accordingtomoi

i love you, simon pegg. he agrees with me that zombies shouldn't run.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/04/television-simon-pegg-dead-set

GO OBAMA GO!!!

proposition 2: passed! (according to the LA times website)
propositions 4 and 8: still too close to call. :/

but obama won! YAY!!!!

hopefully this means america will be respected again!

dinosaur comics says i'm cool because i'm learning zulu! yay.

yesterday i had a really good day. i had a really nice conversation with a good friend on aim in the morning, and it's amazing how much difference a conversation with a good friend can make in your mood. then last night i went to see "tropic thunder" with a local friend. the movie was really funny...it totally lived up to the hype that i read about it. also, i picked up my essay that i wrote about the morality of homosexuality, and i got a really good score. so i was feeling quite good about myself. i guess that got transferred to my dreams, because i dreamed that i was in the audience for saturday night live, and i was picked to be involved in a skit that needed audience participation, and they thought i was so funny they kept me for the rest of the show. i mean, is that a cool dream or what? so cool.

today was good, too, except that i'm a little pissed because youtube isn't working over here. i hardly ever go on there, but i really want to see the snl skits about sarah palin. now i'm watching some on the nbc site, but this computer is sooo slooow, it takes like half an hour to watch a five minute video. and my brother sent me a stephen colbert video that i can't watch, and my sister-in-law sent me a sarah silverman video about the election that is "no longer available". :( you know i didn't even know to pronounce palin's name right? i was corrected when i heard my parents say it. i was pronouncing it "pal-in" instead of "pay-lin". that's how out of the loop i am, people. although i confess, i'm glad i don't have to be surrounded by all the election stuff. just reading about it makes me want to vomit.

just wanted to share this picture with you:
( cute cute cute )

i asked my parents to bring me bagels, refried beans (heh), reese's peanut butter cups, and the movie casablanca, because i have a friend here who really wants to see it. i'm thinking about asking for beef jerky too, because i've been telling people how much like biltong it is, and i want to compare it. anyone else have suggestions? i mean, there's LOTS of stuff i miss, but most of it would either need its own plane ticket, or it would go bad before it got here.

so i've been thinking lately about eating disorders. i read an an article on cnn about how the models at fashion week are not as skinny as usual; they "were up to sizes 2 to 4" rather than their usual zero. also, the latest winner of "america's next top model" was a "plus-size" model; she's a size 10. the article mentioned "thinspiration" (pictures to inspire people to become anorexic or bulimic), so i looked that up, and found tons of sites with really really skinny people looking for support, giving tips about how to hide it from parents, doctors, and anyone else who might try to take away their right to mold their body how they see fit. then today i saw this article in "bitch" magazine about how the "fat acceptance movement" generally closes their eyes and ears to eating disorders within the group.

the general consensus after reading all this? we live in a really fucked-up world when it comes to our relationship with food and weight. it's depressing. yes, it's great that a plus-size model won "antm", showing that you don't have to be really skinny to be seen as beautiful...but how about just getting rid of the "plus-size" model category altogether? the average woman is not a size 2-4, she's closer to a size 10. (actually, according to this site she's about a size 14, at least she was in 2004.) so, this means that the top fashion designers are designing clothes for women who are much smaller than most women, and calling women who are larger than that "plus-size". thanks a lot. it's no wonder the top celebs feel pressured to become anorexic: they want to wear the latest fashions. (or is it the celebs becoming anorexic that influences the fashion designers? never-ending cycle?) this leads to little girls everywhere reading fashion magazines and thinking there is something wrong with them because they're healthy. that is fucked up. sometimes those little girls grow up and try to convince themselves that they're above it, that they would love themselves no matter what weight they were, but i think it's very hard to actually get to a point where one can say that sincerely. it takes a strong woman to ignore the constant media telling them that they need to lose weight. (stronger than me.)

so my first thought looking at the sites with the girls who wanted to be anorexic was, wow that's disturbing. those girls are willing to risk their own health to fit a societal ideal of beauty. at the same time there's a conflict, because after all, if a person has autonomy over anything, its their own body, so shouldn't those girls be able to decide for themselves what that body looks like, even if it is unhealthy? i'm not saying i wouldn't do everything in my power to convince my daughter to eat healthy, but i can see their point. then there's the other side, the "fat acceptance movement"...is it any healthier to be working advancing the acceptance of extreme fatness, even at the expense of health? is there any difference between "stop judging my 500-pound body and let me live my life" and "stop judging my 85-pound body and let me live my life"?

and yes, i know this stuff applies to men as well, but guys, you have to admit women feel the pressure a lot more.

i'm just waiting for the day when "sexy" goes back to the marilyn monroe definition:
( curves!what a novel idea )

last night i had a dream that i went to the renaissance faire with my family. we had a booth (i don't remember what we were selling) and we got into a fight with the people in the booth next to us. then they tore down our whole booth. (it was like a tent thing, so all they had to do was move one of the poles.) then we tore down theirs. good times.

man my dreams are so nerdy! i had a batman dream a couple weeks ago too...not to mention the zombie dreams, the vampire dreams (no werewolf dreams yet)...i like them but people look at me weird when i describe them. what, you mean you've never had a dream where your mom became a zombie and you had to shoot her? awkward.

i finished oryx and crake, and it is one of my new favorite books. now i'm reading the alienist by caleb carr. i'm also supposed to have finished welcome to our hillbrow by monday, for my english class. i've already read the alienist twice already, but they didn't have any of the other books i looked for at the library. boo. i'll have to think of something new. in the meaning, reading a familiar book is like visiting an old friend, so yay for that. reading the alienist brings me back to when i wanted to become a forensic psychologist. good times.

To: people i knew in highschool
CC: anyone my age

please stop having babies. it freaks me out.

thanks,
accordingtomoi

i wrote this in my personal journal a few days ago, but i'm reposting it here.

Lately I’ve been reading a lot. I finished Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, I re-read The Princess Diaries, I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (for my English class), and now I’m reading Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, by Carol J. Clover, and Horror: The Film Reader, edited by Mark Jancovich. The horror books are fascinating. Clover is my new hero; I wish I was smart enough to write a whole book full of my insightful comments about horror films. It gave me lots of films to add to my “Movies to Watch” list. I really wish more women were involved in horror. I don’t get it. Women watch horror. I read a recent article that said a study of horror audiences revealed that women make up at least half, possibly more than half, of horror audiences these days. (I don’t remember how they figured that out, or how big of a sample they studied.) Women, such as Carol J. Clover, Barbara Creed, Linda Williams, and so on, make smart analyses of horror, so it’s not like women don’t “get” the genre. Women write horror novels. So why are there only a handful of horror films written or directed by women? Feminism actually has a large influence on many horror films since the movement started, so you would think women would be eager to have their own say. One argument may relate to what art critics call “the male gaze”, which is the theory (observation?) that in visual art, men represent those who look, and females represent those to be looked at. But that argument doesn’t hold up, because lots of women make other kinds of visual art. There are women who make films in other genres; not as many films as men do in those genres, but many more than women make in the horror genre. So what is it about the horror genre? The horror genre’s main focuses are sex and death, neither of which is such that only men are able to comment on it. Is there some sort of conspiracy (conscious or unconscious) in the film industry that makes producers afraid to back horror films created by women? Is the societal taboo so strong that women don’t even try? (I don’t really accept that theory.) It’s frustrating. Women make music, women write books, women make paintings, women sculpt, women write comics, and yet in the movie industry, one that is more than 100 years old (relatively young for an art form, but still, too long to be dominated by one group), women are still rarely in the creative seat. WHY?

Horror films directed by women:

Slumber Party Massacre (1982, Amy Jones…This was also written by a feminist, Rita Mae Brown, although the script was altered a lot from her original intention as a spoof on slasher films)

Slumber Party Massacre II (1987, Deborah Brock)

Slumber Party Massacre III (1990, Catherine Cyran)

American Psycho (2000, Mary Harron)

Pet Semetary (1989, Mary Lambert)

Near Dark (1987, Kathryn Bigelow)

This is all I know of. There must be more? In that same article that talked about the study of horror audiences, they advertised a contest geared specifically toward female horror filmmakers, in which they pick ten winners that are financed. This will be interesting to follow. I think it’s about time we started getting a female take on the genre. C’MON LADIES DON’T LET US DOWN!

Speaking of the film industry, a couple days ago I learned that a remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is being planned, with Marilyn Manson in the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. At first I was outraged by this. I mean, in general I am not against remakes. Sure, sometimes they’re terrible, usually they’re unnecessary, undoubtedly most of them are made simply because they are sure to make money riding on the proven success of an earlier film, but sometimes they turn out well. Take David Cronenberg’s The Fly or John Carpenter’s The Thing. These are two of the most critically hailed horror movies ever made. So remakes aren’t universally evil. And it’s not like films don’t constantly build on and copy aspects of other films as it is; a remake just makes it impossible to deny. But The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Is nothing sacred? Still, I’ve been thinking about it since I found out, and it might be interesting to see what they do to it. That’s not to say that I think it’s going to be good. RHPS is one of the most fun films ever made, and the fact that so much of it doesn’t make sense just adds to its charms. A remake will undoubtedly try to make sense of it, add a bigger budget, add big-name actors, make it more “mainstream”, and just generally suck the B-movie fun out of it. In addition, I highly doubt anyone will come close to comparing to the original character portrayals. I have high respect for Marilyn Manson, and I think he’s an obvious choice for the role, but no one can match Tim Curry. And who is going to take the place of Susan Sarandon? Meatloaf? Richard O’Brien? I can’t fathom why an actor would even want to touch such an iconic role as Riff Raff. The maker of the remake (I don’t remember who it was) mentioned wanting to “bring RHPS to a new generation” (I’m paraphrasing), but, uh, did he not notice how popular it still is? It’s not just the original viewers that dress up and go to midnight screenings. This generation already knows about it, and loves it. If his goal is to bring it into the mainstream, that goal is very misguided, and disrespects the cult legend that it has become. I’m going to try to stay optimistic, but I think the filmmakers should beware, they’re treading on very thin ice.

last night i saw the film "w delta z" aka "the killing gene". it was bad. the fact that they used a scientific equation for the title - making it look like "waz" - should have been an indication that it wasn't going to be great. honestly, horror film directors should stay out of science. it either makes it look cheesy or shows that they didn't really research it and got the science all wrong. (as a zoologist, i take this personally. i'm sure there are exceptions, though, where science/math oriented horror films have worked and were not super-lame, i'm just too lazy to think of one right now. also, it should be noted that i love science-fiction movies, so it's not like science should stay out of film altogether. just when you're reaching to think up cheesy premises for serial killers.) *sigh* i am losing faith in mainstream horror films these days. also, i really should stop bringing non-horror fans to horror movies...they all think i'm demented after seeing the films i suggest. same with dates. someday i will find someone who understands my taste in movies. SOMEDAY.

i wish i had seen "big nothing" (simon pegg!) instead, but by the time we got there, it was already 20 minutes in. boo. now i don't know if the people i went with will ever trust my movie suggestions again.

by the way, "biologically horrific" was the phrase that miss brittlepoetry used to describe me, way back when, since i'm into biology and horror. i still like it, heh.

i found oryx and crake at the library! yay! margaret atwood rocks.

hey, i put up new photos of victoria falls/botswana on http://www.flickr.com/photos/velvetworm/. check them out!

also, i saw "the dark knight" on tuesday and it was awesome! there were some things that annoyed me, the same things that annoyed me from "batman begins", but overall it was better than the first one. heath ledger was amazing as the joker. he totally outshone christian bale as batman. this joker was a lot darker and scarier and less predictable than jack nicholson's joker (who i also still love). yay for batman.

i should write a long post about traveling with kristen for two weeks, but i don't have the energy for it at the moment. later.

school started on monday. i'm taking an english class on "gender and postmodernisms" (mostly female south african writers), an ethics class, and a zulu language class. i was going to take a class called "plants and society" but apparently they've cancelled that one. so no science classes for me. it will be nice to read fiction for class instead of just textbooks. the ethics class is a lot like an intro to ethics class i took my first quarter at ucsb, but at this point i don't really care if i get credit for it.

I posted a new blog post on velvetworm.blogspot.com. Enjoy!

no one answered my admiration vs. attraction question. it's okay, i get it. talking about mutilating the genitalia of rapists is more interesting than romance. i'm with you on that one.

what is the difference between attraction and admiration? (purely hypothetical, of course...)

also, when looking up stuff about the movie "teeth", which looks AWESOME, i found stuff about "this". it's an "anti-rape female condom" that a woman wears, like a diaphragm, which is lined with microscopic barbs that attach to a guy's penis and must be surgically removed. cool idea, except it only works if the girl wears it in anticipation of being raped. what do you think, ladies? (or men, for that matter.)

helloooo. i spent all of yesterday in the johannesburg airport, so i'm writing about my birthday now. i'm 22! i'm a little excited about that, but not much. i mean, come on, nothing cool happens at 22. it's really awesome that i am turning a year older and seeing things i've never seen before at the same time. i wish my friends and family from america were here though. i'm in cape town right now, and i already like it better than pietermaritzburg. i kinda wish i'd applied to the university of cape town instead of ukzn. but there's no point in wishing that. it reminds me a lot of san francisco. of course, i said the same thing about durban, so maybe all big cities just remind me of sf. i miss sf, by the way. this is just reminding me how much i want to live there someday. anyway, it's kind of hot here, but they have mexican restaurants! MEXICAN! burritos! we haven't been to one yet (we only got here last night) but i am super-excited about that. we had a lot of confusion with the hostel (i'll write more about that in a blog when i'm back in pietermaritzburg) but now that that's all worked out, we can just relax and enjoy our remaining five days here. we plan to go to table mountain and lion's head today, and we're going to try to go to robben island and cape point later in the week. it's all kind of up in the air right now. i promise to take lots of pictures.

if you haven't noticed, i'm in a much better mood right now. i think how much i get out of being here is going to depend on how much i put into it and make the effort to have as much fun and see/do as many cool things as i can (and stop depending on other people to make plans). that's pretty much true of life in general, actually. lesson of the day.

happy easter!

Hey all. So I got a new laptop right before I left the US, and I didn't manage to transfer all of my music from my old one to my new one. I have less than half of my music. I thought I could stick it out, but I'm really missing it now. I don't think my parents could figure out how to send me my albums on the computer. SO, if any of you are feeling extremely generous, and have any of the following albums, and are willing to put them on yousendit, or just send it directly to my e-mail (eva_carroll@umail.ucsb.edu), I would really really really appreciate it! In addition to my eternal gratitude, and an increase in good karma, I'll send you a postcard from South Africa, and/or send you any of my albums that I have here.
xoxoxo Eva

( Albums I have to share )

( Albums I humbly ask for: )

p.s. I would also like to stress that I really do have all these albums on my old computer, and this is not just an elaborate ploy to steal music from you guys. Thanks.

hi all! i am in south africa now, safe and sound. i just wanted tell you that i've started updating my other blog, http://velvetworm.blogspot.com. i'm probably going to update that much more often than livejournal, so fyi. also, they block facebook on campus until 6pm, so i've only gone on that once since i've gotten here, when i was in an internet cafe. they configured my computer to get wireless on campus, but not in the dorms, and i'm not usually on campus past 6pm. (it's dangerous to walk back there after dark, because my dorm is kind of far.) so i know people have been writing on my wall and stuff, but i haven't been able to reply to them. sorry about that.

also, if people could leave their addresses in the comments, or e-mail them to me if you'd rather (eva_carroll@umail.ucsb.edu), that'd be great! that way i can send postcards and stuff. this is my address here, if for whatever reason you feel like sending something to me:
Eva Carroll
c/o The International Office
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Private Bag X01
Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg, 3209, South Africa

For items that need to be hand-delivered (whatever that entails), use this address:
Eva Carroll
c/o The International Office, Milner Road, off King Edward Avenue
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg, 3201, South Africa

so apparently there was a superbowl yesterday? i just heard about it today. lol. and i'm sure "lost" and "desperate housewives" are really great too. *sigh* i am so out of the loop.

holy crap holy crap holy crap i leave TOMORROW. 2:30 pm is check-in, then i leave LAX at 5:20pm. starting at about 3:30am CA time, i'll be in london for about 6 hours, then i get a flight to johannesburg that will be almost 11 hours. then another hour flight to durban, where a bus will take us to pietermaritzburg. i'll get to pietermaritzburg about 32 hours after i leave LA.

yeesh. i hope i meet someone fun to talk to on the way over. here's hoping the airline people don't confiscate any of my stuff.

goodbye usa! i'll miss you!

geez i haven't posted for more than two weeks. i guess my life really has been that boring lately.

10 days left! 10 friggin' days! i could hardly sleep last night because i was thinking about everything. i don't know else to say about it because i've been thinking and talking about it for so long now. so that's it. i'm just excited. and scared. i don't think i've ever been this scared about anything, but it's a good kind of scared.

today i'm going to santa barbara to stay with the always lovely brittlepoetry for a few days. i have been so bored here, i could use a change of scene.

well it's another exciting new year's eve for me. i'm watching "flight of the conchords" on tv because for some reason my parents have hbo. i got sick of watching ryan seacrest. i was invited to go to a hookah bar tonight but for whatever reason i didn't feel like going out. i would be watching a horror movie right now, but some family is visiting, and we just had a conversation at dinner about how they hate gore. so.

i looked at my resolutions from last year and they were just to stop biting my nails, and to get good grades. i've done pretty good in the grades area. my GPA was over 3.0 every quarter, and my overall GPA is up to 3.08. i didn't stop biting my nails, but i make that resolution every year. resolutions aside, 2007 was pretty cool. highlights(not in order): my niece turned one. i turned 21. my friends came back from living abroad. i lived with awesome roommates. i met some really cool people. (i wish i had met them earlier.) i met kimya dawson and saw her sing. sweeney todd. juno. hot fuzz. pan's labyrinth. grindhouse. hairspray. the host. lots of gory horror movies. seeing david cronenberg speak. some fairly cool classes. retaking organic chemistry and getting a B+. seeing a gray whale calf jump into the air lots of times. getting paid to go to the beach. at one point, simultaneously having three jobs. holding a tarantula, a millipede, and an australian walking stick. seeing lots of cool animals and actually knowing something about them. going to bars and getting hit on by old guys. getting into buffy. seeing "rocky horror picture show" in the theater.

there were some crappy times too, but i think those are less important in the long run.

i already know 2008 is going to be amazing for me. i am going to have so many cool stories by the end of it. so i'm not going to make any resolutions, but as for what i would love to see happen (besides all the cool things that are going to happen anyway), i would like to stop biting my nails (maybe this will be my year! lol) and lose 35 pounds. i went to the doctor and was weighed, and according to body mass index standards i am 35 pounds overweight. that puts me barely into the obese category. so i'm not concerned with being beautiful (i don't think i'm ugly, even if i am obese), but i would like to be healthy. i refuse to make that a resolution, though, because i don't have a definite idea what food is going to be in my daily life in south africa, and i don't want to limit my experience there in any way. i am sick of being overweight, though. i've been overweight for like, 10 years or so. i don't want to dread shopping. i don't want to dread passing mirrors. i don't want bad body image to limit my life, and even if i do lose 35 pounds and still have body image problems, i can say, well at least i'm healthy. and i think this year will be awesome in so many other ways, it would just be fitting if this year i finally lost some weight. BUT my top priority is to have a full experience in south africa.

so happy 2008 everyone!

i finally got all my grades back (they were taking their sweet time) and i ended up with a 3.15 GPA for the quarter! yay! even the class i was really worried about, that i was sure i would get a C or maybe even lower in, i got a B! the professor must have been feeling really nice while grading. and/or drinking. either way, yay for me! all i asked for was to keep my overall gpa over 3.0, so i'm extremely happy with how it turned out.

now i'm in fresno. bored, mostly. we got our christmas tree on monday and decorated on tuesday. i've hung out with my two closest friends here, but they both have work, so they can't do much. i've been shopping. people get so stressed out and rude during the holidays! when i was shopping with my friend, we honked at this lady that was waiting a really long time for a car in front of her to leave so she could take the spot, and she flipped us off! then she actually got out of the car (she was on her cell phone too) and shouted at us, "i'm waiting for this car! YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?" sheesh. way to spread the holiday cheer, lady. anyway. i also went to lunch with my mom, and saw all her work friends, and had to say where exactly i was going abroad, when, for how long, and what i was going to study, about 15 times. so that's what i've been doing.

so far it's just me and my parents, although some family came over on wednesday night. tonight my brother and his family are coming. sadly my other brother is in brazil and won't be here for christmas. but there will be lots of other people. should be fun.

here are the details for the kimya dawson show...

sunday december 9th
kimya dawson
clitorectomy and the mutilators
watercolor paintings
Mike xvx
@ the pink mailbox house
6668B Pasado Rd.
Goleta, CA
all ages 2pm
donations will be collected

it's gonna be awesome! :D

edit: oh and also!



teehee.