Advantageous is simultaneously straightforward and complex – intimate, heavy with mood and yet nuanced enough that the weight is applied in layers.
Read MoreFilm review – It Follows
When I visited Detroit last summer, my first impression was that it would make an amazing setting for a horror movie. I’ve never driven through such a large city that seemed so empty, void of both cars and people. And it wasn’t just a regular kind of empty. It felt stuck in mid-stride, as if it were…
Read MoreBook review – Horrorstör
There are few pastimes in this world that make me happier than reading scary books or watching scary movies. One of those few happens to be strolling through Ikea. I know it’s probably indicative of some sort of psychosis, but I find Ikea very soothing. The second time I moved to Beijing I lived pretty close to one of…
Read MoreStream themes – Bizarre romance
In watching the Golden Globes last night, it became abundantly clear to me that I’m a bit out of touch with the mainstream. I don’t think I’ve seen any of the movies nominated, and only a handful of the television shows. To be fair, a lot of the nominated films haven’t been released yet (or…
Read MoreThe hibernation of the mind
I have two basic states of being – creating and consuming – and I’ve found that they tend to be mutually exclusive. The interpretation of either state is relatively broad, but the main constant is that they remain separate. When I was younger, the transition was seamless. I would write feverishly for fifteen minutes, then…
Read MoreFrom the mouths of babes
When I was a teenager, over the course of about a week, three different companies starting building self-storage facilities along the same block. It was as if, unbeknownst to each other, they all bought the same consumer research poll that indicated my neighborhood was full of people with too much stuff willing to pay for storage.…
Read MoreWhy net neutrality is worth fighting for
For a large majority of people, the term “net neutrality” doesn’t really mean much. It’s probably something you’ve heard mentioned a few times over the past year, but you likely dismissed it for sounding too technical or too boring or too… virtual. So, I’m going to ask you to think of it in a different way.…
Read MoreThe weaving of a tale
There is a spider who lives in the window over my bed. Her web is strung like a safety net, woven horizontally between screen and glass so that she’s able to perch herself in the joint of the window frame. At the point in the morning when I open the blinds, the sun is at…
Read MoreMy summer vacation in Detroit
“I’m taking a long weekend in Detroit,” is not a phrase I ever thought I’d say. It’s also not a phrase people expected to hear. But some of my Beijing friends were going to be back in the states for a few weeks, visiting their families in Michigan, and as it turns out, airfare from…
Read MoreThe lost art of the letter
There is something inherently magical about a letter. It’s tactile communication – paper touched by the hand of another, tucked into an envelope that traps their air inside and transports it to you. I find it fascinating, and even slightly romantic, that we still lick envelopes to seal them shut. In a sense, peeling a…
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Positively Natalie 