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Mar. 28th, 2007 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goldenmeanJust back from seeing Music and Lyrics with Jenny and Melissa. It was about as bad as you'd expect it to be, but it's not like it's something anyone is going to have high expectations about. Personally, I think it was worth it solely for the Wham!-tastic faux 80's video that starts it off, but I don't really ask a lot out of my romantic comedy. For a while I was the only male in the theater, and I was convinced that I was going to be torn limb from limb at the inevitable point when the male character did something unforgivably stupid (Which, just as inevitably, he'd eventually be forgiven for of course), but that's probably just me being influenced by Ink, the section of which I'm just finishing is based off of Euripedes' The Bacchae. Anyway, nice seeing a movie (even a mediocre one) with company, even though movie watching is a fundamentally solitary activity anyway.
Speaking of solitary movie watching (and just to prove that I still have some taste), I saw The Namesake yesterday, which was great. I got a little teary, because I am a great big girl. Sometimes I wish my first and middle names had any meaning whatsoever, other than being (as far as I can tell) the last flailing remnants of my mother's Catholic upbringing. At least of all the archangels I could have gotten as my middle name (Michael, if you didn't know), I got one associated with dragon slaying, hence establishing myself as a hopeless nerd from the get go. Then they turn around and give Nadja not just an interesting name, but an unusual spelling of it, and *two* middle names. I guess I shouldn't bitch though, as apparently I was *this* close to being named Zachariah, after this movie. Yeah, I think I'm glad my mom won that particular argument.
It's approaching that grim bad season for movies, though there's still some blips of hope. I just found out that there's a new Julie Taymor (Titus, Frida, etc.) coming out some time this year called Across The Universe which I'm hopeful about, though it doesn't appear to have any solid date. Meh. Assorted and sundry other things I'm interested in: Paprika, Grindhouse (because if you're going to make schlock, you might as well go whole hog), Day Watch (strangely not based on the second book in the tetralogy apparently), Sunshine (pushed back to September now apparently, meh), and First Snow (whose writer is apparently now the billionth or so person attached to the John Carter of Mars movie in production, which seems doomed to failure given how many people it's been tossed through at this point (Why oh why couldn't Robert Rodriguez have kept it? It would have been great. Stupid Hollywood guilds))
Sunday, another trip to the bookstore, another day I have to postpone that severe smack habit I've been meaning to pick up due to lack of funds. I actually managed to buy the book club book this time though... and six other things... I blame it entirely on Pegasus orienting their books cover outward. It's so much easier to impulse shop that way. At least I own a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth again as all good people should. Also, new Jonathan Lethem (as an aside, he's apparently giving a reading at Moe's in mid April), and a repurchase of Barlowe's Guide To Extraterrestrials that I promptly tossed on my pile of coffee table books awaiting a coffee table, where it will keep my Art of the Cthulhu Mythos and Jan Saudek (Oh, I should probably warn that that link is entirely likely to be not at all work safe) books very happy.
Oh, also, Nadja redyed/cut/etc. my hair. My life would be so much easier if it would just stay this blue and never grow out. I'll wait for someone else to take a picture and then steal it, as I don't think I have any way to transfer pictures from my camera to computer at the moment. I think some got taken at Death Guild (which was especially fun this week, though I think I might have done myself permanent injury dancing upstairs)
And now, I shall succumb to a meme, because, well, honestly, because I'm bored, and can't think of anything better to do with the time. As an aside, when did ye olde marketing gods decide that the term viral was going to become a positive thing? I keep seeing cellphone ads that tout their ability to access viral content. "Buy our new Nokia meme-master, now with Herpes Simplex built in! Woo!"
One thing I absolutely refuse to do is copy and paste the rules of the meme. The whole point of memes originally is that they're meant to be capable of evolution. Memes with unbending rule sets are completely missing the point. So, if you also feel like writing some arbitrary number of little known facts/weird habits/other miscellany about yourself, go right ahead. I'm not going to tag anyone. I will however mention that this is all Irina's fault.
1) I was born slightly cross-eyed. This gradually worsened over the years until eventually I had an operation to correct it when I was, I don't know, three or four or thereabouts. As such, there's a good span of toddler pictures of little blonde (I was blonde all through toddlerhood, I'm not sure when it settled down into brown) me decked out in a pirate eyepatch. Yarrr! As an aside, that same eye started fading on me in high school. I really ought to wear a sporty monocle or something, but honestly the only time I notice it is when I close my right eye, at which point everything goes to blursville, so I haven't bothered. Besides, monocles are hard to find these days.
2) My first word was moon. I was such a good little hippy child. The first word I ever recall reading unprompted was balloon on a sign at some sort of outdoor festival occurring in Ashland, Oregon. My parents were apparently a little bit confused, as they didn't see any balloons around, until they realized I was reading the sign. This couldn't have been when I first learned how to read though, as I know that for a while they spelled out christmas/birthday presents in front of me, thinking I didn't understand them.
3) I've never broken a bone, though I chipped a tooth once in junior high while chasing friends around a glass table when I cleverly decided to take a short cut over it. I should clarify that I mean I've never broken a bone in my own body, though with the assistance of gravity and an overly tall slide, I did break my sisters collar bone, or so she'd have you believe (I honestly can't recall, though it seems plausible.)
4) In my head, I'm still well under six feet tall. This is probably because puberty took a pretty lax approach with me, and I didn't hit any sort of growth spurt until late high school, so I became pretty accustomed to the notion of just not being particularly tall, and sometimes I still think "Wow, these people are all so short. Oh, wait.".
5) Strangers always thought I was female while growing up. I think this eventually petered out in junior high, but some combination of having relatively soft facial features (I look a lot like my mother really), longish hippy kid hair, and chubbiness hiding traditional gender tells seemed to throw people for a loop. I rarely bothered correcting them, mainly because I liked interacting with strangers even less then than I do now. Instead of experiencing any sort of gender dysmorphia, it just helped form my opinion that most people really aren't very bright.
6) The first screen name I can remember ever using for anything was back in the bad old days of America Online in the early 90's when I was Polar78171 (I'm probably getting the digits wrong), because I like polar bears, and apparently I was the 78,171st reference to polar in whatever janky database AOL used then. By the way, the only reason we were using AOL was because it was the only option at the time in Ukiah. As an added bonus, the closest connection node was a long distance call away in Santa Rosa, which meant that including AOL's hourly charge, we were spending 10 dollars an hour for the privilege of some cheap semblance of the internet. We had a jar sitting next to the computer that we were meant to put money into whenever we used it. Want to guess how often the money in the jar actually added up to the phone/AOL bill? Before this, I was on the occasional BBS, but usually only from friends houses, and I can't recall what user names I used.
7) My current beloved online nick was originally a shared email account with my college girlfriend, who was an art school student. While rummaging through our respective bookcases looking for names, I turned down all of her artsy references, and she had absolutely no interest in going by Merlin, or Fizban, and eventually she came across her copies of the Griffin & Sabine books. The Golden Mean seemed like an acceptable compromise between my math nerdery and her more artistic endeavors, so it stuck. After we broke up, I kept it, out of equal parts emotional masochism and genuine love of the number.
8) Once, in 4th or 5th grade, to begin our study of the revolutionary war, we were all issued a pile of fake money when we walked into class. Then we were taxed mercilessly for raising our hand (invading her majesties airspace), going to the bathroom, etc. It was fairly obvious to me what was happening, so I decided to "help". I snuck under a desk while everyone else went off to recess and the teacher went off wherever teachers go, and then when everyone was gone, I made off with the loot, and proceeded to dance around the 4 square court tearing up the money screaming "No taxation without representation" and "Give me liberty or give me death". This was one of only two times I was in school related trouble (The other was when my parents and the administration noticed that I hadn't actually gone to class for about 1/3rd of my senior year. They were less amused about that one. Edit: Oh wait, I just remembered, I also had an uncomfortable parent teacher conference in ninth grade because I had turned in a notebook without covering up the pages upon pages of me writing "I hate my life" in incredibly small and dense handwriting. They weren't particularly amused about that one either.)
9) I once attempted to walk the five or so blocks from lower Haight street to House of Thirteen Doors. Naked. In the middle of the night. In front of police officers. It made perfect sense to me at the time, I swear. That night could have ended ever so much worse than it actually did. Instead, I came to a couple of hours later thinking "I had the strangest drea... Oh, fuck"
10) When I was five or six, I wanted to be a doctor, and I still have the anatomy coloring book to prove it, though I think the copy of Grey's Anatomy I also tried to read at the time got left behind in a move. I remember thinking that doctors got paid twenty dollars an hour, and couldn't imagine what I'd ever do with such wealth. By the time I was eight or so, I had decided I wanted to become an architect instead. I know this much because a couple of years ago I found a letter from my paternal grandfather which had been included with a college level architecture text he sent me at the time. When he died when I was ten, we inherited most of his books, and based on his second edition copy of Roth's Fundamentals of Logic Design (It's still on my bookshelf, along with its fifth edition descendant), I decided I wanted to be an electrical engineer. I taught myself Fortran and Cobol out of his library also, though now I think my favorite book of his (also still on my bookshelf) is the Thorne and Wheeler Gravitation book, though I never made it further than the picture of the ant crawling across an apple as a wee tyke.
Anyway, Meat tomorrow. Dancey dancey.
Speaking of solitary movie watching (and just to prove that I still have some taste), I saw The Namesake yesterday, which was great. I got a little teary, because I am a great big girl. Sometimes I wish my first and middle names had any meaning whatsoever, other than being (as far as I can tell) the last flailing remnants of my mother's Catholic upbringing. At least of all the archangels I could have gotten as my middle name (Michael, if you didn't know), I got one associated with dragon slaying, hence establishing myself as a hopeless nerd from the get go. Then they turn around and give Nadja not just an interesting name, but an unusual spelling of it, and *two* middle names. I guess I shouldn't bitch though, as apparently I was *this* close to being named Zachariah, after this movie. Yeah, I think I'm glad my mom won that particular argument.
It's approaching that grim bad season for movies, though there's still some blips of hope. I just found out that there's a new Julie Taymor (Titus, Frida, etc.) coming out some time this year called Across The Universe which I'm hopeful about, though it doesn't appear to have any solid date. Meh. Assorted and sundry other things I'm interested in: Paprika, Grindhouse (because if you're going to make schlock, you might as well go whole hog), Day Watch (strangely not based on the second book in the tetralogy apparently), Sunshine (pushed back to September now apparently, meh), and First Snow (whose writer is apparently now the billionth or so person attached to the John Carter of Mars movie in production, which seems doomed to failure given how many people it's been tossed through at this point (Why oh why couldn't Robert Rodriguez have kept it? It would have been great. Stupid Hollywood guilds))
Sunday, another trip to the bookstore, another day I have to postpone that severe smack habit I've been meaning to pick up due to lack of funds. I actually managed to buy the book club book this time though... and six other things... I blame it entirely on Pegasus orienting their books cover outward. It's so much easier to impulse shop that way. At least I own a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth again as all good people should. Also, new Jonathan Lethem (as an aside, he's apparently giving a reading at Moe's in mid April), and a repurchase of Barlowe's Guide To Extraterrestrials that I promptly tossed on my pile of coffee table books awaiting a coffee table, where it will keep my Art of the Cthulhu Mythos and Jan Saudek (Oh, I should probably warn that that link is entirely likely to be not at all work safe) books very happy.
Oh, also, Nadja redyed/cut/etc. my hair. My life would be so much easier if it would just stay this blue and never grow out. I'll wait for someone else to take a picture and then steal it, as I don't think I have any way to transfer pictures from my camera to computer at the moment. I think some got taken at Death Guild (which was especially fun this week, though I think I might have done myself permanent injury dancing upstairs)
And now, I shall succumb to a meme, because, well, honestly, because I'm bored, and can't think of anything better to do with the time. As an aside, when did ye olde marketing gods decide that the term viral was going to become a positive thing? I keep seeing cellphone ads that tout their ability to access viral content. "Buy our new Nokia meme-master, now with Herpes Simplex built in! Woo!"
One thing I absolutely refuse to do is copy and paste the rules of the meme. The whole point of memes originally is that they're meant to be capable of evolution. Memes with unbending rule sets are completely missing the point. So, if you also feel like writing some arbitrary number of little known facts/weird habits/other miscellany about yourself, go right ahead. I'm not going to tag anyone. I will however mention that this is all Irina's fault.
1) I was born slightly cross-eyed. This gradually worsened over the years until eventually I had an operation to correct it when I was, I don't know, three or four or thereabouts. As such, there's a good span of toddler pictures of little blonde (I was blonde all through toddlerhood, I'm not sure when it settled down into brown) me decked out in a pirate eyepatch. Yarrr! As an aside, that same eye started fading on me in high school. I really ought to wear a sporty monocle or something, but honestly the only time I notice it is when I close my right eye, at which point everything goes to blursville, so I haven't bothered. Besides, monocles are hard to find these days.
2) My first word was moon. I was such a good little hippy child. The first word I ever recall reading unprompted was balloon on a sign at some sort of outdoor festival occurring in Ashland, Oregon. My parents were apparently a little bit confused, as they didn't see any balloons around, until they realized I was reading the sign. This couldn't have been when I first learned how to read though, as I know that for a while they spelled out christmas/birthday presents in front of me, thinking I didn't understand them.
3) I've never broken a bone, though I chipped a tooth once in junior high while chasing friends around a glass table when I cleverly decided to take a short cut over it. I should clarify that I mean I've never broken a bone in my own body, though with the assistance of gravity and an overly tall slide, I did break my sisters collar bone, or so she'd have you believe (I honestly can't recall, though it seems plausible.)
4) In my head, I'm still well under six feet tall. This is probably because puberty took a pretty lax approach with me, and I didn't hit any sort of growth spurt until late high school, so I became pretty accustomed to the notion of just not being particularly tall, and sometimes I still think "Wow, these people are all so short. Oh, wait.".
5) Strangers always thought I was female while growing up. I think this eventually petered out in junior high, but some combination of having relatively soft facial features (I look a lot like my mother really), longish hippy kid hair, and chubbiness hiding traditional gender tells seemed to throw people for a loop. I rarely bothered correcting them, mainly because I liked interacting with strangers even less then than I do now. Instead of experiencing any sort of gender dysmorphia, it just helped form my opinion that most people really aren't very bright.
6) The first screen name I can remember ever using for anything was back in the bad old days of America Online in the early 90's when I was Polar78171 (I'm probably getting the digits wrong), because I like polar bears, and apparently I was the 78,171st reference to polar in whatever janky database AOL used then. By the way, the only reason we were using AOL was because it was the only option at the time in Ukiah. As an added bonus, the closest connection node was a long distance call away in Santa Rosa, which meant that including AOL's hourly charge, we were spending 10 dollars an hour for the privilege of some cheap semblance of the internet. We had a jar sitting next to the computer that we were meant to put money into whenever we used it. Want to guess how often the money in the jar actually added up to the phone/AOL bill? Before this, I was on the occasional BBS, but usually only from friends houses, and I can't recall what user names I used.
7) My current beloved online nick was originally a shared email account with my college girlfriend, who was an art school student. While rummaging through our respective bookcases looking for names, I turned down all of her artsy references, and she had absolutely no interest in going by Merlin, or Fizban, and eventually she came across her copies of the Griffin & Sabine books. The Golden Mean seemed like an acceptable compromise between my math nerdery and her more artistic endeavors, so it stuck. After we broke up, I kept it, out of equal parts emotional masochism and genuine love of the number.
8) Once, in 4th or 5th grade, to begin our study of the revolutionary war, we were all issued a pile of fake money when we walked into class. Then we were taxed mercilessly for raising our hand (invading her majesties airspace), going to the bathroom, etc. It was fairly obvious to me what was happening, so I decided to "help". I snuck under a desk while everyone else went off to recess and the teacher went off wherever teachers go, and then when everyone was gone, I made off with the loot, and proceeded to dance around the 4 square court tearing up the money screaming "No taxation without representation" and "Give me liberty or give me death". This was one of only two times I was in school related trouble (The other was when my parents and the administration noticed that I hadn't actually gone to class for about 1/3rd of my senior year. They were less amused about that one. Edit: Oh wait, I just remembered, I also had an uncomfortable parent teacher conference in ninth grade because I had turned in a notebook without covering up the pages upon pages of me writing "I hate my life" in incredibly small and dense handwriting. They weren't particularly amused about that one either.)
9) I once attempted to walk the five or so blocks from lower Haight street to House of Thirteen Doors. Naked. In the middle of the night. In front of police officers. It made perfect sense to me at the time, I swear. That night could have ended ever so much worse than it actually did. Instead, I came to a couple of hours later thinking "I had the strangest drea... Oh, fuck"
10) When I was five or six, I wanted to be a doctor, and I still have the anatomy coloring book to prove it, though I think the copy of Grey's Anatomy I also tried to read at the time got left behind in a move. I remember thinking that doctors got paid twenty dollars an hour, and couldn't imagine what I'd ever do with such wealth. By the time I was eight or so, I had decided I wanted to become an architect instead. I know this much because a couple of years ago I found a letter from my paternal grandfather which had been included with a college level architecture text he sent me at the time. When he died when I was ten, we inherited most of his books, and based on his second edition copy of Roth's Fundamentals of Logic Design (It's still on my bookshelf, along with its fifth edition descendant), I decided I wanted to be an electrical engineer. I taught myself Fortran and Cobol out of his library also, though now I think my favorite book of his (also still on my bookshelf) is the Thorne and Wheeler Gravitation book, though I never made it further than the picture of the ant crawling across an apple as a wee tyke.
Anyway, Meat tomorrow. Dancey dancey.
