Slap my hair in a bun, give me a pair of glasses and call me Giles Wesley

Wesley is just so much cuter. And less inclined to concussions from being head-bonked, though, surprisingly, more susceptible to gunshot wounds, slit throats, and eventual death. Also, he’s a rogue demon hunter.

So, as part of my non-New-Year’s-resolution — the learnin’ bit — I’ve decided to go to my local library, ask for the British librarian to check if I’m the Chosen One and get kicked out and get books on anything vaguely related to my non-vampire novel. This includes, but is not limited to: dreams, memory, death, Jungian archetypes, and motorcycle maintenance.

Much to my surprise, a vague perusal of the library gave me this: On Dreams and Death, a book about Jungian interpretations of death dreams with an Egyptian mythology chaser. Ha! Perfect! Take that, Internet! Good ol’ fashioned research once again proves to be the victor, playing the Germans in this re-enactment of WWII, Risk-style.

Hey. Get your manky paws off of my little plastic battalions, huh? I’m trying to symbolically show the reasons for the brutality of 20th century skirmishes by comparing it to the effects of the Industrial Revolution and the penalties of compartmentalization on the human psyche. Oh, that’s not how we play this game? God, I just thought it was so boring, that modernization and Jungian archetypes must somehow figure in.*

Sometimes I feel as though I’m growing stupid, so I have to learn things in order to combat this. This sentiment, coupled with years of indoctrination at the hands of IB/AP/Honors schooling, means that I’ve started taking notes on this book. Notes. Cornell style for no reason other than the fact that I want to pretend I’m still in school so that my boring life is less pathetic. And because I don’t want that nifty callus on my right middle finger to go away.

So, what have I learned? A little bit about Egyptian death ceremonies, the fact that people dream really weird shit right before they die and that the pun Forever Jung is still just as hilarious as it was to me before this little adventure.

*While playing the game of Life I took the little plastic men and women and made a four-car pile up with many, many victims. Look! Here’s a picture!

The only Russian phrase I understood when I saw a bootleg Day Watch back in 2006 was "Where's my mommy?" "Your mother's dead!"

*No real Life figurines were harmed in the making of this production. But they were scarred mentally.


Imagine the poor little children of these plastic people, the blue-and-pink strewn body parts, the polymer intestines! Oh, the horror! The humanity!

Happy New. . .whatever

I’m not a fan of the New Year resolutions. Why decide to change something NOW when there are gazillions millions okay, fine, 364 other days (save for leap years) to do that?

It just so happens that this year the impetus to finish a novel (not even the one I started ten plus years ago, but just a novel, and it could be one that I haven’t even thought of yet) came around the time of the new year. It’s not a resolution, it’s just something I’ve decided to do. Around now. You know what? SHUT THE FRONT DOOR.

Another new-thing-I-want-to-do-that’s-in-no-way-connected-to-a-resolution-or-a-new-year? Learn things. I learned that learning things makes you have wacktastic dreams. DOUBLE SCORE ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE SKY. I research things for the novel about dreaming and then dream strange things that can also be used in my novel. Are you pondering what I’m pondering? Yes? Then let’s go learn Yiddish for that opera!

And now for something completely different: I will never go see the movie No Strings Attached. I see ads for it everywhere. I try to listen to music on Pandora and there’s ads for it every five minutes. NATALIE PORTMAN, YOU ARE USING UP ALL OF YOUR GOOD ACTRESS POINTS FOR SHIZZ LIKE THIS. Stop it or I’m going to make you watch that horrible dialogue scene between you and Hans Christian Andersen Hayden Christensen over and over and over. And over.