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.

Brrrrains and Beans

I woke up this morning thinking it was going to be a productive day. When I woke up for a second time at 6pm, I realized it wasn't. But I didn't mind too much, because at some point I just want to be a hermit, and do nothing more with my day than maybe lazily finish a book and make some beans and rice for dinner.

Of course, this doesn't make for a very interesting blog post, but there you go. I did finally get my ass out the door to go comic book shopping the other day. For research purposes only, you understand. If I'm going to be writing a zombie comic, I have to know what else is out there. And there's A LOT out there. I've been reading The Walking Dead off and on for the past while, but something about that book has never sat well with me. I liked the gore, but always ended up feeling as if it was discount Romero without his occasional attempts at progressive politics. But I was surprised at how many other series and graphic novels there were, from Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse to Remains. I picked up Warren Ellis' Crossed, but now I'm thinking the whole zombie genre thing has itself become a zombie. Shambling, cannibalistic... maybe I should lead the rebirth of mummies in horror comics.

Mmm, phone.

Today, I couldn't find my cellphone and had to get one of my friends to call it. Wanna know where it was hiding? In the box of storebought cookies I had been emotionally snacking on. Life win or fail?

Getting Kinda Spooky (And Shorter)

I got another haircut today. Over the past few years, my hair has become progressively shorter to the point where I'll probably end up bald the next time. I can only think that would be an improvement with the humidity, because right now I start looking like Ziggy Stardust as soon as I step outside. Except with the face paint and/or outrageous alien sexuality. Yet.

Also, I think I posted about my obsession with the Penguin Gothic Reds series before. But let's check in again with my favorite literary crack (Hot Gimmick is more like crystal meth at this point):
I'm 60% of the way through the series. Of course I hit all the stuff promising tentacles, severed heads and swine creatures first. Their interpretation of "gothic" is... shall we say... generous. But there's no Stephen King in the mix and eleventy times more noxious fumes and creeping fungi, so I'll forgive them. Here's the roll call so far:

1. The Dunwich Horror: Oh, Lovecraft. At first I thought you couldn't possibly be the strangest of the bunch, although the story with the horrific furry critter from another dimension and the poor lodger who deals with him haunted me for months. Maybe that's because there was probably a squirrel nest above my old room. Or were they squirrels? DUNH DUNH DUNH (Rating: 8 out of 10 tentacles)
2. The Haunted Hotel: This was my staff pick for the longest time, complete with an illustrated card of why noxious fumes+ severed heads= one whacked-out good time. Nobody bought it. Everyone bought The Time Traveler's Wife. Clearly, people suck. (Rating: 8 1/2 out of 10 skeletal countesses)
3. The House on the Borderland: If Hodgson wasn't high as a dirgible on opium when he was writing this, he was doing something terribly, terribly wrong. Or terribly right. I don't know, but this book doesn't end when the horrible swine creatures disappear from the narrative. Because that's when the sinister luminous specks appear and that's when shit just gets started. (Rating: 7 out of 10 outer dimensions)
4. The Beetle: This book outsold Dracula at the time of publication and is still a rollicking good read. Sure it's Orientalist out the wazoo, but with two sassy female characters and one hilariously caddish inventor, I won't tell my post-colonial lit prof it's awesome if you don't. (Rating: 8 out of 10 Egyptian cults)
5. The Spookhouse: I was a little disappointed in this collection, since I loved An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and one of the first few stories, about a boy who encounters half of his fantasy in a forest, is amazing. But too many of them relied on "But he was DEAD!!" ghost twist endings and Civil War yammerings for my taste. (Rating: 6 1/2 out of 10 spectres)
6. Lois the Witch: The least Gothic of all the books so far, but Gaskell has a fine eye for class interaction that's very much like Austen. Gothic thrills are exchanged for non-stop depression as babies are killed, parents are betrayed and the Salem witch trials don't go anywhere good. Check out the title story, which at times shows a surprisingly progressive handling of colonialism in America. (Rating: 7 out of 10 Welsh curses)

If these go out of print before I have 10 queasy yellow spines sitting happily on my shelf, I'll be hurt. Time to go back to my old job and do a special order! I think The Lair of the White Worm should be next.

The Dark Side of Plumbing

I'm back from the country and I've brought with me a sunburn, some insect bites and some entertaining memories. Of course it wasn't the whole "Abandon Game" button I was hoping to hit, but eh. In the cold, hard vision of hindsight (where the lighting is a lot like a J-horror film) I now realize that I was putting too much pressure on the weekend.

Of course, coming back meant the weekend was over, which means that I was back at work today. Now, I don't talk about my new job all that much. I think it's smart blogging policy, it's actually a part of my contract and since I deal with the adult industry a lot- and no, not as the onscreen talent, thanks- I don't want to offend any of my parents' friends who might stumble across this blog. But today, I'll share.

Why? Because today I came across a site that used the term "sperm pipe" in reference to a penis. Now, is this the blorst of the blorst when it comes to cock euphemisms, or are you all hoarding something even worse? Come on, don't fear my sperm pipe. Share.

Summer in the Country

I'm fleeing Montreal for a few days to go out in the country. Pistache, who is currently purring merrily with his paws under my arm and his head on top, will probably be unamused by this turn of events. I have someone coming over to look after him, so hopefully he won't be cranky enough to barf all over my bed.

I'm leaving to help out at a music festival, but honestly, I'm hoping a weekend away will be a kind of reboot on my life. Aside from an almost pain-free move to Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, July has been kind of shitty so far. Mainly for the kind of embarassing, overly hormonal reasons that belong more in something like Hot Gimmick than the life of a reasonable 20yr-old girl.

So, here's to running away from my issues! Cheers!