Novel Eye

This is for Musing and my friend B because it will amuse them but probably no one else will get it. We watched "Mirror Mask" last night written by the wonderfully fabulous, creative, funny and kind Neil Gaiman and designed/directed by one of his longtime collaborators Dave McKean. Simple story and Neil still has trouble with good endings but visually one of the best things I've ever seen. I think it was because of this, I can't think of any other reason. I dreamt I met Gackt (pronounced Ga-Ku-To so they say, and not like what a cat does with hair, Japanese pop star, not Hyde, but friend of Hyde who is so perfect his face looks like a mask) in an ice cream parlor and he bought me ice cream and spoke to me in reasonable English but with a thick Japanese accent and he asked my opinion on all sorts of things, like whether he should do another movie (yes) or dress more like Mathew of Mathew's best hits (no) and everytime I would try to ask about Hyde and whether I coul...

So here it is again, midnight on a Sunday night. What a long stressful week it's been. There's a happy ending and a good lesson at the end of this--I'll try and keep to the salient points. Remember how I said I had a loaner last week, well, $1100 later I got my car back on Monday and on my way to work the next morning it died again. The week before it had died on an off ramp between the highway and a very busy state route (95 and Route 9 for anyone in New England). Fortunately I was within sight of my office park and my friends/bosses/coworkers came out and pushed me to a slightly safer location and one of them used his Triple A to tow me to my mechanic and we all agreed how lucky I was I hadn't taken the Mass. Pike to work, coulda been worse, yadayada. So this past Tuesday with my newly "fixed" car I'm driving on the Pike and the car dies. This is rather like dying on the Autobahn for anyone who doesn't know the Pike. There is no shoulder and people r...

This is what I've done this weekend, starting Thursday night. It's for my own benefit to remind myself that I do a lot and a lot of it good. It says a lot about me but it's very long, so read if you want. After work on Thursday I met a friend at a bookstore to plan invitations to a tea tasting party she's trying to put together. She ended up holding my shoulder bag because I had a "tree," well long branch in the back of the car. Did I mention this is a loaner because my car is in the shop? It's terminal. Basically it's like a relative who's dying of lung cancer--my mechanic is getting it through a bout of pneumonia but advised us we should start saying our good-byes. This is esp. annoying at this moment because my beloved car is a hatchback and the loaner is a sedan. The tree would have worked better in the hatchback. We ended up wandering a mall trying to find the perfect invitations--which we didn't, though we were considering a second bes...

I have three emails addresses pouring into one so I have a lot of spam in my inbox everyday. Some of the names have been great lately--almost Marx Brotherian (how's that for grammar?): Ricochet V. Rickshaw Metropolis L. Underpants (there's a sexual joke in here somewhere--esp. when compared to the lyrics of L'Arc`en`Ciel's Metropolis--but I'm not quite up to it, no pun intended) Penitentiary Q. Pencil I love random word generators. This one's good: http://www.elsewhere.org/bandname I can waste a lot of time there.

Woah! Reread my last post and found all kinds of errors. Must be from doing it at midnight on a Saturday after a long week. I am a mediocre speller, so apologize for that in advance. I believe that style sometimes (but only sometimes) trumps grammar, but I do try to always make sense.

Watched Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle last night. Ooooo, I loved it! I've heard people/critics say that it's not his best, but I found it delightful. Perhaps I'm biased because of the dog who reminds me of mine, but I think not. I am always blown away by his imagination. Watched "Network" today. I missed a lot of the movies of the 70's because I was too young to see them, and by the time I wanted to see them, everyone I knew had already seen them. I've been trying to catch up, but sometimes the moment is just lost. I'd seen so many parodies of Apocalypse Now that it just struck me as funny when I finally saw it. Network is funny, but obviously deliberately so. I must read some Paddy Chayefsky (forgive me if I misspell, Gentle Reader). I had seen The Americanization of Emily when I was a teenager and I remembered it being good. Watched it again recently and realized it was brilliant. The lines, the acting. I didn't like Network as muc...

You've got all those reasons for not being with someone, but you don't have one good reason for being alone.--wildly paraphrased from "Company" Not to Blog--I don't read blogs... Isn't that terrible. So why the hell do I think it worthwhile to do my own. Alright, I read one or two, for awhile, with specific interests or because they're friends, but I don't follow through. I believe in equivilant exchange. To be a good person I need to read others. If I want comments I need to leave meaningful comments of my own. Or do I? Is it enough that this is for me. Is it selfish? or self-empowering? Hmmmm....

I'm adopted from The Republic of South Vietnam, and if you know anything, that will give you an idea of my age. Last year I found and joined a group called VAN. This is an excerpt from a thread that recently appeared at the VAN site. My response is at the bottom. I've done each in a different color. I'll probably write more about this at some point. It's a hot button for me. Initial post ABC7, a local news channel in San Francisco, CA just aired a segment on Amerasian issue. Click here for the story: Local Woman Finds Out She Doesn't Exist First Response You know, something kind of like this happened to me. I was returning from Montreal a few years ago (post-9/11) and only had my driver's license on me. When I went into Canada, the border officer told me that I should be fine but in the future I should bring my passport (at this point, an ex had thrown it out anyway). So no big deal...I go to Montreal, do my thing, and am heading back. I get ...

I seem to be doing this once a week--Saturday nights when my husband has gone to bed and I've watched Full Metal Alchemist. No time, no time. Like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party--no room, no room. Have a short list of topics to write on that I carry to every job and never get to. Just saw Neil Gaiman's blog listed in the of interest column on the log in page. I love Neil Gaiman. Just read "Anansi Boys." Delightful, but not as thought provoking as "American Gods," which is fine. I have a post card from Mr. Gaiman because I mailed him a Halloween wallhanging and he wrote a very nice thank you on a postcard with a Charles Vess illustration. Watched "The Most Terrible Time of My Life" last night--Japanese, early 90's with a character named Miku Hamma (or rather Hamma Miku, but the joke's lost that way). Very funny and sweet and sad and fantastically shot. When it began I said, "That guy (the lead) looks like the guy in "Mystery Train...