{crimson and clover}

If someone believes only in science or only in religion, they are cutting off half their sense of wonder.

I've done it.

I have twitter.

I've also discovered I am impervious to hang-overs. 2 margaritas, 4 shots of tequila, one glass of wine, one vodka and lemonade. I'm pretty sure that should have given me a headache.

I just took on Winsor Pilates for the first time, and I lost. I had no idea I was this out of shape!

Time to flop on the couch and watch the season finale of Beautiful People... yes, again. And you can't tell me they haven't watched AWZ. I swear I heard strains of "Unzertrennlich" playing during the tabletennis rooftop confessional! (Is anybody else watching this show besides omarandjohnny? And if not, then why not?!!! Take Glee, make the musical numbers glitter even more, swap out the moralistic lesson-per-episode with naughty innuendo, slap on an extra heavy coat of campy sparkle, and you've got this show. So much love!)

It's positively freezing here. -16°C (3°F). I have to work today. This is the second winter since I've been living here that's so cold. Last year my pipes froze and I didn't have running water for a day. This year I have to work at the Christmas Market.

I wouldn't mind the cold if my flat was properly isolated (which it isn't, so my kitchen and bathroom window are frozen) or if I was at home with the awesome new fireplace in our living room.

And I still have to find some Christmas gifts.

Apart from having used caffiene to keep from crashing while going with doombuggie to get rehd_fawx.

The Section 8 meeting was, as I knew intellectually it would be, mainly just tedious. 22 pages worth of forms, people, I shit you not. And there were potential landlords and apartment-finders milling around with business cards and flyers. doombuggie was even able to help get us out of there faster. So now I have my Section 8 voucher, and a check toward the cost of apartment application fees. One of the apartment complexes had sounded really promising, and the owner seemed like a really good guy, but his idea of 'right on' a bus line was a motorist's conception of 'right on'. It would be an ok stroll in nice weather when I was having a good day, but if my energy was running low, or if it was hot, cold, or rainy, or if I was carrying groceries, it would be just too far. I know doombuggie will help me out whenever he can, but I want that to be a bit of much-appreciated and helpful assistance, not an utter necessity.

But after that morning of bureaucratic aggravation, we set out for Dallas. There was some pretty horrific traffic at one point, which pretty much ate up the lead time we'd gotten by getting out of the meeting earlier that expected. Oh well, things happen for a reason I guess. We had a little trouble tracking down rehd_fawx's complex, but after a couple of phone calls all was well. The ride back was full of merry chatter. In a bit of synchronicity, doombuggie's friend C. called him just as we were driving through her neck of the woods, and we stopped in for a little socializing. I'd only met her once before but she seems like a good person to hang with. We'd discussed visiting Epoch and Walmart, but we (especially rehd_fawx) were pretty tired by then, so we snagged a couple of McRibs and some fries and doombuggie dropped us off. We nommed our dinner and red_fawx got loved on by Anya and Molly and then it was sleepytime. I have the sneaking suspicion that I am awake for good. As plans stand now, when rehd_fawx wakes we will break out the mangosteen shisha, chill for a bit, hit Frank, stop at an ATM so I can deposit my checks, hit Fiesta and Sally Beauty Supply, then hook up with doombuggie for our early orphan Christmas fest. C. may also be coming. That is the plan, anyway, who knows what will really happen.



And, because I am feeling a little old -

( To those of you that were concerned... )

These are the days where papers and other media all over are announcing "the X and Y of the decade". It's always fun to be retrospect and it got me thinking. A thinking also prompted by ( watching Pirates of the Caribbean )

Again, positive thinking in this post. I'm not up for discussing much these days (depression does that to me), so please don't link anywhere. I just wanted to share a few thoughts here on the cusp of the decade. On a night where there's not much to be positive about, so please humour me in not linking.
Common sense disclaimer of course applies: this is my opinion, nothing less and nothing more. Respectful disagreement is of course welcome! Disrespectful anything is not.

♣ I have - I mean, my post on the recent Trans!fail and what (please, PLEASE) Not To Do, has been linked at The Hathor Legacy. Whoa. This is a surprise and also has never happened to me before. I mean, getting linked anywhere except for people's personal journals. Which is more... personal. - Anyways, cool!

♣ (I plan a second part, btw, because I've been stupid enough to read journal posts by parties involved and encountered some very upsetting statements which are variants of common transphobic... tropes. And cissexism. And cis privilege. But I feel I need to recharge my batteries first.)

♣ Early shift is EVIL. It's an inhuman condition for a Dingsi. I'm so glad this week is over.

♣ Snow is also evil, because it's my turn with the communal cleaning and that means I have to get up at 06:15 tomorrow (i.e. in seven hours) and make sure the foot-walk in front of our house is snow-free and covered in road salt. *hates*

♣ Party tomorrow at a local disco, might possibly attend. Yay socialising! ... Not if it stays that cold, though. The weather makes me want to curl up in my cave and eat steaming-hot meals four times a day. Sigh.

♣ I'm glad to have you.

In six hours I'll be in the Section 8 orientation meeting. I know it will be both intimidating and tedious. All my nerve-endings are jangling. I've been getting lots of needed kitty-snuggles.

I'm trying to just take lots of deep breaths and concentrate on the coolness ahead.

Starting my next book. Inspiration hit me at five in the morning but I laughed and rolled back over to sleep.

In the morning is the Section 8 meeting, which is intimidating the hell out of me but will probably just be tedious. doombuggie is taking me and going in with me, for which I am as always profoundly grateful. The notice I got said it could take up to three hours. Good lord.

But after that bit of terrifying officialness/i>, we are going to hit a drivethru for lunch and head up to Dallas to fetch rehd_fawx for a visit! There will be hookah-smoking and kitty-cuddling and Cosmos-watching. Frank will be visited, and Hoover's. It is very, very good to have something awesome to look forward to. It should make the meeting easier to have something great waiting right after.

Oh, -17C? That must be why I'm shivering. I've got to go pick up my new glasses today, but I'm really not so keen on going out. This is forehead-freezing weather, people, when those ice crystals start forming in your eyelashes.

On the plus side, if it stays below zero for awhile the canal should freeze well. I'm already craving beavertails!

*sigh* I should bundle up now. *bundles*

NC-17 Murderface/Pickles. Part one here. Mentions of incest and non-consensual sex.

<< Part 6: The Capture and Recapture | Part 8 >>

...but I got another thick-ass form from the SSA to fill out for my SSDI review.

*shudder*

doombuggie is going to help me out with it tomorrow. I don't know what I'd do without you, bro. *hug*

PG-13 Starts with part one. Contains themes of Seth/Pickles incest and rape.



<< Part 5: All Is Not Well | Part 7: Gifts for Pickles >>

I am so glad I’m no longer living on my own any more.

 

Yesterday afternoon I went to the library to pick up some books for my grandmother and I must have left the lights on afterwards.  When I went to start the car this morning it was dead. 

 

If this had happened to me in Chicago I would have been shit out of luck (as they say).  I don’t know what I would have done, probably had to spend a couple $100 getting someone to come from a garage to jump start the car because most of my co-workers bike and most of the other people I know worked out of town and/or were clueless about starting a car.  As it was, I was able to call my father and he was able to get the car working again.  Really, this is one of those things that I know would have been a horrible situation if I was on my own (thinking of January 2008 when it was really cold and I couldn’t start my car… what a nightmare).

A great link on Top 10 Jewish Comic Characters.

Sadly does not include Kate Kane aka smokin' hot lesbian Batwoman. Still, a very good post.

Tired as hell. I think I have a cold. doombuggie stopped by to take me to get my meds and even a quick run through Walgreens to pick up a few days' food (yay soup on sale!) wore me out, wtf, I'd been pretty much sleeping all day.

Well, gonna rest so I can do a little picking up for rehd_fawx's visit and steeling myself for the Section 8 meeting.

Inglourious Basterds comes out on DVD today. Here's the review I've been fussing about with since August when I saw it in the theater--

Back in July I watched the film The Boy In the Striped Pajamas about the young son of a Nazi official who befriends a boy his own age interned at the concentration camp his father is in charge of. Reading over reviews of this movie, I found a recurrent complaint—that the Nazi’s were basically British. That is British actors, speaking English accented English. Not long after, looking up reviews of Tom Cruise’s Valkyrie I ran across similar criticism—that German characters were being played by English and American actors speaking in their native accents.

Reading these reviews I remember wondering what level of authenticity would be satisfactory. Was it enough to give German characters German accents? Realistically shouldn’t they speak German with subtitles? Wouldn’t that alienate English speaking audiences?

In its way, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds came along and resolved these questions. Set in Nazi occupied France during the second World War, Inglourious Basterds not only portrays the different languages that are in play (German, French, English and some Italian) but shows them being wielded like Uma Thurman’s samurai sword in Kill Bill.

In many ways, Inglourious Basterds is not so much an action film as a linguistic film. Critics have called it talky, but that’s sort of the point. It’s about words, about language. The verbal interplay of the characters is as meticulously choreographed as the epic kung fu ballets of Kill Bill.

Yet ironically, the masters of the word in Inglourious Basterds are the Nazis. Christoph Waltz is absolutely stunning as Col. Hans Landa aka “The Jew Hunter”. Speaking German, French, English and Italian he dances verbal circles around all the other characters, from a French dairy farmer harboring Jews to the American commandos of the title.

Nearly as clever as Landa is Major Dieter Hellstrom (August Diehl), the Nazi officer who chances upon the covert meeting being held between German actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), British film critic/spy Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) and the two German speaking Basterds. Although Hicox is fluent in German, Hellstrom detects something amiss with his accent and ultimately reveals him by catching him in a minute faux paus. In the meantime, Hellstrom does a bang-up job playing a twenty questions sort of guessing game. He’s quite something. Did I mention he gets his testicles blown off? And Landa, for all his smarts gets a swastika rather brutally craved into his forehead.

I think that one of the points of Inglourious Basterds, is to cut through the cerebral and linguistic mind games of the Nazis with raw bravado and brutality. Tarantino sums this up nicely with a shot of a Nazi officer’s head being lined up against a baseball bat. Swing batter swing and suddenly the supposed superiority of the Uber men isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. This seems to be what Tarantino wants to do, but I’m not quite sure that it works. The Basterds don’t seem at all heroic, just vicious. They seem to wallow in mayhem for its own sake, enjoying every minute of it. They’re a juvenile fantasy, stupid, brutal and largely incompetent when required to do anything more than bust heads. If the film had just been about them, I wouldn’t have liked it at all. Luckily the film is not so much about the Basterds as it is about a storyline that runs on a collision course with that of the title characters.

So the Basterds have the balls, the Nazi’s have the brains, but the heart and guts of Tarantino’s film belong to a young Jewish woman named Shosanna (Melanie Laurent). The last surviving member of her family (they are in hiding and discovered by Landa) Shosanna reinvents herself as the proprietor of a Paris cinema and becomes involved with Marcel, a black Frenchman.

Shosanna is a woman warrior willing to sacrifice herself for vengeance and to end the war. An amazing, blazing character. Marcel is right beside her, stoic and supporting. They are both the heart of the film, personifications of Tarantino’s love and devotion to women and blacks. Without them there is no film.

That’s the problem with Inglourious Basterds, 90% of it is bravado and theatrics and show. Only a small portion of it seems to be about what it’s about. It’s a fierce, radical film with entirely too much clever padding. As much as I love the scene in the basement bar and Christoph Waltz and his milk and cream and Dieter Hellstrom and King Kong it’s clever, it’s padding. It’s my baby Tarantino being boy rather than a man and cutting to the chase which is Shosanna and film and fire.