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krankittoeleven · 1 year

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Can I do an offshoot of a tag game? inspired by the TV show tag game: Rules: 10 (non-ancient) books for people to get to know you better, or that you just really like.

I was tagged by @aeide and @brasideios

Boooks! I'm going to aim for a variety here, though a lot of these will probably lean to horror, but believe me, there is variety in horror lol. These are all the first things that came to mind in no particular order, except the first book which is...just...always...there.

This got long so I put it below a cut.

House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski - if I ever figure out what it is about haunted or weird houses, liminal spaces, and abandoned places etc. that I enjoy so much I think I will figure out something about myself. I mean, I know it has to do with solitude and emptiness or something, but it has to be more than that. Anyway, HOL is insane in its presentation, and I think should be experienced at least once, but it takes several readings to see everything (I think this will be perfectly clear after reading it once, but I know not everyone can devote that much time to one book). My favorite fun fact that I've heard about HOL is that MZD didn't intend to write a horror story, but instead a romance, and it just happened to take place in what some people consider a spoopy book.

Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine - I think if I were to HIGHLY RECOMMEND any book on this list for a broad audience, this would be THE ONE. The premise is that DNA and Mark go on trips around the world to seek out some of the most endangered animals on the planet and to bring to the public eye the conservation efforts etc. surrounding those animals (this was in the 90s). The book is funny, inspirational, heartwarming and heartbreaking, sometimes bleak, sometimes delightful, and always fascinating. It has inspired a lot of conservation efforts since it was published, even now, long after DNA's death, which I think would make him very happy. My favorite story is about their crew trying to buy condoms in China so they could waterproof their mics to record river dolphins. CLASSIC.

John Dies at the End by David Wong - Horror, Humor and Satire all come together to create an incredibly entertaining read. This is one of my overall favorite books, its just weird, stupid and funny. It's best if you don't take it too seriously.

The Terror by Dan Simmons - one of my favorite historical fiction books (based around the disappearance of the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, two British Naval ships lost in the artic). It is the slowest of slow burn, slow creep suspense. If you enjoy audiobooks I highly recommend this one in audio, it is a long read at about 800 pages, but reading it is it's own experience. I really like reading about people exploring really treacherous place so this fits the bill.

When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris - I have always loved David Sedaris' stories, he has been a constant presence in my life for many years and I am always amazed at how open he is about his family life (much to the chagrin of his family sometimes lol). This collection in particular holds a special place for me because it helped me get through quitting smoking, which was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I had read the book previously and knew that the last story, When You are Engulfed in Flames, was about David's own experience quitting smoking. I listened to the audiobook a lot during that time, usually while crying quietly under a blanket. LOL

Glamorama by Bret Easton Elis - I'm usually pretty loathe to recommend this to anyone, lest they think I am a psychopath, but seriously this is one of the best satires of consumerism ever written if you can just get past the blood and gore. If you don't know who Bret Easton Elis is, he wrote American Psycho. If you don't know what American Psycho is then skip this book (and maybe skip it even if you do) LOL

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami - I can see why this is one of Murakami's lesser know liked works, but I think it is one of the easiest to comprehend as well (IDK maybe Murakami purists like being confused and saying HUH? a lot). There is an exceptional amount of character growth and discovery to this story and it was not anything near what I thought it would be so that probably scored it some extra points. This isn't even my fave Murakami book, but it's what popped into my head.

The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers - I feel like I would be doing all of my blog names a disservice if I didn't at least mention TKIY. Have you seen the yellow sign?

Help a Bear is Eating Me by Mykle Hansen - look, everything you need to know about this book is in the title. Also, it's pretty funny.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - much like House of Leaves, I will never get over this story. Technically is a short story, but you can by it on its own so that makes it a book in my eyes lol Although this wasn't intended to be horror, as far as I know, it is one of the most horrifying things I've ever read. Without agency and autonomy we are nothing.

I will tag @theinkandthesea @mini-uzzy @liminalspacecowboah @troublemakingrebel @getfuckedyahoo @akashadarkblade @ainulindaelynn, @erzsebetrosztoczy and whoever else wants to.

#books #tag game

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endofthe1980s · 11 months

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hiyo ! fellow american psycho fan here 😋

im really intrigued by how all of ellis' novels are woven together, and really want to read more of them to get the full picture of all the characters involved as well as patrick from other characters perspectives

i have glamorama and rules of attraction on my list after i finish my current (3rd) reread of AP.

which should i read first? is there an order to the books???

hi !!!!!!

honestly the easiest way is to just go in publication date. he just adds onto the world with every release. it wouldn't hurt to go out of that order because the references to other stories are really small and specific, nothing is really hinging on you having read everything from before. they serve as easter eggs pretty much

but on your list def read rules of attraction first! it's patrick's debut novel anyhow and his involvement in glam is so small. glam is also a sequel to RoA so it works out

the only thing you're missing is lunar park. BUT, if you enjoy his stuff and can wait for more patrick content, hold off on lunar park until you've finished everything before it. it's sort of the only exception to what i said before and there's a big payoff if you know his books well

#you are so strong for reading ap 3 times btw #i haven't read anything post LP but i doubt there's any patrick in them 😭 ....... i hope this helps though !!!!#and have fun reading !!

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lligkv · 1 year

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In the midst of writing my last post, I learned Bret Easton Ellis actually has a new novel, The Shards, coming out this month. And mere days after I published the post, as the publicity campaign for The Shards rolled on in literature's very particular corner of the internet, some people on a Discord server I'm on weighed in. The discussion was acid; the general consensus was that Ellis was a shitty writer and that anyone who thought him worthy of redemption has suspect judgment and taste. I might argue with the first part—I think it comes from rating just Ellis's subject matter and public persona and disregarding the capacities he does have for style and craft, or from weighing Less Than Zero, which is definitely juvenilia, more heavily than his later works. But I don't think the latter is unfair, thinking about the public persona and how, on a publicity tour, that's ultimately what's being redeemed... And it did make me flush a bit to think of any of the folks on that server—who are lovely people, fun to talk to, with fine taste of which I often reap the fruits; I have several books they've recommended on order as we speak—reading my defense of Glamorama, or American Psycho. (Which, I do want to be clear, has some gruesome, gratuitously violent chapters like "Tries to Cook and Eat Girl" that I would say go beyond serving the function that book’s violence is meant to serve. My endorsement of it isn’t as a perfect novel.) I’m nervous to think of them knowing of my sense that Ellis might have a moral consciousness to counterbalance his apparent compulsion to be an enfant terrible, or to align himself with the morally bankrupt, even if it's the latter he often chooses to indulge. They'd probably think I'm a clown, or depraved.

But such are the hazards of making your opinions known. You do have to stand by them and accept how suspect they might make you look.

Still, I'll also admit that Lunar Park hasn't exactly helped me put another notch in the “transcendent” column for Ellis. And it doesn't leave me with much optimism for the artistic potential that The Shards, being another of the autofictional novels, might have.

Lunar Park stars a middle-aged writer named Bret Easton Ellis, a figure who shares some details of Ellis's life—having published all the same novels up through Glamorama; come to fame in the '80s as part of a circle of writers that included Jay McInerney; had a difficult relationship with his father, who is now deceased, and with substances, which are still around; and been working in Hollywood and teaching since—and doesn't share others, being married to an actress with a son, Robby. This character, Bret, begins receiving strange emails, ones that contain videos of his father, including in the hours before his death. He's also visited by strange presences—like a student named Clayton (!) with a suspicious air and an unexplained connection to another student, Aimee Light, who's writing a thesis on Bret's work (and having an affair with him), as well as what seems to be his father's malicious ghost—all in the midst of an epidemic of strange disappearances of sons in the wealthy neighborhood in which he lives—disappearances that haunt him not least because he comes to suspect that Robby and his friends are somehow involved in them—and news of a rash of murders he's made to understand are copycats of the deaths Patrick Bateman causes in American Psycho. In fact, they may be the result of Bateman himself somehow coming to life.

As you could probably guess from that paragraph, there are just a few too many plots going on at once, with too-large gaps between them. Interesting elements do emerge, like the revelation that Bret is being haunted because he's actually created tortured entities in the course of his writing—and that these demons haunt Bret because he has antagonized them by his very creation of them. And the moment when Robby finally joins the boys who vanish, leaving only the words DISAPPEAR HERE, a leitmotif in Ellis's novels since Less Than Zero, scrawled on the wall of his bedroom. As well as the way Bret responds, ultimately writing himself into the end of Lunar Park for his vanished son, perhaps, to find—and perhaps, in the process, following both the father he tried to kill and the son he lost into whatever realm demons come from. Or else stuck firmly on earth, calling out to Robby in vain.

But the book is also pretty sloppy, compared to, say, the measured and careful pace at which Glamorama moves. Again, you have to wait a long time for the threads of Bret's father's resurrection, Patrick Bateman's apparent coming to life, and whatever's happening to Robby to come together and for the fact that Bret's being haunted to become clear. This novel doesn't have what American Psycho does, either, excitements and provocations to compensate for an uneven construction. Ellis also adopts a reliance on paragraph breaks—to slow time in the moments the plot takes a twist or to amplify the horror of certain events or realizations—that quickly becomes wearying. And far too much of the novel's action hinges on Bret's being menaced by a toy belonging to his stepdaughter, a Furby clone with a name, "Terby," that's at one point wrought into a terrible acronym ("Y, BRET?") that lands with a thud.

What’s more, while this may be a strange thing to settle on, Ellis's handling of computers and the internet is appallingly clumsy. For one, the compulsion to name brands and products—an Ellis signature that's a reliable and even entertaining marker of yuppie-era shallowness in novels previous—feels much different when the product in question is WordPerfect. I don't know if it's the result of technology evolving at a pace that the lifestyle signifiers of the late 20th century (watches, suits, glasses, restaurants) just didn't, or if this reflects the scrutiny a reader can bring to references that are contemporaneous to them rather than anachronistic—I did live through the early internet in a way I didn't 1980s or '90s New York—but they took me out of the novel practically every time I encountered them. Ellis also wrings a significant chunk of drama out of the fact that for months Bret remains unaware that the mysterious emails he's been receiving have attachments. Maybe you're meant to chalk that up to Bret's obliviousness or his staggering substance use—but I find it extremely hard to believe anyone who's emailing anyone, no matter how much they struggle to do it, wouldn't notice attachments on mysterious and otherwise empty emails long before that.

Again—and I realize I say some variation of this in practically every post, but—I do think Ellis is grappling with substantive matters in all this... The child's struggle with the primal father, and the prospect of the writer transfiguring this father into literature. The way such an attempt to control narratives through writing or to exorcise through writing may birth new demons, as people read the products of your tortured creation and become tortured themselves or swear revenge. The cruelty of sons to their cruel and inadequate fathers, as they seek to individuate; the cycle by which the cruel sons become inadequate fathers in their time; the question of when this cycle ends, if it ever does. I can see these themes. But were they done justice? The universe Ellis creates in this novel is rather cardboard compared to the vividness of the world as depicted in the entirely fictionalized works. And if your interrogation of the hazards of transmuting pain into art, trying to control narratives that can’t ever be perfectly controlled, and aestheticizing violence is also a somewhat incoherent novel with a serial-killer plot—one in which the costs of aestheticized violence are borne not by you so much as by your fictional son, who disappears while you live... if ultimately, the only cost of all this is how bad it makes you feel, to which you attest in language that only occasionally reaches true feeling or beauty... I don't know. It rids these themes of their potency.

It’s also disappointing to realize I was wrong about Paul Denton, who is referenced, at least, in Lunar Park. I'd hoped the omission was deliberate.

#literary #books #novels #bret easton ellis #held to account for my opinions

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brettyimages · 1 year

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bookish survey! A, C, H, I, O, Q, R, Z

Author You’ve Read The Most Books From - I just answered this one but in addition to my previous answers I also read a lot of John Green's novels and books written by members of Motley Crue, if you can lump them together as one collective

Currently Reading - my current main book is Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis. I've also got Sylvia Plath's Journals, The Scarlet Letter, and That's Your Lot by Limmy on the go as my non-fiction, e-book and short stories for travelling books...

Hidden Gem Book - I read Fangirls by Hannah Rose Ewens last summer and adored it. It's a non-fiction study of fangirl behaviour and covers queuing all day outside gigs, calling your faves daddy in the comments of their insta pics, travelling to the US for a glimpse of Courtney, going on walks around the places Amy Winehouse hung out and so much more and I saw so much of myself and my loved ones in it.

Important Moments of Your Reading Life - I answered this one already too but adding switching Morrissey's Autobiography (so boring) for How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran and having to put it down so I didn't start laughing aloud on the train. I think that was one of the first feminist books I read and it was so much fun.

One Book That You Have Read Multiple Times - this is where I have to shout out to Coal Black Mornings by Brett Anderson. I devoured the library copy before going to his book signing, I've had him read it to me via audiobook, I've read the paperback on my way to hear him talk about the sequel. It's now battered and full of page markers as I used it as a London guidebook, walking the streets he walked and seeing the places he lived and loved; it's invaluable to me.

Quote From A Book That Inspires You/Gives You Feels - it's lame because it's from a John Green novel but it's true: "what a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person".

Reading Regret - I didn't read much in high school at all, only YA novels about girls who were rock guitarists or goth teenagers or music biographies. I skimmed most of the books I had to read for classes and just fell out of love with reading in general for a few years.

ZZZ-Snatcher (last book that kept you up WAY late) - Dracula: I read it as part of Dracula Daily along with the rest of Tumblr and it kept me going on the long tube journeys out to the hotels I could afford for last minute Suede jaunts. It didn't keep me up necessarily because it was a page-turner but it kept me from falling asleep on the train!

#thanks delia! xxx

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ulliell · 3 years

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5, 14, 15, 28, 41, 43 (I KNOW THE ANSWER TO THIS ONE BUT SHH), 54, 60, 134

5. something in fiction that reads like poetry not sure exactly what this question means but fredrick’s love letter to anne in persuasion by jane austen haunts my soul more than anything

14. a book that made you trip on literary acid glamorama by bret easton ellis is just wild from start to finish

15. a book rec you really enjoyed my mom bought and recommended naiv. super. by erlend loe to me when i was 16 and it changed me as a person and is still my all time fave so yeah

28. a book you wish you could read as a beginner again the winternight trilogy by katherine arden! such a magical series and vasya petrovna owns my heart

41. a book about nature can’t stop thinking about the southern reach trilogy by jeff vandermeer

43. a book that you have read more than three times i know you want me to say the lies of locke lamora by scott lynch so i'm gonna say my ultimate teenage guilty pleasure book instead which is audrey, wait! by robin benway

54. a book with the best opening line “the monster showed up just after midnight.” a monster calls by patrick ness

60. a book about city life apparently i read close to zero books about city life because the only one i can think of is beartown by fredrik backman and that’s more about small town life lol

134. unrecommend any book you like! i have a personal vendetta against a little life by hanya yanagihara i don’t want a single person to read that book

#ask games #you really got me thinking on these ones damn #appreciate ya

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avanneman · 5 years

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Yo, Mainstream Media! Bret Easton Ellis has Aitch Ay Dee Had It With You!

It’s true! Mr. Three Names is never, no, never! going to forgive you guys for the way you lied about the Mueller Report! Reason gal Elizabeth Nolan Ryan summarizes Bret's cri de cœur/podcast thusly:

"I want to state that I am not a Republican, I am not a conservative, I am not part of the right wing, I did not vote for Trump, I am not part of the alt-right, I am not interested in politics." ... Ellis said he doesn't "care enough about" Trump to defend him against allegations of Russian collusion, but his beef is with "the crazy dishonest press" and "being lied to" by members of it. "There is no way to get around the fact that the mainstream media misled the country for the last two years. Period," Ellis added. "I'm not saying that as a conservative, or as a liberal. I'm saying it simply as a witness." These outlets "should be humiliated by what they were perpetrating."

Well, as George F. Will was wont to say, “well”. I confess I’m not up on the details of the ravings of talking heads like Rachel Maddow, and that I thought the “speculations” by supposedly more responsible folk like James Clapper that Donald Trump was a “witting agent” of Vladimir Putin were pretty ridiculous, and that Jonathan Chait’s now notorious “plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion”, which he recently tried to explain away in the manner of Rush “Just Putting It Out There” Limbaugh, was so mind-bogglingly boring that I stopped reading it after the first few paragraphs, but (if you’re still with me), I’d like to point you in the direction of a handy-dandy interactive graphic supplied by, yes, the New York Times, with the snappy title “Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration”, a great many of which were frequently lied about by Trump and his minions.

I’m still amazed that it was considered “okay” for a retired three-star general (Michael Flynn) to accept a gratuity from Russian sources to sit at a banquet table with Vladimir Putin, even if he didn’t repeatedly yell “Lock her up!” in public with regard to a former secretary of state, and also “okay” for him to work secretly as an agent of the Turkish government, writing, for example, an op-ed supporting Turkish policies without disclosing that arrangement, and also okay for such a man to be appointed as the president’s national security advisor.

I’m also still amazed that it was considered “okay” for the president to fire the head of the FBI, and to arrange for and publish a cover story to disguise the fact that the firing was meant to discourage the FBI’s investigation into Flynn. I’m also still amazed that it was considered “okay” for the president’s son, working in the president’s election campaign, to have a meeting, in the company of two other principal campaign officials, with Russian nationals for the express purpose of obtaining information from Russian intelligence that could be used against Hillary Clinton in the campaign, a meeting about which both he and the president lied in public.

I repeat the old—old and accurate—comment that if President Obama or Hillary Clinton had fired the head of the FBI for any reason, a Republican House of Representatives would have impeached them for obstruction of justice. Since Donald Trump in fact fired Mr. Comey in order to obstruct justice, then he damn well did obstruct justice.

I think impeachment is a terrible idea, and I don’t think that President Trump, on the record before us, should be impeached. But the notion that his nauseating record of corruption and deceit can and should be swept under the rug on the grounds of “Oh, golly, I’m just so sick and tired of hearing about all this stuff!” is simply a matter of what a not very PC mayor of New York1 once called “rape by acquiescence”.

Afterwords I If Mr. Ellis doesn't trust the Times, perhaps he could consider a column written six months ago by David French in the National Review, Republicans Must Reject ‘Russia Hoax’ Conspiracies and Examine the Evidence. Opined former U.S. attorney French:

The more we learn about Trump World’s contacts with Russians or Russian operatives, the more astounding it becomes. Consider this partial summary:

Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, lied to Congress about his contacts with a Russian government official as he tried to negotiate a Trump Tower Moscow deal deep into the 2016 presidential campaign.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has lied about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, an alleged asset of Russian intelligence.

Longtime Trump friend and adviser Roger Stone (and Stone’s sidekick, conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi) allegedly tried to communicate with WikiLeaks, a “hostile intelligence service,” to obtain advance information about Julian Assange’s planned document dumps.

Donald Trump’s son, campaign chairman, and son-in-law met with a purported Russian representative with the intention of receiving “official documents” as part of a “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

Former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about his own contacts with a professor who “claimed to have substantial connections with Russian government officials” and who claimed to have access to “dirt” on Hillary in the form of “thousands of emails.”

Mr. French thoughtfully provides links for each of these items in case Mr. Ellis still retains some doubts.

Afterwords II I've never liked Mr. Ellis very much. Almost 20 years ago, I wrote a review for the Bright Lights Film Journal of the film American Psycho, based on Bret’s novel of the same name. I looked at the novel, intending to quote a chunk of it so that readers could have a taste, but Mr. Ellis’ prose was so vicious and repulsive that I just didn’t have the stomach for it. So I summarized his effort instead:

When Ellis wrote American Psycho back in 1991, he probably had no higher motive than to write the most disgusting, and thus the most profitable, book he could imagine. Unfortunately for Ellis, he overshot the mark. It turned out that filling a book with appalling depictions of misogynistic torture wasn’t the shortest road to fame and riches.

At the time I wrote my review, Ellis had a new book out, described by his publisher as follows: “Glamorama, Ellis’s latest vehicle, ventures deep inside the world of celebrity, a world that jet-sets from coast-to-coast, from champagne flute to vial of cocaine, all the while sacrificing humanity for image.”

Write about what you know, eh, dude? Write about what you know.

Fiorello La Guardia, the “Little Flower”. ↩︎

#Bret Easton Ellis #Mueller report #Donald Trump #David French

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writer-man-blog · 7 years

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Donna Tartt's 'The Goldfinch' is Tearing Me Apart

The very delicate memories I have of my own mother are the main reason it’s taken me more than two years to get even halfway-through The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. The other is my class-E addiction to the smell of new books, many of which I abandon for the next odorous thing after four or five briskly read chapters.

I dived into The Goldfinch a little perplexed by how unconcerned it was with splashy sentences. I’d been completely unaware of Donna Tartt’s existence, and one of the first things I learnt about her was that she once dated Bret Easton Ellis. Ellis basically rebirthed me with American Psycho, and seemed to hover just as dozy and dazed as all the milky white miscreants in books as gloriously shallow as The Rules of Attraction and Glamorama. I certainly didn’t expect Tartt to write the way Ellis does – as if each narrative chin-up is meant to culminate in a sudden overdose of form – and I was not surprised by a mutual taste for human darkness. But Tartt’s story of an impressionable young New Yorker who survives a pseudo-terrorist attack on an art gallery, losing his mother and gaining a famous painting, is so unassuming that it’s easy to wonder what all the fuss was.

It’s as Dickensian as reviewers promised, in length and in ambition. Before the bomb actually goes off young Theo Decker skips school, and we’re invited to explore the ins and outs of his life within a Manhattan apartment building – his ease with the adorable bellhops, his relative lack of naiveté, and most of all the delicate relationship he has with his mother. She’s raised Theo alone since parting ways with his deadbeat dad. We know that she has some kind of low-stakes role to play at an ad agency, I believe, even though her views on creativity – and how vital it’s been to Theo’s upbringing – are anything but. The ominousness of knowing what’s about to befall this woman, and how large and cruel the world could become for this child, inflects her every gesture with a near hymnal finality. The way Tartt writes, Theodore's mom moves like a butterfly, while Theo himself bounds down stairs and holds up elevators with a burning readiness to confront adulthood.

He’s in mourning for much of his time, in ‘transit’, at the Barbours' – family friends who take him in while Social Services devises a plan. Theo makes secret visits to a craftsman’s shop, of which he learns from a body in the blast, and where he is besotted with the idea of a girl injured in the blast, and who departs before he can figure out what she means to him. An informal cub and bear union is formed between Theo and Hobie, the old man revealing some of the magic of restoring antique furniture for a living. Soon enough, Theo is himself shepherded to Las Vegas by a father whose shady figure cuts back into the scene now that there’s an inheritance to exploit.

Tartt is at home just writing about the little things that happen in between each tragic development; so that the effect is you and Theo just sitting around drawing comfort from whoever’s there, before some flawed authoritarian flings the door open and changes everything. It’s heartbreaking to see what a mother’s absence does to a child, when Theo takes up recreational drugs without a thought, and yet heartwarming to watch him do them with his only friend in the world. I can’t help but think of this song by St. Vincent, and the bits she sings about stealing a Chrysler from the garage, and “throwing up in your mom’s azaleas.”

All the while, I’m trembling with fear at the fact that time will take away the privilege of childhood, and all goodwill with it, and then Theo will have nothing but his mother’s favorite painting to process a mountain of pain. There’ll be no second chances for free – no calls from Social Services or his mother’s well-intentioned attorney.

I hear Warner Bros. or somebody have already optioned the film rights. Even if I’m all wrapped up by then, Lord knows if I’ll be able to watch this shameless tearjerker come to life.

youtube

#the goldfinch #donna tartt #fiction

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atrophiedcompassion · 4 years

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Quarantine Q&A

i was tagged by @2pcb in this questionnaire, so here we go

Are you staying home from work/school?

indeed.

If you’re staying home, who’s there with you?

dad and the cat, as before. this week he’s also been home (his job is having people come in shifts so avoid having too many folk in one place at once) and let me tell you that he’s been quite annoying.

Are you a homebody?

yep! but i am getting antsy with having to stay indoors, now that it’s mandatory

What movies have you watched recently? What shows are you watching?

i watched death at a funeral (the 2010 remake) last night and it was so hilarious. been watching murdoch mysteries with dad and it’s quite fun! am trying to catch up with bob’s burgers on the down time of my work schedule (usually in the 17:00 to 18:00 timeslot, but as far as indulging and binging tv on the weekend, i’ve actually done worse than before the Quarantine. i can barely recall to watch the new westworld ep on tv (3 mondays in a row i barely made it) and i haven’t watched one ep on BCS since season 5 started.

An event that you were looking forward to that got cancelled?

summer hols, i wanted to visit rural catalunya this year, and i can imagine that the japan trip in october is also most likely postponed. luckily i hadn’t yet put any money down on either, so that’s that

What music are you listening to?

been putting itunes to shuffle again, rather than just listening to fleetwood mac’s greatest hits or brian eno stuff or new or old tool.

What are you reading?

Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis. i usually read on commute. with no commute, for the first two weeks of Quarantine, the book remained untouched. i’ve picked up reading last week in what constitutes my “lunch break”. the style is incredibly annoying and the main char is so self absorbed and dimwitted, it’s very hard to enjoy. i had almost gotten used to the style when i stopped for Quarantine, so now it’s very hard to get back into. ugh

What are you doing for self-care?

i am following my skincare routine to a tee, nothing’s changed or missing. i decided to let my eyebrows grow out and since yesterday, i am dabbing them with castor oil hoping they improve! (i am part of that coming of age in the 90s generation of women who plucked their eyebrows to a small thin line and the hairs refuse to grow ever since...)

sports wise, i am so lucky to have a sporty friend who also teaches yoga, so we’ve been doing zoom sessions with her, both core strength exercises and cardio, as well as some yoga.

sometimes i just dance myself into a sweat, 15-20 mins is enough cardio for me.

friends meets on zoom or whatsapp calls, trying to NOT speak about covid, me trying to temper more panic prone friends and getting bad sleep over it. it’s been okay, overall

#meme #quarantine questionnaire #me me me me

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endofthe1980s · 11 months

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hiyo again, its @miss-mademoiselle (the person who sent u an anon about reading glamorama and rules of attraction)

so, im nearly halfway through glamorama (i am also reading rules but its taking me a little longer to get into it)

and i LOVE how much of a silly little guy Victor is 😂😂 hes pathetic but in an almost endearing way. i still love Patrick most but Victor is pretty close. I'm excited to get to the second part.

HI again !!!!

i'm glad to hear back from you and that you're enjoying it!!! 😭 victor is truly the Boyfailure Ever. it really is amazing

and yea understandable re: rules. glam is when ellis starts to actually have a plotline in his stories, so it's a bit easier to get into

personally i'm rereading rules rn and it's more interesting now because of having read glam. there are definitely parallels between what happens to victor in rules and glam that i'm only noticing now🤨

#but!!!!!!! thank u for this update i'm so happy to hear that other ppl love victor lmaoo 😭#i hope u enjoy the rest of glam !!

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foursprout-blog · 6 years

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On Avicii, Top Shelf Vodka, And The Summer Love That Never Was

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/on-avicii-top-shelf-vodka-and-the-summer-love-that-never-was/

On Avicii, Top Shelf Vodka, And The Summer Love That Never Was

louis amal / Unsplash

I was sitting at the red concrete table in front of El Michoacano on the corner of Lankershim Blvd. and Sherman Way when my Grindr notification went off. Repetitive ranchero music was blaring from behind the counter, where they were taking longer than usual to make my burrito. I didn’t remember messaging him, but apparently, I did two weeks prior to no response. Two weeks prior, he saw my what’s up message and decided I wasn’t what he was looking for and passed on me for a more attractive profile. But now, he was horny and kept refreshing the app and it was pulling up too many familiar countenances and he decided to look through his messages to see if there was somebody new and appeasing he hadn’t fucked yet and I guess he figured he couldn’t do any worse than me tonight. I wanted to respond to his late nothin much text with disdain and snark, but I had nothing better to do aside from deepthroating a carne asada burrito while rewatching OZ, so I just replied, what are you gettin into? He was taking so long responding to my message that I was walking through my front door when the Grinder alert went off again.

Hopefully you , masctop9.5 finally replied.

I forfeited on satiating my hunger and just sat the burrito in the microwave when I got inside. He only sent me a close-up dick pic with nothing typical to compare it in scale with, like a remote or can of Red Bull. Most likely nine and a half porn star inches (works for me regardless). I douched until the toilet water ran clear and drove my lemon towards Studio City. Approaching his apartment, I was filled with the same excited energy I always have when I’m walking up to a hookup’s house. The nervousness of not really knowing who or what awaited behind the door as you check your phone to make sure it’s the right address.

At least he wasn’t a catfish. He was just as tall and skinny as his profile indicated. His eyes were a deep grey they went past seductive and leaned more into demonic, and outside of them, he wasn’t that good looking of a guy. Endearingly ugly is a term a friend would later use to describe him and it always stuck with me (even though I wouldn’t necessarily consider him ugly-ugly; he just had odd features. Regardless, he was trading with, a legitimate, nine and a half inches worth of currency). When I came in, he must’ve sensed the nervousness because he asked if I wanted to take a shot and I obliged. The apartment reeked of Cool Water cologne, off-brand laundry detergent, and marijuana. Interchangeable euro techno pulsed from the hallway leading to the bedroom. Making small talk as he pulled out a bottle of Ciroc and two shot glasses, I asked if that was a Russian accent spilling out of his mouth. He replied Ukrainian and we threw back the two shots of something that wasn’t Ciroc (I wasn’t going to complain) and he offered up a pull from his bong after he hit it, but I declined because my cottonmouth can get so severe at times, it makes cunninglingus dry, sticky, and useless. Without another word, his dick was out and it was even more freakishly large than I expected (those Chernobyl genetics work both ways).

The sex started out with a bang but got increasingly annoying. Like most guys who are that hung, he could never get fully hard and ended up utilizing the porn trick of stiffening up and applying a vice grip around the base of his dick while sliding it in and out. Still, the sensation was good enough that I came too soon, and as always, the feeling of something inside of me after an orgasm becomes more tortuous than pleasurable, but I wasn’t going to be selfish. He finished off with one of the weirdest set of accented grunts and foreign swear words I’ve ever heard and collapsed on top of me with all his sticky weight, dripping sweat on the back of my head as his hard pants turned into a slight snore. When he came to, he got up and disappeared behind a bathroom door and I could only hear the muffled sound of a faucet running, water splashing and a succession of hard snorts, followed by a loud hawk and a spit. I was unsure of whether or not I should get up and get dressed or just lay there. There was a point when we were doing missionary that he stared at me with those possessed irises and we both cracked a smile and I kind of wanted to see what that would lead to. If he’d wanted me to stay the night, I wouldn’t want to disinvite myself by being dressed by the time he came out of the bathroom. I decided to gauge his reaction and go from there. If he looked quizzical in any type of way, I’d fake like I was waiting for a washcloth even though I was thoroughly dry by then. But when he came out, his expression was blank and he just asked me if I wanted to hear some of the music he made. He pulled up an Ableton session, colored lines stretching out across his MacBook Pro screen as the shitty techno (that was playing every since I arrived) was replaced by an even shittier amateur, douchebro EDM. He listened to the music intensely, eyes closed as he’s vibing. I feigned amazement because I was laying in his bed naked, taking another shot of whatever this was that wasn’t Ciroc and the bong appeared from somewhere and I’m clearing the chamber because his dick barely fit in my mouth regardless. I wanted to ask him to delete the picture I sent him on Grindr (front facing camera raised slightly above head towards bathroom mirror — no face shown, black Andrew Christian jockstrap, back slightly but not noticeably arched) because I was still planning on becoming famous in those days, but decided not to be a nuisance about it. He tells me about Beatport and that he’s bisexual and that Mila Kunis is also Ukrainian and I try to put him onto Gesaffelstein but he doesn’t seem impressed, so he maneuvered into a Kylie Minogue playlist he created full of dance remixes and we had sex again, both of us wet and sticky again as we passed out before midnight struck.

The next morning was a Saturday, but he had to work. He cleaned the plaque off his teeth with the inside of whatever shirt he wore the night before and threw it towards, not inside of, the hamper. He disappeared behind the bathroom door again, this time to the muffled sound of a stream of piss followed by an asshole fluttering fart and a chuckle. This was never meant to last forever, but I was still interested in seeing how far we could take it.

The summer commenced and Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” dropped, and Vlad, being the connoisseur of great taste, listened to it religiously. Yeezus dropped and I didn’t care for it initially but forced myself to like it. We seemingly survived on a diet of cold pizza, Dollar Tree burritos, and Arnold Palmer Half & Halfs. Gesaffelstein’s ”Pursuit” video dropped. Vlad marveled at it for a few days and I felt a sense of hipster validation for putting him onto it. I’d lay in his bed reading his dog-eared copy of The Master and Margarita while he watched YouTube tutorials and illegally downloaded the VST’s his favorite producers used. I was forced to listen to various strains of house, trance and trap EDM. He’d scrunch up his face and tell me the music I liked sounded like ghosts committing suicide (KID A!!!). My thumb became calloused because I kept burning it while lighting the big, blue bong full of Girl Scout Cookies, and when that ran out, we’d head up to Van Nuys to donate blood plasma to buy another eighth to last us until payday. “Wake Me Up” would still be leaking out of his headphones as he squeezed the blue foam ball and passively flipped through the copy of Complex magazine I bought with The Weeknd on the cover while I’d be nursing a copy of Glamorama (which I kept in my book bag the entire two years I was in LA and have yet to finish) and feeling lightheaded. Sex consisted of the same routine positions (I’d blow him, he’d rim me, cowgirl, squatting cowgirl until my leg gave out, reverse cowgirl, spoon, doggystyle, in front of bathroom mirror, on the bathroom counter, doggystyle again followed by the money shot).

Elisa Lam’s mysterious death was still haunting the city and he wanted to stay at The Cecil for a night. People on the elevator said there was somebody knocking on their door the previous night, but this is Los Angeles and I can never be sure if people are actually serious or just playing it up. We fucked around ghost and an incessant knocking on the walls that wasn’t coming from our headboard. Somebody on our floor was loudly playing Top 40 radio (Top 10 is more accurate) to drown out all the cacophony but only succeeded in adding to it. “We Can’t Stop” and “Blurred Lines” and “Can’t Hold Us” and “Get Lucky” played in a loop and the knocking kept getting louder, so we decided to just check out and go back to his apartment.

He was an attention-seeking Leo and for his birthday, I bought him a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50x headphones. We did molly at a warehouse party and I wanted to hug and kiss him all night but he didn’t want to have any type of physical contact since there were straight men around. Instead, he danced around with a bottle blonde, Slovenian chick with a retroussé nose (bitch looked like an elf) and gave her bumps of the molly that I paid for. When the night was ending, he told her he was going to the bathroom and we snuck out the back. We went back to his place and he fucked me through the mattress, but he wasn’t able to cum.

The relationship gave off the air of what I assume is teenage love even though I was in my early 20s and he had just landed in his 30s. Like most non-cis men, we had to forfeit these type of relationships early on due to societal pressures and fear during our formative years. One night, under the influence of Ace of Spades (which in actuality was a $20 bottle of champagne called Veuve Clicquot Brut that he’d pour in the gold bottle. The aforementioned “Ciroc” was New Amsterdam. Appearance is everything, I guess) and Super Rush, while performing formulaic missionary and staring into those dubious greys again, I told him I loved him even though I didn’t really mean it. He hesitated, then told me the same thing back with an ambiguous smirk. The same tone as telling your boyfriend you’ll be together forever before walking across the graduation stage and into your first taste of the freedom that college brings. We never repeated those three words again.

I caught him wearing a gold wedding band I’d never seen previously and he just shrugged and told me he bought it because it made him more marketable to gay guys. He began inconspicuously checking his phone during the night, so I opened up Grindr for the first time during the summer and saw that he was still active. The next morning, he acted aloof towards me. I knew he was fucking somebody else, and although I couldn’t get mad because we weren’t a couple-couple, I became extremely jealous. I spent nights wondering if whoever he was fucking would knock me out of my spot. The come thru texts were coming less frequently. He just told me he became real busy lately.

Nothing Was The Same leaked just as the summer was coming to a halt. I got fired from my job and moved from North Hollywood to Valley Village, maybe thinking that being closer could mend whatever had broken, but mostly because rent was cheaper. I hadn’t watched porn or masturbated all summer and forgot my password, so I had to “Forgot My Password” it and create a new one. It took a week before he came to my new place. We tried to fuck on the air mattress, but it made too much noise, so we just did it standing up. It was the first time our routine had altered.

A change in location meant a change in Grindr and Scruff profiles. I replaced him with a barrage of random dick coming in and out of my life. He didn’t text much and stopped calling completely, but I already knew I was months away from going back home, so it didn’t matter much anyway. Sometimes men just go cold like that. I’ve been ignored in social situations immediately after having sex with a guy—it’s whatever. Our last meeting happened the following spring, the day before I left Los Angeles to return home as another sad statistic. It consisted of us reminiscing about the previous summer. Our summer. The barrage of music that would always be associated with that time period (All those mindless effects, pitch-shifting, buildups and drops now having significant meaning to me). The cheap GMOs we digested and shat out. The sphincter-stretching, sometimes painful, but mostly great sex. There was only the veneer of keeping in touch. There was never any explanation or real reconciliation about our distance. There was no need. We already knew. It was fun for what it was.

When Avicii died, my social media feeds were inundated with embeds of “Wake Me Up.” I hadn’t heard that song since that summer when it annoyed the living piss out of me. I hadn’t thought of masctop9.5 much since then either. Curiosity took hold and I went to Google to see if I could track him down. After a few unsuccessfully tries of remembering (followed by remembering how to spell) his extensive last name, I finally found those haunting greys. The Ciroc and Ace of Spades aged him and he was now a rough mid-30s. Vladyslav never became the big time push play and fist pump DJ that he wanted to be. His stint in Los Angeles didn’t seem to pan out much better than mine either, as he’d moved back east. The prophecy became true. Like a lot of bisexual men, he used his sexuality to be openly intimate with men while knowing he’d always end up settling down with a wife and having kids to satisfy his religious family. He’d get into these mini-relationships but leave quickly to minimize the hurt he was causing to the men he strung along. His timeline was flooded with pictures of him cradling newborns and hugging the bride and smiling a coffee-stained smile as he lurked over everybody in family photos. Any life before that was erased. I wondered if his wife knew that he probably fucked more men than she had. I wondered if the kids knew that he was probably switching out the breast milk for Similac. I wondered if he would be thinking about our summer together for the rest of his life every time that shitty song comes on.

RIP Avicii.

#Happiness

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foursprouthappiness-blog · 6 years

Text

On Avicii, Top Shelf Vodka, And The Summer Love That Never Was

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/on-avicii-top-shelf-vodka-and-the-summer-love-that-never-was/

On Avicii, Top Shelf Vodka, And The Summer Love That Never Was

louis amal / Unsplash

Hopefully you , masctop9.5 finally replied.

RIP Avicii.

#Happiness

0 notes