Speaking of adoption, which I was in the last post but you don't know that because these go in reverse order, and The Time Traveler's Wife (ditto), I want to bring up something I find very weird, and that bugs me.

That is, the fact that everyone believes that having their own kid is better than adopting. Well, I know you have the biological imperitive to spread your genes, but come on! I would much rather have an adopted kid! (though I probably wouldn't even want one of those because I just know I'd terribly warp any kid that would have the misfortune of having me as a parent) Sign some papers, no morning sickness, no stretch marks, no shooting something the size of a watermelon out of your vagina, no fuss, no muss.

Anyway, I was thinking of it again because (mild spoiler) the woman in Time Traveler's Wife wants to have a kid, but keeps having these awful miscarriages, and if they ever finally suceed at having a kid, the time traveling's genetic, and the kid could have it, and with some of the stuff the guy's going through, you wouldn't wish that on a kid. But she's determined that they have their own kid instead of adopt. Also, they're the last people who should raise kids! What if the dad drops the kid because he disappears all of the sudden?

Also, my sister was talking about how all the crap she's going through right now is worth it for having a kid. I pointed out that we have crappy genes, and she said something lame like, "I'm quite proud of my genes, thank you very much!" but it's TRUE. The greatest gift I feel I could ever give to this planet is letting my genes die with me. Honestly, all of this I have or someone in my immediate family (mom, dad, sister) has had: severe asthma (my sister's been hospitalized), allergies, migraines, ADD, alcoholism (okay--this one is an uncle, but I count it because it's strongly linked with ADD which I DO have), diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, alzheimers (grandparents--but my parents aren't old enough yet to see if this affects them though I pray it doesn't), severe back problems know one knows what causes them (dad), severe muscle problems no one knows what's causing (mom), thyroid disorder, and the cap to all of this, colitis, which is as bad as most of those rolled into one in and of itself. I don't think I could stand seeing a child of mine going through the pain I go through just because I wanted a little copy of myself and my spouse to parade around the house.

Hmm... I'm talkative tonight.

Oh, also I recently realized that Jake Gylenhaal can't be my babies' daddy after all because I saw him do an interview with Dave Letterman where he goes on at length about having an abnormally large head, like he has to get special hats and stuff.

Alone, I don't know if this would bother me, but I, too, believe it or not, have an abnormally large head. I don't normally wear hats anyway, but I took dance class for 10 years and they were always making us do these dances involving these lame hats. And whereas on broadway, the hats are probably real, we got these thin plastic ones, and mine would always crack because I have an enormous head that I would try to jam it on, and no one else's hat did that.

So anyway, I don't want to push out a kid with a combo of my big head and Jake's big head. That's just too much, we're gonna have to adopt.

I spent last night reading The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffnegger, and it blew my mind it was so good. Even by the title, you can tell it is SF/Fantasy, but I feel like I transcended genre for once because I picked it up off the bestseller rack instead of the SF/Fantasy rack. Plus, it strikes me as having more depth than a lot of SF/Fantasy I read, plus the relationships are a lot more real. I kind of wish they'd not separate fantasy bestsellers from the regular rack, because then I never find them, and though I do find gems in the rack I normally am looking through, so many of them I am gradually realizing are awful. So many books get bogged down in explaining their little world or science gimmick that it seems to take away from the story, and the types of authors who can do it without being boring, such as Michael Crichton, are automatically segregated because of their wide appeal. But I hate going over to the bestselling rack, because I have to sift through a lot of stuff I know I won't care for before finding it. Plus, the bestsellers cost more, which cheeses me off.

Anyway, it's hard to explain, but I would strongly recommend this book to anyone, regardless of their usual genre choice. Though the time traveling angle is really interesting (to me), it's more about Henry & Clare's relationship, and how the time traveling has shaped it and put stress on it and to work in some nifty bits of foreshadowing.

I badgered my sister into hanging out with me tonight, so we did. We had orange juliuses that we made in the blender because the Orange Julius stand at our mall folded sometime in the 80's, and we were overjoyed when she learned a recipe for them in home ec sometime in the 90's and we could have them again. We hadn't had any in awhile, so that's what we did, plus pizza and a DVD.

My brother in law chose Mooseport, which I was a little surprised because it didn't strike me as his sort of thing, but it looked okay enough to sit through. I had thought it was a straight comedy, but it was really one of those romantic comedies that have the occaisional funny bit but really shouldn't be called a comedy because they don't produce belly laughs. And the romance angle was a little weak too, so it was overall somewhat mediocre, but I had fun anyway.

My sister and I talked a little bit too. We got to talking about my future career options and Mom, and it surprises me how much my sister doesn't realize how desperately Mom wants me to stay in town just like she has. Maybe she never ran up against it because she never thought about leaving this town. But Mom has a cow if I even mention trying to get an internship in Peoria, which is not that far away. And to a limited extent, I am kind of using her as an excuse not to apply in peoria. I don't really want to go to Peoria. I either want to live in a glamorous city, or stay here where I'm comfortable, if not glamorous. Not pick up everything and go to a crappy town a couple of hours away. I really, really, wish applying for jobs and internships didn't make me crazy. I wish I didn't dread them, and so not apply for many, and even those much later than I ought to. Speaking of which, Walmart and Family Video still have not called back.

Yep. I'm definately going to be working at Arby's* when I graduate. Or die in a gutter. Whatever.


* Just recently I learned that the ovenmitt is voiced by Tom Arnold. I just felt like mentioning it, because it surprised me for some reason when I found out. True story.

Whoa.... that last post was even more rambly and pointless than usual. That's what happens when I don't post very often, which is what happens when I've got not that much to say because I haven't been doing much.

Anyways, today I helped put together my nephew's crib, which went surprisingly well. Usually three of us (mom, dad, and I put it together) = arguements when putting things together, but this was like, the easiest thing ever to put together, luckily.

Yep.

Well, I finally got up off my ass and went job hunting. Though not far... only Walmart and Family Video. I hate filling out 80 applications and then not having anyone hire me, so I thought maybe I'd try 2, and see what happens from there.

The family video ap, it was actually nice to write down my film studies minor and feel like I was actually applying to something where I could at least prove that I have interests that marginally align with the job.

I'm not fooling myself that Walmart or Family Video are fun, just I want a reason to get out of bed in the morning. It's weird, but doing absolutely nothing gets more tiring than actually doing things for me after awhile.

I did get to see some movies in the last week, though, which was nice. Big Fish, which I've meant to see for awhile and was about as good as I expected, Timeline, which was better than my low expectations because while the book was good, it was totally panned by most people, and Troy, which my dad kind of dragged me to, though I didn't think it sounded very good.

It, too, surpassed my expectations. Especially Orlando Bloom. He usually annoys the crap out of me because they put him in action hero roles, but he's such a sissy! If he played Hugh Grant-y roles, I'm sure I'd like him better. But he's so girly, and they insist on giving him macho guy roles. But, I liked him in this because Paris IS a weanie, with a curly mullet no less, so it all works out. And the dude who played Agamemnon was totally awesome at playing a horrible bastard, and I liked the dude who played Hector who was all smart and told them what to do and then they'd all just go and do something insanely stupid instead. The rulers were all stupid, though. Even Paris, who's obviously not the brightest got to be like, "Burn it! Burn the bastard! Why would they leave it if it was something good! Burn it, you idiots!" about the Trojan horse, and of course no one listened.

(warning: long insane rant about crazy family follows)

Well... I think that dream was a premonition. Not of all the crazy stuff literally happening, but more trouble with Grandpa's new girlfriend & my mom.

My aunt called up my sister wanted to see if the girlfriend could come down with her to my sister's baby shower (so she has someone to drive down with).

Of course, my mom who already resents the woman, does not want her coming. And she's further enraged by them calling my sister and not her ("They're trying to sidestep me!") though my sister obviously called up and asked Mom about it.

I myself don't think it would be that big of a deal to bother with the woman. It's not like Mom personally has to hang out with her, the aunt would. But she's been off the deep end about it. And how she can never have a GOOD event, citing specific events.

I.E. 1. Grandma herself messed up my sister's wedding, she had major health problems. And not only that, she was a little bit of a jerk about it. Which... I really can't blame her. Before she died she had several years of being hospitalized all the time and throwing up all the time and taking tests that (having a similar disease I know from experience) are worse than the actual problem. I'm not exaggerating--literally worse. I would rather have my 1 or 2 normal 10 minute long blindingly painful bowel movements than take 6 cups of laxative mixed with fruit juice that doesn't cover the taste enough for me to not constantly be gagging and afraid that it's all going to come up and I'm going to have to start over again, then having that fruit juice shoot out my butt for 24 hours afterwards then having a scope put up there.

Stuff like this also makes me wonder why mom seems so fiercely loyal about grandma now that she's dead. When she was alive, she fully bitched about grandma (both recent incidents AND stuff from when she was growing up) as often as I bitch about her. I'm a horrible, horrible person, but I wasn't that sad when she died. Not only was it actually probably kind of a relief for her after all the health problems, but I mostly have bad memories of her saying horribly mean things to me ever since I got old enough not to be cute anymore. Not that I have many memories of her at all, since she hardly ever visited. My mom keeps going on about how she's going to miss the birth of her first great-grandchild. I was like, "Hey, my cousin has a kid." And my mom's like, "That kid was illegitimate, so she has never recognized it." That's a horrible attitude! I know you can miss someone even if they aren't nice, especially if they might've used to be nice, but do you really pine away for someone like that? When grandma died this line from a Ben Folds Five song, "She said I'd feel sorry but the truth of it is/that I feel guilty for not giving a shit," just kept going over and over in my mind because it was exactly how I felt about it. I'm glad grandpa's found someone nice.

2) my aunt ruined my sister's wedding shower by showing up. I didn't know this at the time, because it was a perfectly okay wedding shower. I myself was a liiitle miffed because I was the Maid of Honor and it was my job, and I wanted to do it really badly because my sister hadn't really let me do anything else because she's the type that has to do things herself. Anyway, my mom, the aunt, the mother in law to be.... all were kind of butting in because they thought that I didn't know how to do anything, and it cheesed me off. But once we actually had it, it was alright. Anyway, this makes me think, "Maybe if you didn't irrationally hate so many people, so many things wouldn't be ruined for you!" Because she does hate the aunt because the aunt is my uncle's second wife and they kind of hooked up before he was fully divorced from his first one, and she's catholic which my mom doesn't like for some reason. But anyway, my mom hates my sister's mother in law too, for no real reason, so she feels like they ruined my sister's graduation for her (they both threw the party since her and my brother in law graduated at the same time) because she forgot to offer for us to take home some of the cake we half paid for.

Lastly.... come on, the baby shower isn't (nor was the wedding shower) a paramount occaision. It's an excuse to get gifts! The actual wedding, the actual birth of the baby--important life moments. Showers--excuses to get presents. Which--I'm not downing showers. People starting a life together or having a baby need to buy a lot of crap, and this sort of lifts their burden. But a total snoozefest for everyone else involved, and not even a life-changing occaision for the one getting the gifts.

I had a whacked out dream last night, and I can't even remember all of it. Still.... the main gist of it was my Grandma, who's been dead a bit over a year now, was actually alive. Like.... they'd buried her because they thought she was dead, but she wasn't, and now she came back and got a divorce from grandpa because he'd gotten a girlfriend because he'd thought she was dead. And I remember thinking very clearly at one point, "Wow.... this is like my mom's soap opera with the midget. I HAVE to blog this." Which I still find it bloggable even though now I realize it's a dream.

And AWESOME! I just got my grades back while I was typing this. Straight A's! The second time EVER! AND I was only expecting an A for one of my grades (the internship). Go me!

I've had Tenacious D's "Tribute," in my head for over a week. I am not kidding. And I don't know why.

Yes, I have it on my computer, and I listen to it while I'm on the computer, which is a certain amount of the time, but I have plenty of other songs on the playlist and they're NEVER in my head. Nothing else is. Just Tribute. Maybe it's the greatest song in the world, alright, the best motherfuckin song in the world, the greatest song in the world. Or maybe it's just a tribute.

.....my babblings get more and more incoherent every day.

Well.... I'm so lazy. I keep thinking of applying for a summer job but then not doing it. The thing is I hate the idea of filling out the forms and going to interviews way more than I actually hate the idea of getting my lazy ass up and doing something. In fact, I think I'd kind of like getting out of the house and interacting with people, if only as a supermarket checker or something.

What I have been doing? Some cleaning of the room.

Lots of sleep.

Lots of Might & Magic 7. I started it last summer and got to the very end, right before the last quest, and quit until now, when I finished it. Then I decided I wanted to go back and start over playing it evil (at one point in the game you get to pick whether you're good or evil) and maybe with different classes. The funny thing is I started MM6 yeeeeeears ago, like when I was still in high school, and I did the same "right before the last quest" thing. And I still haven't finished it, because that last quest is so damn hard and I get killed every time I try, even after spending days and days at a time beefing up my party more.

Lastly, re-reading the Wrinkle in Time books, like I mentioned. Not all of them.... I think I got rid of the ones I didn't like (mostly the ones where the main char is one of Meg's kids, or where L'Engle departs from SF/fantasy). Of the four books I did read, Wrinkle in Time itself is actually my least favorite, I found. All of the books work better when you're younger and don't think to pick at the niggling details that don't quite come together, but Wrinkle in Time seems to have the most of those. But really(in all the books), I did notice things like:

--In wrinkle in time, Calvin does NOTHING but provide ego massage for Meg's low self esteem. There is NO reason for the people to take him along at all, he doesn't do anything or help anyone do anything, he's pointless! Not that I still don't enjoy his character. What nerdy unpopular girl with low self esteem could resist the popular, atheletic, but yet gentle and intelligent guy who hooks up with the nerdy unpopular girl with low self esteem?

--Charles Wallace is supposed to be the genius way ahead of everyone with all the powers no one else has, but of the three books he's in, he's only the one saving stuff in one of them. And in that one, he's more of an observer than actually doing things.

Yes. I am the type that does go back and re-read children's books, or even random other books I happened to particularly like.

Well, I'm finally thoroughly cleaning my room after several years, and it really needs it. It's amazing the amount of paper I've pulled out of there already.

One thing I found was a diary someone gave me for high school graduation. It has about two entries (one "this is the start of my memoirs!" entry and one, of course, about my bowels). I'm awful at keeping up diaries, I had another one before that that I would put in an entry every few years.

I think the reason I can keep up the online journal is that I hate writing, but typing is no big whoop for me. I wish I could keep a paper journal because unless there's a fire or something, it's not going to just up and disapear like electronic files. Oh well.

Ay.... blogger's got a new interface. What's up with that?

Anyhoos, after all the movies I had to watch for class, I thought it would be a relief to go without for awhile, but now I am going into withdrawal, I keep wanting to watch more than I am. Which is not that much, except the other night I saw "Wrinkle in Time," which is apparently a made for tv or straight to video version of the Madeliene L'Engle book. On one hand, it was truly crappy. A lot of the detail that drives the story is lost (stuff happens in people's minds, hard to translate to movie form) and character development is pared down to a bare minimum. I still liked it, kind of, because I could fill in the blanks on my own. It made me want to re-read the book, several of the books actually. Not all of the books though.... because some of them are strange but not in the good way the rest are.

Then tonight I rented a couple. Foolproof, which is about these people who like to come up with these elaborate schemes to rob places with hi-tech security systems, and act them out at home for the fun of it, rather than actually going and robbing anyone. One of their plans gets out, someone uses it, then the dude who did it sort of blackmails them into going along with another scheme, because of their involvement (though unwilling) with the previous. Pretty good, if you like heist movies. I also got Knock Around Guys, because it was free, which was pretty good for ANYTHING with Vin Diesel in, alright for anything else. I think it was saved by him not being the main character.

Also, I dream about movies. Last night I dreamt I went to watch Troy, only it turned out to be sort of like Love, Actually where there are several mini stories and the Troy I've seen in ads was just a small part of the actual film, the rest of it was set in modern office buildings or something.

Also, I have these freaky hives on my hands. I know I'm a hypochondriac, but they're there! My mom agrees! Except all she did was tell me to put cortaid on them, like she always tells me to. Anyway, they were just bumpy for awhile, but now I'm itching like crazy. NOT cool.

You know those stereotypes about the old people sitting around the nursing home alone while their kids and grandkids give them the brush off? I'm beginning to think it's the opposite way around.

My grandma and grandpa used to go to florida for the winter, and we're kind of on the route, so they would visit us. BUT, only for a day or two. During days I was at school. And we'd never visit them, because my mom (and hence the family) just won't travel. Anywhere. I used to beg my mom to let us go up there or ask them to stay longer, or at least come during a break or a weekend, but it would never happen.

So, somewhat over a year ago, my grandma died. And we actually started seeing my grandpa a little more often, (mom put in more of an effort to travel & he came over once for a little longer). Still not as much as I'd like.... I wanted to drive up there at one point but thanks to at one point my inexperience on the interstate and at another point wrecking my car and having no mode of transportation, that didn't pan out and he probably thinks I'm a big phony for saying I'd come and never coming. But here's the new complication: my 80 year old grandpa got a girlfriend.

So he and the girlfriend came up from Florida, and we didn't even get the perfunctory 1 or 2 day visit, because my mom resents the girlfriend and won't let her stay in our house. She made up an excuse about how dirty the house is (and it IS dirty, but she admitted to Dad and I that it was an excuse) and how she'd be embarrassed if the girlfiend stayed.

So... he said we could come up there sometime, and I was all, "that'd be great!" but my mom is all, "I don't want to go there! And see HER in my Mom's house! And her hanging all over him!" Okay, I can understand being a little weirded out.... but she's downright hostile! And the hanging all over him comment was doubly weird. I mean, they're old. They're not exactly about to start making out in front of us or something. And the lady's actually pretty nice, it's not like we've got Anna Nicole Smith on our hands, here.

So anyway, I fully expect to be deprived of interacting with my sole living grandparent until 1) I get a car (which.... I have no money) 2) he dies thus rendering the point moot, and the time is gone forever. Woo.... ain't life beautiful.

So, Bitsy finally got ahold of me, and I was right: everything from Hastily Paraphrased is gone. Forever. Well.... maybe not forever, as she has some scheme involving cached google pages. Really, I feel worse for her than me, she had a lot more things besides the blog up there, plus she was actually paying these people who, by the way, have not answered when she phoned and e-mailed, for the space, not I. Plus, by some horrible coincidence, her hard drive went off at the same time. And it's finals time.

Today I've not been up to much. I finally finished off latch-hook Tigger (from a set of three for my sister's kid. Eeyore was done long ago, and now its time for that bland straightman himself, Pooh.) I also played the Sims for like, ever, on my laptop out on the back porch, which I love the first day I can spend the whole afternoon out there on my computer or reading a book with the stereo on (because really, my idea of outdoor activity is doing indoor activities outside).


And here's a boring story I told someone over IM about "copper." Because I'm bored and I can.


Phoemeister: You'll never catch me alive, copper!
Sui: haha
Sui: dork
Phoemeister: Yeah
Phoemeister: See, my sister was putting the mineral copper on the roots of her oak tree
Phoemeister: and I started saying that
Sui: haha
Phoemeister: because I've seen too many movies from the forties lately.
Phoemeister: Coppah!
Sui: it would appear that way
Phoemeister: Then, I started doing the "you dirty rat..." spiel
Phoemeister: but it sounds more like I'm trying to do Jack Kennedy when I do that.
Phoemeister: So I started saying JFK-y things.
Phoemeister: Then I just started saying random things from tv or movies with boston accents

"Youah retahded! No you ah! Yoah wicked retahded!"
"That kid used to beat the shit out of me in kindahgahten!"
Phoemeister: True story.

Wow. I had a wiiiild dream last night. It was epic length.... but I can't remember a good lot of the beginning and middle, as I've been up for awhile and forgot. But I remember it's wiiild, and that it was another one that was sort of movielike, where half the time I'm watching what I'm in, or playing different roles.....

Anyway, at one point I get arrested for something or other, and they send me to this insane asylum. Not because they think I'm insane, but they think a good punishment for normal people is making them hang out with the crimnally insane, and that puts the criminally insane in a better mood, so it's win win for everyone except for the occaisional normal person who gets horribly murdered by the insane people.

Anyway, right before I go in to talk to the insane people (and I'm really frightened at this), the lady who arrested me, who I think has been a nemisis throughout the dream tells me that she stole these songs I wrote and gave them to Michael Jackson, and it's a black revolution! And then she hit me with a cattleprod or something.

Which, I don't think I've ever been shocked in my life, so I'm not sure what it feels like. But whatever she did to me in the dream that I thought was electricity hurt like hell, and I couldn't move any of my limbs and it was freaky. Anyway, partway through the being shocked, I finally realize it's a dream, and in my head I'm like, "wake up wake up wake up!" and I did.

So... yeah. Anyway: the final final went alright and I have most of my crap out of the dorm. It feels kind of weird to have this be the last time I go through this process.... (I am going to school one more semester but I'm going to live at home) But also a relief, because it is a pain in the asscheeks.

Here's another meme: you know the IMDB top 250 films? I've done it already, but since I've seen so many of the types of films heavily represented on the list (Japanese & classic films) this semester for class, I thought I'd do it again and compare. Only the other one I took was posted at the googlies blog. So really, I'm just taking it again.

Also, I wanted to do another thing that I've seen on a book meme going around, which is as well as bolding the ones I've seen, adding in italics for ones I've seen part of, underline for ones I want to see, and asterisks if I've seen something similar I want to mention, or read the book it's based on. Question marks are letters w/foreign accents that weren't recognized and I couldn't go through and fix all of them.

1 Godfather, The (1972)
2 Shawshank Redemption, The (1994)
3 Godfather: Part II, The (1974)
4 Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003)
5 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)
6 Schindler's List (1993)
7 Seven Samurai (1954)
8 Casablanca (1942)
9 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)
10 Star Wars (1977)
11 Citizen Kane (1941)
12 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) (* read the book)
13 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
14 Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
15 Rear Window (1954)
16 Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
17 Pulp Fiction (1994)
18 Usual Suspects, The (1995)
19 Memento (2000)
20 North by Northwest (1959)
21 12 Angry Men
22 Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)
23 Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
24 Psycho (1960)
25 Amelie (2001)
26 Silence of the Lambs, The (1991)
27 It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
28 Goodfellas (1990)
29 American Beauty (1999)
30 Vertigo (1958)
31 Sunset Blvd. (1950)
32 Matrix, The (1999)
33 To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
34 Cidade de Deus (2002)
35 Apocalypse Now (1979)
36 C'era una volta il West (1968)
37 Pianist, The (2002)
38 Third Man, The (1949)
39 Paths of Glory (1957)
40 Taxi Driver (1976)
41 Spirited Away (2001)
42 Fight Club (1999)
43 Some Like It Hot (1959)
44 Double Indemnity (1944)
45 Boot, Das (1981)
46 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
47 Chinatown (1974)
48 Singin' in the Rain (1952)
49 L.A. Confidential (1997)
50 Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
51 Requiem for a Dream (2000)
52 M (1931)
53 All About Eve (1950)
54 Bridge on the River Kwai, The (1957)
55 Se7en (1995)
56 Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
57 Saving Private Ryan (1998)
58 Rashomon (1950)
59 Raging Bull (1980)
60 Wizard of Oz, The (1939)
61 Alien (1979)
62 American History X (1998)
63 Sting, The (1973)
64 L?on (1994)
65 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
66 Vita ? bella, La (1997)
67 Manchurian Candidate, The
68 Touch of Evil (1958)
69 Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948)
70 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
71 Finding Nemo (2003)
72 Reservoir Dogs (1992)
73 Great Escape, The (1963)
74 Modern Times (1936)
75 Amadeus (1984)
76 Clockwork Orange, A (1971) (* read the book. Awful stuff)
77 On the Waterfront (1954)
78 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
79 Ran (1985)
80 Annie Hall
81 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
82 Jaws (1975)
83 Apartment, The (1960) 8.1/10 (8832 votes)
84 Braveheart (1995)
85 High Noon (1952)
86 Aliens (1986)
87 Fargo (1996)
88 Shining, The (1980)
89 Strangers on a Train (1951)
90 Metropolis (1927)
91 Blade Runner (1982)
92 Sixth Sense, The (1999)
93 City Lights (1931)
94 Duck Soup (1933)
95 Donnie Darko (2001)
96 Great Dictator, The (1940)
97 General, The (1927)
98 Sjunde inseglet, Det (1957)
99 Princess Bride, The (1987)
100 Dogville (2003)


101 Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1989)
102 Notorious (1946)
103 Princess Mononoke (1997)
104 Rebecca (1940)
105 Full Metal Jacket (1987)
106 Toy Story 2 (1999)
107 Lola rennt (1998)
108 Big Sleep, The (1946)
109 Best Years of Our Lives, The (1946)
110 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
111 Yojimbo (1961)
112 Graduate, The (1967)
113 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
114 Patton (1970)
115 Ladri di biciclette (1948)
116 Deer Hunter, The (1978)
117 It Happened One Night (1934)
118 Manhattan (1979) 8.0/10
119 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
120 Forrest Gump (1994)
121 Searchers, The (1956)
122 Glory (1989)
123 Philadelphia Story, The (1940)
124 Cool Hand Luke (1967)
125 African Queen, The (1951)
126 Mystic River (2003)
127 Ben-Hur (1959)
128 Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
129 Bringing Up Baby (1938)
130 Unforgiven (1992)
131 Green Mile, The (1999)
132 Hable con ella (2002)
133 Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
134 Stalag 17 (1953)
135 Grapes of Wrath, The (1940) (* saw a play of it. Yech)
136 Shrek (2001)
137 Elephant Man, The (1980)
138 Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
139 Night of the Hunter, The (1955)
140 Gone with the Wind (1939)
141 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
142 Wild Bunch, The (1969)
143 Christmas Story, A (1983)
144 Back to the Future (1985)
145 Straight Story, The (1999)
146 Platoon (1986)
147 Hustler, The (1961)
148 All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
149 Amores perros (2000)
150 Young Frankenstein (1974)
151 Smultronst?llet (1957)
152 Adventures of Robin Hood, The (1938)
153 Gold Rush, The (1925)
154 Die Hard (1988)
155 His Girl Friday (1940) (* I think I saw the movie this one was based on)
156 Monsters, Inc. (2001)
157 Grande illusion, La (1937)
158 Life of Brian (1979)
159 Lost in Translation (2003)
160 Spartacus (1960)
161 Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The (1962)
162 Battleship Potemkin (1925)
163 Charade (1963)
164 Gladiator (2000)
165 Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
166 Quatre cents coups, Les (1959)
167 Almost Famous (2000)
168 Festen (1998)
169 Conversation, The (1974)
170 Sling Blade (1996)
171 Roman Holiday
172 Toy Story (1995)
173 Magnolia (1999)
174 Ying xiong (2002)
175 Day the Earth Stood Still, The (1951)
176 Night at the Opera, A (1935)
177 Streetcar Named Desire, A (1951)
178 Insider, The (1999)
179 All the President's Men (1976)
180 Brazil (1985) 7.9/10
181 Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
182 To Be or Not to Be (1942)
183 Ed Wood (1994) 7.8/10
184 Being John Malkovich (1999)
185 Trois couleurs: Rouge (1994)
186 Killing, The (1956)
187 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
188 Exorcist, The (1973) )
189 Dog Day Afternoon
190 Mulholland Dr. (2001)
191 Stand by Me (1986)
192 Twelve Monkeys (1995)
193 Harvey (1950)
194 Terminator, The (1984)
195 Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
196 Gandhi (1982)
197 Hotaru no haka (1988)
198 Groundhog Day (1993)
199 Lion in Winter, The (1968)
200 This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
201 Trainspotting (1996)
202 Miller's Crossing (1990)
203 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
204 Whale Rider (2002)
205 Right Stuff, The (1983)
206 Adaptation. (2002)
207 Rain Man (1988)
208 Midnight Cowboy (1969)
209 Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
210 Network (1976)
211 Laura (1944)
212 Big Fish (2003)
213 8? (1963)
214 King Kong (1933)
215 Stagecoach (1939)
216 Ikiru (1952)
217 X2 (2003)
218 Snatch. (2000)
219 39 Steps, The (1935)
220 Strada, La (1954)
221 21 Grams (2003)
222 Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
223 Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, La (1928)
224 Others, The (2001)
225 Big Lebowski, The (1998)
226 Untouchables, The (1987)
227 Thin Man, The (1934)
228 In the Heat of the Night (1967)
229 Rio Bravo (1959)
230 Planet of the Apes (1968) (* saw the marky mark version)
231 Minority Report (2002)
232 Red River (1948)
233 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
234 Traffic (2000)
235 Beauty and the Beast (1991)
236 Fantasia (1940)
237 Being There (1979)
238 Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
239 Good Will Hunting (1997)
240 Henry V (1989)
241 Sleuth (1972)
242 Todo sobre mi madre (1999)
243 Die xue shuang xiong (1989)
244 Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
245 Heat (1995)
246 Quiet Man, The (1952)
247 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
248 Enfants du paradis, Les (1945)
249 Clerks. (1994)
250 Beautiful Mind, A (2001)

I have seen a friggin' lot of movies!

Also, there's this meme I wanted to try out (via Dragonpaws):

Invent a memory of me and post it in the comments. It can be anything you want, so long as it's something that's never happened. Then, of course, post this to your journal and see what people would like to remember of you, only the universe failed to cooperate in making it happen so they had to make it up instead.

(for example, the memory I invented for her was: Remember that time in grade school when we went to the vanilla ice concert? And he invited us backstage and we thought we were SOOOOO cool? But then he hit on us, and you were like, "Hey. We are children. You are a sick, sick man, Vanilla Ice!" and then his career went down the toilet soon after that, and we laughed and laughed.

Then, since we were in the city anyway, we went to a taping of "The Facts of Life." And Tootie hit on us too! And we were like, "Hey, Tootie. We don't swing that way." Except you DID swing that way and visited her later that night and were afraid to tell me, but you let it slip 5 years later and we laughed and laughed about it. Good times.)

So invent something good, peons! (if anyone even knows where I'm posting nowadays and reads this :P)

Thursday, April 29, 2004

I feel awful about the research paper I’m turning in today for Media Effects class. I’ve never done such a half-assed job on a research paper before. Not only did I purposefully muff up APA style just so I wouldn’t have to cite pages, because I didn’t know the pages the info was on, because I never read the articles, instead, I just found some other article on the internet that made a point similar to the one I wanted to make, and stole the citation after that. And apparently people on the internet aren’t big on citing pages either.

Also… I thought maybe my craptacular disregard for APA style might elicit some sympathy from the prof, because it IS hard to get those damn things straight sometimes. How do you cite a paper written by four people, in a magazine compiled by 8 other people, that is technically something besides a magazine, and you found it on an online database…. Who the hell knows or cares? But of course, yesterday he sent us a great APA cheat sheet, so I have no excuse now.

But what I have to say was the worst thing about this paper, is it’s supposed to be 10 pages, and I barely got a paragraph over 5. The first 2 parts of the paper (of 4) aren’t too bad despite the fudging I mentioned earlier. They pretty much lay out aspects of the theory I’m talking about, and research that supports it. But the second 2 parts are tiny and awful. They’re supposed to be “relevance” and “importance.” Which, to me, are the same thing. But for importance, I tried to link it to other theories. This didn’t work that well, because I only knew one research article that linked it to another theory, and the rest I had to pull out of my ass. And it’s obvious that I pulled it out of my ass, because I cite no one else in this section. And the importance section is pretty much, “It’s important to us all because everyone watches TV, and even if they don’t, they hang out with people who watch TV and that affects their views too, blah blah blah.” Also pulled out of my ass and barren of citations. Frankly, if I were a professor of a 300 level class, I’d be offended if a student turned this in to me.

I don’t know what my problem is… I’m not fond of research papers in general, but no matter how much I dread them I usually do pretty darn good, if I say so myself. How can I write a whole huge thing like this simply ABOUT writing a paper, but can’t write the paper itself?

Anyway… it took me so long to do the last page and paragraph last night that I had to go to bed at 2:30. And on top of that, I had no luck falling asleep, so it was more like 4:30/5:00 by the time I finally fell asleep. Boo. Especially as I have another paper I have to work on today (though—thankfully—not a research paper, a “how-to” paper on directing at TV-10).

I had to get the research paper rant out of the way first, but now I have to mention that I’m typing this in Word. It’s been almost a week since googlies.net went down. AND, as I have told several people: since it’s Bitsy’s space, and the only contact I know for her is an e-mail addy @googlies.net, I don’t really have any way to get ahold of her and ask what’s up.

I waited awhile to see if things were going to straighten themselves out, and maybe they still will, but I’ve gotten so used to blogging every day that it feels like I’m bottling things up if I don’t post, so I’m going to be making these secret Word entries until googlies.net gets back or I manage to fix my blogspot account. Which, I dearly hope that googlies.net gets straightened out, because I was a moron and didn’t make backups. That’s almost a year of my life lost.

Good news: I keep the comics on the school server, so they’re at least safe. Until someone hacks in and messes it up, anyway. I have made a couple new ones, partly as a procrastination technique during the making of the research paper:

http://www.ilstu.edu/~alscove/comix/monkeys.jpg
http://www.ilstu.edu/~alscove/comix/grammar.jpg
http://www.ilstu.edu/~alscove/comix/t.jpg

The last business for this entry is probably to mention some of the little things I’ve wanted to blog in the last few days. Of course, I can’t remember a lot of them. And some of them, I can remember the subject, but only vaguely. Like, I had a whole thing about how I saw Man on Fire, and though it’s not my favorite or anything, I realized that Denzel Washington NEVER makes a bad movie. If there is a bad Denzel Washington movie out there, I have not seen it.

Also, how I want Jake Gylenhaal (sometimes better known as Donnie Darko) to have my babies. I had thought that that movie, “The Day After Tomorrow,” looked stupid, but then I finally saw a trailer with my future babies’ daddy in it, and he looked so good in it that I totally want to see it now.

The last thing I can remember, also to do with movies, is the Shrek II ads. And how they have a snippet of Ben Folds’ “Rockin’ the Suburbs” in it, and how I appreciate them taking the time to stick something great but a bit obscure in between the requisite Smash Mouth songs.

That’s about it for now.

(later)

Oh, I forgot to mention another thing I totally wanted to post! I’m not sure why, because it only points out how self absorbed and absent minded I am, but hey. Anyways, there’s this guy I sit behind in two of my classes and does weather on TV-10 every Friday when I’m there to crew the newscast. Up until yesterday, the third to last day of the semester, I thought that he was two separate people! It’s not like he acts all that different in class from TV-10. Or that I would have ANY reason to believe that he’s two separate people. Yet, I thought he was. And I was just staring at his back in class yesterday, and something in my brain was like, “Dude. That’s the weatherguy from TV-10!”

He also probably thinks I’m a psycho with a split personality, I always talk to him at TV-10, and never in class. Which, I don’t think he’s a split personality for not talking to me in class, because he never initiates talk with anyone in class or in TV-10. I get the impression that he’s painfully shy, which makes me wonder why he’s willing to be a weatherman at TV-10. Thanks to equipment malfunctions, we make some unsuspecting weather-person look like a giant fool at least once a week. Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, though, I guess.


Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Hunh. I stopped thinking about blogging as much since I have to type it down in Word. Also, I have been awfully busy this weekend preparing for finals/finishing up last minute projects that profs stupidly assign DURING finals. Anyway, I just came back from the Japanese cinema final, and I think I did fairly okay on it. Go me!

Also, I had a dream last night. I was in a movie or watching a movie…. sometimes it becomes not so clear when it’s a dream… and the same song kept playing over and over. And the first time or two, I was like, “Whoa, this is a good song, I like it,” but after awhile I got really angry, because I couldn’t get anyone to stop it, and it was driving me nuts.

Anyway, the problem is I fell asleep while having my headphones on, with Lifehouse’s “Cling and Clatter,” on repeat. Which, that same dream thing happened to me a long time ago when I did the same thing with a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, but I obviously do not really learn from my mistakes. And most often, I only do the one song thing to myself when I want to lull myself into being calm before I sleep, I don’t actually fall asleep while listening. And I did it for like two months with the same Better Than Ezra song, because I was trying to train myself into a pavlovian response, but after awhile I got tired of it. So that’s the overly long explanation.

Oh, another funny thing about the dream—the song would go on in the background for awhile, and I wouldn’t really pay attention, but every time it got to the part of the song where it says, “Well it’s all good if you would stop the world from making sense,” I’d get like, really homicidal. Like, “Shut UP! Stop this song! Stop it!” And I actually like that bit of the song really well usually. Good times.