If you are feeling a bit generous this year Joe and some of his friends are raising money for Child's Play - the charity that gives games to very sick children to cheer them up - by playing Mario franchise games all weekend long. They're not...um...very good. But hey, it's for the kids, right? (You can also go to the charity website directly if you want to look through wish lists or pick a certain children's hospital.)

Proper updates later, I just wanted to throw that out there since a lot of you are gamers and/or like children (sometimes). :) In my ferreal post at some point this weekend, look forward to: optimism, Bioshock ranting, cackling, and imminent plane trips. Bonus: SOMETIME THIS WEEKEND, COMIC UPDATES FOR SEARCHING FOR STANLEY! LYK A MILLION BILLION COMIC UPDATES!*

*Amount may vary

I miss summer. This got me to thinking about (500) Days of Summer, which is a bit roundabout but to be honest it is *always* on my mind. Here, watch a thing, it will make you smile:

The movie is slated to come out on DVD December 22. I'm definitely going to be picking that one up after Christmas. ♥

Another night, another dream. Anna Friel was teaching me how to dance. That's all(!), nothing horrible or strange or sad or leftover from Cannibal Holocaust or any lonely remains of the day. ♥

Books are great, stupendous, marvelous things. (Of course, no flist in the world knows that better than you guys! XD) In particular, though, I want to talk about Never Let Me Go. ♥ But first, I have somehow forgotten to mention a little book I read roundabouts astronauta's birthday, so here she is:

14. B is for Bad Poetry

It's a book of - gee, you guessed it! - poetry written by Pamela August Russell. I picked it up at Prairie Lights back in November when I was showing off our awesomenitude to Joe. Smarmy little poems too, an example of which is as follows: "She wants / chocolate. / And I have the / knife wounds / To prove it." Very good for a laugh, or a late bus ride home.

So, now we found ourselves onto the meat of the matter...

15. Never Let Me Go

I have come across a problem so many people have come across trying to review, or even vaguely describe, this book: it's a deliberately mysterious story. To mention too much would destroy the experience. The odd, somewhat fragile pieces of a large, dark puzzle become apparent only after serious immersion into the world of Hailsham and its students, so I will attempt to tread carefully.

I should start by saying that my dear friend mister_duster lent me this book sometime in the mid-summer months, though I only got a chance to read it during the last two or three weeks because I spent most of the season hacking (ba doom, ching) my way through American Psycho. It was genuinely moving, strangely affecting. I found myself in tears a lot, even at moments that were not sad, just because of the delicate language or the precariousness of a lonely sentence. Kazuo Ishiguro is an amazingly talented writer who explores the ideas of memory and friendship in original, yet authentic terms. I have read many reviews which describe the story as "deceptively simple" and disturbing, and I would have to agree with both.

You are lulled into a world that seems a bit odd, but not too unlike our own; one with schoolchildren being schoolchildren, running around and getting into little cliques or fights or unspoken agreements. It becomes obvious fairly quickly, however, that these schoolchildren are very special, and that their lives will be unlike those of ordinary people. The story centers on three friends: Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy. Kathy is the narrator, telling their story as she quietly reminisces about her life. She remembers them as children and as adults, negotiating her feelings for them for our clarity as she goes. She has a habit of going off on detailed tangents about classrooms or items, gently dancing around the big questions that she no longer cares too much about, even though we the readers are chomping at the bit to learn more. In short, it is a beautiful, carefully crafted book. Thanks, Sam.

By the way, the movie version of this book actually comes out next year, and I have to admit I am actually rather excited to see what they will do with it!

I realize that although I was exhilarated to flip the pages as I came closer and closer to the conclusion, I was sad to finish it today, because now I feel like I have lost these three new strange friends I have just met. And I realize that maybe this is not a new feeling, that it might even be why I started reading books so slowly to begin with all those years ago - I don't actually like finishing them. :O And I definitely don't like starting new ones immediately, with any degree of serious immersion of course. Hell, that is why Franny and Zooey took me forever and a half to read despite its length! This way I can let the effects of the books settle over me thoroughly, and I can sort of wallow in these people and things that I have grown so close to, go back and jot down all my favorite quotes or expand the worlds in my daydreams. I used to think this was some form of procrastination or just silliness, but I think it is just another example of my penchant for sentimentality, even if they are only memories of fictional friends. XD

In any event, I have to admit that I read this rather quickly, especially for me, and hopefully between this bookish revelation and my love for this last novel, this is the start of a new, voracious approach to reading. :D I want to read The Unconsoled next, another Ishiguro novel, but it is especially long and I know this month is sort of bumpy between work and travel. Anna has lent me her copy of The Time Traveler's Wife (though those fall movie advertisements have put me off it a bit, however unfair that may be) and I still have shadowy plans to someday maybe possibly finish reading the Harry Potter series, though at this point would probably just have to start all over... I also have Revolutionary Road (an even longer novel than The Unconsoled) and some graphic novels on standby.

I am almost completely open at this point, though I don't really want to start any new series, per se. Recommendations for December reading? Anyone?

Last night I had another rambling, vaguely coherent dream that was probably some kind of movie.

My friend Crystal from high school worked at a restaurant and we stopped to eat strange layered desserts there that she thought tasted terrible. She went home or something, all I know is that was her only appearance - thank God - in what happened next.

Another girl and I, just a DreamFriend or someone, watched these two very large sea turtle twins being born, but during the birth their mother died in a completely nonsensical way: its head fell off. Everyone was horrified at the grotesque event unfolding, although nobody knew what to do about it. The baby turtles were both fine, though it was sad to know they wouldn't have a mother. The whole scene was really disturbing, and a group of us sat in a space that was either the woods or the aquarium cafeteria talking about it; it keeps changing when I try to remember it, we were sitting in aluminum chairs at an aluminum table and all but I feel like we were out in the open. Maybe the place had an outdoor cafe.

By this point I had a sense that some slasher movie action was about to happen, although I don't know why or how I knew that. All I knew was that all my DreamFriends looked like they were vaguely from the late 1970s-early 1980s and my perspective kept readjusting between various people and angles.

A guy shows up, who seems a bit clever and troublesome, and sure enough he walks around one side of the table and starts kicking against one of the table legs without saying a word. We all just kind of watch him do this, we are too stunned to do anything else. He suddenly rips the leg off and smashes it into the face of one of our friends, and we take the gory hint and scramble.

There are some parts that don't come together right, now that I am awake; I remember seeing someone else's perspective of running by walls and walls of glassy windows. The colors change a lot, it is nighttime in someone's hiding place while it is daytime in other people's.

My first DreamFriend from the turtle birthing and I ran and hid in some room in the aquarium that was very dark except for a large lit tank sunk into the floor. The killer seemed to have some accomplice, perhaps someone who showed up later or someone from earlier we just didn't notice, and he came into the room where we were. We were crouching in a loft with a little balcony out over the tank, and suddenly one of our cell phones went off. I was absolutely terrified! I turned it off and took the damn thing apart in a panic, but the loonies looking for us somehow didn't notice it had rung.

I don't know how, but I know my DreamFriend died. I know they all did. I escaped, and there was a little jump in time to some point after the whole thing where I had rented out a room in a seaside town that looked an awful lot like the loft we hid in that day. I had visions of my DreamFriend running up the dock to me, and then she would disappear. "I still see her sometimes," I said to no one in particular, "but I know she's not there." I was really sad that my friends were dead, but I was particularly traumatized by her death. In retrospect, I think she might have been my sister in the dream. It would make sense; we looked a lot alike.

The timeline is a bit off here, but cut to the killer's accomplice, who has managed to get to a train station a day or two later to leave some sort of note for his killer friend, perhaps for a rendezvous. A large policeman is looking him over grimly, so the accomplice is smiling broadly and putting different bits of meaningless paper all over the station to throw him off his game. He's about to get on a rusty train heading north, but he doesn't, because he sees me walking down the street...

That's how the dream ends.

I never really try to interpret my own dreams, since they either seem too coherent to be deconstructed or too absurd to put much stock in. But I noticed a few themes in this one: the stunned inaction at both the turtle's death and the initial appearance of a man who wound up trying to kill all of us; a deep sense of loss and memory; concentration vs. distraction. I don't feel like I am just supposed to throw this one away. Then again, it's not something I particularly want to think about too often. I woke up from it very frightened, maybe even half-convinced I was still hiding from this madman, but now I am left with a lingering sense of sadness. So strange.

I wonder how much it will snow today...

I have seen a lot of lists going around lately of the top films of the decade. I decided that I should probably put something together myself, as the '00s are somewhat significant on a personal level because this is the first decade I can confidently say I was fully invested in film culture. I have an aneurysm named Bijou and a way-expensive piece of paper on my bookcase to prove it. ;)

I broke it down into three categories with ten films in each: HomeGrown (mostly American-made/backed), Documentary (American as well as foreign, I'm not going to split too many hairs here), and Global (implied non-American features). I tried to be fairly objective, while at the same time loyal to those films which moved me most. I also tried very hard to weigh the films evenly throughout the decade, so a few more recent films I truly enjoyed and think made some significant impact in filmmaking and storytelling (Children of Men, The Prestige, and Sita Sings the Blues, for example) did not quite make the cut. Also, for the sake of avoiding completely repetitive reviews and language, I did not write blurbs for each film. I may go back and do so throughout the course of the month, or if any of you would like to write one in the comments if you strongly agree, that would be great. :)

They are in no particular order...though it is probably pretty obvious which one is my favorite.

10 Best HomeGrown

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind : Modern, vivid, and impacting, this film plays with reality, love, and memory onscreen the way most of us actually do in our heads: ever-changing and fluid, horrible but beautiful, necessary in spite of massive deconstruction. Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey steal hearts easily as flawed thirtysomethings who fall in and out of love thanks to a machine which erases memories. After his girlfriend impulsively purges her mind of the two years the couple spent together, introverted Joel goes through his entire relationship with the feisty and lovely Clementine during the course of the night in which he tries to erase her...and realizes that even painful memories make us who we are.

The soundtrack alone makes this film one of the best ones of the decade, and the film which will probably continue to be my favorite film of all time. (Just look at my username, guys. Look at it. C'mon.) Beyond the sentimentality of my own memories of watching the film and feeling strangely connected to it, the diverse camerawork, color palette, characters, editing, and tangled storytelling bring the medium to a new level of emotional exploration through film. As a bonus, though David Cross is only present for about three minutes, I fall to hysterics as he tries to build a birdhouse in the middle of the night.



( A Decade of Corn, Labyrinths, and Swedish Vampires )

Life is weird and funny and full and sad and breathtaking.

That lead voice you hear? The cheeriest elf (second from the left) in the room? That's my dad in his barbershop choir! :DDD

I have been a bit down on myself lately because I never finish anything. More than that I never start anything either. I have plans, such plans, that fail to ever see the light of day. Partially because I am always at work, partially because when I get home I am just so tired from work (perhaps I am just not feeding my blood enough yeast) that I can't think straight. I watch TV or talk to my friends online. It is like college all over again, only with fewer school day hooligans in it. I wonder when I will finally stop saying, "Almost there~!" and just agree to live this life of mine fully.

I talked to my mom the other day, not about this, but just about working and being tired&stresed from it, and somehow she made me feel a bit cheerier about the whole thing. I feel like I am becoming more and more cross, that my personality and my outlook are souring, because of the sheer volume of people I deal with any given day. She basically told me to just try to be as nice as possible, even to people who are not, because otherwise at the end of the day I am the one who will feel cruddy. And that's generally true, so I have been superbly chipper the last day or two in spite of any frustrations. It's affected other things, naturally - trying to make new deadlines for myself, organizing my plans, trying to get in better contact with people who I wish I was in closer contact with. My mom, she has skillz. So. Will Sarah's soul die or actually get revamped? Only time will tell!

In other news, I dyed my hair. It looks like chocolate frosting that wasn't quite mixed thoroughly enough:



Truth be told, I love my white hair. Love love love it. I already miss it. But, y'see, it was going into its sixth month of processing, and I currently don't have the time/resources/motivation to keep it healthy in its platinum state. L told me for the brown dye to stick I would need to get color filler, so I will probably have to redye it again pretty soon (hopefully with her help? :D), but I was pretty impatient to get something into it. It took pretty well, though some strands are a lighter tone than others. I sort of like the effect. Who knows, maybe it will even catch on as a hipster fad and everyone will have Cake Mix Hair. ♥

I had a dream that I saw an American movie called "Ho(a)rse Laughter" that was based on a Korean film with a totally different name, but after American popularity, its re-translated DVD cover came out as "Forced Laughter." Anna Friel played a girl who was partially paraplegic: she could sometimes walk or stand up if she was very still, though she had no feeling in her legs and mostly used a wheelchair. There was a horse involved, I think spiritually linked to Anna Friel's character in some way, and at one point in the movie she rode it around the city at night and almost killed herself because the horse would run into traffic and such. I think there was another woman who was in love with (who else?) Lee Pace's character, who was the other main protagonist, and it was slightly comedic to see the two women together, because initially Anna Friel wasn't in love with him, she just knew him. A few other strange things happened in the movie, concerning music and the horse, and her ability to randomly walk, and it ended with her and Lee Pace on a bus heading somewhere, and there was rain falling on the windows and she told him that sound of drizzling rain on metal was their song. It was very sweet. Then I realized I had either missed a scene in the film or they had changed it from the Korean version, because my heart suddenly sank when I realized that at one point when she was in Lee Pace's house she died in a freak accident; a hunter tracking a bear somewhere near the house had a crossbow that shot into the room where she was tragically standing. I think the bus scene was a dream sequence or a daydream that Lee Pace's character was having, in which she had never been able to stand or walk and thus would not have been shot. It might have even been a flashback to a time before she died.

I don't quite understand the significance of dreaming about watching a movie that only exists within the dream - a movie with details that include actors and a pun for a title and a re-translated title from a foreign film.

Has anyone else had a dream they were watching a completely imagined movie? What was it about?

I will someday stop watching television long enough to sort out all the crumpled paper and baking soda that is my life.

Nothing new, but something beautiful regardless...



[EDIT] I JUST REALIZED SPENCER POSTED THIS AS WELL A FEW DAYS AGO AHHH WE'RE SOUL MATES AND APPARENTLY I DON'T CHECK MY FRIENDS' LIST AS THOROUGHLY AS I SHOULD SORRY...

Things I Am Thankful For:

Chocolate Ice Cream
Airplanes
Robot Friends
This
Construction Paper
Oncologists
This
Tea Kettles
Telephones
This
Bleach
Comic Books
Twittering Between Time Zones
This
Sweet Potatoes
Gruyere Cheese
These Guys
Umbrellas
Batman

I had a nice Thanksgiving this year; I went with Anna to Des Moines to eat with her mom and brothers. I made tiny pies, but they are all gone now. I need to make moar...

I spent a good chunk of the day looking through blogs of bad tattoos. There was a link to one on a site I like, and after the first one I just couldn't stop. There was page after page of misspellings, squished faces, and disproportionate trademarked characters. There were bad ideas and there were abominations. I guess my schadenfreude just sort of kicks into overdrive sometimes. I have decided to pass on the knowledge I have gained today, in the form of a countdown!

Top Five Things Never to Permanently Place on Your Body

5. Portraits. Just say "no" to portraiture tattoos unless you have it on very good authority that your tattoo artist has drawn the likenesses of small children that don't look like gremlins fed after midnight. This goes double if for some reason you have decided to travel the dark, horrifying road of celebrity portraits. Now, The Hellish Portrait Trifecta can be achieved if your bad celebrity portrait is that of Robert Pattinson.

4. Products with little to no nostalgic value. I can understand a plethora of potentially faddish tattoos, because I have a lot of little obsessions. Hello Kitty tattoos, Star Wars tattoos, superhero tattoos, quote tattoos, video game tattoos...oh yes, I've considered them, and oh yes, I know people would probably think I was dumber than a box of rocks. But, to me, they represent happy aspects of my childhood and personality. They don't reresent something I might pick up from Target on a Sunday afternoon. C'mon and level with me: do you really love your cell phone that much? Or the tag on your sweater? Or being a hipster douche?

3. Clever use of holes. I don't feel I need to say. a. word. Except that these might not be totally safe for work/the faint-hearted.

2. Rule 34. Crossover childhood cartoon idols? Your grandmother and your college roommate? Done. Boring. Give me something to really grab someone's attention. Pastry mascots writhing around on a giant snack cake? An anthropomorphic lamp and a coy coffee table? A badly drawn hermaphroditic demon on a toilet with a prestigious political figure?! Perfect, just perfect! Ink that onto my torso ASAP so I can go out to the bars and show it off.

...And, #1 goes to...

1. PENISES!!1! Maybe I am just a square. Maybe I am just too exhausted at this point with the cultural significance of the phallus - film school, thank you - to appreciate the penis tattoo. Mermaids. Cupcakes. Sexually confused toaster ovens. No. Back away slowly. We all liked Superbad but even Seth admitted that he hid the damn drawings afterward, not had them proudly emblazoned on his flesh. Hell, even if you are a traditionalist and just want a giant anatomically correct penis carefully inked onto your leg, or arm, or neck, or (perplexingly) right above your genitals or butt (if you are interested in sleeping with people with penises, they probably don't need any kind of road map...), maybe take a second to consider getting anything else on the planet, perhaps even some lovely portraiture or a giant bottle of Tide detergent. I thought about linking some of the crazier things I saw, but I think my browser might very well disown me, so I'll leave that Google shame to you fine folks. Happy searching. O_O

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a teapot (preferably with a bit of Unbirthday Tea!), and blood caps.

...You know come to think of it, I don't even think I would understand that.

I guess I'd throw in some Yoshi slippers.



Perfect.

What's that, little girl?
Twilight: New Moon on Friday?
My ears fill with blood.

What they don't realize:
Sex is too complicated
Without fangs, glitter.

My contribution?
I'll write books about robots...
...who eat up vampires. ♥

Just you and I are sitting
here
on the last city bus home,
all the streets dark and restaurants gleaming,
talking about
talent shows and old lovers
somewhere near Scotch Pines.
We are moving light,
we are floating conversation,
and we are happy in the obscurity between here and midnight.

Dedicated to astronauta and the Wednesday night Coralville Mall security guard.

13. American Psycho

Yes. Just...yes. A dozen times over. Many thanks go to your_lake_como for her exceeding patience. It only took me about a year and two months to get this book back to her. ^^; Dripping with style, equal parts amusing and soul-crushing...this is my kind of literature. And it is entirely possible that this fact makes me a horrifying person...

I had a really relaxing weekend. My friend Joe came into town for a few days, and it was pretty fun hanging out and exploring Iowa City with him. I didn't have to go to work at all or work on anything, either, so we just got to watch movies - In the Loop and Rashomon, playing at your friendly neighborhood Bijou this week only! - and enjoy the weather. I am glad he could meet some of you on Saturday night as well! :D It was an all-around neat visit. Thanks for stopping by, theo_the_honest!

After my aunt and I dropped him off at the airport this morning to head back to Oklahoma, we hung out for a little while at my apartment. We watched The X-Files ("Hollywood A.D." and "all things") while she worked on tagging some jewelry. We also went to Java House before she headed out, where I enjoyed today's special: a chocolate hazelnut latte with a muffin. ♥

I like working mostly(!) full-time and feeling productive with my various projects and hobbies, but damn. I think I need to relax more, just spend time reading in the sunshine or something. I feel fantaaastic. I am much less stressed today than I have been lately, and I think it is just because I am not outlining every last detail in my planner, or trying to fill all my spare time with activities. Even if the activities are meaningless, like watching TV. Even that becomes a weird kind of work if it is done with such intent. I think I work way too hard at distracting myself, and regardless of various things I probably should be distracting myself from a little bit, I understand that this tendency is not anything new. So, yes. That's the plan. Relax moar. Much moar, if possible. Without becoming too downright lazy. XD

How was your weekend? :)

12. Wetlands

Wetlands by Charlotte Roche is a book I didn't expect to read. I was denewing it from the collection at the library and liked the simple cover art. (It is red with a little bandage on it. I think the original translation [from German] was bright pink with an avocado half dominating the center.) I had forgotten American Psycho at home so I flipped through it on my break. I opened to a page describing how hard it is to find a brothel that services women. Whut? More flipping led to discoveries about all the things Helen Memel likes to recycle - mostly homemade tampons - and a horrific, almost beautiful description of emergency surgery. I checked the damn thing out just to figure out what exactly I was looking at. Yes, the book is just about as weird as I am describing it here, and makes "The Vagina Monologues" seem like nursery rhymes.

It's disgusting and honest, and though I have read criticism of her attitude toward her parents contaminating the rampantly feminist physical deconstructions, I like the shift toward her personal dysfunction as not a cause of her sexual and anatomical self, but another element to it. Helen's a weird chick, but in the privacy of our rooms we're probably all pretty weird. It reads really fast; the 229 pages flew. I recommend it, if you're not too squeamish.

Oh, I also haven't been a total slacker regarding the Lonely Ghosts project, I promise. This is the first time in two or three days the Internet at my house has not been spotty every few minutes, as your_lake_como and deliapants could attest to. As soon as I can get it to let me upload my scannables and edit them together, all will be revealed!