Well, so, I haven't blogged in awhile. There hasn't been a lot going on to write about, particularly - I am still homebound on my medical leave, and therefore don't have a great deal happening in my life (not that college was a nonstop thrillride or anything, so.) My dreams have been picking up the slack, though - last night I had a dream that I was a zombie killer. Had to drive my car over a LAKE OF ZOMBIES at one point. My scientist boyfriend and I were keeping some zombies in a lab for tests with, uh, flowers (because in this skewed universe, the zombies were afraid of flowers and you could hurl the flowers at them to keep them away), and there was also an antidote to the zombie bite, as long as you took it within a few hours, to avoid becoming a zombie. It was really fucking weird, though. Too much late-night watching of Buffy, I guess. (Which I'm totally loving. It's great. I am wildly in love with Spike, which should come as a surprise to absolutely no one who is familiar with both the character and my own.)

You know what's a chilling feeling? You know when you start watching a television show ironically - maybe it's on in a marathon, or something - and it's so terrifically, hilariously bad that you just have to continue watching it to laugh at it? You sit there, chuckling, perhaps alone, perhaps with a like-minded friend, rolling your eyes at the terrible acting and the stilted dialogue and the general idiocy, feeling morally superior in your own intelligence? And then, you realize - you really hope there's another episode on after this, not merely so that you can continue laughing at it, but because you actually really kind of want to know what happens with this particular plot point? And it occurs to you that you've actually become INVESTED in this terrible, terrible show, and you sit there in horror and disbelief, feeling the last vestiges of your self-respect fall away?

Yeah. THAT feeling. Chilling.

And before I go, an anecdote that I heard on the radio, apparently reported via someone in the know: Frank Sinatra was quite the playboy, even in his later years, with impressive sexual prowess and stamina, and he apparently credited it all to Wheaties. He once finished having marathon sex with some satisfied young lady, ran out to the kitchen, chowed down on a bowl of Wheaties, and charged right back into the bedroom singing "I'm in the Mood for Love."

Think of that the next time you're having a bowl of Wheaties, will you?

I neglected to mention this before, but my mom got me a cat clock for Christmas:



It's fantastic, and hanging on my wall here at school. It makes this gentle clacking sound as the tail moves back and forth (and the eyes roll, of course), that is both soothing and kind of mesmerizing. It's kind of hard not to let it put me to sleep, hence why I have music on whenever I am trying to work the last couple of days.

(Yeah, back at school. I'm hoping it will get better, and I think it will, but it fucking sucks right now.)

You know who I really, unironically love a whole lot? Kate Moss.




I know she's a cokehead (although why people were ever shocked at that is beyond me, but whatever.) I know she ushered in the super-waif trend among high-fashion models that has plagued the fashion industry ever since. I know she's kinda trashy and something of a train wreck, and that her rough living is totally reflected in her appearance when not in photos. I get it. I love her, and not just because of her breathtaking modeling ability and seemingly effortless personal style that no one else has ever quite pulled off (not that they haven't tried!) Simply put, I love her because, whatever lifestyle she leads, be it shitty or glamorous or both, she doesn't feel the need to talk about it. She doesn't try to be a role model, or talk about her wonderful organic zen life or all of her world-helping charity work, or how she achieves her beauty simply by drinking water and eating vegetables.

Not that there's anything wrong with doing any of that that. I just love that she's out there, doing her thing, be it modeling for the best designers in the world or going on a coke binge with a minor rock star or launching a fashion line, letting people take from it what they will and not shoving anything down anybody's throat about it. It's kind of refreshing, actually. She's one of the most famous, recognizable supermodels of all time for both her public and private life and yet she's managed to remain a creature of mystery. She's a fucking model, and shouldn't be expected to be anything else. She's got a job to do and she does it better than anybody else, every time.



So you go on with your bad self, Kate.

Scattered thoughts.

So "Rocket Queen" by G n' R came up on my iTunes shuffle (I should be writing a paper, but isn't that sure and always the case?), and remembered this delightful little peace of lore about that girl moaning throughout certain parts of the track. Allegedly, one of the members of the band (I don't remember which at the moment), slept with Axl Rose's girlfriend and Axl, having what is surely a highly overdeveloped sense of revenge, decided to sleep with said fellow band member's girlfriend, tape it, and put her orgasming moans on the song.

That is just such an epic level of out-assholing that it reminds me of that episode of South Park in which Cartman gets back at some kid after a prank by arranging for his parents to be killed, making them into chili, and serving it to the kid. Some serious, House of Atreus, Greek vengeance-type shit. No real point to this, just that I love Axl Rose and I love South Park.

Really love South Park - I watch it a lot late at night while hanging out with the cats. A couple of weeks ago I caught an episode that referenced Fiona Apple. It involves Barbra Streisand as an evil monster, going around town indignant that no one seems to know who she is, to which the police officer responds: "Well, I know you're not Fiona Apple, and if you're not Fiona Apple, I don't really give a rat's ass." Bliss.

Hey, you know what else I've gotten kinda hooked on lately? Six Feet Under. It took me a couple of episodes to warm up to it, but I'm starting to like it a lot. Its combination of dark humor and morbidity is right up my alley, and the cast is really good (with the exception of Rachel Griffiths - can't stand her, and in fact she comes close to ruining the show for me), especially Michael C. Hall. I was in love the moment he appeared on screen, so of course a few minutes later it was revealed that his character is gay. Yes, so it goes.

There's something so odd and chilling about him, like he has the "leading man" looks but not quite, which is what makes him uncanny. Love him a lot. I've been meaning to watch him on Dexter, too, but I'm occupied with Six Feet Under and Ally McBeal at the moment. So much kickass TV to discover, you guys!

(I've also been meaning to get into True Blood. Kinky sex + vampires + violence + Southern Gothic vibe = party, as far as I'm concerned.)

Well, I should get back to work. At least my next few papers will be full of fluff and popular culture (but from an academic perspective, y'all!) Party time for me, for real.

Some awesomeness, academic and otherwise.

So, I should be writing (several!) papers right now, but I want to write about this and it might actually HELP stimulate ideas for this particular paper (we quite literally have no topic. I mean, seriously.) Trying to get the brain going. It's a bit more sluggish than usual these days. I blame the internet. And my unhealthy eating and sleeping habits. Oh, and my body, of course. It's always easy to pin the blame on one's body, especially one that is structurally unsound as mine. I think God was a little drunk that day.

(Defense mechanism back in full swing, what up.)

What I actually want to talk about right now is Chekhov. I have a serious thing for Russian writers, Tolstoy in particular (Anna Karenina is one of my favorite books, ever, for both the gorgeous language and the total trashiness that abounds through parts of it.) I've read two different translations of the book, the second of which is by my favorite! translating! team! ever!, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (whose names I know by heart because I am such a fucking nerd). My mom got me a copy of War and Peace for Christmas a couple of years ago, to which I geeked out and said, "Oh! Those are my favorite translators!" Those two also happen to be a married couple. Can you imagine the fucking awesome life they have? Cutest ever, for real.

Anyway, we're reading Chekhov in my 19th century story class - for which I am grateful, since I haven't liked much of anything we read in that class since Poe. (Oh, Poe!) Because Chekhov is great - not to mention that the book is translated by my favorite translating team. I love him for things like this, in "The Lady With the Little Dog," which I had read previously in a "love stories" anthology that I got in preparation for my own short story work, and which is way, way more depressing to read than it sounds:

"Anna Sergeevna came in. She sat in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her, his heart was wrung, and he realized clearly that there was no person closer, dearer, or more important for him in the whole world; this small woman, lost in the provincial crowd, not remarkable for anything, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, now filled his whole life, was his grief, his joy, the only happiness he now wished for himself; and to the sounds of the bad orchestra, with its trashy local violins, he thought of how beautiful she was. He thought and dreamed."

I mean, that shit is beautiful. There's something about the recognition of the utter ordinariness (which the story keeps getting you back to over and over again), seeing the flaws all around him and yet adoring her anyway, that I find so much more moving than a strictly idealistic or epic love. I don't know, all the people with whom I've ever fallen in love have had such obvious flaws of which I was always aware, and I think recognizing what is exceptional about a person as well as what is perfectly ordinary is just a really powerful thing. Whenever literature captures that I think that can be really beautiful. I also love that this story is never really resolved, and that things don't end really well or badly for these two - their lives just go on, and you know that they will with or without one another, but more rich for the time they've had together.

Similarly, I love this Shakespeare sonnet:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Beautiful. Kind of funny, also, and not exactly glowingly complimentary, but it's rather wonderful nevertheless. It was also used to delightfully sappy purpose in My So-Called Life:

Which is an awesome show, and also a perfect segue for me to talk about Claire Danes!

(Queen Eadie for the win!) I wish she'd go back to the red hair, though. Alas.

Truly, though, I love this girl. She manages to be Hollywood-level beautiful while maintaining a completely believable level of gawky awkwardness. I watched Shopgirl with Shannon last night (for a Film Studies paper, which ugh, I should be writing right now), and I was reminded once again of how wonderful she is. She has one of those faces that you can't take your eyes off of when she's on screen, and there's something about the way she acts that feels so effortless to me - like she perfectly inhabits the body of the character she's playing, and she says so much more with the way she moves and laughs and moves her eyes than she does with actual speech.

(I was utterly enamored with Scarlett Johansson for that same ability a few years ago, but she's decided to rest on simply being hot, which makes me sad. In any case, she was so much hotter back when she wasn't trying so hard!)

But now she's all Hollywood and bombshell and sanitized and perfect. Boo! Another before-and-after (and this is getting waaay tangential, but whatever), that also runs parallel to taking actual good roles and demonstrating lots of acting ability: Christina Ricci, before she got all skinny and "perfect":


(LOVE that movie, by the way.)

And now, for a contrast:


Not that she isn't still beautiful, but...come back to the light, Christina! Be sexy and curvy and weird again!

Well, that's way more than enough for now. Sayonara, for now.

More awesome.

I thought I'd do another post about things that are awesome, because I'm in an appreciative mood. Okay? Okay.

So I had a seizure on Monday (not the awesome part, obviously) which was the third in two and a half weeks. I went to the hospital afterwards, which I don't usually do, but both the frequency of them up until that point and the fact that I couldn't focus my eyes for, like, two hours combined seemed like it was a good idea. (My film studies professor came with me and stayed for an hour and a half until she had to pick up her kids, which WAS awesome. She kind of made me tear up a little bit. Really really moving and wonderful. Seriously.)

Another truly awesome thing was the fact that my ER nurse for real looked exactly like Project Runway's Leanne Marshall:


Seriously, they look like twins in that picture. I am pretty sure that the nurse was wearing that same exact shade of lipstick. She was totally indie-nerd-glam-hot. She seemed really witty and cool, too. Swoon. Call me, ER nurse. I clean up nice!

You know what else is awesome? Ally McBeal. Various seasons have just been released on Netflix, and my mom and I have been watching the fourth season. It is really and truly hilarious, and a bit surreal at times. Sure, Ally can seriously grate on my nerves, especially since she has the qualities that I deplore in myself (neurotic, self-absorbed, emotionally fragile, indecisive, overthinks everything, slightly unbalanced etc., etc.,) but these are minor complaints, since the show is generally fantastic. Also, the current season includes Robert Downey, Jr.:


Who is totally wonderful. Charming, smart, sexy, and troubled. And looks killer hot in glasses. When gorgeous men don glasses, I lose it. See Hugh Laurie:


I think Hugh Laurie is positively delectable all the time, but whenever he puts on glasses on House, I melt into my chair. I am such a fangirl and I don't give a crap. I love the guy.
Speaking of sexiness being enhanced by nerdy accessories:


I don't really like Olivia Wilde, and I hate her character on House, but I won't deny that she's scorching hot, especially when she puts on suspenders. Chicks in suspenders just do it for me, really:







Hot.

I also dig dudes and dudettes in vests. Not sweater vests (never sweater vests, unless it is Lisa Meyers or Robert Sean Leonard as James Wilson) but buttoned-up, tailored vests.





I don't even find either of them all that hot. Just in vests. A tailored vest is even hotter on a woman, in my opinion, but those are harder to find pictures of.

Hey, you know what else are hot? Saddle shoes!

I'd love a pair of those for Christmas, along with the numbat from yesterday.

Sherilyn Fenn wore a lot of them on Twin Peaks. David Lynch called her "five feet of heaven in a ponytail":




To that I can only say: signs point to yes.

More awesomeness to come, obviously.

Weird animals!

I'm in the mood for something extremely random. It's Thanksgiving and I'm home and happy and glad to be with my cats and my mom and so forth. So I'm going to post some pictures of strange animals. Because that's how I roll.

The narwhal!


The wombat!


The Tasmanian Devil! This is one of my favorite animals, ever. I think it is all kinds of awesome.


The platypus! The weirdest thing I ever done seen!


The numbat! Anyone want to get me one of these for Christmas?


The Tasmanian Tiger! It's extinct, but it's still awesome.


The echidna! (Boy, Australian animals certainly are weird.)


The komodo dragon!


Happy Thanksgiving, y'all. May your dreams be graced with bizarre animals. Hope for my good health and I will hope for yours, as well.

So, it's been like a million years since I wrote in this, right? (Or six weeks or so, but hey, close enough...)

I'm well into my semester now and overall it's going pretty well. Classes are pretty great for the most part, and my health is...well, it's been worse. There's definitely been some sick badness (nausea, stomach pains, headaches, body aches, chest pain, heart palpitations, a seizure the other day, and even some weird new shit), but hey, at least I haven't gotten the swine flu, right?

I have been really homesick this semester though, worse than it's been in awhile. I always missed my mom really badly, but never "home" so much, and it sounds silly, but honestly I think a lot of it has to do with my missing my cats. Seriously. I am having serious cat withdrawal and it's a problem.

Also, a piece of awesome awesomeness that I forgot to put into my last entry and clearly have not put in since, as I have not updated and all and blah blah blah: The day before moving all my stuff in, when my mom and my brother and I were hanging out on campus, we went for a long walk on the Smith trails. A little dog ran up to us, and as I was, you know, talking nonsense to the dogs and so forth, the dog's owner came over - who happened to be Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth fame. I looked up (way, way, way up because the dude is TALL), and there he was. With his dogs. I mean, I knew he lived in the area, but seriously, that was about the last place I would expect to run into him. Go figure. I basically squealed my face off.

But enough of this. My mom sent me some pictures of the cats and I'm gonna post them now.

Mabel in the cabinets:


Cuddling cats:




More to come, as always.

Veronica Mars

This is something I've wanted to write about in here for quite a long time - one of my absolute favorite TV shows, Veronica Mars. Is this a review? An endorsement? A ridiculous ramble? Yes. Yes to all.

No doubt my rank of "favorite TV shows" has some serious competition. Sex and the City gives me the most pleasure. Queer as Folk gets me the most engrossed and draws the most tears. Twin Peaks is the most fascinating and stunningly constructed, Arrested Development makes me laugh the most, and House...well, my feelings about that show need a whole series of posts of their own. But this show unquestionably has my heart.

The show is about teen PI Veronica Mars, played to perfection by Kristen Bell. While the ensemble cast is, at least up until the third season, uniformly great, the entire show hinges on Veronica in a way I've only ever seen on House. All the humor, heartbreak, drama, thrills, heart, and soul - and there is a great deal of all - is tied up in Veronica. Veronica herself has been through hells that few teenagers, let alone the kinds TV shows are made about, can imagine. In the year before the show starts, her best friend was brutally murdered; her dad, the sheriff, accused her wealthy and powerful father of the murder, making Veronica into the social pariah to end all social pariahs and getting her father eventually kicked out of office. Her mother abandons the family, and after attending a party, Pretty in Pink style, "to show them they haven't broken me," Veronica is raped, to which the local law enforcement does nothing.

Here is Bell as Veronica.



The really fascinating thing about Veronica, though, is how little that previous paragraph actually sums up about her character. Veronica is bitter, whip-smart, savvy, sexy, and a perky, petite, blonde, straight-A student who dresses like a West Coast preppy girl. She has a cutting quip for every single situation and she will ruin your life if you cross her. She is intensely, fiercely loyal, hilarious, and utterly adorable.

Another interesting thing is how, over the course of the first two seasons, we see just how many allies Veronica does have, and how she brings other loners into her life. Her compassionate, protective dad with whom she is allied against the world; Wallace, the laid-back, basketball genius new kid, who quickly becomes her best friend; a hot-and-cold ex-boyfriend, Duncan, who would obviously still do anything in the world for her; Mac, a funky, deadpan computer geek and fellow outsider; Meg, one of the few popular rich girls who still treats Veronica like a human being; Leo, a sweet rookie cop who adores her; Eli "Weevil" Navarro, the motorcycle gang leader and juvenile delinquent who loves his grandma and has some of the funniest, wittiest lines of the show; and, increasingly, Logan Echolls, the troubled, destructive rich kid who lives and breathes for Veronica.

I have a great deal more to say about Logan (and the other characters, but Logan especially), but that'll have to wait. This is Veronica's moment.

Bell with Enrico Colantoni, who plays her father, Keith Mars:



(They're not always this sickeningly adorable together, but they often are.)

Well, this is kind of more health crap, but I had another seizure on Thursday (boo) again in History of Rock (sorry professor Steve and assorted classmates!) Basically I've had a persistent headache ever since, and have been extra more dizzy than usual (which is saying something, since I'm dizzy all the freaking time as it is.) I feel bad about asking for extensions and work and leniency and so forth, because I feel like I haven't been resting as much as I should have since it happened and am therefore exacerbating it (more on that in a minute), but the fact is that the headache and dizziness are very much real, as is the slightly blurry vision I've been having today and the slight coordination issues, and numbness in my fingers. I'm calling Health Services in the morning to see if they can check me out. Of course, being as it's Health Services, they'll probably write it off as "stress" like they have all my medical problems thus far and send me on my merry way, but it's worth a try.

My weekend, however, was pretty packed. Certainly for me, anyway. Friday night I went to see my History of Rock professor Steve's book reading, which was really awesome and just totally reinforced my love for Smith and Northampton in that places like these obviously foster such total awesomeness. Really, Northampton is amazing. Lisa and I had a bit of a revelation about it a little while back while, for a few minutes at least, I kind of gave up on the idea of going to New York and trying to get into the high-powered academic world where everything is so serious and rushed and exhausting, and just wanting to live in Northampton for a couple of years after graduation and work in a book store. I think that in a way that would be every bit as valuable. Probably not forever, but it might be a nice thing to try out.

Saturday Lisa and I hung around in town for awhile, which was not all that awesome since it was kind of cold and gross out, but we had a pretty good time nonetheless. She wanted to buy a $20 puppet, which I fortunately managed to talk her out of. Then we chilled at Hopkins and drank a lot of tea, which is always super nice and a really great environment to (pretend to) do work.

And LAST night we went to see David Sedaris. The reading was at 8:30, but student rush with the half-off tickets was at 7:30, so she and I were there at 6:30. We were the first people there, and we were the only people there for quite a long time, so it was obvious that we were ridiculously early, but I got a bit of homework done while we were waiting anyway. Besides, it all paid off when David Sedaris walked in and actually struck up a conversation with us. (HOLY SHIT AWESOME.) He was adorable and funny and sharply dressed and he called Lisa a pauper (which he then did again when she got her book signed. I had no book for him to sign, so I just stood there grinning awkwardly while she and Alicia struck up further conversations with him.) And the actual book reading was a complete hoot. He read hilarious short stories and he even read us excerpts from his diary, which I thought was super cool. It was a huge venue and we were way way way up in the balcony (which gave me terrible vertigo) but it was still completely awesome.

Seriously. David Sedaris = win. Can't believe I met him. Lisa asked him the secret to happiness and he replied, "Attention."

Amen, hilarious gay writer man. Amen.