Bad Movie Tuesday – Spiral

After watching last week’s offering, Roommate and I immediately jumped onto IMDB to seek other cinematic masterpieces by the writer/director of Frozen.

I’m not sure why? We might have been drinking at that point.

Anyway, that was what lead us to acquire this week’s offering, Spiral. Here is the thing about Spiral–we really hoped it would be as awesomely bad as Frozen was and we were already excited to cast the new Barrowman and Chubs. (Like choosing the Barrowman in each movie, we had decided that each movie had a Chubs, and it was up to us to suss out who it was.) We had high hopes because this one had actual actors in it! That kid from Chuck! Amber Tamblyn! It would be hilariously bad!

Or not.

You’ll have to bear with me for this review–I honestly have no idea what was happening at any given point. It was SO BORING. SO RIDICULOUS. SO WHIMSICAL.

The Chubs of this movie is the protagonist. It starts off with him having a fit and calling the Chuck Kid in the middle of the night. The Chuck Kid tells him to shut the fuck up and go to sleep. (The Chuck Kid is the Barrowman of this movie.) The next day, we follow Chubs to work, where he is a telemarketer for an insurance firm. ChuckKid is is supervisor and only friend and his co-workers include The Wolf (a nickname in reference to the wolves in Frozen) and ~*Whimsy Girl*~, Amber Tamblyn, whose nickname is in reference to the two summaries on IMDB that refer to her character as Chubs’ ~*Whimsical Coworker*~. Ugh. The Whimsy. But pretty much, Chubs sucks at his job and The Wolf likes to rub it in every day.

Roommate: “He looks up, the wolf’s over there. He’s like, ‘*taptaptap* I just sold 17 policies.'”
Me: “‘Hey, you want to go skiing this weekend?'”

So, apparently Chubs’ life sucks, his only friend is ChuckKid, and everyone at work makes fun of him. ChuckKid gives him a ride home from work in the rain and possibly sexually molests him in the car.

Me: “I forgot he was Barrowman! Of course he was sexually assaulting him in there.”
Roommate: “Hello best friend! How’s your penis?”

The next day at work, ~*Whimsy Girl*~ sits down next to Chubs on his lonely lunch bench and starts talking at him. Like, a lot. I don’t think he even acknowledges her. This repeats the next day, after a confusing night of Chubs going home and being scared of a glowing closet in his apartment?

Roommate: “What’s in there? Is it just like a closet he doesn’t go in?”
Me: “It’s Barrowman’s love den.”

~*Whimsy Girl*~ is sad because she’s a shitty telemarketer and afraid to be fired. She cries and shit. Chubs just kind of ignores her, but when he’s leaving that night (in the rain, again) she magically appears with an umbrella and walks him home, spouting ~*whimsy*~ the entire way. This was the point when we started begging Chubs to kill her.

Me: “I would rather be in Barrowman’s car, with him touching my dick.”
Roommate: “I would rather have Barrowman’s dick up my ass and not even come.”

Roommate: “Oh god, is she still out there being whimsical?”

Me: “I can’t wait til he eviscerates her.”
Roommate: “I hope he kills her and eats her flesh.”

The days within the movie blur together in a horrible mush of this girl’s ~*Whimsy*~. Chubs is an artist and we see some suspicious scenes of him looking at sketches of other girls and throwing out all these paintings of other girls that it’s hinted that he’s known and painted. We continue to hate ~*Whimsy Girl*~ with the passion of a thousand suns, to the point where our entire sense of self has been challenged and changed by the fervor of our intense hatred for her.

Me: “I would rather watch Barrowman fuck that dude.”
Roommate: “I hate her so much, I would rather watch actualfax Barrowman fucking.”

Roommate: “Amber Tamblyn, I hate you so much right now that I would rather watch Barrowman’s dick.”

ChuckKid takes Chubs to a record store where Chubs is looking for a jazz record. NOT a “smooth jazz” record because that’s TOTALLY DIFFERENT and Chubs is totes offended that ChuckKid doesn’t recognize that.

ChuckKid: “What about this one?”
Chubs: “No.”
Roommate: “That’s your penis.”
ChuckKid: “You barely even looked at it!”

Chubs has these rules about the sketches he’s started doing of ~*Whimsy Girl*~. She’s not allowed to look at the next poses he has planned. Or even ask about them. Or acknowledge them at all. She’s all ~*whimsical*~ about it and stops asking him. There’s a bit where ChuckKid and Chubs play basketball and visit a cemetery. Or something.

Roommate: “He’s like, ‘These are the other girls I’ve painted. These four tombstones.'”

ChuckKid: “Are you asking me if your old man is going to hell?”
Roommate: “What did he do? Was it interesting? Did he touch you in your no-no place, Chuck?”

At this point, we were willing to latch onto anything that made this movie even the least bit interesting. Anything. The movie just gave us more ~*Whimsy Girl.*~

Me: “I never thought there would be someone who could make me want to rather spend time with Barrowman than them. Then I met this girl.”

Then, ChuckKid has a party where The Wolf and ChuckKid are social and play video games and Chubs sits there awkwardly with his pack lunch (?) until ~*Whimsy Girl*~ finds him in a corner and they go off to paint. But this is the NAKED painting. FINALLY the movie might get interesting!

Me: “I could forgive her if she showed her tits.”

Unfortunately, there was no tit showing. No matter how much I begged for it. Instead, Chubs paints ~*Whimsy Girl*~ and they have an emotional conversation about Chubs’ dad, I think? Or something. Whatever, at the end of it, she takes off her clothes and there’s not even a fade-to-black. It just suddenly flicks to the morning after. All of these HOURS of boredom and we didn’t even get a sex scene. It was tragic.

Chubs leaves ~*Whimsy Girl*~ in bed and goes to make breakfast. All he has is peanut butter and apples.

Chubs: “All I have is peanut butter. Oh, I have apples too!”
Roommate: “Oh my god, he’s you!”
Me: “Oh god, if I ever turn into that…”
Roommate: “Don’t worry. If that happens I’ll show up and touch you in the no-no place.”

While Chubs is making breakfast, ~*Whimsy Girl*~ looks through his cabinets and finds sketchbooks filled with other girls in the exact same poses he’s had her in. The last page on each one is ripped out and that’s the page she’s up to. She panics and hides the books and tries to act all normal, but there’s a distinct lack of her usual ~*whimsy*~, thank god. The next day, Chubs is all cheerful and shit at work and tells ChuckKid that he wants to invite ~*Whimsy Girl*~ to the Christmas dinner that they apparently have together. This might be the point where I hypothesized that ~*Whimsy Girl*~ was his Tyler Durden. Actually, I think I made that prediction at the very beginning. Anyway, ChuckKid is all, “You do this every year, Chubs! It’s not healthy! You’re just going to be sad and let down again! Let’s fuck in my office, it will make you feel better!”

I might have made that last bit up.

Anyway, Chubs insists and the next scene is awkward Christmas dinner with ChuckKid, his unnamed ladyfriend, and Chubs waiting for ~*Whimsy Girl*~. When ChuckKid convinces Chubs that she’s not coming, he goes back to his apartment. I took a bathroom break at that point. I had finished the bottle of wine and, tragically, it hadn’t made the movie any better. I needed to switch to Scotch. When I got back, Roommate filled me in on what I missed.

Roommate: “I told Chubs to jack off on the painting cause at least that would be interesting. Instead he answered the door and fucking whimsy girl was there.”

I think they fought or something? I was pretty drunk by that point, but if they DID fight, it wasn’t an interesting fight. Chubs dragged her into the glowy closet of Barrowman’s Love Den. Or something. Anyway, whatever, the next morning Chubs shows up at work and goes to find ChuckKid in his office, sobbing about how he killed this girl.

Roommate: “It’s amazing that I’m so bored by this that I ship it. I just want the Chuck kid to hold him down and fuck him.”

ChuckKid tearfully explains to Chubs that he didn’t really kill anyone and then informs the audience that Chubs’ dad killed some chick and ever since, Chubs has made up these girls, drawn them, painted based on his sketches, then destroyed the paintings and come into work sobbing about how he killed a girl. But ChuckKid stuck by him out of deep love or something. I don’t even know, guys, we were just so shocked that something INTERESTING had finally happened. Also, that I so called that ~*Whimsy Girl*~ was Chubs’ Tyler Durden.

Roommate: “Oh my god, this movie is like Fight Club except fucking boring!”

Me: “Oh my god, Chuck kid is so emotionally invested in this!”
Roommate: “Oh my god, fuck him, Chubs!”

ChuckKid sends Chubs to wash the “paint” off of his hands, at which point The Wolf comes into ChuckKid’s office. They lament about how tragic Chubs is, and then The Wolf is like, “By the way, one of my sales girls is missing. Her name is ~*Whimsy Girl*~ and she’s been out since yesterday and her mom is worried.”

DUN DUN DUN. The movie literally waited until the last line to be at all interesting and deliver all twists. At this point, we were drunk and outraged that there was a legitimately interesting movie hidden in all the boringness. We wanted to watch the movie from ChuckKid’s point of view where he watches Chubs fall into this obsession with what he thinks is an imaginary girl only to have that revelation at the end. We wanted something more Fight Club esque. Hell, we wanted ANYTHING instead of that. We would watch actualfax Barrowman porn than watch that again.

Me: “I thought the scotch would make it better!”

Me: “Quick! We need to be taking these names in the credits down! We have a lot of hate mail to write tonight.”

Roommate: “I feel like we should watch Shark Attack 3 to feel better about ourselves.”

This movie shook the very foundations of my faith in myself. Previous to this, my worst nightmare was being stuck next to Barrowman on a flight with no book/Kindle/iPod/computer, forced to talk to him. (Well, second worst nightmare. Worst nightmare is still Barrowman fuck-or-die.) Now, given the choice between watching this movie or talking to Barrowman on a flight, I’d have to think about it.

Me: Would there be alcohol?
Roommate: Yes, but he gets it too, and the more he drinks, the handsier he gets.

Even with that qualifier, I still don’t know which one I would pick.

My computer is smarter than me.

Computers are smarter than us, internet. They’re smarter than us, they know how our minds work, and we need to prepare for the revolution.

No, this isn’t a kneejerk reaction to the news that a robot taught itself to fire a bow and arrow. This is a belief that’s been percolating in the back of my mind since I was a child, one that I have finally admitted has come to fruition.

It was my mother who first introduced me to the concept of artificial intelligence. As a child, when an appliance would randomly start working after being declared “broken,” she would instruct us not to talk about our good fortune.

“They can hear us,” she’d whisper once we were out of earshot of the kitchen. “If we act like we don’t notice, maybe it will keep working.”

The same method was used when one appliance would break. Talking about the broken appliance would make the others jealous, my mother held.

“Then they’ll break too, for the attention,” she informed us. We nodded, eyes wide with the newfound knowledge that our fridge was possibly plotting against us.

So I’ve always known that electronics were out to get me. I’ve always been cautious. But it’s only been recently that I’ve realized how much smarter than me my electronic devices actually are. My computer, for instance, can run circles around me. It’s always suggesting helpful things when I am attempting to use a program or look for something and have completely tied myself in knots and ended up searching for the wrong thing entirely. I yell at it all the time, berating it for making mistakes, only to realize ten minutes later that I was the one in error the entire time.

And let’s not even get started on playing games. Shit, guys, every solitaire computer game ever created is miles smarter than I am. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed this. You decide to play one game and get thoroughly trounced. You glance at the clock. You have some more time to kill. One more game would be okay. Just to see if you can do any better. One more game turns into two and two more games turns into three and suddenly three hours have gone by and you’re obsessed with playing until you win, just once, because each time it’s a little easier. You think you’re getting better.

You’re not getting better. Your computer has just realized how stupid you are. Or, rather, it can’t believe how stupid you are. It starts out with an incredibly high opinion of you. Seeing you get creamed makes it feel bad. Maybe you’re not super brilliant. It cuts you some slack. Before long, even an infant could solve the puzzle you’re working on and the screen is doing all but lighting up and flashing the incredibly obvious move you could be making.

“RIGHT HERE,” it tries to yell. “JUST MOVE THIS PIECE AND YOU’LL WIN. NO, NOT THAT ONE. CHRIST ON A CRACKER, IS YOUR HEAD STUFFED WITH CABBAGE?”

No, computer, my head’s not stuffed with cabbage. A cabbage head would have noticed that move about twenty minutes ago. My head is just entirely vacant.

I wonder, sometimes, if my computer commiserates with Roommate’s computer, or with other computers it’s networking with. I imagine it sending information across the internet, as I IM my cousin in all caps about how much Sherlock Holmes and John Watson want to bone each other, weeping and sighing at my ignorance.

“She closed out of the blog update window without saving,” it cries. “THREE TIMES. IN ONE DAY.” The other computers offer vague platitudes. “She tried to type with potato starch all over her hands and almost glued my keyboard down!”

My only solace is that there are people out there who are way worse at computers than I am. Mainly, my parents. I mean, at least I’m pretty good at saving documents. And opening my e-mail. And not accidentally resetting the computer to factory settings.

And if there are people out there who are worse at computers than I am, maybe we’re not in danger of being taken over by computers. Not because we can beat them if they do rise up, but because there are people who are actually worse with computers than my parents are. For every computer that’s left alone long enough to figure out how to plot world domination, there’s one being wiped clean by someone who click “OK” to reformat their harddrive when they’re trying to open a picture of their grandkids. For every bow-and-arrow robot, there’s someone using their CD drive as a cup holder. Maybe, thanks to the lowest common technological denominator, we have a fighting chance against the computer revolution.

But don’t say that too loudly. We don’t want the computers to hear us.

Bad Movie Tuesday: Frozen

Okay, okay, I have been derelict in my blogging duties. However, I started temping and you know… other generic excuses. Anyway, I am BACK, and with another movie review that I’ve written so that you don’t have to. Watch it, I mean.

I have to post this one next, because in the explanation of this movie lies a million in-jokes in the next ones. Because my roommate and I think we’re hilarious.

***

This week’s selection is a bit of a story. It all started when I was reading a website in the theme of PostSecret. As I was scrolling down, in the middle of the page, I saw this image:

I was sure there must be tiny text or… something. Finally, I gave up and looked at the comments to see what the secret was in, what looked to me, like a normal movie poster. The comments seemed to indicate a glitch in the image hosting thingy. The first few comments clearly saw the secret, the people afterward saw porn and I saw this movie poster.

I was intrigued, though, because it sounded like my kind of thing, so Roommate and I simultaneously looked the movie up. Roommate read the summary out loud:

Three skiers are stranded on a chairlift and forced to make life-or-death choices that prove more perilous than staying put and freezing to death

We hypothesized what the movie could be about and realized, obviously, something more perilous than staying put or freezing to death would be having to watch fuck-or-die with Barrowman. Which led to us casting the movie with me and That Guy (an actor that we read about once and decided should be our best friend. But not best-friendly-enough to learn his name) and Barrowman, our arch-nemesis. Guys. Our pitch was brilliant.

In our version of the movie, I win all an expenses paid trip to a ski resort. Roommate can’t come and neither can anyone else we know, so I go and invite That Guy. That Guy is all pissy because he was my last choice but I’m mostly like, “Shut the fuck up, That Guy, we’re going skiing.” However, when we get there, the place is deserted except for–wait for it–BARROWMAN. So clearly I KNOW that something is up. And, well, the middle parts are hazy, but somehow the three of us get trapped on the ski lift and then That Guy and Barrowman are stuck in a Fuck-or-Die.

(Fuck-or-die, for those of you unfamiliar with both scifi and Harlequin romance novels, is a trope wherein two people, frequently two people who are fighting secret affection for each other, are forced to copulate. If they do not, they’ll be murdered for some convenient, vaguely plot-related reasons. Pretty self-explanatory.)

That Guy is like, “WHAT THE FUCK DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?” But his pain is nothing on mine, what with being stuck on a chairlift with That Guy and Barrowman fucking. Also, the snow under the chair lift is now fire. Or something.

Then, I don’t know, just when we think we’re going to die at Barrowman’s hand, a dinosaur runs to the chair lift and saves me and That Guy, as Barrowman falls into the fire.

I mean, seriously, guys. A few edits and this could have been blockbuster material. We would have been ROLLING in it. We were sure that if we could come up with such a great movie in about three minutes, the actual film had to be decent.

This being Bad Movie Tuesday, we were, of course, wrong.

To start with, we went in thinking this was going to be a completely different movie and THE MOVIE TRICKED US INTO BELIEVING THAT. We assumed there would be some kind of serial killer stalking them at the ski resort and the ominous close-up on a “missing” poster supported that thought. However, this is the plot of the movie:

These three douchebags (Barrowman, That Guy, and a girl who we agreed is too stupid to be me) go to a ski lodge, but instead of ponying up to buy tickets, they pay off the lift operator to let them up for free. At the end of the day, they want to go down the mountain one more time, but it’s closed, so they beg the lift operator and he lets them go up again. Then he leaves to pee or something and tells his replacement to wait until the last three people come down before closing the lift. The replacement sees three people–NOT our douchebag protagonists, who are still on the lift–come down and then closes everything down. Leaving the three of them trapped on the lift. And the ski resort won’t open again until next Friday.

Now, okay, I will buy that’s a scary premise. I don’t like heights. But… they weren’t that high up. And they were all so stupid. And these wolves came out of no where.

First the girl drops one of her mittens and spends the rest of the movie NOT putting her hand in her pocket to ward off frostbite. Then, after they realize no one is coming for them, Barrwoman decides to jump. But instead of tucking and rolling, he jumps feet first with his legs straight out and GUESS WHAT? He breaks both his legs. Then he gets eaten by convenient wolves.

That Guy finally decides to go hand-over-hand over the lift wire to climb down a pole to safety, only to immediately turn back for reasons that are never made clear. (We like to think that he saw some wolves in the lift chair behind them. You know, wearing skis and bibs and holding forks and knives and licking their chops.) The next morning he tries again and makes it down and then gets randomly eaten by wolves as well.

Eventually, for reasons that are, again, not made incredibly clear, the lift chair falls and the girl falls with it. Bleeding and frostbitten and rubbing her face off, she manages to crawl down the mountain to safety. The wolves leave her alone because they’re still feasting on That Guy’s body.

I mean, the movie was good for a laugh, but the stupidity was OVERWHELMING. That Guy was supposedly pre-med SCRATCH THAT, we made that up. But still, they never so much as sit next to each other to conserve warmth. They’re literally freezing to death and the girl is just waving her unmittened hand around. There were about six dozen methods of getting out of the chair and to safety that Roommate and I saw, yet the best they could come up with was “jump without tucking and rolling and then be eaten by wolves.”

So, fun for a laugh, if you’re Roommate and I and you’re drunk, but not generally worth your time otherwise.

The sequel where the random guy at the end is a serial killer? Now THAT is going to be our next blockbuster, mark my words.

Bad Movie Tuesday: Monster Ark

Roommate and I have this thing where sometimes we watch bad movies. And by sometimes, I think what I’m really going for is “frequently.” For the next however many weeks, I am going to gift you, my nonexistent wonderful blog readers, with summaries/reviews of some of these bastions of cinematic quality.

Our first Bad Movie Tuesday spotlights Monster Ark, a 2008 SciFi Channel Original Movie starring Tim DeKay of White Collar fame. There are SciFi Original Movies that are laughably bad and then there are SciFi Original Movies that are so bad that you have no idea what’s going on. This was the latter.

Okay, our first duty when watching this one was to find the Barrowman. Which, I suppose, needs some explanation. One of the first bad movies that Roommate and I watched together was Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, which stars Torchwood leading man and Doctor Who companion John Barrowman. John Barrowman is mine and Roommate’s arch-nemesis. Making fun of him is our main pastime. And in honor of that, we pick a Barrowman in each bad movie we watch, usually the role that Barrowman would have played if he managed to be cast int he movie.

It was harder than usual to pick a Barrowman in Monster Ark because neither of us wanted to admit that Tim DeKay was probably the Barrowman. First we tried to make the scantily clad girl the Barrowman (she later became GwenTosh, an amalgamation of the two female characters on Barrowman’s show Torchwood) and then Chubs (who was, sticking with the Torchwood theme, clearly the Ianto of the movie), but eventually we had to agree that Tim DeKay was probably the Barrowman.

I can’t even explain the plot of this movie. DeKay is a famous archeologist and Chubs and GwenTosh are his grad students. They’re at a dig where they find a lost Dead Sea Scroll and bring it back to Generic American University where DeKay’s ex-wife, who divorced him before she thought he was unfaithful (ahaha, see what I did there, anyone else who watched this movie?), is apparently an expert in reading cuneiform. The scroll says something about there being a second one of Noah’s arks, made for monsters, buried in Iraq, so DeKay, Frmr Mrs. DeKay, Chubs, and GwenTosh get in the minivan (?) and drive to Iraq (?).

“This totally is Torchwood. Torchwood in a minivan, going to Iraq.”

They get to Iraq and Stereotypical Black US Army General (SBUSAG for short) yells at them a lot and tells them what they can and can’t do. Can: Open up the ark, poke the creature in the face, and let a terrible evil loose in the desert. Can’t: drive to safety?

Around this point, Suit!Barrowman and Jesus get introduced. You don’t actually know who they are or what they’re doing, but suddenly they exist and have a subplot shrouded in mystery.

There are lots of scenes of the monster running through the desert and killing things, until DeKay and Frmr Mrs. DeKay realize that they need to dig up Noah’s tomb in order to stop the monster. Noah’s tomb, by the way, is just kind of chilling in the middle of the desert. Undisturbed. Unlooted. And mostly above ground. I guess the archeologists were just too busy with other things to bother excavating it.

While they’re at Noah’s tomb the following things happen:
1. Tim DeKay, who had previous not believed in God, is saved from death by God and totes believes again.
2. Jesus shows up with a bunch of black-ops type dudes.
3. Chubs refuses to desecrate Noah’s tomb (you know, after he already unleashed a demon on the world, destroyed several archeological sites, and got a bunch of people killed. But pushing over a statue in Noah’s tomb? THAT’S TAKING IT TOO FAR.) and then gets stabbed by the demon.

Jesus reveals that he’s part of a secret order that’s been created to protect the Monster Ark, an order that hasn’t been mentioned or even hinted at until this moment. Also, we find out that Frmr Mrs. DeKay is also a part of that order, only she didn’t know it because her parents died before they could tell her. However, she has a special necklace that, again, we haven’t seen or even heard of until this moment. So she’s totes legit. Or something.

Anyway, they come up with a really stupid plan to stab the demon with a giant gold q-tip that they graverob from Noah. DeKay will only go through with the plan if they air-lift Chubs to a hospital to deal with his stab wound. He sends GwenTosh with him, because she obvs has a magical healing vagina.

“I’m really concerned about Chubs.”
“Well, they can’t show him on screen with Tosh dry-humping his leg.”

They save the world through the power of the magical gold q-tip, some C4, and God, who sends lightning down from Heaven to help DeKay. Then Jesus and Suit!Barrowman officially give DeKay a Secret Order of the Monster Ark necklace and, in one of many scenes stolen frame by frame from Indiana Jones, they put the Monster Ark in a crate and stick it in a secret warehouse filled with many other mysterious crates.

Guys, there are movies that are bad, and there are movies that are Monster Ark. Friends don’t let friends see movies that are Monster Ark. Even if Tim DeKay is playing Barrowman playing Sam Neill in Jurassic Park in them.

Reasons I Live With Roommate

I have this thing with names.

And also faces.

Pretty much, I am crap at remembering who actors are, what roles they’ve played, and what the names of characters are in any show I watch casually. Once I get crazy about a show, I end up memorizing every bit of trivia by accident due to ~*heightened attention*~, but generally, I am ass at remembering minor characters and things like that.

Roommate like… frigging knows how my mind works. I can’t explain it. She knows my memory is shit and she almost always manages to summarize a character/plot in a way that I immediately make the connection in my head.

For example:

Friend 1: Let’s talk about how January Jones is going to be Emma Frost.
Me: Who’s January Jones?
Friend 2: Betty on Mad Men.
Me: …..
Roommate: Okay, you know that part in Love Actually when that guy goes to America to pick up chicks?
Me: Yeah?
Roommate: She’s the second girl he meets at the bar.
Me: Oh yeah! With the jukebox! I know who you’re talking about!

THIS IS MY LIFE, GUYS. I make up names for all the characters in shows I only casually watch. In fact, with a few exceptions, even the shows I am hella into now started off with a cast full of monikers. I still don’t know the proper names of the characters on Heroes. Seriously, ask me about a show and I can tell you what I called all the characters before I learned their names. Sometimes it’s hilarious. Sometimes it’s obvious. But whatever my brain chooses, it’s easier for me to remember than their actual names. And whatever my brain chooses, Roommate can translate it perfectly each time.

Back on the blogging horse. Or something.

I swear, internet, I have a million totally legitimate excuses for falling off the blogging horse, you know, pretty much immediately. Not long after my last post–the day I was working on a new post, in fact–I landed myself in the hospital under ~*mysterious circumstances*~. I had some stomach thing and I spent over six hours in the ER during which they were entirely unable to help me because I have bad veins. Literally, I spent six hours writhing in pain because they couldn’t find a vein to start an IV line. At the end of it, they kind of shrugged and told me I could go home or stay. I ran to the car faster than you’d think a completely dehydrated twenty-five year old girl with severe abdominal pain could run.

Then, of course, there was the recuperating and the working and the packing and the visiting people and the reading books. And the wasting time on the internet. And the going to concerts.

Look, these are all completely, 100% legitimate reasons for not having time to blog, okay? The internet isn’t going to read itself.

That’s all to say, about a million things have changed since I last updated. Approximately. For one, the move that I’ve been stressing about is… well, over. Hurrah? I am here, in Boston (Somerville, actually) with Roommate-to-Be (now Actualfax Roommate). I no longer work at The Bookstore, although, um, I haven’t actually found a new source of employment yet (if you have any leads on that, let me know). The convention I was preparing for is now over. Hell, the con crud that I picked up at that convention has already worked its way out of my system. Three of the four new books I’ve been pining for have been purchased and read.

Essentially, I am blogging from the future. At least, compared to where I was the last time I blogged.

I am totally ready to get back in the blogging habit, however! I have post ideas lined up and everything! (And ample free time, given that unemployment thing.) I have movie reviews and book reviews and hilarious stories about life in my new apartment that will only be funny to Actualfax-Roommate and myself. I have recipes and shit. I am going to be ~*hardcore*~ about this blogging stuff from now on!

Erm, starting tomorrow. For the moment, I have to go read the internet. As I said before, it’s not going to read itself.

Why I need my cellphone surgically grafted to my hand

I am kind of a freak in that I like to be scared.

Or, well, I’m actually kind of a freak for a lot of reasons. I am terrified of bugs, but don’t mind bees and only read kids’ books and don’t like onions. But, honestly, I love being scared and apparently that is odd to most of my friends. I adore horror movies and horror novels, even the shitty ones, but especially the awesome ones. I find horror, as a genre, fascinating and could talk about it for hours. (Roommate-to-Be had to put up with my rant about how Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is one of the most groundbreaking horror films of all time when we were at Target last week. It’s a wonder she still wants to live with me.)

I like walking out of the theatre with an abject fear of the dark and I don’t mind telling people that. I always roll my eyes at the teenagers who proclaim that they weren’t scared at all and the movie was stupid. I know it’s just a defense mechanism, but I still don’t understand it. The point of horror movies is to be scared! Why deny that?

I don’t deny it to anyone. A few months ago, I watched [REC]2 with my friend Jenn4. (I have four friends named Jen[n]. They are going to be numbered in the order in which I met them, despite the fact that their names are all spelled differently, purely to make your lives easier, readers. Even though the four of them probably make up four of the only readers of this blog. Deal with it.) A few days later, Cousin stayed over for the weekend and we watched it again.

“We’re going to sleep with the lights on tonight,” I informed her. “Just so you know.”

“That’s totally fine,” she said.

(Cousin also understands that the point of horror is to be scared.)

The point is, I like being scared. I actively seek out reasons to be scared. I’m not exactly sure how I stumbled across Marble Hornets earlier this week, but once I figured out what it was, I threw myself into watching it precisely because I love to be scared.

I just, you know, didn’t exactly realize the consequences at the time.

For those too squeamish to so much as google “Marble Hornets,” it’s one of those internet real-time storytelling horror stories. It revolves around a series of videos uploaded by “J,” cut together from footage he rescued from a college friend. They were working on a student film together when his friend started acting strangely and then killed the project. J stopped him from burning the tapes and then went through them, trying to discover the source of his friend’s anxiety. As J uploads more videos, his behavior becomes erratic, just like his friend’s, and he seems to be stalked by the same supernatural entity that was after his friend, before abruptly disappearing from the internet after posting one last creepy video.

I eat this shit up, guys. Remember that creepy house blog back in like, 2005? Dionea House? (Thanks, Jenn4!) I’ve read that five or six times. It still creeps me out. And I love it. Once I managed to piece together what Marble Hornets was, I had to sit and watch all the videos and read all the comments and totally freak myself out over the mysterious Slender Man.

None of this would have been a problem, normally, except for three things:

1) I discovered and then gorged on these Slender Man videos between the hours of 9pm and 12 am.

2) I had left my cellphone (aka my alarm clock) in my car.

3) I had to work the next day.

Around midnight, after finishing the last of the videos, I began to prepare for bed. I was jumping at every sound, which was completely expected, and looking over my shoulder constantly. Great. Fine. I was just going up to bed, where I would curl up with my steampunk supernatural scifi novel for a few minutes and then go to sleep and wake up for–

And that was when I remembered where my cellphone/alarm clock was.

I spent a few seconds agonizing over my dilemma. I didn’t have to work until the afternoon and I had been waking up naturally after about eight hours of sleep for the past few weeks, but I didn’t want to chance it. My options were a) using my old alarm clock or b) going out to my car at midnight in the dark to get my phone, where I would promptly be murdered by the Slender Man.

“Kaitlyn,” I said to myself. “You are twenty-five years old. Besides, the Slender Man doesn’t outright murder people, he stalks them and drives them crazy first.”

I have a lot planned for the next couple of months and I was pretty much against confronting a supernatural psychopath outside my house where I knew he was waiting. Which left only one option.

The reason I did not initially relax and jump on the fact that I had a secret back up alarm clock is that this alarm clock and I have a history. A history of me being late.

The past two times I have used this alarm clock, the alarm has mysteriously not gone off. I don’t know why. It always works when I test it. It used to work consistently. I used this damn thing every day for the entire summer I worked at camp and every day for the first semester of the school year that followed, but for whatever reason, it is now plotting against me. I’ve changed its batteries. I always triple check to make sure that I have the alarm set and the time correct, including am/pm. The volume is up as high as it can go and it is within hearing distance, but not within reach.

Still, when the time comes, the damn thing refuses to wake me up on time. The first time it did this was okay–I was just meeting a friend for lunch and simply called him and told him I was running about twenty minutes late. The second time I didn’t wake up on my own and only realized it didn’t go off when the store manager called me to tell me I was supposed to be at work an hour prior.

Not fun times, but what choice did I have? I did not want to be serial killed.

I tested the alarm twice. I switched out the old batteries for fresh. I made sure the time was set right and the alarm was set right. Then, exhausted, I read a few pages of my book and fell asleep.

That was when the dreams started.

You would think they would be dreams about the Slender Man stalking me, driving me crazy, and murdering me. You would be wrong. No, I, being the neurotic lunatic that I am, had a series of stress dreams about being late for work. A whole frigging series. I had six dreams over the course of the nine hours I was “sleeping” and each ended with me waking up in a panic to check the time on my shitty alarm clock to make sure I wasn’t late for my shitty bookstore job.

Each dream went like this: I would wake up. I would have a terrible feeling I was late. I would look at my alarm clock. It would be 1:30. I would panic so badly I woke up for real.

And each time I woke up for real, I had to check the fucking clock. It was pitch black and STILL I had to check the clock. JUST TO BE SURE.

Like I said, I am kind of a freak.

The last one happened around 9:30 am, at which point I decided, fuck it, it wasn’t worth another half hour of sleep, I should just get up.

I spent the entire day exhausted and weary despite the nine hours I spent in bed. And every time someone asked why I was tired, I had to explain.

“I was up watching scary videos on YouTube.”

“Oh, you had nightmares.”

“Yes, but not about scary things, about being late for work.”

“Wait, what?”

“It’s a long story. Have you ever heard of the Slender Man?”

“Um…”

“Have you ever been afraid of being serial killed in your driveway at midnight?”

“Um…”

“Anyway, so I couldn’t get my cellphone.”

“I think I see a customer. Over there.”

It did not do much for my Bookstore Cred. Of course, having voluntarily and eagerly accepted the worst job at the Bookstore and then held it for two years, I didn’t have much Bookstore Cred to begin with.

The lesson here, children, is this: don’t watch scary YouTube videos when you have a faulty alarm clock and a tendency for stress dreams. Save that shit for when you don’t have to work the next day.

And remember–it’s totally acceptable to sleep with the lights on.

(Even though lights probably won’t actually stop the Slender Man from sneaking into your room and serial killing you. Sweet dreams!)

I’ll never doubt you again, kids’ lit

At the beginning of the year, when all of my friends were pledging to read fifty books by December 31st, I made myself a different promise. As you may have gathered from, you know, my outright stating of the fact, I work in a bookstore. More specifically, I work in the children’s department of a bookstore. Not counting picture books, early readers, or anything under about a hundred a fifty pages, I probably read upwards of two hundred books a year and skim-read even more than that. I’m constantly surrounded by children’s and young adult books. I love them. I devour them. I want to write them and I like to seem knowledgeable to my customers, so I have a good excuse for always having my nose buried in one, but I’ve recently passed the point where I can no longer ignore the fact that I don’t even know what adults books are about any more.

When my friends were resolving to read fifty books–any fifty books–I quietly promised myself that I would read one adult book for every five middle grade or young adult books that I read.

I was proud of myself. I was confident. I would totally be able to achieve that goal. Totally.

That is, until I realized that I read roughly five books a week and if I was going to be true to my promise, I was going to have to actually finish a whole adult novel before I could go on to the piles of new MG and YA books that were coming in every week. It was like torture. I would lovingly caress the cover of the new Dan Gutman book and then tear myself away to read about grown-ups having existential crises that totally didn’t involve genies or wacky middle school misunderstandings or teenagers coming of age via humorously illustrated journals.

Predictably, the whole thing lasted about a week.

I blamed it on being busy–in the spring, I was planning a party, deciding to move to Boston, going through some major changes at work, and spending a lot of time watching Criminal Minds with my mom. It was more important that I keep up to day on the MG and YA new releases. It was a work thing. Life would calm down, I decided, and then I’d go back to reading grown-up books, like I promised I would. Fortuitously, this was around the time that Roommate-to-Be discovered one of the wonders of genre television–licensed tie-in novels. After the aforementioned party I had been planning, she asked to borrow some of the novels I own based on the British sci-fi show Torchwood, a spin-off of my beloved Doctor Who. I think she made it through approximately one half of one of them before announcing that she needed to start a book club to talk about how shitty these books are. About eight of our friends (myself included) jumped right on that.

How bad are these books? It’s hard to explain if you’re unfamiliar with the Doctor Who franchise, but I’ll do my best. Imagine, if you will, that Doctor Who is a priceless painting. An original Monet or, probably more appropriately, a Van Gogh. Now, if Doctor Who is an original Van Gogh, Torchwood would be a picture postcard of that Van Gogh that’s been roughed up by the US Postal Service, bought in the museum gift shop by your douche-y hipster cousin who’s trying to seem cultured, but really just comes off as tacky and ridiculous. The shitty Torchwood tie-in novels are what happens when you give that beat-up, tacky, postcard to your six-year-old nephew and ask him to replicate the picture in his public school art class where they only have primary colored paints and use q-tips for paintbrushes.

(This is not an entirely fair description. There are a couple of these books that are actually pretty funny and one or two that present situations and characterizations that are more appealing and believable than the original Torchwood show. Of course, remember that the show itself is that gaudy postcard covered with jam-y fingerprints and reeking of shitty hipster beer.)

I figured, “Hey, reading these shitty novels will a) get me back on track to reading adult books, b) ensure that I read at least one per month for the rest of the year, and c) ease me into real literature with baby steps.”

Oh god. Oh god, internet. Oh god.

I’m forcing my way through the second one now, but if anything, reading these has upped my MG and YA intake tremendously. After reading twenty pages of a shitty TW novel, I need an antidote and that antidote is frequently the collected works of David Levithan or Gail Carson Levine.

But the other important thing these books have done is remind me that it’s totally acceptable to read a steady diet of MG and YA. Who says that a novel can’t be “real literature” just because it’s written for children? Isn’t Tom Sawyer real literature? What about Anne of Green Gables or The Wind in the Willows? I defend these books day in and day out to people who think YA novels aren’t “real novels” and that MG novels are only appealing to people under the age of 12. It boils my blood to listen to adult customers at my store pick up The Book Thief and then immediately say, “Oh, this can’t be the book Shelly was talking about reading–it’s for teenagers.” But, for some reason, I had trouble getting it through my own head that it was okay to stick to titles intended for the under-eighteen set. I mean, they’re got the right mix of humor and intensity, hope and angst, suspense and closure. The coming-of-age themes are things that I can relate to, now, as I’m getting ready to truly leave my parents for good. The writing is accessible and never tries to be something its not.

And if all that weren’t enough? I have never read a MG or YA book wherein a creepy asshole doctor uses alien technology to look at a lady’s nipples.

Please, internet, don’t take that as a challenge.

The perils of free food

There’s a reason my last post had the subject line it did. That reason is “I am a broke idiot.”

At least, that feels like the reason.

To get to the vomit bit, I need to start with the cheesecake. Last week, I worked Friday morning, moved my cousin into her new condo on Saturday, and then worked Sunday afternoon. When I came into the break room on Sunday afternoon, there was a sign on the table.

“Cheesecake and chocolate cake in fridge! Help yourself! :)”

Internet, I love free food. I love free food for two reasons, but both of those reasons are readily apparent in the description “free food.” I am trying to save money. I love eating. Especially cake. A sign advertising free cake is pretty much a no-brainer.

I spent the first half of my shift disproportionately excited for my break. I’m usually pretty excited for my breaks because it means I don’t have to deal with customers and also that I can sit down. Today I was extra excited. There was cake and it was waiting for me.

I ordered a sandwich from The Bookstore’s cafe and blithely told the barista that I did not need a cookie, just a sandwich today. I did not mention the sign in the break room. Perhaps if I had, the situation could have been avoided. Instead, I took my sandwich back to the break room, where I ate it while surfing the internet and thinking about how awesome the cake was going to be. When I finished my sandwich, I opened the fridge with the sort of excitement that is best saved for Christmas morning, or at least a USA Network season finale. I was even more excited when I saw the cheesecake was in a box from one of my favorite local bakery, the one my family has been using for years.

The excitement waned when I saw the contents of the box. The cheesecake was covered with some sort of fruit goop. Ew. I am totally in favor of mixing fruit and desserts, unlike my mother, but this was something yellowish that could have been pineapple or lemon or apricot and I did not want it on my cheesecake. The cake also looked a little crumbly and dry. I didn’t let myself get discouraged, though. I had only been out of the store for a day–the cake couldn’t be that old. I was sure it could be fine.

Still, the perfect slice I imagined when thinking about FREE CAKE morphed into a much smaller sliver. Apparently, my sense of self-preservation kicked in without me even realizing it. Good on you, self-preservation. By the time I scraped the weird fruit bits off of it, the slice was even tinier, but I was feeling even less sure about eating it. Free cake, though, so I dug in.

I didn’t even finish my micro-sliver.

Feeling vaguely unwell, I went out onto the book floor to train a new girl how to close in my department. It was a useless exercise for reasons that are not relevant to this tragic vomit story, but I was still annoyed when I straightened up mid-sentence and said, “Excuse me, I need to go to the restroom.”

I tried to walk professionally, but I’m pretty sure I sprinted.

My stomach was doing backflips and making it’s owwieness well-known. I was trying to placate it using logic, because even though logic has yet to work on any of my body parts (mind included) or any of the inanimate objects I frequently find myself addressing, I’m nothing if not persistent.

“It was just a little piece of cake, stomach,” I insisted. “We can handle this.”

We could, actually. After I spent two minutes dry heaving.

Irritated, still vaguely green, but feeling better, I went back out onto the floor. I instructed my new minion. I answered some questions. And then the queasiness returned. Before I could make a run for it, a customer cornered me and asked for some specific titles. I should have just made an excuse and fled, but, no, I had to help her. But it went beyond that–not only did I help her, but I found myself purposely lengthening our interaction. I gave her more suggestions. I explained the different levels of beginning chapter books. I offered her my personal recommendations. The entire time, I was sure I was going to vomit right in front of the Beginning Readers spinner.

Why didn’t I just leave? Because I am a lunatic.

“Because I am a lunatic” is the answer I give to a lot of questions I get asked or ask myself. Because I am. I stood there thinking, “God, I’m going to be sick. I want to rip out my stomach, these cramps hurt so much. I want to curl up and die. But this woman is so nice. And I need to help her. I need to be a good employee. I’m dying, but my need to be a good employee is winning over my need to puke my guts out. What is wrong with me? Why won’t anyone in Boston hire me? I am choosing helping the company over my personal safety! Why am I doing that? Why can’t I put that on my resume? Oh god, she wants another book. Why did I eat that cheesecake?”

I felt, at that point, that I had been adequately helpful enough to slip away. Well, also, the customer thanked me and moved on, thus signaling my job was complete.

I know I sprinted to the bathroom this time and made it just in time to puke my guts out. I actually spent less time puking that I had previously spent dry-heaving and when I was done, remarkably, I felt better.

And continued my shift.

Because, as previously established, I go right past “company loyalty” and into some form of corporate Stockholm Syndrome.

I did make a stop in the break room to throw that cheesecake out, though. I didn’t want anyone else to repeat my mistake.

(Mostly because, if they did, they would probably actually go home and I would be left to cover their shift by myself. See above, re: company loyalty.)

I really need a job in Boston, internet. If only so I can quit The Bookstore and eliminate the lure of free food for the time being.

It could be worse, this post could be about vomit.

The main problem that I have with keeping a blog is that I’m inundated with ideas for blogging at all the wrong times. I spend my day as a retail drone, mindlessly putting books on shelves and picking up people’s discarded coffee cups. It leaves me plenty of time to think about things I should blog about. Sometimes I even start to write posts in my head when I’m too scatterbrained to focus on the fictional writing that takes up most of my energy and daydreaming time. (Haha, yeah right. We all know that sitting around, doing nothing on the internet is what takes up most of my energy.)

The problem is, when I have time to sit in front of my computer and actually put words down, I’m suddenly exhausted. It’s my lunch break! I don’t want to be writing words! I want to eat lunch! Or, more likely, IM my future roommate about how much I hate my job. I don’t want to be thinking because that involves thoughts and being entertaining and decidedly less whining and looking at funny pictures on the internet.

So I walk around with all these ~*ideas*~ for blog posts in my head. I make little lists about what I’m going to write about and when I’m going to write it and which posts I need to write to the lay the groundwork for future posts, because apparently I need to arc my life out the same way I arc my stories out.

Clearly, none of these things get written.

The list of book reviews, recipes, “witty” observational humor, updates, cautionary tales, and general whining that I’ve intended to share with the internet is so long it’s daunting, but I don’t have the energy or incentive to do anything about it most days. I have another site where I keep track of the mundane (“Today I went to work and it was horrible, anyway, HOW AWESOME WAS DOCTOR WHO?”) and everything else falls to the wayside. I always intend to pick up serious blogging. “Oh yes, I’ll get right on that, as soon as things calm down!”

Internet, right now I live at home and work a shitty retail job and have no girlfriend and no social obligations to speak of. This is pretty much as calm as it gets. I don’t know why I think that now that I’m moving and job hunting and writing really long fiction I will suddenly have all the time in the world to try and be funny (or at least mildly entertaining) on the internet, but my brain cannot be persuaded otherwise. “THIS IS THE MOMENT!” it is telling me. “THEY NEED TO KNOW HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT ORGANIZING THE BOOKS YOU ARE PACKING!”

I feel pretty stressed, internet, is how I feel. And yet, here I am, taking time out of the book packing to write a blog post on the internet.

Maybe I am misinterpreting my brain. Maybe what it is really saying is, “THIS IS THE MOMENT! THE MOMENT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE PREPARING FOR YOUR FUTURE! QUICK, HIDE HOWEVER YOU CAN!”

Yep. That sounds much more like me.