Really beautiful things.
Category: Reviews
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keep you sleepy as the south
So I have been doing nothing constructive to my future as of recent.
Just hanging out a lot and wasting my life away. At the same time, I’m pretty worried that As are less than a year away oh Lord. :-(
On your to-watch list, all of you:
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
Because it’s the best yet since HP1, (which was only great cuz the trio were cute beyond words and Dumbledore wasn’t a menopausal psycho bitxh yet.) no srsly, Daniel Radcliffe went past his angst to portray something good this time. Also, stunning scenery. If not, just watch for Dobby. He’s the only CGI character I have cried so much for.
Easy A
Easily the best chick flick along with Mean Girls. Emma Stone was of pure talent, along with the rest of the cast – just. watch. It’s really really good.
Tangled
Because it is the last Disney Princess movie to ever be produced. No wait – just get it on DVD.
Kokuhaku
ARE YOU KIDDING FRICKIN’ AWESOME AS ALWAYS MINDFUCKING JAPANESE PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER. No missing this.
The Other Guys
The trailer was LOL so maybe.
I HAVE ALSO BEEN DOING LOTS OF READING.
BECAUSE OF THIS:
You’re supposed to bold the ones you’ve read and italicize the ones you’ve read parts/excerpts of. Most people have read at least an average of six by middle age or something. It also made me feel really inferior cause I haven’t heard of a full quarter and have read less than half on the list.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carrol
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
In repentance, I picked up The Time-traveler’s Wife and The Alchemist so as to (however minutely) improve my literary scope. After that I will prolly give in to guilty indulgence and eat up some chick lit.
So as you can see, I’m going nowhere on the academic scale neither am I pimpin’ my portfolio like the rest of the J1 world is. All I’m doing is.. idk. Reading and Lookbooking and Watching Movies and being an obnoxiously carefree teen.
Now to watch Big Bang Theory and then 3 Sisters later (which I got scammed into offering 20 bux for. No srsly, 20 bux and NO TRANSPORT? Angst.)
Alright laterzx.
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After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Misery is deciding not to go out as the rest of your friends frolick around town, so that you can stay home and procrastinate in the face of 24 commentaries, a lit essay, two GP booklets to fill out, and EOM to boot.
Which I promise I’ll finish within an impossible time period of three hours. Later.
Spent the earlier part of today reading Murakami’s After Dark.
He’s actually the only serious-pretentious read I’ve picked up since Enid Blyton in primary school. I lost all hope in authors – besides Asians like Catherine Lim and Amy Tan (Also dunno the why) – since entering teen-hood. There’s really just nothing good enough, but not dark enough to read.
I mean like yeah there’s Harry Potter and then all those chick-lit I devoured. Or Dan Brown and Jodi Picoult. SERIOUSLY. That’s what my entire reading collection constitutes of. Which sounds very painful and sad but not really, I just reread Roald Dahls and shit to cripple my vocabulary into that of a eight-year-old’s.
Plus I only read Enid Blyton because it has all those vivid description of food erotica, (a tip: Especially in Famous Five.)
Okay now that I’ve revealed to you my very pitiful extension of literary range, let’s move on to After Dark.
The one thing that kept haunting me throughout the novel is how incredibly suited for a movie it is. It is one of those books that translate so easily into scenes, with it’s vivid night scene and explicit references to (really good) music. Hell, it even comes to a point of describing screenplays.
So I’m really surprised there’s no based-on films, yet.
Alright then again, maybe not. While it’s really pretty in print (the whole Murakami whimsical voice shizam), the life comes mostly from conversations (very often quietly insightful) and the visceral – but very much still – images. In other words, it lacks sufficient substance, plot or action to beef up one-half hours of film.
While I’m sure much of the beauty in prose was lost in the process of translating, it’s still a lot smoother than the contemporary American works you get around.
It takes place within a single night in Tokyo, and the inter-relationships can be pretty confusing but just keep in mind that there are three main stories, all somehow linked (illogically, but seamlessly. It’s weird in the best way possible);
Mari’s meeting of Takahashi and their interaction – often alluding to Mari’s estranged relationship with her comatose sister, Eri.
A Chinese hookah who got beaten up by a masochistic computer expert, (in a Love Hotel Mari later came to be associated with) and the maso’s actions post-attack.
This fantastical, surreal, and totally unexplained dream-scape of Eri’s subconscious/conscious state that the narrative breaks in now and then.
Characterization was crisp and real.
Nothing about the whole strawberry-blonde protagonist with determined spunk and a history of hurt. No smart-aleck annoyingly perfect sexy young man who’ll tease the heroine and then start making love to her towards the end.
Most importantly, no sparkling immortal who fell in love with his favorite food.
Instead, portrayal is incredibly genuine. The journey is also gradual; you learn about them as you would a friend over time. At the end of the day you know enough to be interested, but not completely as to lose the sense of mystery. Very like-able, very real, very effective.
Murakami’s narrative is engaging – maybe too much so; there are certain reinforcements that become redundant in excess. There’s also his tendency to pull the readers out of the story (this detachment also pretty evident in his other novels).
Well it really depends – if you’re the observing/analysing kind of reader, this book suits you perfectly. Murakami babies the audience by lending his eye on every detail, giving quite little space for self-assumptions or inference.
If you’re the kind with a ten-speed imagination running on Energizer, then you might feel stifled by his style of presentation.
The plot, though, I have an issue with. It’s conceptual idea is brilliant, but the potential of it just wasn’t fully exploited. It elevates to the point right before the ending, and wraps off nicely – short of that few unresolved ideas here and there.
The ending with Mari/Takahashi was pretty and proper, just the right amount of resolution and mystery where the audience can just pick n’ choose whatever they want to happen.
About Eri, though, I thought more of a hint could be given about the earlier happenings. YEAH it’s supposed to be fantasy~*, but (maybe just a leeeeeeetle) revelation of it’s paralled reality would be a damn nice ending touch – especially in the context of day/reality settling in.
The most disappointing cliffhanger, really, was with Shirakawa (the sadist prostitute beater computer night shift expert). I enjoyed his vignettes the most, and the stylisation of his thoughts were chilling. Maybe it’s just me, but I was expecting more of him to be revealed (especially after they described his body – a geek with ABS, wtfiwant.) but. Ah well. ):
Overall, a great read for an afternoon procrastination. Wouldn’t take more than a few hours to complete. Flow is lovely, so that’s a change from American Contemporary Lit (which I personally find v jarring in comparison.) MIGHT leave you a little HUH? at the end, but some fresh concepts to think about when you’re bored while in class or defecating.
Oh wow, okay I wasted so much time on this.
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Whirley Potato & Hip Hop Jelly
I figured that work’s perennial. Right so blocks are over SO? I still have 24 articles to somehow conjure up by Tuesday, with a slew of other shit work besides. So I’ve decided against doing something that will never end anyway. Instead I shall be here to do some RECOMMENDATIONS~. Yay!
OHYEAH did I mentioned? I FINALLY managed to get my hands on Hip Hop Jelly today. Quit asking me what it is, not my fault if you have no life:
IT IS THIS! NOW PREASE BE AWED BY AWESOMENESS.
I quote sixthseal.com:
The Paddle Pop Hip Hop Jelly is described as an apple and peach flavored ice confection, but the thing that makes it stand out is it’s…well, malleable nature.
Indeed YES, it is like icy jelly. Or like jelly ice. Whichever, the point being it’s WEALLY GOOD. So today I randomly came across this mamashop at Clementi (Yeah k WHY was I at Clementi – long story, I ended up stranded in a Bus Stop located ‘After Estoril Mans’ DON’T ASK and somehow groped my way into civilization to be towed home by my mom.) at just felt this immediate instinct, that HHJ was near.
HELL YES I BOUGHT IT ATE IT LOVED IT though it was prolly the dumbest thing to do. Because I was wet from the rain, and deathly cold as any icemother. Also, I was about to get in my mom’s car. So, really – not the smartest thing to do. But worth it. TOTALLY worth it. I mean it’s not everyday you find HIP HOP JELLY in stock!
Now to the climax of this post. And I MEAN CLIMAX AS IN OMFH IT IS A TONGUE ORGAAAASM!
THE. WHIRLEY. POTATO.
The photo does not do justice to the true extent of it’s omnipotence. And neither can ANY description I attempt. NOTHING. Nothing can ever fully capture The Greatness of The Whirley Potato.
Everything about it is divine. The shape, the seasoning, the size the cut the moisture the crunch. It is the POTATO GOD. It is the HEAVENLY MASTER POTATO OF ALL POTATOES.
The potato is elegantly sliced into a spiral shape, then skewered through a stick, deep fried and dusted with cheese powder, to provide OPTIMUM eating pleasure. (If you ask me this should be the shape of ALL FOODSTUFF from today on.)
First your teeth meets the crisp golden surface of the potato; your tongue comes into contact with the cheese powder. It is this gentle invasion of tangy sweetness – this series of EXPLOSION that then settles in so comfortably you start to believe it’s impossible to live without it’s taste.
As this taste condenses on your tongue, you sink deeper into the layer of potato. It is perfection. Not thin to the point of being like a chip, not thick enough to be a fry (I mean what ARE these lousy substitutes since the birth of The Whirley Potato?) The perfect width. At this point, the combined pleasure of the outer crispiness giving way to satin softness, the pure sauteed fragrance it bears, and the mothergoodness of the cheese powder, elevates you to this realm of FOOD NIRVANA.
Even the process of ripping layers of potato off the stick incites this primal ecstasy that reminds me why I keep myself alive in this world of cruelty, pain and homework.
Woah somwhere there I had to take a moment off to exalt silently about The Whirley Potato and my memory of it, this thing really has quite a grip on my emotional state.
Anyway, this isn’t really called The Whirley Potato, though to me it remains as that. It’s some Korean invention (I LOVE THEM KOREANS) I think they call it the spiral fried potato? It also comes with a range of other flavored powders.
K I was gonna put up some songs and shit but I decided that the Whirley Potato warrants a post of its own. Even having it share this space with the Hip Hop Jelly is a little blasphemous but ah well.
PLEASE GO EAT THE WHIRLEY POTATO / THE SPIRAL FRIED KOREAN POTATO / TORNADO POTATO / THE REINCARNATION OF POTATO GOD, AND ACHIEVE NIRVANA WITH ME!
Edit: While re-reading this post, I actually had to scroll repeatedly just so I can get to see the picture like, many times and closely. It’s like I’m watching porn, but more embarrassing. Cause it’s not a naked man it’s a naked freaking potato. If I had to choose I want to get my teeth on the potato. Screw the man. No wait, I’d rather screw the potato too.
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Tell your mother I said Hi.
Am really dying to watch this. Confessions by Tetsuya Nakashima. Not sure when it’s coming out, but it was screening at the Film Festival in Japan on 5 June.
GODFINGER! Now available on the iPhone. Everyone should download this, the graphics are amazing. Strangely addictive, though it doesn’t require much skills or brainpower. I guess it’s just the feeling of being absolutely omnipotent, even if it’s on a two inch screen, but yeah.
Then again, don’t download it. The server crashes about ALL THE TIME due to heavy loads. If you start playing it’ll take away the fun in mine. So don’t.
LOL T-PAIN’S AUTO-TUNING OBAMA. Not especially funny or anything, but I really want the Auto-Tune application for iPhone.
Mitch Hewer, or Maxxie, from Skins. So illegal to be so sexy right?
SO YES, I should be mugging instead.
Q 