Kate Winslet has been called the “best English-speaking actress of her generation.” I have analyzed the acting style of this beautiful film icon and I can confidently say what it is that makes her unique.
Bewilderment.
Bewilderment?
That’s right! Confusion! Bemusement! Consternation! All these similar emotions and more pepper Winslet’s stellar technique. This breakthrough observation came to me when I saw The Reader, the film which won Winslet an Oscar. And when she won that Oscar? There was the face.
Oscar?
It’s a specific confusion, a sort of wonderment at the beauty/pain/anger/actual confusion that she is currently experiencing. In The Reader it is a constant hint of “how can I deserve to feel this way about what I am doing right now?” Whether she is swimming, running a trolley, watching children sing, or just sort of sitting around being naked.
Now it is time for me to do my part towards raising a new generation of actresses- a Separated Chaff acting lesson. Stand in front of a mirror so you know when you are making the right expression. Have a friend talk to you normally. Note your expression. Have them continue the conversation in Welch. Congratulations, you are an amazing actress! Keep your puzzled eyes peeled because if we start doing video features we could use your help. Ratings are down and winning an Oscar is apparently a big deal.
With the economy in the toilet, there have been more and more ads for people who have bad credit but want all the perks of good credit. That’s cool, wanting what you don’t have, that’s America, baby. What I love is how coddling these ads come across.
The one I hear the most is also the most oddly specific. “Does your bad credit keep you from getting the laptop you’ve always wanted? We can help!” Well damn, thank you! I wanted to get a loan for a home so my fiancée and I can start our life but yeah, actually, the laptop thing sounds a lot better, thank you!
Ads like this always paint people with bad credit with the same brush- an innocent mistake and then the credit companies start to hammer you with fees and fines and generalized unfairness. Maybe you have bad credit because you’re rubbish with your money!
Credit exists for a reason. If I take out a loan and miss a few payments and then don’t return my flat screen television to the Rent-A-Center when I’m supposed to maybe, just maybe, I don’t deserve a laptop right now.
The following contains spoilers for the “Twilight” series. It also contains questions pertaining to the science of boning. I may win several literary awards.
A minor note before we get into the hot and sticky stuff- in the Twilight series it’s revealed that vampires have twenty-eight chromosomes, two more than humans and one more than werewolves. Apparently vampire venom is made up of a bunch of chromosomes for the genetic recombination that takes place when a human is turned. I’m no geneticist but that sounds a bit off.
We can all agree vampires love blood. They drink it and it makes them strong. They have no blood of their own, so vampires can’t feed off one another. Twilight vampires are the same- very dry individuals. They don’t bleed, they don’t sweat, they don’t cry. They mope, a lot, but they don’t cry. So, in the fourth book, when Bella and Edward get funky (after marriage, the book was written by a Mormon) how does Bella get pregnant? Because she does! And, in true barely-legal mom fashion, she gives her baby one straight-up idiotic name. But where’d the baby juice come from? One theory is that it was vampire venom, the only fluid Edward can produce, canonically speaking. So the same stuff comes out of Edward’s mouth comes out of his Dracula-dong? I don’t think so. One friend told me she thinks that it’s like cement-mix, which is a) gross and b) not really an explanation so much as it was, well, gross. And the “no precious bodily fluids” thing goes even further. I’m not just worries about payload; I’m worried about the delivery system. Boners require blood! Hot, excited, pounding blood! If vampires are never changing creatures then how can Edward get it up? Meyer uses a boatload of terms to describe how the vampires are so smooth, cold, and above all, rock hard. Is that her way of saying the Cullens are a family of golden-eyed priapists? In couplings where both partners are vampires is a lot of lube required? Or is there some other loophole for that, too? And most importantly, why have I spent so much time thinking about how fictional characters get down?
Twilight has a big fanbase. A fanbase you could go so far as to call “rabid.” I’m sure I’m not the only person to consider this (“Team Edward” I’m looking at you) so please, by all means, enrich my life with your knowledge! You can e-mail your research, well-cited essays, and brain curdling fan-fiction to separatedchaff@gmail.com.
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