1. Gravity Falls. 4 Eva. I can't wait until it comes out on DVD so I can buy it and watch it as my pre-sleep lullaby while I'm far away from home in the UK. It takes place in Oregon, you understand. It is the story of my life.
2. Comics. All of them. A few I read this week (as a reward for finishing all my homework): Saga, Prophet, Marceline & the Scream Queens, and Are You My Mother? (links are to first issues in the run--or, in the case of Alison Bechdel's book, Powell's--in case you want to read them!)
3. Breaking Bad, even though it is stressful and I sometimes have to play bejeweled while I watch because I am bad at handling tense situations (yes, even when they are entirely fictional).
4. The new F. Scott Fitzgerald story that was in this week's New Yorker. It might be my favorite piece of his that I've read (if you read it, you'll know why). I can't believe the New Yorker rejected it the first time. Haters.*
5. These roasted potatoes I made this morning.
6. The idea of being an expat. Not for the change in politics (come on, you think the UK is much different? You are hilarious), not for the "foreign cuisine" (LOL), or fashion, or even the health care (though that one is pretty sweet).
First (and most romantically): it's an automatic "in" to the old-school novelists club**. The only way to be more like Papa is to be an expat in Paris. I will happily settle for the stomping grounds of Lewis and Tolkien, those cuties.
Second: it's a label that will be automatically applied to me that, for the first time in my life, does not feel like an insult/backhanded compliment. It does not matter what you look like, what nationality your parents are, or the state/country you were born in. It is simply a fact. It means you moved from the land where you are a citizen and are currently living someplace else. The reason doesn't matter. Despite having some association with exile (self-imposed or otherwise) it does not feel politically or socially charged. Most labels don't work this way. You can't even own a certain kind of computer without people labeling you and then using that label to judge you. "Blah blah blah" you hear me ranting. "I hate labels." Nah, dudes. I just hate mean labels, or any label that can become mean. But that's why I like "expat". It feels pretty unpolarized--at least in this day and age.
7. Burritos.
8. Butts.
the end.
*further proof that Magic Realism has pretty much always been under-appreciated or misunderstood. But this is a happy list, so I shan't get into that right now.
**which is a club that exists exclusively in my mind