We Are Men of Action, Lies Do Not Become Us.

So, I came back from North Carolina safe and sound... like a month and a few weeks ago. It was lovely and relaxing, and I learned about myself. And then I worked for all of July and then 2 weekends ago I went to Long Island. I visited a friend and we drove all around and talked and watched Sherlock (some things never change) and I learned about myself. I also took this picture.

 

That is 1 (one) house in the Hamptons. On the other side of that house is the ocean. It was a gorgeous house and one that I could easily fit all of my family and friends (and probably a few of their families as well) inside of. To stop myself from going completely crazy, I imagine that at least 15 people live there at any given time. If, by chance, the person who owns or lives in that house sees this blog and gets annoyed that I posted a picture of the top of their huge house on the internet, I'm letting you know now, I will gladly remove this picture from my blog post if you let me stay in your house for a few days. It's so big and I am so tiny, you wont even notice me.  I could even stay in the winter when you probably aren't there anyway. Just a thought. 

I have been so blog-neglectful, I don't even know what to say really. If this blog were my child, it would have been taken away by child services ages ago. In an attempt to prevent that from happening, let me write a list of potential future blog ideas (knowing full well, I'll only come back to them if I really have nothing to write about or stay un-busy):

• How I am frighteningly similar to Lumpy Space Princess and how so many people in my life are like cartoon characters.
• How 80% of the time I think writing a blog is totally silly in the first place in much the same way that I think writing a diary is silly (they are both things that I want to be able to do and keep trying to do and then I call them silly when I manage to do neither consistently.)
• Weddings!! (exclamation points here denote equal parts excitement and terror. Note: I am not getting married, nor will I be in the forseeable future. All potential wedding related blog posts will be about upcoming weddings to which I have been invited. The danger and likelihood of  such posts going back to nil once September has passed.)

That should be quite enough to be getting on with. Oh, but, since I am so behind the times, I feel like I also have to mention something about (the Olympics, Batman, New Singles from The Killers and Mumford and Sons, Republican Running Mates, The Hobbit being three movies instead of two, and that new J.K. Rowling book.) Man, crazy business, right?

XOX

Currently Reading: Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon & Alex and the Ironic Gentleman by Adrienne Kress

P.S. This post had nothing to do with Princess Bride. Sorry, that's my favorite quote from the film, and I have no other reason for posting it.

Gatsby, Good Omens and Catching Up

Guys, I am behind on blogging about stuff! I am very behind! This is a catch-up post. After you read this, you will be up to date on my goings on and we can all be goings on with our lives. And I will blog more frequently. Promise.

• I finished my librarian training and I start work tomorrow and I am SO EXCITED.
• I finished reading Good Omens by the illustrious Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. It was VERY GOOD. I finally understand what all the fuss is about. I don't know if I should go through the trouble of reviewing a 22 year old book here, but I will just say it was: very funny, very poignant, very very clever, and extremely enjoyable. A unique take on Revelations and the apocalypse and so nice to read when all we seem to get these days are zombie apocalypses. Guys, the Bible did the apocalypse first, and it was scary as all get out. And Good Omens made me think about the apocalypse again, but in a new, cool and interesting way. Zombie apocalypses just don't hold a candle in my mind.
• ...that being said I'm about to start World War Z by Max Brooks which is about... the zombie apocalypse... *sigh*
• Also reading: Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler. I can't get enough of Daniel Handler. I just started this and so far so good. This one I absolutely will review. 
• Also also reading: The Adventure Time Comics. Just finished issue 4. These comics are so well written (by Ryan North of Internet Comic Fame, and my first internet celebrity crush) and capture the tone of the TV series so well, I challenge you not to fall in love with them. I hope you accept. 
• The end of Sherlock Series 2 just finished airing in the US and now I finally feel like I can talk about the ending out in the open to everyone. If you haven't seen it yet, don't talk to me about Sherlock. I might spoil it. Even if I try not to, I still might. It's a bad habit. To be fair, my whole relationship with that show could be categorized as a bad habit.

I think that's it. I can't come up with anything else. Now I'll act like a real blog. This is the trailer for a movie titled The Great Gatsby:

I have very mixed feelings about every frame of this trailer. I will say that Leonardo DiCaprio looks more like Gatsby than I thought he would. And Carey Mulligan looks like she might make a good Daisy, even though I think she's a little young ( I did just watch her play a silly, frivolous Isabella Thorpe in 2007's Northanger Abbey; she played naive and foolish very well and that may bode well for her as Daisy.) Toby McGuire is just not my Nick. At all. Or my anyone for that matter. And I'm worried about the trapeze artists, and the glitter, and Gatsby throwing his shirts. And hopefully it will all come together and be one big beautiful Baz Luhrmann film and not.. a mess of symbolism and excess and flapper dresses. I'm not above bringing my heavily annotated copy of the novel to the theater and getting up to go read it somewhere if the movie goes horribly awry, that's all. Ugh. 

XOX

P.S. Northanger Abbey was so good! It was introduced to me as "fluffy and silly and wonderful" and it was all of those things. I'll be sure to write something up about it later, as it will give me an excuse to talk about JJ Feild as Henry Tilney who is very nearly my favorite Austen leading man. 

-Em

Tea-drunk and Writing

Guys, I am sleepy and tea-drunk. Originally, I was going to post some thoughts on writing and they were going to be good and clever, but then I drank too much tea. Now my head is all warm and fuzzy, and all I can think about is how I wish I had been closer to certain people when I was in college. I wish I could Facebook chat them and find out how they're doing without it seeming weird as hell. Tea-drunk is not close enough to real drunk for me to feel confident in my ability to say, "Hi! What's been ups?" without feeling like a creepy stalker who shouldn't still be trying to be friends with people I only had 2 classes with.

Drinking too much tea, or maybe thinking too much, has also given me the sort of stomach ache you get when you're anticipating something. My brain receives these "I-drank-too-much-tea" signals and interprets them as "oh God oh God I'm so nervous right now!" Sometimes bodies are incredibly stupid. Mine in particular.

Here are my thoughts on writing that I drafted half an hour ago. There is a dramatic shift in tone between these two blog sections. During this second part, I'm sober:

First of all, let me start off by saying this: I don't know shit about writing. Really. I try to and the more I read and listen the more I learn; college and workshopping and everything like that, it all helps. But when I sit and put pencil to paper, everything I've learned about process and craft works together in unconscious ways that I don't pay attention to. It's a bit like driving. You don't always pay attention when you're doing it, but you make it home safe from work every day.


Sometimes something that I love comes out of it, and other times it is absolutely awful and I look at my notebook or my computer screen and sigh and tell myself that this is why I need to find a real job. But I do love writing. When I start working on something it's what I imagine being addicted to drugs is like. It's all I think about, it's what I breathe, I try to get away from everyone at work at lunch time so I can sit in a corner and script dialogue that I wont ever use because it makes me feel something.  When people come near me I snap at them and am basically really rude and awful, but it doesn't matter because I need the words to be on the page more than I need people to like me (this is not very nice, but it is true. The fact that it's true really lends itself back to the drug metaphor well, because when I'm not writing I am a very dependent person. When I'm doing it, it changes me.)

God, that was so much more coherent than this. All this writing talk started because I've been feeling really inspired lately, and I believe it's because of all the good writing I've been steeped in. Sometimes reading or listening to writing that's better than yours is discouraging. That used to be how I felt all the time. I'd write stuff and I'd be like, "Ugh, this is nowhere near as good as Shakespeare!" and then crumple it up and start over. But I'm at a place right now where good writing (Adverbs by Daniel Handler {again}, Sherlock {yes, that fucking TV show again}, Adventure Time {the comic by Ryan North and the TV show}, Travels With Myself and Another by Martha Gelhorn, everything by Frank O'Hara, and the collected works of Paul Verlaine {in both English and French}) is just pushing me. The more I listen and read, the more I want to create and do. Tonight it's all sort of jumbled up in my head and I can't really manage to get any of my own work done because I keep Googling poems by Frank O'Hara and Paul Verlaine. Seriously, everyone else: stop being so fucking amazing. You are driving me to drink. Too much tea.

XOX

(Click the pic to check out its source. Should be your go to for AT screen-cap needs.)