So...I've been reading From Hell - the comic book. And, yes, I saw the movie first. I am guilty of that too...though I knew it was a comic book when I saw the movie. So there. And I have learned three things from reading the comics.

1. The Masons were/are much freakier than I thought (though I suppose I should have gotten that from The Cask of Amontillado if nothing else...)
   
2. While Ian Holm may be the book's Dr. Gull, Jonny Depp (pretty as he is) is not the book's Fred Abberline. He's apparently someone else entirely who has the exact same name and position
   
3. The Elephant Man is in the movie for a reason. Really.

But, yeah...the book is good. Alan Moore is very cool. I should go read Watchmen again...

Could someone please tell me what's up with fanfiction.net? Sometimes it loads and sometimes it doesn't and when it does I can't search or get to certain categories and I an annoyed. I did get to check my Dracula story that's now 59 chapters long and finally we're getting to characters from the original novel. Jonathan's been born, at very least. But at least the site is back...sort of. Hopefully it will be up permanently again soon. That would make me very happy.

Speaking of Dracula (Renfield: We were? Hush, Renfield.) I watched Shadow of the Vampire this afternoon. I really like that movie. But then, I love vampires and I love learning about old horror films so, really, this is the perfect film for me. However, I don't understand the fact that it's supposed to be funny. I keep reading reviews that say that it's "shockingly funny" or something like that. I don't get it. Certain parts of it are funny, I grant you - I'm particularly partial to "The script girl? I'll eat her later," part - but the whole is not very funny. It's tragic and disturbing and dark but it's not that funny. I do like the fact that Murnau ends up being more frightening at the end - to me, at least - than the vampire. "If it's not in the frame, it doesn't exist." Brrr...makes me want to find out more about Murnau's real life. And I love the scene where the vampire eats the bat and talks about how the lonliest part of Dracula is the part where Jonathan Harker catches him setting his table himself because he has no servants. And, put that way, it is very sad. (Of course, to me, the saddest part is when Renfield dies. But that's for entirely different reasons. For one, the novel goes completely downhill after his death...but that's a different rant. And no one really wants to hear it. My poor Renfield...mine because no one else wants him. Renfield: Hey! I resent that. Plenty of people want me. People that I haven't invented? Renfield: Well, no. There you go.) Another thing about Shadow of the Vampire...Wesley (from Princess Bride) sounds very strange with a German accent. His name in the film is "Fritzie." That is somehow very funny. But hurrah for movies in which everyone has a German accent! I do love German. I should learn more. Ich spreche nur Deutsches wenig.

It's very strange when the characters in your head turn out to look and act and be almost totally different than you imagined them. I woke up the other morning and discovered that Jerry the Ratman (he's a wererat - please don't ask for an explanation...) looks a bit like Alan Rickman in Harry Potter. But only a bit. It's the tallness and the paleness and the stringy black hair and the long pale fingers, mostly. And though he was invented to play with Renfield, he has apparently decided not to. I'm not sure what he's doing - I mean, he'll have to do something, eventually. But he won't give me details. I know he's aboveground (which is unusual for him), he's with a group of people all working for a common goal and he's got really long pointed fingernails. But that's all I know. Weird, yes? I wish he'd let me know what's going on. Oh, well. Guess I should probably stop confusing my readership (since most of them live in my house and will more than likely ask me about this). See ya later!

("Circumlocution," said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. "It's a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity." Mr. Vandemar nodded. "I wondered," he said.)

And now I am home from school. Actually, I've been home from school for a while now (about since I last updated) but the computer is in the kitchen and four other people (the other people who live in the house...namely, my family) also use it. And my little sister - she who is called Schikelinde - plays the Sims a lot. So I don't get to spend as much time on the computer as I would like. But that's ok. Someday, I will have a computer of my own again.

I did not get the job at the video store even though the lady there liked me and I got to talk about Re-Animator with her husband. I've seen weird Lovecraft movies! Why don't you want to hire me? Life is so hard. But I have an interview at Michaels and I've worked at a semi-craft store before, so maybe they will hire me and I can buy posterboard cheap with which to make Scooby-Doo Mythos cards. (Yea, Lovecraft card games...strange authors from new England taking over my life. Bwa haha!)

I went to a baseball game the other day. Now, generally, I don't like sports but anything is fun if you eat a lot of jelly beans while your doing it so I had a great time. We lost horribly - 2 to 13. Isn't that awful? We're going again on the 4th of July. I must buy more jelly beans.

I got American Gods on recorded book from the library. It makes my mother's ceiling buzz. She can hear it in her room and the ceiling vibrates. I think this is very funny. The book is 15 tapes long. That's a lot of ceiling buzzing. Ah, well.

There are no books on lockpicking at the Kitsap library. The Bellingham library, yes, but not the Kitsap library. The Bellingham library even has one that blatently says "If you want to break into other people's houses illegally" or something like that. Why can't I get books like that at home? Life away from college is so difficult. And there is no Squirrel Man. Tragedy, yes? 8)

("Circumlocution," said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. "It's a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity." Mr Vandemar nodded. "I wondered," he said.)

My roommate is gone! I never have to see her again!...except for the 'random-passing-in-a-crowd' that happens because the school is really not that big. But she's gone! And there was much rejoicing. (Yea...)

And my finals are almost over! Just the one more tomorrow and I'm done. It's the last one and econ, so of course it will take the most time and be the most difficult. But that's ok, because I think that I'm pretty much ready. And I can do more studying tonight. Hooray for finals week...one of the few times when I actually study. 8) But see, it's ok because there are really two types of people who don't study. There are intelligent slackers - who don't study because they don't really need to - and there are dumb slackers - who don't study because they just don't care. Fortunately, I belong to the former group. hehe. Yea, geeky slacker-ness.

The only real problem with having my roommate gone is that she took the phone with her. This means that, combined with the general lack of computer-ness, there is really no way to reach me when I'm not in the computer lab short of actually coming to my room. And none of my friends ever do that. 8) I live much too far away from them. Also, I cannot call the nice lady at Island Movies who wants to interview me and might want to give me a job. Perhaps the employment gods will reward me for taking some initiative and actually going home last weekend to apply instead of staying here and watching Squirrelman as a very large part of me wanted to. But actual employment will make the missing of Squirrelman quite worthwhile. (Besides, I was ambushed by my friends the moment I came back and forced to watch the one I missed in which Richie dies for the first time...so all is well. Except for the fact that Tessa is also dead - permanently in her case. And I liked her, too. Strong, intelligent female characters are so very hard to find...) Yea, possibly actually having a job for the whole summer. Money is good. All hail the employment gods! (There must be employment gods. There are gods for everything else. According to Neil Gaiman in American Gods the goddess of television occasionally resembles the main character from I Love Lucy. Frightening, yes? hehe)

My room no longer looks like my room, really. I have been cleaning and packing for hours. There was stuff on the dresser that had been there since September. But it's finally done. All I have left to do is take the bed apart, sweep and throw out the trash. Then, goodbye room 318, Mathes Hall! I shall ne'er look upon thee again! For, come September, it's Fairhaven stack 3 for me and a room to myself. I was bored yesterday (what with the lack of computer-ness and all) so I started making a list of all the movies that I want to see but that either I am slightly ashamed to watch in front of other or that no one else would want to see. (Bride of Re-animator anyone? How about Hell Comes to Frogtown?) But next year, in my room, I can watch them all alone. It is very exciting. And every weekend will be like the weekend where my roommate goes home. I'm so very thrilled about this that I almost want to skip straight to September. But I can't do that and I do want to spend time with my family and I might just have a job! So we'll just have to wait til September actually arrives. I'm looking forward to this summer.

("Circumlocution," said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. "It's a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity." Mr Vandemar nodded. "I wondered," he said.)

Yeah, I take too many of these things. But really...how could you resist this one? (And I've nothing really to say...)

which "monty python and the holy grail" character are you?

this quiz was made by colleen

yes...muchly with the nothing to say...






I am ominous

you have an ominosity quotient of six. you are really ominous. href="http://www.likeisaid.com/ominosityquiz.html"> find out your ominosity quotient.

Which Rocky character are you?
Woohoo!

I am the Mad Hatter! You tend to confuse people, especially yourself. It doesn't matter, though, because you enjoy life as it's thrown to you, whether you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing (which most of the time you're not sure of). You've a friendly nature, but sometimes you're pretty damn overwhelming, you freak.

So which letter of the alphabet matches YOUR personality, huh?

Go Faeries!!


Take the What Faery Are You? Quiz!

This quiz was made by lia

Cor blimey, I taste like Tea. I am a subtle flavour, quiet and polite, gentle, almost ambient. My presence in crowds will often go unnoticed. Best not to spill me on your clothes though, I can leave a nasty stain. What Flavour Are You?

BLUE You give your love and friendship unconditionaly. You enjoy long, thoughful conversations rich in philosophy and spirituality. You are very loyal and intuitive. Find out your color at Stvlive.com!

So...yeah. Found page full of quizzes. And I'm a little bit bored. And now I'm not thinking about Tolkein. (Dang it...brought it up and now I am...blargh...)

La la la...woke up this morning with Grima Wormtongue in my head...and now I can't get him to leave. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. It's just that I almost forgot to go to class because I was absorbed in Tolkein-ness. (I did get to class, don't worry...not that we actually did anything today...) But he's going to be played by Brad Dourif in the movie (which probably means nothing to you...it's ok) and he was nifty beforehand anyway and he's all slimy and weaselly and I like him. And feel sorry for him, because he has the most awful life. And I'm allowed to mess with his life as I am not allowed to mess with members of the Fellowship (or other major players) because he is not a major player and, besides, no one else wants him. So he can be mine, gosh darn it. Anyway, it's not like I'm doing anything AU with him. (Alternate Universe, for those of you who are fanfic deprived. That would mean that he wouldn't have to go all snivelly and crazy and die at the end. Or it could mean that LotR is set on Mars. But we try not to go there.) I'm just delving into motivations and history a bit. So that's all right.

Now that I've justified the fact that I am basically writing fanfic in my head about Grima Wormtongue (it won't be written down, I promise) to myself, let me tell you how freaky it is getting inside his head. Most of the time when I'm on the side of a villain, it's because the heroes are annoying anyway. But this time I really like the good guys. The Fellowship is cool and the Rohirrim truly rock. (If I lived in Middle Earth, I would be...Rohirrim!) And I love Theoden. I've always loved Theoden. Ever since the first time I read the Two Towers, he was my favorite King. (Yup, as a King he beat Aragorn...as a Ranger and Fellowship-member, no. Aragorn is cool.) But if you're looking out from inside Grima's head, Eomer's a jerk, Eowyn's an ice princess (well, she is anyway...moving on now) and Gandalf, well...we'd have to use very bad words to describe Gandalf. And I usually like these people. But it's very hard to today. It's a very freaky thing. Hopefully, it will go away by the time I see the next movie. 8)

I wouldn't want to live in a film noir movie. Who would? The people who do don't seem to like it much. But, oh, I like to watch them. I saw City of Angels last night - a musical film noir comedy. And it's great...which is good, because I needed a new musical. The songs are a lot of fun and the plot is nifty. And it's film noir. Men with trench coats and fedoras, guns and that bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer. And secret pains. Because we all know that the private eye always has a secret pain. He may look hardboiled on the outside, but there's always something different inside. There's the girl he lost, the client he couldn't save. There's the dead partner - "because when your partner dies, you're supposed to do something about it." They're battered knight errants spouting bitter patter with a cigarette dangling from their lips, with a gun instead of a lance. And, like a knight errant, they're so firmly on the side of the right. Maybe they've been kicked off the force, maybe they've got regrets and they're bitter and callused and tired, but they're still fighting. You've got to admire that. Especially since, in film noir, you know there's no happy Hollywood ending. Sam Spade may have loved Brigid, but she's taking the fall and all he's left with is a hunk of lead shaped like a bird. "The stuff that dreams are made of."

Whoa...waxing poetic about film noir. That can't be good. But, well, we knew it would happen. Joel Cairo may be pretty and he may be mine, but Sam Spade's got my heart. 8) Going to the theater does frightening things to me. And I want to go again, but I can't afford it. Blargh...oh, well. I'll go watch Squirrel Man with Rhiannon and try not to think about it. (Can't go to the library and get the Big Sleep...going home far too soon. Blargh...)


(Mr. Croup: I wonder if we should be offended that she saw us as the two thugs in the play last night.
Mr. Vandemar: They did look like us. Sort of.
Mr. Croup: We are a pervasive archetype. And I did almost get to blow up the hero.
Mr. Vandemar: We'll let her live.)