up-to-date randomity

1.) Anyone else think The Primitives "Crash" should have played throughout the end credits of Crash (2004)? It'd have been funny, and perhaps we'd like something about the movie then.

2.) I just recognized there aren't many words with three Us in them. Isn't that unusual?

3.) Anyone else underwhelmed by the films currently out? Will the movie season get any better? Eh. I'm eagerly anticipating I'm Not There (2007) because you know how I hate the conventional biopic; Control (2007) because it's about Joy Division and I want to see how it compares to 24 Hour Party People (2002); and Atonement (2007) because... well, for obvious reasons.

4.) I came out as queer to a class I was teaching, about the diversity of LGBT people, cultures, and issues. My fellow Q&A panelists weren't expecting it, but I don't think they were shocked.

5.) I don't want to wait till next fuckin' summer for the second season of "Mad Men" (2007-present). Tuesday means the season finale of the other show I have been committed to watching since its premiere: "Damages" (2007-present). 'Bout time. It's a bit too drawn out. But I like it.

6.) "Pushing Daisies" (2007-present) is too cute for words. I want the complete series of "Wonderfalls" (2004) on DVD. Right now.

the little envelope that could

I have no idea what marks I earned at Lancaster. I've been checking my unofficial transcript online everyday to see if they've been transferred and made available for my viewing. Nope.

So imagine my surprise today when I received an envelope in the mail from Lancaster University. Still no grades, but it was a check for £58.10. I have no idea why. I hope I can deposit it.

What cracks me up even more is the handwritten mailing address on the envelope. I just don't know how it got here when it only has my name, street address, town, and country labeled on it. No state. No zip-code. I imagine it took a long time to get here.

randomity doesn't float; it sits in labeled boxes

I just noticed that I haven't written about anything "totally random" in ages. Since May 5 to be exact. I guess as I have become more and more detail-oriented, I have neglected to use that label. It's as if it no longer fits anything. Actually, I don't think it ever did. I mean, how could something be so random but move me to write about it? If I deemed it important enough to make permanent here (or as long as this blog exists in cyberspace), then it couldn't be random. Or at least it isn't anymore. The different random bits have the blog in common. And by extension: me.

Sorry, I just thought I should point that out.

potty training

Call me disgusting, but on my most recent trip to the bathroom (yeah, this happened just a minute ago), when I saw how someone's previously set off anal fireworks (aka diarrhea?) had stayed clung to the seat, I thought, of course, "how disgusting!"

Usually when I make observations not wholly unlike this one, I do something to change it. For instance, whenever I spot litter while walking around anywhere, if it doesn't look too germy, I will pick it up and properly dispose of it asap. My thinking is, I cannot just notice it and NOT pick it up.

So, I admit that this thought ran through my head, too. But I just couldn't clean up someone else's shit. I've honestly thought of putting up a sign that reads: "I'd wipe it clean if it were my shit." But I know I won't.

I just had to share this.

a way round it

This is for today!

auto-reply message: will return wednesday

I'm exhausted. There's not enough time to write a proper post. I am going to Manchester tomorrow for a Razorlight concert. I won't be back until Wednesday evening/night. This means there will be no post tomorrow. The first time since I started this blog. I apologize for any inconvenience.

question!

What's a conurbation?

making time

Well, everything is back to normal again. I am now five hours ahead of the East Coast and eight ahead of the West. The changeover happened last night before I went to bed. I noticed because my computer was telling me I was going to bed at 2.20 am. I didn't even realize British Summer Time was starting, so it came as a bit of a shock. "Uh, I didn't think it was so late..."

I had to change the time on my watch so it wouldn't be 50 minutes behind. "50 minutes behind?" you ask. "Why isn't it an hour?" Well, I have always set my watch a couple minutes ahead. It once was four minutes fast, then it slowly turned into seven and then nine and then eleven. I don't understand how I lost time like that, but to end the confusion, I decided to set my watch to the actual time.

It is 1 pm.

i don't even know what to call this

"IE is always better than Y."*

*Note to self: this statement concerns scholars/authors with the same name, only there is a difference between the spellings of their surnames.

i spy with my little eye

I was just plucking my eyebrows with a hand-held mirror so I could keep one squinty eye on French Kiss (1995). I noticed something very strange about my left eye. Yes, I have known for years that I have a "discoloration": I have big brown eyes, but at the bottom of my left there is this hazel-green patch. What I noticed just now is that there is a streak of my dark brown cutting through the green area. Technically, I suppose I have two green areas. How wonderfully strange!

if only someone would ring it

Alan Fletcher and I have the same doorbell. I noticed this the other day. In my poster of different spaces in Fletcher's house/studio, you can see his doorbell at his front door:



And here is mine:



I realize this is probably not all that special. It must be very common in the UK, but it's quite a novelty for me. When I take the poster home, I will always be reminded of my own doorbell here. Tear.

no, i don't go there and i've never even been

I wore my Berkeley sweatshirt to my seminar today on the May 1968 student riots in France for my class on youth and political culture in 1960s Europe. No one pointed out the irony there.

doppelgangers

Not a day goes by that I don't find something offensive. Today, one of the things is a photo gallery from The Los Angeles Times suggesting actors to play serial killers if their stories should ever become the stuff on the silver screen. Looking at these mug shot-like portraits (the actor's and the serial killer's juxtaposed together), you can see staff writer Patrick Day's suggestions are mainly based on what the actor looks like. Mind you, this is not what they always look like (with the exception of Kevin Costner maybe). Day may write that Benicio del Toro "would be perfect to channel [Ricardo "The Night Stalker" Ramirez's] intensity," but what he really means is, "He looks kinda like him. You can't get that guy from Babel. He doesn't look like him!" It's even clearer when Day says that Vincent Gallo should play Charles Manson because he's had a bug bushy beard and a coif reminiscent of Manson's anyway. Nothing about his acting cred.

The actors should be offended. It's as if Day's suggesting Philip Seymour Hoffman can be mistaken on the street for John Wayne Gacy, the "clown killer" who raped and tortured boys with whom he had contact due to the nature of his job as a party clown. (Then again, I bet Gacy wouldn't be out on the streets; probably behind bars.)

As a cinephile, I am offended at the suggestion that Ryan Seacrest should play Jeffrey Dahmer. Never mind the fact that there's already been a movie about him. Saying Seacrest has a "leg-up" on other contenders for the role because he has witnessed "many acts of human depravity" as host of American Idol really degrades Dahmer's victims and the singing contestants on the show. The torture is not comparable. It's just sick.

I realize this is all just a joke, but c'mon. It's pretty low.

you say it's your...

I'm officially freaked out. I have this uncanny ability to wander onto someone's filmography page at IMDB when it is their birthday. For example:

Yesterday, I was looking up Diva (1981) because I have to see it tonight for my French film class. None of the names looked familiar but Dominique Pinon, who I knew already was from Amelie (2001) and A Very Long Engagement (2004). What do you know? In confirming who I thought he was, I noticed that March 4 was his 52nd birthday.

And just now, I looked up Dario Grandinetti because I had watched Hable con ella (2002) last night and fell in love with it again. Today is his 48th birthday.

I told you birthdays mean a lot to me, but this is just weird.

a breath of fresh air?

Last night, I spat into my own eye. It was quite a feat, let me tell you. There was something in my left eye, and whenever something like this happens, I usually blow upwards into my eye to get the stuff out. (If this fails, then I reluctantly take off my glasses and rub it out.) This time, however, my air was accompanied by a little bit of spit. I laughed at the ridiculousness of this at the time. Now I'm just embarrassed to have told you about it.

private eyes... they see my every move

I am under investigation.

Got something in the mail today saying that the TV Licensing Enforcement Division is investigating whether or not I am receiving TV programming since I do not have a TV license (a £131 value, I might add, for the whole year). To watch terrestrial TV (i.e. the BBC) without a license is against the law, punishable with a fine of up to £1000. Well, I really shouldn't be too worried. After all, I do not have a TV.

I assume this is just a general tactic, sent to anyone who doesn't have a license regardless of whether or not they have a TV. It's also a way of advertising. I imagine it's tempting for some people who have previously written off buying the TV license for whatever reason. But buying one is completely out of the question for me. It's not like I have the money to buy the TV, too.

How do people deal with this? I understand *why* TV licensing exists--it's a sort of membership fee or a tax for public broadcasting. I respect this. The BBC is world-renowned for fantastic public programming. PBS in the States is floundering all the time and some of its financial support comes voluntarily from the public. Still, there's something about me, a socialist, that inhibits me from this cultural practice: why should I pay for TV?

license and registration, please

I am terribly confused. Just how old is James McAvoy? The Internet Movie Database says he was born 1 January 1979. That would make him 28.

But read this first sentence from an article by Ella Taylor in LA Weekly: "On January 1, one day after his 27th birthday and fresh from his honeymoon, James McAvoy slips into a coffee shop in the fashionably scruffy North London borough of Crouch End, where he’s bought a house with his bride, the actress Anne-Marie Duff."

This supposes he was born 31 December 1979. There is very nearly a year's difference here! Something tells me Taylor is right since, regarding his success so far, he is quoted as saying, "'Look at all the actors who were so successful at 27 and then disappeared.'" You wouldn't say that about yourself without indirectly referring to your own age (in this context), would you? Then again, he might just be referring to the success he's had up until that age because he's just barely 28. I don't know what to think anymore.

I apologize for nitpicking, but something like someone's birth-date always catches my attention. I have a (semi) photographic memory, and I am very good at remembering numbers, especially dates. But McAvoy's birth-date doesn't mean much in the long run, I know.

I will say this, though: If he was born 31 December 1979, it is too cool. He could have just spent hours--or even minutes--in the 1970s. Same goes for Val Kilmer; his experience in the 1950s is also limited to just hours or minutes. How do I know all this?

Oh, and I want to comment on the article's title: "Great Scot." This is the go-to headline for anything regarding a Scotsman. Ewan McGregor would get this kind of treatment in the American magazines, and I'm sure he still does somewhere.

floundering laundry

Laundry. Always exciting. I write this as my wash starts its second hour of drying. But this is not the story I want to tell.

I went back down to the laundry a few minutes before the wash was finished. I thought it would only be three or four minutes, but it had seven minutes left when I got there. So, to keep myself busy, sane, I cleaned up a bit. I scraped off the lint from the lint collector/screen (what is it called?) in all of the dryers. I even collected the lint balls off the floor.

Then two girls came in. They were saying to one another how it looks so much cleaner since the last time they came in. They said all this without even looking at me, bending over to pick shit off the doors of all the dryers. It was as if they had no idea how it came to be like that. They just collected their clothes from two of the washers in their Sainsbury's shopping bags. They didn't even use the dryers. I don't understand. They had a lot of clothes. Are they just going to hang it all up to dry? Do they have a clothes line?

Later, I came back to collect my drying. Didn't think it would be ready, so I came prepared with more money. To make a long story short, after slipping in 10 more pence to get me six more minutes (what a difference!) I accidentally put in a pound, which got me an additional 60 minutes. I could have sworn it was the other 10p I had in my pocket. I laughed at my stupidity, but it really isn't that big a deal. After all, when I originally arrived to start my wash, I used the one available washer, which only needed 50p to start. (A wash costs at least £1.50, so someone must have made a mistake or was feeling generous.) So I didn't end up saving money today because I was foolish not to look at which coin I was putting in the machine.

Sorry to have bored you with this, but I am trying not to think about how I lost over $10,000 in a departmental scholarship. Bummer. Today sucks.

camp is performed but must be perfected first

Around campus there are many advertisements that try to convince my English student-peers to work as volunteers in the U.S. doing this and that. This is nothing new, but today I saw one with "Work at camp in America." What is wrong with this picture other than the fact that the people look too deliriously happy with American flags waving in the background? This statement is missing what I presume is an indefinite article: "a." "Work at a camp in America." That sounds much better. When I first read it, I thought they mean for the English to go over to the U.S. and help the Americans get campy, help them develop camp. Americans don't need help with camp.

narcolepsy in the uk

Here's another thing: I attract so many narcoleptics. During Flamenco (1995), the girl that had slept through my presentation on Guggenheim Museum Bilbao sat next to me and slept pretty much through the whole film. Why come to something--whether it's class or a film showing--if you're just going to sleep?

Today, I had to share a handout with a girl in my French cinema class. And as soon as slid my paper between us, she started to nod off. She would wake only when I made the slightest of movements. I was never even trying to wake her. How rude it is to fall asleep/sleep during class! If I were the prof, I would never tolerate such a thing.

Is it the plastic bags you all carry around that make you so sleepy?