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Opinionated and loud, with a sugary-sweet sarcastic glaze. Brought to you by TX. |
I have nothing to say, but I'm going to say things anyways. 
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| Seven Psychopaths A struggling screenwriter inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends kidnap a gangster's beloved Shih Tzu. Fantastic! There's a part in the beginning where the writer in the movie tries to describe his story to his friend, but doesn't actually have a story, just a character, 6 blank spots, and a general 'tone' he wants the story to have. I feel that guy on a cellular level. Obviously the movie spins out pretty quickly after that point as the title suggests (if it was ever actually on the rails), and Sam Rockwell and Woody Harris really steal the show. I definitely recommend this one if you're into dark comedies. 8/10 The Awakening In 1921, England is overwhelmed by the loss and grief of World War I. Hoax exposer Florence Cathcart visits a boarding school to explain sightings of a child ghost. Everything she believes unravels as the 'missing' begin to show themselves. Saw this ending from a mile away. Utterly predictable with a few jump scares thrown in to keep you watching, but it's nice for what it is. Less about the horror, and more about the emotional scars. If you're into period pieces with a bit of a gothic vibe, give this one a go. 5/10 300 King Leonidas and a force of 300 men fight the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 B.C. The epitome of guy movies. Definitely homoerotic, but who am I to complain? Cersei makes an appearance in scenes that were clearly added into the screenplay to make the movie more... movie-esque? But she kills the role, so again. I can't really complain. Fassbender looks great, screams a lot. And if you're like me and hate Gerard Butler, by the end of the movie you'll be cheering for him. So it's almost like a magic movie. Oh, and the movie will have an effect on your psyche similar to that of Diehard. You'll suddenly be into old school justice and want to hit things. Hard. Fair warning. 6/10 The Fall In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastic story of five mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality blurs as the tale advances. Dear god, this movie is good! It's creative and moving, and absolutely beautiful. There are parts that are so sharp they will cut right through your soul and you'll cry, but I promise you the tears are worth it. You need this movie in your life. 10/10 In Bruges Guilt-stricken after a job gone wrong, hitman Ray and his partner await orders from their ruthless boss in Bruges, Belgium, the last place in the world Ray wants to be. This one is by the same guy who did Seven Psychopaths, only this one is better. The casting was spot on. Colin Farrell acts like a petulant five year old while Brendon Gleeson acts like every single put-upon father figure. It's a beautiful pairing. The movie then takes a turn, getting a bit more serious while still managing to scrounge up some laughs. This may be my favorite dark comedy of all time. 9/10 North & South Miniseries (2004) North and South is a four part adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's love story of Margaret Hale, a middle class southerner who is forced to move to the northern town of Milton. If you're a fan of Jane Eyre, you'll love this. Uses a lot of classic tropes, as most of the books from that era did, but the acting was great. 7/10 Death Comes to Pemberly Miniseries (2013) Elizabeth and Darcy, now six years married, are preparing for their annual ball when festivities are brought to an abrupt halt. An adaptation of PD James's homage to Pride and Prejudice. It wasn't awful, but it's one of those sequels that relies on the original way too much. Everything had to go back to the beginning, and everything from the beginning had to be validated, and ugh. That being said, if you're a big fan of Pride & Prejudice this might be worth a watch. 4/10 ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| It's funny, in high school there was an exchange student from Columbia who always used to call me 'My Salvation'. It was hilarious and weird, and I never got an explanation for it. The first time I met him, that's what he called me. He also used to pretend-choke me a lot. Like I said, weird. I will never be able to use the word salvation without thinking of that kid. But I digress... My hard drive is safe! God bless brother-in-laws and tech-minded individuals. This is hands down the best news I've heard all year. I can't believe that I almost lost everything, all because I'm too lazy to create backups. Well no more! I have two spare external drives now, and I will be creating monthly backups as well as utilizing google drive and dropbox on the daily. I may be willing to sacrifice a folder full of old myspace-era selfies, but I refuse to lose my documents. Just picture me as Golum crouched on a street corner whispering 'My Precious...' over and over while fondly caressing a Seagate drive with near obscene enthusiasm and hissing at passerby who wander too close. That is my new existence. I don't know what I did to get the Karma gods on my side, but thank you. Thank you all! Expect a goat shortly. Or a pig. You guys like pigs?  ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| So my laptop died. My hard-drive crashed and I lost all kinds of fun stuff, including a number of unnamed manuscripts. I know, I know. Cue the 'you didn't back up everything on Google drive???' comments. Yeah, I know. I get it now, I've learned my lesson. Back-ups, good. Kate, bad. In a way, it's kind of good that this happened. It's freeing. I mean I've had all those high school pictures on there for years, and I've never looked at them twice. Why would I? So now I just have a few pics saved on Dropbox and that's enough for me. Farewell, awkward teenage years. Rest in peace. In other news, I've started a new novel. Again. Because starting something new while trying to finish something old is always productive. Ah, well. The good news is that it's fun to write. I mean who doesn't love exorcisms? If nothing else it'll be a good change of pace from SL, which has taken a decidedly dark turn. It's a bit difficult to jump into that head-space, but I'm hoping it will be worth it in the end. Whenever that may be. Not that I've been doing much writing these days. I've been on a strange movie kick for the past month or so. It's weird, because usually I find it very difficult to get into movies. They're so long, and involved, and require so much attention. But I don't know what it is, I'm really into them now. Maybe it helps that I have a vetted movie list featuring plenty of Dark Comedies. Or maybe it's just more fun watching movies with another person. So thanks, movie buddy. And again, sorry about a certain pick I made. They can't all be winners. Oh and one more thing. I'm planning on doing something really cool next year. Hopefully. I don't really want to talk about it until everything is set in stone, but if it all works out it will be amazing and will probably involve multiple cans of spider repellent. Maybe a sharp stick, too. And that is all I will say on that subject for now. Now I'm off to do witchy things. I'll probably watch another movie, too. See ya! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
"You're unnatural, you know that?" I have a tendency to demonize myself in my own writing. Just a little touch here and there, nothing all that noticeable. I'm fairly confident that no one can really pick up on whats accurate and what's not so I'm not really worried about it, but I think that little habit is making it difficult to get anything done. It's uncomfortable, almost. Like staring into the mirror for hours on end, looking for scabs to pick at and agitated wounds to leave gaping. Or worse, peeling off the skin and examining the bone and sinew beneath to find a flaw in the design. It's beyond unpleasant and there's not enough therapy in the world to play that game, so for now I'm not doing anything at all. My mind is just kind of circling the drain. No writing, extra sleeping. Dead space. A while back I wrote a short story summarizing my life from the age of six to present day. It was a lot more unpleasant than I thought it would be. The only word I can really use to describe it would be... surreal. Reading it was like painting a portrait of a stranger, all angry scars and open wounds. Now don't get me wrong, my life wasn't some great tragedy or anything. I don't spend my nights weeping uncontrollably or have a box under my bed full of dead birds. I'm fine. It's just that none of it has ever been resolved and probably never will be, so it's all still a little raw. It doesn't help that I have a tendency to shove things into my own proverbial version of Pandora's box, locking all of my secrets up tight and treating any hint of escape as a matter of life or death. Maybe that's what has me all blocked up, the fact that my life is just sitting there in a folder on my desktop, waiting. Existing. I know I should probably just delete it and forget that I ever had the melodramatic urge to write it all down, just push it back and deal with it some other time. Perhaps while paying someone $600 an hour to hear my tale of woe. Or maybe I should just post it online under a ghost account, let it exist but in a state so disassociated from my own existence that the truth of it hardly matters at all. Just an acknowledgement, really, one that only I will recognize. I don't know. All I know is this is a weird place to be in. I need my head back. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| *takes a drink of water* *clears throat* Hello, all. Today is a special day for two reasons: one, I found the pen I've been looking for all week, which was nothing short of a miracle since I found it amidst the stacked particleboard paintings and stashed paperback collection that lurks beneath my bed. And two, I get to vent about something that has been bothering me a lot lately, namely the female body and the world's reaction to it. There have been a lot of news stories popping up online about female high school students and their dress code violations. Now I know what everyone is thinking: follow the dress code and you won’t get in trouble, how is that difficult? While this is fairly solid logic that’s hard to argue with, it doesn’t really address the real issue. Lauren Wiggins is a high school student in Canada who was sent home for wearing a halter dress that left her shoulders and upper back exposed. My issue with this isn’t that her dress was inappropriate according to the dress code (which was vague at best and made no mention of exposed soldiers, by the way). My issue here is why it was considered inappropriate. A male teacher, of unknown age, deemed the dress a “sexual distraction.” Uh, what? There are so many things wrong with that statement, I’m not sure where to start. That accusation alone perpetuates the idea that a woman is a sexual object and should be ashamed of her body and that she should cover it up, not for the sake of following a dress code, but on the off-chance that a man may see it and become sexually aroused. Are you kidding me? This goes right back to that age old saying ‘boys will be boys, so ladies - carry pepper spray and be prepared to run’. Could we maybe stop teaching children that? How about as a society we stop hyper-sexualizing females and focus on teaching boys how to respect girls, instead of punishing girls for being anatomically correct. The girl wasn’t dressed like a pussycat doll, she wasn’t dressed provocatively. She was wearing a dress that reached the floor and that (shock! horror!) left her upper back exposed and revealed the thin spaghetti-like straps of her pink bra. How is that sexually distracting? Have you ever heard a teenage boy once proclaim, “Wow, look at those shoulders! And those bra straps! Woo, boy. Guess I’m not paying attention in class today.” Now I would probably wear a wrap with the dress because I get cold ridiculously easy, and stylistically I’m averse to wearing a pink bra with a red and blue dress, but c’mon! The dress isn’t that revealing. Is the idea of a woman wearing a bra some exciting new titillating secret that was just exposed in Canada? Were they not aware bras existed? Would they have preferred she not wear a bra at all? In another instance an honor student named Cameron Boland, a 17 year old girl, was disqualified from the National Honor Society title of Historian that she had won 40 minutes prior because she gave her campaign speech in a spaghetti strap tank dress. She’d arrived in a jacket, but removed the jacket for the speech because it was hot and she'd wanted to be comfortable. It wasn’t a cleavage-baring dress, it wasn’t tight and clingy. It was a sweet white sundress that a toddler could have worn without outrage. But because she’s 17, they deemed the dress inappropriate and stripped her of the title that she had earned. They essentially claimed that her body outweighed her brain, and shamed her for it. Once a woman reaches a certain age, she’s sexualized. It’s inevitable and it’s horrible. Why are we just allowing this to go on? It reminds me of this rule we had at school for mass day, something we were forced to attend once a week regardless of personal theological beliefs (but that's another issue for another soapbox): Boys had to wear a tie and girls had to wear skirts. Let me repeat that again: girls were forced to wear skirts. What kind of sexist, black and white 50’s nonsense is that? Since when were pants considered inappropriate for a church setting? The only possible reasoning I can come up with is that the school didn’t want any tight material highlighting a girl’s leg on mass days, so they could hide the female figure from the waist to the knee and pretend like it didn’t exist. Paired with the blousy white button-downs we were also forced to wear on those days, the rules led to us being pretty well camouflaged. In rebellion, I used to wear lace-up boots with this high-low Victorian skirt, sometimes with the added addition of black and white striped tights. It never seemed to bother anyone as much as I’d hoped it would, but it made me feel better about being forced to adhere to outdated gender norms. At least the age of the attire matched the age of the request. A string of protests have started popping up of these teenage girls supporting each other and the freedoms they should have with their own bodies. Signs are being posted in schools pointing out the hypocrisy that girls are more frequently attacked than boys for dress code violations, with the reason usually being that the sight of their skin may incite the males sexually and distract them from their studies. Girls are organizing ‘crop top days’ and ‘jean short days’, which both boys and girls are participating in. It’s great seeing the support coming from teenagers everywhere. While I don’t think crop tops will ever be allowed in a school setting, I think using them as a protest tool does get the message across: Stop sexualizing girls and telling them to police their bodies instead of policing other people’s reactions to them. Being a woman isn’t a crime and no one should have to apologize for it, or cover it up like some kind of shameful secret. Well, I think that's it for now. Feminist rant over. I'm off to spend the evening doodling with my long lost friend, the pink click pen. Maybe he'll grow sentient and regale me with tales of his harrowing journey where he gallantly fought off dust bunnies using nothing but his wit, survived by licking the acrylic paint off of Ryan's nose, and managed to keep his sanity by reading old Dean Koontz novels. Until next time, see y'all later! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| Recently I've taken up journaling in the form of an interesting little book that I picked up at a lovely inflated price while waiting for a table at Crocker Barrel. I've honestly had my eye on it for years, so I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to pick it up. Ah well, it's in my life now and that's all that matters. The journal is filled out by answering a different question every day for a year, and then you repeat that process for five years, with each entry going right below the one on that date for the previous year. Now I don't know about you, but personally I think this may be the coolest concept I have ever come across. It's like a time capsule of your life. One day this journal will stand as either a testament to my oscar-worthy triumphs and subsequent rise to fame, or it will go down in the history books as the world's most long-winded suicide note. I, for one, am excited to see how it all turns out. Fingers crossed, people.  In other news, I've developed an all-consuming and unhealthy love for Wes Anderson movies. Granted, I've only seen the two, but they were absolutely incredible. I first watched The Grand Buddhapest Hotel back on mothers day, something I'd been putting off for weeks for reasons I can no longer fathom, and just last night I watched Moonrise Kingdom. They were both beautiful and brilliant, and I don't know how I will get over it. Now if you've never seen one of Anderson's films, allow me to summarize: syrupy-sweet pastels and stylistic scenes are laced with nostalgia and laid gently over dark and morbid things like murder, affairs, emotional turmoil of the brutal kind, and other heart-wrenching sad things that I can't list here without giving away pieces of the films. I really cannot express how deeply I love Anderson's work. If you have never seen one of his movies, I strongly urge you to pick one up and give it a go. You won't be disappointed. I think that's all for now. I think I'll spend my Sunday lazing about with a cup of green tea while I review things, something I always put off but I desperately need to do. So I'm off to review things! Probably. Most likely... Hopefully? See y'all later. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
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