Blade Runner 2: More Blade.

october 14th, 2017

Sweet Vlad and i went to see the new Blade Runner movie last night. Here are all the spoiler‑laden tweets i restrained myself from tweeting:

it's fun to see Robin Wright make jokes and say like "runnin" and "goin" a real workaday lieutenen
6:45 PM - Oct 13 2017

the new Voight-Kampff test is dumb. CELLS. CELLS. CELLS. 6:50 PM - Oct 13 2017

you know what this movie needs more of? more SHIVVING women in the belly 7:03 PM - Oct 13 2017

ok that was a joke but another woman just took a shiv in the belly (gross) 7:05 PM - Oct 13 2017

LUV seeing Barkhad Abdi as The Finn from Neuromancer et al! 7:38 PM - Oct 13 2017

they TEASE live goats but they never show any this movie doesn't have the Goa/UTS 7:39 PM - Oct 13 2017

imagine this same movie but using male sexuality. male robo prostitutes. electric boyfriends. butts and wangs 8:01 PM - Oct 13 2017

soft male body w lingering shots of his butt and wang, mirrored-contacts Claire Danes caresses his forehead, shivs him in the belly 8:01 PM - Oct 13 2017

Claire Danes replaces Jared Leto (obv) 8:02 PM - Oct 13 2017

Robin Wright texts Ryan Gosling, "you up?"
Robin Wright in Ryan Gosling's kitchen, whispers the secret password that makes him take his clothes off
(we wish) 8:19 PM - Oct 13 2017

his new name is JOE?? why not ADAM why not ISAAC why not SIDDHARTA why not RYAN 8:23 PM - Oct 13 2017

you know what this movie needs more of? more bare female butts 8:24 PM - Oct 13 2017

you never see hairy lady butts in film. but they're real and people like them. don't ask how i know 8:25 PM - Oct 13 2017

now we're in the radioactive ruins of Las Vegas. you know what Las Vegas has now? giant statues of naked women 8:38 PM - Oct 13 2017

what if they were statues of naked men kneeling, backs arched, in thrall to each other? 8:39 PM - Oct 13 2017

... the perfect hiding spot in this fragile masculine world. the replicants could form an intentional community and chill there forever in peace 8:39 PM - Oct 13 2017

Ryan Gosling sticks his hand in a beehive, very fearlessly robotic, a big setback in his quest for a human soul 8:40 PM - Oct 13 2017

we're not gonna see even a little of Ryan Gosling's wang in this movie are we. we're not gonna see his bare FOREARMS 8:42 PM - Oct 13 2017

geeze ok finally it's DECKARD TIME let's get this blade RUNNIN 9:10 PM - Oct 13 2017

Ryan Gosling smashes his whiskey glass to the floor. "you're a better dad to that DOG than to your own SON, DAD!" 9:29 PM - Oct 13 2017

Harrison walks away, dog follows. Ryan Gosling screams, "you're a better dad to the BEES!!" 9:29 PM - Oct 13 2017

Ryan Gosling's ringtone is Peter's motif in Peter and the Wolf and he's reading Nabakov ... 9:50 PM - Oct 13 2017

... but don't go readin into that! this is not a movie that rewards reading 9:51 PM - Oct 13 2017

Ryan Gosling getting flirts from a giant naked hologram, this movie teases some Japanese giant porn but they don't have the GUTS to show it 10:10 PM - Oct 13 2017

people like Japanese giant porn. don't ask how i know 10:10 PM - Oct 13 2017

Ryan Gosling drowns Rachel T-1000. i get that the replicants bleed but do they actually breathe? air? 10:45 PM - Oct 13 2017

overall i'm surprised that it's so much blam-blam shoot-to-kill replicants and not, like, targeted EMP cannons 10:46 PM - Oct 13 2017

well it's been five hours and we're at the end of the movie when Ryan Gosling dies a Roy Batty death in the snow having delivered Harrison Ford to a woman he loves 11:45 PM - Oct 13 2017

and then afterward Bubble Girl Hera Agathon links up with the robo resistance i guess 11:45 PM - Oct 13 2017

shout out to some cinematic references: 12:01 AM - Oct 14 2017

shout out to Her — electric girlfriend hiring a realspace prostitute 12:01 AM - Oct 14 2017

shout out to Ghost — same scene 12:01 AM - Oct 14 2017

shout out to Mad Max — feral children greeting the wanderer 12:02 AM - Oct 14 2017

shout out to The Dark Knight Rises with the tricky flashback, little boy is a little girl ohhhhh don't you feel like a gender essentialist now viewer GOTCHYA 12:03 AM - Oct 14 2017

shout out to the actors, set designers, and technical people, Blade Runner 2 is a dumb movie but that's not on you 12:04 AM - Oct 14 2017

Harktober.

october 9th, 2017

i cut off my bangs into a nice little choppy fringe this morning. It was liberating like it always is when i cut my hair. People sometimes talk about cutting your own hair like it's illegal. Like someone will call the cops on you. Or that you need to be an expert or have expert equipment. But you can just do it with child safety scissors in the bathroom on a whim.

Today my dad is giving a talk at my hometown high school about how he learned to read CAT scans from YouTube videos posted by some of the best internal medicine doctors in the country. my dad has reminded me that the internet is a library.

Fetishized expertise comes up in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when the narrator's travel buddy wants to take his motorcycle to a mechanic rather than learn how to fix it himself. And the reader is meant to agree with the narrator that o, isn't this tragic, what a bummer that the travel buddy alienates himself from his experience rather than learn to fix his own motorcycle like I, the narrator, do.

But then laced throughout the book are moments when the narrator is shitty to his young son. Which then made me wonder if the travel buddy's reluctance wasn't so much magical thinking about the expert caste of mechanics and more an attempt to set boundaries with his pushy friend the narrator.

i'm a third of the way through Dhalgren right now. Have you read Dhalgren? You should read Dhalgren. It's very good.

Most portraits of collapse of civilization look like dirty cannibalistic stress festivals, like Mad Max or The Road. But i think actual collapse of civilization and resource ultra‑scarcity won't be like The Road, it'll be like Dhalgren. People will share. We will share. We are mammals. That's what we were made to do.

Here's me singing I Can't Go for That at karaoke last week and flirting with my husband:

Photo by Nat