And movies, maybe. Anyway, I tend to like books that deal with this subject matter, the various possibilities of life after death. Just thinking "out loud," I'm compiling a list of the books I have read and hope to read in the future. I might also include a few movies, but I don't know yet- we'll just see as we go.
Books I've Read--
The Great Blue Yonder- Alex Shearer
The Lovely Bones- Alice Sebold
Elsewhere- Gabrielle Zevin
The Afterlife- Gary Soto
Be With You- Takuji Ichikawa
Maybe there are more. I just can't think of them, maybe. Hrm.
Other stories I may want to read..
Dante's Inferno
What Dreams May Come- Richard Matheson
Winter's Tale- Mark Helprin
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Wallpapers... 2!
The second installment, which will include previous wallpapers as well. These are my current favorites, so enjoy! Most come from Mini Tokyo, but are usually credited somewhere on the images themselves! Yay!
What is she doing? Drowning? Swimming? I don't know, but it is pretty...
I posted this one pretty recently, but I'm putting it here as well. It is so pretty!
Creepy doll. I posted this one last time, but I still really like it!
Fairy! Also from last time...
Kiss on forehead! Cute and perfect for winter :)
Love and lanterns. Sigh!
Kinda creepy, but I love the color!
Love between a fish and a seagull. This one is not new, but I will always love this theme. Love love love stop using that word gah!
Hard to fit because of the size, but worth the effort! I like how they used the dark squares.
What is she doing? Drowning? Swimming? I don't know, but it is pretty...
I posted this one pretty recently, but I'm putting it here as well. It is so pretty!
Creepy doll. I posted this one last time, but I still really like it!Fairy! Also from last time...
Kiss on forehead! Cute and perfect for winter :)
Love and lanterns. Sigh!
Kinda creepy, but I love the color!
Love between a fish and a seagull. This one is not new, but I will always love this theme. Love love love stop using that word gah!
Hard to fit because of the size, but worth the effort! I like how they used the dark squares.A list of the books I'm going to finish
before the quarter starts. Gumption- rawr! Here I go...
Edit: 12/29-- Crossed out,like this = I have finished the book!
Already started...
A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the Fourth: The Miserable Mill- Lemony Snicket
The Jungle Book- Rudyard Kipling
Female Masculinity- Judith Halberstam
Trans-Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue- Leslie Feinberg
From my readings for next quarter..
Juice- Renee Gladman
The Lover- Marguerite Duras
The War- Marguerite Duras or... ""
I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala- Rigoberta Menchu
Frame Structures: Early Poems: 1974-1979- Susan Howe
Continuing Series...
A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the Fifth: The Austere Academy- Lemony Snicket
A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the Sixth: The Ersatz Elevator- Lemony Snicket
A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the Seventh: The Vile Village- Lemony Snicket
-- at which point, I will only have six books in the entire series left, and really ought to begin the search to find a new series!
Other...
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas- John Boyne
The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life- Michael Warner
And, being optimistic...
Bleak House- Charles Dickens
The rest of the Lemony Snicket books!
Kinsey's studies on the man and woman
Some sort of women's studies intro text >.<
Is that nine books in nine days? Oy!
Edit: 12/29-- Crossed out,
Already started...
Female Masculinity- Judith Halberstam
From my readings for next quarter..
I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala- Rigoberta Menchu
Continuing Series...
A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the Fifth: The Austere Academy- Lemony Snicket
A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the Sixth: The Ersatz Elevator- Lemony Snicket
A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the Seventh: The Vile Village- Lemony Snicket
-- at which point, I will only have six books in the entire series left, and really ought to begin the search to find a new series!
Other...
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas- John Boyne
The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life- Michael Warner
And, being optimistic...
Bleak House- Charles Dickens
The rest of the Lemony Snicket books!
Kinsey's studies on the man and woman
Some sort of women's studies intro text >.<
Is that nine books in nine days? Oy!
Kinsey Scale
I am a firm believer!
From Wikipedia
I guess I would situate myself somewhere around four or five but really, sexuality is something to explore, not to set rigid rules for! Oh, Kinsey, you understand me so well- I should get your book from the library and watch your biopic again. :)
From Wikipedia
| Rating | Description |
|---|---|
| 0 | Exclusively heterosexual |
| 1 | Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual |
| 2 | Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual |
| 3 | Equally heterosexual and homosexual; bisexual. |
| 4 | Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual |
| 5 | Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual |
| 6 | Exclusively homosexual |
| X | Asexual, Non-Sexual |
I guess I would situate myself somewhere around four or five but really, sexuality is something to explore, not to set rigid rules for! Oh, Kinsey, you understand me so well- I should get your book from the library and watch your biopic again. :)
Monday, December 21, 2009
The Crow
The Crow- Dennis Siluk
Heavy he leans his feathered head
Gazing at the blood red mist
Tired, -- his face shows time has past
And on his tarnished-gray wings-
The world rests...
Has God forsaken you-?
To grief and pain:
To love the sparrow instead?
Are you not the largest of the perching birds?
Crowned with a grayish hood-;
Or are you just a crow...the farmers hate
(or should)...?
Your breath has left you
My feathered friend...
Too week to lift your head again?
What separates you from man?
Is it the sky and land?
Or the road each must go?
Each unto his own...!
It seems to me,
Life's a test for you as well?
But man must ponder on,
And Reason.
What is the question you ask?
I see, within the stare
Of your silent dark eyes:
"Who are these masters who rule the land-?
Give back to me the sky!"
However,--will you fly again?
Touch the heavens?
Light your wings on fire
From the scorching sun?
Glide with the wind until dawn?
Within...but then, you are not made in His Image,
My Friend...!
Monday, December 14, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Race Rant
Okay, so a kid whose a lot older than me brought up that a person is treated how they are viewed, ergo I should not be upset that I am mistaken for a white person even though I am Latina. So, basically, because I'm a fair-skinned Latina, I am treated the same as Caucasians.
Race rant... begin!
For one thing, my main objection to being seen as white versus Latina is that I personally identify MYSELF as a Latina. That is to say I was raised mostly by my mom, who is from Chile, and I feel like I am culturally Latina. I'm not just identifying it as my race, but my culture. And if I have to have labels, which it seems like I must, I want to make them myself.
Plus.... I'm continuing this tomorrow. Just that much wiped me out. Hrml.
Race rant... begin!
For one thing, my main objection to being seen as white versus Latina is that I personally identify MYSELF as a Latina. That is to say I was raised mostly by my mom, who is from Chile, and I feel like I am culturally Latina. I'm not just identifying it as my race, but my culture. And if I have to have labels, which it seems like I must, I want to make them myself.
Plus.... I'm continuing this tomorrow. Just that much wiped me out. Hrml.
Nanowrimo- I Won!
I don't think I've gotten a single congratulation yet, so I'm posting it here that I did in fact write 50,000 words toward a novel in the month of November (actually wrote 60,000). I didn't actually finish the book (three chaps left) but that's not the real point. I'm happy anyway. And I got a lot of words written- phew! So, that's why it says winner over there on the left. I'll take it down in January on account of bragging all year is a little silly.
Anywho, the novel was called The (Mostly) True Story of Ms. Bertha P. Collins, Grandmother, Showman, and Sometimes Usurper, as Told By the Terribly Unfortunate, Blister-Thumbed, Hortensia Higgory Hernandez, Volume 1. Yes, it is rather silly.
Here is the summary:
The biography of Miss Bertha "Bertie" Prudence Collins as recollected by her greatest enemy, Hortensia Higgory Hernandez. Miss Collins is best known for the unfortunate watercolor incident, by which she entered the land of Tyzkule and sparked a revolution. But that part really isn't interesting at all, is it? What readers really will want to know is, does she find love?
Here is the preface, which is by my fictional narrator, Hortensia Higgory Hernandez. It is unedited, so be kind:
Greetings from Hortensia Higgory Hernandez. Yes, it is true, despite my immeasurable fame and uncountable wealth, I have been drawn in to the not-so-noble art of biography writing. I may as well tell you, as it will certainly appear in the latest tunes of the gossip troubadours and besmeared upon the walls of even the humblest of courtyards, that I have been forced to undertake this task- yes, compelled against my very will!- to compose this, the first volume documenting the life of one Miss Bertha P. Collins, grandmother, showman, and sometimes usurper.
How have I, Hortensia Higgory Hernandez, the greatest thumb wrestling champion this world has ever seen, been strong armed into such a dreadful position, you ask. Well, dear friend, come closer, and I shall whisper it in your ear.
It was all that no-good Bertie Collins’ fault! Though my brief interlude in this the first section of this rather too long work does, in fact, spoil the very ending of this text if read as a narrative tale by revealing to you that, yes, the accursed Miss Collins does yet live, I promise you that the suspense has not been relieved at all! For, I will tell you here, on risk of once again becoming imprisoned on a stinking naval ship, that I have every intent of destroying the Collins woman’s very existence before my pen scribbles the final letters, final punctuation marks, final spaces, if one can write such things, within this ridiculous book.
Hear me well! And by “hear” I mean “read, and understand in the very core of your miserable being!” Come along with me and see the terrible creature that is Bertie Collins, for though my pro-Collinsian editor has ruined, I tell you, RUINED the essence of my work by omitting many truths as to the nature of Collins’ wicked existence, I have very cleverly managed to include subtextual references to her true character.
Be not fooled by the propaganda or the kind words of her silly friends and family. It is on account of Collins that I now sit here with blistered thumbs and cracky knuckles. How, after such an ordeal, can I ever defeat even the weakest foe in a tournament of skill, true skill, of the thumb martial art?
You have been warned.
-Hortensia Higgory Hernandez
Now then, I am waiting for your congratulations. Impatiently. :( BTW, this is my third successful year in a row- yayz!
Anywho, the novel was called The (Mostly) True Story of Ms. Bertha P. Collins, Grandmother, Showman, and Sometimes Usurper, as Told By the Terribly Unfortunate, Blister-Thumbed, Hortensia Higgory Hernandez, Volume 1. Yes, it is rather silly.
Here is the summary:
The biography of Miss Bertha "Bertie" Prudence Collins as recollected by her greatest enemy, Hortensia Higgory Hernandez. Miss Collins is best known for the unfortunate watercolor incident, by which she entered the land of Tyzkule and sparked a revolution. But that part really isn't interesting at all, is it? What readers really will want to know is, does she find love?
Here is the preface, which is by my fictional narrator, Hortensia Higgory Hernandez. It is unedited, so be kind:
Greetings from Hortensia Higgory Hernandez. Yes, it is true, despite my immeasurable fame and uncountable wealth, I have been drawn in to the not-so-noble art of biography writing. I may as well tell you, as it will certainly appear in the latest tunes of the gossip troubadours and besmeared upon the walls of even the humblest of courtyards, that I have been forced to undertake this task- yes, compelled against my very will!- to compose this, the first volume documenting the life of one Miss Bertha P. Collins, grandmother, showman, and sometimes usurper.
How have I, Hortensia Higgory Hernandez, the greatest thumb wrestling champion this world has ever seen, been strong armed into such a dreadful position, you ask. Well, dear friend, come closer, and I shall whisper it in your ear.
It was all that no-good Bertie Collins’ fault! Though my brief interlude in this the first section of this rather too long work does, in fact, spoil the very ending of this text if read as a narrative tale by revealing to you that, yes, the accursed Miss Collins does yet live, I promise you that the suspense has not been relieved at all! For, I will tell you here, on risk of once again becoming imprisoned on a stinking naval ship, that I have every intent of destroying the Collins woman’s very existence before my pen scribbles the final letters, final punctuation marks, final spaces, if one can write such things, within this ridiculous book.
Hear me well! And by “hear” I mean “read, and understand in the very core of your miserable being!” Come along with me and see the terrible creature that is Bertie Collins, for though my pro-Collinsian editor has ruined, I tell you, RUINED the essence of my work by omitting many truths as to the nature of Collins’ wicked existence, I have very cleverly managed to include subtextual references to her true character.
Be not fooled by the propaganda or the kind words of her silly friends and family. It is on account of Collins that I now sit here with blistered thumbs and cracky knuckles. How, after such an ordeal, can I ever defeat even the weakest foe in a tournament of skill, true skill, of the thumb martial art?
You have been warned.
-Hortensia Higgory Hernandez
Now then, I am waiting for your congratulations. Impatiently. :( BTW, this is my third successful year in a row- yayz!
Okay, More Puzzle Pirates.
By popular demand! Or not... anyway, I got another limited edition item, and one that you can only get as a gift. Which means I did something good. So I got it somehow. Make sense? No? Not to me either...
The color is WINE and it is limited edition. Oh, and I checked, and I got it on account of I renewed my subscription. Yes, I do pay $50 per year to play this game with all the features. It is totally worth it because sometimes the only thing that can kill stress is a good video game. Ahhh!
Anyway, here my character is in her new slutty outfit, because I got the shirt as a gift, and it's slutty, so the rest had to match, didn't it? Seems an awfully dumb outfit to wear on a pirate ship, but the pants just looked silly, as did the boots, with such a scandalous top.
The color is WINE and it is limited edition. Oh, and I checked, and I got it on account of I renewed my subscription. Yes, I do pay $50 per year to play this game with all the features. It is totally worth it because sometimes the only thing that can kill stress is a good video game. Ahhh!
Anyway, here my character is in her new slutty outfit, because I got the shirt as a gift, and it's slutty, so the rest had to match, didn't it? Seems an awfully dumb outfit to wear on a pirate ship, but the pants just looked silly, as did the boots, with such a scandalous top.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Well, the reviews just won't happen
I've been reading, I promise, but I can't seem to get even brief reviews done for all that I read. On account of that great, miserable, unfortunate, deplorable failing, I will in this thread list all the books I've read since September 10th 2009 and to September 10th, 2010. As you may recall, I think waiting 'til New Years' to make a resolution is lame. It's just a procrastinatory measure. Oh, spell check is unhappy...
Anywho, here is the list. I will include the reviews if I've written them. Unless I get bored. Am worst blogger in history. Then again, they're pretty new, so really I haven't got much to be put against have I? Anyway, it's newest finished closest to the top. And, by the by, I do not include books I'm rereading on this list, though I reread a lot, so be impressed, punk.
12/1/09 Summary- Thirteen books! Be amazed! I'm a grad student, after all, so this is in addition to course readings. Okay, so... (am mathing in another place) about twelve weeks have passed since I started. Twelve times one is twelve (yes, I really did just think that out- see how I love you, I update when I am exhausted.). Which means I'm one book ahead! And I'll probably finish Five Children and It before the real twelve weeks hits (Thursday). Feeling good! Plus, I plan to read pretty much the whole Series of Unfortunate event series (redundant much?) after the quarter ends. Yay! Optimism!
June 8 2010-- Well, I finally am getting around to updating pretty much everything I read extracurricularly Winter and Spring quarters. Wow, a lot of updating to do...Will probably be getting a lot more reading done now that I'm out of the school- rah! ... except I'm researching so much this sum-muh.
edit note: though I did do summer quarter... done tomorrow!
August 27 2010: oops, apparently I miscounted at some point -- So, hurrah- am done!
Kafka on the Shore- Murakami
Nine Pound Hammer- Bemis
Break of Day- Colette
Never Let Me Go- Ishiguro
Hate that Cat- Creech
Cabinet of Curiosities- Preston and Child
Teaching to Transgress- bell hooks
Critical Race Theory: An Intro
Slow Fat Triathlete- Jayne Williams
The Stranger - Albert Camus
The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis
The Old Man and the Sea- Ernest Hemingway
Maisie Dobbs-Jacqueline Winspear
Goodbye, Mr. Chips - James Hamilton
After Dark- Haruki Murakami
Eat, Pray, Love- Elizabeth Gilbert
House and Philosophy: Everybody Lies- Ed. Henry Jacoby
Girls in Peril- Karen Lee Boren
Polyverse- Lee Ann Brown
History of Sexuality Volume 1- Michele Foucault
How to Train Your Dragon- Cressida Cowell
Geography- Kelli Russell Agodon
The Cancer Journals- Audre Lorde
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo- Stieg Larsson
Ghost Boy- Iain Lawrence
Moon Opera- Bi Feiyu
The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison
Disquiet- Julia Leigh--Creeeeepy!
The Possession- Annie Ernaux
Beauty Salon- Mario Bellatin-- Hauntingly interesting. Highly recommended!
A is for Alibi- Sue Grafton
A Single Man- Christopher Isherwood
Gentlemen of the Road- Michael Chabon-- Don't be fooled! Even though it's by the fabulous Michael Chabon, this book is TERRIBLE. Possibly the worst book I've ever read. I want to buy and burn it, but then I'd be financially supporting this crap. I'm not even linking it because it is so bad.
Letter to My Daughter- George Bishop Jr.
The Malady of Death- Marguerite Duras
Newcomer Can't Swim- Renee Gladman
A Picture-feeling- Renee Gladman
The Activist- Renee Gladman
The Yiddish Policemen's Union-Michael Chabon
A Mercy- Toni Morrison
Shutter Island- Dennis Lehane
Little Women- Louisa May Alcott
Hard Times- Charles Dickens
Geography Club- Brent Hartinger
Empress of the World- Sara Ryan
Ash- Malinda Lo
I, Rigoberta Menchu- Rigoberta Menchu
Frame Structures: Early Poems: 1974-1979- Susan Howe
Juice- Renee Gladman
The War- Marguerite Duras
The Lover- Marguerite Duras
Trans-Liberation- Leslie Feinberg
The Jungle Book- Rudyard Kipling
A Series of Unfortunate Events Book the Fourth: the Miserable Mill- Lemony Snicket
The Gates- John Connolly
Five Children and It- Nesbit
The Afterlife- Soto
A Series of Unfortunate Events Book the Third: The Wide Window- Lemony Snicket
Crossing the Wire- Hobbs
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days- Kinney
Slaughter-house Five- Vonnegut
Esperanza Rising- Munoz Ryan
Push- Sapphire
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society- Barrows and Shaffer
Peter and the Shadow Thieves- Barry and Pearson
Elsewhere- Zevin
Border Crossing- Cruz
It's nice to find a book out there dealing with the experiences of multiracial children, but this book was only decently written. Sometimes, it felt more like a lecture than an illustrated lesson, and the coincidences were a little too far-fetched to be believable. Plus, there was a pretty noticeable typo regarding which country San Diego was in- at one point the narrator gets off the bus in San Diego and is suddenly in Mexico. Overall, though, the novel covers themes not expressed at all or at all effectively elsewhere and fills a gap with mediocre skill.
Love That Dog- Creech
Told through the poem's enclosed in a boy's school journal, Love That Dog is a story of loss, healing, and artistic awakening. One of the most original children's stories I've ever read and uniquely beautiful among Creech's plethora of gorgeous works. A wonderful book to introduce to young artists not yet mature enough to take on Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.
Let Me In- Lindqvist
While many literary critics quickly associate the voice of John Ajvide Lindqvist with other more well-known writers of the horror genre, Lindqvist should be noted as a young artist noteworthy for his particular distinctness of story-telling and narrative. In an era that has seen the violent vampire myth turned into a romantic topic of teen angst, Lindqvist imagines vampirism in its darkest hours, weaving a tale of murder, sadism, and everyday suffering, in which it is not so much the vampires as the humans who are the monsters.
Lindqvist's take on the necessities for the modern vampire's survival is innovative and disturbing; the vampire-girl Eli lives in the body of a 12-year-old and thus depends on a middle-aged pedophile to support her need for blood. She is too young for work but cannot survive in a modern world without financial assets, and so takes money from her victims. As a vampire or vampire-like creature, she does not kill for pleasure but purely to survive, and the author clearly illustrates for readers that most people-turned-vampire cannot make the choice to kill, and instead commit suicide.
While the story primarily focuses on the extended life of Eli and her new friend Oskar, a viciously bullied 12-year-old boy, it also shows how their situations affect those around them. Vampirism is treated as an epidemic that Eli attempts to contain but which somehow continues to spread throughout the novel, creating on particularly terrifying character both in appearance and mannerism. The town of Blackeberg itself becomes a character, treated as the Transylvania of the Bram Stoker novel.
Anywho, here is the list. I will include the reviews if I've written them. Unless I get bored. Am worst blogger in history. Then again, they're pretty new, so really I haven't got much to be put against have I? Anyway, it's newest finished closest to the top. And, by the by, I do not include books I'm rereading on this list, though I reread a lot, so be impressed, punk.
12/1/09 Summary- Thirteen books! Be amazed! I'm a grad student, after all, so this is in addition to course readings. Okay, so... (am mathing in another place) about twelve weeks have passed since I started. Twelve times one is twelve (yes, I really did just think that out- see how I love you, I update when I am exhausted.). Which means I'm one book ahead! And I'll probably finish Five Children and It before the real twelve weeks hits (Thursday). Feeling good! Plus, I plan to read pretty much the whole Series of Unfortunate event series (redundant much?) after the quarter ends. Yay! Optimism!
June 8 2010-- Well, I finally am getting around to updating pretty much everything I read extracurricularly Winter and Spring quarters. Wow, a lot of updating to do...Will probably be getting a lot more reading done now that I'm out of the school- rah! ... except I'm researching so much this sum-muh.
edit note: though I did do summer quarter... done tomorrow!
August 27 2010: oops, apparently I miscounted at some point -- So, hurrah- am done!
Kafka on the Shore- Murakami
Nine Pound Hammer- Bemis
Break of Day- Colette
Never Let Me Go- Ishiguro
Hate that Cat- Creech
Cabinet of Curiosities- Preston and Child
Teaching to Transgress- bell hooks
Critical Race Theory: An Intro
Slow Fat Triathlete- Jayne Williams
The Stranger - Albert Camus
The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis
The Old Man and the Sea- Ernest Hemingway
Maisie Dobbs-Jacqueline Winspear
Goodbye, Mr. Chips - James Hamilton
After Dark- Haruki Murakami
Eat, Pray, Love- Elizabeth Gilbert
House and Philosophy: Everybody Lies- Ed. Henry Jacoby
Girls in Peril- Karen Lee Boren
Polyverse- Lee Ann Brown
History of Sexuality Volume 1- Michele Foucault
How to Train Your Dragon- Cressida Cowell
Geography- Kelli Russell Agodon
The Cancer Journals- Audre Lorde
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo- Stieg Larsson
Ghost Boy- Iain Lawrence
Moon Opera- Bi Feiyu
The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison
Disquiet- Julia Leigh--Creeeeepy!
The Possession- Annie Ernaux
Beauty Salon- Mario Bellatin-- Hauntingly interesting. Highly recommended!
A is for Alibi- Sue Grafton
A Single Man- Christopher Isherwood
Gentlemen of the Road- Michael Chabon-- Don't be fooled! Even though it's by the fabulous Michael Chabon, this book is TERRIBLE. Possibly the worst book I've ever read. I want to buy and burn it, but then I'd be financially supporting this crap. I'm not even linking it because it is so bad.
Letter to My Daughter- George Bishop Jr.
The Malady of Death- Marguerite Duras
Newcomer Can't Swim- Renee Gladman
A Picture-feeling- Renee Gladman
The Activist- Renee Gladman
The Yiddish Policemen's Union-Michael Chabon
A Mercy- Toni Morrison
Shutter Island- Dennis Lehane
Little Women- Louisa May Alcott
Hard Times- Charles Dickens
Geography Club- Brent Hartinger
Empress of the World- Sara Ryan
Ash- Malinda Lo
I, Rigoberta Menchu- Rigoberta Menchu
Frame Structures: Early Poems: 1974-1979- Susan Howe
Juice- Renee Gladman
The War- Marguerite Duras
The Lover- Marguerite Duras
Trans-Liberation- Leslie Feinberg
The Jungle Book- Rudyard Kipling
A Series of Unfortunate Events Book the Fourth: the Miserable Mill- Lemony Snicket
The Gates- John Connolly
Five Children and It- Nesbit
The Afterlife- Soto
A Series of Unfortunate Events Book the Third: The Wide Window- Lemony Snicket
Crossing the Wire- Hobbs
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days- Kinney
Slaughter-house Five- Vonnegut
Esperanza Rising- Munoz Ryan
Push- Sapphire
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society- Barrows and Shaffer
Peter and the Shadow Thieves- Barry and Pearson
Elsewhere- Zevin
Border Crossing- Cruz
It's nice to find a book out there dealing with the experiences of multiracial children, but this book was only decently written. Sometimes, it felt more like a lecture than an illustrated lesson, and the coincidences were a little too far-fetched to be believable. Plus, there was a pretty noticeable typo regarding which country San Diego was in- at one point the narrator gets off the bus in San Diego and is suddenly in Mexico. Overall, though, the novel covers themes not expressed at all or at all effectively elsewhere and fills a gap with mediocre skill.
Love That Dog- Creech
Told through the poem's enclosed in a boy's school journal, Love That Dog is a story of loss, healing, and artistic awakening. One of the most original children's stories I've ever read and uniquely beautiful among Creech's plethora of gorgeous works. A wonderful book to introduce to young artists not yet mature enough to take on Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.
Let Me In- Lindqvist
While many literary critics quickly associate the voice of John Ajvide Lindqvist with other more well-known writers of the horror genre, Lindqvist should be noted as a young artist noteworthy for his particular distinctness of story-telling and narrative. In an era that has seen the violent vampire myth turned into a romantic topic of teen angst, Lindqvist imagines vampirism in its darkest hours, weaving a tale of murder, sadism, and everyday suffering, in which it is not so much the vampires as the humans who are the monsters.
Lindqvist's take on the necessities for the modern vampire's survival is innovative and disturbing; the vampire-girl Eli lives in the body of a 12-year-old and thus depends on a middle-aged pedophile to support her need for blood. She is too young for work but cannot survive in a modern world without financial assets, and so takes money from her victims. As a vampire or vampire-like creature, she does not kill for pleasure but purely to survive, and the author clearly illustrates for readers that most people-turned-vampire cannot make the choice to kill, and instead commit suicide.
While the story primarily focuses on the extended life of Eli and her new friend Oskar, a viciously bullied 12-year-old boy, it also shows how their situations affect those around them. Vampirism is treated as an epidemic that Eli attempts to contain but which somehow continues to spread throughout the novel, creating on particularly terrifying character both in appearance and mannerism. The town of Blackeberg itself becomes a character, treated as the Transylvania of the Bram Stoker novel.
Female Masculinity and Locker Rooms
In the introduction of her book, Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam explains what she refers to as "the bathroom problem" (20), essentially the difficulty that people of ambiguous genders (butch women, transgender individuals, drag kings/queens, etc.) face when they try to use public restrooms. Halberstam recounts her own experiences having security called on her while trying to use the women's room, as well as those of Leslie Feinberg in Stone Butch Blues and the character Remedios in Nice Rodriguez's "Every Full Moon." Usually these people, women in each cases that Halberstam highlights, are either confronted by other women in the restroom or by security guards, forcing them into the uncomfortable situation of having to prove their woman-ness.
This reading got me thinking about locker rooms, and how such gender-specific spaces can lead to additional problems. No, I'm not going to go off on how much the above situations could be worsened in the context of a locker room. I could, because I imagine these scenarios are much less pleasant, if that's at all possible, with nudity involved.
I could especially because, while some facilities include"family" bathrooms*, there aren't any "family" locker rooms that provide single-occupancy changing facilities. True, there are individual, draped showers and changing rooms within the men's and women's locker rooms, but one must travel through a locker room, past the naked people, to reach them. The "family" changing room, at least at my local YMCA, is multi-family oriented, which means that anyone can walk in on you at any point and really offers zero privacy. I'm not entirely sure what their points are, to be perfectly honest.
At any rate, I'm not going to pursue any of those lines of inquiry at this particular time, as I am more interested in an issue that I feel troubles me more personally. Instead, I am going to go consider the awkwardness of same-sex sexual attraction in the locker room.
(At this point, and for the sake of avoiding awkwardness, I advice my dearest mother (aka mi mamacita fantástica) to discontinue her perusal of my always riveting text and instead go buy herself a lovely double latte. Cheers.)
Below is an excerpt from my novel for National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) last year, entitled Dedication.
“So, tell me about yourself. Any terrible disappointments? Daddy rape you? Mommy hit you?”
“No, nothing like that.” I blushed lightly, and tried to come up with something slightly unpleasant and far less private than what she was assuredly asking for. Of course there was an obvious thing I might've said.
I’d grown up almost when things turned bad. I was probably fifteen, radiant perhaps, and young and awakening, when everything turned sour quite suddenly.
I’d begun training at the local gym to try to thin out my wide latina thighs and rear-end a little bit, hoping to look at least something like the girls my age that somehow made it onto television shows and into magazines. Every morning I went running at my gym until I thought for sure my muscles would burst out of my legs and abandon their sadistic mistress, and later made sure to take a shower before school.
Of course, showers tend to be where these sorts of things happen, these sudden inspirations. One of the other women cleaning herself must have been a trainer herself or something, or at least someone who exercised a rather lot, for she had toned her body so that it was as firm and shapely as a sculpture. Her skin was as dark and shined beautifully beneath the water, which must have been cold too chill the heat of her exercise away, for her nipples were wonderfully erect, like a pair of Hershey’s kisses. Her eyes were closed in ecstasy as the water washed over her, pouring from her forehead and catching at her crotch before dripping into the drain. Her legs were parted ever so slightly, probably for balance in the slippery shower room, and she leaned back against the wall for support. Her face wore an enormous smile, and she sighed contentedly from time to time.
I just stood and stared, and I knew. I could feel myself suddenly come to womanhood in that moment, and I didn’t even try to fight the way I felt, however wrong it might be with my parents or God or whomever (5).
The trouble is, apart from a few cheap thrills, which, honestly, if you don't know, feel really cheap, it can be awfully awkward to have to avert your eyes from every nude person you come across when in the locker room. I must continuously avoid catching the merest glimpse of a naked lady, one to whom I am attracted or not, for fear of falling into self-loathing as an unpleasant after effect.
And, I am no prude. I enjoy pornography and erotica and "adult" materials immensely. Looking at a beautiful naked woman who has not undressed herself for your pleasure (or money, I suppose) is entirely different, however, for she is simply, in this context, going about her business cleaning herself. She is meant to feel safe in the company of woman, and I feel myself coming to shame for betraying her trust. Then, I feel like a pervert.
Now, this just isn't fair.
I really shouldn't feel like a pervert, right? It isn't my fault that I'm attracted to her and that I haven't been successful in my continuous efforts to avoid looking at her. I feel awful for feeling perverted, because the further implication is that homosexuality is perverted, which, though I do not believe when considering the sexuality of others, I always worry about falling into believing when considering myself.
It is hard enough being a lesbian and a feminist! I find myself reading about the "male gaze" and worrying that I am contributing to the subjugation of women simply by agreeing with the heterosexual male sexual attractedness to women. Here, I think, is the difficult issue, and I hope to find a scholar far cleverer than myself who has tackled it in the near future.
*Note: Apparently, the UW Seattle's Q Center has a unisex bathroom campus map available! Now, I haven't visited these restrooms... or at least haven't knowingly visited any of them, but the next time I go to campus, you can bet your butter I will investigate whether these restrooms are actually "unisex" or secretly "family" bathrooms. Anyway, in the meanwhile, I will provide you with the link: Unisex Bathrooms!
Works Cited
Halberstam, Judith. "An Introduction to Female Masculinity: Masculinity without Men." Female Masculinity. Durham and London: Duke U P, 1998. 1-43.
hooks, bell. Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. New York and London: Routledge, 1996.
Martin, Amanda. Dedication. Unpublished.
P.S. I will take you to court so fast you lose your socks if you try to steal my sexual awakening short autobio piece. Just saying...
This reading got me thinking about locker rooms, and how such gender-specific spaces can lead to additional problems. No, I'm not going to go off on how much the above situations could be worsened in the context of a locker room. I could, because I imagine these scenarios are much less pleasant, if that's at all possible, with nudity involved.
I could especially because, while some facilities include"family" bathrooms*, there aren't any "family" locker rooms that provide single-occupancy changing facilities. True, there are individual, draped showers and changing rooms within the men's and women's locker rooms, but one must travel through a locker room, past the naked people, to reach them. The "family" changing room, at least at my local YMCA, is multi-family oriented, which means that anyone can walk in on you at any point and really offers zero privacy. I'm not entirely sure what their points are, to be perfectly honest.
At any rate, I'm not going to pursue any of those lines of inquiry at this particular time, as I am more interested in an issue that I feel troubles me more personally. Instead, I am going to go consider the awkwardness of same-sex sexual attraction in the locker room.
(At this point, and for the sake of avoiding awkwardness, I advice my dearest mother (aka mi mamacita fantástica) to discontinue her perusal of my always riveting text and instead go buy herself a lovely double latte. Cheers.)
Below is an excerpt from my novel for National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) last year, entitled Dedication.
“So, tell me about yourself. Any terrible disappointments? Daddy rape you? Mommy hit you?”
“No, nothing like that.” I blushed lightly, and tried to come up with something slightly unpleasant and far less private than what she was assuredly asking for. Of course there was an obvious thing I might've said.
I’d grown up almost when things turned bad. I was probably fifteen, radiant perhaps, and young and awakening, when everything turned sour quite suddenly.
I’d begun training at the local gym to try to thin out my wide latina thighs and rear-end a little bit, hoping to look at least something like the girls my age that somehow made it onto television shows and into magazines. Every morning I went running at my gym until I thought for sure my muscles would burst out of my legs and abandon their sadistic mistress, and later made sure to take a shower before school.
Of course, showers tend to be where these sorts of things happen, these sudden inspirations. One of the other women cleaning herself must have been a trainer herself or something, or at least someone who exercised a rather lot, for she had toned her body so that it was as firm and shapely as a sculpture. Her skin was as dark and shined beautifully beneath the water, which must have been cold too chill the heat of her exercise away, for her nipples were wonderfully erect, like a pair of Hershey’s kisses. Her eyes were closed in ecstasy as the water washed over her, pouring from her forehead and catching at her crotch before dripping into the drain. Her legs were parted ever so slightly, probably for balance in the slippery shower room, and she leaned back against the wall for support. Her face wore an enormous smile, and she sighed contentedly from time to time.
I just stood and stared, and I knew. I could feel myself suddenly come to womanhood in that moment, and I didn’t even try to fight the way I felt, however wrong it might be with my parents or God or whomever (5).
The trouble is, apart from a few cheap thrills, which, honestly, if you don't know, feel really cheap, it can be awfully awkward to have to avert your eyes from every nude person you come across when in the locker room. I must continuously avoid catching the merest glimpse of a naked lady, one to whom I am attracted or not, for fear of falling into self-loathing as an unpleasant after effect.
And, I am no prude. I enjoy pornography and erotica and "adult" materials immensely. Looking at a beautiful naked woman who has not undressed herself for your pleasure (or money, I suppose) is entirely different, however, for she is simply, in this context, going about her business cleaning herself. She is meant to feel safe in the company of woman, and I feel myself coming to shame for betraying her trust. Then, I feel like a pervert.
Now, this just isn't fair.
I really shouldn't feel like a pervert, right? It isn't my fault that I'm attracted to her and that I haven't been successful in my continuous efforts to avoid looking at her. I feel awful for feeling perverted, because the further implication is that homosexuality is perverted, which, though I do not believe when considering the sexuality of others, I always worry about falling into believing when considering myself.
It is hard enough being a lesbian and a feminist! I find myself reading about the "male gaze" and worrying that I am contributing to the subjugation of women simply by agreeing with the heterosexual male sexual attractedness to women. Here, I think, is the difficult issue, and I hope to find a scholar far cleverer than myself who has tackled it in the near future.
*Note: Apparently, the UW Seattle's Q Center has a unisex bathroom campus map available! Now, I haven't visited these restrooms... or at least haven't knowingly visited any of them, but the next time I go to campus, you can bet your butter I will investigate whether these restrooms are actually "unisex" or secretly "family" bathrooms. Anyway, in the meanwhile, I will provide you with the link: Unisex Bathrooms!
Works Cited
Halberstam, Judith. "An Introduction to Female Masculinity: Masculinity without Men." Female Masculinity. Durham and London: Duke U P, 1998. 1-43.
hooks, bell. Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. New York and London: Routledge, 1996.
Martin, Amanda. Dedication. Unpublished.
P.S. I will take you to court so fast you lose your socks if you try to steal my sexual awakening short autobio piece. Just saying...
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
This is What Happens When You are SICK
Yes, it is true, the rumors, I mean (lookit all those commas). I am now a ranked Puzzle Pirates Player (alliteration!). Also, I got a pretty darned awesome hat, and am now the most fashionable pirate in the whole entire game (yargh!)
Yeah, that's not my dog. But that is my hat. I forget what it is called, possibly a buccaneer hat- they look similar, right?
Also, I have two trophies for becoming illustrious, which means, becoming RANKED. Which, in turn, means I've been playing way way way way (four, count 'em) too much. But anyway, here are images from the YPPEDIA (Yohoho Puzzle Pirates Encyclopedia) of the trophies I have for Exploring and being a Magnate.
They are, top to bottom, the Monogrammed Ingot and the Gilded Atlas. Be *amazed*. Or not... I really need to get a real life, don't I? Cough. That's not an order. That's a me coughing from the awkwardness of my situation.
EDIT: It is actually a COCKADE HAT- it is limited edition, so it's a lot harder to find on the YPPEDIA (Yohoho Puzzle Pirates Encyclopedia):
Yeah, that's not my dog. But that is my hat. I forget what it is called, possibly a buccaneer hat- they look similar, right?
Also, I have two trophies for becoming illustrious, which means, becoming RANKED. Which, in turn, means I've been playing way way way way (four, count 'em) too much. But anyway, here are images from the YPPEDIA (Yohoho Puzzle Pirates Encyclopedia) of the trophies I have for Exploring and being a Magnate.
They are, top to bottom, the Monogrammed Ingot and the Gilded Atlas. Be *amazed*. Or not... I really need to get a real life, don't I? Cough. That's not an order. That's a me coughing from the awkwardness of my situation.
EDIT: It is actually a COCKADE HAT- it is limited edition, so it's a lot harder to find on the YPPEDIA (Yohoho Puzzle Pirates Encyclopedia):
Monday, November 23, 2009
More Tweets....
Anywho, I made tomato soup from scratch tonight because... well... I'd have rather hung out with someone or other but ya'll are busy or out of the country (*cough* Courts, mom *cough*) so instead, I made soup. Along the process, I updated my Twitter status. I apologize for the profanity. This is what being crazy does to your tongue.
Order goes newest to oldest, so start at the BOTTOM.
# mandycandyland
I made this recipe! http://www.foodnetwork.com/... less than 5 seconds ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
Holy f*cks. It is delicious. Am culinary genius. Have burn size of Texas, but it is totally worth it. You may feel free to congratulate me. 7 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
wish me luck, I'mma taste it a bit now. Maybe a few more sips of champagne first.... 8 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
WTF, apparently I do have a hand held immersion blender O.o where did you come from, little guy? 13 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
While looking for a blender, I found a food chopper. Will bite my thumb at it repeatedly. It is too late for you, luxury equipment! 14 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
Solution! Thank you 101 Cooking! "Alternately, use a conventional blender or food processor and work in batches." 17 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
orange juice is overrated. Cheers! 18 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
unless breaking out the champagne before concluding is bad luck.... I don't think so... hrm.. 20 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
Hrm, will come up with clever alternative. In the mean time, will have mimosa. 23 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
Dude, I don't got this shit. http://www.cooking.com/prod... 31 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
"Puree with a hand held immersion blender until smooth." What the hell is a hand held immersion blender?! 34 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
burnt my hand on hot oil- must be careful not to splash! 43 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
dude, what is the difference between "diced" and "chopped"? Will assume they are close enough to the same O.o about 1 hour ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
attempting to make tomato soap from scratch. Will tweet throughout. Eeeek! about 1 hour ago from web
Order goes newest to oldest, so start at the BOTTOM.
# mandycandyland
I made this recipe! http://www.foodnetwork.com/... less than 5 seconds ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
Holy f*cks. It is delicious. Am culinary genius. Have burn size of Texas, but it is totally worth it. You may feel free to congratulate me. 7 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
wish me luck, I'mma taste it a bit now. Maybe a few more sips of champagne first.... 8 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
WTF, apparently I do have a hand held immersion blender O.o where did you come from, little guy? 13 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
While looking for a blender, I found a food chopper. Will bite my thumb at it repeatedly. It is too late for you, luxury equipment! 14 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
Solution! Thank you 101 Cooking! "Alternately, use a conventional blender or food processor and work in batches." 17 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
orange juice is overrated. Cheers! 18 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
unless breaking out the champagne before concluding is bad luck.... I don't think so... hrm.. 20 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
Hrm, will come up with clever alternative. In the mean time, will have mimosa. 23 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
Dude, I don't got this shit. http://www.cooking.com/prod... 31 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
"Puree with a hand held immersion blender until smooth." What the hell is a hand held immersion blender?! 34 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
burnt my hand on hot oil- must be careful not to splash! 43 minutes ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
dude, what is the difference between "diced" and "chopped"? Will assume they are close enough to the same O.o about 1 hour ago from web
# Amanda Martin mandycandyland
attempting to make tomato soap from scratch. Will tweet throughout. Eeeek! about 1 hour ago from web
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Short, Short, Short, but I was Amused!
So, Neil Patrick Harris is on Twitter now (@ActuallyNPH), and he's hilarious as all heck.
I'm documenting his Tweets thus far, because I want to look back and laugh again:
It goes newest to oldest, top to bottom.
1.
Alright, alright. I'm done with the '140 character' running gag. Sorry, it makes me laugh. But as my wise father Ron always says, "Know w about 4 hours ago from web
* Reply
2.
Ok. So. Now that I've figured out this 140 character stuff, get this - Tim Gunn bursts out of his room, walks right up to me and says, "Ne about 7 hours ago from Twitterrific
* Reply
3.
On set. Best guest star EVER! The entire cast/crew was super stoked. No one more than me: http://yfrog.com/0w5ostj about 9 hours ago from Twitterrific
* Reply
4.
Prfkt. Thx 4 L th advyc evry1. This s a way ezr way 2 cmuNik8. Un42n8ly, itz takn me 3 hrz 2 ryt, but itz much pre4d 2 gtn cut off lyk i u about 15 hours ago from web
* Reply
5.
@alwaysmix : Ah, perfect. Thanks. I totally get it now. about 16 hours ago from web in reply to alwaysmix
* Reply
6.
'Morning. Reading backlog of responses and sipping coffee. How many times should one tweet per day? BTW this character limit hokum is pis about 16 hours ago from web
* Reply
7.
Holy Pete, so many responses! Thanks, gang! I'm still trying to figure out which button does what..! And this 140 character limit is craz 8:11 PM Nov 16th from Twitterrific
* Reply
8.
Felicia Day is popular. She mentions me and Twitter and Kablammo! http://yfrog.com/15aklrj 5:05 PM Nov 16th from Twitterrific
* Reply
9.
My first tweet, peeps. I apologize in advance for my slow learning curve. Nice to (sort of) meet you. It's amazing how quickly 140 charac 2:02 PM Nov 16th from web
I'm documenting his Tweets thus far, because I want to look back and laugh again:
It goes newest to oldest, top to bottom.
1.
Alright, alright. I'm done with the '140 character' running gag. Sorry, it makes me laugh. But as my wise father Ron always says, "Know w about 4 hours ago from web
* Reply
2.
Ok. So. Now that I've figured out this 140 character stuff, get this - Tim Gunn bursts out of his room, walks right up to me and says, "Ne about 7 hours ago from Twitterrific
* Reply
3.
On set. Best guest star EVER! The entire cast/crew was super stoked. No one more than me: http://yfrog.com/0w5ostj about 9 hours ago from Twitterrific
* Reply
4.
Prfkt. Thx 4 L th advyc evry1. This s a way ezr way 2 cmuNik8. Un42n8ly, itz takn me 3 hrz 2 ryt, but itz much pre4d 2 gtn cut off lyk i u about 15 hours ago from web
* Reply
5.
@alwaysmix : Ah, perfect. Thanks. I totally get it now. about 16 hours ago from web in reply to alwaysmix
* Reply
6.
'Morning. Reading backlog of responses and sipping coffee. How many times should one tweet per day? BTW this character limit hokum is pis about 16 hours ago from web
* Reply
7.
Holy Pete, so many responses! Thanks, gang! I'm still trying to figure out which button does what..! And this 140 character limit is craz 8:11 PM Nov 16th from Twitterrific
* Reply
8.
Felicia Day is popular. She mentions me and Twitter and Kablammo! http://yfrog.com/15aklrj 5:05 PM Nov 16th from Twitterrific
* Reply
9.
My first tweet, peeps. I apologize in advance for my slow learning curve. Nice to (sort of) meet you. It's amazing how quickly 140 charac 2:02 PM Nov 16th from web
Monday, November 16, 2009
Sappy Love Poem
As much as it is possible for one human being to own another wholly
I belong to you, Annabelle
If you wanted to, you could bottle up my soul like a green glowing fairy
You could use me as a nightlight, a candle, a reading lamp
I would always glow for you, bright as I could or dim as you like
And, if you asked me, I would snuff myself out to let you sleep
I belong to you, Annabelle
You, you were always so devoutly Catholic, you prayed for me
You gave yourself to something big
You asked for my salvation
I went through the motions. That is love
I bathed naked in a basin of holy water with a priest watching and muttering
I learned the words. I would have memorized encyclopedias for you,
But really, it’s all silly to me, giving myself to God, because I know wholeheartedly that
I belong to you, Annabelle
If you asked me to, I would jump from the top of a skyscraper, the Tower of Babel even,
If you asked me to, I would
I wouldn’t even be afraid, I feel as though I wouldn’t fall but only fly
I know that I could
How can a person fall in love? No, we do not fall
We jump and we expect to fall and be crushed
Sometimes we lose our gifts and end up broken on the pavement
But, forever now, I can float within the wind like an autumn leaf
I belong to you, Annabelle
I find myself stripped of all my being, my many labels, everything I thought I was
And there you are
Beneath, I have found you
Of course, I’m just an ugly thing, an ugly mold of blood and flesh and bone
But, because I know that you are there underneath it all, you are all I am,
And I am beautiful
And you, my beloved, you tell me that I am beautiful, but I’m distracted by your lips
I’m distracted by you always. This is my bliss
I belong to you, Annabelle
Burn out my eyes, cut out my heart, chop away my useless limbs, pour acid on my face
That is not pain, no
Pull me out in front of a million people and call me a coward, a whore, an abomination
Tell them all my greatest shames, remind them of my failures
Whip my back and stab my chest. Kill me!
They can do whatever they like, inside I will laugh!
Underneath, in that place that is you
They cannot touch you with their violence, you are safe within me always.
That’s all that matters.
You
You are all that matters
I belong to you, Annabelle
And you will dwell within this pining, silly, maudlin heart
Even if my soul should be extinguished
Or any number of gods forsakes me, and strikes me down to size
If I am taken into a million different pieces and scattered to the wind
Even if I lose hold of my mind, believe I’m someone else, someone who never knew you
If I am lost to age, accident, another’s anger, apocalypse, Alzheimer’s
If one day I forget you
I will, beyond any doubt, remain
Your happy,
Your most dutiful servant
Your protector
Your winter coat
And, I hope, your love
If you’ll have me
(and even if you won’t)
Annabelle
I belong to you, Annabelle
And you, only, only you.
Copyright Amanda Martin 2009
I belong to you, Annabelle
If you wanted to, you could bottle up my soul like a green glowing fairy
You could use me as a nightlight, a candle, a reading lamp
I would always glow for you, bright as I could or dim as you like
And, if you asked me, I would snuff myself out to let you sleep
I belong to you, Annabelle
You, you were always so devoutly Catholic, you prayed for me
You gave yourself to something big
You asked for my salvation
I went through the motions. That is love
I bathed naked in a basin of holy water with a priest watching and muttering
I learned the words. I would have memorized encyclopedias for you,
But really, it’s all silly to me, giving myself to God, because I know wholeheartedly that
I belong to you, Annabelle
If you asked me to, I would jump from the top of a skyscraper, the Tower of Babel even,
If you asked me to, I would
I wouldn’t even be afraid, I feel as though I wouldn’t fall but only fly
I know that I could
How can a person fall in love? No, we do not fall
We jump and we expect to fall and be crushed
Sometimes we lose our gifts and end up broken on the pavement
But, forever now, I can float within the wind like an autumn leaf
I belong to you, Annabelle
I find myself stripped of all my being, my many labels, everything I thought I was
And there you are
Beneath, I have found you
Of course, I’m just an ugly thing, an ugly mold of blood and flesh and bone
But, because I know that you are there underneath it all, you are all I am,
And I am beautiful
And you, my beloved, you tell me that I am beautiful, but I’m distracted by your lips
I’m distracted by you always. This is my bliss
I belong to you, Annabelle
Burn out my eyes, cut out my heart, chop away my useless limbs, pour acid on my face
That is not pain, no
Pull me out in front of a million people and call me a coward, a whore, an abomination
Tell them all my greatest shames, remind them of my failures
Whip my back and stab my chest. Kill me!
They can do whatever they like, inside I will laugh!
Underneath, in that place that is you
They cannot touch you with their violence, you are safe within me always.
That’s all that matters.
You
You are all that matters
I belong to you, Annabelle
And you will dwell within this pining, silly, maudlin heart
Even if my soul should be extinguished
Or any number of gods forsakes me, and strikes me down to size
If I am taken into a million different pieces and scattered to the wind
Even if I lose hold of my mind, believe I’m someone else, someone who never knew you
If I am lost to age, accident, another’s anger, apocalypse, Alzheimer’s
If one day I forget you
I will, beyond any doubt, remain
Your happy,
Your most dutiful servant
Your protector
Your winter coat
And, I hope, your love
If you’ll have me
(and even if you won’t)
Annabelle
I belong to you, Annabelle
And you, only, only you.
Copyright Amanda Martin 2009
Nanowrimo 2009
It came out in a drizzle at first then poured out all at once in a massive eruption not unlike that of Mt. St. Helens. I'm sure my creativity could have wiped out villages and encased Yakima in two inches of thick, white ash. In fact, I have it on good authority that it might very well have done just that. Maybe.
Anyway, I have hit 37,000 words this weekend, which means that I am well past the halfway mark (25,000) for Nanowrimo, though I (woe to me!) remain bit short of the halfway point in my actual novel. Now, what am I to do? Should I attempt simply to meet the 50,000 word Nanowrimo goal ("simply," really? Who do I think I'm fooling?) OR actually complete the silly, overly bulky novel? After all, it isn't "National [50,000 Words of a] Novel Writing Month."
Unless, of course, they simply cut out those extra words for the sake of catchiness. Clever marketers that they are...
In any event, I get the terrible, dreadful, awful feeling that my book this year will have to be at least 70,000 words, which means, despite my efforts to get ahead of my word count, I am only just where I need to be in terms of finishing the #%*& book. Alas, alack, I feel that such cruelty of myself toward myself can only be expressed through the random vomiting of four letter words.
So, what thinks thee, gentle reader? Ought I make my goal the 50,000 words or the novel's actual completion? How lofty ought I make my dreams? In short, how much should I spend on liquor this month?
Love to you all, and merry Monday.
Anyway, I have hit 37,000 words this weekend, which means that I am well past the halfway mark (25,000) for Nanowrimo, though I (woe to me!) remain bit short of the halfway point in my actual novel. Now, what am I to do? Should I attempt simply to meet the 50,000 word Nanowrimo goal ("simply," really? Who do I think I'm fooling?) OR actually complete the silly, overly bulky novel? After all, it isn't "National [50,000 Words of a] Novel Writing Month."
Unless, of course, they simply cut out those extra words for the sake of catchiness. Clever marketers that they are...
In any event, I get the terrible, dreadful, awful feeling that my book this year will have to be at least 70,000 words, which means, despite my efforts to get ahead of my word count, I am only just where I need to be in terms of finishing the #%*& book. Alas, alack, I feel that such cruelty of myself toward myself can only be expressed through the random vomiting of four letter words.
So, what thinks thee, gentle reader? Ought I make my goal the 50,000 words or the novel's actual completion? How lofty ought I make my dreams? In short, how much should I spend on liquor this month?
Love to you all, and merry Monday.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Sad poem- not for the eyes of my mom!
So if you are reading this, mi mama magnifica, stop! It is too sad, and I don't want you to become sad! See what a good daughter I am?
Last Poem
It’s been a few months now
Since we last spoke
My tan begins to fade, the trees shed their leaves
The kitten we found has grown big
He no longer reminds me of you
He purrs and makes me smile
And sheds all over my black pants
I don’t cry for you much anymore
My hair is longer now and I have bangs
All of the holiday decorations are up in the stores
And soon the sales will begin
I had to replace my computer again
The bees in the hive outside my window are all dead
I find myself writing about you less and less often
Soon I won’t write of you at all
The wind is loud and pulls at scarves
It sounds like a ghost at the window
The grass in all the yards grows long
I began a new job, I’m at a new school
And all of my hobbies have changed
You used to sing for me as I played the piano
Now I play the piano to fill the house
I make no music for you these days
You’ve never met my niece
Soon she will be old enough to walk
You would have been her aunt
Doesn’t that make you sad?
The places that used to be ours aren’t ours anymore
Your heart doesn’t touch me much anymore
It isn’t my place to console your sadness
Soon, I won’t give a damn about you
I know you’re alone
And you’ve told me you miss me
You said it again when last we spoke
But it’s me who was left alone
I’m not lonely anymore
Soon, I won’t miss you at all
And I’ll stop taking your calls
Rare as they are
And then, I’ll stop writing you poems
I won’t write anything for you at all
Amanda Martin 2009
Last Poem
It’s been a few months now
Since we last spoke
My tan begins to fade, the trees shed their leaves
The kitten we found has grown big
He no longer reminds me of you
He purrs and makes me smile
And sheds all over my black pants
I don’t cry for you much anymore
My hair is longer now and I have bangs
All of the holiday decorations are up in the stores
And soon the sales will begin
I had to replace my computer again
The bees in the hive outside my window are all dead
I find myself writing about you less and less often
Soon I won’t write of you at all
The wind is loud and pulls at scarves
It sounds like a ghost at the window
The grass in all the yards grows long
I began a new job, I’m at a new school
And all of my hobbies have changed
You used to sing for me as I played the piano
Now I play the piano to fill the house
I make no music for you these days
You’ve never met my niece
Soon she will be old enough to walk
You would have been her aunt
Doesn’t that make you sad?
The places that used to be ours aren’t ours anymore
Your heart doesn’t touch me much anymore
It isn’t my place to console your sadness
Soon, I won’t give a damn about you
I know you’re alone
And you’ve told me you miss me
You said it again when last we spoke
But it’s me who was left alone
I’m not lonely anymore
Soon, I won’t miss you at all
And I’ll stop taking your calls
Rare as they are
And then, I’ll stop writing you poems
I won’t write anything for you at all
Amanda Martin 2009
/th3 inv1te Teaser One
The first teaser for the webseries I've been working on with some friends.
You can also check out our character blogs for more info:
Wesson P. Smith (my character)
Fa'lynn
Triple
We should have the first ep up in the next few weeks (or, at the very least, a few more teasers). I will keep you "in the know."
You can also check out our character blogs for more info:
Wesson P. Smith (my character)
Fa'lynn
Triple
We should have the first ep up in the next few weeks (or, at the very least, a few more teasers). I will keep you "in the know."
Monday, November 2, 2009
"Like a hell-broth boil and bubble"
Sometimes, the way that people speak about interracial children makes me feel as though the blood within my veins is actually some sinister potion. It reminds me of the mixture that the three witches brew in Macbeth, a "hell-broth" (IV.i.19) composed of repulsive ingredients that bubbles grotesquely. I am reminded of the bui doi (bụi đời), the children of Vietnamese women and American soldiers in Vietnam conceived during the long "military intervention." The term bui doi literally translates to "living dust," an idea that acts as an allegory for the experiences of many interracial children. We float in the air, but we are not a part of the sky, and we look like earth, but we do not belong to the earth. We continuously struggle to find a place to belong.
This sense of internal diaspora was intensified for me last week when I read about a Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to issue a marriage license for an interracial couple. The story was addressed in a blog co-edited by a professor in my cultural studies program, Kari Lerum, entitled "Sexuality & Society." The judge refused to marry the interracial couple on the grounds that any children they produced would suffer because he or she would assuredly be shunned by both of the racial communities to which the parents belong. "I'm not a racist," the justice said, "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else" (Foster).
While Lerum focuses on the broader implications of the occurrence for the same-sex marriage movement, and Dworkin, the other editor of "Sexuality & Society," examines the history of anti-miscegenation laws in a later post, the question that I am most concerned with is how people the public statements made by people in positions of authority, such as this justice of the peace, affect how interracial children are treated. Having grown up as a fair-skinned Latina of half-Irish, half-Chilean ancestry, I remember continuously being asked "what I was," as if having physical characteristics that are not easily tied to a single race, such as green eyes, somehow made me less than human. The question was never "who" but "what." Many people, not just children, are confused by their interracial associates, yet interracial people should not have to shoulder the responsibility of giving a summary of Cultural Pluralism 101 seven times a day. This treatment can be a cause of intense anger, such as that expressed by Sandra Cisneros' narrator in Caramelo:
...the guys at my new school act like a it's me that's the freak. The talk to each other like this:
-Man, you're fatter than shit!
-The good life.
-Damn right.
And this is how they talk to me:
-Hey, hippie girl, you Mexican? On both sides?
-Front and back, I say.
-You sure don't look Mexican.
A part of me wants to kick their ass. A part of me feels sorry for their stupid ignorant selves. But if you've never been father south than Nuevo Laredo, how the hell would you know what Mexicans are supposed to look like, right?
There are the green-eyed Mexicans. The rich blond Mexicans. The Mexicans with the faces of Arab sheiks. The Jewish Mexicans. The big-footed-as-a-German Mexicans. The leftover-French Mexicans. The chaparrito compact Mexicans. The Tarahumara tall-as-desert-saguaro Mexicans. The Mediterranean Mexicans. The Mexicans with Tunisian eyebrows. The negrito Mexicans of the double coasts. The Chinese Mexicans. The curly-haired, freckled-faced, red-headed Mexicans. The jaguar-lipped Mexicans. The wide-as-a-Tula-tree Zapotec Mexicans. The Lebanese Mexicans. Look, I don't know what you're talking about when you say I don't look Mexican. I am Mexican. (352-353)
When you aren't 100% identifiable to people, you are constantly asked the same kinds of questions as you grow up: "Where you from?" "You Greek?" "You Irish?" "¡No eres latino!"
When you become an adult, your colleagues continue the questions, albeit in a slightly more politically correct manner: "What's your heritage?" "You have such beautiful olive skin, are you from the Mediterranean?" "Where's your accent from?" It all amounts to the same question: "What are you?" I was recently asked about a colleague with a Latino name. "His name is Julio [name changed], but he doesn't look Hispanic. Can that be a black name?" It never occurred to this woman that the gentleman in question might be part-Latino, part-black, or any other mixture of races, much less that Latinos can have darker skin than the cafe con leche stereotype.
I think that it is important to recognize this issue in U.S. society because we cannot successfully argue with the aforementioned justice without acknowledging the truths he bends to make his ignorant statement. "There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a[n interracial] marriage," the judge explains, "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it." There is truth in this statement; children from interracial marriages can suffer and be ostracized by their parent's cultures. What is not true, however, is his proposed solution to the problem: no more interracial marriages.
The implication behind the judge's solution is that interracial people would rather have never been born than have to bear prejudices on account of their races. Taking this line of thinking further would suggest that anyone who might be teased in K-12 or have trouble fitting in to society would probably be better off never existing: queers, non-Christians, people of color, people with disabilities, etc. In short, this justice proposes that rather than suffering something so awful as the Holocaust, we'd be much better off having no Jews (queers, communists, gypsies, people with disabilities, the elderly) at all.
For further reading, see Ivy Farguheson's "A Latina by Any Other Name Sounds Just as Dulce".
Note: I apologize for not having the lengthy quote indented. Blogger apparently has its own rules for the use of HTML. Hm...
Works Cited
Cisneros, Sandra. Caramelo. New York: Vintage, 2002.
Dworkin, Shari. “Race, Sexuality, and the ‘One Drop Rule’: More Thoughts about Interracial Couples and Marriage.” Sexuality & Society. 18 Oct. 2009. Eds. Kari Lerum and Shari Dworkin. 2 Nov. 2009. http://contexts.org/sexuality/2009/10/18/race-sexuality-and-the-one-drop-rule-more-thoughts-about-interracial-couples-and-marriage/
Foster, Mary. “Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.” Associated Press. 15 Oct. 2009. Yahoo! News. 2 Nov. 2009. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff
Lerum, Kari. “Love is a (political) battlefield: Interracial couple denied marriage license.” Sexuality & Society. 17 Oct. 2009. Eds. Kari Lerum and Shari Dworkin. 2 Nov. 2009. http://contexts.org/sexuality/2009/10/17/love-is-a-political-battlefield-interracial-couple-denied-marriage-license/
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. No Fear Shakespeare. 2009. SparkNotes. 2 Nov. 2009. http://nfs.sparknotes.com/macbeth/
This sense of internal diaspora was intensified for me last week when I read about a Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to issue a marriage license for an interracial couple. The story was addressed in a blog co-edited by a professor in my cultural studies program, Kari Lerum, entitled "Sexuality & Society." The judge refused to marry the interracial couple on the grounds that any children they produced would suffer because he or she would assuredly be shunned by both of the racial communities to which the parents belong. "I'm not a racist," the justice said, "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else" (Foster).
While Lerum focuses on the broader implications of the occurrence for the same-sex marriage movement, and Dworkin, the other editor of "Sexuality & Society," examines the history of anti-miscegenation laws in a later post, the question that I am most concerned with is how people the public statements made by people in positions of authority, such as this justice of the peace, affect how interracial children are treated. Having grown up as a fair-skinned Latina of half-Irish, half-Chilean ancestry, I remember continuously being asked "what I was," as if having physical characteristics that are not easily tied to a single race, such as green eyes, somehow made me less than human. The question was never "who" but "what." Many people, not just children, are confused by their interracial associates, yet interracial people should not have to shoulder the responsibility of giving a summary of Cultural Pluralism 101 seven times a day. This treatment can be a cause of intense anger, such as that expressed by Sandra Cisneros' narrator in Caramelo:
...the guys at my new school act like a it's me that's the freak. The talk to each other like this:
-Man, you're fatter than shit!
-The good life.
-Damn right.
And this is how they talk to me:
-Hey, hippie girl, you Mexican? On both sides?
-Front and back, I say.
-You sure don't look Mexican.
A part of me wants to kick their ass. A part of me feels sorry for their stupid ignorant selves. But if you've never been father south than Nuevo Laredo, how the hell would you know what Mexicans are supposed to look like, right?
There are the green-eyed Mexicans. The rich blond Mexicans. The Mexicans with the faces of Arab sheiks. The Jewish Mexicans. The big-footed-as-a-German Mexicans. The leftover-French Mexicans. The chaparrito compact Mexicans. The Tarahumara tall-as-desert-saguaro Mexicans. The Mediterranean Mexicans. The Mexicans with Tunisian eyebrows. The negrito Mexicans of the double coasts. The Chinese Mexicans. The curly-haired, freckled-faced, red-headed Mexicans. The jaguar-lipped Mexicans. The wide-as-a-Tula-tree Zapotec Mexicans. The Lebanese Mexicans. Look, I don't know what you're talking about when you say I don't look Mexican. I am Mexican. (352-353)
When you aren't 100% identifiable to people, you are constantly asked the same kinds of questions as you grow up: "Where you from?" "You Greek?" "You Irish?" "¡No eres latino!"
When you become an adult, your colleagues continue the questions, albeit in a slightly more politically correct manner: "What's your heritage?" "You have such beautiful olive skin, are you from the Mediterranean?" "Where's your accent from?" It all amounts to the same question: "What are you?" I was recently asked about a colleague with a Latino name. "His name is Julio [name changed], but he doesn't look Hispanic. Can that be a black name?" It never occurred to this woman that the gentleman in question might be part-Latino, part-black, or any other mixture of races, much less that Latinos can have darker skin than the cafe con leche stereotype.
I think that it is important to recognize this issue in U.S. society because we cannot successfully argue with the aforementioned justice without acknowledging the truths he bends to make his ignorant statement. "There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a[n interracial] marriage," the judge explains, "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it." There is truth in this statement; children from interracial marriages can suffer and be ostracized by their parent's cultures. What is not true, however, is his proposed solution to the problem: no more interracial marriages.
The implication behind the judge's solution is that interracial people would rather have never been born than have to bear prejudices on account of their races. Taking this line of thinking further would suggest that anyone who might be teased in K-12 or have trouble fitting in to society would probably be better off never existing: queers, non-Christians, people of color, people with disabilities, etc. In short, this justice proposes that rather than suffering something so awful as the Holocaust, we'd be much better off having no Jews (queers, communists, gypsies, people with disabilities, the elderly) at all.
For further reading, see Ivy Farguheson's "A Latina by Any Other Name Sounds Just as Dulce".
Note: I apologize for not having the lengthy quote indented. Blogger apparently has its own rules for the use of HTML. Hm...
Works Cited
Cisneros, Sandra. Caramelo. New York: Vintage, 2002.
Dworkin, Shari. “Race, Sexuality, and the ‘One Drop Rule’: More Thoughts about Interracial Couples and Marriage.” Sexuality & Society. 18 Oct. 2009. Eds. Kari Lerum and Shari Dworkin. 2 Nov. 2009. http://contexts.org/sexuality/2009/10/18/race-sexuality-and-the-one-drop-rule-more-thoughts-about-interracial-couples-and-marriage/
Foster, Mary. “Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.” Associated Press. 15 Oct. 2009. Yahoo! News. 2 Nov. 2009
Lerum, Kari. “Love is a (political) battlefield: Interracial couple denied marriage license.” Sexuality & Society. 17 Oct. 2009. Eds. Kari Lerum and Shari Dworkin. 2 Nov. 2009. http://contexts.org/sexuality/2009/10/17/love-is-a-political-battlefield-interracial-couple-denied-marriage-license/
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. No Fear Shakespeare. 2009. SparkNotes. 2 Nov. 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Not much to update on
To be perfectly honest. Just the usual- I guess. Schooling, working, etc.ing. Taking my computer in to get fixed tomorrow- will hopefully be able to watch the new episode of The Guild at the library and print the articles for school there (I hear there are 100 free sheets of printing per week- can it be true?). Elsewise, I'll need to print at Kinko's or set up another printer- this one's dead. Alas alack.
Trying not to stress about grades because profs say not to.
Neck hurts too much to write anything smart.
peh. lurve
Trying not to stress about grades because profs say not to.
Neck hurts too much to write anything smart.
peh. lurve
Monday, October 12, 2009
Busy Weekend (groan)
Maybe I don't really need to do the recommended readings for grad school. Maybe the required readings would be sufficient. Am going to explode my brain from over-informationing it too rapidly, I think. Or not.
I have so much stuff to bring to class on Tuesday. Seriously. I have three books and a hot water pot (you put water in it, plug it in, and the water heats up). Two books are for a kid studying homeless youth- one book is about a priest working with the homeless in Portland and another is about two children in an inner city neighborhood. The third book is for another kid who went to Sundance and saw the film version of Push (now called Precious because of the Dakota Fanning movie) and was interested in reading the book (which I was reading before class last Tuesday). Lastly, the hot water pot for one of the students from China-- he has had trouble finding one here!
We shot the first episode of the web series, /th3 inv1te this weekend. The website's up but there's nothing there yet- else I'd link you to it (remind me if I forget later). It was a loooong day- we were at S's apartment from 8AM to 6PM. There were two meal breaks and a lot of breaks from filming to set up the various scenes.
Stills--
The scene for the scenes (ha.. bad joke) with C. Pay attention to the details and let me know everything you seeeeee.
The set for the scenes with S. The bra is a nice touch >.<
Um, no one took photos of the shots for scenes with me apparently, and I was busy over makeuping. Hrm. Anyway, you can see it in the background of this photo. And it's me, so I can't get in trouble for putting it up, right???
The tentative release date for the first episode is October 31st. I think we're planning to put it up on Youtube (we have an account set up already). Next Saturday should be writing the script for episode two and editing the first episode. I'm not sure of all that will have to go into completing the episodes- hopefully not too much. Saturdays are already a pretty big commitment, and I'm trying to hold steady.
Had to study for forevuh today, miss seeing the limited Toy Stories in 3D in theatres and cancel Japanese in order not to fall behind in school due to shopping for props all day Friday and filming all day Saturday. Probably won't be able to do that again...
What else?
There's a character blog for Lt. Col. Wesson P. Smith (my character) on blogger as well. You can see it at: Lt. Col's Log. There's nothing up yet, but I'm going to write something about my char's cats, Liberty Bell and Fourth of July (ha!).
Also, really need to update the book-tracking ness. I finished Peter and the Shadow Thieves, Esperanza Rising, and Push. Must remember to update and write short reviews. But probably not going to happen anytime soon- ugh!
Goodnight goodnight! <3
I have so much stuff to bring to class on Tuesday. Seriously. I have three books and a hot water pot (you put water in it, plug it in, and the water heats up). Two books are for a kid studying homeless youth- one book is about a priest working with the homeless in Portland and another is about two children in an inner city neighborhood. The third book is for another kid who went to Sundance and saw the film version of Push (now called Precious because of the Dakota Fanning movie) and was interested in reading the book (which I was reading before class last Tuesday). Lastly, the hot water pot for one of the students from China-- he has had trouble finding one here!
We shot the first episode of the web series, /th3 inv1te this weekend. The website's up but there's nothing there yet- else I'd link you to it (remind me if I forget later). It was a loooong day- we were at S's apartment from 8AM to 6PM. There were two meal breaks and a lot of breaks from filming to set up the various scenes.
Stills--
The scene for the scenes (ha.. bad joke) with C. Pay attention to the details and let me know everything you seeeeee.
The set for the scenes with S. The bra is a nice touch >.<
Um, no one took photos of the shots for scenes with me apparently, and I was busy over makeuping. Hrm. Anyway, you can see it in the background of this photo. And it's me, so I can't get in trouble for putting it up, right???
The tentative release date for the first episode is October 31st. I think we're planning to put it up on Youtube (we have an account set up already). Next Saturday should be writing the script for episode two and editing the first episode. I'm not sure of all that will have to go into completing the episodes- hopefully not too much. Saturdays are already a pretty big commitment, and I'm trying to hold steady.
Had to study for forevuh today, miss seeing the limited Toy Stories in 3D in theatres and cancel Japanese in order not to fall behind in school due to shopping for props all day Friday and filming all day Saturday. Probably won't be able to do that again...
What else?
There's a character blog for Lt. Col. Wesson P. Smith (my character) on blogger as well. You can see it at: Lt. Col's Log. There's nothing up yet, but I'm going to write something about my char's cats, Liberty Bell and Fourth of July (ha!).
Also, really need to update the book-tracking ness. I finished Peter and the Shadow Thieves, Esperanza Rising, and Push. Must remember to update and write short reviews. But probably not going to happen anytime soon- ugh!
Goodnight goodnight! <3
Saturday, October 10, 2009
"Obama Derangement Synrome"???
Definition from the Urban Dictionary for Obama Derangement Syndrome:
The acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the statements -- nay -- the very existence of Barack Obama.
Ex: Obama's positions better reflect the change and new direction that the American people have been calling for, but those with Obama Derangement Syndrome would rather stick with failure than even consider voting for him.
-- a beautiful video from Rachel Maddow. I agree with this lady- we should be proud that our president has won the Nobel Peace Prize, and, although we rarely think of it in this manner, it is true that many, many people have won the award/recognition for things for which they have only yet striven to achieve (i.e. the Dalai Lama still leads a people exiled from their homeland):
The acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the statements -- nay -- the very existence of Barack Obama.
Ex: Obama's positions better reflect the change and new direction that the American people have been calling for, but those with Obama Derangement Syndrome would rather stick with failure than even consider voting for him.
-- a beautiful video from Rachel Maddow. I agree with this lady- we should be proud that our president has won the Nobel Peace Prize, and, although we rarely think of it in this manner, it is true that many, many people have won the award/recognition for things for which they have only yet striven to achieve (i.e. the Dalai Lama still leads a people exiled from their homeland):
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Tired!
Which reminds me, I need to check my car's tires... they are all squeaky and ness.
Let's see, I think I never wrote about my job, but maybe I did and I forget. It is a crazy sleepy time. Anyway, working for Academic Affairs at UWB, mostly things relating to retreats and the 21st Century Campus Initiative (campus goals, how we're working to meet them, successes, etc.). Typing up evaluations, comments, timelines, etc. etc. and putting them up on the Blackboard website. Am genius of epic proportions. I will begin working 3 days a week soon, including Tuesdays and Thursdays, which are class days. So I will be at work all day and go to school for four hours in the PM and get home 10ish.
Spiritual death.
Anyway, that's that. School began today. It didn't feel like four hours, so thar's a plus. Our break was only fifteen minutes though, which uber detracts from the pointage. I had intended to have time to eat, but it wasn't so much enough and I didn't have much food anyway. Plus, we went to the computer lab, and you shouldn't eat in there (you shouldn't, really... oh one of the labs, I mean, there are a lot). I didn't say too much in the second half but said enough at the start, I think. Need to be vocal so's to make an IMPRESSION, but I want it to be good so it is all confusing.
Apparently, reading ahead of time was actually a b.a.d. i.d.e.a. because they want super specific details and I didn't take that intense of notes. So I didn't feel like I had much to say, you know? Though I did want to relate the experience of CEDAW in the UN with one theory, but lacked courage. CEDAW= Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (close enough) and was created to fulfill its name (obviously...) but, though many agencies were present at CEDAW meetings in general, CEDAW staffers realized that they really should be included in ALL other human rights conferences because women should be represented in all groups. But they weren't so much accepted in this capacity- people only wanted them to have their conference once a year and go away for all other events.
I'll rethink and pretty wordify that thought later, but now that I got it down, I won't forget.
Finished reading Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society yesterday- need to write down some things so I can get it to mom to read. Then K prob. needs to read it. Oy.
Sometimes, could use a little sympathy. I feel like people think I live a life of leisure but I am become so busy. Could do with a little more lovin.
Let's see, I think I never wrote about my job, but maybe I did and I forget. It is a crazy sleepy time. Anyway, working for Academic Affairs at UWB, mostly things relating to retreats and the 21st Century Campus Initiative (campus goals, how we're working to meet them, successes, etc.). Typing up evaluations, comments, timelines, etc. etc. and putting them up on the Blackboard website. Am genius of epic proportions. I will begin working 3 days a week soon, including Tuesdays and Thursdays, which are class days. So I will be at work all day and go to school for four hours in the PM and get home 10ish.
Spiritual death.
Anyway, that's that. School began today. It didn't feel like four hours, so thar's a plus. Our break was only fifteen minutes though, which uber detracts from the pointage. I had intended to have time to eat, but it wasn't so much enough and I didn't have much food anyway. Plus, we went to the computer lab, and you shouldn't eat in there (you shouldn't, really... oh one of the labs, I mean, there are a lot). I didn't say too much in the second half but said enough at the start, I think. Need to be vocal so's to make an IMPRESSION, but I want it to be good so it is all confusing.
Apparently, reading ahead of time was actually a b.a.d. i.d.e.a. because they want super specific details and I didn't take that intense of notes. So I didn't feel like I had much to say, you know? Though I did want to relate the experience of CEDAW in the UN with one theory, but lacked courage. CEDAW= Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (close enough) and was created to fulfill its name (obviously...) but, though many agencies were present at CEDAW meetings in general, CEDAW staffers realized that they really should be included in ALL other human rights conferences because women should be represented in all groups. But they weren't so much accepted in this capacity- people only wanted them to have their conference once a year and go away for all other events.
I'll rethink and pretty wordify that thought later, but now that I got it down, I won't forget.
Finished reading Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society yesterday- need to write down some things so I can get it to mom to read. Then K prob. needs to read it. Oy.
Sometimes, could use a little sympathy. I feel like people think I live a life of leisure but I am become so busy. Could do with a little more lovin.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Two Blogs Keeps me Really Busy
I think there may have been a lack of good grammar in that blog title. Hrm. It's Friday, my neck hurts, and I'm tired so, just for this one night, I'll through gramar to the wind (ha- okay, those two were on purpose... threw grammar to the wind.... gettit?).
Started a new job on Monday. Not very exciting but everyone seems nice. Lots of transcribing/data entry for the first two days with a tad of running around campus putting posters up thrown in. I think I may be getting overpaid. Have been asked to take on more hours- I only do 12 hrs a week right now, but I think grad school's gonna take a lot of time.
Had the orientation for grad school today, and it sure feels that way! Soooo much reading this first quarter and so much thinkin' goin' on. It is too tired to put g's at the end of words. "It is too tired"- I mean I am too tired.
Nanowrimo is coming up and I need to get to work on novel outlining. Think I'll do the one about the road trip to ComiCon. OH! Apparently a lot of people do Nanowrimo and get together at the Writing Center on campus. How exciting!!! (hear the lilt in my voice, please).
I wasn't going to watch Monk, but it's on, and I have the desire to leave you with this lame-o post and go see what that wily detective is up to. Should be studying. Hrm.
Moon is at the Crest for $3. Must. Go. Seeeeeeee!
Started a new job on Monday. Not very exciting but everyone seems nice. Lots of transcribing/data entry for the first two days with a tad of running around campus putting posters up thrown in. I think I may be getting overpaid. Have been asked to take on more hours- I only do 12 hrs a week right now, but I think grad school's gonna take a lot of time.
Had the orientation for grad school today, and it sure feels that way! Soooo much reading this first quarter and so much thinkin' goin' on. It is too tired to put g's at the end of words. "It is too tired"- I mean I am too tired.
Nanowrimo is coming up and I need to get to work on novel outlining. Think I'll do the one about the road trip to ComiCon. OH! Apparently a lot of people do Nanowrimo and get together at the Writing Center on campus. How exciting!!! (hear the lilt in my voice, please).
I wasn't going to watch Monk, but it's on, and I have the desire to leave you with this lame-o post and go see what that wily detective is up to. Should be studying. Hrm.
Moon is at the Crest for $3. Must. Go. Seeeeeeee!
Friday, September 25, 2009
AFI's 100 Years, 100 Movies
I want to compare a little bit with the TIME list, and see which of THIS list I have seen- AFI's list does seem to include more popular films. Anyway, they also replaced 23 of the films in 2007 with some old, some newer films. So, this list will include those that were deleted in 2007 as well, and be a bit long. ! following the date means that I have seen the film. I will make notes on those I have seen at some point.
1. Citizen Kane 1941
2. Casablanca 1942!
3. The Godfather 1972!
4. Gone with the Wind 1939!
5. Lawrence of Arabia 1962
6. The Wizard of Oz 1939!
7. The Graduate 1967
8. On the Waterfront 1954
9. Schindler's List 1993!
10. Singin' in the Rain 1952!
11. It's a Wonderful Life 1946
12. Sunset Boulevard 1950
13. The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957
14. Some Like It Hot 1959!
15. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 1977!
16. All About Eve 1950!
17. The African Queen 1951
18. Psycho 1960!
19. Chinatown 1974
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975!
21. The Grapes of Wrath 1940
22. 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
23. The Maltese Falcon 1941
24. Raging Bull 1980
25. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1982!
26. Dr. Strangelove 1964!
27. Bonnie and Clyde 1967
28. Apocalypse Now 1979
29. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 1939
30. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948
31. Annie Hall 1977
32. The Godfather Part II 1974
33. High Noon 1952
34. To Kill a Mockingbird 1962!
35. It Happened One Night 1934!
36. Midnight Cowboy 1969
37. The Best Years of Our Lives 1946
38. Double Indemnity 1944
39. Doctor Zhivago 1965
40. North by Northwest 1959
41. West Side Story 1961!
42. Rear Window 1954!
43. King Kong 1933
44. The Birth of a Nation 1915
45. A Streetcar Named Desire 1951
46. A Clockwork Orange 1971
47. Taxi Driver 1976
48. Jaws 1975!
49. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937!
50. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969
51. The Philadelphia Story 1940
52. From Here to Eternity 1953
53. Amadeus 1984
54. All Quiet on the Western Front 1930
55. The Sound of Music 1965!
56. MASH 1970
57. The Third Man 1949
58. Fantasia 1940!
59. Rebel Without a Cause 1955
60. Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981!
61. Vertigo 1958!
62. Tootsie 1982!
63. Stagecoach 1939
64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977
65. The Silence of the Lambs 1991!
66. Network 1976
67. The Manchurian Candidate 1962!
68. An American in Paris 1951
69. Shane 1953
70. The French Connection 1971
71. Forrest Gump 1994!
72. Ben-Hur 1959
73. Wuthering Heights 1939
74. The Gold Rush 1925
75. Dances with Wolves 1990!
76. City Lights 1931
77. American Graffiti 1973!
78. Rocky 1976!
79. The Deer Hunter 1978
80. The Wild Bunch 1969
81. Modern Times 1936
82. Giant 1956
83. Platoon 1986
84. Fargo 1996!
85. Duck Soup 1933
86. Mutiny on the Bounty 1935
87. Frankenstein 1931
88. Easy Rider 1969
89. Patton 1970
90. The Jazz Singer 1927
91. My Fair Lady 1964!
92. A Place in the Sun 1951
93. The Apartment 1960
94. Goodfellas 1990
95. Pulp Fiction 1994!
96. The Searchers 1956
97. Bringing Up Baby 1938
98. Unforgiven 1992!
99. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 1967!
100. Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942
Added in 2007, replacing others:
50. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)!
71. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
83. Titanic (1997)!
89. The Sixth Sense (1999)!
18. The General (1927)
49. Intolerance (1916)
59. Nashville (1975)
61. Sullivan's Travels (1941)
63. Cabaret (1972)!
67. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
72. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)!
75. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
77. All the President's Men (1976)!
81. Spartacus (1960)
82. Sunrise (1927)!
85. A Night at the Opera (1935)
87. 12 Angry Men (1957)!
90. Swing Time (1936)
91. Sophie's Choice (1982)
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
96. Do the Right Thing (1989)
97. Blade Runner (1982)!
99. Toy Story (1995)!
123 total. 46 seen. Hrml. I guess I'll try to get through TIME first, but these movies are a lot more fun.... should I switch?
1. Citizen Kane 1941
2. Casablanca 1942!
3. The Godfather 1972!
4. Gone with the Wind 1939!
5. Lawrence of Arabia 1962
6. The Wizard of Oz 1939!
7. The Graduate 1967
8. On the Waterfront 1954
9. Schindler's List 1993!
10. Singin' in the Rain 1952!
11. It's a Wonderful Life 1946
12. Sunset Boulevard 1950
13. The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957
14. Some Like It Hot 1959!
15. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 1977!
16. All About Eve 1950!
17. The African Queen 1951
18. Psycho 1960!
19. Chinatown 1974
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975!
21. The Grapes of Wrath 1940
22. 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
23. The Maltese Falcon 1941
24. Raging Bull 1980
25. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1982!
26. Dr. Strangelove 1964!
27. Bonnie and Clyde 1967
28. Apocalypse Now 1979
29. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 1939
30. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948
31. Annie Hall 1977
32. The Godfather Part II 1974
33. High Noon 1952
34. To Kill a Mockingbird 1962!
35. It Happened One Night 1934!
36. Midnight Cowboy 1969
37. The Best Years of Our Lives 1946
38. Double Indemnity 1944
39. Doctor Zhivago 1965
40. North by Northwest 1959
41. West Side Story 1961!
42. Rear Window 1954!
43. King Kong 1933
44. The Birth of a Nation 1915
45. A Streetcar Named Desire 1951
46. A Clockwork Orange 1971
47. Taxi Driver 1976
48. Jaws 1975!
49. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937!
50. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969
51. The Philadelphia Story 1940
52. From Here to Eternity 1953
53. Amadeus 1984
54. All Quiet on the Western Front 1930
55. The Sound of Music 1965!
56. MASH 1970
57. The Third Man 1949
58. Fantasia 1940!
59. Rebel Without a Cause 1955
60. Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981!
61. Vertigo 1958!
62. Tootsie 1982!
63. Stagecoach 1939
64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977
65. The Silence of the Lambs 1991!
66. Network 1976
67. The Manchurian Candidate 1962!
68. An American in Paris 1951
69. Shane 1953
70. The French Connection 1971
71. Forrest Gump 1994!
72. Ben-Hur 1959
73. Wuthering Heights 1939
74. The Gold Rush 1925
75. Dances with Wolves 1990!
76. City Lights 1931
77. American Graffiti 1973!
78. Rocky 1976!
79. The Deer Hunter 1978
80. The Wild Bunch 1969
81. Modern Times 1936
82. Giant 1956
83. Platoon 1986
84. Fargo 1996!
85. Duck Soup 1933
86. Mutiny on the Bounty 1935
87. Frankenstein 1931
88. Easy Rider 1969
89. Patton 1970
90. The Jazz Singer 1927
91. My Fair Lady 1964!
92. A Place in the Sun 1951
93. The Apartment 1960
94. Goodfellas 1990
95. Pulp Fiction 1994!
96. The Searchers 1956
97. Bringing Up Baby 1938
98. Unforgiven 1992!
99. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 1967!
100. Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942
Added in 2007, replacing others:
50. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)!
71. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
83. Titanic (1997)!
89. The Sixth Sense (1999)!
18. The General (1927)
49. Intolerance (1916)
59. Nashville (1975)
61. Sullivan's Travels (1941)
63. Cabaret (1972)!
67. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
72. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)!
75. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
77. All the President's Men (1976)!
81. Spartacus (1960)
82. Sunrise (1927)!
85. A Night at the Opera (1935)
87. 12 Angry Men (1957)!
90. Swing Time (1936)
91. Sophie's Choice (1982)
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
96. Do the Right Thing (1989)
97. Blade Runner (1982)!
99. Toy Story (1995)!
123 total. 46 seen. Hrml. I guess I'll try to get through TIME first, but these movies are a lot more fun.... should I switch?
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Border Crossing- Review
Border Crossing by Maria Colleen Cruz.
Review for Facebook, because Amazon is too daunting right now O.o:
It's nice to find a book out there dealing with the experiences of multiracial children, but this book was only decently written. Sometimes, it felt more like a lecture than an illustrated lesson, and the coincidences were a little too far-fetched to be believable. Plus, there was a pretty noticeable typo regarding which country San Diego was in- at one point the narrator gets off the bus in San Diego and is suddenly in Mexico. Overall, though, the novel covers themes not expressed at all or at all effectively elsewhere and fills a gap with mediocre skill.
4/5
Review for Facebook, because Amazon is too daunting right now O.o:
It's nice to find a book out there dealing with the experiences of multiracial children, but this book was only decently written. Sometimes, it felt more like a lecture than an illustrated lesson, and the coincidences were a little too far-fetched to be believable. Plus, there was a pretty noticeable typo regarding which country San Diego was in- at one point the narrator gets off the bus in San Diego and is suddenly in Mexico. Overall, though, the novel covers themes not expressed at all or at all effectively elsewhere and fills a gap with mediocre skill.
4/5
Monday, September 21, 2009
Things and Whatever
Too lazy to come up with a title. So, starting a new job on Monday after forevers of being unemployed. Hope hope hope it goes well and hope hope hope school goes well too. I'm scared that they'll both be beyond what I can handle. I guess we'll see- it's scary to begin two big things at the same time. Plus, November is Nanowrimo, and, as much as I joke about it, I'm very serious about being successful. It's good to expunge creativity in one go- force your mind open with a crowbar and spill out all the pretties.
This year, I have two story ideas I'd like to develop into novels, though I think that planning beyond just the one might be a little idealistic. The first is a road trip/coming-of-age thing, three jr high students voyaging to the San Diego Comic Con. Yes, nerds. There aren't enough nerds in children's/young adult novels. The other is a sci fi story I've been working on forever internally, but have little to show for. I'll put up better summaries in November. Must do some planning.
A new chronic pain support group opened up in my area on Meetup.com- I joined it but no actual meetups are planned yet. Might be able to make some of the Fibromyalgia support group's meetings when school starts. Ugh- pain.
Need to find some interesting books- after reading Let Me In, I'm in the mood to some more unique books than usual. Another really interesting book was The Exquisite by Laird Hunt. Anyway, let's do some searching online.
Oh, at the library I found The Gargoyle on the paperback picks shelf:
he narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.
A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.
-- what else? Let's search- weee!
Beastly by Alex Flinn sounds good, and will be a movie soon:
A beast. Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog but a horrible new creature who walks upright—a creature with fangs and claws and hair springing from every pore. I am a monster.
You think I'm talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It's no deformity, no disease. And I'll stay this way forever—ruined—unless I can break the spell.
Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I'll tell you. I'll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and the perfect life. And then, I'll tell you how I became perfectly . . . beastly.
-- sounds interesting and I already like the voice. Dude, Neil Patrick Harris is going to be in the movie, which means I have to see it, which means I should read the book.
Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War sounds AMAZING! SOOO interesting! I love it- like a mock version of something I'd read for class:
Brooks, the author of the determinedly straight-faced parody The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), returns in all seriousness to the zombie theme for his second outing, a future history in the style of Theodore Judson's Fitzpatrick's War. Brooks tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts "as told to the author" by various characters around the world. A Chinese doctor encounters one of the earliest zombie cases at a time when the Chinese government is ruthlessly suppressing any information about the outbreak that will soon spread across the globe. The tale then follows the outbreak via testimony of smugglers, intelligence officials, military personnel and many others who struggle to defeat the zombie menace. Despite its implausible premise and choppy delivery, the novel is surprisingly hard to put down. The subtle, and not so subtle, jabs at various contemporary politicians and policies are an added bonus.
-- they also think this'll be a movie- it says "in development" hrm.
Been meaning to read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova for a long while:
If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.
--also will be a movie- because I went from a "soon to be movies" list on Amazon....
Choose your own adventure for adults! Exciting! You are a Miserable Excuse for a Hero
sounds hilarious and DEFINITELY unique. Checking that on my list ^__^
Why Do All the Nice Girls End Up Getting Kidnapped and Held for Ransom?
In this book, YOU, the reader, are a thirtysomething part-time actor/full-time waiter suddenly caught up in a kidnapping. Julia, the girl you went out with last night, has been TAKEN HOSTAGE. What will you do? Will you go to the police and ask for help? Will you burst into the hideout, killing everyone in sight, then tell Julia that she shouldn't misinterpret this as some sort of big commitment? Or will you unplug your phone and just get really, really drunk? The choice is yours!
You awake to the sound of the phone ringing.
"Hello?"
You hear a man's voice. It is muffled. "We've got Julia."
"Wait, what do you mean?"
"We have kidnapped your girlfriend. If you ever want to see her again---"
"Whoa, she's not my girlfriend," you say. "I just met her. I mean, I had a good time with her and all, but I wanna take it slow with this one, I think."
"We understand," the voice says. "But she's new to the city, and presently, you're all she has. Give us fifty thousand dollars by tomorrow or we'll blow her head off."
If you want to go and ask your parents if you can borrow fifty thousand dollars, go to page 173.
If you want to have sex with your ex-girlfriend, consider getting back together with her, then think better of it, go to page 183.
BE VERY CAREFUL! You're directing the story and the CHOICES you make can result in MURDER, GRADUATE SCHOOL ENROLLMENT, TORTURE, MARRIAGE, POST-APOCALYPTIC SLAVERY, UNWANTED PREGNANCY, even TEMPING! It's YOUR STORY and YOUR LIFE. All you've got to do is decide which page you want to turn to.
--Anyway, I'm putting the rest in a list without much info, because I need to shower and go to bed O.O Lazy me
Ida B: . . . and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World -Katherine Hannigan
The Shadow Thieves- Anne Ursu (who wrote The Disapparation of James)
The Raw Shark Texts-Steven Hall
In the Lake of the Woods- Tim O'Brien
Winter's Tale- Mark Helprin
Kiss Me, Judas- Will Christopher Baer
Good night! <3
This year, I have two story ideas I'd like to develop into novels, though I think that planning beyond just the one might be a little idealistic. The first is a road trip/coming-of-age thing, three jr high students voyaging to the San Diego Comic Con. Yes, nerds. There aren't enough nerds in children's/young adult novels. The other is a sci fi story I've been working on forever internally, but have little to show for. I'll put up better summaries in November. Must do some planning.
A new chronic pain support group opened up in my area on Meetup.com- I joined it but no actual meetups are planned yet. Might be able to make some of the Fibromyalgia support group's meetings when school starts. Ugh- pain.
Need to find some interesting books- after reading Let Me In, I'm in the mood to some more unique books than usual. Another really interesting book was The Exquisite by Laird Hunt. Anyway, let's do some searching online.
Oh, at the library I found The Gargoyle on the paperback picks shelf:
he narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.
A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.
-- what else? Let's search- weee!
Beastly by Alex Flinn sounds good, and will be a movie soon:
A beast. Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog but a horrible new creature who walks upright—a creature with fangs and claws and hair springing from every pore. I am a monster.
You think I'm talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It's no deformity, no disease. And I'll stay this way forever—ruined—unless I can break the spell.
Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I'll tell you. I'll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and the perfect life. And then, I'll tell you how I became perfectly . . . beastly.
-- sounds interesting and I already like the voice. Dude, Neil Patrick Harris is going to be in the movie, which means I have to see it, which means I should read the book.
Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War sounds AMAZING! SOOO interesting! I love it- like a mock version of something I'd read for class:
Brooks, the author of the determinedly straight-faced parody The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), returns in all seriousness to the zombie theme for his second outing, a future history in the style of Theodore Judson's Fitzpatrick's War. Brooks tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts "as told to the author" by various characters around the world. A Chinese doctor encounters one of the earliest zombie cases at a time when the Chinese government is ruthlessly suppressing any information about the outbreak that will soon spread across the globe. The tale then follows the outbreak via testimony of smugglers, intelligence officials, military personnel and many others who struggle to defeat the zombie menace. Despite its implausible premise and choppy delivery, the novel is surprisingly hard to put down. The subtle, and not so subtle, jabs at various contemporary politicians and policies are an added bonus.
-- they also think this'll be a movie- it says "in development" hrm.
Been meaning to read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova for a long while:
If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.
--also will be a movie- because I went from a "soon to be movies" list on Amazon....
Choose your own adventure for adults! Exciting! You are a Miserable Excuse for a Hero
sounds hilarious and DEFINITELY unique. Checking that on my list ^__^
Why Do All the Nice Girls End Up Getting Kidnapped and Held for Ransom?
In this book, YOU, the reader, are a thirtysomething part-time actor/full-time waiter suddenly caught up in a kidnapping. Julia, the girl you went out with last night, has been TAKEN HOSTAGE. What will you do? Will you go to the police and ask for help? Will you burst into the hideout, killing everyone in sight, then tell Julia that she shouldn't misinterpret this as some sort of big commitment? Or will you unplug your phone and just get really, really drunk? The choice is yours!
You awake to the sound of the phone ringing.
"Hello?"
You hear a man's voice. It is muffled. "We've got Julia."
"Wait, what do you mean?"
"We have kidnapped your girlfriend. If you ever want to see her again---"
"Whoa, she's not my girlfriend," you say. "I just met her. I mean, I had a good time with her and all, but I wanna take it slow with this one, I think."
"We understand," the voice says. "But she's new to the city, and presently, you're all she has. Give us fifty thousand dollars by tomorrow or we'll blow her head off."
If you want to go and ask your parents if you can borrow fifty thousand dollars, go to page 173.
If you want to have sex with your ex-girlfriend, consider getting back together with her, then think better of it, go to page 183.
BE VERY CAREFUL! You're directing the story and the CHOICES you make can result in MURDER, GRADUATE SCHOOL ENROLLMENT, TORTURE, MARRIAGE, POST-APOCALYPTIC SLAVERY, UNWANTED PREGNANCY, even TEMPING! It's YOUR STORY and YOUR LIFE. All you've got to do is decide which page you want to turn to.
--Anyway, I'm putting the rest in a list without much info, because I need to shower and go to bed O.O Lazy me
Ida B: . . . and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World -Katherine Hannigan
The Shadow Thieves- Anne Ursu (who wrote The Disapparation of James)
The Raw Shark Texts-Steven Hall
In the Lake of the Woods- Tim O'Brien
Winter's Tale- Mark Helprin
Kiss Me, Judas- Will Christopher Baer
Good night! <3
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Love That Dog- Book Review
Book 2 of my campaign- a very short children's book told in poems. I may just put the short review that I entered for the Visual Bookshelf program on Facebook here for now.
Love That Dog- Sharon Creech
Told through the poem's enclosed in a boy's school journal, Love That Dog is a story of loss, healing, and artistic awakening. One of the most original children's stories I've ever read and uniquely beautiful among Creech's plethora of gorgeous works. A wonderful book to introduce to young artists not yet mature enough to take on Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.
Love That Dog- Sharon Creech
Told through the poem's enclosed in a boy's school journal, Love That Dog is a story of loss, healing, and artistic awakening. One of the most original children's stories I've ever read and uniquely beautiful among Creech's plethora of gorgeous works. A wonderful book to introduce to young artists not yet mature enough to take on Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.
Let Me In- Book Review
So, I have finally finished the first book of my fifty-two book goal, Let Me In by John Ajvide Lindqvist, also known as Let the Right One In. It was very long, for me, 472 pages in hard cover. It was much more terrifying than I'd imagined as well. Anyway, I'd better make some sort of eloquent review in order to put in Amazon in the end, so here's a late-night rough draft, lame, to be sure.
Let Me In-
While many literary critics quickly associate the voice of John Ajvide Lindqvist with other more well-known writers of the horror genre, Lindqvist should be noted as a young artist noteworthy for his particular distinctness of story-telling and narrative. In an era that has seen the violent vampire myth turned into a romantic topic of teen angst, Lindqvist imagines vampirism in its darkest hours, weaving a tale of murder, sadism, and everyday suffering, in which it is not so much the vampires as the humans who are the monsters.
Lindqvist's take on the necessities for the modern vampire's survival is innovative and disturbing; the vampire-girl Eli lives in the body of a 12-year-old and thus depends on a middle-aged pedophile to support her need for blood. She is too young for work but cannot survive in a modern world without financial assets, and so takes money from her victims. As a vampire or vampire-like creature, she does not kill for pleasure but purely to survive, and the author clearly illustrates for readers that most people-turned-vampire cannot make the choice to kill, and instead commit suicide.
While the story primarily focuses on the extended life of Eli and her new friend Oskar, a viciously bullied 12-year-old boy, it also shows how their situations affect those around them. Vampirism is treated as an epidemic that Eli attempts to contain but which somehow continues to spread throughout the novel, creating on particularly terrifying character both in appearance and mannerism. The town of Blackeberg itself becomes a character, treated as the Transylvania of the Bram Stoker novel.
Let Me In-
While many literary critics quickly associate the voice of John Ajvide Lindqvist with other more well-known writers of the horror genre, Lindqvist should be noted as a young artist noteworthy for his particular distinctness of story-telling and narrative. In an era that has seen the violent vampire myth turned into a romantic topic of teen angst, Lindqvist imagines vampirism in its darkest hours, weaving a tale of murder, sadism, and everyday suffering, in which it is not so much the vampires as the humans who are the monsters.
Lindqvist's take on the necessities for the modern vampire's survival is innovative and disturbing; the vampire-girl Eli lives in the body of a 12-year-old and thus depends on a middle-aged pedophile to support her need for blood. She is too young for work but cannot survive in a modern world without financial assets, and so takes money from her victims. As a vampire or vampire-like creature, she does not kill for pleasure but purely to survive, and the author clearly illustrates for readers that most people-turned-vampire cannot make the choice to kill, and instead commit suicide.
While the story primarily focuses on the extended life of Eli and her new friend Oskar, a viciously bullied 12-year-old boy, it also shows how their situations affect those around them. Vampirism is treated as an epidemic that Eli attempts to contain but which somehow continues to spread throughout the novel, creating on particularly terrifying character both in appearance and mannerism. The town of Blackeberg itself becomes a character, treated as the Transylvania of the Bram Stoker novel.
Monday, September 14, 2009
moving on
Amanda Martin-Copyright 2009
moving on
I was never a smoker, but after you left
I smoked myself through an entire pack of Marlboro Lights
I burned a votive candle with the picture of the Virgin on it
and used its flame to light the first
I used the first to light the second
the nineteenth to light the twentieth
I transformed myself into a constant practitioner of stoicism
I read Nietzsche and believed in nothing
I read Nishida and believed I was nothing
I dyed my hair black and murdered it flat and lifeless with an iron
I plastered white cream on my cheeks to hide their color
I cloaked myself in black as though I intended to attend a funeral
I stopped ordering Lemon Drops and Strawberry daiquiris
I ordered whisky, dry, or a bottle of bitter wine
and hoped each time that the liquor would
turn my insides into a vinegary formaldehyde
or an acid that would rot away my many useless organs
I was never a Feminist, but after you left
I looked online to try to find some place to burn my bras in public
I figured it didn’t matter anymore if my breasts should sag or be of different sizes
Who cared whether or not they looked perky and welcoming?
I searched for someone to join me in my rage, my awakening, my liberation
I was somewhere around forty years too late
So I built myself a funeral pyre and threw my bras on top
I tossed all my lacy panties into the flames
I cut my all my hair off with an oversized knife
I rubbed the paint off of my nails and filed them to stubs
I washed away the color from my eyes and lips
Later, I went to a lesbian meet up without anything on beneath my dress
I flirted with everyone around me, and raved about the Feminine Mystique
I had never read the Feminine Mystique
I traveled to the local sex shop and bought myself a personal massager
I drove to the drug store and bought three packages of double-A batteries
and secretly hoped I would accidentally electrocute myself
I was never a rover, but after you left
I finally got around to updating my passport,
I withdrew all of my savings from the bank
I carried myself across borders, went as north as I could
I went downward until I could go no farther south, then traveled at random
I rode on horses and boats and one camel and taxis and buses
I took carriages and subway trains and light rails and streetcars
I walked and I walked and I walked and I walked
When my feet bled, I wrapped them up, and bought a bike
I filled up my passport with stamps and became an expert on
Disembarkation and Embarkation forms
I ate and drank a thousand things,
I attended weddings and funerals and quinceañeras and graduations and Bar/t Mitzvahs
I visited places where white was the color of death
I wore white there
I spoke the international language of silence
I think I was understood, though I still knew nothing
I hitchhiked and hoped my drivers were sociopaths.
I was never nothing, but after you left, I wasn’t anything
I lost and found and lost and found myself on a hundred different occassions
I erased your touches, melted every kiss away with Purell
I tattooed my arms, which had so often been in your arms
I jammed rings through the nose that you had loved to tease
and through my ears you had nibbled, my tongue…
I bought a cat to keep me company at night, to purr and love me
I named it after you at first, then changed it to something inane
I stayed awake for three months straight, I thought
I tried every fad and tried on every stereotype
I spent hours walking through graveyards, slipping past funerals
I was that strange woman in the background, quickly forgotten
I even went to grief counseling, would you believe it?
I told the man with the beard and a kind face everything, all of your secrets
I knew it didn’t matter anymore, how could it?
I bleached my hair and dyed it brown
I bought myself some new underwear
I removed my many rings and lasered away my tattoos
I packed my passport away in a safe deposit box
I somehow found myself a new job
I started rebuilding my savings
I got some Nicotine patches from the pharmacy
I “pulled myself together.”
And, yes, I even went to see you again
I brought you a dozen roses, white, and I carefully avoided
all the funerals in progress
I said good-bye, but I didn’t mean it
I lied to my counselor
I lie to him still
And I never for one moment intended to move on.
moving on
I was never a smoker, but after you left
I smoked myself through an entire pack of Marlboro Lights
I burned a votive candle with the picture of the Virgin on it
and used its flame to light the first
I used the first to light the second
the nineteenth to light the twentieth
I transformed myself into a constant practitioner of stoicism
I read Nietzsche and believed in nothing
I read Nishida and believed I was nothing
I dyed my hair black and murdered it flat and lifeless with an iron
I plastered white cream on my cheeks to hide their color
I cloaked myself in black as though I intended to attend a funeral
I stopped ordering Lemon Drops and Strawberry daiquiris
I ordered whisky, dry, or a bottle of bitter wine
and hoped each time that the liquor would
turn my insides into a vinegary formaldehyde
or an acid that would rot away my many useless organs
I was never a Feminist, but after you left
I looked online to try to find some place to burn my bras in public
I figured it didn’t matter anymore if my breasts should sag or be of different sizes
Who cared whether or not they looked perky and welcoming?
I searched for someone to join me in my rage, my awakening, my liberation
I was somewhere around forty years too late
So I built myself a funeral pyre and threw my bras on top
I tossed all my lacy panties into the flames
I cut my all my hair off with an oversized knife
I rubbed the paint off of my nails and filed them to stubs
I washed away the color from my eyes and lips
Later, I went to a lesbian meet up without anything on beneath my dress
I flirted with everyone around me, and raved about the Feminine Mystique
I had never read the Feminine Mystique
I traveled to the local sex shop and bought myself a personal massager
I drove to the drug store and bought three packages of double-A batteries
and secretly hoped I would accidentally electrocute myself
I was never a rover, but after you left
I finally got around to updating my passport,
I withdrew all of my savings from the bank
I carried myself across borders, went as north as I could
I went downward until I could go no farther south, then traveled at random
I rode on horses and boats and one camel and taxis and buses
I took carriages and subway trains and light rails and streetcars
I walked and I walked and I walked and I walked
When my feet bled, I wrapped them up, and bought a bike
I filled up my passport with stamps and became an expert on
Disembarkation and Embarkation forms
I ate and drank a thousand things,
I attended weddings and funerals and quinceañeras and graduations and Bar/t Mitzvahs
I visited places where white was the color of death
I wore white there
I spoke the international language of silence
I think I was understood, though I still knew nothing
I hitchhiked and hoped my drivers were sociopaths.
I was never nothing, but after you left, I wasn’t anything
I lost and found and lost and found myself on a hundred different occassions
I erased your touches, melted every kiss away with Purell
I tattooed my arms, which had so often been in your arms
I jammed rings through the nose that you had loved to tease
and through my ears you had nibbled, my tongue…
I bought a cat to keep me company at night, to purr and love me
I named it after you at first, then changed it to something inane
I stayed awake for three months straight, I thought
I tried every fad and tried on every stereotype
I spent hours walking through graveyards, slipping past funerals
I was that strange woman in the background, quickly forgotten
I even went to grief counseling, would you believe it?
I told the man with the beard and a kind face everything, all of your secrets
I knew it didn’t matter anymore, how could it?
I bleached my hair and dyed it brown
I bought myself some new underwear
I removed my many rings and lasered away my tattoos
I packed my passport away in a safe deposit box
I somehow found myself a new job
I started rebuilding my savings
I got some Nicotine patches from the pharmacy
I “pulled myself together.”
And, yes, I even went to see you again
I brought you a dozen roses, white, and I carefully avoided
all the funerals in progress
I said good-bye, but I didn’t mean it
I lied to my counselor
I lie to him still
And I never for one moment intended to move on.
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