Sunday, Bloody Sunday

So I've had a pretty frustrating weekend/week/month. I'm not feeling so perky. In the interests of wanting to know if it works - is anyone else on the pill Yaz? I'm switching to it next week, because I told my doctor that I pretty much can't stop crying, so she wrote me up a prescription. I had a big read about Yaz when I got home and found out that there's such a thing as Premenstrual dysphoric disorder which - to be fair my doctor didn't seem too interested in going into my mood swings so much, so no I'm not formally diagnosed or anything - but it seems that the symptoms are me everyday. So is anyone else on Yaz, what's your experience, does anyone else have killer crying jags, or is it just me?

My weekend: For Valentines Day, we woke up and it was raining, so we stayed in bed watching Boston Legal for a few hours, which was nice. Then we went up to go on a trek to get some Italian. It turns out that all nice restaurants in the radius of our house do not open until 5pm. So we ate some cheap Indian which just made me long for my new favourite Indian place just up the road. Which was shut. I hate life.
So there was that. Today, once again I lay in bed all day, this time reading. I finished off A Child Called It by David Pelzer, which made me sick and reinforced my idea of becoming a foster parent someday. I get so upset to know that child, spouse, any abuse happens so often, it's happening right now, probably to someone you know. Once again...what the fuck is wrong with the world? And where is Dustin Hoffman with a bouquet of flowers to make me feel better? I'm glad I made that picture my desktop background.

Right now I've just finished reading a short story called The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I've been wanting to read it for ages and swiped it up on ebay. It was brilliant, creepy and really disturbed me. It's a short tale based on Gilman's own experiences with mental illness in the 1800s - a woman who is stricken with some type of "female hysteria" is taken by her physician husband to a house in the country to let her "absorb some air". She's confined to a room on the top floor with hideous yellow wallpaper. She is told to rest, and unable to indulge in any of her hobbies - writing - and as the days pass she begins to hallucinate watching the wallpaper.
I also watched a great movie along the same lines last night called Bug. A woman and a retired veteran are together in a motel room and they begin to see bugs. The first hour was slow and I wasn't sure where it was going or if the story really mattered but then things started to go awry. It was one of those movies that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since watching.
Another one that I recommend is a film called Funny Games. The original is German or Austrian, but the director remade it himself shot-for-shot in English to get a wider audience. It was powerful and intense and disturbing and all those other words you can think of, and just watch it, okay?

Anyway, here's something I wrote the other day while kind of pissed off. Directed at anonymous.

You're one of those people whose best years were in high school. Consequently you never left in your head.
You still have the same friends and refuse to entertain the possibility of making new ones. You listen to the same music and refuse to listen to anything else, old or new.
Every day is the perfect time to reminisce.
You continue to live exactly the way you did the first time you moved out of home. I know, I did it too. Eating nothing but noodles, ice cream for breakfast and cereal for dinner. Let the bowls pile up cause someone else is bound to clean them. You stay up really late like you're badass for doing it. Watching Rage till the sun comes up and drinking coffee cause there's no one to come and tell you to turn it off. Then you were old enough to drink, so lying on the kitchen floor with a bag of goon became familiar. You still live like your parents are gone for the weekend.
It's always bothered me to see old schoolfriends on facebook who live in the same place and see the same people. You're just like them.
You think you're independent because you've lasted this long. But you've gone nowhere, you've learned nothing and you're the same person you were at 17.

Dear Stephen King

I love you. Maybe one day we can have babies that inherit your talent. But I'll keep my last name when we marry, and our children can be called King-Llewellyn, so that they will carry on our name...well mostly mine...and bring great honour to my already awesome family that is descended from Welsh Princes. Princes, Kings, it was destined to be.

Perhaps you could take me under your wing and teach me all the secrets that you didn't put in On Writing - I know you have more secrets, because you wouldn't just give that shit away for free. I mean, yes I paid for that book. Do you have some kind of note card system, where everytime you think of something that is evil and soul-destroying, you write it down, then you put them all in a hat and draw out three?
"Okay let's see what the cards say today. There's a....clown who....eats children....and he lives in the sewers!"
"Okay we've got a...bad cop who....kills everyone in sight....but he's actually a flesh suit for an evil being!"
I'm pretty sure I have you figured out Stephen King.

But then you trip me up with your unbelievably horrifying stories that are so simple. Like being handcuffed to a bed for a weekend, or trapped in a hot car by a rabid dog. Can I just let you know, I fainted and threw up while reading Gerald's Game. That's how highly I think of you.
I don't think I've ever read one of your books and NOT loved it.

Sometimes I get carried away and I imagine you are the incarnation of the Lord here on earth, and I think, you sneaky sneaky deity, trying to blend in with us mere mortals. How else would you be able to put on paper that which harrows us and makes us praise you that we are not in such a situation (hello, Pet Sematary)?

In all seriousness I'd like to thank you for creating so many awesome female characters - that's probably my favourite thing about your stories, and perhaps the reason I find myself sucked into a different world so often whilst reading. I'm not alienated by a useless screaming head with no character - your women are plunged into terror, and they don't always keep their head, but they always go it alone and they're JUST LIKE ME. You've written heroes that are women, villians that are women, and victim-hero women who defeat the evil men in their lives. Thanks for reminding us all that girls can kill an evil clown with a sling-shot, murder an entire prom with their mind, or kidnap an author and keep him in her house. ;)

Also, I love happening upon random columns you've written, or interviews with you where you lay the smackdown. Not to mention that you live in the greatest house known to man.

To quote Oasis...I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now.

PS...You look like a character from Dr Seuss.
PPS...Here's what happens when I get bored and think about Cujo.

No ifs, ands or butts

This one's a few days late, but here is the 2008 wrap-up video for Target:Women starring my biggest girlcrush ever, Sarah Haskins. I've pretty much never known love until she came along.

PLEASE watch it! Target Women is Sarah's show on Current TV where she takes on mainstream media representations of women in advertising. Awesome ones to watch are the segments on bridal shows, cleaning ads, Twilight and poop. No one is funnier than Sarah Haskins. Perfect comedic timing? She has it.

Speaking of Twilight here's a cool albeit very long article from Bitch magazine taking a look at the way Twilight portrays abstinence and the totally unhealthy relationship between the two main characters, which is probably not a good thing to be portraying to gajillions of impressionable teenage girls. I haven't seen/read Twilight, and I don't really plan to. I've read a couple of articles about it in the same vein as this, and it pretty much seems like shitty fluff fiction with a bad message that stalking a girl is okay if you're a hot vampire. Also now I've read this cracked article of Twilight condensed, I won't ever have to read it or see the movie! I will say I am intrigued in the way I was about Harry Potter when I was younger - what is causing this mass hysteria?
Man do I ever hate Victorian upperclass vampires. I would say go read Anne Rice, but I'd rather have fantasies about a heterosexual vampire than go through fucking Interview with a Vampire again. That shit was latent and made me fear turning every page in case I'd stumble upon some vampire anal sex. I'm just not into it, sorry Anne.
I guess I'll stick to Stephen King. At the least he knows how to shove a good sex scene in the middle of a scary book.
Addendum re Robert Pattinson...
I would still hit that like the fist of a terrifying and mighty deity.

Reading is awesome

I finally got myself a bookshelf and was able to unpack all of my books from the darkness of the garage, so here's a list of my favourite books in no particular order. I do want to add that these favourite books are only the ones I own. There are so many books I am in love with that I can't remember right now because I'm transfixed by my collection. Pretty much every book I ever read is my favourite, because I don't continue reading a book unless it's awesome. Why waste time on crap lit?

The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
I have no problem reading this sweetly sad book over and over again. It's dreamy and I swear I can smell perfume when I read it, and it puts my mind in a haze for days after I'm finished.

The Beach - Alex Garland
Excellent fast-paced backpacking adventure that the movie with Leo was based on. Much longer and more involved and way cooler, makes me want to go to Thailand.

Still Life with Woodpecker - Tom Robbins
Princesses! Outlaws! Bombs! Redheads! True Love! This book's got everything and it's just...I don't really think I've ever come up with an apt description for it, but it's fantastic, and probably my favourite book.

Dante's Inferno
This mega-poem makes me wish I believed in God, so I could believe in Hell, so I could imagine Hell was as horrifying as this. And that some people I knew were headed there.
Simply amazing, and I think it's aged well.

He Died with a Felafel in his Hand - John Birmingham
While I was living in Townsville I would read this book every month (it only takes an hour) because it made me so homesick for Brisbane. I used to pair it up with a Nick Earls book (also based in Brizzie) and spend weeks afterwards being upset about living where I did. Awesome book about sharehousing around Australia. By the way, John Birmingham does a regular column for brisbanetimes.com.au here.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 - Hunter S. Thompson
Before this all I'd ever known of HST was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and that he was a drug-gobbling freak. This book introduced me to what he actually does, and the fact that he's actually the smartest most interesting drug-gobbling freak ever. I love HST. This book also kindled my interest in politics.

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
This is just one of those books that you can't help but love. Just amazing.

Now I'm going to try and choose only 2 of my favourite Stephen King books...

Gerald's Game
Actually made me throw up and pass out. Also I didn't sleep for 3 nights afterwards. Read it and see. I have a phobia of people touching my wrists, or not being able to move my arms.

Pet Sematary
There's horror, there's despair, there's disgust. It's all here. I cried, I didn't sleep, it was powerful.

So...read more people.
At the moment I am reading a piece of feminist sci fi, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin, which is interesting as I'm not really into sci fi but this is grabbing me.
I'm also reading Kingdom of Fear by HST which is sort of his autobiography, with a mess of letters, stories, memos and whatnot thrown in together. It's chaotic and I love it.