreads profile, but the story is that this guy at work keeps recommending it (he forgets he recommended it before, so he's done it about 3 times), so I finally bought it remaindered for about $4. I don't normally read memoirs, especially memoirs or stories about cancer, because, well, as the author of this book notes, cancer is like this thing with a life of its own... once it's in the picture, the picture isn't about anything else. And it makes me think of crappy movies like A Walk To Remember. But anyway, this is sort of different, and I'm reading it now, and it's simple and good and I admire the guy who wrote it, partly because he's such a dad, the way my dad is a dad. I don't know if that makes sense. But the other thing I've been thinking about while reading this is what he talks about here: the little insignificant things that matter. I have lately felt as though I've lost memories of little things, and in my reading of this memoir and Jonathan Franzen's The Discomfort Zone, I've felt more and more like I need to start writing the little things down. So I don't lose them forever.
Also, I had, or am in the middle of having, a conversation with Justin about our grandparents, and those stories become the kinds of stories where the little things matter a lot. And then on a meta, writing, authorial level I realized that my feelings about this may be different an interesting if I just write them down... and then I thought, as I have thought a lot recently and failed to put into action, I can write about this. So perhaps I will.
I'll report more about this book when I've finished it.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
More Lit Crawl - Stephen Elliott
I took a Continuing Studies Creative Non Fiction class from Stephen Elliott, a major staple of the SF lit scene. (You can't avoid him, especially in my 'hood: his books are at McSweeney's/826 Valencia and Good Vibrations, and he lives there.) I like Stephen and I liked his class, although I've only read some of his stuff (which he assigned, um, in class). I get the sense that there's a Stephen Elliott crazy-fan contingent out there, and I'll say right now as a disclaimer that I'm not in it. But. He spoke at Lit Crawl the other night (because he is a Star of the SF Lit Scene, he had a session all to himself), reading this piece "The Score" which was published in The Believer this March. I'd read it before, but his reading made it funny, in a sad way (which, given his subject matter, makes sense), and he had photos and videos to accompany the reading, which was pretty fun as well. It made me happy I'd taken the class and that he recognizes me (barely) on the streets.
When I left her apartment the Tenderloin was full of fog. It floated near my kneecaps. The air was cool and wet and it wasn’t totally dark. There were drug dealers and college students in front of the red and green flag of the taqueria. Forty thousand people had gone to the desert carrying art to burn and pills. A spontaneous, impermanent city.
She would call and say it was over. She would send me a note detailing all the time we’d been together and she had felt alone. Sitting on a bar stool later that night I felt the floor shift beneath me. I felt profoundly fucked up and sad that I hadn’t spent the night with her. I wanted to tell my friends about it. I would build up to the punch line: “And then she fucked three guys just to make sure she didn’t go back on it. And then, get this, she tried to go back on it anyway.”
It also makes it pretty amusing that I know a lot of random information about his love/sex life.Laura Fraser at Lit Crawl
Went to Lit Crawl the other night. It was pretty fun. I loved Laura Fraser, who read this piece about being and not being a vegetarian. She was funny and self-deprecating and totally the kind of person who would write for O magazine, and I mean that in a good way (everyone I've encountered who writes for O is really warm and friendly and not a sap at all, which surprises me, but which is kind of cool). I recommend her piece, although I think the reading-aloud really made it better for me. Lit Crawl is a great idea, but it's too crowded. Sort of a shame.
An excerpt:
The truth is, I became a vegetarian in college for two reasons. One was that meat was more expensive than lentils, and I was broke, or broke enough to choose to spend my limited budget on other classes of ingestibles. The other was that I was not a lesbian.
This is not to say that all lesbians are carnivores; in fact, there's probably a higher percentage of vegetarians among lesbians than most other groups. But there was a fair amount of political pressure to be something in those days. Since, as a privileged white girl from suburban Denver, I couldn't really identify with any oppressed minority group, I was faced with becoming a lesbian in order to prove my political mettle. I had to decide between meat and men, and for better or worse, I became a vegetarian.
An excerpt:
The truth is, I became a vegetarian in college for two reasons. One was that meat was more expensive than lentils, and I was broke, or broke enough to choose to spend my limited budget on other classes of ingestibles. The other was that I was not a lesbian.
This is not to say that all lesbians are carnivores; in fact, there's probably a higher percentage of vegetarians among lesbians than most other groups. But there was a fair amount of political pressure to be something in those days. Since, as a privileged white girl from suburban Denver, I couldn't really identify with any oppressed minority group, I was faced with becoming a lesbian in order to prove my political mettle. I had to decide between meat and men, and for better or worse, I became a vegetarian.
Recommitting to the blog...
I'm trying to get back into this again, as I'm feeling semi-inspired. Not to write real things... I'm still stymied in the writing process across the board (especially in my writing group, but that's not the point here)... but to write little "I'm thinking about this" today. Whatever that may be. Articles, videos, food, anything that's on my mind, just a short, quick entry. Like a Facebook post or note, which I've gotten in the habit of doing. (And I like it. Boy, do I wish my whole life could be integrated in a sort of Facebook/Google/Hype Machine mashup of awesomeness Internet-style.) But I don't want to give up on my Blogger. I feel it keeps me honest. Hence, this new attempt.
Stay tuned.
Stay tuned.
Friday, September 28, 2007
I love Jim/John and his man-cardigan. More men should wear these (besides my roommate, who does wear one).
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Gossip Girl!!
Let it be said that my dad introduced me to the OC. He was at work and called home to me, sitting lazy on the couch the summer before I went abroad, and told me I just *had* to watch the episode. I tuned in somewhere in the first 15 minutes and was pretty much an instant fan. God it was so good that first season.
Anyway so I have now been waiting for Gossip Girl to debut on the CW since whenever it was I found out that Josh Schwartz (wunderkind creator of the OC) was affiliated with it, which I think was when I found out it existed at all. I've watched the 10 minute "preview" on their website, I've already looked up the whole cast on imdb to find out what I recognize them from, and it's been on my gCal for like, a month. Anyway. So all I'm saying is, I feel really vindicated by several of my favorite blogs announcing that they LOVE it, even if they may actually just be snarkifying about it. But I mean, Eat the Press said it was nothing short of spectacular.
I'm going to dinner with someone tonight (I used to say "I have a dinner date tonight" but people always get way too excited like I actually have a real date), but you can bet that by tomorrow morning I will have watched this shit and verified my own prescience and good taste.
Anyway so I have now been waiting for Gossip Girl to debut on the CW since whenever it was I found out that Josh Schwartz (wunderkind creator of the OC) was affiliated with it, which I think was when I found out it existed at all. I've watched the 10 minute "preview" on their website, I've already looked up the whole cast on imdb to find out what I recognize them from, and it's been on my gCal for like, a month. Anyway. So all I'm saying is, I feel really vindicated by several of my favorite blogs announcing that they LOVE it, even if they may actually just be snarkifying about it. But I mean, Eat the Press said it was nothing short of spectacular.
I'm going to dinner with someone tonight (I used to say "I have a dinner date tonight" but people always get way too excited like I actually have a real date), but you can bet that by tomorrow morning I will have watched this shit and verified my own prescience and good taste.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
My big debut
I hosted an authors talk at work on Monday. I was nervous as hell to meet him, let alone introduce him, since the video ends up on YouTube. But it wasn't so bad! I have lots of thoughts about the talk and the author himself, since I have a new swelling of literary admiration for him now, but since I am, after all, at work, I'll just leave you with the video for now. He reads my favorite essay at the end (after the Q&A). It almost made me cry. No joke.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
People really love Gmail
This isn't an advertisement or anything... But Google did this contest where you could submit a video of how Gmail *really* works, behind the scenes. And people submitted some really awesome stuff! The whole video has lots of little chunks of awesome videos from all over.
Watch it here.
And if you watch the video, or click on one of the spots in Africa on the map, you can see my roommate, on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, in a yellow jacket marching with the Gmail M-velope. Coolness.
Watch it here.
And if you watch the video, or click on one of the spots in Africa on the map, you can see my roommate, on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, in a yellow jacket marching with the Gmail M-velope. Coolness.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Hey, it's me, the delinquent.
For some reason I haven't felt inspired to write lately. It's sort of annoying... I just feel generally uninspired and lazy and incompetent. But perhaps I'm extrapolating this from my feeling the past couple of days of complete inactivity. I've been sick, sick, sick, and in that way where I just can't do anything, am not inspired, am just lying on the couch hacking up a lung and feeling too lazy to go buy more cough syrup (although when I did, I found myself wandering around the streets of San Francisco in a daze, like I'd never seen sunlight before, and also like I was on some sort of very strong sedative or the date rape drug or something). And I watched the entire first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer today.
I really told myself sometime in 1997 that I would never become the kind of person who liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Times, apparently, do change.
Anyway, I guess from this momentary late-night (for me, since last night I was in a codeine haze around now - and will be soon!!) post it means I'm maybe, sort of back in the blogging game. I'll try at least.
But first, recovery! And legal narcotics!
For some reason I haven't felt inspired to write lately. It's sort of annoying... I just feel generally uninspired and lazy and incompetent. But perhaps I'm extrapolating this from my feeling the past couple of days of complete inactivity. I've been sick, sick, sick, and in that way where I just can't do anything, am not inspired, am just lying on the couch hacking up a lung and feeling too lazy to go buy more cough syrup (although when I did, I found myself wandering around the streets of San Francisco in a daze, like I'd never seen sunlight before, and also like I was on some sort of very strong sedative or the date rape drug or something). And I watched the entire first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer today.
I really told myself sometime in 1997 that I would never become the kind of person who liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Times, apparently, do change.
Anyway, I guess from this momentary late-night (for me, since last night I was in a codeine haze around now - and will be soon!!) post it means I'm maybe, sort of back in the blogging game. I'll try at least.
But first, recovery! And legal narcotics!
Monday, August 13, 2007
Finally!
I always miss out on the cute things at Frecklewonder because I never get to the shop on time to buy my favorites. But this time I remembered! And I got this cute shirt. I like it because it ties in with my newfound fascination with the 70s. The colors are nice. I hope it fits!
I think half the reason I want to buy things from this shop is because of her freckles.
I always miss out on the cute things at Frecklewonder because I never get to the shop on time to buy my favorites. But this time I remembered! And I got this cute shirt. I like it because it ties in with my newfound fascination with the 70s. The colors are nice. I hope it fits!
I think half the reason I want to buy things from this shop is because of her freckles.
Why I love my city
This past weekend I had a borrowed digital SLR from work. We took TONS of pictures. Some of them are here (I haven't uploaded the ones from Saturday yet). My favorites from Sunday (Dan took all of these I think, he pretty much commanded the camera yesterday):
I love my hair. I'm sorry that's vain.
This is what SLR can do for your food photography.
Dan and I went to The Apartment and I bought a couple of awesome old photos and a postcard. This one is a postcard from 1910, and Dan caught it in the focus here (Justin is reading it).
Fannnntastic glasses.
On our walk home to our place, the shadows were perfect.
I love my hair. I'm sorry that's vain.
This is what SLR can do for your food photography.
Dan and I went to The Apartment and I bought a couple of awesome old photos and a postcard. This one is a postcard from 1910, and Dan caught it in the focus here (Justin is reading it).
Fannnntastic glasses.
On our walk home to our place, the shadows were perfect.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
I love this 3191 from the other day. Calvin and Hobbes is one of those things I wish I could re-read again for the first time, like watching episodes of the Office.
It is a truth universally acknowledged.
Pablo will hate me for saying this but, guys, Becoming Jane was actually pretty good!
I saw it with Belton, one of my two friends who I go to all (bad) romantic comedies/movies with, like, for example, The Wedding Date and Raising Helen. And we went in hopeful but not totally confident. But I quite liked it. I didn't treat it like a close biography or anything - I thought of it as a Jane Austen movie/book that I'd never seen/read before. It was pretty clever and there were a couple of good dance scenes and good characters who were all like shades of Jane Austen characters in books and James McAvoy is kind of hot in this although he reminds me of Rachel's boyfriend which is... odd. But like Daniel Craig he has the bluest freaking eyes I've ever seen, except they are less sky blue and more this sort of dazzling periwinkle. Also, Sarah and I almost died in the last 3 minutes of the movie thanks to a minor revelation/surprise moment.
Recommended. Really. And now I need to go back and research Jane Austen's life to find out what really happened.
I saw it with Belton, one of my two friends who I go to all (bad) romantic comedies/movies with, like, for example, The Wedding Date and Raising Helen. And we went in hopeful but not totally confident. But I quite liked it. I didn't treat it like a close biography or anything - I thought of it as a Jane Austen movie/book that I'd never seen/read before. It was pretty clever and there were a couple of good dance scenes and good characters who were all like shades of Jane Austen characters in books and James McAvoy is kind of hot in this although he reminds me of Rachel's boyfriend which is... odd. But like Daniel Craig he has the bluest freaking eyes I've ever seen, except they are less sky blue and more this sort of dazzling periwinkle. Also, Sarah and I almost died in the last 3 minutes of the movie thanks to a minor revelation/surprise moment.
Recommended. Really. And now I need to go back and research Jane Austen's life to find out what really happened.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Things I'm thinking about
I'm moved in, finally, or rather, I'm moved out of my old place. But I'm not settled yet. Here are some things I've been thinking about as I'm getting settled and exploring:
-Rugs. I need a rug for my room, and we probably need one for the living room as well. These are (currently) the candidates for my room, but I haven't explored very much: Moroccan window rug (I have wanted this one in orange for a while, but they are out of orange - I'd get brown), honeycomb rug (I am apparently on a bee/honey curiosity kick), or Ikea orangey rug which kind of looks like a cross between mushrooms and a brain.
-Curtains. I have these filmy curtains on my front window that came with the apartment. I need to replace them, since they are somewhat transparent and people can probably see me changing. They are also ugly. I think I'm going to replace them with these pretty bird curtains I had in my room growing up, from Urban Outfitters. But that throws my decorations into a tizzy, since the bird curtains are very bright and multicolored and my bed right now is this increasingly annoying Laura Ashley white with red-and-blue tiny flowers printed on it. With some brown and gold tints here and there. Plus with these curtains it's hard to get that orange rug I want.
-Lampshades. I have this sweet (as in, rad) owl lamp and no shade for it. I want this one from Anthropologie, but it's, um, $100.
-Plants. For my front yard. I want some grasses, but I also want some flowers, and I need only plants that can go in planters.
-The 70s. I just watched the movie "Diggers" - it's really very good - and was incredibly inspired by the fashion. It's sort of mid-later-70s working class slash 70s collegiate/Love Story, if you really want me to paraphrase Lucky magazine style. Lauren Ambrose has these great outfits. And Maura Tierney has my haircut, only she rocks it slightly differently (and also I'm in sore need of another one). That movie, combined with my purging of magazines from my household (which involves me going through old Lucky magazines bookmarking pages to tear out, so that I can use them as inspiration for a) shopping for new clothes in the aesthetic i want and b) combining old clothes to create the aesthetic I want), is really making me think seriously about my clothing. I'm tired of only wearing jeans, flats and tshirts/sweaters/cardigans. It gets really predictable. I really want this particular dress from J. Crew (second row, far right, the plaid "Bridget" shirtdress). I might really buy it. (Also PS, I love Paul Rudd in Diggers.)
-Tea tins. I have TONS of tea and it's all in boxes and currently since our kitchen is tiny, tiny, tiny all the tea is in a paper bag in my room. I want to get vintage tea tins and put the teas in those so it becomes decorative.
-A new wallet, and a new purse. I want a worn brown leathery purse, a kind of golden light brown (see: the 70s), with some nice strappies. And I really need to replace my wallet. I got it for $5 in the Fashion District in LA and it's fake Gucci and getting torn and really not cute.
-Movies. I'm falling behind! There are so many I want to see and so little time. And I feel sort of lame staying in every night in my new city to watch Netflix. Justifiably lame.
-Honesty. I have been driving and traveling a lot recently since I now have a much longer commute and I've been thinking about just owning up and being totally straight with everyone on this blog. Meaning, not write it so much like a public service announcement and more like a journal. I'm not sure I have the time to do that though. It usually takes a lot of energy to parse my emotions into functional, readable, meaningful sentences for public consumption.
-Rugs. I need a rug for my room, and we probably need one for the living room as well. These are (currently) the candidates for my room, but I haven't explored very much: Moroccan window rug (I have wanted this one in orange for a while, but they are out of orange - I'd get brown), honeycomb rug (I am apparently on a bee/honey curiosity kick), or Ikea orangey rug which kind of looks like a cross between mushrooms and a brain.
-Curtains. I have these filmy curtains on my front window that came with the apartment. I need to replace them, since they are somewhat transparent and people can probably see me changing. They are also ugly. I think I'm going to replace them with these pretty bird curtains I had in my room growing up, from Urban Outfitters. But that throws my decorations into a tizzy, since the bird curtains are very bright and multicolored and my bed right now is this increasingly annoying Laura Ashley white with red-and-blue tiny flowers printed on it. With some brown and gold tints here and there. Plus with these curtains it's hard to get that orange rug I want.
-Lampshades. I have this sweet (as in, rad) owl lamp and no shade for it. I want this one from Anthropologie, but it's, um, $100.
-Plants. For my front yard. I want some grasses, but I also want some flowers, and I need only plants that can go in planters.
-The 70s. I just watched the movie "Diggers" - it's really very good - and was incredibly inspired by the fashion. It's sort of mid-later-70s working class slash 70s collegiate/Love Story, if you really want me to paraphrase Lucky magazine style. Lauren Ambrose has these great outfits. And Maura Tierney has my haircut, only she rocks it slightly differently (and also I'm in sore need of another one). That movie, combined with my purging of magazines from my household (which involves me going through old Lucky magazines bookmarking pages to tear out, so that I can use them as inspiration for a) shopping for new clothes in the aesthetic i want and b) combining old clothes to create the aesthetic I want), is really making me think seriously about my clothing. I'm tired of only wearing jeans, flats and tshirts/sweaters/cardigans. It gets really predictable. I really want this particular dress from J. Crew (second row, far right, the plaid "Bridget" shirtdress). I might really buy it. (Also PS, I love Paul Rudd in Diggers.)
-Tea tins. I have TONS of tea and it's all in boxes and currently since our kitchen is tiny, tiny, tiny all the tea is in a paper bag in my room. I want to get vintage tea tins and put the teas in those so it becomes decorative.
-A new wallet, and a new purse. I want a worn brown leathery purse, a kind of golden light brown (see: the 70s), with some nice strappies. And I really need to replace my wallet. I got it for $5 in the Fashion District in LA and it's fake Gucci and getting torn and really not cute.
-Movies. I'm falling behind! There are so many I want to see and so little time. And I feel sort of lame staying in every night in my new city to watch Netflix. Justifiably lame.
-Honesty. I have been driving and traveling a lot recently since I now have a much longer commute and I've been thinking about just owning up and being totally straight with everyone on this blog. Meaning, not write it so much like a public service announcement and more like a journal. I'm not sure I have the time to do that though. It usually takes a lot of energy to parse my emotions into functional, readable, meaningful sentences for public consumption.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Is it just me who thinks this is unintentionally funny?
In northeastern Texas, advocates of abstinence education vow to fight for their mission because to them, it is not just a matter of sexuality or even public health. Getting a teenager to the other side of high school without viruses or babies is a bonus, but not the real goal. They see casual sex as toxic to future marriage, family and even, in an oblique way, opposition to abortion.
“You have to look at why sex was created,” Eric Love, the director of the East Texas Abstinence Program, which runs Virginity Rules, said one day, the sounds of Christian contemporary music humming faintly in his Longview office. “Sex was designed to bond two people together.”
To make the point, Mr. Love grabbed a tape dispenser and snapped off two fresh pieces. He slapped them to his filing cabinet and the floor; they trapped dirt, lint, a small metal bolt. “Now when it comes time for them to get married, the marriage pulls apart so easily,” he said, trying to unite the grimy strips. “Why? Because they gave the stickiness away.”
Is that so?
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