Best Movie Review Ever

My favorite thing about this review is the fact that it doesn't actually review the movie Constantine so much as assert the truthfulness of the existence of demons and the need for exorcism. Interested in the subject of exorcism, you say? Funny you should mention that. Check out Ghani's post on a similar subject matter of real world relevance.

As for the review, I'd say don't worry about spoilers in that particular one--it's not really about the movie itself, anyways. The closest to a spoiler in that review is the mention of actors and the characters they portray.

Nodie & Nabiki

As may or may not have been mentioned here before, Djinn is moving into a new apartment with our mutual friend, Skank Kyra. While Djinn is moving today, Kyra moved in over the weekend, taking with her two adorable cats, as referenced in the title of this post. Node, or Nodie, is a beautiful little Siamese who is about 4 years old. She's about as slutty and affectionate as a cat can get. Nabiki, who is 11 months old, is every bit as affectionate. Her markings are also as unique as I've ever seen--she's white and cream colored, except on the points like a Siamese, where she has markings like a muted tortoise-shell cat (the colors are all subtle--gray, light yellow, cream, light orange). Her little paws have markings except on the toes, which are white, so she looks like she's wearing little hobo gloves.

Now, Nodie and Nabiki have only interacted a few times before moving. They don't really know each other. When they met at the new apartment, there was a cat fight. Nodie won, hands down. They met up a second time the other night, after being locked away from each other, and Nodie won again. Here is where our story really begins....

7:15 pm, Sunday night. My cell phone rings. It's Kyra. "Genie, I'm having a cat crisis, can you come over, I need moral support."

"Sure. What's wrong?"

"Nodie beat up Nabiki and she's stuck in the fridge. I can't get her out she's stuck in the fridge she won't come out she's stuck."

Being the good friend I am, I didn't ask questions, I just went over. Turns out that Nabiki was both under and inside the fridge. She had run away from Node, and wedged herself between the wall and the fridge. Then she got herself behind the fridge, and up under it, and on top of a bunch of coils between the bottom of the fridge and the floor which exist perhaps only to provide a place for cats to hide. Our solution took about 45 minutes and involved unscrewing parts on the back of the fridge, lowering the coils as much as we could while they were still connected near the front of the fridge, and Kyra's boyfriend Zollman tilting the whole thing backwards while I pulled the cat out from underneath it in the front.

Y'know, just in case you were wondering what I'd been doing since my last post.

Random excerpt from a random day

So, we serve coffee where I work. Some guy, who I've seen around before, comes in to get just a cup. No coffee. Just the cup. Drinks without lids aren't allowed outside of the offices where I work. As he walks out, the conversation is as follows:

Genie: Can I ask why you want just the cup?
Asshole: (hesitates) No.
Genie: No? Why not?
Asshole: Because if I tell you, I'm afraid you'll tell me I can't have it.

Honestly, I was too surprised by the whole interlude to really form a sarcastic response. I really wanted to say one of two things. Either, "Then put the cup back and get out" or "Are you going to piss in it for a drug test?"

Next came:
Genie: You know that cups without lids with any liquid in them aren't allowed outside of this room, right?
Asshole: I think that I've patronized this place long enough that they can allow me a little bit of rule-bending.

Yeah, asshole, everyone thinks that after 4+ years of tuition. But let's face it, those 4 years of tuition only buy you exactly what it buys everyone else, and there's no "special treatment" for you just because you're one of thousands of students to pay the exact same amount for your education as everyone else at this school.

Jesus Christ, people, all I ask for is a little normalcy once in awhile.

I also got a parking ticket at Djinn's apartment this morning. Happy Valentine's Day.

The aesthetics of this oilslick lifetime.

So in the middle of showing my photo professor, Terri, my proofs for this next critique, she comes across I shot I took of an oily puddle in a rainstorm at night. She says, "This is--beautiful, surprisingly so." Then she looks at me and with one eyebrow up asks, "Why do you like taking pictures of stains?"

This photo is merely part of a trend I hadn't noticed, I guess further proof of the work of the subconscious in the formation of art. (If I can call my photos art.) Anyhow, it made me start thinking about it. A lot. And very hard. I knew there was a reason, but it was subliminal--I had to find the right way to think about it, and then I could articulate it.

One of the projects I've always wanted to do in the writing world was to craft a beautiful story about someone ordinary. Utterly ordinary. Not like the aestheticized ordinary of American Beauty or anything like that--an actual ordinary person, someone who lives the unsung life that 90% of us share. The people we forget about. Those we think aren't worth the effort. I've always wanted to write that story, but I've never been able to. (Though a lot of my stories do involve basically normal people in basically normal situations, I'd like to think.)

I can create just that project with photography. One of my current crop of exhibition-quality prints is a chalk mark on a brick wall. I don't know who did it, or why they marked on the wall; it just looks like a scribble. But that photograph encapsulates something. These stains--oilslicks, chalk marks, refuse--are the discarded eulogies of forgotten people. They are all that remain of the everyday human, of the person who moves through our world without notice or import, and even this reminder that they move we throw away. The chalk marks are washed away. Who even thinks of oilslicks anymore? But every rainbow shine in the parking lot is the epitaph of someone just like you, in that same parking spot, in that same place, only no one even cares.

I feel like, if I don't call attention to these things--these discarded people and these discarded markings--then no one will ever care. It would be as if everyday was your funeral, and everyday no one showed up.

Djinn....

...if you check the blog, please call me. I figure if you're awake, you'll post to the blog sooner than check your e-mail.

I just want my laptop to be portable again

Why won't someone, somewhere, sell me a new Apple G3 iBook battery for under $90?? It's an older laptop. You'd think that a battery would go down in price. I don't want to spend $89.95 on a battery. I don't think I should have to. Is this too much to ask?

The future is now, this is now, that was then, & what happened to now?

You just missed it. When? Just now. (I love Space Balls).

Just been doing some thinking, and considering, about that amorphous entity known as "the future." I still have at least one grad school I want to apply to for next fall. However, an idea came up at work the other day that after acceptance to a program (we're making the assumption here that I'll get accepted--just go with it), I could defer my acceptance for a year (don't they let you do that? I'm sure they do, whoever "they" are) and remain in my current job for another year. This would be nice if, as I'm certain has happened with at least one of the schools, I did indeed miss out on financial aid applications. One of the apps has a spot that says, "Want financial aid?" and I said, "Yes, please, gimme money," so I think that counts as the application (the form implied it does, and when has a checkbox on a piece of paper ever lied to anyone?).

Anyways, for some reason, this is sounding like a pretty good idea--partly depends on where I get accepted, where I decide to go, and if I'm ready to move to that location. Another year of getting financially stable and paying off undergraduate student loans couldn't hurt, though.

If I stuck around for another year, I know at least one student who works with me who would be happy--she wants my job after I leave, but she doesn't graduate for another year after this one. I might be persuaded to accomodate her in this. We'll see.

"Every day in this town is like a whole lifetime of dying slowly..."

So says 12-year-old Naota in the final episode of FLCL, which Genie got me for my birthday (the whole freaking thing, and the two mangas!). I just finished watching the whole program, which at a whopping 3 hours is not the longest of all animes, but definitely it is the best I've ever seen. Actually it's one of the best anythings I've ever seen.

Everyone can immediately recognize the visual aspect of the show. It's as beautiful as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I will admit, with utterly no shame, that in Sunshine, when the rain starts falling in the living room, I choked up. There were tears forming. It was that breathtakingly beautiful.

Pretty much all of FLCL is like that one moment, stretched over three hours, until you get to the final episode (wonderfully titled FLClimax). This episode is surreal, haunting, yearning, hopeful. All the wonder and energy and furor and pain and love of childhood distilled into visuals and music and streaming experience that is so wonderful it hurts. To watch it is to realize again and again those things you strive for in life are worth something.

"Nothing interesting ever happens in this town. Now the smoke pours out all the time from the Medical Mechanica plant. It's easy to forget there's a world outside.

"Everyday in this town is like a whole lifetime of dying slowly."

Melancholia.

Thursday marked my 22nd birthday, and everything went pretty well. I got presents from my mom and dad and brother (a Graphire3 tablet, which is awesome), and Genie got me the manga and the full DVD set of FLCL (my favorite anime of all time bar none), and I even got money with which I bought the Photoshop Bible. Life on Thursday was good enough that I ignored the pain in my lower abdomen and back.

Not so on Friday. It hurt so bad I risked life and limb to go to the infirmary. The infirmary is known for such medical exploits as offering someone cold medicine. And a birth control test. For everything. However, after I was violated several ways by the probing fingers of science, it was determined that at no point have I ever had a urinary tract infection. (I was diagnosed with a UTI in December and took Cipro for a couple days. Then over Christmas I thought I was relapsing. Now this.) Instead I have prostatitis, an infection of the prostate gland that, lo and behold, will not go away after a few days' Cipro. Try a month.

So I head over to CVS and grab my prescription and realize again the idiocy of name brand medicine. 60 pills of the generic was 20 bucks. Had I filled it namebrand, it would have been $330. That's ridiculous. So I call my mom and when she picks up the phone I know she's been crying. Dread hits my gut and I'm not in my car--I'm four years old and I've done something wrong and I know the bad things are coming. My mom asks me what's going on, real nonchalant, and before I can say anything she tells me the bad news.

One of our cats, Mildred, who is 12 years old and the sweetest cat ever, has a mass in her lung. It's inoperable. So odds are they'll have to put her to sleep. My brother got Mildred and her sister Vivian for Christmas 12 years ago, and I don't talk to him on Friday because he's just aimlessly driving around. The news has made him sick. I talk to my mom about everything and hang up. Then I call Genie. And I lose it. Because Thursday night when I was driving to Genie's place I saw a cat on the road, dead, and he looked just like my tabby I had when I was little. I miss him so much. And it hurt so bad to see a cat that looked like him on the road. So I just break down when Genie's on the phone.

Friday night was good, though. Kyra and Zollman and Jim and Komal and Genie and I go to the Melting Pot, the fondue restaurant, and we have cheese and chocolate. Kyra and Zollman forgot my birthday present, which turns out to be Home Movies vol. 1 (excellent).

Saturday we found a new apartment, that Kyra and I will share for 3 months or so. I've been working on my resume today, and working on a DVD project for my Chinese Arts Group, and trying to ignore the horrifying pain I keep feeling.

Being 22 sucks.

I'm 22!

It's my birthday! Screw you, universe, and your attempts to kill me!

Damned Groundhog

I just tried to post about Groundhog Day, and dammit if Blogger and/or my internet connection didn't decide to get pissy. Fuck.

Anyways, the gist of the post was as follows:

Apparently, at least one groundhog predicts six more weeks of winter. Dammit. On another note, the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray is hilarious. So there you have it.

I am done with today. It can now become the weekend.

And I broke my pencil. Fuck.

Damned Groundhog

Apparently, at least one groundhog out there saw his shadow today. Dammit. Six more weeks of winter. On another note, the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray is hilarious. So there you have it.

Unrelated to groundhogs, this day so far has not been pleasant. I'd like it to be the weekend now, please.

Soon.....

For anyone who knows or cares, Djinn's birthday is coming up this week. He keeps asking me what his present is. I usually respond with, "Oh, I didn't tell you? I'm sure I did." And I just keep on forgetting to tell him. Oops.

However, let me just say that he will love his birthday present. More on that later. And this post will drive him crazy, no doubt. If you know him and want to know what his present is, drop me an e-mail and I'll tell you, so long as you don't tell him.