one of the four

[jinian]

Wim is gone and so are the upstairs neighbors, so it's just me in a house that normally holds four humans. As the upstairs cats do not appear to have gone mental yet like last time their people were away, this is awesome. It's been all chilly and rainy here for days now, though. My wrists hurt, stupid weather. It is meant to be August.

Progress:

• Bed pieces are all 100% painted.


• Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo: Pretty cool. A documentary without much narration or overt interviewing, mostly just looking at insect fans in Japan, from commercial collectors to little kids keeping stag beetles as pets, with a few voice-over segments trying to tie love of insects to mono no aware and similar declared elements of the Japanese character. I am happy to know what the "konchu saishu" from the Shonen Knife song means.


• Glee s1: Too many of these people are stupid, but there's singing (even if it's heavy on the Autotune). Cannot stop watching.


• Helvetica: Many people are bigger type geeks than I am, and I just bought a zip sweatshirt that says KERN across the gap and think it's hilarious. Good movie. Thrilled to see Hermann Zapf himself! He made Optima and Palatino! And some of the other interviewees were awesome; I think is was Michael Bierut who killed us dead every time he came on.


• The Invincible Pole Fighter and The Mystery of Chess Boxing: Tremendous fun. Both pretty serious for kung fu movies (though Ghostface Killer was clearly high at all times), both quite well done. I think it's the only time I've seen the Grand Illusion completely sell out; there were chairs in the aisles, and normal occupancy is 70. (The Stranger Suggests listed it, so we knew to get there early.) As usual for the Illusion's special features, there were stories about where the movies came from -- stashed under a stage in a dedicated Shaw Brothers theater in Vancouver Chinatown, and dumpster-dived, in these cases.


• Electronic ARC of Cryoburn: No in-person Ekaterin, alas. I think it's a little better than Diplomatic Immunity. Worth the money!


• Currently have picked all the ripe evilberries from the yard, where they are trying to overrun the plum trees, and am stewing them up with last year's blueberries for something that might be pie filling or just go on ice cream, we'll have to see.


• Cat pee state is improved. We don't think they're doing it actively any more -- a couple days' surveillance (the Urinary Panopticon) showed nothing worse than sock theft from the hamper in progress (burning with cuteness). But good lord the smell just keeps coming up from under. Am seriously considering replacing the carpet-padding.

Unrelated to my life, there have been some really good anti-rape campaigns lately:
http://bitterbuffalo.tumblr.com/post/910431591/whats-this-an-anti-rape-campaign-that-focuses-on
http://thecurvature.com/2010/06/29/scotland-anti-rape-ad-tackles-she-was-asking-for-it-myth/