Monday, February 23, 2009

FUCK MY LIFE

My friend Kathryn (not to be confused with Catherine), showed me this awesome  website today. Fuck-my-life-dot-com is one you have to add to you weekly blog check. This page is hilarious, filled with wonderful fuck my life moments from all over the world. This one is definitely going on my favorite website list. Seriously, I'm in love. 

Saturday, February 7, 2009

...THAT DRIVES ME INSANE

Because I am in a super bad mood right now, I am going to give you all a blog about all the miniscule things that I avidly hate. Right now I have my period, I'm getting sick, I'm sore all over, I hit my head, I want alone time (which I never get here), and someone just got on my nerves. So in the spirit of all that ugly hate, a blog post about random things that I hate in no particular order.

GUM-CHEWERS
You might as well be rolling a giant piece of meat in your mouth, because thats the kind of effect it gives me. I rarely ever chew gum because I don't want to become that which I hate, and that is a loud-gum-popping-can't-chew-with-their-mouth-closed-annoying-person. I always get stuck to this person on the bus, or in class, or its the person I happen to be hanging out with at that particular moment. This is one of my pet peeves, and its worse when they're chewing it right in your ear. For me it brings this anger bubbling up into my body, I just can't take it. Which also might have something to do with the fact that I can't chew gum for longer then ten minutes before feeling like I want to throw up, so maybe I am secretly jealous. All I know is the other day in class I was stuck next to a girl who was a nasty combination between the gum-chewer and the whisperer (who will be coming up in this blog shortly). I almost decked this chick.

SNOW
You know you've become an adult when this symbol of childhood and innocence starts becoming something that you smite when you get the chance. But I'm not bitter (okay I AM), I use to love snow. That is until SNOWMAGGEDON 2008 right before I left for France and I didn't get to see my family or my friends at all. Now whenever it snows here in Grenoble, I find myself sneering at the snow gods, only remembering how horrible it was to be trapped in my Seattle Apartment for a week and a half. There are few moments in my life where I have been so stur-crazy that I had to leave where ever I was, and in those circumstances, it was usually pretty easy for me to leave. But around the time when my roommate had to pretty much tackle me to the ground because I wanted to get out of Seattle so badly and it was too dangerous to drive, I realized my love for snow was as icy as the winter itself (omg what an awesome metaphor).

ARIZONA
I'm sixteen, and my father wants to take us on a family vacation because we have never had one, and I soon learned why. Its because my mother is an airhead, my father is equally airhead-y and a control freak, and I cannot live for an extended period of time without a large body of water. This is Arizona, where there is nothing but desert, and desert, and rich people who for some strange reason like the desert. Now I'm sure a lot of awesome things have come from Arizona, I just can't think of any right now and I'm fairly sure nothing will come to me later. The only good thing was that I had a pool, filled with six year olds, but no big deal. 

SELF HELP BOOKS
Most likely written by some crazy religious fanatic or Dr. Phil, this is the perfect thing for someone who has absolutely no control over their lives. Now I'm sure there are some good self help books out there, but my personal hate spawned from a specific experience when - during a really hard time of my life - someone who was supposed to be my friend (but had effectively "ditched" me because she couldn't handle my hard time), met with me just to give me a self help book. I was insulted, I was furious, I was laughing. The situation ended with my mouth hanging open and my firm choice then and there to never read a self help book. I still have that book, although I have never opened it. 

THE WHISPER-ER
This is right up there with gum chewing for me. And for those of you stalkers, yes this is just what that girl in class next to me was doing in correlation with her awful gum chewing. Whenever I am in a room that is quiet, the last thing I want to hear is the buzzing of whispers in the back of the room. We get a lot of these in our language labs, that person who just can't seem to type out a sentence in French or read a French word without whispering it to themselves. Combine that with the gum chewer like I had in my last class and you have a world class horrifying-Kat moment. I had to put on my headphones and crank out my itunes to drown this chick out, but of course nothing could drown out that horrid combination of sounds.

STRONG PERFUME
Now I know that this one is because I have a really sensitive sense of smell. When I smell a woman wearing really strong perfume, my nose scrunches up and I get the sense that I am about to up-chuck. I also have a wonderful habit of sitting next to these folks, and maybe if I'm lucky they are gum chewing whisperers too. All I know is that I am always super afraid when I go to buy/put on perfume since I secretly fear that I'll - once again - become that which I hate.

CHALK
I don't really understand this one either. But I think it has something to do with the gritty feeling it has on your hands, especially when it gets under your nails. I don't really have too much to say about this one, since I don't really see chalk used anymore except for on sidewalks and old classrooms. But I've heard they now have glow-in-the-dark chalks and bubble chalk, but I don't know how the latter one works. 
 

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

TRUEBLOOD V. TWILIGHT: THE THROW DOWN OF THE CENTURY

Since Vampire's are getting more popular then ever, and I just because finished watching the entire TrueBlood series as well as started reading the books the series spawned from, I decided to give the people what they want: sexy vampires.

TWILIGHT:
A bad movie based on an even worse book. Brought to you by that abomination of a writer Stephanie Meyer, who pretty much became a slayer of the English language when she came out with her poorly crafted, grammatically incorrect novel. This woman dedicated her last book to Muse and sites Linkin Park as one of her main inspirations. Who is this woman and why did she write? Oh, to bring screaming hoards of emo fangirls with no fashion sense and braces to swoon over the possibility of meeting a real life Edward. Keep on dreamin' girls, he's just around the corner waiting for you.


TrueBlood:
A HBO series loosely based on the novels of Charlaine Harris about a bar girl who falls for a vampire. Harris also wrote a series of novels that have about the same merit as Meyer's, but are far less obnoxious in the sense that they were written for an older audience and thus have much less emo fan girls crushing on a Southern vampy named Bill. Because honestly the name Edward is a far better vampire name, and Bills supposed to be like thirty, and omg that is just like way totally to old. Like I said, less obnoxious Twilight-ers makes me like it more, although her book is at the same writing level as Meyers, so I can't play it up too much.

THE THROW DOWN

Literary Merit:
Twilight: A story about your normal teenage girl who moves into this nowhere town in Washington and ends up dating the most coveted guy in school who also happens to be a vampire. Shocker. Not much of a plot in the sense that there really isn't one other then "omg omg he's so hot", and it kind of blows that in the first book Meyer sort of threw in a problem with other vampires because she had half the book written and realized all that she had done was talk about how hot Edward was. Ergo, she threw in some bad guys. Did ya cover foreshadowing in school honey? 

Dead Until Dark: This one automatically wins in the vampire genre for having a plot. That being, scientists have figured out a way to make synthetic blood, meaning that vampires can stop living their secret lives and 'come out of the coffin' (har-har). Meaning that some of them are adapting to local society, and like Americans - people intolerably freak out. Thus spawning a long winded set of murders through the town somehow related to vampires, and our little set of heros has got to figure it out before someone is wrongly accused. Hey, she had a plot. I'm happy. Although I must admit I did have a bad habit of skipping ahead to the interesting stuff.

On the Screen:
Twilight: Horrible acting on parts of everyone in the movie. But for some reason I still think its better then the book. Maybe its because we get to see Alice break someone's neck at the end, or the fact that the director worked in some foreshadowing. But mainly I think its because the 300+ pages of "omg i love you omg this isn't going to work because I'm a vampire omg he's so hot" were cut out. Although I must admit I was partial to the baseball scene, just because it had Supermassive Black Hole by Muse in it, so good work on the soundtrack.



TrueBlood: First off, I must say that its indie-creative opening song scene really makes me love this show all by itself. After that, there is much more character development and foreshadowing in the show then in the books. Sam and Jason and Tara (who isn't even in the first book) are actually full existing characters rather then just flat ones and you can follow there own little stories rather then just staying in Sookie's head - which is nice because first person perspective often bores me. It also really conveys the prejudice that 'out of the coffin' vampires face, which is something the book doesn't cover at all really. I have a feeling the series is going to start heading away from the book, because at the season finale there was this new teen chick vampire, who wasn't in the book. Which is fine because I think Bill and Sookie break up in the book, and I don't like sorrow in my mindless time-fillers. Although the downside is that, just like with the books, I found myself skipping ahead to the interesting stuff often.




Leading Ladies:
Bella Swan: In the book, a lot of Bella's internal dialogue is obnoxious and could easily be cut out. I could go without the ten pages about how hot Edward is every chapter. In the movie, whoever plays her can't really act, and thats okay because no one else in the movie can either. She doesn't really do too well with exclamation or anything like that at all, although my favorite part was probably towards the end while they're in the hospital and he's talking about leaving her, and her only response is some incoherent babble of words. Priceless. I usually pull for my leading ladies when they're brunette, just because I harbor resentment to all those 50s and 60s movies where the "bad girl" is always a brunette and the sweet leading lady is a blond. Somehow though, this one doesn't make me like her any more. Although I did like the mittens she wore.

Sookie Stackhouse: I'm just going to start by saying that Sookie is probably the first female character in a while that hasn't just annoyed the shit out of me. That being said, she's kind of obnoxious in the book. The series however makes up for that one pretty well. Although she can get obnoxiously dramatic at times and kick poor vampy Bill out when he needs to get laid (and thats just plain mean), I like the fact that she can live her life away from him and doesn't use him like an oxygen take like poor Bella constantly does in both the book and the movie. Did I mention the actress that plays her is award-winning? Well she is, and she is a damn good one. When she laughs, I laugh. When she cries, I probably do to. See, simply amazing.

Vampy-boys:
Edward Cullen: Although being somewhat of a turn on in the book, he always did get rather obnoxious with the whole "I think it would be best if you left me because I am dangerous and etc.", but hell he was still entertaining. And good mental eye candy. The movie kind of ruined that. The dude who plays Edward (who most of you will remember as the dude-who-died-but-still-couldn't-act in Harry Potter 4) cannot act. Simple. Another down is that for some disgusting reason, production of Twilight thought it was okay to put so much makeup on him that his neck and his face had different colors entirely, and they didn't bother to do away with his five-o-clock-shadow. He's also the owner of some pretty great lines, such as the infamous "skin of a killer". You tell her Edward. You tell her what a big bad killer you are, that's a special boy.

Bill Compton: Automatic props for the bangin' last name. Okay, so the dude has a freaky taste in music, so I'm gonna take those last name props away. Anyways, in the book he is almost obnoxious. And then he gets a little sex-crazed which kinda ruins the whole Southern Gentleman thing (although there is a particularly interesting quote about how the thought women's under-things during the civil war was sexy, freak). But he improves dramatically in the show, not really ruining that gentlemanly thing so badly. He also looks like a vampire, in the sense that he's kinda dark and twisted and not just some teenager running around. And he doesn't have this whole "I don't wanna kill people" thing, he's very realistic - I like that about him. Plus, he's got a really nice ass. 

Ooh thats Steamy...:
Lets jump to the fourth book: Where Edward and Bella get married, have apparently a lot of hot steamy sex that is never talked about but only slightly referenced to, and then pop out some kind of freaky demon child with a stupid name. I know I can be hard on Twilight and I have a bias against it, but what the fuck? No. Absolutely not. You lose, Meyer. The only thing this did was become a giant reason to remember your birth control.

Every book, and every episode: If you like graphic sex, don't read the books. Harris describes the sex vaguely and its kind of random when it does happen. But if you do like watching something that is almost porn but not as perverted, feel free to watch TrueBlood. Every episode. Hell, if its not her brother getting some or Tara, all you have to do is wait six episodes for Sookie to finally loose her V-card to the big V himself (aw man, horrible joke). And if their first scene isn't steamy enough for you, the do it in a graveyard later which at least had "WTF?" points in my mind.

My final verdict: 
TrueBlood wins by a landslide. Its like Obama in the 2008 elections. 

NOTE: I probably should have titled this post "REASONS WHY TRUEBLOOD KICKS TWILIGHT'S ASS", but maybe next time. 

Sunday, February 1, 2009

GET YOUR MUSIC FIX AT SPINNER.COM

Now I know I do a lot of complaining and mockery of the crap that is online right now, but every now and then I find something beautiful. So I just had to share this awesomeness with someone. Spinner-dot-com is a website that I think is sponsored by AOL (down-points), but is pretty awesome in the sense that it uploads a free mp3 of the day, everyday. Its a great way to bulk up your music library and also get to know a couple of stars you (and probably no one else) has ever heard of. Hell, this is awesome.