hmph.

I'm alive. Really.

I'm busy. Really.

I have one more weekend of stuff to do. Final exams on Tuesday. Then the Independent Study Project begins, and I enjoy glorious freedom. Sort of.

I have a massive ejaculation en route concerning this trip we did. The problem is a lack of time combined with a lack of motivation to write about all the things that drove me crazy. I could just write about the fun stuff but that would be rather premature (my awful puns get worse every time I use this thing) and I'd be doing you all such an egregious disservice that I would be forced to give up writing about anything ever again and cut homeless people's toenails for a living.

Really.

Now I will do the thing where I clip bits of emails I've sent to people and post them here because I have just enough time to do that and fuck you I already wrote it once. Ctrl+V!

so, hmm, yes, trip was good, 'cept now i hate most of my group, you will learn all this in great detail very shortly. on the monday after we got back roya had a birthday party at this bar called fraktal... had to hang out with the group again. hate.

but it was ok because we smoke lots of joints at fraktal. also a rock star named jeff showed up. he is an african-american with no arms and tiny legs who plays the bass with his feet and probably sings and has played with ben harper, allegedly. one of his bands was called three foot six. interesting guy.

not making that up, by the way.

And now for some film geekery.

[after mentioning how the civil war starts in 2005, which is a long story I need not get into here but it'll probably happen]

I probably just set off like 5 million government email-checking spy thingies. You'll never break our amazing codes you fuckers!

Uhh... yeah. In Ethan news: I think I've figured out my thesis for my project. Something to do with Chytilova's conception of paradise (and the destruction thereof), y'know, utopia and dystopia, all that fun stuff. Saw another one of her films: Panelstory, or Prefab Story in English. It's about all those fun fun fun communist apartment blocks. Happy stuff: nothing works, everyone steals and is horrible to one another... quite a fantastic film now that I look back on it though. The opening is amazing. Jerky, nervous handheld shots from a moving car of these ridiculous buildings with horror movie music playing underneath.

Also saw another pretty good film by this guy named Vojtech Jasny: All My Good Countrymen. It was made in 68 and immediately banned, although only because it gives a relatively straightforward (but all lyrical and poetic and shit) account of how communism and the power it gave certain people corrupted and wrecked entire towns. Cinematography by Jaroslav Kucera, Chytilova's husband (he did Daisies with her). Goddamn if the film isn't great just because of his stuff. He's a fucking genius, I've decided.

Oh yeah, and I saw A Report On The Party and The Guests by Jan Nemec. It was very late-period Bunuel, subtly surrealistic, the comparison with Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is not inaccurate although this film was made a bit earlier, 1967 I believe. I've heard Nemec's other films are crazy... his first was Diamonds of the Night, which is apparently a film about two escapees from a Nazi prison camp made with no dialogue that tries to capture what the experience as closely as possible (meaning: all sorts of avant-garde trickery).

At some point over the next few days I'm going to watch Marketa Lazarova by Frantisek Vlacil. It gets favorable comparisons to Andrei Rublev by Tarkovsky (they're both big historical epics), and my host father tells me its the best film he's ever seen. I saw a short documentary of Vlacil's in class and it was pretty fucking fantastic.

Fuck man, I just realized that not only can you guys not see all these films, but once I get back to the States, I won't be able to either! Fuck!

Unless I cough up $60 a pop to Facets for a VHS. Ughh...

I bought a winter coat today. In the store, which is called New Yorker, they had an ad on the wall showing two cool duuudes on the London Underground except it was pretty fucking obvious they were photoshopped in because they were in perfect focus and everything else was a bit fuzzy. I think the new motto for all advertisers anywhere is "Things only make sense when nothing makes sense." Very Taoist, I can feel the void, can't you? It smells like money.

Tonight I am going to see Czech Traditional Black Light Theater because Roya's family bought her tickets for her birthday, meaning she's somewhat obligated, and nobody else would go with her. Hmph.

We're buying pot beforehand.

Really.