I bought things today. I haven't bought anything in ages, probably since before Christmas. Nothing not utilitarian like food or toilet paper, that is. Today was cathartic, though. Sometimes retail therapy does work.

Things I bought:

3 brassieres (fun fact: Kohl's apparently does not stock bras with band sizes smaller than 36. there was not a single bra in my size in that store. I DO NOT WEAR AN UNCOMMON SIZE. WTF) from Victoria's Secret. I like Victoria's Secret, IDGAF. Their stuff works for me.

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh and The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

2 bottles of nail polish. My nails are always, always painted, and it's kind of amazing how fast I use up nail polish. I don't know why I'm making excuses for buying nail polish. I like nail polish. It's not like I hoard it. I think I've been watching too much Hoarderslately. I've been selling stuff and giving stuff away and throwing stuff away like crazy, because I know I'm going to be alone when I'm old, and for God's sake I don't want to be an insane hoarder on top of that.

Bonus fun fact: John le Carré wrote the most boring spy novels of all time. Of all time! I'm having an easier time reading Finnegans Wake than I am Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

I've got to inflict this on share this with you guys. I am loling too hard not to. I think these quick 'n dirty caps should help, however inadequately, to convey the insanity of this scene.

( Caps from Dorian Gray orgy scene, spoilery and kind of NSFW )

The makers of 2009's Dorian Gray must have attended the selfsame How to Film a Boring Orgy 101 class that everyone involved with True Blood did.

Tonight's Supernatural was shitting fucking ASS and I don't know how everyone seems to have loved it so. It was bad enough (in conjunction with most of the episodes this season) that my faith in the entire show is shaken, and that's something. I think I can firmly say that breaking the fourth wall in S4 was Supernatural's Jump the Shark moment, though. It hasn't been the same since.

Community, however, warmed me right down to my toes with wibbly love and joy, so at least the night wasn't a total loss.

And there's this True Blood casting side (tiny, unimportant S3 spoiler) that made me wail with laughter. True Blood, making softcore irrelevant since 2008. Never change!

For January 31, 2010, here are Things I Officially Do Not Understand:

1. Anyone, ever, at any time, going shopping or out on the street in pajamas simply because they cannot be bothered to get dressed

2. Having cyber sex with Eli Roth, sending him intimate pictures of oneself, and then being unjustifiably proud of it and posting evidence publicly


Okay, that's only two things, but they're boggling me sufficiently at the moment.

OH MY GOD PETER SARSGAARD IS SO CREEPY IN AN EDUCATION THAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF I CAN FINISH THE MOVIE

ONLY CAPS CAN APPROPRIATELY CAPTURE MY DISTASTE FOR EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS

DDDDDDDD:

So. The iPad. I don't want one. I like Apple devices, but it doesn't mesh with how I use technology. When I'm away from home, I want a device that will fit in my pocket, has enough memory to hold my entire music collection, and can access the internet. When I am at home, I want a device with a traditional keyboard, full word processing and spreadsheet software, at least 2 GB of RAM and 150 of internal memory, and a screen large enough to enable movie watching without eyestrain. Additionally, it needs to be portable, sturdy, and substantial enough to cuddle with. Warmth emanating from the bottom is a huge plus.

The iPad is an awkward thing in between those two. It has enough memory for my music, but not enough to hold much else. It's portable, but not THAT portable: it won't fit in my pocket or my purse. It has better web viewing capabilities than the iPod Touch, but no keyboard unless one also hauls around a bulky accessory. Its screen is just too small to facilitate comfortable hours of video viewing. It has no USB ports. So in my case, it has many of the limitations of a laptop without having the benefits. Plus, I have no desire to possess an ebook device, so that new aspect of the iPad does not appeal to me.

I'm sure the iPad will be just what a lot of people want, but it's not what I want, and I frankly don't think it being suited for my life or needs at any point in the foreseeable future.

S6 of Supernatural should be like The Brothers Bloom. Just think about it. Dean is Stephen. Sam is Bloom. Castiel is the Curator. Lucifer/John/YED/Zachariah/whoever-has-literally-or-figuratively-screwed-the-boys is the Diamond Dog.

All it lacks is Bang Bang and Penelope.


I only wish I were joking

ETA: Castiel is totally Bang Bang and I don't know why I didn't realize that before. One day he just showed up.

I am vastly amused that 1) I actually found fic for this movie and 2) it is ALL Penelope/Bang Bang. Also 3) I think I actually liked it a lot more than I thought I did while I was watching it. Except for the intro. That is still amazingly bad Wes Anderson lite. Not that the rest of it isn't Wes Anderson lite, but whatever.

I'm completely revamping all of my genre smart playlists in iTunes, because now that I'm approaching 10,000 songs, even sub-genres like "Indie Pop" and "Folk" are useless when they've got several thousand songs in them.

So I'm getting kind of super specific in an attempt to keep every playlist less than or equal to 500 songs.

List so far:
Alt Female Vocalists
Alt Folk Singer-Songwriters
Brit Pop (considering deleting everything that might fall under this, btw)
Brit Rock
Celtic
Chamber Pop
Classic Rock
Classical
Electronic
Experimental & Lo-Fi
French Pop
Garage Rock
Indietronica
Holiday
New Age
New Wave
Pop
Punk
Remixes & Mash-Ups
Scandinavian Indie
Soundtrack, Film
Soundtrack, TV
Twee

What I'm having difficulty categorizing are the major indie rock bands like Spoon and the Pixies and The National and Arcade Fire, as well as the major indie pop bands like the Magnetic Fields and Stars. And what about the White Stripes and the Dead Weather and Tilly and the Wall? I don't want to get alarmingly specific like Austin Lo-Fi Alt Country Indie Rock (uh, that'd be Spoon), but I need some more divisions.

This is the sort of project I start on at 10:00 pm, then I can't stop and end up dragging myself into the shower at 4:00 with a raging headache and a royally bad start to the weekend.

Halp!

From The Candy Blog, here's the "candivore's" list of 110 essential candies from around the world. How many have you tried?

( My answers and the list below the cut )

More pictures! I hauled my ass into bed at 2:30 am after coming home from the party, then went out again this morning at 9:00 to explore an abandoned movie theater with some friends (I'm being astonishingly social lately). These are the best yet, I think, mostly because there were such amazing things to photograph. I'm not going to post a lot in an entry because I'm too tired, but I'll give a teaser and a link to the complete set on Flickr.

The theater reminded me a lot of the one from Inglourious Basterds, being from the same era and having a similar design (minus the ornate lobby from the one in the film).

Sorry for the multiple posts, but I wanted to put this up.


This is the oldest surviving picture (of which I am aware) of any of my family members. It was taken in late 1891 or early 1892, and the subjects' relation to one another is as follows: daughter, mother, great-grandson, and granddaughter. L-R: Elizabeth Holland (1841-1922), my great-great-great grandmother; Catherine Hickey (1824-1910), my great-great-great-great grandmother; Arthur Connors (1891-1962), my great-granduncle; and Mary Lapp (1867-1937), my great-great grandmother.

My grandmother also has Mary Lapp's autograph book from 1883 when Mary was sixteen. It's pretty incredible.

Every year or so, I like to concentrate on an area of literature with which I feel insufficiently familiar. In 2008 and 2009 it was Russian and Central and South American literature. This year I think I shall venture into science fiction, and I badly need recommendations as to where to best invest my time.

( These are the science fiction titles I've read within the last six years or so. )

You saw it here first: I'm liveblogging and reviewing the pilot episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand. It won't air until early 2010, so here's your chance to hear whether or not the bastard TV child of 300 and Gladiator is worth watching or downloading.

( This gets long and detailed. )

I may finish another book before the end of the year, but here are my general feelings on the majority of what I read in 2009.

Overall, I'm disappointed with myself for reading less than half the number of books I did last year. Sure, I made a lot of headway on getting into grad school, and yes, I did write a lot more, but I also wasted a shitton of time on things of no value. Like ohnotheydidnt, which I'm proud to say I haven't visited for two weeks now.

Besides that, these are the books I'm most pleased that I read, because reading them made me better educated in to the universal canon of literature, and because I got to experience the skill and artistry with which they were written.

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Hamlet by William Faulkner
The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Of all that I read this year, I definitely liked O'Connor's stories the best. I wasn't a huge fan of Wise Blood, and was childishly prejudiced against "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" thanks to a less-than-ideal freshman lit class, but reading the body of her work was a revelation in the use of language and symbolism. Her stories are funny, sick, depressing, melodramatic, and understated, often all at once. I don't think I've simultaneously enjoyed and been impressed by a book that much since I first read Lolita.

What were your favorites from what you read this year? What impressed you, and what disappointed you?

I was going to do this nicely with commentary, but I ran out of time, so you guys get the bare bones version.

Top Tracks of 2009:

10. Animal Collective - "Bluish"
9. Neko Case - "I'm an Animal"
8. The National - "So Far Around the Bend"
7. Passion Pit - "Moth's Wings"
6. Matt & Kim - "Daylight"
5. Bon Iver - "Blood Bank"
4. Grizzly Bear - "While You Wait for the Others"
3. Phoenix - "Lisztomania"
2. Girls - "Lust for Life"
1. Yeasayer - "Ambling Alp"

Top Albums of 2009:

10. Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
9. Metric - Fantasies
8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!
7. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
6. Passion Pit - Manners
5. Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
4. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
3. Florence and the Machine - Lungs
2. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
1. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer

I may come back and repost and elaborate later and include uploads.

Just for the record, these are the television shows that should have gotten Globes nominations:

Drama: Big Love, Breaking Bad, Lost, Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy

Comedy: 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory, Bored to Death, Community, Curb Your Enthusiasm

Because the Hollywood Foreign Press doesn't know its ass from a hole in the ground.