inky comedy

Little Miss Sunshine, with Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear and Toni Colette. Wow, a movie that actually pulled off uncomfortable/awkward humor and that I found funny. Usually I'm so drawn into feeling uncomfortable that it overrides the humor, but something was just sincere and sweet enough about these characters that I was okay with it. And they are interesting characters, with a quirky, but not actually too eccentric net of relationships. I am so glad the ending was heartwarming rather than tragic, that would have just been a bad investment of all that they'd drawn me into empathizing with the family.

Igby Goes Down, with Kieran Culkin, Ryan Phillippe, and a slew of other good actors. Wow. This one is definitely much more on the tragic end of the tragicomic scale, but it's definitely a thinker. Not an upper, though. I viewed it as something of a riff on Catcher in the Rye, but with a more noble and intelligent main character. Of course, by his actions and behavior in the movie he hardly seems noble at all, but it's there, just the context has twisted his best attempt at nobility into something sad. Sad nobility equalling tragic, I suppose, which is what keeps the film from being horribly depressing, and maintains it as literature.

Random, but would be a fun night activity

Apparently Bruce Lee invented these, if I recall correctly. Yow.

Huh, I thought inchworms were just a kind of worm. And there're carnivorous ones?! Creepy.

"The importance of A. oryzae has led to its recognition as Japan's national micro-organism ("kokkin"), just as the sakura cherry blossom as Japan's national flower." -- wow, I wonder if we can find someone who majored in MCB to tell us what other countries should be, heh

One more insect thing, which is kind of horrifying, and now I oddly feel compassion for locusts