1. Get to the Met for the da Vinci and Thomas Struth exhibits. Da Vinci is self explanatory - how could you not be into that shit, really. Struth is (understandably) lesser-known but should be equally interesting; he specializes in large-format photography and video portraits (you may have read about him recently in the Times).

2. I need to stop reading Patrick O’Brian novels when I should be reading epistemology papers, or the god damned Meditations again. But, I mean, historical fiction! I can’t help it if this stuff is more addictive than Jolt Gum.

3. I really need to stop playing SSX Tricky when I should be sleeping (or doing anything else at all), but Kaori is just so cute.

As I mentioned, what with being old and preferring our pajama’d cinematic adventures to the whole club thing these days, Crispymon and I stayed in out of the snow to watch movies on cable last night. And when I say movies, I mean we watched American Movie and then flipped around looking for another movie to watch and ended up dozing off to DEADLY BEES OF ASSAM on the National Geographic channel. Seriously, the city that never sleeps!

Anyway, American Movie is funny in that documentary way where you absolutely can’t help laughing but also feel terribly guilty about laughing at the same time. But it’s definitely funny, if slightly depressing, and definitely worth seeing. The deadly bees were worth seeing too, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not quite the same thing.

And speaking of being old and pajama’d and watching movies, I’m actually watching Jaws for the very first time right now, so if you’ll excuse me: I’m going to go devour my Thai noodles and pretend the tofu chunks are little tourist limbs.

<emma> oh god damn
<emma> mozilla just died, taking my un-posted post with it
<emma> do you think anyone will notice if i just put up some hunter s thompson photos of dubious quality and leave it at that

So yeah, I’ve gotten a lot of mail asking where I heard about the HST signing on Wednesday, because while it seemed at the time like all of Manhattan had smushed itself into the Union Square Barnes & Noble it turns out that not many people - much less many New Yorkers - were aware of it, and are bitterly lamenting this fact. And it was totally by accident that I heard about it, actually; I happened to see an event listing for that particular Barnes & Noble while I was there buying an aesthetics book and I was all hey look, Hunter S Thompson is totally going to be here next week. I guess it wasn’t very thoroughly publicized, which on the one hand is a shame because he rarely agrees to do signings (and rarely shows up for them when he does) but on the other hand if another couple hundred people had tried to pack into that god damned bookstore I think it would have turned into an even stranger and more (occasionally) tiresome thing than it actually was. Because there was a really stupendous amount of waiting in line involved, such that those of us who managed to stake out spots at the front began to forget what we were waiting in line for, by the time the man himself actually showed up, which had very little to do with the time written on the little event listing thing, which is probably to be expected considering this is Hunter S Thompson we’re talking about here. But still, I sympathize - all the waiting and standing and waiting and wristbanding and waiting were more than worth it when HST finally did show up, called us a pack of drunken suckerfish, and signed our books. And I’m going to point out, too, before I shut up about the whole HST thing (for the time being - I have photos to post, still), that it turns out Johnny Depp’s Hunter was really eerily accurate. Really.

In other news, it’s snowing again and Chris and I are sick and doing the oatmeal-and-movies-on-cable thing for the time being. And no, I won’t be attending the Big Apple Blogger Bash tonight because honestly even if I weren’t sick and planning on sitting around in pajamas today I think I would probably still avoid a Blogger Bash, Big Apple or otherwise.

Maybe the very strangest part about meeting the very strange Hunter S Thompson this evening - apart from the popping pen practical joke of which I, along with half a dozen other girls, was the unwitting victim - was how much listening to him talk is like reading his writing. With most people there’s that strange sort of dichotomy between their textual voice and their conversational voice, but he speaks in exactly the same way that he writes, or perhaps it’s the other way around.

And maybe the very best part about meeting the very best Hunter S Thompson this evening - apart from when I finally (finally) got to leave Barnes & Noble, my copy of his latest book freshly and illegibly scrawled upon - was his endless patience with those of us who’d waited hours in line in order to meet him, and his corresponding complete lack of patience with the uppity and occasionally officious Barnes & Noble event coordinators.

Although meeting The Strokes as well wasn’t half bad.

For those of you who already find it a little disconcerting that we nutty humans are so wild about cow, another reason to look askance at your milk: a rise in the price of cattle feed has resulted in farmers buying up expired human junk food (as in junk food intended for consumption by humans, not food made from human junk - or so they say) because it’s cheaper than buying the usual corn meal or what have you. I’m not prompted to comment on that article, incidentially, out of some sort of adorably misguided indignant vegetarianism; as I’ve said before, whether I eat meat or (as it happens) don’t has very little to do with whether or not I cry myself to sleep over the dairy and beef industries or (as it happens) don’t. There’s just something terrible and fascinating about the image - herds of unlucky cows chomping away in an unwittingly snacktacular reflection of their predators, if we can really be called predators. Think of poor bovine Bessie, comfortably plump on the same potato chips that are destined to serve as her very own side dish when she has met her flame-broiled fate. According to the American Angus Association, apart from their undisputed claim as Most Fabulously Named Association At All Ever, they’re quite sure that none of this is, nutritionally speaking, a big deal - at least not for the cattle.

For those of you who joined with me to swarm across the globe in a splendid hurricane of conquest, I give you proof of our delicious (if momentary) triumph over the Blogspot infidels. Now, my minions, it’s time to let some other, lesser domain share in the honor and glory of exceedingly temporary world domination.

Tonight, buckeroos and buckerettes, we take over the world! My brother alterted me to the game of Referrer Risk, whereby you, loyal readers, click territory on the map below in order to conquer it in the name of Caoine.org. Join me, and together we shall rule the galaxy as father and son Emma and friends. You can track our progress here, or view all the high scores.

I don’t know: I feel like I’m getting old, this week. Maybe it’s my ass-early epistemology class that’s in one of those little overheated basement classrooms, which reminds me very strikingly of the ass-early ethical theory class I took my freshman year in a similarly little overheated basement classroom, which gets me thinking about how my freshman year was rather a long time ago, proportionally speaking, and maybe I really ought to have graduated by now, and good lord I still keep telling people I’m 21, not because I’m like under the impression that I am still 21 and not because I think other people won’t like me if they find out that I’m not still 21 but shit - I forget, sometimes.

The only thing better than writing a bitchy post about Blockbuster is happening to be acquainted with a Blockbusterful person in a position to show a copy of said bitchy post to the relevant Blockbuster district manager. I know the poor manager will probably cry him or herself to sleep for months over it, but I feel I’ve made an important contribution to the whole video rental establishment in the New York metropolitan area.

And speaking of movies, which I wasn’t exactly but I mean Blockbuster is not an entirely unrelated subject, having something to do with the whole movie thing (to say the least), Chris and I happened to catch the Super Excellent Collectors’ Special Deluxe Edition (or whatever) of Star Wars on network television this afternoon. I haven’t actually watched any of the original three in quite a while, apart from that time Empire was sort of playing in the background while I was installing Jaguar a few months ago and I’m not sure you can really count that. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon than spending it making fun of the cartoonish depths to which Industrial Light and Magic has so pitifully sunk. Although now I’m filled with an insatiable desire to play Rogue Leader, a desire only exacerbated by my lack of a Gamecube.

And speaking of movies and video games, Resident Evil is on tonight. I still haven’t seen it because I’ve been told most emphatically not to spend any money on it, but as it’s on cable I’m not actually spending anything on it, and there are worse ways to spend a Sunday evening than spending it basking in gratuitous Milla Jovovich.

And speaking of movies and gratuitous Milla Jovovich, I caught the second half of Fifth Element last night at a party of truly unequalled glory, at which there was also an abundance of tequila and homemade brownies and many rounds of some elaborate shot that theoretically takes like chocolate when properly constructed but which is still pretty good even without the whole chocolate thing.