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donnerpartyofone · 6 years

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21 Questions

Tagged by @getoutofmyhouse who had oddly similar answers to mine

Nickname: only the one I use here, that I gave myself--Claire Donner, which has to do with my famous love of cannibalism. Claire is my real first name, though.

Zodiac: I am so very cuspy. I was born at about a quarter to midnight on April 20, so I tend to relate to, and feel insulted by, the suppositions about Aries and Taurus equally. I’m one of those jerks who will tell you astrology is a bunch of hoo ha...and then drone on with my Many Esoteric Ideas about it, so I’ll just stop myself right here.

Height: 5’ nuthin is what I prefer to say...because saying I’m 5 and 3/4′ sounds a little like saying I’m 10 and a half years old.

Amount of sleep: It’s all fucked up. Until I got into my 30s I could, and would prefer to, sleep endlessly. Now I go to bed around 10 (depression), get up around 5 or 6 (being old), and for extra fun, I’ve developed this insomnia that often keeps me up from about 2am-5am. I try make the most of it by getting up, getting high, watching a movie or two, writing...basically just having a secret private day by myself. I’d really rather go back to just sleeping constantly though.

Last movie I saw: I saw GRETA in theaters tonight, which was ok. I guess I thought any Neil Jordan film would be headier than this, but watching Isabel Huppert just running around acting like an absolute maniac is a rare treat! My last video experience was RAW, which I put on to bother my husband right when we got home from the theater. (I think he liked it more than I originally did, to my surprise)

Last thing I googled: The correct spelling of Sylvia Likens’ last name. I’m obsessed with this type of crime where a group of people (usually a family and/or some of their friends and neighbors) fall into some kind of shared hysteria where they protractedly torture to death an acquaintance for no particular reason. Some times there’s an element of mystery as to why the victim didn’t leave while they were still able to, which suggests to me that the murdered person was just as much a victim of the groupthink as the perpetrators. Other example victims include Suzanne Capper, Vera Jo Reigle, and I think to some degree Sophie Lionnet, James Bulger, and Junko Furuta. (Also a crime they briefly discuss in the book Lords of Chaos, where several people murder a friend in their trailer, but I can’t remember it specifically enough to look up the names--the other last thing i tried to google) I keep thinking there should be a psychiatric and/or legal term for this kind of crime, but I’ve never heard one, so let me know if you got one!

Favorite musician: I have trouble with questions that involve ranking anything, so I’ll just say that right now I’m listening to a lot of old White Zombie. I didn’t know anything about their origins as an East Village noise band, and I’m fascinated by the stories about how apocalyptically miserable it was to be in that group. I’m increasingly obsessed with people who work their asses off doing something they barely even enjoy, for what must be borderline spiritual reasons.

Song stuck in my head: Nothing right this second, for which I am very grateful. There’s something awful in my brain that causes me to wake up with some maddening, babyish tune stuck in my head more often than not. It is most frequently the Ten Little Indians nursery rhyme. This is literally killing me.

Other blogs: @anhed-nia, which started as a dumping ground for long posts about mental illness, and turned into almost only movie writing. at some point there was just so much movie shit that i started to feel awkward about posting anything personal there again. i also got @getoffyrass which is a group blog, and a repository for images that make great drawing references. everyone is encouraged to post their drawings, too, although it is seldom used. i still like having it around, for when i have time to draw. my “real” drawing blog is @neveratendermoment but i don’t draw often enough anymore...

Do I get asks: i used to get tons! i really enjoy them, even the trolls to some degree. i must have seemed like more of a regular tumblr geek girl back in the day. also tumblr has just changed a lot since then. my blog was definitely a casualty of Best Stuff First, i think my follower count stopped dead forever right when that happened, and now that practically every single fucking thing on this entire site is either fandom shit or *discourse*, i really have nothing to offer tumblr anymore, anyway.

Blogs following: 1,057.

Lucky numbers: 2! Also 5.

What I’m wearing: black wool long john pants from Chrome, and a white v neck teeshirt with the words BLACK MAYONNAISE on it in black Rocky Horror font. i live near the notoriously toxic Gowanus Canal, and “black mayonnaise” is the actual term used to describe what’s on the bottom of it, by the scientists who are trying to figure out what to do with it.

Dream trip: i am really excited by travel, it’s hard to pick. i’m hopefully making a dream trip soon though: my father’s mysterious finno-swedish family is from the åland islands, and my husband and i will be planning part of our honeymoon there, whenever that happens.

Dream Job: i think about this a lot, because the older i get, the more i object to the entire concept of having to work to live. i’m into the whole universal basic income thing. i’m at this point where i can barely stand to think about capitalism in any way--like i think about how the need for money is so mortally serious that there’s a lot of physical stuff in the world that only exists because someone was scared of starving, tons of useless products and packaging and factory byproducts and all kinds of fucking straight up garbage that was only invented due to the lethality of poorness. i would rather be left totally alone forever if possible. however, if i HAD to do something and i COULD do anything, it would probably be film criticism. this fantasy takes place in a world where people care so much about what i have to say that i can make a career, not only out of movie writing, but out of only writing about the specific movies i want to write about, referring to nothing other than my personal reactions.

Favorite food: i wish the answer weren’t just “cheese”, but it probably is. also mushrooms. anything cinnamon. i’m a pretty adventurous eater though. the most important thing for me is a variety of flavors and textures.

Languages: english. i took several years of italian in junior high-high school, and did nothing with it. i taught myself to read french pretty fluently, but i would fold right up if someone tried to speak to me. i learned a bunch of swedish on duolingo, shoulda kept it up. i’ll get back to it! i really regret never learning spanish though, so i’m easily torn on what to do with my time.

Play any instruments: clarinet in junior high/high school, also alto sax which i did not enjoy at all, a little guitar. i bought a used electric bass last year that i have really been enjoying, but i feel a lot of guilt around not playing enough. so much of it is just strength training. that’s probably what i like about it, though. also i got a lot of electronic music software and midi controllers and stuff...and then i realized that it could take me months to sort through the thousands of samples i have to program this stuff, and i only got so far into it before i started to get discouraged. i need to get back to it, it’s ridiculous to let that stuff lie around. this is a rare example of me wishing i knew someone local to play with, who could speed me along on how everything works.

Favorite songs: another one of these impossible questions! anybody who is even reading this can probably guess the answers from the handful of music posts i reblog over and over and over. the other night i got all hyperactive and forced my husband to drop everything and listen to “buffalo stance” by nene cherry, which i never ever get sick of. real top contenders for favorite song might be “Stand By the Jamms” by the klf, and this recording, which has gotten me through many difficult hours:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8k1HsF3EvY

https://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/sunray-sonic-boom-music-for-the-dreamachine-cd/STRAWB.003CD.html

Random fact: i’m sure i’m missing out on something really funny and cool, but for now it’s just the well-known fact that i read palms.

Describe yourself as aesthetic thing: man, how do i answer this without being totally pretentious? maybe nobody can! i’m coming up with something really hard to describe but it will be worth it. the other day i watched this insane, completely unnecessary movie about lorca and salvador dali (played by robert pattinson) as gay lovers. there’s a scene in it where lorca does that “pick a hand” thing to dali, and dali picks an empty hand. of course, they’re both poor students who couldn’t be buying any gifts, so they do this obnoxious pantomime where dali pretends lorca actually gave him something--but then it turns out that lorca really DOES have something. he opens his other hand and gives dali...SOMETHING. i don’t know what! they make such a big deal out of it, but what the hell? you see it for a second in this closeup, but it’s shot from like, behind and slightly underneath, and it is just unrecognizable. it’s sort of an orange blob? it’s probably meant to be a sculpture. but, i love the idea of doing the “pick a hand” thing to somebody, and the other person is just like...hey wait a minute, what the fuck even IS this??

it reminded me of one of the most amazing things anyone ever did at my school, bard college. this genius art student who I WISH I COULD NAME TO CREDIT HER did her senior project as this like...made up product. i saw them at the senior show, hanging off a spinner rack, like you’d see next to the register in the drug store. they were called Toilet Buddies. they were these plastic, brightly colored objects that looked like toys, but they didn’t have a familiar earthly shape, and because of the title, it was IMPOSSIBLE to imagine what to do with them. so, she gets the lipstick cam from the film department, and shoots this video of herself sneaking some Toilet Buddies into Walmart. then she takes them to the register and BUYS THEM--the baffled cashier looks for them for a while, and eventually just rings them up as a general grocery or something. then in part 2, the artist TAKES THEM BACK TO THE STORE WITH THE RECEIPT AND GETS A REFUND.

so anyway, i see myself as like a fake product--something that looks just familiar enough to exit, and that appears to have a designated purpose, but it’s just kind of cheap and foreign and it becomes nightmarish to try to imagine what to do with it.

I don’t know if anyone i know will want to do this, but i tag @negativepleasure @moviesludge @former-contender @dimestoreman @thefuzzydave @darkarfs @theoddsideofme @blueruins ...um, i don’t really know who would enjoy this. the ultimate would be @garbagenacht

#long post

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