Colored Ink
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miss something? check the archives about me name: n/aaliases: kit, kits, kit kat, the smart girl, foxay, an chin age: 20 location: oakland, ca hobbies: anime, manga, comic books, reading, writing, doodling, video games likes: all of the above, being lazy, mushrooms, animals, food, laughing loudly in public, SUSHI dislikes: nuts, stinging/biting insects, religious fanatics, violence, olives contact: coloredink(at)gmail.com wishlist playstation 2car a good night's sleep money stress-free life trigun long colt keychain ipod hardon-kardon speakers 19" flatscreen monitor world peace realistic wishlist transmetropolitan vol 5-7, 9-10long-term obsessions comicsyaoi/shounenai/slash writing music animals life and living current obsession(s) smallvillecurrently reading anansi boys by neil gaimancurrently watching smallville (3.2)farscape (1.) stargate: atlantis (1.7) scrubs (1.4) hana yori dango (20) utena (23) witch hunter robin (18) rose of versailles (19) matantei loki ragnarok (15) scrapped princess (14) sailormoon live action (25) |
Saturday, October 22, 2005 [link] 01:34 a.m. listening to: Also, I saw Good Night, and Good Luck with some friends. Rachel talks about it in her blog and gives a very good critique of it, what with being a film studies person and all. So I'll just talk about other stuff instead. Edward Murrow, in case you don't know, is a pioneer of broadcast journalism. He was raised as a Quaker, which of course means that he's an idealist peacenik, and also has a distinctive speaking style. Fortunately, listeners really liked his voice (you can listen to some sound clips here). He gained fame for his live broadcasts from abroad during WW2 and became well-known for his cogent POV and journalistic integrity. David Strathairn does a smashing job as Murrow in the film. He had Murrow's personality, cadence, and speaking style down pat. I can imagine the man listening to Murrow's broadcasts over and over again in a room somewhere, practicing until he had every syllable perfected. Murrow's words are still relevant today, despite being spoken fifty years ago. It's really amazing; this film was made at precisely the right time, I think. In his speech to the RTNDA convention in 1958(which can be found in full here, Murrow said: "I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live." And isn't it true? Network television is filled with reality tv, soap operas, teen dramas, and otherwise really crappy programming. None of these things are meant to educate, they're only meant to entertain. A lot of this is why I don't watch television, and when I do it's really crappy shows like Smallville. I see television as a source of entertainment, a time-drainer; anything of educational or enlightenment value I generally get online. I've never watched the news on TV; too much of it's about shock-value, getting the best ratings. If, as Murrow suggested, we deliberately focused prime-time programming on educating and enlightening the viewer, would anyone pay attention? Would anyone care? I had a conversation with my friends about this once, some weeks ago. Do people want to care? They did, back in 1953, when Murrow ran his famous broadcasts against Senator McCarthy. They sat up and paid attention, perhaps despite themselves. Would they, today? And you know, I have to talk about George Clooney for a second, because I hate George Clooney. It's an irrational dislike; I have nothing against his acting. I just don't like him. I don't know why. Every time I see him on screen, I want to punch him. Except in O Brother, Where Art Thou. He worked in that movie. He worked in Good Night, and Good Luck, too. For the first few minutes I wanted to punch him every time I saw him on screen--and every time I saw him on screen I still thought "George Clooney" first and "Fred Friendly" second, which is kind of distracting--but he was. . . good. I generally have something against films in which the writer/director also plays a role; for one thing the direction can be rather poor, since the director's on the set instead of behind the camera, and for another it smacks of masturbation. The fact that Clooney cast himself in the role of Fred Friendly, Murrow's producer, does not exactly disabuse me of this notion. But Murrow/Strathairn got the spotlight, and Clooney was rather good in his role, I thought, and it was a good film. Clooney is apparently producing and acting in another film, Syriana. He's been doing things with such interesting political content these days. I'm quite intrigued. In case you hadn't noticed, I don't really watch mainstream movies anymore. They're too puerile. Next on my list is Capote, and after that The War Within and/or Paradise Now. I actually want to see The Fog just for Tom Welling, which is a horrible excuse to watch a movie, seeing as how a) the movie looks terrible and b) Tom Welling is a terrible actor. But he's hot, and sometimes you just want to see a terrible movie. Come to that, though, I'd rather see Doom. Then at least I'd get to see the Rock blow shit up. But I've digressed. I'd like to go back to the words of Edward R. Murrow. "We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. If we dig deep into our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men--not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. . . . We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. "Cassius was right. 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.' Good night, and good luck." Tuesday, October 18, 2005 [link] 02:05 p.m. listening to: "St. Peter's Bones" - Girlyman Update: I still have a huge crush on Ty Greenstein. I thought you'd all like to know that. Monday, October 17, 2005 [link] 01:29 p.m. listening to: "Are You Out There" - Dar Williams Dar Williams last night rocked so, so hard. Kaie talks about it in her journal. Her summary is pretty good, especially regarding our newfound love for Girlyman. We got back around 12:30 AM. Eleanor was kind enough to pick us up after we got stranded at Coliseum BART. I totally owe her. Maybe I'll buy her flowers or something. Or just sell her my soul. So tired. We got up at 6:30 this morning so that Kaie could get back to Stanford in time for class. I went back to sleep for maybe an hour before I had to go to strength training and then journalism. Now I am going to take a very brief nap, then get up and attempt to write two articles. Somewhere in there I'm going to see my professor, Dan Ryan, about. . . something. Then I am going to come back to my room, finish these articles, send them into The Weekly, and then go to pitch and do some light copy editing before coming back to my room again and passing the fuck out. Yes. Sounds good. My grandmother is in a coma. It's unlikely that she'll wake up, what with her being 91 and very elderly and infirm and all. For some reason I wasn't informed of this until this morning, even though she's apparently been unconscious for a few days. Saturday, October 15, 2005 [link] 03:35 p.m. listening to: nothing This is the second time in as many weeks that my computer has restarted itself, recovering from "a serious error." I'm going to take this as a sign to back everything up and write down my serial numbers. Friday, October 14, 2005 [link] 09:53 p.m. listening to: Things I need to get done this weekend: - - get ahead on my reading (if possible) - - - get my picture taken by someone with a digital camera - - - Whew. Full weekend. And Dar Williams on Sunday!!! Thursday, October 13, 2005 [link] 12:44 a.m. listening to: "Kryptonite" - Route 9 Stereotypes I have encountered in real life: Case #1: I attended a poetry reading last year. In attendance was a slender young man in black jeans and a black turtleneck. He had a goatee and black-rimmed emo glasses. I wanted to ask him, "Did you forget your beret at home?" Case #2: My editor's girlfriend is a classic Dyke on Bike. She rides a motorcycle, wears lots of leather, has short hair, is really buff, and works as a mechanic. I had no idea people like this existed outside of television. Case #3: A man in the line across from me at Barnes & Noble turned around and complimented the woman behind him, saying, "I love your jacket!" He also loved her shoes. He then went on to say how he used to work at Nordstrom's as the person who orders the clothes. He had the hand gestures down pat and crossed his legs at the ankles. He was very refreshingly gay. Monday, October 10, 2005 [link] 10:10 p.m. listening to: "Selig" - Helium Vola I don't understand why people don't pay attention to the news. Okay, that's not quite right. I do understand why people don't pay attention to the news. There's an awful lot of news out there and life gets pretty busy. Some issues are so complex that you can spend hours wading through background and still not have the whole picture. The news can be pretty damn daunting. Hell, I'm a journalist and I often don't have the time or energy to read the news daily. Not thoroughly, anyway (I skim headlines and leads daily). Some people just come up with the most feeble excuses, though. "I don't watch television" or "I don't subscribe to the newspaper," for example. Okay, I have never watched the news on TV. Honestly, I haven't. By the time I was old enough to care about the news, I'd stopped watching television. Remembering to turn on the television at the same time each day or each week was too much of a burden. My father stopped subscribing to the newspaper once he discovered that he could read the news for free online. Online is still how I get most of my news. I'm required to subscribe to a print newspaper for a class, but the Chronicle's circulation is quite frankly awful and I haven't seen my paper in the past week. I still get most of my news online. It's so convenient. The New York Times will drop articles straight into your mailbox. You can get BBC World News on your friendslist, if you have a LiveJournal. Google News is infinitely customizable. Heck, you can even get headlines on your cellphone, though I certainly don't know how to do that (I'm not as cellphone-savvy as many of my peers). Almost everyone has five minutes in the day to check the news. Seriously. What are you doing every day that is so important? What are you doing every day that is more important than what is going on in the world? Sunday, October 9, 2005 [link] 12:16 p.m. listening to: "Echoes" - Dar William Tales from the dining hall: Lynne likes motorcycles and cars, knows how to change a tire and use a blowtorch, wears men's clothing, and does carpentry. We're all very sad that she's straight, because she would be such a great dyke. And I know you're reading this, Lynne. **waves** I told her about Laura's girlfriend, who is a classic Dyke on Bike, the kind of lesbian that you never think actually exists because she's so stereotypical. She wears leather, rides a motorcycle, and works as a mechanic. Lynne: That's hot. Rachel G: Are you sure you're not a lesbian? Because, you know, you'd make a great lesbian. **we start laughing** Rachel G: Not that there's anything wrong with being straight! I'm half straight myself! Maggie: I can die happy. It's finally happened. Saturday, October 8, 2005 [link] 11:40 p.m. listening to: "Goukon ato no famiresu nite" - Sonim Sometimes I get the urge to be alone with the world. Not alone in the world, but alone with the world. It's the urge that makes me want to climb onto a rooftop and open my arms to the sky. But there aren't any stars here for me to swallow, and the places that have them make me feel too large and clumsy and alone. I struggle, these days, to find something to say in this blog. I've become much more active in fandom lately, and between that and journalism I have nothing to say. Do you, dear readers, want to read about how I spent two hours at Campus Facilities waiting for an interview? Do you want to read about how I sat outside and smoked one of Jay's cigarettes, struggling to flick the ash off one-handed like a cool smoker? I've always said that I don't write this blog for other people. That's why there aren't any comments here, why things I do write for other people go on my livejournal. The livejournal is where are the "interesting" parts of my life go: the geeky bits, the writing bits. That just leaves the messy stuff that has no where else to go. It's masturbatory, of course; I think all blogs are, in a sense, masturbatory. One person, sitting alone in a room, writing their thoughts for an anonymous audience to see? I suppose it's masturbatory and exhibitionist. So I do keep this blog for other people. Listening to others talk about their parents and their curfews is like listening to someone talk about their culture back in the old country. It's a foreign land to me, this world of parents who set restrictions and mothers who get angry on behalf of their children. I had a strict aunt, but I was allowed to stay at home by myself when I was eleven. My father has yelled at me only twice in my entire life. And my mother, well, my mother never wanted children, as far as I can tell. She regrets it now, but now I think it might be too late. Tomorrow I am going out to pizza with my friends and seeing MirrorMask again. Tomorrow, I need to finish this case analysis of FEMA and, if possible, write the first draft of an essay. Life is good. I am going to England, I still love the city, and life is good. Friday, October 7, 2005 [link] 01:58 p.m. listening to: nothing Whew. Good workout this morning! I'll be sore tomorrow, but it'll be worth it. I worked both my lower and upper body, but mostly lower body; my legs are fine, save for my enormously flabby thighs, but there's time enough for that. I really want to develop my upper body strength. I then promptly negated my workout by having a horrendously bad breakfast. I also spent the last two hours procrastinating and drawing more usericons for my LJ. Now I really need to shower and finish up these two articles that were due to my editors last night. Tuesday, October 4, 2005 [link] 06:31 p.m. listening to: "Dragostea din tei" - O-Zone I WAS ACCEPTED!!! DEAR GOD THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH EXCLAMATION POINTS IN MY LIFE. . . . EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! Tuesday, October 4, 2005 [link] 01:27 p.m. listening to: "Iowa" - Dar Williams For a while now, I've been reading this pretty lame comic called The Meaning of Lila. It was slightly amusing when I lived in Los Angeles and read the newspaper every day, but now I find it mostly stupid. It seems to be trying to fill the hole that Cathy left in newspapers when she got married and failing miserably, which is probably saying something since Cathy wasn't terribly funny, either (at least to me, but maybe I just don't get it because I'm not a single thirty-something). I do, however, like Lila's male friend, whose name I can't remember. For some reason I've always been convinced that he's gay, and I think today's strip just lends more credence to my hypothesis. Ha! Victory for my gaydar! Monday, October 3, 2005 [link] 02:21 p.m. listening to: "White Flag" - Dido I wrote an absolutely terrible article last weekend about Sheehan's arrest and the absolute, uh, nothing on campus in response. It was my fault, absolutely; one of the stories I was working on completely fell through , and I spent the entire weekend attending geeky things (Serenity premiere, MirrorMask premiere, and a Neil Gaiman signing) so that I didn't have much time to work on an article at all. But, well, it's better to turn in something than nothing at all, in my opinion. Ironically enough, this is our first graded story; the past four articles have been pass/no pass, and the only way to get a no pass was to not turn one in. Physical therapy today. My back has actually been feeling much better over the past month, actually. Go figure. But it's not feeling, well, the way it used to before I started having back problems, so I'll see what the physical therapist has to say about that. My blog has become very uninteresting lately, I fear. I talk about school and journalism and little else. My LiveJournal has probably become much more exciting. But, well, there hasn't been much non-geeky stuff going on in my life lately. I suppose that's the consequence of having a geeky life. Sunday, October 2, 2005 [link] 05:18 p.m. listening to: "Don't Give Up" - Peter Gabriel feat. Kate Bush My cellphone came with a headset, but I never used it. It seemed kind of extraneous to me. Journalism has finally prompted me to join the 21st century. I discovered that I really, really need to have both hands free to type while conducting a phone interview. Friday, September 30, 2005 [link] 03:46 a.m. listening to: nothing I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume; For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you. Thursday, September 29, 2005 [link] 02:38 p.m. listening to: nothing Sometimes the universe just doesn't want you to take a nap. I lay down a nap sometime around noon-fifteen and was woken at one o' clock by someone knocking gently on my door. Turned out I'd left my keys in the lock outside. I thanked her sleepily, then tried to go back to sleep only to discover I needed to piss like whoa. So I trooped down the hall to the bathroom (oh, the trials of living in a dorm), then trudged back to my room, where I couldn't fall back asleep. When I finally did, I was woken a scant half-hour later by a phone call. Alas. I really wanted to get some sleep because a) I didn't get much sleep last night and b) I'm staying up late tonight for a midnight showing of Serenity. Oh well. Hopefully that was enough. |
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