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AKA: A Bunch of Shit You Probably Don’t Even Want to Know!
So this is one of those internet questionnaires that probably went around in emails and then into the blog and online journal spheres until it became a narcissistic series of THIRTY POSTS that are supposed to reveal your ~true self~ to the internet. And since I am nothing if not a COMPLETE NARCISSIST, I’m doing it.
Day 1: Introduce Yourself
My name is Ash. I’m 25. I’m getting ready for my second and last year of grad school where I am trying to get an MFA in writing (fiction) and writing a book and being a reader for a pretty okay group of other writers.
These are the three most recent pictures taken of me, least to most recent:
The top and bottom were taken by my gf because she is obsessed with my hair and also putting things into my bun, like pens and flowers. The middle one is a self-portrait! Told you I was a narcissist.
I like all of the media things that I talk about: books, movies, tv shows, the internet, music, and comic books/graphic novels. I also like taking pictures of shit, but I think all of the conceptual/technical photography stuff is really, really boring. If I like a picture, I like a picture. Fuck your rule of thirds.
I’ve been writing since I was little and I spent all of third grade carrying around those black and white composition books where I wrote stories about the kids in my class then told them that I wrote stories about them, but wouldn’t show them the stories unless they did things for me and then always, 100% of the time, refused to show them anyway.
I was, and am, kind of a dick.
I am not a great or a dedicated writer. I have never been a devoted or hardworking person. Ever. I write because I like it and it comes easily and my basic number one goal in life is to never, ever have to work hard at anything.
My first novel is a young adult story and I love it even when it’s a huge fucking cunt that I want to punch in the face over and over again. I am pretty certain that young adult is really where I belong as a writer (and a reader!) so I am already looking at other MFA programs that specialize in YA/children’s lit to go to after I finish this program, since I am obviously not at all ready to try and be part of the real world.
Also, I have no marketable or useful skills to speak of. I have only ever taught and written for money. I am useless at everything else except for working at a video store, which I was great at! But is now totally obsolete as a career choice. God damn it.
I am really fat and loud and usually smart and funny. I am not into outdoor activities at all unless it’s going to Disneyland or walking from my car into a place of business. I am into fat acceptance and body positivity and feminism and equalism and gay rights and human rights and the general ability for awesomeness that I believe the human race probably does possess deep down inside somewhere under all the evil and body odor.
I’m an adamant atheist and I think religion is basically stupid. I don’t understand people who aren’t pro-choice or pro-gay marriage. Basically, I was born and raised in California.
I have absolute faith that there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe. I will absolutely punch you in the mouth if you somehow infer that believing in the statistical probability of aliens is comparable to believing in ghosts/werewolves/vampires/Jesus.
I live with my parents (fail!twenties, represent!) and my girlfriend and four dogs and two cats and we are all pretty awesome. I am close to my parents and my older (by nine years) sister. My family is really weird and one of my neighbor friends once said to me, “You guys are, like, really loud.” and she was totally 100% right. I don’t think she meant it as a compliment like we took it though.
I can be really rude and brash and obnoxious and because of these awesome personality defects, I have a really hard time making friends. The few I have are basically stuck with me whether they like it or not. I never know if the people around me actually like/tolerate me because I have a really hard time reading people and body language. I am also sort of bossy and demanding and I have unreachably high standards when it comes to public decorum. I AM A GREAT PERSON TO BE AROUND. CAN’T YOU TELL?! WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE LOVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!
Basically, I have spent my entire life being incapable of keeping my mouth shut, completely unable to stop the torrential outpouring of verbal diarrhea that makes up my personality.
I am fucking awesome.
More narcissism here.
So, earlier this summer, I made a summer wishlist post with only one item on it — a god damn pool I NEVER GOT.
And it’s the second to last day of August now and the first draft of my book isn’t finished yet (I’m at 177 pages though, YEAH THAT IS RIGHT.) even though I set September 1st as my ABSOLUTE CONCRETE FINAL DEADLINE and I DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL but there’s still only one more thing on my summer wishlist:
FALL
Yeah, part two of my summer wishlist is for it to FUCKING BE OVER ALREADY. I don’t want to go back to school or have to leave the house for any reason other than Disneyland or hangs with the BFFs, but I am ready for my financial aid disbursement (I bought one gallon of gas today. ONE GALLON. Because that was LITERALLY all that I could afford. But at least I got that damn gallon.) and cooler weather and rain and for some other shit too, like:
STRAIGHT UP READY FOR SOME HALLOWEEN SHIT RIGHT NOW. Including:
And:
How fucking awful are these? I made a sexy/trashy/stereotypical Native American costume for the GayBFF last year that was better than that thing!
Also ready for these:
And always ready for some of these:
Fuck yeah, FALL CLOTHES! TACKY SWEATERZ 4 LYFE.
Anyway, yeah, ready for some cooler weather! And some changing leaves and stuff. I always envision fall like some glorious orange, yellow, and red spectacle of color and breezes! Like Disney’s Pocahontas painting with all the colors of the wind and shit except with grandma cardigans and jeans and flip flops because let’s get real, I live in southern California and I am not putting on real shoes unless it is absolutely necessary. Except for the part where I LIVE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, so the chasm between dream and reality is pretty monstrous.
 And also fall is starting RIGHT NOW. My bank parking lot was knee-high with leaves this weekend because the trees were like, “FUCK I AM TIRED OF HOLDING THIS SHIT UP. IS SUMMER EVER GOING TO END?!” and then got pissed and took a massive dump everywhere. Except it was a million degrees all last week, so it’s not red cable knit sweaters and running and high-kicking through the leaves and giggling, it’s stomping through sticky leaves basically barefoot in shorts and tank tops with sweat squirting out of your armpits like ejaculatory geysers. Fuck you, California, fuck you.
In spite of (or because of, it’s a razor-thin line) all of that, I am fucking ready for fall already. But it won’t come. We still have at least a month and a half of summer left, if not two full months. A month of which will involve my commute further east where it will be twenty to thirty degrees hotter than where I live! (MY LIFE IS GREAT! I AM SO EXCITED FOR SCHOOL TO START! CAN’T YOU TELL? AREN’T YOU SO JEALOUS?!) Which means that I will be going to class on 100 degree days and waiting for my eventual death from heatstroke. In October.
HOORAY FALL.
Anyway, all of that is really just to say, I fucking hate candy corn. Fuck that shit. If you like candy corn, our friendship is over. Get out. And take your fucking candy corn with you. Because it’s bullshit.
Let’s talk about how I am really excited about this movie! And not just because I love everyone in it!
It’s pretty uncharacteristic of me — I like movies where things (literally) blow up and where there are fart jokes and dick jokes and violence and blood and sex and stuff. I love comedies, but not generally ones that are about chicks or relationships. Not that there are a lot of comedies about chicks! WHICH IS WHY I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS MOVIE!
If a man tells someone that he likes comedy movies, they think about stuff like The Hangover (which I love) or Clerks (which I love) or maybe animated movies like Shrek or Toy Story or Groundhog Day or Hot Fuzz or Ghostbusters or The 40 Year Old Virgin or American Pie or Tropic Thunder or Animal House a ton of other movies that I DO in fact love.
If a woman tells someone that she like comedies, they think about stuff like Love, Actually or The Bounty Hunter or Moonstruck or Sleepless in Seattle or You’ve Got Mail or Splash or 27 Dresses or a million others JUST LIKE THOSE.
The commonality between these two groups is that most of those movies have predominantly male leads. The ones that have a female lead are usually the “romantic comedies.” As if women are unable to laugh except when the jokes come between bouts of relationship drama. Female-starring comedies, straight-up comedies that are NOT primarily about a relationship, just don’t exist. Off of the top of my head, I can honestly not think of a single one. NOT ONE.
SO I DON’T LIKE ROMANTIC COMEDIES. Generally. I don’t like them because the women are USUALLY: weak, boring, self-involved, only concerned about the men in their lives, insecure, unstable, vengeful, bitter, catty, stereotypical, anti-women, anti-man, anti-human, baby-crazy, often in competition with one another, and rarely fleshed out as anything other than half of the relationship dynamic.
I’m not saying that romantic comedies don’t exist where this isn’t the case — though it isn’t perfect, I actually think the women of Love, Actually are pretty well done — it’s just incredibly unusual.
This is where You Again comes in. Based on the trailer: There are women! LOTS OF THEM. And they’re not competing for a man! Or worried primarily about the romantic pleasure of a man! They are successful! And driven! And smart!
The trailer alone passes the Bechdel Test!
Granted, it’s still women: in competition, being catty, man-oriented (even if it’s family), petty, and stereotypical, but it looks like they learn a decent lesson about being human, forgiveness, all that great stuff.
So I remain cautiously optimistic and hope that maybe, just maybe, studios will learn that female-driven movies don’t all have to be Eat, Pray, Love or Bride Wars because there is an eager audience just waiting for them to do it right.
Lately I have been experiencing an increased amount of anxiety.
I’m not talking like, clinical, medical, diagnosed anxiety which is somehow at a level higher than normal. I am talking about the actual feeling of anxiety that all people experience at one point or another. Granted, I’ve had panic attacks for most of my life and I should probably be diagnosed and medicated, but since I have not and am not, I am more comfortable talking about it as an emotional reaction. Even if my emotions are reacting to nothing.
So, again, for the past week I’ve been experiencing some heightened anxiety levels. I haven’t had a panic attack thus far, but my sleep patterns are more screwed up than they normally are (I keep a weird schedule during the summer, usually staying up until 3-5am and then sleeping ’til noon-ish). I have been napping during the day or evening or sleeping for two or three hours at a reasonable time (10 0r 11pm) and then getting up and staying up for many hours, then sleeping in midday. I either sleep fitfully or like the dead, no in between, and I can’t figure out how to eat in a way that doesn’t make me miserable. I’ve been crying (at stupid things! LIKE SAD CATS) and having some problems regulating my breathing and just generally not feeling well at all.
Something is clearly up.
The other day, I was lying in bed watching some… Homes of the Rich and Tasteless style show and they were showing this HUGE house in Malibu overlooking PCH and it was enormous and so… empty. And I started legitimately panicking at the thought of trying to fill up that space with my life. And how I don’t have very many friends and how a house that big would be so wasteful. And while talking to my girlfriend about it, I realized that there’s an emotional connection between being unable to physically fill a home and emotionally fill a home and blah blah blah it all makes sense, but still. I had to fend off a panic attack over some house on TV that I have no desire nor ability to ever live in. That’s the epitome of crazy, right there.
Tonight I was working my way through my Google Reader load and I had about three dozen tabs open beside it (I read through the whole set of posts, then clear through the tabs one by one, usually compiling blog/tumblr posts and emails for my girlfriend/dad/sister.) and I just started panicking intensely about all of these THINGS in front of me and I started shaking and I had to go splash my face with water and sit on the toilet to calm down.
I’ve talked about it briefly before, but I have a truly awful, unstable memory. I cannot retain more than three ideas at a time (not joking. at all.) and I have to take lots and lots of notes just to be able to function through bullshit daily tasks like internetting and blogging, let alone primary needs and work (my novel) and school. My memory plays an enormous role in my issues with anxiety. I am constantly freaking out about forgetting even simple, unimportant things and being unable to remember what I wanted to do, sometimes from one moment to the next, is… It’s embarrassing. And miserable. And depressing. And frustrating and exhausting and STRESSFUL.
I forget whether I’ve accomplished tasks. I forget what tasks I am supposed to do. My mom or dad or sister or girlfriend can ask me to do something for them, something as simple as grabbing a glass of water or checking something on the internet, and I will, in just a matter of moments (usually the ones I am using to complete a task before I can turn to theirs) forget ENTIRELY that they asked me to do something for them.
I cannot remember shit.
Compounding my memory issues and exascerbating my anxiety is multi-tasking. I am CONSTANTLY multi-tasking. I cannot remember the last time I only had one tab open in Firefox and even when it’s down to two or three, I am rapidly moving from site to site, tab to tab, trying to stay up to the minute on all of the ~social media~ feeds I follow. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GReader, Flickr, boards, blogs. My email is always set to pop immediately upon receipt of a message. Texts are frequent, instant, constant. Phone calls, follows, mentions.
I love the internet and I love the availability and speed at which it brings even the most inane information straight to my eyeballs, but it’s making me insane. It’s making me anxious.
Since I made this bed for myself, I am trying to find more survivable ways to lie in it.
STEPS FOR MY INTERNET SURVIVAL:
1. Chill out. The information isn’t going to go away.
2. You are not at a place in your internet presence where you have deadlines. Appreciate that.
3. TAKE NOTES. You keep papers and pens around you at all times, use them. TextEdit and Word are always open, USE THEM.
4. Stop forsaking your book (YOUR REAL JOB) for the internet.
5. It is always okay to step away for awhile.
My anxiety is manageable. I learned a trick from my dad when I was just a kid that still works: NINTENDO. NES used to do magical things for him when his anxiety was unchecked and Wii does the same unbelievably simple job. MarioKart requires zero brain cells. And if I just keep remembering to CALM THE FUCK DOWN, I’ll probably make it out of my twenties alive.
ANYWAY. Now that I talked all serious-like about my anxiety, I can talk about what I really want to and that is:
The idea of buying real furniture, like the kind that doesn’t require significant assembly, but does require delivery by people in large trucks, freaks me the FUCK OUT.
The idea that, at some point in the relatively near future, people are going to expect me to go into a store and pick out some SERIOUS FURNITURE that I am going to have to live with for… years that is going to cost me a whole bunch of money and require a place in which to put it? That’s fucked up! Dining rooms?! How is that a thing? How do adults do this shit? I am only TWENTY-FIVE. Ikea and milk crates and paying for concert tickets instead of putting money into a savings account. THOSE ARE THINGS I UNDERSTAND. Adulthood and mortgages and OH GOD I AM GOING TO HAVE TO FIND A JOB.
 This is some serious bullshit. Not ready, world. YOU HEAR THAT. I AM NOT READY.
So! Today I went and saw Inception again. I KNOW, I KNOW, WHATEVER, I DO WHAT I WANT.
Plus it was free because I had an old-ass coupon.
So anyway, the parts that I liked, but had to bear through gritted, angry teeth the first time were SO MUCH MORE enjoyable this time around, since I already knew I hated the ending and didn’t have to sit, waiting, knowing what was going to happen, but not being able to be CERTAIN, and the parts I didn’t like were… some were more tolerable (the snowscapades were still so incredibly idiotic, but they became almost transcendentally watchable in their idiocy) and others were still completely and utterly hateable in every way (that last shot, Mal, NO ONE MOVING THEIR FACE AT ALL).
The thing that was MOST frustrating was that, on the first viewing I was like, “Hey, there are some legit plot holes up in this motherfucker.” and on second watch it was like, “WAS ANYONE EVEN WATCHING THIS MOVIE AS IT WAS BEING MADE? WAS THERE EVEN A SCRIPT?!”
It was as though every time someone said, “Hey, Christopher Nolan, there’s this GLARING error in your story and it’s kind of ruining the pretty cool mythology that you are trying to build up in herrre,” Christopher Nolan was like, “I’M CHRISTOPHER NOLAN, SUCK MY DIIIIIIIIICK. MAKE THE SLO-MO GO SLOOOOOOWER. NO ONE WILL NOTICE. I AM BUSY FUCKING BATMAN. I AM THE GOD DAMN BATMAN. SLOOOOOOOOOOWER!” or some approximation of that.
And hey, man, I liked Transformers! And, awkward racism aside, I found the second one to be pretty watchable! It’s not like I am over here expecting some Citizen Kane or Vertigo master work up in my AMC. I just want movies to like, I don’t know, make sense beyond their first viewing.
I’m not even going to talk about the actual plot holes (Google that shit, son!) because I will just feel a lot of awkward, now passion-less rage again, instead I am going to, SHOCKER, talk about some shit I liked.
Like I said last time, I really dug the zero g ballet. I think a lot of the effects in the movie are sort of hokey and plastic looking, but the shift in gravity after everyone except Arthur has descended to the next level is incredibly cool. It looks like a practical effect as the world is tilting (the Fatboy Slim video wall crawling portion) and whether or not it is a practical effect, the fact that it looks like one delights me. The extended sequence beyond that is a little too long and a little too graceful, but I still think it’s good-looking enough to warrant some interest/credit.
The train blowing through the middle of Downtown L.A. scared the holy shit out of me both times I watched the movie. The sound mixing is perfect for it and even when I knew it was coming, it was startling.
Arthur and Eames’s banter and antagonism toward one another is fabulous. “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling” is the kind of smarmy charm that the movie would’ve been infinitely weaker without. Plus, more importantly, they both seem to really love their jobs. Cobb hates his skills because they’re all he has left, Ariadne is terrified of it, Saito and Yusuf play their roles willingly, but without a lot of joy. Arthur and Eames know what they’re good at and they’re more than willing to do it.
The initial kick (Cobb into the bathtub) is a great, lively use of ramping. Granted, it’s TOO SLOW and too long, but it changes speed in a way that looks really cool and helps the audience understand the difference in time between dream levels. It doesn’t serve that last purpose particularly well (it doesn’t when he overuses it through the rest of the movie either) but god damn if it don’t look cool for twenty seconds.
I kind of loved the crap out of Fischer. Cillian Murphy is the WEIRDEST LOOKING FAMOUS PERSON EVER, but he’s pretty damn good at under and over-selling shit in the right places. I don’t know, maybe I am just tricked by his weird face.
A visual motif with which I am down:
I am sure there were other instances of those Tetris-ish pieces showing up (Ariadne’s mazes, the paradox construction, Mal and Cobb building in limbo, etc.) but I really noticed the top and bottom ones here as directly referencing each other. Since I occasionally like to overthink things (I know that’s shocking, I KNOW.) I like to think that they’re subtle visual cues nodding to the completion of whatever “puzzle” Nolan was trying to draw. The first image is from Arthur and Cobb’s helicopter ride with Saito, the last is from Fischer’s safe room at the end. In the end, the puzzle is complete.
Draw what you want from that! Regardless of it’s intentions (or unintentions), I like the look. Especially in that last scene.
ANYWAY. What the hell is up with no one moving their face? Marion Cotillard looks like she’s made of wax and Joseph Gordon-Levitt talks like he’s got Bells Palsy. WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON IN THERE? Were they trying to make up for Leonardo DiCaprio’s constant fart-smelling face? DOES INCEPTION WORK LIKE BOTOX?
The world may never know.
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