positivelyBLEAK Grinning back into the abyss.

The most metal Rocky movie. :D

…and he’s watchin’ us all in the eeeeye of the tiger! I ran for twenty min­utes straight on Thursday, which prob­ably doesn’t sound like much to most of you, but I’m a smoker with a desk job, so it’s an accom­plish­ment to me. My awe­some dad and I are going to run the Falmouth Road Race together come 2011, so I have a real incen­tive to keep picking my feet up off the ground.

And I got a pro­mo­tion! Keys to the kingdom, pass­words to the servers, every­thing, so I’ve been filling my brain up with new knowl­edge to put to use. I’m dying to start — designing net­works is my thing.

Dragon rolls and an Tokyo-​politan!

To cel­e­brate, S. and I went out for sushi and cock­tails! There’s a rather dingy area of my neigh­bor­hood that’s lined with dollar stores and pawn shops and shit, but smack in the middle of it is this classy little pan-​Asian place called All Seasons Table — I wanted to give it a shot. (The upside of living in a neigh­bor­hood that’s often described as “resis­tant to cleaning itself up” means that there’s never a wait for a table or a crowd of tourists to deal with. I left a white-​washed, affluent suburb of Boston for this awe­some hood, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.)

Anyway, it was about a tril­lion degrees and humid, so we left the gum-​dotted side­walk for the frigid AC and I did my best to keep my hair and makeup from melting down my head. (I did not nec­es­sarily do the best job at this, but a little of this stuff really helps!) The place was very casual; lots of reg­u­lars here, and sported a killer cock­tail list, and a live jazz quartet! Wicked good date night.

It’s grosser out­side than in.

Speaking of date nights staying local, want to know how gore-​hounds keep the romance alive? There’s only one other person on this planet that will sit through The Human Centipede or Martyrs with me (hint: it’s S.), so we snug­gled in with a screener copy of The Serbian Film. (Here’s the trailer — def­i­nitely NWS, and prob­ably not mind-​safe, either!) I’ve never turned a horror movie off in my life — you can fre­quently find me cheer­fully eating dinner or doing my nails in front of surgery videos or Mermaid In A Manhole — and I wasn’t going to start with this one, but if you’ve ever had to avert your eyes or walk out of a the­ater, steer clear of this one, because it is E-​X-​T-​R-​E-​M-​E. If you’re a super-​duper gore fanatic with a stomach of steel, look for a screening! I don’t nec­es­sarily buy the director’s state­ment that it’s an alle­gory for everyday vio­lence during civil unrest, but I will say that it’s got some excep­tional prac­tical effects (it blows past Saw II but doesn’t quite reach Nacho Cerda levels of skill) and makes an effort to break ground in terms of shocking the hell out of an audi­ence. Supposedly, most of the audi­ence fled the the­ater when it screened at SXSW. I wish I’d known, it’s about the only thing that could’ve drawn me into the hip­ster nest!

I don’t like to plug random new prod­ucts (and I’ve been trying to shop hand­made), but really — I dropped a few bucks on this updo pin while I was out today. I’m the sort of girl that wears my hair held up with a ball­point pen at work, so it was worth a shot to try some­thing that wouldn’t scream “engi­neer.” This took me about ten sec­onds, with no mirror and no product, fo’ realsies:

No-​effort twist!

…so I’m glad for the impulse buy. It looked even better with a little more hair­spray and effort later on, too. You could prob­ably make one your­self with a heavy-​gauge wire and a little rub­ber­izer!

Do you have some stupid-​cheap drug­store thing that makes your hair awe­some? I like to use the cheapie packet hot oil treat­ments once in a while, they make my hair soft for a few washes after­ward and smell totally awesome. :)

Gonna end this on a crazy cat lady note, Lillehammer has really taken to acting like a dog these days:

Aw.