i'm not saying there's nothing out there.

we watched the final episode of The Sopranos tonight, despite not understanding what was happening, given that we started watching halfway through the last season.  I decided that I liked it, the abruptness and all.  It proved the talent of the people behind the show.  Granted, I was coming into it from an outsider's perspective, somebody with no emotional investment except in the cat that I'm convinced is the reincarnation of a dead character, as it kept staring at a picture of said dead character.  There was an emotional richness in the episode.  The reincarnated cat, the old mob boss with Alzheimer's, the exploding SUV, the family coming together again at a diner.  But the song that's playing throughout the tension-ridden last five minutes is "Don't Stop Believin'" by The Journey. 

now I'm sitting here at my computer, trying to decide whether I should just say to hell with it and go to bed, since I don't feel like doing anything, and suddenly "Don't Stop Believin'" comes on.  I didn't even know I had that song.  But it comes right after The Eraser, because it comes from the album The Escape. 

weird. 

happy all hallows' eve, though no one celebrates it here.

I am currently rediscovering Sigur Ros, whom I've neglected for the past year or more.

I think Von is my favorite album of theirs, which is strange because it has the lowest rating on iTunes (early, undeveloped sound). But the song "Victory Rose" is so scary I can't listen to it. My favorites are "Mother Earth", "Dawn", "Darkness", and "Hope" (my name - Von). I like their other albums too, of course, but Von really is the most hopeful, at the same time that some of the sounds are absolutely frightening. It reminds me of that place I used to imagine when I was little, that I think I saw in an in-flight magazine - the cold, purple fields of grain under an undying sunset. Of watching the sun rise while crossing the Pacific Ocean. It makes me remember my life in totality, instead of just the latest advancements or the past ten years, which is what I usually define as my life - with a huge void missing. Von is the kind of music that makes me remember emotions, not from when I was younger, but emotions that last forever, emotions of being in tune with the planet. Life emotions. No, I know what it is:

the sublime.

Felicity has been trying to make us think of what the sublime is for us all semester. Apparently it's very important for a great deal of film theory. Jacques Ranciere and the like. It's not bliss, it's something better.

would smell as sweet

Piqued by Australia's "Are You Smarter Than a 5th-Grader?", I looked up America's national flower. 

Guess what it is?

The rose. 

Since 1986 - President Reagan's idea, apparently.

America shares the rose as a national emblem with, among others, Iraq.