i'm not quite laughing

Has anyone else looked up the definition of "incubus" and then thought about how it was a name of a band in the 90's they liked and been a bit troubled/amused?


Researching the history of British comedy before the 1960s is only funny when in the midst of articles on music hall musicians, comedians, and analysis on what T. S. Eliot meant when he used the world "popular" in writing a memorial, you come across articles with abstracts like this:


"The article offers tips on how teachers can maintain the interest of special needs students during school assemblies in Great Britain. It is suggested that introductory music be played as pupils enter the hall to offer them something to listen to. The article also provides advice for how teachers can ensure that students on oxygen and students with epilepsy will be appropriately monitored during the assembly."

Oh the incongruity.

Can I tell you something? Even if I may be repeating myself?

What scared me about the auto accident in Paraguay was how completely I fell apart. J, who was experiencing the same thing, had to take care of me. I couldn't stop crying until I fell asleep in the crazy van ride back to Asuncion. The next day I couldn't stop crying for hours. Sometimes I still cry now and I'm not sure why.

I wrote a paper for my English class about how I didn't know how to deal with this because it's so dramatic. I live for cinema but I don't want to be living grandiose cinematic moments. Life is absurdist, life is banal and I love every bit of that. It's all I want.

A few years ago a friend ask me to watch Elephant (2003). It's about a school shooting, but the shooting doesn't happen until the last 15 minutes of the film. The first hour just follows average high schoolers through their average day. S asked me to watch with him because I was the only person he knew that could be happy and find meaning if the whole film were nothing but quotidian. It's true. I just wanted to keep watching the kids in photo journalism developing their prints. I didn't ever want to get to the climactic moment.

This isn't to say I'm still a complete wreck. I no longer feel shaky like everything could dissolve at any moment to leave me floating in a lonely fog, I no longer hold my breath when I go over a bump in a car, I no longer stare dumbly at people when they ask me to tell them stories of Paraguay. I can even talk about the accident out loud now if I have to.

I just still don't know what to think. I just still feel vulnerable as h. I feel how much I need people which is a weird thing for a recluse like me. 

Can I also tell you how much I love you?

sincerely,
Marge

one topic chopped into many pieces

I am currently living with taxidermied animals, mutilated mannequins, oh and some people, too.

One quarter of our two toilets work. You figure that one out.

A pet peeve of mine is when people compliment me when I don't wear my glasses. Get over it, I'm going to continue doing the four-eyed thing. When I wear contacts it's a sign that I'm struggling with migraine-land. Should I puke all over your face so you know how pleased I am with my unglassed face? That's rude of me to say but I really hate it.

I really want to own an overhead projector. They are all sorts of aesthetically pleasing and inspiring to me.

I am not a total aesthete. I looked it up today to make sure.

I have had some very delightful news but I can't count my chickens and share them with you yet. But what I can say is that I am about to embark upon writing a paper script for a 75 minute documentary which is also a very delightful prospect.

grey day shun, or, as the seasons devolve

Once (perhaps it was last night) I kind of tried to dye my hair reddish. You might point out that my hair already leans reddish in the brunette spectrum. Well maybe that's why this morning when I looked at my hair in the mirror I thought, If I hadn't been there, I wouldn't believe I'd dyed my hair at all.

The absurdity of how fairly unchanged my hair looks, tempts me to buy another package of dye and try again to see how many times I can dye my hair with such imperceptible change. Absurdism will be my downfall.

This is all part of my attempt to be La Roux, or more appropriately the androgynous performing Elly Jackson half of La Roux, for Halloween. I'm mesmerized by her. The short red hair, bold style, outskirts attitude, and on top of all this she sings in my vocal range! This has never happened before in all of pop history.

As a side note, my Freddy & the Dreamers radio station has now devolved into The Doors and Aerosmith. Not that I didn't go through an Aerosmith phase in junior high and not that I don't like a little doorsiness now and then....but we were going for goofy, goony Freddy, remember?

What I'm trying to get at is this (note the ironic tone as I now devolve and digress some more)
1. Even though I love La Roux and she will serve as my new style icon, I still can't imagine that I'll actually expand my color palette out of my greys, tans, blues, blacks, creams, and reds. Green? What? Bright colors, what?

2. I also don't foresee the advent of more make-up colors. And even though I've always wanted redder hair and apparently I can get a pretty natural redder look I'm still hesitant because what if I have to keep dying it so none of us get bored with my previously enjoyable but now dulldrum boring brown?

3. La Roux is also amazing because she has escaped being categorized as "adorable" or "cute." Androgyny is so fantastic. I am not sure if I will, at any point, ever escape being "cute" in a (non)pejorative way. Although I generally work this in my favor. Like when I threaten to cut people.


4. I am most definitely boring in the "writing nonfiction for children and adolescent" category. This is my latest english assignment. Write for publication in a children's mag. Well, no children's mag will take me, I'm way too depressing.

5. It will never fail that every year I will become a slugabed and feel rather hibernationish.

6. Google docs believes that internet should be capitalized.

When asked what I will do after graduation my immediate reaction is still a wry chuckle. I need to change that.

my favorite tv show of old

I was always happy to be "sick" on Wednesday mornings when I was in elementary school so I could stay home and watch this:

how much product would I have to put in my hair?

I was planning on being salty for halloween:

 
But I just can't get enough of herrrrrrrrrrr:

 when I saw this ^ music video I knew I was in love. Piet Mondrian colors!

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

also, it has been seeming like a good decision to....oh gosh, say it out loud, use words, type, type, type...

it kind of still seems like a good idea to move home for the month of january.

it also seems so permanent.
so different.
so much of an end to lovely things.
but my documentary heart is longing, longing, longing to be a lonely girl set loose on the world. and i've never been able to deny my documentary heart.

they say it's possible to be in love with a person but

Nothing quickens my heart like this:

"The exceptional technical facilities of the AFI Silver include film formats from 16 to 70mm, high-definition digital cinema video projection, broadcast quality video recording and distance learning capabilities via satellite, fiber and the Internet. Whether it's silent film at the proper frame rate with live musical accompaniment, 70mm wide screen spectaculars or digital cinema, the AFI Silver offers state-of-the-art technology in each of its three theatres - with seating for 400, 200 and 75, respectively - as well as in its world-class conference room, all available to rent."

http://www.afi.com/silver/new/about/about.aspx

Seriously. Whisper that in my ear and I'll fall to pieces.

it was like a styrophoam hug, did you like it?

Deadlines, deadlines, so many deadlines. So many people in my livingroom and so many of them I really have no interest in ever talking to because I'm being tired and snottyyyyyyyy. So tired. This halloween party we're having at our house and I'm supposed to be showing enthusiasm for sounds like it's going to get even biggerrrrrr and I just want to curl up in my beddddddddd. Sometimes I think I'm on the brink of losing all my intellect. Sometimes I wonder why my life goal was to be an artist and an intellectual: begging for failure. Sometimes we should all wish I was shy again so that I wouldn't open my mouth up so much. Sometimes I want to stick my head in a bucket of cold water and see how long I can hold my breath. So tired. I should shut up. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, I sometimes just want to pick up, move, and disappear. Off to see the world. Sionara. Ciao. Goodbyes, goodbyes, don't want to be charming so I'm disappearinggggggggggg.
Shutting up now.

No I'm not. Apparently one time I wrote on a hot cocoa mix packet, "I hate stories like this." (I know it was me, my handwriting is unmistakable.) And I might not have exactly thought that sentiment again today during church but I did think that there is probably more complexity to that Vietnam war story that she told and I might have thought of Dayan. Because last night I realized I could totally defend one of the crazier of the film theorists. When you can argue in favor of a crazy film theorist crazy crazy you know you're crazy. But my brother-in-law is still more crazy and he said it so himself. Ah, family bonding. That wasn't a sarcastic remark.

Snotty, snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, snottyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

tired.

patches.

There is touch of construction going on at the south end of campus which means I now park my bike and have to make a bit of a detour through a little campus park and up a hill and around some buildings until I'm finally going in the direction I want to go.

This afternoon, I decided it's not so bad. I keep running into my uncle, who is a professor, as we now both traverse the hill. It's not often I remember I'm his niece and that's a special thing. We lived so far away when I was a kid, I didn't know what aunt and uncles were like.

But this afternoon he said "Hows my favorite Marge?" and walked me to my bicycle. 

another reason for buffy

A New York Times article on how bullying starts young young young young young these days or maybe always.

I felt vindicated when they cite shows like Hannah Montana, that have extremely self-centered protagonists, as having a negative effect on young girls. However, they compare Montana to Brady Bunch girls which is a little ridiculous. Why not Buffy?

  
Also, an interesting article about how women are treated in France. In the article they point to  the World Economic's 2010 Forum ("world economic's" links to a description of the forum, "2010 forum" to an article about the 2010 forum) that says France has fallen from 18th place to 46th place and now ranks behind Kazakhstan in gender equality. But I've been reading up on the World Economic Forum and it ranks countries by how much they've progressed or digressed in the past year. Alors, it seems the forum compares progress and not the actual standard of equality. And France fell in ranking because "of the departure this year of several high-ranking women from the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy." That being said, it doesn't seem terribly appealing to be a woman in France, even if it is France*.

And don't think I want to make career women out of us all, one woman says she quit her job to be a stay at home mom and she feels pressured to by (French) society to go back to work.

Oh and please don't leave any comments with lame jokes about how French people are stupid (unless you're one of the five Monty Pythoners–Gilliam is from the US and therefore has to abide by the same rules I've set for everyone else. Then I would have to say that I don't really understand why you're reading my blog. Go away). Those jokes are so old, widen your repertoire.

And note, the U.S. only recently broke the top 20 and is now above Canada but behind Latvia. I am currently looking for the actual Forum report because, well, newspaper articles interpret what they want. At this point you might point out how I could be in the wrong about the Hanna Montana genre of tv shows for this same reason but then I would have to touché you back by saying it's what I want to hear so it works for me.

and more from the Buffy side:





*My number one reason for saying no when someone asks me, "don't you wish you were alive back in such and such a day and age," is because I want to stay in a time period where I've got more rights.

i don't think i'll be going swimming in the morning as i'm obviously not falling asleep now

I usually pray over my food. This can easily be a perfunctory act but lately it actually makes me feel better. Because without my acts of religiosity I am left with my feminism, my democratic and anarchic leanings, and my existentialist novels. Things can get highly unbalanced or stereotypical (especially when I'm wearing a boxy, corduroy blazer).

Sometimes the part of me that prays is my blue collar worker side. Not always, not exclusively, but frequently it's the assembly line/shipyard/house keeper inside of me. There are times when I'm tired of trying to find every answer and I just want to live life. And so I pray. Maybe you're not following how the one leads to the other. It's for the same reason that one afternoon a few years ago I sat down at my desk thinking, "Wait...I'm actually not convinced that God exists," which would make my philosophy of the purpose of life null and void– at that moment when I was falling into a black hole, I got up and took a shower. Because what else is a person supposed to do?

The one follows the other because I can only take so much of trying to reconcile the world. I can only handle so much of imperialism, Freud, cut-throat insurance companies, cancer, abuse, and oppression. At that point I have to take a break, pull out my lunch and pray over my food.

I use this prayer-time to think of the food in my lap as a gift from the earth, I try to be sufficiently grateful and remember to take only what I need...


Good heavens, I'm in a waxing serious streak. I need to start making fun of myself more. And yes, I have watched quite a few No Doubt music vids on youtube today.

This also maybe be how I'm spending these sleepless hours: http://www.ornettecoleman.com/ (run your mouse over the colored triangles) 

lately I've been strangely nostalgic for:
1. No Doubt
2. that funky/sweet/homely/grungy/punk sensibility that informed the fashions of the 80s and 90s
3. when videos were 4:3 instead of 16:9

hmmmm...yup.

I could almost go out and buy some dark purplish lipstick over this.

a million things at once.

There are times when you have to accept that some things in your life were just sweet and beautiful, they're over, and now moving on...


but...

there are other endeds from this summer but I can't photo everything.

quizical

Sometimes I can't fall asleep at night because my impending schoollessness and otherwise uncertain future bears down on me. What, dear world, am I going to do?

Tonight I am reminding myself that I will not forget (ha) that I can do anything I set my mind to. I haven't lost the "American"* or anyone else's dream. Particularly not my dreams, I haven't lost those. Unfortunately. What I mean to say is, that since I'm not shaking this feeling of anxiety, I've been dreaming a lot more. Everyone I know and even everyone I don't know regularly parades through my nocturnal conscious. None of these spectrals listen when I tell them this is not what Carl Jung meant by collective unconscious and would they please leave me alone.

My waking dreams are great. And like I've been reminding myself to not forget: I can conquer any one of them. I just can't settle on any one of them.

It all works out, I know. I know, I know, I know.

But right now I am in the dark and as far as I can see (ha) there are two options for what comes next:

a) I will remain in the dark, walking towards this abyss, and I will remain in the dark until I reach the edge. At which point someone will hit the light switch and I'll see the bridge that will lead me over to the other side. "Phew," will be my reaction at that point. And "What a nice bridge," I'll think, as well as, "How provident!"

b) I will remain in the dark, I will arrive at the cliff still in the dark, and I will have to leap into the dark, hoping I will land in a place I like. Exhilarating to fly like that, but hard and scary.

All I need to know right now is if it's A or B.




*Calling something American, while vernacularly means one thing, actually references two continents and something like 23 different countries. It may be more, I don't really know how to count some of those islands. In other words, roughly half the globe. While I may be pretentious to refuse the popular usage of the word, I just can't see it in an un-ironical light (hence the quotation marks). In high school when I would see the "I am an American" commercials I desperately wanted to see one that said, "Soy una Americana."  

i sit outside to balance it out.

I have started pulling that invisibility stunt on gchat more often. Maybe you don't notice because you can still see me there a lot. Of course you can, everything I do requires a computer. For work I research film festivals and text edit some google docs; I grade summaries and grades are stored on my computer (and backed-up on an external hard drive, if you're the worrying type); and now I'm searching databases for scholarly articles on British comedies before the 1960s. I write "papers," have on-line discussions, and watch videos for classes. I edit films. I type up my Grandma's journal. So much computer time.

I need a break.

So I pull out of digital things, one being chat.
 
Here's another reason.

Last night I went on a walk with Lesshalynn which helped shut-up present stresses about the present and the future.  Nothing is solved, I am the same, but I feel better. No digital communication ever does this.

(Except for sometimes emails from my parents.)

a yiddish cinema dream would have been nice

If you spend a couple of days reviewing the basics of the beginnings of Russian cinema and then spend a few hours grading summaries right before you go to bed you are likely to have dreams with Soviet Russian filmmakers in them. And not just any Soviet Russian filmmakers, Lev Kuleshov and Sergei Eisenstein. Gosh. Forget the proletariat, please, I beg of you.

On another note I still feel directionless and therefore still have nothing to say to you.

I'm not communist, I was just folding my nephew's laundry and...

Something the world needs because documentarians and/or marxists/communists/french-revolutionaries sometimes have babies: instead of prince/princess clothing there should be "mommy's comrade," or "daddy's citizen," "proud to be proletariat," "pleasant plebian!" "big brother is watching,"...I could go on...