Hurts so good.
April 30, 2012 1:26 PM
Holy crow, new Blogger interface.
Initial response: NooooOOOooOOooo! Where the fuck is my blaagghh?!
Now: It's rather pretty, this.
But yes, after my initial knee-jerk reaction of [Hissss, resistance to change], I think the new look is quite nice and streamlined. So cheers to ye, industrious Blogger team!
H'okai, so. In March I tantalized the world with a mention of some good news, then never explained what it was. You have all, I am sure, been waiting on tenterhooks for me to unveil my big secret. As I've recently been sent this... braggadocio... graphicky badge thing... I suppose it's safe to share:
What that actually means is that I've been accepted into the University of Washington's Masters of Library & Information Science program. I'm gon' be a librarian when I grow up!
I'm pretty thrilled. If you happened to be at the tattoo convention and saw a giddy Asian kid dancing across the hotel, this is why.
And yes, yes, okay, I've seen this
and its sequel and I TOTALLY AM THAT STRIPEY-SHIRTED BEAR, I accept and embrace this. It will be difficult, of course, to turn my back on the glamorous lifestyle to which I've become accustomed
but I am willing if not entirely prepared to face the challenges that lie ahead. For the children.
This also means that I'll be moving to Seattle this summer! (Trust me, if my pride allowed it, I'd have tacked on a bunch more exclamation marks to the end of that sentence.) I don't own any furniture, so I'll probably be falling back on my tried and true relocation method of drag-a-couple-over-stuffed-suitcases-onto-a-plane-and-mail-the-rest. (Though as "the rest" consists mostly of books and plastic kitchenware, it might actually be cheaper to buy what I need there.)
Joe was accepted into the Science(!) program in Iowa City, so we'll be doing the long-distance dance again, but that's old hat for us, and at least this time we'll be in the same country. Plus, I have unlimited texting = unlimited opportunities to annoyyyy him.
"I will love you like a horror movie"
April 20, 2012 5:46 AM
I just wanted to share with ye this (probably NSFW) poem to which I was introduced via Danielle Corsetto, who writes and draws one of my favorite webcomics, Girls With Slingshots. As she put it, "It is (in order of appearance) the funniest, raunchiest, sweetest and most intimate poem I’ve ever heard. I know you’ll love it." And I agree.
(In case you're like me and have trouble sometimes with parsing words when they're spoken aloud, I've included the text under the cut [let me know if I misrepresented anything in the transcript!].)
And now, without further ado: "Bloodbath," created and performed by Christian Drake.
Visions of the Future
April 16, 2012 8:18 AM
This past weekend, I attended some of the Visions of the Future: Global Science Fiction Cinema Conference, with panels like "Cyborgs, Affect, and Sexuality" and "SF, Empire, and the State." It was my very first academic conference, which meant that while I romped merrily down a memory lane paved with the jargon of my youth, I was also taken a little aback by speakers' tendencies to preface their presentations with an apologia re: science fiction as much maligned but increasingly respectable with lots to offer even discerning minds, et cetera, ad abundantiam (ad astra‽).
You guys. We are all in the same geeky boat. It's okay to admit that you may actually like this genre.
Again, it was a fairly cozy con, but a fun one that introduced me to many most excellent folks / papers / films, including this super charming claymation short ("Viaje a Marte"):
And "Rosa," the visually mindblowing (if somewhat simple in narrative) solo production:
And "The Mothcatcher," which, I think, made the best use of its eerily gorgeous soundtrack (an instrumental version of Efterklang's "Maison de Reflexion"):
Joe and I capped the weekend by going to see Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods, which I heartily endorse, not only because it's a great film in its own right, bringing in equal measure new twists and familiar tropes, but because I was so damn pleased about emerging from the cinematic release of a horror flick without a sense of disappointment bordering on offense. (And yes, I've been told that much of this disappointment is my own fault for having high expectations of horror flicks in the first place, but I maintain that no genre precludes quality.)
Have a trailer:
