Donnie Darko, Natural Born Killers, and My Mother's Reaction To Pretty Woman

Let's say someone hasn't seen "Donnie Darko" yet and feels the burden of this ignorance and bought the movie on sale at Meijer's a coupla weeks ago.

Now, without spoiling this person -- who understands that the movie is both dark and somewhat disturbing -- how late could she conceivably watch this movie and still sleep? Like - how much decompression would she need - how many hours - before she'd not be creeped/depressed? Take into account that she is heavily over-identifying as of late with everything and watching "Solaris" - a movie only disturbing in its awfulness, sparked off over 6 weeks of nightmares followed by insomnia. Oh, and she is me, of course.

I am so vague. Also, my mother was right. I am impressionable. She wouldn't let me see "Pretty Woman" when I was 15 because she knew I wanted to be an actor and she was afraid I would see this movie and run off to Hollywood to be a whore. At the time I was offended. Now, I give my mom props for recognizing that I sometimes believe everything I see. It sucks that she didn't know me well enough to know I would not fall for that movie. No. But she did realize that I would fall for a movie. She was just censoring the wrong genre.

One time in college, this guy I was seeing lent me and my roommate his cable decoder box for a few months. It descrambled all the channels and at first this was very cool.

Then it became not so cool. See, I am a little obsessive, just a smidge, and it became important to me that - since we had this decoder for only a limited amount of time - that we not watch any free TV channels at all. That would be wasteful. Instead I left the TV on - even when normally I would have it turned off- 24 hours a day to pay-per-view. PPV just happened to be running "Natural Born Killers" that month. I have no idea how many times I have seen NBK in a row - but after awhile it does put you in this unreal state. I didn't grab my boyfriend and go on a cross-country shooting spree - but I think I thought about it. Especially when I had to wait on these tables full of messy children on Sunday afternoon and the post-church crowd will run your ass off fetching sodas, but do they tip for shit? No. They bring the whole family and someone else from the church to the nice restaurant I work at to show off that they are picking up the check and their wives order the filet as a fill-let, hard "t" and they want ketchup for their sirloin and after all of this and the 3 year old that screams and crumbles up 3 packages of crackers on the floor, you will be lucky to clear 10% from their final bill. And you know this from the moment they sit down, but you think maybe this time will be different. And this time it is different. They leave you $4 on an $80 tab and you have to think that, well - gee, the IRS is taxing me on at least 8% of my sales, so I actually just lost money there and probably should not have gotten out of bed today.

In that moment you can heavily emphathize with Mickey and Mallory. But you don't kill anyone - even if you are listening to the movie now in your sleep, because you can't turn off the TV since you are getting the movie for free.

This is why I don't believe in the lawsuit that NBK made that teenage couple crazy and go on a spree - I can't remember where. I'm gonna say Texas or Louisiana and I bet I'm right just on the guess. No one has seen that movie more in a shorter period of time, then me. And I was 19 at the time - so still a teenager. And while, I was disturbed by repeated viewings, I was kinda disturbed before I ever saw the movie - the movie just gave me images to play with in my head.

Also - the movie gave me "Sweet Jane" which was just one of my favorite songs from that spring. Then Rory danced to it with Dean on Gilmore Girls and part of me died. They cannot have that song. So wrong.

So, if you know me - should I even watch DD right now or should I wait for a less frenetic emotional time? I don't want to know what it is about - so no specific spoilers - but I guess I need to know if it is disturbing just in a general sense and all will be fine once I see it, or is there anything in it that will really bug me and I should just wait?

God, I think I am paranoid. But "Solaris" messed me up bad and I don't wanna go through that again.

Vidders, Vid- Wanters: Together For a Good Cause

This could be great or at the very least interesting, which is also great and sometimes better:

The basic idea of the vid auction is this: a vidder puts up an offer to make a vid to order, with whatever conditions she feels are appropriate -- e.g., listing what fandoms she'll work in, how the song will be chosen (both parties should be happy with the song, but beyond that, either one can be responsible for coming up with suggestions), how much input the bidder gets to have into clip choices -- and then we hold an online auction, with the proceeds to go to the con.


http://www.livejournal.com/community/vividcon/9598.html

I get a lot of emails, although not as many as I used to, with vid ideas - and I consider all of them, but rarely ever have I made a requested vid. I think "Closer" might be the only one. I've also been on the other side where I have wanted a vid made and I have wanted a particular vidder to do it and I have harped and begged and groveled until it was done (Thanks Wendy!!)

This is like taking out the strong-arming and replacing it with bidding. And I am getting good a bidding with all my eBay experience and all. I won a book over there.

Trimmed The FList

I just trimmed over a hundred LJs off my Flist. I had too. I promised. Okay, that wasn't passive-agressive, now was it? Here is me taking responsibilities for my actions: I got to wily-nily with the adding to the list and it was out of control. The fact that I just cut over 100 and I still have an Flist that is unwieldy is pretty indicative of that and at this point filters just are not cutting it.

Last week something important happened and I didn't catch it or see if posted until yesterday. Well, that sucks, and then I get behind and I'm all avoidy of my own reading list and how freaky is that? I mean - I am avoiding, in essence, me. Well, my choices and actually it is totally in character for me to want to avoid dealing with my own actions.

But I want to be manageable, so there have been changes. To tell you the truth - after a while I just started clicking the delete button - at one point I narrowly missed deleting Cappy and she is my sister. I just can't keep all these names straight and half of them sound the same and without the icon to let me know who is who I just went for an overall numbers reduction. If you think I cut you in error, well let me know. I'm certain that is it. Other LJs I cut because we are not in the same fandom, principally, anymore and/or we don't overlap in the fandoms we share. Let's face it: we just don't have anything to really say to each other. Dissenting opinions are great, but right now I am looking at numbers and needing a reduction.

I rarely lock a post. If I do it is because it is usually very personal and private and no one really wants to read those anyway. If you do - well first, bless you, and second - let me know and I'll add you back.

I feel kinda sick to my stomach. Seriously, if I removed your lj and it bothers you (and it shouldn't - this is *not* a personal thing at all - this is about me being stressed out because I went nuts adding) but - if you are bothered, let me know as a frank and open dialogue is very important. For something.