Jolie-Laide

Let me be perfectly clear: I never wanted to know that Roger Daltrey got old.

This. Is. BULLSHIT.

I don't ever dole out advice for reading, even when asked, but this book just broke my heart. And it's utterly astounding.



I found it on a whim in the bookstore of the university next to my job. I was kinda struggling through a W.B.Yeats guide to Gaelic folklore (Every day I learn my culture is even more boring and primitive than it was the day before.), and I found this. It's a...well, not graphic novel, because no one has a katanna and there aren't any "L" noses, but it's in pictures: beautiful, stark, American Gothic pictures that are so dark with Americana that you can taste it.


The titular sutures.


Of course I'm biased to it, but here's my favorite bit of the story, where the normalcy of the narrative is punctured by this lucid depiction of his therapist as the Carroll White Rabbit.

Seattle?
Phoenix?
San Francisco?
Paris?

Guess who just hung out with a handful of the "in-crowd" in high school and found that they weren't as big of a dork as they thought?

Yeah. That's right.

I was shopping with my iPod and one of the more melancholy airs from Marie Antoinette came on and I remembered my three girlfriends and the year that began with that song.



I accidentally found an online text of the Twilight book Eclipse and was so engrossed with it that I read it while exercising I still think that both of her love interests are completely abusive, but I do love a chintzy melodramatic gothic romance. It really is pretty delicious, all that "I crossed oceans of time to take Calc II with you."

I know what you're thinking: "A girl who uses LiveJournal and gets Twilight? Ironically?!? What a special snowflake!"

Olympia, Manet


Venus of Urbino, Titian

I don't know nearly enough to pontificate, but sometimes I think about what Olympia is supposed to mean in contrast with Venus and I get very sad.

I took up bubblegum to quit smoking, which was a cheap and surprisingly successful endeavor. The downside? Looking like this: I do however smell pleasantly of cotton candy or watermelon. I can't go anywhere at work without being chased by an alarming amount of men. I ate my lunch outside on the stairs and looked up to see three medical students watching me eat a salad for twenty-five minutes from three locations.One guy even followed me, jumped in front of me when I went to get the elevator, got in with me, and proceeded to ask why I looked so lonely at lunch. Between this, getting free parking and food, and getting followed home from the train by a man in a sweatshirt....I'm just a little put off by the opposite gender. I really never seek physical attention (or really think I'm all that good-looking), so this is a little...much. Work is fantastic, though. I genuinely love everything about it. Even the two hour drive home is nice. I'm just very sleepy and need to find stronger alternatives to coffee and soda. The website says that the drink is bisexual, but I doubt any man, even a highly ironic one, would drink this at work.