Que ridiculoso

I had a pretty good week, I guess. I saw both Ponyo and District 9 in quick succession; hard to imagine two more different films, but I really liked them both (and hardly had any nightmares about D9 at all!) Ponyo was especially fun because my sister and her boyfriend met me there fresh from the Ikea, bearing weird candy from Sweden for all (toffee flavored whips, elderflower juice boxes, and no jelly rats because my sister scarfed them all before I got there.) Foreign candy and snack food is one of my many unhealthy avocations. My discovery of yesterday is Rollos Con Cajeta from Mexico - a rolled snack cake sheet filled with Coronado brand goat's milk caramel. What is it with Mexico and caramel? Or South and Central America in general and caramel? Whatever the explanation, they do it right.

But District 9 was really creepy! I successfully failed to spoil the main plot point for myself through prior knowledge, so when the bomb dropped, so to speak, I was pretty surprised - and horrified, because (uh, spoiler alert) I love/hate the genre of "body horror" (especially physical transformation beyond the affected person's control.) If I'd known it was going to figure prominently in the film, I would still have gone, but I would at least have been prepared for creepy grossness.

This week my homework for Color Theory includes tracing an 8 1/2 x 11" magazine illustration and transferring it to a board. I'm sort of nervous but I also can't wait; the trick is going to be finding an acceptable work surface in the unholy mess that is my living space. I don't even have a desk, dude.

Other current projects include my new obsession with embroidering my own line drawings. If I can figure out how, I plan to immortalize my "edgy" rendition of an ugly mermaid smoking a cigarette by uploading it here. I used peach, teal, mint, lavender, and yellow thread from the Needlepoint at Rittenhouse shop on 18th and Chestnut, but I didn't have any cinder grey for the curl of smoke, so I need to get back there today (although it's kind of a haul for me.) Embroidery is so cute and fun, and I can't wait for my glow in the dark thread and Jim Woodring iron-on patterns to show up in the mail! Fun, fun, fun. Anyway.