Thank the sweet baby Jesus, I’m finally home!

After over two weeks of traveling in Europe, it feels fantastic to be back in my snug little Chicago apartment. The trip was great fun–I got to see some neat places (oh yeah, Sedlec ossuary, I’m talking about you!), but it was also completely exhausting. A general lack of sleep combined with an unexpected need to write a paper abstract amidst traveling to 4 countries and sleeping in 5 different beds over the course of only 6 days all came together to make one incredibly tired Batty. Thankfully, I slept like a log last night, even though I woke up at 7:30 this morning.

The strange thing about it though is that it actually feels weird to be back home. It does absolutely feel like home: familiar, comfortable, etc. But its almost like I feel disoriented because it’s not disorienting, if that makes any sense. After two weeks of having pretty much no idea where I was most of the time, and understanding none of the conversation going on around me, I felt very much like a passive observer of a world that was just swirling past me. And I guess it’s that feeling of being a passive observer that I still have with me, even though I know exactly where I am and understand exactly what’s being said around me. I ‘m sure that like jet lag, that feeling will soon go away. For now I shall be content to remain safely home and oddly bewildered.

It’s been almost a week since I got back from Berlin and I’m still not really back on the work wagon yet. But do I really need to be? I mean, at least not until after my birthday, right?

So today’s celebratory events included: 1) brownies for breakfast, 2) dinner with friends 3) getting a freakin’ ice cream maker from Jess and 4) going downtown to see the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In.

Now, not to turn this birthday post into an extensive film review, but I have to say that Let the Right One In was both highly enjoyable and seriously messed up. I don’t really know how to accurately describe it. In ways, it reminded me of Fargo with the bleak, icy landscapes and the gruesome black humor. Yet, it definitely takes that formula down a darker path. Maybe it’s because the movie centers on children rather than adults and completely subverts any notion of the innocence of youth. But without doubt the movie exploits the fact that sociopathic children are so much more disturbing than sociopathic adults. And that I think is what really makes the film chilling–it’s not the vampires that are frightening, but the brutal and senseless harm that the entirely human characters perform on one another. In a way, the sudden moments of intense vampiric violence in the film are a relief from the tense and twisted atmosphere that is the protagonist Oskar’s daily life.

Overall, I found the film quite enjoyable, although I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. It definitely doesn’t into either a horror or a romance genre, as most other vampire films do. Instead, it’s an intense psychological drama punctuated by dark humor and visually stunning scenes of mayhem. Sweet.

This is why I love my alma mater:

UC Berkeley’s StarCraft 101

I guess this has been making the rounds on the interwebs for a while, but I only just caught wind of it and, well, clearly this is something I need to serve at my next Halloween party!

Mmmm, cholesterol-filled braaaaaaains!

I admit, the fact that it contains 1000+% of your recommended daily dose of cholesterol is a little frightening, but isn’t that just part of its appeal? You can read more about tasty pork brains here.