Friday, May 31, 2002 So the interviews went well. I don't know what I'll be offered, but odds are one out of the two will want my labor. For money! Won't hear anything until next week, most likely. Giving me one last weekend of freedom. I've written a long thing about my AZ trip - nothing special, except for the fact that it's something I wrote - an endangered species, these days. It may show up here at some point. My goal over the next week is to write for an hour a day - doesn't matter what, so long as it's writing. I always say stuff like this - the advantage of unemployment is that there aren't a ton of distractions. Plus, there's other work to be done. I saw the blog on another computer this weekend, and it no look so good on larger displays. Looks like I'll have to completely dismantle the style sheets and reformat everything by hand. Something to do during the Lakers/Kings Game 6 tomorrow night! Much excitement. Should be a nice quiet weekend. The perfect cap for a nice quiet week. | permalink Thursday, May 30, 2002 This is really quite cool - so far, my favorites are Emily Dickenson and William S. Burroughs. But there are too many to name. Time to dry my hair now. And job interviews! Turns out there are two today! | permalink Monday, May 27, 2002 So, it's probably worth mentioning that I'm in Arizona right now. Realized that I wasn't sure when I would next get a chance to visit my buddy Nicky, and so I threw some stuff in a car and drove through the desert. It's done me good. It's great to be here. More thoughts later. | permalink Sunday, May 26, 2002 The Village Voice: Nation: Press Clips: War Riddles by Cynthia Cotts lists ten questions about US domestic and foreign affairs that seem to avoid being answered. It's from February, but since I really didn't get this stuff then, it's nice to take a look back. It all starts to make a bit more sense. | permalink Saturday, May 25, 2002 So today I discovered that Anne Lamott and Douglas Coupland make for a potent, unsettling combination. Anne makes you want to write, but Doug can make you feel like the only things worth writing about are trapped inside your head, only findable if you hide away in a smelly tent in the Vancouver mountains. I was stuck in my head, then, splayed out on my bed like a hit and run victim, unable to break the boring, repetitive cycle of thoughts - unable to be sure of what I was thinking. I therefore knew that I had to escape - I had to get out. So I did. Grabbed the messenger style bag Mom let me borrow ages ago, and the older-than-me manual camera that Mom let me borrow just recently, and went for a walk. Wandered around my neighborhood, taking pictures of people and places and things. I'm so much more comfortable on the other side of a camera, I've realized. And I miss filmmaking, a bit - I'm discovering all these crazy voyeuristic tendencies that are only satisfied by trapping life through a lens. There are all these funky Spanish Art Deco buildings in my area - pretty as all hell. I kind of love them - their chaotic gardens of weeds and cactus and wildflowers, their tiled patios, their peeling, flaking fresco paint. I never bring along a CD player or walkman on these walks - I just listen to the music filtering out windows. I try and peek through windows. I spy. I can't walk without a destination, though, and so I ended up on Melrose, in the comic book store. For some reason, I gravitated towards the indie comic section, and I read bits from The Waiting Place and Box Office Poison and some more obscure titles about people and their lives. I seem to be more interested in the ordinary than the extraordinary, these days. I miss superheroes, but I was addicted to them for over a year - it makes sense that I'm a little burned out right now. I still love comics, though, as a storytelling medium. That's comforting, and I can't wait to have a job and be able to afford some of the new stuff that I'm eager to try. I might start reading Sandman again, too. I stopped last year, because they cost so much and I was only buying out of routine - but I feel like rediscovering them, rereading my way through the volumes I do have. So I browsed the comics, but didn't buy anything - points for me! And then I wandered in and out of some other shops before going to the coffee shop I used to haunt during the semester, when the choices were writing in my apartment or writing elsewhere. Comfortable sofas, great coffee, and nice people behind the counter. Too bad it closes at 6 - I'd be tempted never to leave, otherwise. Read some more of Bitch while I was there, jotted down the first two paragraphs of a potentially very bad short story. And then closing time lurked and I got cold, so I walked home. And here I am, writing about this very unextraordinary afternoon. But I'm still jazzed on caffeine and my fingers type so well when it's like this. And while my own life bores me, I'm discovering how much I'm enjoying reading about other people. I've become a blog addict, enjoying the quiet moments of desperation and joy and, yes SEP, bitching that other people choose to share online. Because I'm savoring the ordinary, these days, as I slowly emerge from my own head. And I'm delighted to see what's outside. | permalink I have come to some decisions, folks. Or rather, one important decision - I HATE DANCING TO RAP/R&B/HIP-HOP. Had my first over-21 clubbing experience last night, which was fun, but one of the other people chose the club and as a result, it was all loud, blaring, buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh hip hop music all the goddamn night. I mean, I got in cheap because it was ladies' night, and I had a good time in the end, but I CANNOT dance to hip-hop. I need more than one rhythm, folks. I need escalation and acceleration and music that MOVES me. Not music that's all about pimps and hos and macking and sex. That's not why I like to dance. That's not WHY I dance. So I'm peturbed. But - eh. Better luck next time, I suppose. Tonight'll be quiet - I might try and go see a movie, all by my lonesome, because no one else wants to see Enigma and gosh darn it, I really want to. So there you have it. Today... I don't know what I'm doing. May do some writing. Heh. Not that I don't always say that. | permalink Wednesday, May 22, 2002 So, I've been trip-hopping recently down nostagia road. Also translated as: I've been thinking about X-Files. Not on a large scale, see. But after I saw the trailer for the finale last week, I was excited because, damn, I kinda miss Mulder, y'know? So I fastforwarded through a few episodes, skipped to the good parts. Ended up watching the end of "The Unnatural" for the TEN billionth time, and went looking for that beautiful gospel from the end... ..and in my searching, I found the music for the second movie trailer. And it was so GOOD! I'd forgotten how much that trailer ruled, what with the big-budget imagry, fast editing, and "Ven ve must take avay vat vithvich he cannot live vithout." So I put the mp3 in my playlist, and bopped along with it. Roommate asked me who did it, and I realized that nothing that fast and cool could be done by Mark Snow. So, one hour later, I discovered that this mp3 which has come to represent all that I really love about XF - the passion and the danger and the drama and did I mention the passion? - Was from the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet. This conclusively proved one thing - Craig Armstrong is an unsung genius - ::cough::download::cough:: "Escape from Mantua" (the track in question) if you don't believe me. It also made me think about how the things that I like XF for aren't necessarily the things that XF has come to represent, in the end. So, with that in mind, I am going to make a list of all the good things about the series finale. Or, rather: What I Liked About "The Truth" (Spoilers Ensue) -I missed Mulder, and the teaser reminded me why. In this world of rationality and common sense, it's nice to see a protagonist do something completely stupid and get caught. All that we needed was for him to drop his gun, and it woulda really been a party! -Um. Yeah. I'm gonna be horribly obvious and just say it - I LOVED THAT KISSING -I also really liked that reversal - Brainwashed!Mulder to BadHannibal!Mulder to GrabbingAndKissing!Mulder. If I had to point to any sign that Chris Carter knows what he's doing as a screenwriter - that nine years of experience had taught him anything - I would say those two scenes were remarkably well-written. Well, until the characters started talking about things that matter, that is. But that's an issue for another list. -The clip show was just absurd. I toast its absurdity with one of the many Schirmoff I drank that night. I laughed a lot, I can tell you that. It was like watching someone dance on a trapeze wire, and falling onto a pile of whoopee cushions. Almost magestic, if it weren't so goddamned ridiculous. -I will applaud the choice to keep things simple - to use a (hideously inaccurate) trial to finally, once and for all, Make Things Make Sense. They did the trial, did the big confrontation in the desert, and that was it. It could have been much worse. -Also, the clip shows are really easy to skip past while fastforwarding. As I label my tape for posterity, including the timecodes for all the good stuff (ie - not the plot), I again raise a Schirmoff in praise. -On that same note, the Dead People Cameos pleased me to no end - so nice to see some familiar faces - but they didn't really move or touch me. -I missed being able to shout, "Mulder, you martyr-complex moron!" at my TV. A proud tradition reinstated on Sunday night. -They finally fulfilled Cancerman's dirty-old-man potential, with a heaping dose of creepy, to boot. That was great. And really dead? Eh. It made me smile. -I want to e.p. a TV show someday. And I'll be able to say, "Can I get two black helicopters to blow up some ancient Navajo ruins?" And the answer'll be "Yes." And that'll rule. -On the William front... I still can't quite get over the name, and whether this is a permanent sacrifice or not, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I feel badly for the characters. And I dearly hope that this doesn't get swept under the rug for the upcoming movie - that they keep this sense of melancholy with them, always. -Because that last scene, while being way too long and badly written, was just right in tone. And it was the ending that should have been "Requiem" and it was the ending that should have been. And in the long run, it's an image I'll cherish. Because the show did have a remarkable impact on me when I was becoming the person I am. And there's no point in denying this. -At the very end of it, I got up, said goodbye to the friend who had watched it with me, and did some thinking. And the one thought I had? "Time to get a life, now." So there's a goal for the summer. Among other things. Like getting a job. Still no luck there. But who knows what the future holds - for me, Mulder, Scully, or any of us? | permalink Tuesday, May 21, 2002 So I was digging through my in box and I found this - probably one of the funniest emails I've received in recent history. A friend and I regularly disagree about whether or not it's a good thing that we have nuclear bombs (his position - he doesn't necessarily like them, but since they're out there, he'd prefer that we have as many as humanly possible). So I got this from him the other day: I get breaking news from cnn on my email. Thought you guys would be interested in this. --- BreakingNews@MAIL.CNN.COM wrote: > Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 08:31:03 -0400 > Reply-to: newseditor@MAIL.CNN.COM > From: BreakingNews@MAIL.CNN.COM > Subject: CNN Breaking News > To: TEXTBREAKINGNEWS@CNNIMAIL12.CNN.COM > > -- President Bush says United States, Russia agree > to substantially reduce nuclear arsenals. Los Angeles student, Liz Miller, is quoted as saying "I am thrilled that the president has made this choice. Speaking for vegetable eating hippies everywhere, I think this is a huge step forward in the war on nuclear war. I hope that the president and Russia don't just throw the bombs away, I hope they convert them into to Love or Happiness bombs if you will. So if ever the US in in danger of an attack we can fight back with love....and of course lettus." Miller then returned to her tofu burger. | permalink Went out and had a milkshake tonight with a friend. He kept talking about war, about nuclear bombs, about Isreal. He kinda scared me, in the end. I don't want to live in this place, sometimes. I want to be somewhere safe, away from the madness. But this madness is part of life. That's what I have to deal with, in the end. I suppose the question is - what is it I really value? Is my safety that important, really? If I hide inside my room all the time and never go outside and never get hurt and never feel any pain, is that a way to live? The men in The Right Stuff... It's an ego trip and puffed up nationalism, in part, but there's also a part of them that just isn't afraid to strap themselves to a rocket and get blasted into space, possibly to die. I've been afraid to die for so long. Sheltered little suburban girl, feeling trembly at the thought of being alone in the big city. But I guess that I'm not really living, though. And I was driving home, thinking about the things I value, and how little some of them matter in the face of all the big stuff. It's cause for thought, certainly. All of it. What do I want to get out of life? What do I want to do with it? I'm 21 years old. I feel so old. I feel like I have all these decisions to make, all of this time looming ahead, and it's like I've gotten taller or something, because the view's gotten clearer. I think about the valleys and peaks of my future - undefined, but existant - and I don't know what they hold in store. What any of it means. So. Yeah. In other news, I felt kinda cheated by tonight's Angel. This makes three finales in a row (Ed and X-Files preceded) to leave things completely unresolved. Hopefully, Buffy'll break the cycle. And it turns out that boys love geek girls! At least, if the Onion personals are anything to go by. Always encouraging news. Not that things have to end on an up note or anything. But it does help, in the end. | permalink Wednesday, May 15, 2002 So welcome to a brand new day, a brand new webpage, a brand new Lizlet. Well, actually, none of these things are really true. Except for the webpage thing. It was a hard decision to leave LJ, and I may still update when there are private thoughts that I feel like hiding away. But this is the new pad, so to speak, and I hope to get comfortable soon. Perhaps my life will even stop being so boring. And I'll fix up the pictures page, as soon as I have more pictures to work with (I do have some, but not tons, and it's good to have more projects, don't you think?), and maybe this site won't be so pointless. Because, hey, it's all about me. It's nice to have a place on the web that's just that. Today, I ate a nice lunch. Bought the new Moby CD. There's a cool breeze coming through the window, slamming tunes coming from my stereo, and I love my laptop. My life may be boring. But I don't mind it so much. | permalink blog • archives • photos • about • contact This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. All content © 2004.