I made a new mix which basically doubles up as a fanmix for movies like Dark City, 28 Days Later, Children of Men, and books like the Mortal Instruments series. What I really like about these movies and books are the worlds: dystopian or post-apocalyptic cities with dark alleys and generally creepy atmospheres. These songs are basically great for getting chased by zombies or running/driving for your life from oppressive tryants and/or monsters/zombies.
Imagine Dragons- Radioactive
Greenskeepers- Vagabond
The Pixies- Hey
The Rapture- Echoes
Radiohead- Talk Show Host
Arcade Fire- Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
The White Stripes- Seven Nation Army
The xx- Crystallized
Wolf Parade- You Are A Runner And I Am My Father's Son
I'm an iced tea queen. There's no other explanation for it. I made the sweetest iced tea from scratch today and it was perfect.
You boil water (like two or three cups) with a couple of tablespoons of tea leaves of your choice. I kind of winged it when it came to proportions and got super lucky. You need to be careful that you don't boil it too long. The bitterness creeps in otherwise. If you're using tea bags, let it seep in the hot water for a while but do not press the tea bags! Bad idea.
Sugar syrup is the important ingredient here, because it spreads through the tea beautifully. You boil equal parts sugar and water (try it out with one cup) until you get a clear, sort of thickish syrup. Let the syrup and the hot tea cool until it's room temperature before mixing them together in a big jar. Try it to make sure it's not too sweet but it totally differs from person to person. Squeeze in a lemon and you have the most beautiful iced tea ever!
While on the topic of DIY, I made pasta and tomato sauce today which was... interesting, to say the least. Note: do not confuse tomato puree with tomato sauce or real diced tomatoes. It was like eating butter chicken minus the chicken. Anyway, I'm on a quest to learn how to cook. That's on my list of things to do so that I can fend for myself. The next step would be learning how to drive but ugh, this fucking laziness.
And finally, my sister and I got super adventurous and made a galaxy print t-shirt!
I don't know how it's going to look once it's gone through a cycle of wash, but it was super fun to do. I'm probably going to experiment with this idea a lot more but now on to something new to do.
I feel like I've been in a real rut lately. I haven't been able to bring myself to do anything and that just makes me more apathetic and lazy and upset. I know exactly what I should do but I can't do anything except waste time online and walk from room to room whining. I can't even finish writing or reading a paragraph and it's so frustrating. Also, this is a really bad summer and even though I totally romanticize summers in my head, they kind of suck in reality. Also, I'm on a real negative kick and everything seems useless and pointless and stupid and I want to snap out of it. "The only person holding yourself back is you"- yes, wise words that I should stick up on my wall but I don't have the energy to do that.
I've been on a real movie watching kick. The best movie I watched in the last one week was probably Dark City, which is this sci-fi movie released in 1998 about a guy who wakes up with no memory of anything. He lives in a city where it's perpetually dark, he might be a serial killer and there are a bunch of creepy ball dudes after him. I really enjoyed this one. It was tense and fast-paced and mind-blowing and every little detail was so well done. The effects do get quite cheesy in the end but the overall effect was great.
I also watched The Place Beyond The Pines, which I thought I would love (Ryan Gosling) but it ended up being quite disappointing. A third of the movie is exactly like Drive, but with bikes and definitely not as good. Drive hits you good and you root really hard for the Driver but this movie just seemed like a poor substitute. There wasn't any flow as the movie slipped from one narrative to the other. The only thing I really really really enjoyed about the movie were the trees. I swear. The pines were beautiful. I would have enjoyed a movie about haunted woods a lot more, I think. (That's my new kick right now: haunted woods and folklore and myths and legends about haunted forests.I have a funky notebook dedicated just for this kind of stuff).
The Fall was another movie I watched and wait, that's the guy from Pushing Daisies?! There were some scenes that I really enjoyed (and cried during) but the overall effect was a little blah-ish. The little girl was really adorable though. I think I ended up watching the entire movie with full attention only because she was so incredibly good.
I remember watching Thelma and Louise a few years ago but I sat through it again. I'm all for movies about girls and generally being a kickass female but this one kind of fell flat. And I also watched Castle in the Sky, which was quite disappointing. I loved Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke so I assumed I'd like this one but ugh no that was not the case.
I haven't read a book in a really long time, which is kind of sad. My to-read list on goodreads grows fast but so does my abandoned bookshelf. Need to sit down with one book and read it cover-to-cover.
I'm also bored and lonely because all my friends are in different places. Maybe if I studied, it would take my mind off stupid things but I wish there was a cure for laziness.
And now, every time I watched Game of Thrones and there's a scene with Theon in it, the only thing that comes to mind is this song:
At least Alfie finally amounted to something in life. And how insane was the last scene in this week's GoT episode?!
I love Sarah Dessen. I love her in the way that I stay up all night reading her novels, then proceeding to have intense conversations about them with the only person who will listen to me (my little sister), analyze her characters, and feel like a goddamn enlightened person.
Just Listen is one of the heartbreaking, important books everyone should read. Annabel was one of those girls who “had everything” but after an incident with her best friend’s boyfriend, she’s left destroyed. Nobody sits with her for lunch, her sister is anorexic, she can’t vocalize her feelings, she’s got issues with her mom, she’s falling for the school bad boy, etc. etc. Now I know these sound like extremely ~deep~ problems but trust me, they are! Sarah Dessen handles every feeling with the utmost sensitivity so it’s really refreshing to read. What really made me cry was the way she handled the psychology of a rape victim. I’m a bit over sensitive, but Just Listen can make anyone cry. It’s sad and hopeful and… well, everything at the same time. What I also really like about Sarah Dessen is that her novels are all one big coming-of-age story. This means that her characters don’t have to deal with one or two problems but several of them. And resolving them doesn’t just take a page or two but several hundred pages along with a couple of years of the characters’ lives. Your heart will beak for Annabel. She’s strong but vulnerable, caught in a tough place, still discovering who she is. You’ll love Owen because he’s not only the best kind of guy there is, but also the nicest kind, even if he comes across as brusque. All of the characters in the novel are excellently fleshed out (except maybe Sophie, Annabel’s ex best friend). The dynamic between Annabel and her sister(s) are interesting and well thought out and that just makes the whole novel all the more fulfilling. And the whole way music is brought into the novel (it is called “Just Listen”, y’know?) makes you want to start your own radio show and listen to Celtic chants. I LOVE YOU SARAH DESSEN.
I think the best kind of poems are the simple and short ones, but the ones that sum up all your feelings in a few lines. So keeping up with National Poetry Month, today's poem is The Look by Sara Teasdale.
I realized today that April is National Poetry Month and usually I roll my eyes at the these kind of months/days (National Masturbation Day? Really?), I secretly kind of dig them because what is more exciting than having one day (or week or month) dedicated especially for one specific thing, so you can geek out completely and appreciate everything there is to appreciate about said thing? Anyway, The Orange by Wendy Cope is one of my favourite poems ever because it's as simple as poems get, and yet it hits you in all the right places.
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange The size of it made us all laugh. I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave— They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park This is peace and contentment. It's new.
The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all my jobs on my list And enjoyed them and had some time over. I love you. I'm glad I exist.
