maybe i've figured it out. put the pin at the right spot and pushed hard enough until it hit. something. anything. a nerve. the bottom. the fact there is no bottom and that everything is infinite and those dreams i've been having about pete whispering to me spinoza are real. there's no passion. anymore. i don't argue with myself until words spill out into late night crap poetry. or emailed love letters. or strange drunken phone messages i always regretted. the fact that i might be buying into some neither/norism drives me insane. this one will stay. and that one will leave. and probably the pain won't feel worth it. because when you turn yourself into animals, there's always a little less character. left. i don't feel passionate about anything. or anyone. maybe it's just like sleep. i've already had my fill.

yesterday the world changed. and i've decided i'm not going to turn into a raving woman with bad hair and teeth and too many men on her mind. i'm going to take my boyfriend to middle eastern food and eat with my hands. and allow myself to feel happy.

here's something that i don't understand: why people were so crazy about the movie little miss sunshine. don't get me wrong. it isn't as though i failed to understand the film. i mean. i got it. proust. nietzsche. all the levels of dysfunction. the pageant. my work is to analyze and write about 20th century fiction. so, it's not as though i couldn't see what the film was doing. and i thought it was a fine movie. but it was clunky. it was like having a conversation with a name dropper. here's a big issue: blob: here's another one: blob. there just wasn't enough development of anything to make it very interesting, for me. maybe it was a bit confused about whether it wanted to be a comedy, or a black comedy, or a drama--making it not a very good attempt at any of those things. i'm sure everyone of you out there loved it. but i just don't understand the buzz. for me, the attention its receiving is like crash. no one can tell me that's a good film. it suffers from speaking from the same pathetic dominant perspective that it claims to be attempting to expose. maybe that's why so many people loved it. it's the narrative they like to tell themselves to feel better about their own complacency in the perpetuation and propagation of oppression and violence. there are better and more honest movies out there about these issues, but of course the country that i live in isn't that interested in honesty. (as the president continues to make clear.)

if you want to watch a good film about dysfunctional families and 'posing' and parenting that actually spends time with intricate plot development, watch the squid and the whale. it knows what it is. the acting is solid. it's funny and sad and warm. and there's a sub-plot to the whole thing that i really adore and that has strong roots in working in academia. the character who acts like he's a scholar in a subject when really he's just spouting off information he read off of a dust jacket or that he overheard someone saying in the hallway. brilliant.

my other suggestion is that you go out and watch the battle of algiers. then read the stranger. then watch the film cache. or maybe reverse the order. or something. where a movie like crash fails to present anything even remotely useful, cache considers personal and cultural guilt and shame in some of the most subtle and outstanding ways. and from an alarmingly non-dominant perspective, as well.

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