real Love stories

i want to offer up a selection of films that need to be watched today--it doesn't matter if you're with someone, alone, or trying to/in the middle of hooking up, you must watch these films. this is a day filled with saccharine wubby-dovey-love and last minute gifts soon to be passing through the lower intestine (rejected candy hearts) or dead by the end of the day (those poor flowers). the notion of this day being the most romantic ever is always being reiterated in movies and having happy endings (getting laid? weddings? BABIES?); the mere human beings that we are will fall for it, becoming necessarily disappointed when none of it happens to us. when i first watched these movies i wholeheartedly believed my life would be boxes of chocolates and rides in hot air balloons, but since i've gotten wiser (ie: experiencing none of the aforementioned things and spending the majority of my valentine's days alone) my outlook on this holiday consists of disgust and indifference. even with all the cynicism boiling my blood, i don't mean to say i don't appreciate romance. or love. these are wonderful things...that are sadly twisted in the modern world.

ok. getting on with it. so whilst browsing a selection of films on netfilx about three months ago, i came across boys on the run.


i watched it because
1)it was a japanese movie
2)the brief synopsis was intriguing
and
3)i needed a break from supernatural.
apparently it was based on a comic and was also a tv series at one point (i just found out now...and i am sooo reading the comic). i didn't like it in the beginning. it really wasn't what i was expecting and it was so ...shocking. i grew to understand and empathize with the underdog protagonist, minature toy selling tanishi. as a 29 yr old living with his parents and offended by the benefits of adulthood and completely clueless in approaching females for relationship purposes he's soooo pathetic...but that's what makes him real. there are so many guys like him who never get any breaks. tanishi gets dealt shit, sulks in it, but he gets motivated to clean himself up, defend his pride and maybe even get the girl.



after a while i began rooting for tanishi. i empathized with his plight. and as every wretched event enveloped him, i hoped to find a man who would be awkward and funny around me, a man who reciprocated my love before we knew each other, a man who would still want me after getting knocked up by his rival and have to take me to an abortion clinic and then try to fight to defend my honor. that was sweet. that was fucking real.

another film i watched recently was blue valentine.


i remember the controversy regarding it when it was first released. ...it really isn't all that graphic (my standards are probably much higher than the general public, proceed with caution.)...and i wanted to watch it because
1)ryan gosling
2)grizzly bear
3) ryan gosling.
when i watched it, i did it in two parts: half of it one one night and finishing it the following night. i don't know if it had a direct impact on my impression of the film, but it did give me time to reflect on the progression of the plot and put together the pieces of the dean(gosling)/cindy(williams) relationship.



watching this felt so fucking real. fights and showers and sex and breakdowns; all the tension between the characters manifested themselves onto the viewer and it was sometimes too much, too intrusive to watch what was happening to fictional characters. the way dean and cindy met was cute...the way they would sing and dance in the street was cute...i started wishing i had more cute dates. dean's outlook on love also fascinated me. he was so sincere about it...so singular. he's a traditionalist, but his devotion and care for cindy a short while after meeting her...so sweet. the way he simply held her, refusing any idea of letting her go...completely dreamy. with ryan gosling as a main character what's not to love? oh, probably when he's dean five or six years later and has to look like this:


omg, he looks so creepy... the grizzly bear soundtrack complemented the film well. i had been a fan of the instrumental version of foreground and the way the music would mirror the scenes, the tension of the characters and the nostalgia of their blossoming relationship really made me enjoy and get unintentionally emotional (ie: crying) throughout the course of the film. anyway. this made me think about the future. so i got super scared. blue valentine shared a few similarities to boys on the run, making me wonder if there's a sentimental man who hasn't known me for long...who's willing to accompany a pregnant version of me to an abortion clinic...even though the baby isn't his...and proclaims he loves me even when i give him shit. are there real guys like that out there? maybe other girls aren't interested in someone like that unless he's attractive...
let that kind of dedication be a guide to all you lonely men out there (& wouldn't hurt if you looked like ryan gosling).

and now something completely different

mini post. nothing particularly droning or serious, just some shit i've become ...too interested in for the past few days. here are my obsessions of the week.


these shoes (or at least these kind of ones with ankle straps and a not too high heel).


so i just finished reading this. don't let the cute cover fool you--this is serious good myth-like, epic shit. with rabbits. i started reading it about a week ago and i couldn't stop.


пряники. prianik. russian equivalents to our gingerbread cookies. i like that they're soft and not too sweet. it goes well with tea.
that's all for now regarding my recent obsessions. it's quite a pathetic departure from my usual rants, but the one that's coming before this, well, that'll be a good read.

brutal

this is the part where i make a huge reveal about how my life has finally changed for the ultimate better and i have a feeling this is the year everything comes up roses. people do that, right? like, "i'm living for me", self-empowering parties? look at that picture (not eating chocolate-covered toffee). that's me in a state of profound contemplation and about to tell you all the exciting news about how fucking amazing i'm doing. hm. actually, no, this isn't anything like that. this is more like "how the fuck did i end up like this"; part analysis, part explanation with an abundance of sidetracks.

this blog is nearing it's seventh year, something i can't begin to fathom and, ok, i'll go ahead and admit it's something i'm proud of (granted, the posts on here are consistently far and in between). when i started this thing i truly had no intention of keeping it up or having my friends or relatives or people close to me know that i had a blog, it was more of thing to express my sadness regarding the separation from the awesome friends i made in japan during the summer of '06. i don't think i'd ever gotten close to people like that ever at the time. they were closer than family. i had the best time with them. many firsts. it was only naturally i would be devastated and i vented our such feelings here. at the time i was on my last year of secondary school so this blog was neglected for about a month. i don't know how i rediscovered it...or why i started to post stuff, but it all happened and here we are.
throughout my time blogging over the years i was always hopeful. i thought "what the hell. i'll be out of here in a few years time with the whole world left to explore. and maybe i'll find my frapanese scotsman!" five years later, some exploration done and not a frapanese sighted, I'm basically at the same point where I left off. yes, i do blame myself for this heinous circle, mostly because i didn't have any back-up plans (failures and missed deadlines and dire illnesses must be taken into account--ALWAYS) and i got distracted. the defining moment of my downfall? hm. i really believe it was when i stopped giving a fuck. really. i was also pretty sure i'd skim by without any terrible consequences. no. the world would never be that nice to me. nothing would ever be that nice to me.

for a while i lived with the depression and freedom and boredom. it was tolerable. who doesn't want to watch episode after episode of supernatural? but the good times began to wane. i had become someone i had always feared, worse than one of those people who seriously consider applying to nursing or technical schools after seeing those cheap-ass commercials that come on during ricky lake, i was really someone who frankly didn't give a damn. it was the ultimate shit feeling because i knew i was letting it happen...mostly because i felt so trapped. i'm in a terrible limbo--not quite graduated, nowhere to fucking go, nothing that likes me--and from my perspective there's way out. not even a hard, impossible one to try. even so, it's completely my fault the weight of my world is crushing me and stifling my attempts to better myself. i'm the most difficult person to overcome. alternatively, i can be my biggest inspiration (in lieu of a posse of best-friends-forever-for-life...because they can be so busy dealing with their own problematic lives these days).









I discovered these pictures in a cabinet. They’ve been there a while and I knew such things existed there, but it had been a really, really, really long time since I’d seen them, I mean really look at them. In my youth I would often flip through old photo albums or school year books pre-1998 and examine the pictures of people I knew, wanted to know, and couldn't care less about. i would also gaze at in my own captured image. i look rather pleased with existence, eh? i guess it's because i still had dreams of becoming an astronaut-zookeeper-animator-author-hollywood-person-world/universe/time-traveler who was certainly going to get a basic college degree or masters (in archeology, probably) and didn't know/care about the real shit in my way to becoming such an individual. seeing the way i was, how oblivious and hopeful about the world i looked, i felt fucking shit. how the hell could let someone down like that? why would i let myself get consumed in sloth and destroy the dreams of a badass (i was going to say 'precious' or 'sweet', but i've never really been like that to the core) girl? So, maybe i need to change my life for the motherfucking better...
i am positively convinced chicago is the only place that makes me 100% happy.
...
god. the bads totally outnumber the goods at this point. if i really never wanted to be this depressed and inept, i should've never been born. and i could never really be in control of that, right? (but i wish, truly do, i never came to be.)
...
guess i'll go back to actually trying again and having (tangible) goals.
화이팅.

Premium fade

it's roughly the middle of the month and life has not, simply refuses to, and continues no change. maybe little things that have no place in mattering. there has been too much movie and tv watching. since someone made me watch submarine because it was a coming-of-age film that seemed like something inanely british (though exclusively Welsh) i would fancy. i didn't much like it, the ending was terribly inconsistent, but there were some nice scenes. this film made me completely obsessed with alex turner again. i'm listening to the ost nonstop and it's so pretty; like when i associate sad songs to the miserable excuse of a life i attempt. this is my favourite.


apparently this was released again as a song on an arctic monkeys' album. not like i'm following all that again, i'm a pure turner convert. also, i think craig roberts and alex turner look alike except the former has a shorter/more compact head with darker hair..? young mr. roberts is now a part of the welsh actors i dream about on cold dark nights alone in my bed.
completely unrelated, i'm into elliott gould again. ages ago after seeing the original m.a.s.h. i developed a thing for him and there was another 70s era gould robert altman film on netflix (hello, long goodbye) so...i have a thing for 70s era elliott gould again. or maybe i'm saying i have a thing for hairy, tall jewish guys, but i already knew that.

new

another year. i have to admit 2012 was some kind of great. probably the best year overall i've had in a long time. yes, there was too much shit, but i think i got most of it flushed down the toilet and here we are all cleaned up. the only thing i really hope for this year is to be happy. don't know how that's going to work out. also trying to work on ...you know, other important stuff relevant to living in this day and age.

if you've been Bad or Good

after watching the complete first season of american horror story, i will admit to finding evan peters attractive.

maybe it was the portrayal of his character (oh that troubled youth would affect me again!) or the way he looked in bedhead hair with oversized sweaters or when he would wear that gimp suit--but he ensnared me. i want to curl up in bed with him and stare into his soulful eyes. or do whatever people do in beds..the most appealing aspect of evan peter's take on tate langdon was his devotion, how he would do anything to protect violet, how he couldn't fathom to be away from her, like violet was the only thing in the world that mattered (this came to be that one time when he told her she had been the light in the darkness he was made of). ...in my case, this has never happened to me. mr. peters fulfills the fantasy of knowing that one day i'll meet someone (dead or alive) who cares. and then i started to watch the second season of american horror story (asylum) and mr. peters was in it too as kit: 

there's something about him that's so... irresistible. what i wouldn't give to have him look at me that way,,, and today i started thinking, comparing if you will, a similar actor, someone who might make an interesting chiaro to mr. evan's scuro. the conclusion was michael cera.

look at that. i mean, there's some kind of white guy weirdo resemblance that i definitely can't shake. michael cera is not darkness or trouble or anything negative really. whenever i look at him, or even think about his voice, i smile and imagine rainbows, cotton candy, and dolphins frolicking in a purple sea. something pleasant, slightly lisa frank. 

...it's not quite as attractive...maybe cute? geeky, nerdy, i play video games for 13 hours a day cute? well, he's still someone i like. i can't believe he's canadian, it's totally news to me. 

anyway, this side-by-side comparison is kinda hilarious.

i don't know why this is a christmas post. 

santa should've left this to fill my stocking.

hohoho.

good bye, cruel world

the closing of 2012 has always been a bit..frightening? it causes a worry in me not felt since the turn of the millennia with something called y2k . although i wasn't so worried or freaked out hoarding toilet paper and snickers, but there was the uncertainty, the possibility that technology would implode, turn against the human race à la skynet, and we would become destitute without our internets and cell phones. there have been signs of this sort of thing happening with the rise of ridiculous "reality"" television coming about, sub par music, crimes of the past coming to light, falling off fiscal cliffs, and psychotic children. it's probably a good time to clean the slate and start a whole new world. a brave new world. 
rationally, there is no real threat to this coming of the end. i don't think people should be repenting for their lifelong sins...

should the end be approaching, however, i hope i'm doing something that makes me happy. i mean, i don't give a shit if i'm going to die as long as i feel good. ...like i've done everything i wanted to, within my means, and don't expect things to get any better.
...
hm. i guess i mean to say i really don't care if it's the end of the world. i'm rather tired of it. i wonder if this has anything to do with watching too much supernatural and american horror story. god, i don't want to be a ghost either.