get it together, movies

so i went to another movie by myself today. again, totally awesome. i laughed any time i wanted to without worrying about whether the person i was with thought i was a nerd. as it happened, the nerd next to me and i laughed at all the same times. i saw omega man, which was great. i am way into that post-apocalyptic stuff. i like to think of them as training films, with a plot. each one is another possible eventuality i have to prepare for, at least emotionally. charlton heston was killer and there were lots of interracial makeouts with one of those 70's afro women.



two things, though. i am pretty tired of visual cruxifiction references. i am also tired of every movie happening in new york. what has happened in san francisco that didn't suck? it's a pretty short list: the graduate, mrs. doubtfire, the rock. a lot of movies happen in fantasy places (hook, labyrinth), some in foreign lands (mad max, road warrior, beyond thunderdome, ninja turtles III) and a few in london (human traffic, 28 days later). a very few happen in the wildnerness (homeward bound) and a couple in suburbia (bill and ted, donnie darko), but other than that pretty much every movie takes place in new york (ninja turtles I and II, spiderman I, II, and more than likely III, pretty much everything else). why is that? if most movies are made in la, why do they take place in new york? life happens plenty of other places too.

friday night was pretty much fine

it was fine, with very little eye contact and a lot of sweaty hands on my part but pretty fine. it was nice to see these people i've been scared of for almost two years now because they have changed too. they've gained weight and gotten balder, adopted makeup styles that make their eyes look small and piggish and grown small social awkwardnesses of their own. they're just people, after all.

jake and i have this friend. he knows every little band in this town. as a natural extension of his ability to schmooze and through schmoozing bring people together, he's starting to plan parties. last night jake and i went to a party he had planned. as it turned out, so did an entire high school. it was hilarious to fall back into an old habit of making fun of an entire room of people at once, but i just hope no one got in trouble.

i finally have something cool to do on friday night

the one problem is, i have burned a lot of bridges in this town. i just hope none of them show up. aw-kward.

i think the people in the background should be hugging them way more

kotohiki

that is the name of a girl who was killed pretty late in battle royale, which was stuck in my head the whole time i was sick and kind of feverish (the last four days). today i felt better, so i cleaned the room a little bit and then took myself to see a movie. the only other time i have gone to a movie by myself, it was because of a misunderstanding - i think it is actually pretty common here in portland because we have the second-run three dollar movie theaters. you can weed out the movies that just have good previews from the movies you actually want to see, and if those are different from the movies the people you usually go to the movies want to see, no big deal because it's only $3 to go by yourself, pretty much the same as renting, and sometimes $2 if you go in the afternoon, better than some renting. well, i had a great time.

i saw stranger than fiction. my opinion is, i am no longer going to listen to lizzy acker's opinion about movies. she panned it, but it was totally fine. i completely enjoyed it and it was a fine use of a sunday afternoon. then again, if i had paid full price for it, i might feel differently.

what's your dad like?

my last impression was that i should get a real digital camera instead of relying on my phone

okay, so i will probably catch some flak for this one for a few reasons; having "feelings," being "crunchy," liking that song when i had it on cd from a cd that i had that you could order from commercials (i bought mine in a jewelry shop on cape cod, and then when it wore out i bought another copy at the mall) but which i don't remember the name of anymore. it was pretty crunchy, it had some enya on it and the theme songs from the exorcist and twin peaks, a lot of chimes and stuff, you know. i think the word "sounds" was in the title . . . man, what i would not give for another copy of that, as well as my copy of the 2nd spice girls album. my high school boyfriend's little sister gave it to me and we used to just ROCK OUT to it even though we knew it was totally silly. maybe i will look for those when i go home. anyway, i posted this video because at first it made me laugh and then it made me jealous of all the places that guy has been and then it made me think, what is the whole point of this blogging thing anyway? to get in touch with other people. the internet is a great way to downplay the negative effects of globalization and really concentrate on the possibility that you could have a penpal from another country, just like that internet commercial where everyone in the world watches a boy dancing in a video that someone, one can only assume a parent, took on their cell phone.

ps - this was my favorite song. i hated the enya one, and the exorcist one terrified me, and i can't remember any of the other ones, but i used to just listen to this on repeat. i had a lot of patience as a kid. not anymore.

you win, ana punye!

here is the rest of my story.

so we got to the shanghai tunnel, and as soon as we sat down he was again complaining about the dark and the smoke. i ordered a beer, he ordered a vodka cran (another red feminine drink), and we got some noodle dishes. i probably do not even need to say this, but he complained that his was too spicy. then when it was time to pay and walk to the movie theater, he offered me cash if i would pay with my card. i'm not really one to get my meals paid for by boys all the time, by which i mean i never expect it, but i'm also not really one to drive some dude across town to pick up a computer he had bought on a date. so it threw me for a loop when i took a closer look and the amount of cash he had handed me was way short of the cost of his dinner.

at this point, i had completely checked out of the entire thing. it may have been before dinner, when he spent the ten-minute walk between the first bar and the second complaining about smokers. not just smokers in general, but one or two friends he had who were smokers. he implied that by smoking socially, they were throwing their lives away, and appeared to come to the decision to burn those bridges while we were walking. i never suspected that he was trying to take me in any way - that he had needed a ride, and now he was paying for like half his dinner and getting a free movie and a ride home out of the deal. this guy was not slick, not even a little bit. i'd like to think that if he was slick enough to play the not slick role and get away with it, something i have encountered before, i would be able to tell. my grocery-store peek into his current lifestyle (overweight, fooling himself) is proof positive of this conclusion. had he actually been slick, i would have been extremely upset but playing the naive fool and plotting some volleys of my own. as it was, i couldn't wait for the whole thing to be over so i could ask jake to take me back because i had realized that other people are terrible and not for me.

so we walked to the movie theater, where we sat down to watch "kontroll," which was playing as part of the portland international film festival at the independent theater. it was the perfect date movie. a little spooky, a little magical, a little romantic - it's a great movie. i couldn't wait for it to come out on video. when you go to an independent film in portland, it's mostly an aging hippie crowd, and the entire theater is talking and really into it. it's sort of an experience, and you really can't be a codger about it. at first, when my date stopped shushing the people behind us, i thought he had just given up - actually, he had fallen asleep. when he woke up at the end of the movie, he said it had been "too dark." i dropped him off and never, ever talked to him again. and then i saw him in the grocery store yesterday and felt good that he was fat, and now i've completely ridiculed him on the internet.

not lame

lame

i saw a guy i went on a date with once at trader joe's today, and he was fat. like, in the way where he's pretending he isn't, and squeezing himself into jeans with the same designs on the back pockets as the ones the hipsters wear, but really his are stretchy and have an elastic waist and he is fooling nobody. this made me feel great. this makes me a terrible person.

to be fair, the date went terribly. jake and i had broken up for a little while and i met him through this online thing i joined just so i could look at anna forsher and maria galindo's profiles. i didn't even have a picture up, and everyone knows that if you don't have a picture up you are a. ugly or b. not taking it seriously. i will leave it up to you to decide which one of these i was. anyway, he "messaged" me and sounded nice enough and had read some things that i had read and i had some free tickets to a movie i wanted to see and i desperately wanted to stop drinking and crying to anna forsher, so i "messaged" him back and we agreed to meet. first, he didn't have a car. that is no crime, certainly not it portland. however, it is a crime of love to ask someone to drive you around on an errand on a first date. he had bought a computer from a girl at reed college, all the way across town from him, and asked me to drive him over to pick him up. i might have thought that he was using the mercury's lovelab personal service to bum rides from lonely girls except he was pretty unattractive, at least by portland standards, and so devoid of any ability to interpret social signals that i'm sure he thought this was ok. well, anyway, i did it because he asked me like twenty minutes before i was supposed to pick him up and what was i going to do, say no and crawl back into the bath to cry? no, i am way stronger than that. strong enough not to be able to refuse an extensive favor (it involved a lot of waiting around, pulling around to the back and carrying) for a guy i didn't know. so we got his computer and then went to this bar i liked at the time, with greasy food and good, strong drink specials. the second we get in there, he complains about how smoky it is, then how dark. when the waitress comes, i order a whiskey & ginger and take a look at the menu. he doesn't know what to order - i tell him the mixed drinks are pretty cheap, figuring he knows the basic combinations that will not make a person look like they would rather be eating a popsicle. when the waitress comes around again, he looks frantic, and practically shouts what is obviously the first thing that came into his head - "a sloe gin fizz!" when it came it was redder than my shoes. then he decided he didn't want to eat there because all the food was too greasy, so we finished our drinks and went to another bar i like where the beer is cheap and the noodle dishes are delicious.

i have to go watch heroes now. i trust no one will be disappointed if i continue this story later or fail to do so at all.

sometimes i encourage people to compromise their principles

also, i am a purse hoarder.

this is the toucan we helped today

it makes me feel better, or at least different, to think about it. do you think if i called the zoo tomorrow, they would tell me how it was doing? i hope so because i don't think that i will be able to sleep tonight for worrying, about both the toucan and my future.

as usual my predictions for a crappy day were totally wrong, more evidence that i get bent out of shape for no reason

it was a GREAT day at the zoo.

first, we saw the sea lions. i am from california, and so i have seen seals, sea lions, and elephant seals probably more times than anyone from other states. but this was the first time that their size and unexpected underwater grace really took hold of me. out of water, it was obvious that they are intelligent, boisterous, and probably pretty fun to care for, but they are awkward and ungainly. underwater they were beautiful. i think that word is used too often, but it really was true in this case. it was like they had coreographed it beforehand; they swam in sync, and were obviously showing off. it was very impressive.

then came the otter, who was also a showoff. we got to see him get fed, retrieve a stick, rub his belly, and do a bunch of flips. it sounds mundane, but it was way, way cute.

then we saw the polar bears. jake has this habit of sort of rushing through things like the zoo, especially if there are children around. he was done with the star wars exhibit probably 45 minutes before i was, and he was the one saying "let's move on" after we saw every animal. but he was just entranced by the polar bears. when one went into another part of the habitat, he wanted to go to a different window to follow it, and the dozens of children screaming at the bears to play with the ball or play with each other or roar didn't bother him at all. when the biggest one dove into the water to tackle the smaller one, he cheered along with everyone else, and we even went back to see them again later. i found out after that that after his grandparents retired, they drove around all over the country, including alaska, and took pictures of bears. i was really glad for his enthusiasm because then i didn't end up feeling like i had dragged him there for an afternoon of me oohing and awing over everything while he stood around and waited until i took him home. the grizzly bear was asleep, though - we went back three times to see if maybe he had woken up, but no luck. that was pretty much the only disappointment.

the hairiest part of our trip to the zoo was the "flooded rainforest" section. when we got there, a couple dads were talking about the caiman that was staring at a toucan that had fallen in the water. i thought maybe they had seen this earlier, because i could see a toucan hopping around on some branches above the caiman. then, just as we were walking past them, i saw the caiman go for something behind a tree; i just couldn't see the toucan from where i was standing, but he was stuck in the water and the caiman had gotten some of his tailfeathers and was right behind him, hissing. i flipped out, and ran toward what i thought was an information booth but turned out to be an abandoned cafeteria. i grabbed what looked like a maintenance guy and tried to explain what was happening, half-crying and pretty hysterical. he couldn't understand me and apparently didn't work there anyway, but he ran behind a door and came back out with a guy wearing an apron. since i was hyperventilating and pretty much incapacitated, jake explained the situation calmly to the teenager in the apron while i made frantic hand gestures. the guy sort of laughed at me and said he would "call". when we went back to check on the toucan, someone was using a rake to shoo the caiman away, and then he took both toucans out of the habitat. i don't know whether he took both out because they like to be together - the mobile toucan was pretty obviously concerned when the other one was stuck in the water - or because this incident made someone realize that it's not safe for the toucans to be in there with the caiman, but either way i don't think it's a good idea for all those animals to be in there together. i mean, some of them are endangered, and they're at the zoo to be protected! when jake first pointed this out, i was sure that zoologists, or whoever works at the zoo, would never put animals that have a predator/prey relationship in a habitat together. but even if the caiman doesn't usually prey on toucans, most carnivores are opportunists and if something goes wrong for someone else, like falling in the water and not being able to get out, something bad is going to happen. on the other hand, maybe this just happens sometimes and the toucan is going to be fine - i do tend to really freak out about stuff like this. the frustration i feel about the global political situation is nothing next to my desire for a toucan not to get eaten by a caiman, at least not somewhere where i know it is happening. sometimes i care so much about animals it makes me feel crazy.


this is what a caiman looks like. creepy, right?

we also saw the elephants doing their stretches and the giraffes eating. we went through "lorikeet landing," where you feed these lorikeets a bunch of nectar and they land all over you. they must have them specially trained or something because i have never seen a single person get shit on.

one really encouraging thing about going to the zoo was seeing all the animals hugging. the polar bears hugged, the sun bears hugged, pretty much all the monkeys were hugging each other, the hippos can't really hug due to lack of any sort of functional appendage but they were snuggling, the elephants kept touching trunks, and there was a pretty obvious relationship between both the musk oxen and the toucans. maybe it was just a chilly day, but it was an awfully nice thing to do for valentine's day.

it is difficult to have a positive attitude under circumstances like these

it's raining and the first of the rejection letters just came in. jake seems to only actually want to go to the zoo because i told him i would buy coffee beforehand. it is shaping up to be a pretty CRAPPY day at the zoo. i don't even think that having cookies for breakfast is going to fix this one.

nell really likes otters, and also i know we will see some when we go to the zoo tomorrow. tomorrow! i can't believe it's almost here!

this is a sea otter. there are also river otters, which are darker. that is pretty much the extent of what i know about otters.

i saw nell today

i know, i know. nell is a terrific name for a friend to have. anyway, this is how it started.

last year, before i moved back to san francisco, i lived with nell. my good friend emily had moved back to san francisco early in the fall, my awesome friend carl had gone to japan and subletted the room next to mine to a girl i liked but not as much as him, and nell was sort of my saving grace because it seemed like everyone was just getting less and less happy. not just at the house - everywhere. myself included. then nell told me that she had decided to move, that she wanted to live by herself for a while. i completely understood her reasons for doing it, but having moved into the house specifically to live with her, i felt a little abandoned. i had thought i was still (immaturely and ashamedly) pretty butthurt about the whole thing until I JUST SAW HER AND EVERYTHING WAS FINE.

here is another way to approach the story.

this year, i have really been dressing like crap. at work i open cardboard boxes and take out the garbage. am i going to wear my limited edition search for spok promotional tshirt to work? no. nor am i going to wear a sweater, a sweatervest, a nice sweatshirt, or pretty much anything but one of the numerous crappy tshirts i own and a pair of pants that i won't get all butthurt about if they get a weird stain from packing materials (has happened) or i accidentally cut them with a boxcutter (has happened) or they get dripped on by the unrecognizable, possibly toxic material that drips from the ceiling in the back hallway (has almost happened). when i tutor, sometimes i'll put on a sweater or a nicer sweatshirt to cover up the crappy tshirt, but it's immediately back to the tshirt when i get home. i won't even go into the kitchen if i'm wearing anything i actually care about. the days that i don't have work are probably the worst though. i sleep in, and then feel guilty and rushed to try and do something with the day so i leave the house without even washing my face, usually in the tshirt i just slept in. then, inevitably, i see someone i know at the library, or trader joe's, or the post office (the three places i go on my days off). no matter who it is, i pretty much do not want to see them because i feel terrible and am pretty sure i look terrible, which is a shame because i know a lot of nice people that under other circumstances i would be very pleased to run into. but today was different. yesterday i went on a raging domestic kick, and cleaned my entire room (vacuumed, even) and started the 2-3 loads of laundry i have been putting off for a week. today, i got up early because i wasn't scared to face my surroundings (usually i just lie in bed and read comic books or stare into space, anything to put off getting up and looking at the shithole i live in. you would think this horribly depressing routine would have encouraged me to clean my room sooner. the only thing i can say is, i am just really lazy). i got dressed, washed my face and EVEN BRUSHED MY HAIR. that is when you know it is going to be a red letter day, where everything gets written in the day planner and then crossed off, the plants all get watered, i have a grocery list to take to the store, and i am on time for everything. i dressed in a nice tshirt i got months ago and hadn't even worn yet. i'd thought about wearing it before, even taken it out of the closet, and then thought, "why? i am only going to get dirt on it, so why put on a nice tshirt just to sit in front of the space heater and not look around?" i put everything i needed in my bag, gassed up, and was off to probably the most efficient and fulfilling round of errands i will enjoy all year. i had mailed everything i needed to mail and was parking in front of the post office, and who should i see walking by my car but old nell. AND FOR ONCE I DID NOT LOOK OR FEEL LIKE CRAP.

so there you go. i saw nell, it was great, we are hanging out on friday, and just like that i have a friend again.

i have allergies, and it's hard to concentrate and/or keep my balance, so here are just a couple things

this whole anna nicole smith thing is just a cover for the fact that the government has been DOCTORING INTELLIGENCE. yes, that was announced two days ago. terrifying. that said, i am also terrified by the fact that a.n.s. left her baby in the bahamas when she left for hollywood. less terrified, much less, but still terrified.

having a fever is not sexy. even if you have a fever because you are near someone you have a crush on and you are just an awkward person, it is pretty much the farthest thing from sexy. it's sweaty, and kind of headachy, and even if a shower provides temporary relief, you still have a fever when you get out and then you have a fever and are squeaky clean with your pores sealed shut and you feel like the finger of a really big latex glove.

i have a strange relationship with valentine's day. ever since i stopped going to an all-girls' school, i wanted a valentine, but the timing was always off, so valentine's day has always been a pretty big disappointment romantically. one year, a couple weeks before valentine's day, i was hanging out with a friend in his dorm room. i went to the bathroom on his hall and found his hallmate and a girl he was dating shaving each other. they said it was a date they had thought of. this led to a nightmare where i got an envelope in the mail and it was full of their greasy hair. then, on valentine's day, i opened my mailbox and saw a big envelope. i was so excited! my first real valentine, not from my mom or grandparents, ever! i opened it and it was full of max's hair. i cried. the first year jake and i were together, we got together right after valentine's day. the next year, it happened during the week or so we were broken up (jake sent me a card anyway. it was big and heavy, with a dark red heart with lace around it. i have no idea where he got it - i can't for the world imagine him actually buying it - but i do still have it). then, last year, i was home and jake was here in portland (although he sent my flowers and candy anyway - a dozen roses, and a big box of chocolates. i ate all the chocolates immediately). this will be the first year i will have a real valentine's day. i guess i'm excited. that said, my mom has always done a little something for valentine's day. sometimes i would wake up and there would be a new mug and some ghiradelli's hot chocolate on the kitchen table, sometimes special valentine's day socks. that always meant a lot to me, and it might sound retarded but my mom is the best valentine i could ever have. i think my mom is totally rad.

confessions II

i forgot, this is lizzy's blog, in case you want to be as obsessed with her as i am. one other thing i forgot, i also started watching deadwood because she likes it so much. lizzy, this is a confession for you: i like it, but i like carnivale way more. i see how you could be crazy for calamity jane and all the swearing, although my personal favorite is the widow garrett (the more conniving she is, the better i like her), but i am just hooked on that crazy supernatural shit and i love clea duvalle (leftover from how every time i see "but i'm a cheerleader" i think maybe i could be a lesbian [i can't, i've never even really tried and i still know that]).

anyway, admitting that i am really into pretending to be lizzy when she's not around felt pretty good. admitting things to the internet is not that hard, and even though i'm pretty sure there's not a whole lot of things that are secretly true about me that aren't secretly true about millions of other people, i've decided to get a few more off my chest.

sometimes i have fantastical, mildly violent fantasies about people i severely dislike. my roommate for junior and senior years sort of decided that she'd outgrown me, and started knowing absolutely everything and getting whiplash from how hard she looked down at me. of course, i reacted defensively, which made the situation much fiercer than it would have been had i sat her down and talked about how ANGRY she made me. i think i sort of understood this, because my recurring fantasy in this situation was shooting her through the neck with a crossbow - not to puncture an artery or anything, just to nail her to the wall through her vocal cords so i could give her a serious talking-to without any crappy backtalk. when jake and i broke up for about a week and i suspected one of his fellow philosophy majors of trying to get with him, i imagined pushing her down, putting on some enormous boots, and stepping on her womb, which would crack just like an eggshell. when jake made out with another girl while i was away, i imagined scalping her - not in a bloody way, but in a way where her hair would peel off like the back of a sticker and i would have a trophy and she would have humiliation. wow, maybe i am crazy! i think a lot of other crazy things too, but maybe that should be all for today.

i have this friend

her name is lizzy acker. here is a picture of her i found on the internet:

i wish i was just like her. she is crazy in a hilarious way that charms people and makes them laugh and leaves them with the impression that she is intelligent (true), while i am crazy in an awkward, sweaty hiding-in-my-sweatshirt way that leaves people with the impression that i am just weird (true). she goes to graduate school. now i want to go. she got a tattoo of oregon. now i want one. she got a blog, so i did. i want to be just like her, and i know she reads this blog, so really this is a confession.

my mom has this special way of making me feel really, really guilty when she needs technical support and i am 300 miles away.

law and order is doing hillary clinton being politically faulted for bill's indiscretions tonight. they could be doing a better job.

jake and i are going to go to the zoo for valentine's day

i can't wait. i wish this was us, except i do not wish that jake had a ponytail.