Libby, our calico, occasionally seems to have some sort of psychotic episode or something. Those of you who have cats probably know what I’m talking about–the mad dash into the very middle of the room, the wild looks into every corner of the room as though the cat is trying to keep an eye on all of them at once, the multiple pounces on objects invisible to any non-feline, followed by another mad dash out of the room. Libby’s sometimes include amazing gravity-defying feats. This usually means that she jumps halfway (literally) up a doorframe and stays there for a full second or two before dropping. (This is probably more amazing if you know that she has no front claws to hang on with.)

This has led to Tim occasionally referring to Libby’s antics as “Matrixing” or “pulling a Matrix”, in homage to the amazing gravity-defying stunts in The Matrix. However, generally, Libby’s stunts don’t actually bear any resemblance to the ones in the movie.

Until last night.

In the bedroom, we have a box fan set up perpendicular to the wall at one point, right up against said wall. It was in this general area that Tim was playing with the cats last night. Libby got spooked and–I kid you not–raced up the wall on one side of the fan, over the fan itself, and back down on the other side. It was a perfect arc, and she was on the wall the entire time.

Cats never cease to amaze me…

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Over the past few months, in my spare time, I’ve been reading through the archives at Tomato Nation. Many of the essays have made me think, but for some reason this essay seemed like a good one to blog about. I think because I can actually articulate my thoughts on it, so I’d better do so before that ability wears off or something.

As I read through Sars’ “you should read, or at least be familiar with” list, I felt my heart begin to sink. Let’s take a look at some of it, shall we?

• The Bible. I’m OK here; I’m no religious scholar, but I think I have a pretty decent familiarity with the Bible. And when I run into something I don’t know, I know where to look for it, or at least who to ask.
• Homer. I know the general story of The Odyssey, but I’ve not actually read it all the way through. The Iliad I’ve been trying to read for some time and having real trouble keeping with it.
• The other Greeks. I group them all together because of the ones she lists, I did read Oedipus–in high school–and I’m familiar with Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Other than that, I recognize names, but can’t remember even reading them for certain.
• The medieval era. I know very little of “Beowulf”, even less about “Canterbury Tales”. Arthurian legend I’m pretty golden on, though; we’ll just say that I’m no longer obsessed with it. St. Augustine I’ve never touched.
• OK, Shakespeare I totally have covered. I don’t know every single play, I don’t even know most of them, but I do have at the very least a passing knowledge of most of the big ones, and I know several quite well.
• Other past masters. I’m in trouble with Milton, who I haven’t read since high school, and even then it was just an excerpt. I’ll defend myself by saying I do have some idea of the impact Paradise Lost had, though. John Donne and Ben Johnson and Marvell… I don’t know that I’ve actually read.
• Post-seventeenth century. I’m good with Dickens, Austen, and sort of Twain. However, my eyes haven’t seen Wordsworth, Shelley (either of them, in print), Keats, Eliot, Yeats, or Frost since high school. And the others in that paragraph? Not at all.
• That last paragraph of reading list. I have read… one Toni Morrison book, although I own two. Shirley Jackson’s name I recognize from “The Lottery”, which short story has been seared in my brain since seventh grade and is in no danger of leaving. The Diary of Anne Frank I’ve read several times. “The Tell-Tale Heart”, of course, and other Poe. And that’s it.

It’s a pretty sorry reckoning, really. (And I know it’s just one person’s opinion of what everyone “should” be familiar with, but I also didn’t really see anything that I thought was out-of-place.) Even if you narrow it to the genre I prefer to read for pleasure–science fiction/fantasy–my list of “classics read” is pretty sorry. Stranger in a Strange Land. Dune. Lord of the Rings. I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head; everything else is more recent and more “oh, that’s a good book” (when applicable) than “classic”.

In the end, why do I care? I don’t even know. I have a desire to be well-read and well-cultured, and I kind of feel exposed as a wannabe here. It doesn’t feel good. I suppose if you get right down to it, I care because I don’t like not feeling good. I like feeling smart, and realizing how not-well-read I am kind of makes me feel dumb.

So go read that stuff, right? I’ll probably try. Some of the older stuff I’m sure I can find on the Net, which makes it easier to read in my spare moments at work (of which there are a lot right now) or something like that. Unfortuantely, though, I know myself entirely too well. I know that I will get through one or two things and then get distracted by some other project, some other book, some other bright shiny thing that draws me away from what I’d intended to do. But at least I can try to make some progress.

I feel inspired to start a reading journal, too, but I really don’t know how well that will work out–I’ve tried it before, and it generally dies after a few weeks. Of course, that used to be the case with regular journals, too, and look at this blog! So I dunno, maybe it will work.

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Where’s ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ creator?

Answer, in short: Living his life in private with no apparant plans to do otherwise.

While this story attempts to be a sort of nostalgic and wistful “wish we knew what Bill Watterson is doing, ten years after the end of one of the bestest comic strips ever”, and mostly sort of succeeds, I was actually a bit put off by it. I mean… C’mon, guys. It’s one thing to wonder where he’s at now, but this line kind of pushed it over the top for me:

“Watterson’s parents respect — but have no explanation for — their son’s extremely private nature.”

…”Have no explanation for”? Excuse me? I’ve got an explanation for you–Bill Watterson has every bit as much of a right to live his life out of the public eye, especially now that he’s not doing anything to keep his name there. Just because he once drew a damned good comic strip does not give the rest of us any right whatsoever to track him like some sort of pet dog with a microchip in its ear. No further explanation is needed, thank you. What the hell is that all about?

Mr. Watterson, I highly doubt you’re reading this, but if you are–I just wanted to say, you seem to have done a remarkable job of keeping the media’s noses out of your business, and I’d like to congratulate you on that. I’d also like to thank you for your excellent work on Calvin and Hobbes, which helped inspire a generation of children and adults to use their imaginations, enjoy lazy summer days and snowy winter ones to the fullest extent possible, and listen when their stuffed animals speak. I hope that, wherever you are, you’re doing well and enjoying as much privacy as you desire.

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Apologies if this gets a little disorganized. This is attempt #3 to post this… Dashblog seems to really be having problems. This was supposed to go up yesterday, right after we got back from the booksstore, hence the probably two posts in one day.

Last night Tim and I stopped in at Barnes & Noble for a bit. We found, in the sci-fi/fantasy section, a surprising entry on the “new books” shelf: Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan. Book 11 of The Wheel of Time.

My first reaction was to be startled, because I hadn’t known it was coming out anytime soon yet. My second reaction was to wonder, for the first time since I’ve started reading the series, if I actually wanted to read this one. I love this series, I really do. The beginning of it, anyway. The first three books or so are excellent; the next five or so I’d rate “very good”… but after that it kind of went downhill. (New Spring, the prequel, is exempt from this statement since I haven’t read the full novel yet.) #10 in particular was very disappointing. It is not a good thing to come away from reading a 600-page-plus book with the thought that you could accurately summarize it in two sentences without leaving anything out. Very little of importance happend; very little of interest happened. So I’m thinking that unless I hear #11 is just really good, I’m probably going to skip it for now. The series is just getting too damned bloated… It’s too much trouble to read it again every time a new book comes out, even if that is only every couple of years. I think I’m going to let it rest until I see a volume with “the *insert adjective here* Conclusion of the Wheel of Time Saga” on the cover. Which doesn’t seem to describe #11. I’m hoping it will be #12. Sometimes, enough is enough.

But then, after that rant-inspiring discovery, I saw something else that made me smile. Apparently Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde books have been reissued! I know there will never be any more of them, but at least we’re getting pretty new trade paperback editions. Unfortunately, I already have copies of two of the three, and naturally those were the two the store had in stock. I love new editions and all, but I can’t justify buying those two since I already have copies of the old edition and money doesn’t grow on trees. If I see Jinx High around somewhere, though, that might be a different story. No pun intended.

We also cruised through the manga section. I think I should be proud of myself here; I didn’t buy any. I have discovered that manga (and possibly regular old graphic novels) can be just as addictive as “regular” fiction, but in a much worse way. See, the manga at least tends to be more expensive than your average paperback, and they go much more quickly. And yet, despite knowing you’re getting lured into paying more for less story than you normally would, you just can’t help it.

And then there was the 50th Anniversary Edition of Lord of the Rings, bound in beautiful slate-grey leather and all that jazz… *drool* Oh, for an extra hundred bucks or so.

And, and, and. So many books, so little time…

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The other thing that happened last night was that Tim and I went to see Tim Burton’s latest stop-motion work, Corpse Bride. It’s been out for a while now, and we’ve been meaning to see it for a while now, and this seemed like a good opportunity.

Before I get to the movie itself, there is one preview I must address. Because the “good” preview–you know, after they’ve done all the crappy little previews and run the Dolby Digital sound test and welcomed you to the movies and everything–was for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, set for release next month. And… drool. I’d seen previews before, but this one looks even better than those did. It’s now quite obvious that the focus will be on the Triwizard Tournament, with the Quiddich World Cup perhaps making a minor appearance near the beginning, but not much. It’s obvious that they gave the effects guys a pretty good budget–you must see the Beauxbatons carriage (and I hope I spelled that right) and the Durmstang ship making their respective entrances. I can’t wait to see this one.

Anyway. Back to the main feature. Premise: Victor Van Dort is to be handed off in an arranged marriage to Victoria Everglot. Her family is old money, but they’ve lost all of it; his family is noveau riche, but definitely “in the money”. Neither Victor nor Victoria is terribly excited about it–until they actually meet one another, at which point they fall in love. At the wedding rehearsal, however, Victor botches the vows for about three hours straight before accidentally setting his future mother-in-law on fire and rushing out in embarrasment. He wanders through the woods, practicing his vows, until he finally gets them right and slips the ring onto what he supposes is a stray twig. Except it’s not; it’s the skeletal finger of a would-be bride named Emily who died decades ago, meaning he’s now made his wedding vows to her instead of to Victoria. Hijinks ensue.

The plot is transparent, the puns are awful, there’s not really much I can think of to say about the movie in general… But even after those statements, which might lead one to think that the film was mediocre, I would say it was a very good movie. The animation is superb; all those painstaking hours of adjustments (28 of them just to make Emily blink, I heard) really pay off. The predictability comes across not as boring, but more as a familiar style–a fairy tale, if you will. You know how fairy tales go, and therefore you know how this story is going to go. It’s comfortable rather than dull. The music is excellent. There is an interesting use of color which suggests that the dead may be more alive than the living in this story. And the whole thing is laced through with Burton’s own brand of dark-edged whimsey.

So basically–it’s got Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, and Johnny Depp. No movie with those three together can really be bad, I think, and Corpse Bride doesn’t disappoint. But at the same time it leaves me with an odd “now what was it I liked about that movie again?” feeling. Like it was good, but I can’t quite pin down why.

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Today’s biggo-mondo-huge thank-you goes out to Eyebrows, for reminding me when I was bitching about my lips being all dry and chapped and painful that Carmex has camphor in it for a reason. And that reason is not simply to get unsuspecting consumers hooked on it. It’s to ease the pain while the balm does its thing. I picked up a pot at Kroger when I was there for some other things. After only one application, I already feel better. MUCH better. As much as I love Zum Kiss and Badger Balm, when it comes to circumstances like this, Carmex truly does rule. And so does Eyebrows, for reminding me of that.

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New Orleans heartened by beignets’ return

I don’t know why, but for some reason this really hit me as a sign that things are on their way back up in New Orleans. It’s stupid, I know; it’s not like this means everyone’s magically OK, or signifies that a certain portion of the city is habitable or whatever. It certainly doesn’t match the news that they were done pumping floodwater out. It’s just one of those heartwarming human-interest stories and I’m falling for it, I guess.

I think part of it, too, is that Café du Monde is one of the few places in New Orleans that I’ve actually been, myself, and have pretty clear memories of and know by name. So it’s like, “Hey, I know that place!” The only other place that qualifies is the Superdome and… well, my memories are not so fond and the news earlier on in this particular disaster was not so happy. (Yeah, I’ve been elsewhere in the city, including Bourbon Street and all that, but my memories are sort of fuzzy and generic there. And most of the places I remember better I don’t know the names of and couldn’t necessarily identify.)

So anyway. Let’s all have some virtual beignets and chicory-laced coffee to celebrate!

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I hate stereotypes. I dislike the assertation that just because someone has certain genitalia, or a certain skin color, or a certain socio-economic status, or a certain condition, they must do or feel or be certain other things. Because people are individuals, and no matter what rule you come up with, no matter how accurate it might be for 90% of the people it attempts to describe (though that’s not usually the case), there will always be someone who doesn’t fit. There will always be exceptions. I don’t find stereotypes useful in the least. But what I really hate? Is people who act like stereotypes, because they feed these perceptions, because they reinforce incorrect and often derogatory ideas about how X Group of people allegedly are.

Which is why, today and yesterday, I hate myself. Because it’s the week before my period and I’ve turned into a messy ball of emotional goo without a functional brain. Because reading about how someone’s cat got sick years ago (and is now better!) reduced me to a quivering puddle of tears. Because Tim even acting like he wanted to say a cross word to me made me get all weepy, e-mail him a sorrowful and yet horribly defensive apology, and then check my e-mail obsessively to see if he’d written back yet for the next hour. Because I can’t remember what I’m doing for two minutes at a time sometimes. Because I can’t remember to get things at the store that are on a list that I’m carrying with me. Because the slightest irritation makes me want to explode in fiery cataclysmic rage. Because when I got home last night all I wanted to do was collapse, despite not having done much other than what should have been a relatively easy half-hour exercise walk with Dad.

I am living the PMS stereotype. I hate that. I do not want to admit it. I want to find some other explanation for the way I’m acting and feeling. But I can’t. When it comes right down to it, I have no other explanation. And then I want to say, “Well, I don’t need an excuse to feel bad, sometimes I just do,” and shrug it off, but it’s a little too coincidental that this happens every four weeks, like clockwork. I start the third week of little orange pills, and my stability goes all to hell. I can’t get around it. I am a freaking stereotype.

Hate. Hate hate hate.

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Four years ago, the company then known as Squaresoft tried cashing in on their highly successful Final Fantasy video game series with a fully-CGI movie called Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It met with mixed reactions; some people liked it, but many fans said, “You call this a Final Fantasy movie? What the hell is Final Fantasy about this? Hell, what’s even ‘fantasy’ about it?”

Now, Square Enix has an answer for those fans: “You want a Final Fantasy movie? Try this, bitches!”

If any of you have been following this movie’s development, you may assume that the thoughts I am about to share are pure conjecture, based on previews and still images released in the lead-up to Advent Children‘s release. You would be quite right to assume this, since the US release isn’t for more than a month yet. But your assumption would be wrong. It turns out fresh, homemade bread will buy you a lot–including an illicit copy of Advent Children, with the main feature subtitled in English. Tim and I watched it this afternoon.

My initial reaction can be summed up in one word: “Drool”.

The problem many highly-anticipated movies have is that they can’t live up to the hype that’s built up around them. Advent Children does not suffer from this syndrome. It met and exceeded my expectations in virtually every way. It is exhilarating. It is poignant. It is packed with exquisite action sequences, and yet not dominated by them. It will make you laugh until you cry. It will make your heart stop beating, lest you miss a single crucial moment. It is an hour and a half of pure magic.

It is everything that Spirits Within could have been, but (as much as I like it) wasn’t.

I feel like I should say more about it, but my brain’s still sort of mushy from the experience, so… Drool.

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I don’t know what’s wrong with me these past few days… It seems like I’m always either way, way emotional, or just about dead. If I’m not bawling, I’m storming around in a rage, or I’m sitting at my desk staring off into space and trying not to fall asleep, or once in a great while I’m even just deliriously happy. There aren’t any inbetweens. There isn’t any “just existing”, or mildly happy, or slightly irritated. It’s all or nothing.

And I have this headache… It comes and goes without warning. I took some Tylenol for it, and I guess we’ll see if that helps or not. Yesterday at one point it got so bad that I had to stop listening to my iPod–and when I have to put away the music, it’s a bad headache. (But then yesterday I didn’t have anything with me to take, really.)

I’m also craving sugar all the time. Normally this means I’m dehydrated; there’s some weird logic where my body figures moisture is moisture and maybe if it can’t get me to drink water it can get me to drink Coke or something like that. But… I’ve actually been staying fairly well-hydrated recently, so that’s not it.

And yesterday I was so cold, all the time, indoors or out, even with a jacket on. So much so that I checked my temperature when I got home, because last time that happened I turned out to be running a fever of 102. But no fever this time.

I don’t even really know why I’m posting this. I guess I just feel like getting it out there somehow. Like maybe writing it down might make me feel better or something. I dunno. I guess we’ll see.

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