Discovered.

Found out.

Butt

soda.

Fucked up

and found out.

The cute

economy.

Cut-and-paste

creationists.

If you could be anyone you want to be,

why did you decide to be you?

I am dead.

You have killed me.

Telling it like

I think it is.

Your pissing

tongue.

Beezle-

bugging.

Everyone suffers

from belief.

Science

is the new rock and roll.

Johnny's always running around,

trying to find certainty.

Has got that

I don't know what.

Be a better person.

Give me money.

A game

of evens.

The only way to win

is to not try.

You only like it

because it's yours.

Moris Klaw, Moris Klaw,

the Devil's come for you.

To instill a little bit of hate

in a three-chord pop song.

Putting distance

between small talk.

I am

that motherfucker.

Buying petrol

from a pederast.

Through the darkness of future's past, the magician longs to see.

One chants out between two worlds, ‘Fire walk with me.’

A little boy

choking on a thesaurus.

Flesh and blood

and a poorly-executed bone structure.

I'm sorry,

am I being obscure?

Is considered

in no particular terms.

The polarizing girl

and the bi-polar boy.

In our world, he's a shoe salesman,

and lives among the shadows.

Naming is the origin

of all particular things.

Grading goodbye emails from work, vol. 1.

_____________________________

From: C. L.

To: [random stuff email list]

Thanks for all the awesome memories and opportunities – I’m going to miss you all and this lovely agency.

http://thisadvertisinglife.tumblr.com/post/25851882720/emerging-from-a-meeting-that-has-gone-on-for-way-too

K.I.T.

Word!

C.L.

email@email

fb/twitter/instagram: @name

_____________________________

Critical analysis:

At its core, a casual goodbye, unmarked by gross sentimentality. His decision to send the email to the 'everything goes' listserv (that not everyone has opted into) is telling – was there no one in particular that warranted inclusion? 'Whoever gets it, gets it,' he seemed to say. Were there no cherished stories? Had the waves crashed too hard upon his shores? Pleasantries thrown off off-handedly. There is a discomfort in his continuing to be here; a ready-to-say-goodbye-ness about the affair.

'Emerging from a meeting that has gone on for way too long.' In our jokes, just a little bit of truth.

And what the fuck is 'K.I.T.'? A Google search reveals it to mean 'keep in touch.' Had he really meant that, I'd wager he wouldn't have thrown it off so half-heartedly and would bothered to have used fucking links. It speaks to a piece of his character that I did not know was there. In saying goodbye, I only find you to be different from who I thought.

The touches of detachment have left me cold, I'm afraid. I am not sure who I am saying goodbye to.

C-

Pots and pans and ceiling fans

may rest easy on your head,
but it's skips and sails and long tall tales
that get you out of bed.

Memories of you I will always keep.

God saw you were tired, and put you to sleep.

Doot doot doodle doot.

Mon Oncle - 3/10. Man, fuck this slow-ass shit. It's a thirty-minute Charlie Chaplin movie stretched over two hours. Every gag takes forever to unfold. It's an attempt at a silent movie with sound, and to that I'll give it its points – all of the talking is just for effect. It's just a prop, a sound effect, and that was interesting. The rest wun't.

What kind of bird are you?

Moonrise Kingdom - 6.5/10. Maaaaan. I'm no Wes Anderson fan, but his last two movies showed a level of storytelling-beyond-style that I ain't seen in his others. I was hoping for some degree of maturing his style but naw, bitch just doubled down on what comes easy. It's all aesthetic. It's all designed to look good, to sound good, but ain't no thought been put into meaning. Everyone's cast because of their appearance. It comes close to having something, in small moments, but his aesthetic overload, his constant filmmaking means a bunch of characters who get in the way of the few interesting ones. Every detail is seemed to be important, everybody's got to have a cutesy fucking name. Ain't everybody got to have a story, dog. Just the people in the front. 

Turning your pain

into the latest dance craze.

I thought you were somebody.

But you were somebody else.

Bringing jazz back to the working man.

Jackass 3D - 7.5/10. They look old. As in, I feel bad watching what feels like old people trying to make money by causing themselves pain. And then you get over it and it's funny as shit. 

The friction between their souls and the outside world.

Stalker - 7/10. It takes too long to get to a good conversation. 

Shut up, little man.

Shut Up Little Man! - 7/10. Manages to pull a full movie out of a small experience. Sometimes its stretched thin, sometimes the new and interesting angles aren't sat on. Or: sometimes it talks about things too much and sometimes it doesn't talk about things enough. It asks interesting questions and then doesn't answer them. That's okay. But I'll give it a great compliment: it makes you curious, and then it satisfies that curiosity. It feels complete. 

Mutual interests other than spitting.

Submarine - 8/10. Wes Anderson by way of Jared Hess. Not as bad as that sounds. Lower-class style. Stylistic, sure, but it doesn't get in the way. It doesn't become the predominant feature of the movie. Performed well, a soul in the center, well-decorated as it may be. It's a nice house, lived in. 

Neuro-epileptic

appendectomy.

Beasts of the city,

beasts of the sea.

Eli, Eli,

lama sabachthani?

The protean string

will offer an inestimable yield.

Well then, son, you've got a condition.

The Avengers - 8/10. Fun as shit. Joss Whedon is the star of the movie, but he's also its weakness – a television director's sense of things. It's all big, but it doesn't look or feel big. Some scenes are outright poorly done. Do you think this motherfucker cares? 

We all thought it was cancer.

Crazy, Stupid, Love - 7/10. 'The Kids Are Alright' and 'Hitch.' It's very amiable and sometimes funny, but it's got a sticky-sweet core that's partly icky and partly disingenuous. It's easy not to think about it.

Did they send me daughters when I asked for sons?

Mulan - 7/10. It's not really talked about and from that era when people stopped caring, but it's surprisingly good. The songs, mostly. Eddie Murphy practices his annoying side-character voice. It's annoying. Jackie Chan sings a super-serious version of 'I'll Make A Man Out Of You' on the DVD extras. 

If I'm mad, I will enrage.

The Raid: Redemption - 7/10. Less fun than it should have been. Fantastic premise, just wish it didn't take itself so seriously. They should've thrown a little bit of comic book in there. A little more 'The Warriors.' I hope America remakes it!

You shall kill the woman and the beast.

The Girl With Dragon Tattoo - 7.5/10. A very exciting thriller, I just have no idea why she's so fucking important to the whole thing. It's really more of his movie, isn't it? I mean, she's cool, and she adds some sadness and pain, but some of that's just secondary to the primary. Gripes, that's all.

Am I on speakerphone?

Cabin In The Woods - 8/10. Hello, friends, do you like to have a good time at the movies?

They just want a good show.

Hunger Games - 6.5/10. Reads like a good first season of a TV show. I wish it was a TV show. What's the use of introducing characters if you can't grow to care about them and then get sad or joyful when you watch them die? Too many people. What seems like scheming is actually just sincerity. Production value of a TV show, too. Fashion is odd – an amalgamation of things, never its own thing. That's the feel of the movie – a whole bunch of shit crammed into two hours, never finding an identity. Katniss is an easy hero. Make her make hard decisions. Make her fight her way through. Things happen around her. 

You forgot something.

The Secret World of Arriety - 8.5/10. An extremely kind and gentle movie, action bros. My favorite of the Miyazaki family (by far) (and he didn't direct this one!). The most linear of the Ghibli movies I've seen, which I desperately needed from the other Ghibli movies I've seen. Quiet and soulful. A slight misstep at the end ruins the beauty of the ambiguity, but fuck it, I'll forgive it. (And apparently it's not in the original version, just tacked on to the American. Anywayz.)

Hell yes.

Ghost Rider 2: Spirit Of Vengeance - 4/10. From the directors of Crank? You've caught my eye, little sparkle. Everything they're good at – style, speed… pretty much those two things, I guess – is good. Everything they're not good at – plot – is not good. Whenever it slows down to speak, it fuuuuucking slows down. Everything you need to know about Ghost Rider is in the fucking name  – we want to see a guy with a flaming skull for a face ride a motorcycle. They make it a plot point to take that away altogether. Just shut the fuck up and give us what we want, you pissants. Now's not the time for clever.

Murdered to death.

Punisher War Zone - 2/10. Dominic Monaghan is a bad actor in everything but 'The Wire.' Just watch 'Death Wish' over this overblown nonsense. 

I know you're a good guy.

Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance - 7/10. I hardly remember watching this but I wrote down 7 out of 10, so I'll trust that. I think I got confused by which characters were what characters. Reminded me of 'Blood Simple,' with everything turning bad for everything.

That's Vietnam music. Can't we get our own music?

Jarhead - 7/10. It's certainly an interesting movie with all of its middling about. The ennui, as all of the reviewers say. There's just no way to leave this movie without a sense of being unfulfilled because, like, that's what this movie's about, dog. 

Oh, but none of us will see it.

Gosford Park - 7/10. It's well put-together. I guess that's what Altman does, with all his many parts. He did it again! Yay!

This is a unique and dramatic situation.

The Descendants - 7/10. I CANNAE REMEMBER MUH THOUGHTS ON THIS MOVIE. It was reserved, almost too reserved, until that moment at the end when it all came out? Something like that. It's called crescendo, motherfucker.

When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships.

The Hunt For Red October - 5/10. My boy Johnny McTiernan wrings some tension out of the scenario, but only so much. 

Oh hidy-ho, officer, we've had a doozy of a day.

Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil - 3/10. Nothing particularly offensive about this, I just ain't find the jokes funny. 

Magic? You just pissed on a gypsy in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Bronson - 8.5/10. Motherfucker, I loved the fuck out of this. It's like 'Amelie' with a bad guy, which may make it sound worse than it is, but fuck, it fits. There is no way in which I did not love this. Tom Hardy is a fucking star. 

He was my son. But he was also a douchebag.

World's Greatest Dad - 7/10. Robin Williams is friendly and sad and forms something of a person to rally around. Bobcat Goldthwait makes that easy by making everyone else a douchebag. But still. It's a great set-up, it really is, but it stops short of the fences. There's no build-up to that final reveal that makes it seem like it just has to come. Therefore: a fine, competent movie. 

Ain't no use fixing things.

Things'd just be broke in some other way.

You've become proud! You've become stupid!

The Artist - 7.5/10. The first thirty minutes is mostly notable for how well-thought out it is. Those thirty minutes, more than the movie that follows, captures the idea of these old movies as these magical things where every prop can possibly co-star. After that, it loses its ideas and meanders on and Jean Dujardin has a beautiful smile, but it doesn't make a great movie.

It's a devil of a thing, dying.

Bill Cunningham New York - 6.5/10. Cunningham comes off as adorable and simple. The few occasions where the filmmakers ask interesting questions to get at a little piece of depth are the best in the movie, but they're not poked at. The movie makers seem almost apologetic for having asked those questions in the first place. 

Yes, but you're a surrealist!

Midnight In Paris - 7.5/10. Foot loose, bordering on adorable, doesn't leave you feeling full. That is to say – it doesn't try very hard to accomplish some great task. We know where our final destination is from the outset. There are no real curves or intricacies. But it's nice. It's nice.

A hard, cynical act for a hard, cynical world.

The Muppets - 7/10. Fun, enjoyable songs. Jason Segel doesn't try to be an actor, which is befuddling. Great character moments but, like all Muppets movies, not a tightly-wound plot. I hope this series someday tries to say something.

THE PRESIDENT HAS INITIATED GHOST PROTOCOL.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - 5/10. Nobody was having fun. The set pieces deserved a better movie. Something with charm. Something where someone smiled once in a while. Roger Moore-era Bond film, where are we when we need you. 

Godless sonofabitch.

Warrior - 6/10. There's some honest-to-god tension in seeing two estranged brothers go at it, but: Tom Hardy plays it tight-lipped and one-note, Nick Nolte's character is all-but-forgotten, and Joel Edgerton feels the need to fight to save his idyllic two-story home. Yo, bitch? Keep your job as a teacher and buy an affordable house. It is not heroic to fight for something you don't need. 

Buddy Slade and I are meant to be together.

Young Adult - 6.5/10. Literalism! Everything ties in to its title and character and job description and movie poster and aiyiyiyiyiyiy. It's all a bit too much. But I can be okay with it. The problem as I see it are a lack of a consistent… presentation? I am honestly not sure if I am supposed to laugh when things happen, or if the movie thinks its ending is empowering. Maybe this shit is just really dark and that bitch crazy. I don't know. 

Let's go see the 3D Werner Herzog film.

Cave Of Forgotten Dreams - 4/10. You were boring!

Enough romance. Let's fuck!

I Love You Philip Morris - 7/10. It's fun! Critical analysis yeah!

This is where they're made.

Hugo - 5/10. It's bad magic. All distraction without any sleight of hand. Such such such potential for a good story in that of George Méliès and it wastes it on squat sentimentality. It forgets its themes. Nothing connects. It's not about a love of movies, it's about some kid trying to 'fix' things. Fuck you, kid. Martin Scorcese only knows how to make unlikeable characters. Fuck him, too.

When I passed the Statue of Liberty, I took it seriously.

Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man - 5.5/10. It never manages to define him. It builds him up, good and bad parts, but never manages to show what it is that created him. It needs a bat crashing through his window following the death of his parents at the hands of Crime.

Get them to blink in sequence.

Airplane II - 4/10. There are some jokes, but there are a lot of them, and I don't play that ratio game.

This station is non-operational.

Paranormal Activity 3 - 8/10. Just a fucking master class in making movies, man. Fuck y'all, shit.

Hello, my name is Michael Caine.

The Trip - 7/10. It's such a genial and inviting movie that I'd rather choose to forget its stray dressings.

Someone who was famous for a while.

Notting Hill - 3/10. Why the fuck would anyone fall in love with this bitch?

Buttsnatch

and Herb.

Incontinental

shores.

Here go

hell come.

His last words were reportedly:

I don't even know why I'm here.

Not to sound kooky or out there,

but Marvin will help him to choose.

The populist

zit.

What I been practicing my whole life

is to be okay in the moment of possible failure.

Butt

hut.

Sex

poisoning.

We've missed the opportunity

to screw this up.

You make it

commonplace.

Say goodbye

to common ground.

This is how everyone

talks to everyone.

I want a good life.

and a nose for things.

We ain't got to tell the truth,

we just got to make it sound good.

Need is the excuse

for every betrayal of rational thought.

If you ever decide to play a real human being,

I'd come watch your act.

We asked the captain

what course of action he proposed to take toward a beast so large, terrifying, and unpredictable. He hesitated to answer, and then said judiciously: "I think I shall praise it."

[His] favorite comics are the ones

where the joke is on the reader.

Whatever happened

to Johnny Internets?

Somewhere, in our darkest night,

we made up the story of a man who will never let us down.

Arbeit

macht frei.

Saturday's

for sinning.

Rape

builder.

The production and distribution

of meaning.

Growing up

Alcatraz.

What a strange way to die.

What a strange way to never be.

To say things

and not mean them.

Farting

in a Yankee Candle store.

I didn't too much

want much.

Make it a part of you,

then forget it.

The mind

that has no mind.

Hara hachi bu.

Eating until you are 80% full.

And it wasn't very interesting,

and it wasn't very fun,
but man,
did he fight for her.

I was described

1200 years ago.

It is according to opinions

that we suffer.

Corpses

are improvements.

She was a dull person,

but a sensational invitation to make babies.

How nice –

to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies,

or people just aren't going to want to go on living.

The growing metaphysical void

at the center of my bedroom ceiling.

Don't give a fuck,

'cause motherfucker, that's what I do.

Later years spent

reorganizing your youth.

Taking my place

as temporary.

He's what happens

when even the ratfuckers have lost all subtlety to their art.

Devolve

or die.

I'll war

no more.

The way it used

to was.

The eye snot

on your third eye.

Eh, why bother.

You can get mad at dumb stuff, that’s your thing.

I’ll get over it, that’s my thing.

Liquor

soup.

I have trouble distinguishing the differences between the way I've always been

and how I should be.

The politics of right and wrong make everything complicated,

to a generation who's never had a leader assassinated.

This Abandoned Building Used to Be a Business there a While Ago

and Today it is Now Empty and Condemned and it was a Business there Once upon a time.

To seem to be,

rather than to be.

To condescend

decisively.

We're here for a good time,

not a long time.

Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face

before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight.