Good luck is not in my vocabulary.

I was alarmed by the sound of dripping water in my bedroom on Tuesday night. Then I felt the slow seepage in the carpet which eventually led me to at last run my hands over the clothes in my closet to find them all soaking wet.

Then I found this...



Yes. That is my jewelry sitting in approximately three inches of dirty sewer water. You see, due to limited space in my bedroom, I hang my jewelry in plastic sleeves in my closet. So much for the "protective plastic" idea.

To make a long story short, the ceiling in my closet pretty much collapsed in with old, rusty, greasy pipewater from the three apartments above us. It was out of my control. All I could do was salvage what hadn't been coated and soaked already and watch while it rained down from the ceiling. I have a video...I'll post it.

Most of you know I am a collector of designer dresses and shoes, vintage jewelry and an avid purseaholic.

So here's some of the damage:





It doesn't look THAT bad, admittedly, but you have to understand that most of the damage was contained to my closet. My closet that houses everything I hold dear to me. BCBG, Diane Von Furstenburg, Nicole Miller, Armani, Gucci, Fendi, Badgley Mischka, Tiffany & Co. My friends, you will never be the same. You will never have that "I've just been deeply discounted" glow that you used to. You'll always be just a little tarnished to me. That breaks my heart a little.

To my surprise, when I went upstairs to see what the hell was going on in the apartment above me, I found a note in place of the tenants. It read something like this...

Dear ________ Realty Company,

Fix our sh-t before we take legal action. Our kitchen sink has overflowed x-number of times since we moved in and you keep hiring the same incompetent plumbers to fix it. We are going out of town and if this isn't fixed when we get back, we are going to sue your asses.

Thanks,
Apt. 3C

My roommate, who just happens to be one hell of an attorney said that the note proves the property management company's negligence. So I took it to work and made a copy. Along with the photos and the video, I'm pretty sure I have a case to get my stuff replaced. Or at least dry cleaned. What do you guys think?

I leave for Florida on Saturday morning for work for two weeks so this doesn't come at the most opportune time. I'm trying to remain calm.

You guys all remember this fiasco less than a year ago. I thought I'd at least have some good juju leftover from that mess. Oh and then there's this disaster at my old apartment. I just don't know where this black cloud comes from.

Someone please send me some good karma, please? I'll even pay for postage.

Words of Wisdom by E.Lo

"Drinks taste good, do body bad. Smokes taste good, give cancer. Sex feels good, leads to pregnancy and rashes. Food taste good, makes you fat. Just the fact that we are this hot is really pushing it, Megan."

And that's an exact quote.

Prepare yourselves...

For the greatest party ever.

This one...

This one has me wrapped around her little finger.

I'm trapped under the sweaty belly of life and it keeps yelling, "Submit!"

This boredom is good for my writing. All I have are my thoughts and this sorry keyboard to free them with.

I don't have that teathered to a rock feeling inside me anymore. There is no tension, immediacy. I miss it.

I miss longing and being unsure. All the aching questions tumbling about inside my head for hours. It’s easy to write then. Inking out the way I would get through this or that or it or him. And it was always him. I could have misplaced an arm on the way to work and it would still be about him. That was where the rawest emotions in me came from. The freshest cuts left to be gingerly dressed. The buzz in my head and the catch in my throat. I was the walking wounded, but I felt alive.

Complacency is like L.A. fog. During the day you don’t notice it because you are consumed with daily tasks and minutiae. Only when you’ve escaped the work day can you see it rising above the skyline, massive, yellow-luminous and steeping the air with indifference.

I'm plagued by a different beast now. And even though it's not one that cuts as deep, the damage is slower and more lasting.

There is a difference between stumbling into some restlessness and actually mass producing it. I don't know if my luck is just really bad, or if I am just this strange harbinger of small tragedies.

But on the other hand, would I be satisfied with a life of effortlessness?

That's a tough question. I think I thrive on the difficult, expect it.

It just seems I am always on the verge of this massive heartbreak and I can't keep myself from not just walking toward it, but running full speed ahead.

How did this happen?

He is the hulking anchor to my wandering boat, always pulling the sea of possibilities to me when I would rather sail away.

He's the whisper at my shoulder in the middle of the night that turns the corners of my mouth up into a sleepy smile.

He's feverish and exacting with his saving of me. Calculating and determined in the wordless way he halts my uncertainty before it ever even reaches my lips.

His smile opens roses. My heart.

I am needed more than necessary and I like it.

He is the effortless to my demanding. Unruffled to my frenetic. Happy to my sad. Love to my lonely.

And he offered me no choice.

She did it!

Please congratulate my bestie and resident New Yorker on completing her first triathlon!



Megan Donnelly
bib number: 1438
age: 27
location: NEW YORK, NY
division place: 167 out of 260

Amazing, Donnelly, just amazing. I think Biggie Smalls was looking down on you yesterday and helping you along! :)

WAY TO GO!

Dark Knight

Easily the best movie I've seen in ten years.



See this movie.

Ho hum.

Not much to say. I like posts with photos though.

This is where you will find me all weekend. (Please don't make fun of my TV).

Movie Review - The Strangers

Most of you already know I have a strange obsession with horror movies. Really, actually anything deeply grotesque and disturbing.

The movie thing started years ago when as a child I caught a glimmer of The Exorcist playing on my parents' TV in their bedroom. It was the scene where Regan started speaking in tongues, this deep, demonic voice whistling out of my parents' open door. Naturally, I crept closer, watching the black and white shadowy light from the TV flicker violently on the bedroom wall. That alone pulled me in right from the start. I didn't even have to see a single scene of the movie, I was hooked on that compelling flicker.

Maybe it was the juxtoposition between such a frightening moment coming from a place that always felt safe to me, the comfort of my parents' flowery wallpapered bedroom. Whatever it was, since then, I haven't been able to shake it.

Basically after that time, my affinity for all things macabre has grown into a full fledged obsession. You can read about my picks for scariest movies of all time here.

So, while all the pretty girls were waiting in line to see the Sex and the City movie the night it came out, I snuck through the hoards with my tickets for The Strangers.

Here's what I liked about The Strangers.

It stuck to what works in classic horror movies. It stayed true to the elements of suspense: great music (best if used correctly, which it was [for another example of a perfect use of music, see the scene in House of 1,000 Corpses where Otis shoots the cop in the head in the backyard. I never knew country music could be so insanely creepy. Or the classic moment in Resevoir Dogs (not traditionally labeled a horror movie) where Mr. Blonde cuts of Marvin Nash's ear. You get the picture.]

I digress.

Another key element of a classic horror flick is suspense. If The Strangers did one thing perfectly, it was keep you in suspense. From the moment the guy in the suit with the potato sack over his face head appeared at the back door, my heart was racing. That, coupled with the fact that you never actually see the villains' faces, is just completely terrifying.

The film plays into what is definitely one of my biggest, and what I believe to be a lot of people's biggest fears. What if one night I am sleeping and my boyfriend wakes me up and says, "Megan, I think there is someone in the living room." So this movie struck a chord of absolute dread with me. What if you went into the living room and there really was somone there?

Chills. Up and down my neck.

The plot was simple, which any good horror movie writer knows is key. A group of people show up in the middle of the night and proceed to horrify and torture a girl and her boyfriend until the light of morning. Their experience will eventually come to a gruesome end that everyone knows is coming, but just doesn't know when.

It's a setting that allows you to suspend your disbelief enough to think that this mayhem could actually happen to someone as ordinary as you. That's the scariest part about the movie. It makes you come home and pull that front door a little tighter, secure those window locks a little more. The overwhelming fear that one day you will look out your window and on your front lawn will be a girl in a clown mask in the middle of the night. Ummmm fuck that, people! I'm locking those doors!

The thing is, fear only exists and breeds as we name more and more things to be afraid of. A person that has never seen a spider before, is probably not going to be frightened of it. But because generations and generations of men and women have screamed and squirmed their way away from spiders, fear has become inherent.

If you can disengage between the object and the fear, I think the scary can be envigorating. A controlled thrill. That's why these movies captivate me. Fear is the most recognized and powerful emotion in human response. Over love. Over joy. An emotion with such a negative stigma ends up being at the helm of everything; imagine that.

So when they're done right, these movies can be downright emotional masterpieces.

The Strangers was awesome. Not too much blood and gore, but enough to satiate those Freddys and Jasons and Michael Myers lovers. It was a steady and restrained suspense throughout the movie until the end. Which I felt was also one of the strongest points in the movie.

The killers wait until daylight to murder their victims. Bound and defeated, the victims watch with terror as the killers finally de-mask. During that moment, my stomach turned and tightened. You know this is not going to end happily with the girl and boyfriend skipping away from the house holding hands.

The last scene was chilling. Done in complete silence. The reality of the morning light often offers escape to many victims in horror movies. Without the lurking dark of night, we tend to feel a sense of safety. But that idea is completely false. This film shattered any sense of security and comfort in your own home. It was especially devastating to watch, with the way the writers and director had developed the characters to that point.

But.

Every exceptional horror movie leaves the door open for a sequel. And that is all I will say.

Go see it!

Thoreau said "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" and that doesn't sound so bad.

I'm going to go off the record with this post. Meaning, I've turned off all the RSS feeds to any of my hundred other online outlets that would allow anyone else to peek around.

Let's get intimate, Blogger. It's just you. And me.

I'm depressingly bored. Or, boringly depressed. Either way you put it, I'm not leaping out of bed in the morning. I want to inhabit someone else's life. Take over their size sevens. I've always wanted to have size seven feet.

I'm ready to give in.

Give me the blue house and white picket fence once and for all. Give me the dog and the laundry and the groceries. Let me be satisfied with a life of percolating black coffee every morning, two sugars, one cream, kissing my husband goodbye, saying "Love you, babe" and believing that is all I've ever wanted out of life.

Let me be proud of small accomplishments, a well-hedged lawn, a bed made every morning and turned down every night. No dents in the car, no cracks in my proverbial sidewalk.

I surrender to the expected, to the routine. To the punch of the timeclock every day at the same time. To render ideas with no implementation. To be ineffective but remain jovial. Day in. Day out.

I don't want to be me anymore. It's too hard.

I want to be happy with the circumstances I'm given and never question anything. I want to settle and for once not regret it. I want to be a regular, not a small, not a large. I want to be the safe choice. Please let me live without ever having to know frustration or unmet potential. I don't want to know how things could have been. I want to concede to things I can't change, to accept futures that don't make waves, to live contentedly, concentrating only on being the best ordinary me I can be.

I don't want to grow up and have to be something.

And Blogger, I want this now.

I just want to be overlooked. I'm done with expecting anything other than the reliably pedestrian life that would never, ever, ever include this immutable heartbreak that just won't let me for one god damned day wake up without it.

I'm ready.

The Music of Politics

In an age where our world's political climate is sweltering and virtually every move our leaders make becomes satirical fodder, shouldn't we at least have some good music? Isn't it warranted?

Is there any inspiration I can glean from a song titled, "Freek-A-Leek" or lyrics like,

"To the window, to dat wall/ To the sweat drips down my balls/ To all you bitches crawl".

It's puzzling really. I mean, sure, give me a good hook and a loud bass line and I'll shake my ass with the best of them. But this is an opportunity for the creative people of the world to SAY SOMETHING.

What happened to bands like Neil Young, the MC5, The Yardbirds, Bob Dylan and The Who? And then those that followed, Bad Religion, Public Enemy, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Ani DiFranco? Even the Sex Pistols. Damn, and the Clash. The Clash did it right. And they did it in the time of hair bands and fake metal followers.

"Kick over the wall/Cause governments to fall/How can you refuse it?/Let fury have the hour/Anger can be power/Didja know that you can use it?"

I'm sick to death of turning on the radio and hearing the same insouciant, alternative crap and phony, made-up gangster lingo.

Where are the Clashes and the Rages? Are there none left? Where is the dissent? The rebel yell?