slaughterhouse 90210
“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.”
—D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Ben Found
This device isn't a spaceship. It's a time machine.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
I’ve had this song stuck in my head for days and I could not remember what it was called. Googling the lyrics was no help. It was killing me. I’m so relieved that I found it (by chance!).
It’s called “Following the Itinerary,” by Still Flyin’.
I made breakfast. Jealous?
The blue pins mark the locations of the grad schools to which I’m applying. Fall of next year, I will be living in one of these places.
This is what applying to grad school looks like
timewasting
Tonight has been dedicated to writing, as I prepare my grad school applications. I was taking a breather and noodling around on facebook. I decided to update my profile. The favorites were formerly blank. Prompted for a favorite movie, I thought of two that I’d watched recently and loved: Badlands, and Broadcast News. Also 3 Days of the Condor. Also The Player.
I decided to go into my Netflix account and check out the movies that I’d rated 5/5 stars. To be fair, I tend to overrate movies that I like, in order to train the recommendation algorithm more aggressively. Netflix tells me that I’ve rated a total of 721 movies. Of those, in alphabetical order, here are the ones that I gave 5 stars (thus, my “favorite” movies):
12 Angry Men
13 Going on 30
28 Days Later
The 39 Steps
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Adaptation
Air Force One
Alien
All the President’s Men
Amadeus
American Beauty
Anatomy of a Murder
Animal Crackers
Annie Hall
Army of Darkness
As Good As It Gets
Bad Education
Badlands
Barton Fink
Batman
Batman Begins
Beetlejuice
Being John Malkovich
The Big Chill
The Big Lebowski
Blow Up
Borat
The Bourne Identity
Boys Don’t Cry
The Brave Little Toaster
Brazil
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Breathless
Bridge on the River Kwai
Broadcast News
Brokeback Mountain
Chinatown
A Christmas Story
A Clockwork Orange
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Contempt
Cool Hand Luke
Dancer in the Dark
The Dark Crystal
The Dark Knight
Deliverance
The Descent
Dial M for Murder
Dogville
Don’t Look Now
The Dreamers
Duck Soup
Edward Scissorhands
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Fargo
Fatal Attraction
The Fifth Element
A Fish Called Wanda
Funny Ha Ha
Gates of Heaven
Gattaca
Ghostbusters
GoodFellas
The Graduate
Happiness
Harold and Maude
The Haunting
Heat
Heathers
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
High Noon
A History of Violence
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Ice Storm
In a Lonely Place
In the Bedroom
The Incredibles
The Innocents
The Jerk
Jules and Jim
Junebug
Jurassic Park
The Killing
Knocked Up
Kramer vs. Kramer
LA Story
Labyrinth
The Lady Vanishes
Laura
Lawrence of Arabia
Leaving Las Vegas
Little Children
Little Shop of Horrors
The Lookout
Lost in Translation
Magnolia
The Maltese Falcon
The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Man Who Would Be King
Manhattan
Match Point
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Men in Black
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Minority Report
Misery
My Life to Live
Network
The Night of the Hunter
The Nightmare Before Christmas
No Country for Old Men
North by Northwest
The Notebook
Open Your Eyes
Othello
Out of Sight
Palindromes
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Perfume
Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Story
The Price of Milk
The Princess Bride
Pulp Fiction
Rachel Getting Married
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raising Arizona
Ratatouille
Rear Window
Rebel Without a Cause
Requiem for a Dream
Road to Perdition
Roxanne
The Royal Tenenbaums
Rushmore
The Searchers
Secretary
The Seventh Seal
Shakespeare in Love
Shortbus
Singin’ in the Rain
Six Degrees of Separation
The Sixth Sense
Some Like It Hot
The Sting
Strange Brew
Strangers on a Train
Straw Dogs
A Streetcar Named Desire
Synecdoche, New York
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Talk to Her
Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense
Teorema
There Will Be Blood
The Third Man
Three Days of the Condor
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tootsie
Transformers
Twilight
Unforgiven
The Usual Suspects
Vertigo
Videodrome
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Witness
Wonderboys
Young Frankenstein
Edit: I decided to put in bold the ones that I’d consider “important enough” to put on facebook
Me and my brother Sam at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
Imagine here: a flat, vaguely whiney report about how I haven’t been posting lately because, gosh, I was traveling, and I just started a new job, and am consequently apartment-hunting, and my scooter was in the shop, and I’m applying to grad school, and it’s just a really hectic time right now, so hang in there, and soon there will be all kinds of wonderful new things here, if my life ever gets back to normal.
Imagine the indignity you’d feel, thinking to yourself: What, and my life isn’t beset by obstacles? Ben, yours are the luxurious “problems” of privileged youth. Whine to me when you’ve got a tapeworm like I do.
And then, imagine how the indignity would extend and expand throughout you like a spill: And wait a minute, why would you apologize for not writing? Just because I have a tapeworm, you think I’m doing so badly that I rely on you for happiness?
Do you miss Oomb with the kind of forlorn, horizon-scanning grief with which Penelope awaited Odysseus’s return? I thought you might. So I started this new blog to make you happy.
It’s going to be different from Oomb, in that nothing will be posted without comment. Assorted cyberjunk can be found here.
New blog post #1: I am in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My dad’s wedding is tomorrow. Either this mug is really big or my head is really small or likely both.
