Tag: Reviews: Books

white trash party

if i had a buck for every time i started mucking around with the design of TLC, I’d be a rich woman today.
I also realized that I could probably name several weeks worth of chronicles with afghan Whigs song titles and not repeat myself once.
They (Whigs) broke up earlier this year — Dulli is apparently going to be working full time on The Twilight Singers — pffft. Now we will bow our heads in silence for 60 seconds in memoriam of the Whigs’ breakup.
*crickets chirping*
moving right along, it’s been a quiet Sunday (you know, no fighting or anything) — and paul and i watched a few crappy movies on teevee while i dicked around looking stuff to do. we adopted another pug, this one is called Lili, and is Wednesday’s sister. They are paternal twins but from far away look identical. I call them the girls, and paul keeps saying when i move out, lili is going with me.
so thus begins our story.
a few weeks back, upon seeing my shrink, she and i started talking about sex, when i started opening up more about how i was feeling sexually — which is nothing. she suggested that i see her in a few weeks instead of a month and start talking about these issues at hand so that grow past them and carry one. i agreed.
last week, i took a spin in my new car up to see her, and things started pouring out. things i knew that i hadn’t discussed with anyone, let alone paul, in a very long time. i sniffed few times, i used urn charm containing my fathers ashes as a touchstone as i talked. fear. abandonment. lack of commitment. these were some of the issues concerning my and things that needed to be addressed. paul and i had tentively brought the wedding up to 5/01 instead of 9/01 and my shrink (correctly) was detecting that the closer to the wedding we got, the more put i closed up inside. which is true, I’m not going to lie about that — it’s like there should be a club for my ex boyfriends (such as in the show drew carey when all of kate’s boyfriends held a support group for her at the warsaw) to comment on my past behavior and how i have hurt/affected them in the past.
but i digress.
and i digressed a lot when i spoke to my shrink that day as well. i found myself jumping from one issue to another and yet in my mind it all made sense. here i had thought i was getting along marvelously well but inside I’ve been screaming for something (anything?) to get out.
i know a lot of it has to do with how paul and i interact with each other. a friend of mine had notated that in our office, our computers were facing away from each other — which he said seemed odd. i had obsessed about that one for sometime and brought that up to paul, when paul mentioned that it had been my idea to place our computers away from each other as i had wanted my space. which, of course, i had neglected to mention when i had spoken to said friend.
if i could spell out paul’s and i’s relationship, it would be under a lot of misunderstanding (on my part), misinterpretation and sometimes lack of an overall picture. paul wants to move forward and i want to stay here (where here is, is sometimes hard to distinguish). i used to think, when things got bad, that it was because of the boyfriend, and not something within me that had to change. but with paul, it’s different, how different i don’t know, it just is. i know that sometimes things seem to be more perfect when I’m with him and when I’m away from him i miss him like crazy. but in everyday situations, it always seems to be when i get antsy and it takes extreme events to make me realize that i love him.
which is bullshit, i should be thankful I’m with him everyday and not stirring up trouble to see his reaction.
but in all honesty, the only fault that i found with him is that sometimes his own lack of confidence in himself in the regards of us. it’s like, why torture me with the whole argument of “when you leave…” scenarios when you are just creating another wide open door for me to step through?
we wage this war on ourselves sometimes, and I’ve started working on being more calm within myself and not jumping the point when it came down to who was right or wrong in silly stupid arguments. but you know, as they say, pimpin’ ain’t easy.
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lisa
ps: I’ve sent emails on starting a reading club on yahoo, and the response was pretty fucking overwhelming (honestly, I’m surprised that many people still WANT to read – considering the advent of the interweb and such). If you want to join us, you can find us on yahoo as the lisa chronicles book club. I’m on yahoo as modgirllisa, so shoot me an email, sign up, just have fun.
pps: what i had also forgot to mention, was a funny (to me) incident at the shrinks office. she had said to me “do you write?” when in speaking with in means about other methods of therapy, and i just gave her this level stare and she responded with something like “you don’t like to write?” and i said something like “it’s not that, i have been writing a journal on the internet since 1995 or so”. i think, in all my times with her, I’ve never spoken about things that made me happy, including writing. so with her permission, she’s on the TLC mailing list and with my permission, she can browse my archives. i love therapy 🙂

hannibal

if there are but two movies i have been eagerly awaiting the release of this year, it’s been harry potter (yes yes, I’m a huge fan of harry potter and got a lot of nifty cool stuff for Xmas that was harry potter based) and Hannibal.
Harry Potter i could easily explain because of my obsession with the books, but even though I saw “silence of the lambs” and i liked it (not loved it), i became obsessed with seeing the movie. maybe because i have a slight obsession with serial killers, or maybe it looked gruesome, i have no idea other than i had to see this goddamn movie.
since Friday night is logans night round these parts, there was talk about going to go see it after dinner last night, but because I’m old and cranky, paul and i decided to go see it after hitting the chiropractor Saturday morning.
now, i have NOT read the series of books by Thomas Harris yet (red dragon, silence of the lambs or Hannibal); which is unlike me since i generally read the books movies are based on. So in going into the movie, i went with eyes wide open and with a clear mind.
now gore or horror movies don’t freak me out — but suspense thrillers do. i was totally expecting something as involved as SOTL, but boy was I wrong.
the good points: the cinematography was beautiful. the shots of Florence and NoVa were beautiful and the scenery was breathtaking. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter was satirical with his tag lines of “Okay dokey”. But other than that, the movie was not that great.
It wasn’t awful either — so don’t take it the wrong way. The problem is that the movie seemed to be billed as suspenseful and horrifying when it really wasn’t. The ending, which everyone kept saying was horrific and gruesome, wasn’t and it was very obvious they were using CGI for the scenes. Julianne Moore, whom I love, was fine as Clarice Starling, but it was obvious she was nothing more than an accessory in the movie and yet was billed as staring. The movie in no way explores the relationship between Hannibal and Clarice, which it should have, but more focuses on Hannibal and his returning to the “scene” of his crimes.
Over all, on a rating scale, I’d give it a 3 out of 5 stars. I would recommend seeing it for the pure factor of Hopkins and his satirical speeches and the humor he plays out onto himself, but the gore/suspense and the thrill just wasn’t there.
I have heard the book is slightly different from the movie, and that they are planning on remaking “ManHunter” (based on the first book, Red Dragon) with Hopkins and several of the comments on the book itself have been summed up as “a manuscript produced in paperback form”.
When I finish reading the series (which I’ve ordered from Amazon), I’ll let you know what my final verdict is.
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lisa

harry potter strikes again

in the space of two weeks, i finished the first three harry potter books. but of course if you checked alt.stuff and clicked on reading list, you would see this already. so go check out and make fun of my damn tastes. but don’t make fun unless you plan on telling me what you THINK i should read.
and i don’t give a fuck what anyone says, those harry potter books are damn scary! i had nightmares the other night after reading a particular scary scene. the problem i had/have with the books is that i can’t see how they are written for “kids 9-12”. i mean, they aren’t certainly adult books, but i dunno. paul was reading over my shoulder one night and he was like “this is for kids right?” and i grunted “mhm” and he couldn’t see how kids wouldn’t be freaked out by it. fuck, i’m 28 and some of the things Rowling wrote scared ME and i used to be the horror queen.
i do love the books but damn they are addictive. i stayed up till 2am to finish book 3 last night and paul found book 4 in pdf format (but i’ll probably go purchase it anyways). and i’m highly recommending it to all my non-reading friends because well fuck, the books are fun to read. and i’m so fucking tired of all these whiny, late 20something women books that i’ve been finding in the “just published!” section at BnN. it seems that every book i’ve been picking up lately has to do with some woman in her late 20s having a midlife crisis.
go figure.
also, i finally put away all the cds i had piled in a 100 cd-case from the cross country trip (nearly a year ago — geez how time flies). my desk is clean again and i also updated the list of cds and will probably be buying more this weekend. again, now that the radio in my car is fixed, i am sure that i’ll probably go back on a spending spree with cds again.
ironies
so, as i’ve talked about in the past, my father has set up a trust fund for me. it’s not much (at least in terms of USD) but it’s considerable and the lawyer offered to pay for my plane tickets and hotel stay and stuff when I was in Toronto, which equaled to some nice change. The lawyer calls me earlier this week and tells me that the probate has gone through and i can get that reiumbusement this week and it’ll be wired into my account. i was feeling a tad relieved because an unexpected bill came up and we were short for rent due on the fifth. by the conversation i had with the lawyer, i would have it friday at the latest.
so thrusday night (last night, whatever); i’m leaving work and i hear this loud squeaking noise. i start freaking out and brake hard a few times and the brakes feel really really soft — and so i drove, very very carefully home. i’m bummed out. depressed. the money isn’t in yet. rent is due. i don’t get paid for another week and we don’t have any money for gas or anything “extra” that might come up.
i make up my mind that rent will be late and that my car is more important. so i get up fucking god-awful early friday morning (this morning– err yah) after crashing out for only 3 hours after finishing mr potter. i stumble into the server room and check citibank (sometimes they are very good at what they do) and see that my account is suddenly flush. i dance around in joy at 7am and take my car in to get fixed.
So now i’m over 1k poorer: 700 for the car, 350 to my mom, 100 to brian (pauls brother — he pitched in cash for some stuff and i paid him back. i told him he should use his money for crap for HIM), 150 to my brother to fix his car (again).
The funny thing was, when I was at Satryn of Fairfax and intialing my life away to get a rental car, they required a cc. I said “I’m planning on pay by check and is that going to be a problem?” and they said no, this is just in case and we won’t charge anything against the card. So i find a card that has some money on it, give it to them and no less than an hour later, i get a phone call from Enterprise telling me i have to come up with 250 cash deposit or else another credit card. So i call another one of my cards and realised since i made good on payments try to get an emergancy limit increase of a min of 500. Because my brother is primary owner of the card, they required him to call — so I call my brother who calls the company and they will let him know “in a few days” if the increase went through or not. Even though my brother had stressed the importance of the reason WHY we were requesting the increase.
Call Satryn of Fairfax and my car will be ready tomorrow (Saturday — uh yah) and call Enterprise back and since the car rental is less than 24 hours, i don’t have to have the deposit.
i just thought it was funny with the credit card companies personally.
So I’m sending my mother money because she had emergancy surgrey on Monday and didn’t notify me about it. Jeff was out of town for basketball and he tells me late last night/this morning that she is out of commission for three weeks and the company she is working for changed her normal 90 day waiting period to 150 and so she has no health care benefits OR pay. ugh.
i told jeff that he better start taking better care of her because i do not plan on having two parental funerals this year.
this week has been weird with all these little things coming up. brian is still staying with us and now that we have money again we are finally going to go do stuff in the area before their parents come up in two weeks — whom i meet for the very first time. the funny thing is that since i’ve been living with paul for nearly a year (yah time does fucking fly) i’m not the least bit nervous. probably because i’ve got the sullivan brothers wrapped around my pinky fingers.
“lisa is a very well liked bitch at uunet” — our friend derrick (not moe) at dinner tonight.
moo.
this week has been strange. strange because i came up with an idea the other night from reading mightywords about publishing some of my older stuff — however i don’t have anything really “large” to contribute other than some of the older stuff like downpour on my soul which was over 20 pages when it was first contrived. so i re-read it for the very first time in quite some time (over a few years at least). and then i got depressed and then i had to go searching for andrew again.
and i found him.
he’s so easy.
and i decided in the same time frame to start cleaning out my harddrive and MY GOD, how much shit i have written and forgotten about it. just shoved away for the “rainy day” to finish and never did.
now i have something productive i want to do.
i had such a incredible response to the entry i posed a few days back “Open Letter to MTV Execs” that i got persuaded (like it’s really hard to persuade me) to send the letter to MTV. I rewrote it and cleaned it up before i sent it.
Of course I never heard anything back.
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lisa

i wanna be adored

Saturday afternoon, paul and i plunked down cash for our new pad that we will be sharing with his sister, Ivette.
Now, here is where it gets somewhat interesting. When we moved into our current pad, we had to plunk down 2 months worth of rent plus the deposit because at that time our credit was so shitty. In the 15 months since we have been living here (has it really been that long already??), I’ve been working my ass off on improving both my credit and helping paul establish his. The road has been rough and in that process I’ve learned a few things about myself. For instance my need for must have handbags and must have shoes. i also don’t need all the clothes I’m apt to buy (but whine it was on sale!) and the host of other things we have around our apartment.
i noticed this really prevalently when we were in Miami for Christmas. We brought back so much loot (including my lovely new visor that I adore the living hell out of), that I drug (is that even a word in this context?) Brian to the mall with me to go shopping for a new suitcase because the three we brought with us was simply not enough to ship our shit back home. What loot we got! Nearly new 20 dvds, books, clothes, candles, visor, a scooter (that paul promptly broke), toys, games, money; we made out like bandits on Christmas day. Not including all the shopping sprees I did when I was there because “everything was on sale” and had to have this red velvet skirt. I have enough clothes now to clothe a small nation. You know, like China.
when we came home and unpacked, i looked around our apartment and noticed all the “crap” we had. stuff that we bought on whims that wasn’t necessary at the time nor is it necessary now. I’ve been purchasing storage boxes just to toss all this crap in so that we can move everything to the new apartment in a much more smoother fashion than when i moved into the old pad.
all the stuff that can be used to decorate my cube, I’m taking with me to work tomorrow. All the papers I’m so found of keeping (you know, credit card bills, receipts, stuff like that); I’ve gone out and bought a shredder and have already shredded my way through five garbage bags of stuff. Next is the magazine collection (ugh, never again will I subscribe to any magazines!). Then it’s the books. I have no idea what I’m going to be doing with all the books that I’ve purchased over the years. I’ve been looking and eyeing our current bookcase (which literally takes up one whole wall of our apartment) and it’s already overstuffed with books and crap. I’m thinking we’ll end up throwing that bookcase into our new bedroom and buying something new for the living room.
it’s all about spending money isn’t it? I’ve been looking for design programs to help design our new living area so that i know what to keep and what to toss, and then it comes down to how much freaking money I’m willing to spend for this item or that item. it was like this apartment was our starter apartment and now that we are moving on up in the world, i can no longer allow myself to have pictures of darthmaul on the door.
go figure.
pauly is my co-pilot
you get the feel for someone after you’ve been living together for awhile. I’ve started getting such a good feel for the way that paul acts and behaves that I’ve started intoning before he ever does anything. “no paul, we are not spending 300 bucks on a tivo.” or “no paul, we are not going to eat Mickey d’s on our diet.” you know, shit like that. now I’ve started ribbing him about “pauly is my co-pilot” since doesn’t drive so he assumes that he is automatically in control of the car dashboard while he bitches about my one handed ability to drive a car and look for cigarettes. next up on the list, before we kill each other, is paul getting car driving lessons and his own car. he wants a durango. if anyone thinks that i will be co-signing my name to a loan for a 2001 durango while i drive a 1998 Saturn, must be smoking some serious crack.
already dead
on the topic of books, paul made me read “already dead”, the California gothic and I’m dying from all the “lush symmetry” and the “beautifully chosen way he has with words”. it’s like, when people write, why can’t they write for the sake of writing. it’s goddamn boring.
but it’s spring and I’ve got ants in my pants. nothing could satiate me now.
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lisa