Oh, For The Smell Of Overpriced Pearson Education Outputs...

I didn't realize how odd it would be, or how nostalgia-inducing, to see Froshies wandering the streets of Montreal. This whole post-grad thing kind of snuck up on me. It felt like one day it was still summer and I could maintain the illusion of being a college student on a temporary break from life. And then the next day, drunken 18 year-olds were running me down in their neon shirts while I returned to the job I might* be returning to for the rest of the year. As this is the first time I won't be buying textbooks, new pens or optimistically writing in a scholastic planner, I feel both regret and guilt at being a bad consumer. Maybe I should buy a Crayola pack at Bureau En Gros to assuage my guilt or something.

I'm not sure whether to keep up my studies on my own or give up and start watching Twice in a Lifetime on repeat**. I've already forgotten important points on de Saussure and Radway, which would seem like a reason to haul out the course packs. But then again, if I go into grad school for epidemiology, or simply spend the rest of my days as a shiftless jack of all words, will I ever really need to recap de Saussure and structuralism? On the other hand, I could keep up with my friends who are still in school.

Sigh, I'm not sure which way to go. Maybe I should pick a third path and study something I never studied before. Particle theory, here I come!
Note: I do not think it bodes well that I spelled it "particly" the first time around.

*Depending on how my latest fuck-up at work pans out.
** Was saved from doing so today by friends. Probably for the best because it started out with someone humorously slipping on a book and dying. You know, for the laffs only a low-budget, Cancon serial drama can provide.

Slaughter At The Nickelodeon

I'm beginning to think the true unsung heroes of the cinema are the trailersmiths who slaved away on the B-movies of the 70s and 80s. They had to spin shit into drive-in gold, and came up with some genius solutions. Some of my favorites:

1. Don't Use Any Footage From The Movie

Something Is Out There, 1977 Quick! We have to sell a PG-13 rated horror movie! Maybe if we just make the text larger and larger while our voiceover guy gravels it up, viewers will imagine their own gore and titties. And then we can use the rest of the trailer budget on lunch!

2. Change the Title For Maximum Tagline Effect

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, AKA Don't Open The Window, 1975. Check out the great homage Edgar Wright made for Grindhouse: Don't. But do. Seriously.

3. Just Give It All Away, It's Not Like Anyone's Going to Find Out Until They've Already Bought Their Ticket

Dead And Buried, 1981 is a surreal movie with a couple of shocking twists. Unless, that is, you watch this trailer. Then it's just a weird, slow movie whose only good scenes you've already seen.

4. Use TITS

Dr. Butcher, M.D. (1979) Or rather, Dr. Butcher, MEDICAL DEVIATE. Sorry, the trailer voice is very persuasive. And repetitive. The trailer doesn't really make much sense, which doesn't bode well for the movie. But that's until the boobies make their appearance! Never underestimate the plot cohering abilities of your average set of breasts.

5. Embrace the Camp.

Slaughter High, 1986. Did they come up with the puns just for the movie, or did they come up with the trailer copy first and then started shooting? Because matching "rekindle old flames" to scenes of a randy couple getting electrocuted is just a little too perfect.

But sometimes, even they failed. Or didn't even bother to try. And that's when you got something like this, a series of gore scenes loosely thrown together with the title added here and there.

Burial Ground, 1981
Maybe the trailer editor had just broken up with his girlfriend and was hitting the sauce. Maybe he was late to meet someone for drinks. Maybe he was hitting the sauce and had to meet someone for drinks. I don't know, I like to imagine my trailer editors as hard-drinking, thrill-seeking adventurers. Either way, this sucks. And they could put more asses in the theater with the only shock scene they didn't use, the hilariously fake de-nippling at the end of the movie (seen here at 9:34.)

They're Coming Back!

A bee stung me today. Clearly the survivors of colony collapse are coming back and this time they're pollinating MAYHEM. Or maybe it was my fault for not checking where I was leaning my hand and pretty much impaling myself on a bee. That being said, as a bee lover and wannabe apiarist, I still feel betrayed. Just which beloved creature will turn on me next- cephalopods?

We're coming to get you, Protagitron!

Also, Caféo maintains its sterling reputation of having the dickiest waiters to ever bag a douche. I'm not sure why I go back, unless it's some weird self-esteem issue. Or I'm in the neighbourhood and want a coffee. Flip a coin, kids.

The Current Book Pile

I wanted to post my list of the greatest 70s horror movie trailers today, but it's still being compiled. Gore is serious business, you know. So instead, take a look at the diagram of my current book pile. As you might remember from the last time, this includes both books on the go, just finished and those I mean to start.
1. Classic I Will Guiltily Put Off Reading: Mountolive, Laurence Durrell
2. Future Cancon Requirement: Roughing It In The Bush, Susanna Moodie
3. Delicious Mystery I Just Finished: The Bloody Wood, Michael Innes
4. Current Guilty Reading: Blackmailer, George Axelrod
5. Current Racist Piece of Crap, er, Classic: The Lair of the White Worm, Bram Stoker
6. Oh God, This Book Is My Life And It's Sad Award: Inglorious, Joanna Kavennna
7. Graphic Novel: Goldfish, Brian Michael Bendis

And look! I still knit from time to time, too. The pile's been on a diet ever since I graduated. Now I have more time to read books at my speed, instead of picking through them to get a decent close reading. And, of course, there are no assigned books so I can be more monogamous to my reading. If not to the many, many things that need doing around the house. Alas.

The Language Question: Napoleon's Revenge

Last night, I spent an ungodly amount of time squeezing out a letter in French it would have taken me about three minutes to write in English. And if a real Francophone ever read it (in other words, anything but a product of Ontario's lax commitment to French Immersion) it would probably read like mad libs. Or some translations of anime movies. Or a Nigerian bank scam.

But after hours, or rather minutes, of double checking the gender of every second word in an online dictionary, I'm proud, damn it. Although it's yet another reason to sign up for French classes instead of Russian lessons. With French classes, I would be able to formulate a coherent letter requesting repairs to my apartment... theoretically. Or at least be able to request directions to the nearest affordable and clean hotel. With Russian, I could... read War and Peace in the original? Try and pick up a chess player in the park so we could discuss ontology as foreplay? I need someone to champion the Russian language here, people.

Hipster Love 2, Aliens 1

I've realized something over my past few weeks of movie watching. For an ex-Cultural Studies student, I kind of blow at formulating coherent interpretations of movies. At least in real life. And especially right after I watch them. Usually I just feel like grunting "Derrrrr, movie bad!" or "Derrrrr, good movie!" before lumbering out of the theatre to digest my popcorn.

Come to think of it, school was a bit of a crap shoot too, with papers ranging from the good (sociological causation in Altman's A Wedding), the bad (monstrosity in Black Narcissus) to the ugly (the cultural myth of Aran sweaters) without any kind of consistency. So, I'll just give you my unstudied, random thoughts on a couple of movies I've seen recently.

• (500)Days of Summer: Like those parentheses in the title? Don't feel they're at all precious? Then you'll probably like this movie. Otherwise you might spend most of the time muttering "Over stylized!" and "White people need to stop whining." to yourself. I felt a little bit of both. The structure annoyed me, but I found parts of it really touching and honest. See it with someone who is as secretly squishy and romantic as you are, under that carapace of cynicism. Or else rent Commando. Again.
• District 9: It grew on me a lot since I watched it on Saturday. Probably because the hangover headache I was battling while watching all the explosions wore off. The general consensus among my friends was that the movie rocked, but that the documentary-like parts were stronger than the straight-up action sequences. Still, it's that perfect blend of excitement over speculative technology that goes boom and topical political paranoia that makes great Sci Fi. Also, has more splatter than most horror movies.
  
• Paper Heart:If you checked out my quickie list, you probably have a good idea of where this is going. Sigh. It's not a bad movie, just a frequently annoying one. Charlyne Yi doesn't believe in love and her buddy's made a documentary about it. Or is it a documentary? Why, the director's played by an actor! Just what is truth and what is fiction? Do such distinctions even matter in our po-mo society? Conclusion: yes they do, if they mean I have to look at twee-ass puppets acting out someone's life story when they converge. And people should be banned from acoustic guitars once they fall in love/like/whatever.
  

Listly Update

I am not dead. With this heat, I kind of want to be, but I'm not. Yet. I just had a busy week, then a week without Internet (BELL!!) and then... well... I couldn't think of much to say. Here's what I learned over the past few weeks:
1. I have terrible taste in men.
2. Mervyn Peake is still a GOD
3. Sci Fi is alive and well, and now comes with a South African accent
4. Charlene Yi has the most annoying vocal cadences I've heard since my Calc 2 teacher
5. I'm the most awkward hostess ever
6. Even when I mean well, I end up offending people
7. Patati Patata poutine is that magical thing that tastes as good sober as drunk
8. This is more than I can say for La Belle Province poutine
9. I can never stick to a personal deadline
10. My alias at my job is actually a real pornstar's name. GOD DAMN IT.

Signs and Old Assigned Reading

Well, tonight I had a really good conversation with a friend. And then on the way home, I was happily bouncing my keys in my hand when my key chain exploded and sent one of my keys tumbling to the ground in a dark alleyway. And of course it was the dull one that barely reflects anything.

After 10 minutes of looking like a drunk loser (not the former, perhaps the latter) and running my hands through gravel that smelled a little urine... esque, I found it. I'm glad none of you were around to see my awkward victory dance.

But trying to interpret this mix of good and bad signs meant I just didn't get around the writing the long, overdue blog post I had planned. I'm sorry. Until I come up with something of substance, check out Malcolm Gladwell at the New Yorker, writing about Atticus Finch. And not holding back either. Gladwell doesn't criticize To Kill A Mockingbird for the usual reasons, namely that it is less progressive and more condescending when it comes to race. Or, as my Grade 9 English teacher put it, "I feel like this book is a little 'white people to the rescue!'" Rather, he gets at something that bothered me way back then: the villification of Mayella. As condescending as the book can be towards Tom, at least it views him as a person instead of a cliched bit of trash. Even Mayella's implied sexual abuse at the hands of her father isn't used to justify her actions but condemn her character and make her seem even more grotesque. It bothered me then, and reading about it now made me remember how much.