back to regularly scheduled entertainment reviews

xxviii. the disappearance of alice creed - very interesting! definitely not what it appears to be at first. i saw it at lunchtime on a monday with 2 other people in the cinema.

vi. washington, OAF - went with my sister who professed to be an earlier fan than me. went to the all ages show which was probably a good move in hindsight because the first performance of the day tends to be better? in any case it was very impressive! fantastic voice!

xlviii. the disappointment artist, jonathan lethem - i kinda skimmed this, i am finding that essays are not the most interesting form of writing unless they have an interesting central theme
xlix. and the heart says whatever, emily gould - i really enjoyed this! obviously i am in the right demographic. the cover was annoying though because the cardboard was trimmed short of the rest of the book's edge and therefore difficult to flick pages properly.
l. all the sad young litereary men, keith gessen - i won't say 'never' but i have rarely been so annoyed at a book and its characters and yet kept reading it. clearly this was the aim and that was achieved.
li. changing my mind, zadie smith - most of these essays were enjoyable! for some reason i couldn't get into the ones where she writes about other books or writers, most likely because i haven't read them and they require actual understanding of the discussed material.

think of it as a social experiment

and go!

.

it's so weird to listen to my mum talk with her friend on the phone about said friend's divorce proceedings with my dad in the same room.

in other news i worked like a full 10.5hr day today for the first day in many, many, many moons possibly more than 12. therefore current nagging headache.

in the last 2 days i have been listening to a lot of megan washington, mainly because of the great similarity between her chord progressions and that 'for the beauty of the earth' hymn, specifically in 'little women' featuring kirsten dunst, and yes, winona ryder, i am very predictable.

oh oh last night i saw 22iii. 'august: osage county' and my reaction and review is as follows: holy shit! such manipulation. brilliant acting. we were sitting a little too far for my poor eyesight to distinguish facial features but my hunch that george clooney's older sister in 'up in the air' played one of the main roles turned out to be correct.

summer will be in a couple of months. this is a portable watermelon cooler:

only in japan.

sugar spell it out!!

i don't know whether it's because i am an asshole or actually growing up, or most likely monumentally un-self-aware, but i am sick of reading females-in-their-twenties internet speak which waffles about 'feelings' (as opposed to 'thoughts') and wallows in selfish passive-aggressive pleading and hyperbole. a taste of the phrases which i am beginning to hate:

-'is this a thing?' / '[insert action/newly coined terminology], it's a thing' - like what does that even mean?!? if you want to say that something is beginning to have meaning for you, come right out and say it.

-similarly, '[action] is a thing that happens [somewhere]' - you could take out the 2nd to 5th words and it would have the same meaning. why the waffling? i really don't understand, don't want to either.

-'so there's that' / '[insert general statement, usually in melancholic tone], so.' - SO.. WHAT? SO YOU ARE SAD, SO YOU WANT SYMPATHY, WHAAAT? usually these statements follow so-called first world problems such as minor injuries, biopsychosocial or otherwise. sidenote, you know what my version of a first-world problem is? when 90% of people who use electric toothbrushes have gingival recession.

-'what am i supposed to do now.' - or other similar statement, note, no, it is not a question because there is no question mark. this is a statement of weak futility and/or 'ambivalence' as defined by winona ryder in girl interrupted, which is to say, that you actually don't care and are therefore being 'ironic'.

-'shaking and crying' - again, i understand you are experiencing emotions, but i believe that you are curled up in a wet vibrating ball just as much as i believe you really laugh audibly when you LOL. again, mostly due to 'irony' because these emotions usually follow something terribly mundane, though you are trying to explain that it actually means a lot to you!

-'clean [or other verb] all the things!!' - a la hyperbole and a half. it got old very quickly. just like 'i want to go to there.' oh har har i don't even watch 30 rock and i am happy for you that you can share your knowledge that this is where the phrase originated.

-linking to your own blog post via twitter, via quoting yourself or summing up your point with another femotion waffle. i mean, sure, self-promotion, i too can quote tegan and sara.

so ultimately my conclusion is that with the advent of twitter and facebook status updates people try to be funny all the time and really they should stop. either you are funny, or you can use one of the above tropes to appear 'ironic', or something, upon which occurrence i proceed to rip you a new one, in my mind.

p.s. i momentarily considered linking to this on my twitter but that would be way too passive-aggressive not to mention unspeakably hypocritical, ho ho ho.

p.p.s. i am fully aware that i am being harsh and mean but these are not really 'judgements' (which i am trying to give up in general) when the inherent uncertain tone leaves them open to interpretation and critical analysis, right? THE PERSON WHO READS THE TEXT IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

resophnotes.exe

well, my life as it was previously known on the computer has been changed monumentally by this app, because it makes perfect sense that apps as they are on portable interfaces should be retrocoded for real computers. not that i do anything on my computer that i couldn't do on my phone, except for using a keyboard, which incidentally does not have inherent predictive-text abilities, for which something has probably already been developed in the interest of speed though not necessarily the typing skills of the general population. basically what i am saying is that auto-save is the answer to my incipient short-term memory problems for which i suspect the internet is to blame.

therefore, some notes:

- i watched the 2nd season of 'united states of tara' and 50% of my thoughts were unwillingly taken up by the fascinating depth of toni collette's eye sockets. 25% went towards the utter boringness of the titular personality, and the remainder to the kate and marshall snark which saved the entire show.

- i quit my shitty job and am looking forward to 5 weeks of holiday. two thirds of that statement are partially untrue.

- someone drove into 'my' car last week and it is currently being fixed, i may go crazy if we don't get it back soon

- my creativity has been snuffed over the years by the striving for academic excellence with which i am still somewhat stuck. why else would i be planning to read and summarise 'dentistry for the child and adolescent' in the next 5 weeks. hopefully in approximately 4-5 years this will be out of my system. in any case i am currently blaming the academic system, from high school up. and therefore i am fully aware of the irony of taking on a weird 'writing' job in order to force myself to be 'creative', when the job consists of creating material with which others teach high school students how to give the system what it wants, in order to get into med school. and then here i am blogging to avoid 'working'.

- '"I love rutabaga," Gary said inconceivably.'
by which that sentence encapsulates the frustration inherent in re-reading 'the corrections' and identifying with everyone. i am unspeakably excited about reading 'freedom' which has been given a critical reception in print and online media like none other that i can remember.

- also read xlvii. taking pictures, anne enright
which i have mostly forgotten, they were short stories mostly about women and then mostly about their relationships with others, mostly men

- 'we are very rare, and we are mostly men'
i recently re-watched girl, interrupted which was a definitive movie for me, and not unexpectedly but still a little sadly it was a lot more melodramatic than i remembered. anyway it was still good, kinda mostly

- i saw xxvi. salt
and xxvii. date night
neither of which i care to go into much, except that angelina replaced tom cruise whose dental midlines are extremely non-coincident and who i don't want to google image search to find out in exactly which direction they are skewed

- robyn!! i've had 'hang with me' on repeat for like 4 days. i guess i appreciate the distinct lack or at least undetectable presence of auto-tune.

- watermelon brain

i mean who comes up with this shit? i am jealous of that person.