Accomplishing Escapism

I am a complete failure at internetting this year - after the decent success I had last year of keeping up with my book and movie blogs, and setting and keeping the goals I had, I started in January with such lofty resolutions.  I would see two movies a month in the theater, and write about them.  I would read more nonfiction and historical fiction (I'm most mad at myself about that one, because I should know by now that what I read next is largely driven by what's handy, and if I plan ahead enough to go to the library then I can keep on track like that - but usually it's just "this exists on my shelf and I haven't read it, guess what's coming on the train with me."  So.)  I would write other posts about movies and books in general.  I would be prolific and attract readers and continue strengthening my web presence.

And then I did NONE OF THOSE THINGS.

I don't even KNOW how long it's been since I wrote in my livejournal, which I guess is one of the reasons I'm writing this on DreamWidth and crossposting to LJ.  I WANT to be journaling, but for some reason I have found it incredibly difficult to find the motivation to do so.

Gotta start somewhere, I guess.

THESE ARE THE THINGS I WANT TO TALK ABOUT

( Comix Chat )

It's amazing that my dreams haven't been more fucked up, I guess is what I'm saying.

I have additional thoughts on NBC's new (awesome) (fabulous) (amazing) show Hannibal, and also on some movies I've seen recently, but I think I'll leave this here for now.  Breaking the blogging ice, as it were.

Saw District 9 tonight.  It was...much better than I expected, but it was also much, much harder to watch than I expected. 

( District 9 spoilers )

I did read two excellent books last week, both by Charles de LInt and both vastly different experiences.  I liked Yarrow more than Angel of Darkness, and eventually I'll write about why.

I've decided I'm going to play in a WarMachine tournament coming up at a Chicago games store, so in preparation for that I have a buttload of painting to do and I also need to practice playing timed games.  I know that I take too long to think about my turns, so I really need to work on konwing solidly what my army does, what I have to do to get them to do their thing the best they can, and how it all will play out in different games.  I've got three weeks, so we'll see if I can get ready in time.  If not, I'll at least have a fully painted 500 points and actual tournament experience, even if it's a losing experience.

I had a really good Fourth.  I love going to Minnesota - my mom's family is from there - and every time I come back I have the sort of reflective thought that I could live there at some point.  My aunt and uncle's house is fantastic; they have a HUGE lawn framed by this gorgeous thick spread of trees, so it's perfectly balanced between civilization and wilderness.  My aunt is also an avid gardener, and their back garden is lovely and peaceful.  Also they get MASSES of interesting birds at their feeder, including a pileated woodpecker who doesn't think he's too large for their feeder (but he really, really is) and lots of hummingbirds.

Point being, if I ever needed to restart my life, Minnesota/Minneapolis is on the list of places I would move to.

I finally made contact with the folks at Borders, and I'm going in on Thursday to fill out my paperwork and I'll start training next week.  I've really been frustrated with the treatment I've gotten there so far - never once have they called me back when they've said they were going to.  In every single case, they've given me a date by which I should expect to hear from them, and the dates go by three or four days before I lose patience and call them myself.  And every time I get "No one called you?  They should have called you three days ago!"  No, no one called me back.  That's why I'm calling.  Because, you know, I'd REALLY LIKE to start making money.  *headdesk*

My plan to read only books I've never read before this summer is so far a success.  My next book is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami, which I recently found I was NOT the only person on the planet not to have read yet.  It just felt like it sometimes but that's because I talk to Sam about books when I shouldn't.  I'm looking forward to it, though.

You know what else I'm looking forward to?  The continuation of summer movies.
Public Enemies
Harry Potter
The Ugly Truth
G.I. Joe
Julie and Julia
District 9
The Time Traveler's Wife
Final Destination 4
Because OF COURSE the world needed another Final Destination movie.  IN THREE DEE YOU GUYS.  That's almost as good as the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure flavor of the last one.  Oh God, please let Hollywood continue to make idiotic sequels to stupid movies that obviously exist only for my personal entertainment.  I would hate to think that filmmakers were starting to take themselves too seriously.

I've been reading mass quantities of John Connolly, and he makes me think of Neil Gaiman, and for some reason this ALSO makes me think of comics, the end result of which is that I want to write loads and loads of gothic fantasy.  Which is bad only in that I feel like right now all my writing would just be regurgitated forms of better novels I've already read.  And part of my knows that I should do it anyway, just to get all the regurgitation out of my system (as it were) so I get past it, but...

So I might start posting snippets of writing.  Because otherwise I'll end up with a stack of looseleaf paper, scribbled over with tons and tons of half-formed paragraphs.  Well, this might happen anyway....But I can also share my fractured thoughts with you!  :P 

In other news, Terminator: Salvation comes out tomorrow.  If it's half as good as Star Trek it will be awesome.  (Note: all I need for it to be awesome is for Christian Bale to be shirtless at some point and for him to kill lots of robots.  Also to see his cheekbones, because they are phenomenal.)

Watching Boondock Saints.  I'm not always sure that I know what's going on in this movie, but I'm pretty sure it's always awesome.

I have two DreamWidth codes of my very own now.  I am considering keeping one for my own to use as a writing journal, but then I realized that in light of paying for this shiny account I can just keep everything here.  So does anyone know someone who needs a code?

I have a long list of things to do before Saturday, so I'm dividing up duties by day.  Tomorrow, I am going to the bank, canceling my gym membership, and packing up my bookshelf.  Maybe my clothes?  I don't know.  I hate packing, as I have previously mentioned.

I'm pleased that I've started to get back into reading for pleasure; my blog suffered a bit last month because I honestly had nothing to put there.  For new people, I run a blog called Alternative Read wherein my goal is to review books that don't get a lot of exposure.  So far, what it really means is that I review stuff I think people should read and which I haven't heard many people/websites/newspapers/whatever talking about.  Sometimes I deviate, like when I did a comparison entry of Coraline the film and Coraline the movie, but hey, it's my blog.

Point being, I've done so much reading for school (see: work) that it's incredibly refreshing to be able to venture back into reading what I want to.  This afternoon I read the first thing of my choice that wasn't a comic (which I'm not maligning, as I love them, but the graphics do make them easier to process in my brain) or a young adult/children's book (I've re-read all of Garth Nix and Tamora Pierce's books because they take about two hours to finish), and it felt really good.  It was a collection of short fiction from John Connolly called Nocturnes, and I won't be reviewing it in depth on the blog since I'm pretty sure it was a New York Times best seller, but trust me: I know who's looking at this journal, and YOU ALL want to read this book.  They're horror, gritty fantasy, eerie, macabre stories that made me nervous just to look at the titles.  Some are not as good as others, but they're all fascinating, and some are riveting.

/self-promotion