Odds & ends, because it's all I feel up to:

Could tell that Elizabeth: The Golden Age wasn't exactly to a level with its predecessor, but it was too easy to lose myself in its costuming and set design. Those dresses! (swoon) ... sadly, all Clive Owen's subplots were dead weight, I felt, and I'm pained in saying so as I love Clive Owen dearly.

Alan Moore love fest continues: Top 10 #1 was great, eagerly awaiting book 2; League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #1 a fun read though more of a simple diversion.

<3 Heart Station, as expected.

Officially filled up on $4 gas last week, but too shellshocked to come to terms with it 'til now.

Didn't warm to Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett until her final, heartbreaking duet with Toby. Anthony and Johanna? Ugh. Johnny Depp, unsurprisingly, continues to amaze.

Am not feeling like jumping on GTA IV's bandwagon with the rest of humanity. Truly, when would I play?

newborns

These little guys were hanging out with their mother just outside my building's rear entrance (am not sure why, but immediately the cover of Beatles For Sale came to mind). They hadn't been there long, at least not in this state -- you could still see eggshells on the ground. Was immediately flush with newfound sense of renewal, and v. timely so... and oh, but they look cosy, don't they?

Just looking at them made me feel warm, too, and loved.

Thanks for the well-wishes, all. Really, and truly, mean it...

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Hit my deadline & have been laying v. low the past few days, a happy feeling indeed! Sweeney Todd is sitting  next to the television, waiting to be watched. Finally saw Juno. Persepolis was just so good, must see movie version stat -- if I can find it. Elsewhere on the to-consume list: Top 10 #1, Absolute Sandman #1, Heart Station, Lost Odyssey. Plan to try to fit as much as possible, plus relax, the next five weeks, inasmuch as one can do that whilst preparing to move.

Need to admit, though I feel uncool doing so, that I don't really get Daniel Clowes.

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paris

paris hilton

paris hilton's album has been on near constant repeat in my office at work. i'm so ashamed! but it's just so, so catchy -- plus you have to admire the sheer audacity required to record an unironic cover of rod stewart's "do ya think i'm sexy?"

recording my dreams again, almost daily; so far this week i've been a wrestling harajuku schoolgirl, a traveller in a miniature athens, a visitor in marrakesh. i've seen a bearded female hamlet battle a faceless android laertes on a stage of glowing, red concentric circles. i'm a tourist in my own head these days.

writing has taken a back seat to enchanted arms, but i'm done, finally done, free! and watching paul gross and julie cox in 20,000 leagues under the sea. feel undersea myself as rain & cold have returned to seattle, as they do, and last night went so far as to dream about being aboard a ferry as it suddenly submerged to the ocean floor. strange convergences.

what will i catch in my butterfly net tonight? i can hardly wait to see.

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janjan says i should share some of what she calls my boston lesbian music collection. which is neither all boston or lesbian, but whatever! here are some randomly-picked tunes you may have never heard of.

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strauss: vier letzte lieder, "beim schlafengehen"

lisa della casa

oftentimes, i think of this strauss song, which just may be my all-time favorite work in the classical genre. right up there with brahms' ein deutsches requiem and g major violin sonata; seems i'm unwittingly attracted towards the autumnal and/or elegiac, and maybe it's fitting to revisit such pieces now.

this is lisa della casa, in her prime -- her famous 1953 decca recording. no one else comes close.

now that the day has made me so tired,
my dearest longings shall
be accepted kindly by the starry night
like a weary child.

hands, cease your activity,
head, forget all of your thoughts;
all my senses now
will sink into slumber.

and my soul, unobserved,
will float about on untrammeled wings
in the enchanted circle of the night,
living a thousandfold more deeply.

-- herman hesse, translation emily ezust

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mahler: kindertotenlieder, pt. 5

kathleen ferrier

in this weather, in this raging wind,
i should never have sent the children out;
someone carried them away,
i didn't have anything to say about it.

in this weather, in this tempest,
i should never have let the children go out,
i was afraid they'd get sick,
now that’s just a futile thought.

in this weather, in this dreadfulness,
i should never have let the children go out,
i was afraid they'd die tomorrow,
that's not a problem now.

in this weather, in this tempest, in this wind,
they're at peace as if in their mother's house,
frightened by no storm,
protected by god's hand.

-- friedrich ruckert, translation celia sgroi

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