Augh. I feel really fucked up in the head right now, and have basically the whole weekend. I suspect most of this is a direct result of the types of things I’ve chosen for entertainment recently, and once I explain what I’ve been up to it should make a little sense.

As usual, I spent the majority of the weekend over at the guys’ place. Friday night the three of us sieged dungeons until we were too tired to see straight. Brian left the next morning to hang out with Martha so Jon made us pancakes. After the realization that he only had a tiny bit of butter left, I was sent on a butter run, which took much longer than expected, but in the end we had some yummy food. This time he had the consistency of the batter correct so the pancakes weren’t a mile thick. XD After that we took a brief trip to Radio Shack so he could get some serial port ends so he could make cables for his UPSes. We decided to go see a movie in the theatre since it’s been forever and a day since we’ve done that, so I played Silent Hill 4 for a half hour until it was time to leave. I got past the part I was stuck on, so I felt a little better.

The movie we chose was The Forgotten. (Well, I pretty much chose it and Jon agreed to come along.) I knew very little about it other than it looked like a mystery starring Julianne Moore. That was enough to pique my interest anyhow. It turned out to basically be an extended X-Files episode with different actors, so I was quite pleased with it. I don’t want to give too much away for the sake of those who have yet to see it, but the route they took to explain what was happening was very typically X-Files in nature, and while they did a fantastic job keeping it away from cliche, I think the plot would have been a lot more interesting if the answer had been of a more human origin. That’s probably given more away than I should have but I can’t really be any less specific without it making no sense. So go see the movie and hopefully you’ll understand what I mean. In any case, it was far better than I expected it to be, but that’s not saying much since I didn’t go into it with any expectations, other than the fact that I think Julianne Moore is a fantastic actress. She did a fantastic job in this role.

So after we got back from that we putzed around for a little while then went to Fazoli’s for supper since Jon was in the mood for “cheap Italian-American food.” While we were waiting for the food, I looked down at my receipt and noticed that something wasn’t quite right. So I asked Jon to look at it too, and together we picked out four mistakes in the restaurant’s address. The street was misspelled, the city was misspelled, the zip code and area code of the phone number were all wrong. WTF?! Jon was so intrigued by it he went up and told the staff about it, and they all seemed a bit surprised…apparently in all these years no one had noticed it. Hrm. Nice to see that people are so observant.

When we returned home, the fucked-up-ness of the weekend clicked solidly into motion. Over the course of the evening, Jon helped me through the remainder of Silent Hill 4 with occasional consultation of a walkthrough (the building world 2nd time was very confusing.) After figuring out what to do for the final boss battle it only took me one try to beat him (yes, I was playing on easy mode, because I get too easily frustrated) and I got the “best” ending (”Escape”) so that was really cool. Too bad “Cradle of Forest” was the closing theme…that song is so beautiful but the vocals over it are just horrendous. Eeegh. After saving the game, I restarted it and played up until Cynthia’s death scene because I wanted to see that again…for some reason I find it very beautiful, mostly due to the song “Room of Angel” that plays over it. In any case, we checked a walkthrough to find out what you can get for playing through the game multiple times, and we joked about how there’s no way in hell I could ever beat the game in under 2 hours because of my horrible sense of direction. I needed Jon there to direct me, since so often I knew where my destination was but had no clue how to get there. “Ann, walk towards the camera! Now to the left–NO, the other left!” (One of the rooms is upside down and all the controls are reversed…that REALLY fucked with my brain) ~_~ There was so much “mother” imagery in the game, and so much of it was based on theology (a very fucked-up theology, but a theology nonetheless) that parts of it reminded Jon of The End of Evangelion, which I had never seen. I’d once watched the entire TV series and the first movie in one weekend (which really fucked me up) but hadn’t had the nerve to watch that movie too. So we watched that while I crocheted. Parts of it made sense, while others left me going “Ehhhhh?” Just an absolute overload of mother imagery and theology was had that evening, and before I went to bed I said to Jon “If I dream I’m pregnant, it’s going to be your fault.” I didn’t.

Slept in late on Sunday morning…which I feel rather meh about. It was nice being able to get a bit more sleep, but I felt so dull when I awoke that it didn’t matter. I went home, watched a couple episodes of Twin Peaks, then…as if it wasn’t enough…watched Lost Highway. My god. After that I was basically overwhelmed with psychological anxiety, so I took a 2-hour nap because I didn’t know how else to handle it. Then, once I awoke, I felt even worse than before. I didn’t feel like eating…I was emotionally drained and very very uncomfortable and anxious. So, stupidly, I watched even more Twin Peaks. The problem with being so addicted to such a cerebral series is that the more it drains me, the more I want of it. Luckily Jules came online and was able to talk to me for a bit.

I stopped watching stuff and began listening to some Aussie rock and I started feeling a bit better. I listed a bunch of stuff on eBay and then went to bed. I lay there for over an hour, trying to think of good things to focus on. Thoughts of my upcoming trip to Australia only made me nervous and anxious because the magnitude of it…of everything that will change because of it. I’m very nervous about all the changes that will be happening in the months to come, and once the time draws near, it’s going to be even worse. These are all changes for the better, and my life will be completely upended and I’ll have to plant new roots in an unfamiliar place, but it’s also a welcoming place so it’s not as if I’m headed down the wrong path. This is *right*…it’s just the fact that it’s unfamiliar that scares me. Because I’m still full of youth and vitality, I have the energy and resiliency to be open to change, so this is the time that I need to do this. It’s comforting to know that I have my friends to remind me to keep my mind on what is important, my ultimate goals, rather than the insignificant details that I so easily get caught up in.

And on a tangentially related note, three different people have come on IRC this morning all stressed out and upset, lashing out at the world. I think there must be some cloud of uneasiness and negativity blocking the flow of energy in the universe. If this cloud has a definite shape, I feel as if I’m caught in the wall of it, hanging in a sort of limbo between complete uneasiness and angst and the other side which is full of calm, peace, and contentedness. I don’t completely feel any of those things at the moment…I just slide back and forth lazily from one side to the other, never really pushing my way completely through to either side. Hopefully it won’t be long before I’m past this mood and back to my contentedness.

So a word of advice, do not mix a cocktail containing any combination of two or more of the following: The Forgotten, any Silent Hill game, Neon Genesis Evangelion, any David Lynch film or TV series, and lack of sleep/exercise/stimulation. It’s just asking for trouble.