Had a film marathon day on Saturday, courtesy of Netflix streaming movies.
- Welcome to the Dollhouse – a very poor way to cheer yourself up with a hangover
- Little Dieter Needs to Fly – just astonishing, you couldn’t make it up
- Air Gear – meh. Good anime recommendations needed
- My Best Fiend – Stu wrote this up a while back. Fascinating
- Reno 911 – amusing
Unfortunately I had undesired company in my apartment.
Somewhere during film #2 I notice movement in my peripherals and there to my left is a fat cockroach, dragging its carapace casually across the kitchen floor. This has never happened before. With a faint growling noise I get up and grab some kitchen roll to get the fucker without having to touch it. When I get within a couple of inches though the beastie hits the Turbo Boost and rockets under a door into the cupboard.
I open the door, find the big Kafka bastard on its back and go for the scoop. Unfortunately in a bid for freedom the beast decides my arm is a viable escape route and goes for it. An appalling sensation of too-many bristly legs clinging and working up the side of my hand.
I’m not particularly squeamish but at this unexpected turn of events my arm starts flailing and I hear myself make a noise of pure mammal horror, the reactions coming from somewhere in my brain completely outwith my control. Cockroach left the flat pretty soon after that.
I read in Unweaving the Rainbow about how your brain has a visual circuit dedicated to picking out small, dark, moving objects. For the next three hours this function was turned up to 11 – I was seeing little beasties in every dark shape in my lower field of vision.
So just as this reaction begins to fade and I’m trying to concentrate on Kinski’s insane goggle-dish, I sense movement and lo! a mouse’s filthy puss peeks out from under the fridge. Fucking hell, not again. I shout at it – “Oi, you wee bastard” – and it scampers into the same cupboard. Cue 25 minutes of carefully removing items from cupboard and chasing it around.
Just when I’d got the apartment looking pretty cool. Verrrry hard to relax barefooted around the flat after two invasions in one day…
08-Jan-08 at 2:22 pm | Permalink
You’ll never be able to relax in there now, you may as well move. I used to love Welcome to the Dollhouse. Haven’t watched it in years, but I bet I still would.
Alyssa
08-Jan-08 at 5:52 pm | Permalink
I can give you a fuckload of animé recommendations, but sadly, they are series, not movies.
Two amazing series (of only six 20 min. episodes each!) are Gunbuster and its sequel from 25 or so years later, Diebuster. Gunbuster may seem a bit dated, but it is worth sticking with for the effing amazing final episode. Diebuster is utterly awesome all the way through – top notch design and animation and, once again, AMAZING FINAL EPISODE (which is ten times more awesome if you’ve watched Gunbuster). Really, seek them aw oot, total awesome telly.
I have written too much already. So I winnae bother going on aboot Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Eureka Seven, Denno Coil, Bleach etc.
And as you know, don’t ever, EVER watch the dubbed versions.
I love animé (in a good way, not in a “OMG it is Japanese and a cartoon it must be good OMG” way).
10-Jan-08 at 6:59 pm | Permalink
Nice – Netflix have Gunbuster, Eureka, Bleach – now added, cheers mucker!
11-Jan-08 at 4:11 pm | Permalink
Do bear in mind that Bleach is 150+ episodes, and is still going! A lot of it is ACE, though. Eureka Seven is only (only!) 50 episodes, but is a complete story. And the last 10 episodes are some of the best telly I have ever seen. And the main character is called ‘Renton Thurston’.
If I could find some way to actually have the sum totality of the spirit of Eureka Seven instead of, like, limbs or something, I would.
P.S. I like Terry in Reno 911, he is good.
11-Jan-08 at 11:13 pm | Permalink
>Unfortunately in a bid for freedom the beast decides my arm is a viable escape route and goes for it. An appalling sensation of too-many bristly legs clinging and working up the side of my hand.
Waah, that would give me nightmares for a month. I can’t even squash a little spider with a book for the fear that it will somehow manage to jump up my arm.
12-Jan-08 at 11:09 pm | Permalink
One balmy day about 25 years ago (good god) I was loitering atop the coalbox and peering over the wall into my neighbour’s garden, plucking bits of dewy moss from between the bricks and rubbing them to bits with my little fingertips. I glanced at the mess after awhile and saw two distinct halves of still-wriggling woodlouse. (You have to imagine that last sentence in italics like H P Lovecraft).
What I’m trying to say is that I once pinched a woodlouse in half. If that experience was a trump card it would have FEAR FACTOR 100
23-Apr-08 at 12:20 am | Permalink
As a native New Yorker who has made his everlasting peace with the true overlords, las cucarachas, I can tell you there is really only ONE way to get rid of the little bastards for good…mark my words, get yourself an IGUANA! Back in the good ol’ days pet stores would actually let you borrow them for a few days while they went on an extermination spree