Uh Oh

ME: Why did you tell mom I had a blog?
SISTER: (dropping head in hands) They asked what you were writing for
and I said your blog and Dad said “She has a blog?” and I said “I don’t
know” and changed the subject.

I am trying to forget this new information, or hope that surfing the
Internet remains too complicated a task for them to actually find it …

But speaking of family, I have felt an ever-present tug to go back
home, which is unusual … every weekend I want to go, and it is all
because of this:

I went for a walk/jog this morning and explored Nathan Tufts Park
(which is so small I wouldn’t really call it a park, but whatever) and
kept thinking how much he’d love climbing on all the rocks. Lovesick, I
am.

Get Off My Chest!

I had a very rough night of sleep that included a bout of Sleep Paralysis:  “A period of inability to perform voluntary movements either at sleep onset (called hypnogogic or predormital form) or upon awakening (called hypnopompic or postdormtal form).”

In other words, your brain wakes up but your body doesn’t, and you can’t move, and it feels like someone is there, squeezing you. Everyone’s brain paralyzes their body while you’re asleep to prevent you from acting out your dreams, and that’s where the glitch happens. The brain is awake but has failed to turn the switch to release your body from paralysis. And you are groggy and half-asleep and confused and you can’t move. There is an old myth about an Old Hag sitting on your chest (not to be confused with The blogging Old Hag, though I don’t know if the name of her blog has anything to do with the sleep-disorder myth), and personally I believe that people who think they have been visited by aliens are really just experiencing sleep paralysis. Because it absolutely feels like someone is in the room with you. The mixture of dream-state and waking-state and a paralyzed body is a recipe for all sorts of creepy stories about what is actually going on. I suppose it was scary for me the first time, but once I learned what it is I just wait for it to pass and wake up.

It happens to me infrequently, about once a year. When I lived in Maryland I experienced it more. I think it has some correlation to mood, and there is some evidence that it is linked. My mood is certainly quite bad these days, and I haven’t experienced it in a long time. And when it was happening a lot in Maryland my mood was the worst it’s ever been. But last night before going to bed I was actually thinking about the fact that I haven’t experienced sleep paralysis in awhile, so perhaps the power of suggestion was enough to bring it on … the brain is a strange thing.

Or maybe the Old Hag heard my thoughts and wanted to teach me a lesson…

But What A Savings!

Today I finally got around to fixing the strap in a leather backpack
that busted several months ago. I bought the heavy duty thread and
needle and figured I’d do it myself, how hard can it be to shove a
needle through four layers of leather? Pretty hard, it turns out. I had
to use an oven mitt on the hand holding the needle because it takes so
much force to push the needle through that the head of the needle ends
up piercing your finger and not budging. But with the oven mitt I could
shove it through. With difficulty.

So, $3, sore fingers, and a half hour later I did by myself a job that
probably would have cost me $5 and 20 seconds in a sewing shop.

Film Noir Bitch

I am an expert at coddling male egos but I’ve decided it’s no longer
worth the effort. Here is my new approach to men, via the screenplay
for The Verdict:

           
           
            LAURA
                       
You thought maybe you’d get
                       
some sympathy.  You came to the
                       
wrong place.

                                   
GALVIN
                       
And what makes you so tough?

                                   
LAURA
                       
Maybe I’ll tell you later.

                                   
GALVIN
                       
Is there going to be a later…?

                                   
LAURA
                       
Not if you don’t grow up…

                                   
GALVIN
                       
If I don’t ‘grow up…’

                                   
LAURA
                       
You’re like a kid, you’re coming
                       
in here like it’s Sunday night,
                       
you want me to say that you’ve got
                       
a fever — you don’t have to go to
                       
school…

Do You Ever Just Groove On Yourself?

I would just like to say how much I love my new hair. Today I decided
not to tax my anti-frizz styling products in this frizz-inducing
weather and so I let it go back to the curls rather than straightening
it. And I have an electrified, slightly Bride of Frankenstein look
going on with these blond chunks amid the curls which, now shorter, are
tighter and stand out further from my head. It’s so cool.

And the stud in my nose just caps the look perfectly.

*Bonus points and maybe a kiss to the person who can identify what film I am quoting in the title of this post.

Movie Making Me Laugh

“Don’t touch me! You could be menstruating!”

– in Only Human, spoken by a teenage boy whose form of rebellion is becoming an orthodox Jew, as he fights with his sister

13 Ways

Written by me 3 years ago but might as well have been yesterday:

13 Ways to look at Nobody’s Boyfriend
by Someone Else’s Girlfriend
after J.B.
and W.S.

1.
i order a premium bourbon from
nobody’s boyfriend and he
gives it to me for three dollars.

2.
nobody’s 19-year-old boyfriend
sits close and i try to ignore
his impossibly masculine hands.

3.
i dreamt of nobody’s boyfriend
walking down a darkened path
with me.

4.
my heart leaps as i see nobody’s
boyfriend on the sidewalk, and
i do not wave as i step down
to cross the street.

5.
the blackboard in my kitchen
tells me that nobody’s boyfriend
called while i was out.

6.
in the crowded bar my chest
rubs against nobody’s boyfriend’s
back as i squeeze past him.

7.
right now, somewhere,
nobody’s boyfriend is not
thinking of me.

8.
my voice cracks on the phone
as i tell nobody’s boyfriend
that i miss him.

9.
the long-lashed eyes of nobody’s
boyfriend meet mine and then
drop down over me.

10.
nobody’s boyfriend wants me to
meet him and his buddies at the
B-side, and i don’t show up.

11.
i stay in bed for three days
with nobody’s boyfriend.

12.
waiting for the T nobody’s
boyfriend drives by and
yelps at me.

13.
a friend hooks me up on a
date, but he turns out
to be nobody’s boyfriend.

OK, Maybe This Is A Patton Oswalt Fan Blog

Patton goes to France:

How crowded could the Louvre be?

Very
fucking crowded, especially since the staff had some sort of problem
(croissants late?  an undefined malaise brought on by a grey
realization of the futility of love?) and had to open late. 

[...]

Now I have something in common with our “I believe in angels but not evolution” President: I hate the French.

I
loved Paris.  If there was a way to replace all the Parisians with,
say, people form Finland or St. Louis or something, then aces.

Look,
I was so embarrassed when all the dumbshits in this country started
their we-hate-the-French, “freedom fries” bullshit that I HAD to take
the side of the French.  It’s like, when some douchebag you hate hates
something, then even if you haven’t experienced it, you’re going to
like it.

Out
of spite, and probably because — okay, I’ll put it this way.  Say
there’s some asshole, this guy who thinks that Limp Bizkit and Linkin
Park are the greatest bands on the planet, and he announces that he
hates a band called Train.  And you’ve never heard the band train but,
you figure, this guy’s such a shit-bucket intellect, I’m going to love
Train.

But then you hear “Meet Virginia” and “Drops of Jupiter”, and you go, “Oh Jesus, that moron’s right.”

Parisians were my “Meet Virginia.”

We’re Like, So Mature

I watched Closer
and what a pile of pretentious shit that movie is. There were
occasional nice moments but overall the movie was screaming “THIS IS A
MATURE MOVIE ABOUT ADULT RELATIONSHIPS. WE ARE SO ADULT. ADULTS ARE SO
COMPLICATED. SO THORNY. THIS MOVIE IS VERY THORNY.”

The movie reminded me of We Don’t Live Here Anymore
in the way it tries WAY too hard to seem adult and complicated and
therefore just announces itself as adult and complicated without really
having the substance. The most ridiculous moment: Natalie Portman
turning away to look out the window after acknowledging that she heard
her boyfriend Jude Law hitting on Julia Roberts, then turning back and,
with a tear running down her face, asks Julia to take her picture. Oh
how meaningful (spit). Then the picture of course becomes part of
Julia’s exhibit and becomes famous. (vomit.)

Plus, what woman anywhere, ever, for any reason, would ever leave Clive Owen? For smarmy Jude Law, no less. I mean, seriously.

But as I said there were some nice things about it. I liked that Clive
Owens was set up as the brutish former working-class doctor who is
oriented toward the concrete and physical world, to contrast with Jude
Law’s arty dreamy romantic writer-type guy (who I wanted to punch the
entire time, and not just becaues he’s Jude Law), and that Jude Law’s
type was shown to be the true brute, as most romantic arty men are
(spit). One good line–Jude is confronting Clive in his doctor’s office
and is going on about his heart, and Clive jumps up and yells “What do
you know about the human heart? Have you ever seen a human heart? It
looks like a fist wrapped in blood.”

But the film didn’t live up to its potential. It tried too hard and was
too impressed with itself. It had zero subtlety. And it had three of
the most annoying actors in Hollywood as its co-leads (Jude Law,
Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts). I wish they had all committed suicide
and ended their suffering–and mine. And leave lovely Clive free to
find less pretentious, self-absorbed assholes to hang out with.

And, finally, if you want to see the way a film about “mature” and
“complicated” relationships is done well, see Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation.

Happily

Perhaps it is an indictor of my own emotional issues lately but I read this and burst into tears in my office. Congratulations Bunny.

Postscript: Even better is Raymi’s comments on that post: “that is so gay and awesome at the same time.”

I Just Want A Damn Napkin

Is it wrong to want to punch someone with Down Syndrome? Not just
anyone with this handicap, but a specific person who has begun to
infuriate me. She works in a local eating establishment that I frequent
and every time I go over to the napkin counter, she is there stocking
things and blocking the whole counter. She gets irritated if you need
to reach over her to get a fork or a napkin. And if you do get a
napkin, she immediately gets huffy and follows after you and neatens
the napkins the moment you pull one from the dispenser. The first few
times it happened I thought it was funny, but now I’m tired of it and
I’m actually thinking of complaining, which is something I never do.

Cute Short Films

This guy sent me a link to
his web page to check out his short films and I did, and they are very
funny and cute. I am a fan. Check them out, I highly recommend!

Summer Cleaning

I am blogging from a newly spit-shined and spotless house that was for
the first time cleaned by someone other than me! (Not that I do it
often, but if it is ever done, it’s done by me.) But it wasn’t cleaned
by my roommates either, don’t be silly. A new roommate had his mother
in tow this weekend when he moved in and she tore through the house on
a cleaning rampage. I stayed locked in my room for the duration–one
thing everyone should avoid is a woman on a cleaning rampage. If you
happen to encounter her, flee as quickly as possible–you will either
get ordered to join in the rampage or you will have to dodge verbal
attacks about how messy the house is. I could hear the verbal attacks
from behind my closed bedroom door, so I stayed away. It was
reminiscent of too many weekends from my childhood.

But now she’s gone, and the house is clean…

Make New Friends, But Keep The Old…

Ever since running into my old friend D at Silverdocs I have had this Wallflowers lyric running through my head:

The only difference that I see
Is you are exactly the same
as you used to be

I used to think that was an insulting line but in this context, the context of two old friends suddenly running into each other again, it becomes a beautiful compliment.