Who Says Money Can't Buy Happiness?

1 Blockbuster going out of business + $80 of hard-earned moneys = cinema happiness.

You know when people say "It was like being a kid in a candy store"? This is when a movie nerd like me says it. All those years when my family and I were actual card-carrying Blockbuster members (instead of the netflix consumers we have become. I mean, the nearest movie store was half an hour away; it was bound to happen), I dreamed of being able to walk down those aisles and just grab every movie I loved off the shelves and take them home forever and ever and ever. So as guilt-riddled as I felt showing up for the first time in years for the sole purpose of cleaning them out, it was a total dream come true. The sales clerks were good sports about it, even though I did buy Back to the Future 1, 2, and 3 out from under one of them (I didn't have the heart to tell him they're for my girlfriend. I'm sure I'll enjoy them too).

My glorious 15 or so new acquisitions + me buying Spaced online = happiness

So who says money can't buy you happiness? I can curl up with Simon Pegg, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and my girlfriend (hi, honey!) all in one weekend. Who could want anything more?

Illustration Friday - Swarm

It's been a while since I've felt inspired by Illustration Friday. The word this week reminded me of a series of drawings I always wanted to do but never did, so I finally let one of these strange visions out. Lord only knows where or when I first started having this idea of butterflies as things of menace as well as beauty, but it's certainly been with me for at least the past few years. Someday I'll have to scan some of my etchings from my last year in art school. I started writing this whole visual fairytale about an androgynous girl being attacked by a faceless, tuxedoed magician figure and his butterflies...

They really do swarm, though. Seriously, type monarch butterfly swarm into google image search. Then tell me you wouldn't be terrified if you saw that gorgeous insect army descending.

Ads.

I am endlessly amused (and somewhat frustrated) that facebook is apparently convinced that I am: Christian, married/engaged, and pregnant. How it got any of these impressions is completely beyond me. I have tried to discourage it, repeatedly indicating that these ads are uninteresting to me, and yet they persist.

For the record, I am in fact: agnostic, of Jewish blood and heritage, in a relationship but neither married nor engaged, and absolutely not even a little bit pregnant, nor even in the market for any kind of sperm getting near me for any purpose.

Maybe since facebook is now apparently EVERYWHERE, not just on its own website (seriously, it creeps me out that I even have the option of "liking" things on facebook when I'm nowhere near the facebook website), they'll read this blog and get the hint. More likely, they'll just see the buzz words Christian, married, engaged, and pregnant, and inundate me with even more irrelevant ads.

Like a Chicken With Its Head Cut Off...

I can't help it. Every time I go to Petsmart, I fall in love. But c'mon, wouldn't you? Look at her! There's even a little note on her cage saying to please not remove her bed.

{I think my surviving cat is jealous of how much I want this cat. As I was typing this post, she chased and devoured a cricket (pretty much my favorite insect) right in front of me. Beast.}

How to Recognize an Awesome Girlfriend

This weekend, the only thing I really felt like doing was watching How to Steal a Million. It was one of the first movies I grabbed when I was helping my mom's library dispose of its VHS collection. We have two VCRs in my house, one of which is very reliable, and the other of which is total crap that is constantly malfunctioning and has a history of eating tapes. So obviously, I chose to watch it on the crap VCR, and it was instantly sucked in, chewed up, and spit out in a tangled mess. Being all PMSed up, and really loving that movie and wanting to see it, I was very upset. Two days later, I get a dvd copy in the mail, ordered by my girlfriend :)

Why procrastination is stupid.

So I'm a hopeless facebook addict. Not so much for the social networking (who are these people again?), but for the games. Games like the highly addictive Restaurant City, which recently had a contest for Halloween-themed recipes. Which I slaved over all day Sunday, making four totally awesome recipes, the last of which I finished several hours before the deadline. Not thinking to check just how much earlier midnight happens in Greenwich Mean time as compared to when midnight happens in my time before proceeding to dick around for a couple of hours afterward instead of just posting the damn things to the forum. So when I finally went to submit my long-since finished work, I found that I had missed the deadline by an hour and a half and the forum was now closed. Thus demonstrating why procrastination is incredibly, painfully stupid. But just because Restaurant City is denied my Adobe Illustrator-driven "genius" doesn't mean you should be! Enjoy my spooooooky, delicious-looking efforts.

Contacts

So my old phone finally slipped into the realm of "beyond repair" when it decided to no longer connect to the charger. I did manage to get all of the pictures and such that I wanted off of it, but I didn't have enough battery to download the software that would be required to move my contacts to my new phone. So I copied them all down manually, and in doing so I realize just how many numbers I've been carrying around for the past six years or so that not only do I never use, but don't even remember the people they belonged to. Seriously, did I ever know an Ashley well enough to put her number in my phone?? The last Ashley I remember was in High School, and I didn't even have a cell phone then. Eric? Justin? Who the hell are these people?? Not to mention the names I do vaguely remember but have no idea why I was given their numbers. Like Jessika. We had one class together, and we got along to the point that we traded prints (it was a printmaking class), but we weren't friend to the point of needing each other's numbers. Or Carrie. Again, one class together, maybe two. The only thing I really remember about her was that once when we were talking her false (but I didn't know it was false at the time) tooth came flying out of her mouth.

I was kind of sad to see that I didn't have Malcolm's number in my phone, even though I'm sure I'll never need that number again, and I only used it maybe twice when I had it. But she was a really cool chick, and she kept turning up in the strangest places. I guess that was my old, old phone. Too bad.

Well, at least this phone was laid gracefully to rest and didn't take a bath like the other two that had to be retired. Farewell, my little dinosaur. Hello, newfangled contraption with all your fancy, shiny, flashy things.