Things I care about recently and right this second also

<--- Pastry humor. Dig it.

In an attempt to start writing again with some sort of routine (or at least semi-regularity), I'm spending the day in front of my laptop. This, of course, is not unusual, but what is rare is that I will decidedly not be refreshing the bookface and Etsy with alternating clicks in four-second intervals.

Instead, I'm blogging nonsense.

I've been out of touch for oh-so long, and I have all of these opinions, you see. I just opine all the live-long day. And they're piling up around here. The opinions. Here goes [a whole lotta] nothing.

STUFF I LIKE A LOT LATELY:

The Bay Bridge.
I've been in love with this beastly bastard for years now, but I find that it's even better when I'm not using it. And now no one it using it. It's just sitting there, just this big useless thing. We live right at the base of it and it's hard to explain the oddness of not hearing traffic at all ever. It's like growing up in rural Iowa--when's the last time you fell asleep and could hear the sound of cars if you tried to hear them, if you considered how long it's been since you started ignoring the sound of traffic?

You just sit there and look pretty. The stupid, lazy bridge as seen from the roof.
Still, Bay Bridge, I prefer you to the Golden Gate any day. Most. Overrated. Bridge. Ever.

Movies About Sewing And Other Stuff.
Two excellent excellent films everyone in the world has to see right god damned now.

Bright Star is a movie about sewing that takes place in 1818 [sic]. The movie is also about a hipster poet named John Keats who was basically like the Dan Brown of the 1820s, except that unlike Dan Brown, Keats died before seeing any of his work adapted for the screen. Ok, but really: a lovely little romantic, Romantic biopic. With poetry. And long, slow sewing scenes. Because I'm a geek, I've been obsessively reading up on this romance and a lot of the film's dialogue is taken from the letters Keats wrote to Fanny (though tragically, all of the letters from Fanny to Keats were destroyed after his death, as per his request).

Oh, by the way, things the movie messed up: the word Dandy didn't exist in 1818, am I correct? And the film fails to mention that PERCY 'd-bag' SHELLEY was the one who invited Keats to Italy (where he [spoiler?] died, thanks Percy). I'm so tired of pro-Percy propaganda films, but this one apologizes with pretty dresses and lovely poetry.

Coco Before Chanel is about two of my most favorite pastimes in the world: sewing stuff and smoking cigarettes. I'm not going to go into detail here about all of the political untidiness the filmmakers get out of dealing with by making a film about Coco's early life, but suffice it to say that this film is gorgeous, sultry, meticulous, and agonizing. The heroine's relationships with clothing made me fall in love alongside her and her relationships with men made me want to pluck her from dark bedrooms and bad decisions. And the lines, oh, the perfectly stitched hems and pleats and collars.

Perfume.
I'm not going to attempt to write about perfume because I don't know how and the other member of this household does it much better than I ever could. I did just want to mention, for all the bibliophile geeks I love, that CB I Hate Perfume's In The Library is an extraordinary little thing for your nose's brain to love. Let me clarify: this is the scent of bibliotopia. This perfume captures the scent you imagine old stacks to emanate. "You" here implying anyone who has ever paid thousands of dollars to sit in classrooms and talk about Jane Austen with other like-minded, aspirational youths of all ages. No real library smells charmingly and romantically like aging leather and dusty pages. This smells like you'd imagine an archival basement to smell as you ran a fingertip over a gilded title of a first-edition book that you love. Libraries don't smell like that. In fact, here is a short description of the scents of the three libraries in which I've spent embarrassingly too much time:

The University of Iowa: Twizzlers, Red Bull, last night's Long Island iced teas transfused in the sweat of 19-year olds (tmi?), the sort of sexual energy that gets frat houses kicked off campus, florally supermarket shampoo

St. Mary's College of California: Rockstar Energy drink, shitty coffee, sunscreen, that sort of chemically smell that rises from non-shag carpet in direct sunlight (sort of like artificial static electricity)

The University of Chicago: when's the last time you showered?, Indian food, benzoyl peroxide, burning dust on hot-to-the-touch radiators, dry erase markers, evaporating stipends

Anyhow, buy In The Library if you love books or want to love books or want them to love you or want to be loved by or be lovers with lovers of beloved books. This is not a guarantee, but seriously. Make your library a better-smelling place.

Television's Reminders That You Could Be Failing More Severely But Aren't.
Oh my god, if you haven't watched all of the (available online!) episodes of A&E's reality show Hoarders, go right now and watch the shit out of it! And then come back and read the rest of my blog!

Have you heard the joke about the seven-year-old dyslexic hoarder with attention deficit hyperactive disorder? That's because it's not a joke. It's episode number five!

I'm also way too into watching people fail on Project Runway and Top Chef but who cares. There's a tv show about people who keep way too much useless shit for way too long! Oh my god, it's incredible!

Have we had enough for now? I think we have.