A Short Visual Essay of Five Things I Love (and One Thing I Hate) Posted by Alex Snider

These three pictures have nothing in common. Or do they?! Well, each one fills me with mirth and keeps me smirking when otherwise I'd be slipping into further despair over (not) writing final papers. But aside from being hilarious, there are five specific things having to do with these pictures that I adore. And one that I wish would be stricken from the earth forever.

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Rebekah Likes Larry Bird, Stories About Fabio Posted by Alex Snider

As a way of further procrastinating, I started a Tumblr yesterday of things Rebekah likes called Rebekah Likes.

A Jose Canseco Bat?

Top five ways in which the original 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie has greatly influenced my life:

1. They reference two of my favourite books, War and Peace and Grapes of Wrath, and considering that I watched the movie a hundred billion times (I actually memorized it and still can recite that scene where Michaelangelo orders the pizza -- "and nooooo anchovies, I mean nooooo anchovies". Yes.) would be really be a surprise if those two references planted the seed which would eventually blossom into a full-fledged biblio-obsession?
2. Inspired my adoration for the lovable and charming party animal. Michaelangelo was my first crush. Yep, I had a crush on a turtle. There was an episode of the cartoon where they all became human and Mikey was a skateboarding dude and I fucking loved it. Incidentally, I also had the hots for Peter Venkman from the cartoon Ghostbusters, what a fox.
3. I still have trouble turning my back on any of my belongings outdoors because I saw the Footclan at work and man oh man, those guys were gooood. The montage scene where the news report is playing over a bunch of young ruffians just liftin' stuff left and right? They steal a lady's TV when she just turns for a second!
4. Pretty sure that my primal desire for an old dilapidated farm house complete with a claw-foot tub and peeling plaster stems from April's place where the turtles and Casey hide out. Ah, the romance!
5. Well, it's a toss up between my insatiable hunger for 'zah (seriously, HOW GOOD IS PIZZA??) and how the voice in my head is usually either in an Oprah or Splinter voice, specifically I'm always reciting "and four baby turtles..." or "I made a funny" to myself. 

Here's my favourite five minutes of the movie (oh man, when the pizza falls on Splinter's head? Classic.):

Side-note, how much does Casey Jones look like Elliot from Law and Order: SVU???

Nabokovvvvvvvvvvvv!!!!!! by Alex Snider

Today, I embark on a journey that will culminate with me becoming the preeminent Nabokovian scholar. That being, I begin my course on my long-dead (*come on Zombie-apocalypse*) boyfriend. Oh, can you even imagine having Vladimir for a boyfriend? He'd be the one that you'd try and impress by being all serious and smart and never fart in front of.

Been there, bought the nerdiest t-shirt ever. A side-note, this picture was ridiculously hard to take with my computer without making my breasts look like watermelons hence the terrible, half-shimmy, "who's your daddy" pose/face.

But, I digress... As you can see I am a little enamoured with the greatest writer of all time; his prose has actually brought me to tears; he is the kind of author in who's novels you would write in the margins, underlining ferociously because while you had never perceived the world that way but now that image, that thought is branded in your mind and you will never be the same. John Updike described his writing as such: "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, ecstatically", which incidentally also describes how I feel reading his prose; for reals, I get goose-bumps.

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Ba Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Daaaaa

Deliverance is on and I'm watching it again (well, that and Celebrity Rehab. Seriously, what is going on there? Eric Roberts is wearing a saggy tank-top and I can see his nipples; that is something I can never unsee) and hot damn, that is a fine movie. A fine movie AND a gorgeous novel.

The novel, by the poet James Dickey, flows like the river at the centre of the plot; lush and vivid, it is an achingly beautiful story about survival and the disparate nature of urban life and our more primal instincts. The kind of book that compels one to write things like, "an achingly beautiful story about survival and the disparate nature of urban life and our more primal instincts".

And, the movie is almost, like super close to being just as good as the book. So good, I forget that Jon Voight is a total dick-hole. So good, it makes me think that maybe, just maybe, I could love movies. 

But, alas, I don't love movies. There are movies that I love but as a whole, I rarely opt to watch them and when I do I'm so very often disappointed. Although, I do find it really difficult to stop talking for two hours  the reason is a bit more complex.

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M-M-M-Montage

Oh man, do I ever love a good montage. Hell, not even a good montage; any montage will do. The combination of music and clips is so manipulative and I am more than willing to be manipulated. There must be some sort of montage 101 template that every montage-maker must follow (after the jump):

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Crystal and the Ghostly Dog

When I moved to Toronto from Winnipeg nearly six years ago I brought with me a Value Village suitcase jammed with clothes, an old bulk tortilla chip box from the Mexican restaurant I worked at filled with shoes and books, a print of Botticelli's Birth of Venus and this picture of two girls dressed up all harlequin-like.



I the decision to drop out of school and move across the country was one I came to rather spontaneously on day in March, 2005; I bought my plane ticket the next day and was gone on April 6th.

Before I left, my dear, dear friend, Crystal and I took a trip to Value Village so I could buy a suitcase. Crystal and I had, have been friends since we were thirteen. It doesn't matter how many kilometers separate us or how different our lives are or even how many months are between calls, we always pick up just where we left off. She is one of the silliest, most fun people I know and, hot damn, she has the best stories ever. Whether she's inadvertently crashing a sick kid fundraiser picnic with her bandana wearing toddler (who wasn't sick but put a scarf on a toddler's head and, voila, instant sick kid -- it got ugly) or hanging on to a deer spine we found one winter at my cottage and I won't even get into the cat cremation story.

Anyway, so while we were at La Village that day we came upon these two paint-by-numbers depicting the same couple of girls, one blond and one brunette, one with a parrot and one with a creepy white ghost dog. Well, hey, Crystal had blond hair and I had dark brown. Crystal had this creepy, ancient white cat and I kind of liked birds. Obviously it was kismet, we were meant to find those paintings.

We each bought one and promised one another that we would always keep them so that every time we looked at them we would think of the other. And, in so every bedroom I've had in the past six years the Crystal picture has had a place of prominence and sure enough every time I look at it, the picture warms this old lady's withered soul.

Not to mention, it really kicked off my love for paint-by-numbers and obsession with shabby-chic, bohemian home decor.