There were three of us this morning, I'm the only one this evening
Since it's been over a month since I last updated, I figure I might as well write one up now.
••• A lot of stuff over the past month has gone better than expected! When my aunt and cousin visited us at the end of last month, it was pretty uneventful in a good way; I didn't get to see my cousin a lot because she got sick and had to be by herself a lot (which wasn't all that great since I would've liked to talk to her more, even though/especially since we're not all that close, but oh well), and the only really eventful thing that happened was that one weekend, I went with my aunt, mom, and sister to York Square in New Haven. We bought my sister a laptop at the new Apple Store that opened up there (yeah, I was jealous XD), we checked out Urban Outfitters (the only good part of the place was the music section TBH), and we had a huge lunch/early dinner at Ivy Noodle.
There's been other relatively good stuff too: the cavity filling went perfectly well, my dad's mom has actually gotten better and hasn't been hearing nearly as many voices as she had before (and when she does, she doesn't get freaked out by them like she used to), and I only have to go to Yale once a week for the light treatments for my psoriasis. Unfortunately, for the past week or so I've been feeling very down on myself; the psoriasis has been stubborn lately and I've been very unmotivated to take care of it -- or to take care of myself in general for that matter. I hate feeling set back like this, but I know it'll pass eventually. I'm starting to realize I can't rely on my parents as I have been to help me out emotionally -- there are obviously things I can't do alone, but both of them are stretched thin between work, being caretakers for their elderly mothers, getting me and my sister to doctor's appointments, and all their other Adult Responsibilities™, so ... yeah. I need to stop being lazy and anxious and start being more proactive when it comes to the things I've been meaning to do for a while now. :/
I also try to keep this in mind as much as I can too:
Productivity was invented to support the myth that people are worthless and toil is sacred.
Productivity is not the same thing as accomplishment. It doesn’t exist as a concept to justify anyone’s existence or continued employment or general worthiness. It exists to justify denying these things when it proves expedient to do so.
We are worth more than the wealth we generate for others. We are more than the tasks we can check off on a checklist. We have value that cannot quantified by any metric.
The first thing in life is to do what you need. Sometimes, success means you get by even when the world doesn’t recognize the value of your existence.
••• I guess I've also been getting frustrated lately with people not contacting me back in a timely manner when I try to get in touch with them;it's been happening with K. and a couple of other people I know. Whenever I try to send them a message after not having spoken to them after a couple of weeks or months, I almost never seem to get a reply back, even after waiting more weeks or months, and sometimes even after sending messages multiple times. I realize people get busy and totally forget about replying back to people -- after all, I've done it myself plenty of times -- and I know that at least 98% of the time there's no reason to assume bad faith. But it always feels that the few times I don't feel shy and anxious about making the first move when it comes to talking to people, they almost never seem to pan out. Couple that with the fear that I'm being pushy/clingy/codependent if I try to contact people multiple times when I haven't gotten a response back, and my own emotional hang-ups, and ... well, it doesn't exactly lead to warm and fuzzy feelings, to put it mildly. I know it's a selfish and stupid thing to complain about, but still ... =_=
••• In the meantime, I've been trying to get into the habit of watching movies to keep myself occupied and to open up some space on my hard drive. I'll try to keep this as brief as I can:
••• So, has anyone gotten the chance to see the leaked pilot of Elementary yet? Because it was absolutely amazing! 8D No spoilers, but it shows a lot of promise, and a lot of the problematic stuff in Sherlock is dealt with well here. Perhaps it might turn out to be better than Sherlock? We'll see. :3
••• On Twitter not too long ago, this happened:
Yes, a big, well-known music magazine is following me on Twitter, little blue checkmark and all. And yes, it's legit because I've actually bought copies of this magazine before. No, I don't know why they're following me either. Yeah, it's cool, but I find it more confusing than anything else, especially since I hardly use Twitter. O_o;
••• Can I just say how giddy it makes me to find out how epically Mitt Romney blew it? Because it so, so does. XDDDDDDDDDDDDDD I suspect schadenfreude isn't the best response to this, and it's best to be cautiously optimistic about these things because anything can happen between now and November 2. But still, I love it! BUSTED!!
••• And last but not least, the songs I've been listening to a lot lately:
The Aikiu, "Pieces of Gold" (you may have seen GIFs of the video floating around Tumblr, but it doesn't have the whole song)
Autechre, "Notwo"
fun., "Some Nights" (total guilty pleasure)
The Glitch Mob, "Fortune Days"
Gotye, "Save Me"
Joensuu 1685, "(You Shine) Brighter Than Light"
Leonard Cohen, "In My Secret Life"
Leonard Cohen, "The Partisan"
Menomena, "Heavy Is as Heavy Does"
Shearwater, "Leviathan, Bound" (good song, horrible video)
Torches, "Sky Blue & Ivory"
The xx, "Angels" (their new album is awesome!)
The xx, "Missing"
Yeasayer, "Blue Paper" (their new album is really good too)
Yeasayer, "Demon Road"
Yeasayer, "Henrietta"
How's everyone else doing?
Originally posted at http://quadruplify.dreamwidth.org/131145.html || Comments on original post:
••• A lot of stuff over the past month has gone better than expected! When my aunt and cousin visited us at the end of last month, it was pretty uneventful in a good way; I didn't get to see my cousin a lot because she got sick and had to be by herself a lot (which wasn't all that great since I would've liked to talk to her more, even though/especially since we're not all that close, but oh well), and the only really eventful thing that happened was that one weekend, I went with my aunt, mom, and sister to York Square in New Haven. We bought my sister a laptop at the new Apple Store that opened up there (yeah, I was jealous XD), we checked out Urban Outfitters (the only good part of the place was the music section TBH), and we had a huge lunch/early dinner at Ivy Noodle.
There's been other relatively good stuff too: the cavity filling went perfectly well, my dad's mom has actually gotten better and hasn't been hearing nearly as many voices as she had before (and when she does, she doesn't get freaked out by them like she used to), and I only have to go to Yale once a week for the light treatments for my psoriasis. Unfortunately, for the past week or so I've been feeling very down on myself; the psoriasis has been stubborn lately and I've been very unmotivated to take care of it -- or to take care of myself in general for that matter. I hate feeling set back like this, but I know it'll pass eventually. I'm starting to realize I can't rely on my parents as I have been to help me out emotionally -- there are obviously things I can't do alone, but both of them are stretched thin between work, being caretakers for their elderly mothers, getting me and my sister to doctor's appointments, and all their other Adult Responsibilities™, so ... yeah. I need to stop being lazy and anxious and start being more proactive when it comes to the things I've been meaning to do for a while now. :/
I also try to keep this in mind as much as I can too:
Productivity was invented to support the myth that people are worthless and toil is sacred.
Productivity is not the same thing as accomplishment. It doesn’t exist as a concept to justify anyone’s existence or continued employment or general worthiness. It exists to justify denying these things when it proves expedient to do so.
We are worth more than the wealth we generate for others. We are more than the tasks we can check off on a checklist. We have value that cannot quantified by any metric.
The first thing in life is to do what you need. Sometimes, success means you get by even when the world doesn’t recognize the value of your existence.
••• I guess I've also been getting frustrated lately with people not contacting me back in a timely manner when I try to get in touch with them;it's been happening with K. and a couple of other people I know. Whenever I try to send them a message after not having spoken to them after a couple of weeks or months, I almost never seem to get a reply back, even after waiting more weeks or months, and sometimes even after sending messages multiple times. I realize people get busy and totally forget about replying back to people -- after all, I've done it myself plenty of times -- and I know that at least 98% of the time there's no reason to assume bad faith. But it always feels that the few times I don't feel shy and anxious about making the first move when it comes to talking to people, they almost never seem to pan out. Couple that with the fear that I'm being pushy/clingy/codependent if I try to contact people multiple times when I haven't gotten a response back, and my own emotional hang-ups, and ... well, it doesn't exactly lead to warm and fuzzy feelings, to put it mildly. I know it's a selfish and stupid thing to complain about, but still ... =_=
••• In the meantime, I've been trying to get into the habit of watching movies to keep myself occupied and to open up some space on my hard drive. I'll try to keep this as brief as I can:
- Monsters, Inc. -- I'm sure many of us have already seen this, so no need for a summary. In any case, it was fun and entertaining with plenty of humorous moments; it's not one of Pixar's better works, but it was enjoyable all the same.
- Circumstance -- An Iranian movie about a lesbian couple in high school who long to get out of the repressive society they live in; however, while they dabble in parties, alcohol, and activism, the brother of one of the girls -- who was trying to end a drug addiction through becoming an extremely devout Muslim -- has eyes for the other girl, and begins having suspicions regarding both of them. Any description I can give can't do this movie justice; it's a complex, nuanced study of the very understandable reasons why the people who are supposed to protect the two girls fail to do so, and the ways this failure plays into -- and is influenced by -- how Iran's government oppresses queer people like the two girls so that their lives are affected permanently. It's definitely on the soul-crushing side, and it's not as all-encompassing as the other big Iranian film of the moment, A Separation, but it's still well worth watching.
- Vertigo -- I only watched this because it recently surpassed Citizen Kane as being considered the greatest movie of all time, and I need to watch more older movies anyway. It was a good movie, to be sure, but I wasn't really blown away by it; I think its perceived greatness may have more to do with the influence it had on cinema as a whole and the underlying themes rather than the story itself. (Also, when it comes to movies with such critical acclaim as this, I try to look past their datedness as much as possible, but in this case it was hard to do so.) I still think Rear Window is a better Hitchcock film, anyway.
- Carnage -- HORRIBLE. The premise sounded interesting enough -- a meeting between a rich couple and an upper-middle-class couple to try to resolve a schoolyard dispute between their children goes horribly wrong -- but it was handled very poorly. Boring, predictable, and with no real emotional or intellectual payoff; the acting was really the only good thing about it.
- Drive -- I loved this movie! The slow pacing suited the plot very well, it had gorgeous cinematography, the opening scene was brilliant (on par with that in Touch of Evil), it held your attention perfectly, the soundtrack was awesome, and I loved the way all the characters -- even/especially the antagonists -- were portrayed in a sympathetic light, sometimes through just one shot and no dialogue. If you haven't seen this already, you really, really should.
- There Will Be Blood -- Another great one; I can definitely see why many consider it one of the best movies to come out over the past few years. That's all I can really say about that. ^_^;
- The Big Lebowski -- Somehow I feel like I'm the only one who didn't care for this movie too much. :P I mean, I totally see why people love it, and there are some great moments, but I didn't find it all that funny and I felt the movie was too enamored in its own bizarreness.
- True Grit -- This was the 2010 Coen Brothers version; they were also the ones that made Lebowski, but I liked this one better. It's a rather straightforward Western, a genre I really do not care for that much, but it's one I surprisingly found enjoyable; it really draws you in from the beginning, it has some genuinely funny moments, and many elements of the plot weren't clichéd at all (especially the main character, who has to be the most intelligent 14-year-old girl ever). Recommended for fans of strong female protagonists.
- The Interrupters -- An excellent documentary about CeaseFire, an organization in Chicago that tries to directly intervene in stopping gang-related violence in the inner city, especially cases in which young people would otherwise end up getting killed. If you're interested in how racism and poverty fosters cycles of violence and encourages gang activity, and how black people are empowering themselves to improve their neighborhoods and communities, this is a movie you should check out, as it's very well-done and thought-provoking.
- Kumare -- The only copy of this movie I found floating online was a rip of an Internet stream when it was broadcast on Australian TV; as a result, the movie froze in places for minutes at a time, the audio and video was frequently choppy, and I couldn't watch the whole thing. I really wanted to see it when I first heard about its premise: The filmmaker, disenchanted by what he saw as the falseness of trendy "gurus" and spiritual leaders, decided to become a fake guru himself, complete with Hindu symbols and a laughable New Age philosophy, and make a film about it. He makes fun of all the clueless white people who look up to him for purpose and spiritual enlightenment behind their backs -- that is, until his teachings actually start to work. This isn't Borat -- it's far more empathetic and profound, and I can't wait until it comes out on DVD so I can see the whole thing. :D (And here's the trailer, for good measure.)
••• So, has anyone gotten the chance to see the leaked pilot of Elementary yet? Because it was absolutely amazing! 8D No spoilers, but it shows a lot of promise, and a lot of the problematic stuff in Sherlock is dealt with well here. Perhaps it might turn out to be better than Sherlock? We'll see. :3
••• On Twitter not too long ago, this happened:
Yes, a big, well-known music magazine is following me on Twitter, little blue checkmark and all. And yes, it's legit because I've actually bought copies of this magazine before. No, I don't know why they're following me either. Yeah, it's cool, but I find it more confusing than anything else, especially since I hardly use Twitter. O_o;
••• Can I just say how giddy it makes me to find out how epically Mitt Romney blew it? Because it so, so does. XDDDDDDDDDDDDDD I suspect schadenfreude isn't the best response to this, and it's best to be cautiously optimistic about these things because anything can happen between now and November 2. But still, I love it! BUSTED!!
••• And last but not least, the songs I've been listening to a lot lately:
The Aikiu, "Pieces of Gold" (you may have seen GIFs of the video floating around Tumblr, but it doesn't have the whole song)
Autechre, "Notwo"
fun., "Some Nights" (total guilty pleasure)
The Glitch Mob, "Fortune Days"
Gotye, "Save Me"
Joensuu 1685, "(You Shine) Brighter Than Light"
Leonard Cohen, "In My Secret Life"
Leonard Cohen, "The Partisan"
Menomena, "Heavy Is as Heavy Does"
Shearwater, "Leviathan, Bound" (good song, horrible video)
Torches, "Sky Blue & Ivory"
The xx, "Angels" (their new album is awesome!)
The xx, "Missing"
Yeasayer, "Blue Paper" (their new album is really good too)
Yeasayer, "Demon Road"
Yeasayer, "Henrietta"
How's everyone else doing?
Originally posted at http://quadruplify.dreamwidth.org/131145.html || Comments on original post: