The Ink-Pot and the Palette

( Listening to fiction )

( Listening to nonfiction )

( Watching TV )

( Watching a movie )

( Reading things )

And, a propos of very little:

My fellow Fanmericans - The State of Our Union is...#SuperSleepy is canon! May God ship you & may God ship the United States of Fanmerica

(@TheOrlandoJones tonight on Twitter)

Just got in from the late showing of Much Ado. It's playing at Cinema 21, an unapologetically crappy old movie house in a neighborhood that was hip when I lived there in, like, the Reagan era, and seems, after a period where it started to feel a bit corporate, to have been re-hippified.

I picked up my ticket, wandered across the street to a bar I'd never heard of, and had a mojito and a really good spinach, strawberry, goat cheese and hazelnut salad. Since I almost never drink, I was a wee bit tipsy when I crossed back over at showtime.

( I honestly don't think the rum was solely responsible for my delight. )

Missed a day. Darn! Only a quarter of the way into posting, reading, and commenting every day for a month, and I completely forgot yesterday. Never even opened my computer.

I saw "The Internship" on Friday after work. Considering that I've missed every major movie of the past two years except "The Avengers", spending the admission price to see a predictable underdog buddy-comedy is kind of a questionable choice. But, you know, Dylan O'Brien.

The movie was better than I expected. Once the cringeworthy oblivous-people-embarrassing-themselves part was done (the first 15 minutes or so--and yes, that's a thing of mine, not a criticism of the movie), it became kind of charming.

What made it the most fun of all was that vampirefan, who lives two time zones away, wanted to see it too. Neither of us had anyone to go with, so we went together! She went to a 6:30 showing, I went to a 4:30 showing, and we texted each other at key points from our respective cinema back row seats.

Here's a frame from my favorite scene:

In the last few days I've been indulging what seems to have been a pent-up appetite for mainstream media.

( Books, shows, movies... )

I have had the most splendid day!

First of all, I slept a long time. Second of all, when I woke, there was SUNSHINE! Real sunshine, through real gaps in the Venusian cloud cover. It was gorgeous.

And third of all, I had a terrific online chat with ravurian, and it has left me with that unique, specific good feeling that comes from a long and engaged conversation with a new friend.

The sun, astonishingly, continued to shine, so fourth of all, I went out on Eleanor O, and determined that as long as I don't exert myself into actually-aerobic levels of pedaling, this lung condition is almost sort of not a problem.

A few errands and a visit to my mom later, I came home and, fifth of all, finished sleeve number one of a positively ancient WIP cardigan, while watching The Two Towers and Return of the King. (Note: you may keep your Viggo and your Orli and even your Karl Urban, and just leave me with David Wenham.)

And then, even though it clouded up and rained some more, the clouds parted to reveal SUPER MOON, and it is lovely. Sixth of all.

Oh, and I've lost 42 pounds. \o/

I cut off my Netflix-by-mail because I've been in a long phase where I just don't have the attention span to sit and watch something on my TV.

That phase may be ending, and now I'm considering going to a streaming-only plan. Since I run Linux at home, I don't believe I can use my computer as the vessel for channeling Netflix. So I'm thinking of getting a Roku (or variant, if such a thing exists)--a Netflix box.

Does anyone have this? Can you tell me what's it's like? How you like it? Whether you think it's worth the cost? Any insight would be helpful. TIA!

I just finished watching Lars and the Real Girl, a strange little 2007 movie about family and community, with the unlikely premise of a socially-backward man who buys a life-size sex doll on the internet and introduces her as his girlfriend.

You wouldn't think it would work--or you'd think it would be some kind of fratboy farce, or else some weird Oliver Sachs-based tale of psychosis, but it's not. It's lighthanded and gentle, and it dances on the edge of magical realism without quite crossing the line.

It has two remarkable performances, by Ryan Gosling as Lars and Patricia Clarkson as Dagmar, the family doctor who works with him in his delusion.

There's a scene between them that was hard for me to watch because it hit a little close to home. Lars, talking to Dagmar in her clinic, says that he doesn't like to be hugged.

"But it's such a comfort sometimes, just to have somebody's arms around you, don't you think?" Dagmar asks.

"No!" Lars says. "It doesn't feel good. It hurts."

This surprises Dagmar, but she covers it and says, "Like a cut or a bruise?"

"Like a burn," Lars says. "Like you go outside and your feet freeze, and then you come back in and they thaw out? It's almost exactly like that."

So Dagmar puts a finger on the back of his hand, and he says, "No, that's okay, that's not too bad." She puts all four fingers there and he becomes uncomfortable, but he can still handle it. She moves her hand to his neck, and he completely freaks out.

I have that symptom, and I've never seen or heard so clearly described. I can almost not bear to be touched either, and I associate with a pain very similar to what Lars describes in this scene.

The movie was gentle-spirited enough that I was able to watch it all the way through despite the too-close-for-comfort "untouchable" scene. It has an unsurprising ending; there's nothing incredibly brilliant about it, but it's well written and charming, and I'm kind of glad I saw it.

It made a nice antidote to the the one I watched last night: Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. Talk about a contrast.

It seems that when they put you on an extended work schedule, you get used to it.

I've been getting home one, two, sometimes three hours late almost every workday for three weeks now, and it doesn't seem so trying anymore. Somehow I still manage to get to the grocery store, fix food for myself, and put on clean clothes every day.

Summer's slipping away into fall, and a little part of me thinks, damn, I hate to miss that, while the rest of me attends the endless meetings and does the software testing and rewrites training documents and generally puts her nose to the grindstone.

It's about 9:30 and I'm home, a late dinner settling in my stomach, I just watched Kung Fu Hustle at the recommendation of owzers (good flick, pretty odd), and now the TV is silent and the living room is dark, and all I can hear is crickets outside in the late-summer night air.

We hit 54 percent of goal today at 56 percent of our scheduled time. We might make our deadline, and if we don't, it won't be because I didn't spend enough time at the office.

Today I pruned some shrubs, cleared a patch of ground for future vegetable gardening, planted an apple tree, baked bread, helped avventura1234 build a raised bed, bought a cabbage to make my own sauerkraut (per instructions from the class I took at Preserve last week), and bought some organic raw milk to make my own yogurt. And a jar to make my own kombucha.

I'm turning into some kind of...hippie. Or pioneer. Or something. It's very weird.

So anyway, my reward for a day of urban farming-related busyness was a long cool shower, followed by hot bread with more melty butter than is strictly consistent with best dietary practices, and some Due South. (I still don't have the whatever to watch the very last episode, though.)

Tomorrow: gonna make manapua, start the yogurt and the sauerkraut, and go see the new Callum Keith Rennie movie X-Files movie with my mom and my niece, three generations of X-Philes whether Chris Carter deserves us or not.

Netflix, Netflix, how I love thee. Not only do you recommend movies you think I'll enjoy, and not only are these recs pretty accurate, but you provide me with the wildy-varied and entertaining opinions of hundreds of fellow Netflix subscribers.

Today, you recommended The Passion of Joan of Arc. I clicked through to learn more about it, maybe add it to my queue.

You let me know right up front that this movie is dated 1928. "Filmed in black and white, silent with English intertitles," you further tell me, because you are helpful and informative, Netflix my friend.

My favorite user reviews? Two stars: "The film attempts to create an intellectual thriller without sound." (And without color! Couldn't they just have waited ten years?)

Three stars: "The movie was so-so it would have been better if it was a talkey not a doctormentry."

And the ever-popular, daring and iconoclastic one-star review: "You people are hard up for entertainment. You are the same folks that could play with a ball of string for hours. This movie stunk!" (Well, now I know why I should rent The Da Vinci Code instead.)

Don't ever stop being Netflix, Netflix.