6: Archer

Archer is in it's second season right now on FX, and it's hilarious. It's all about the main character, Sterling Malory Archer, the world's most dangerous secret agent. Sterling is an agent for ISIS: International Secret Intelligence Service in New York City and his mother is the head of ISIS. Lana Kane is the other top secret agent who also happens to be Archer's ex girlfriend. The whole show is completely ridiculous and funny with a lot of dark humor and sarcasm.
At first I didn't really care for the show until a friend of mine convinced me to watch a whole episode, by which the end of it I became a fan of the show. With Archer's smooth pick-up lines and constant vanity, it shows that with even the most important moments of your life are better off with some silly humor.

5: The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

This book of short stories is translated into English from Japanese and it's a little on the dark side of humor. Most of the stories start out with really strange situations of Japanese people and their lives. At first, it was hard to completely get into reading it, but after the first story ended I didn't really want to put it down. Since then I've read it multiple times. The stories are so good that I find it hard to pick my favorites, but if I had to it would be Sleep and The Second Bakery Attack.
Sleep is about a women who finds herself unable to sleep for seventeen days. In that seventeen days she begins to do things while her husband is at work and her son is at school that isn't exactly her normal routine. She ends up drinking bourbon, eating a ton of chocolate, rereading the book Anna Karenina, and going for swims in the gym pool. This story reminds me of my days in high school where I would find myself doing random things due to insomnia. I feel like I could relate because it's something you don't want to tell anybody because it's nice to be out of the normal routine.

4: Sleeping in the Forest by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

I've studied Mary Oliver's poems before and I picked this one because I haven't ever read it before. Mary Oliver is a transcendentalist and most of her poems are about nature. This particular one seems to be about sleeping on the forest floor. In the first few lines she is conveying that she is in one with nature so that she feels completely comfortable just lying down on the earth of the forest like nature is an entity and they are old friends. This makes me wish I felt that way about nature.
The last few lines make me think that while sleeping she became one with mother nature in spirit and in mind. It's about the "luminous doom" of having to wake up and be separated once more from nature. This is how I feel about sleep in general, which is that waking up means I have to go back to reality which isn't as sweet as feeling like you're being part of the world, with your mind shut down. To think of it that way could also mean a symbolism of death. As you shut down your body, you become one with the very nature that made you a separate entity.

3: Amelie

Amelie has been my favorite movie for a few years now. It is in French, with English subtitles of course, but it's meaning is universal. It is about a French girl who grew up without any friends because her father was a doctor and thought that she had a heart condition and deemed her unfit for school. Then her mother dies and her father becomes a complete recluse. Though she gets older and moves out while working at a bar called the Three Windmills. Through a series of odd events she becomes interested in helping the people she is in daily contact with but doesn't really know and may be falling in love with a boy she "feels an affinity with".
I related to this movie so easily because I'm just like Amelie. I help other people to the point where I don't ever help myself. You can't fail if you don't set any standards for yourself or if you don't try because you're scared. But then again, you can't win either. This movie definitely made me realize that to get anything worth living for you have to take a risk.

2: Fire and Ice by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I don't normally read poetry but I do remember this particular poem from when I read it in high school. I like reading it aloud because of it's rhyming scheme and the way it rolls off the tongue. It's almost like music. I think that when he says "fire" that he means things like hate, jealousy, greed, and lust, which are among the more stronger emotions. "Ice" seems to be more like ignorance, depression, and antipathy. I agree that "ice" will definitely work in destroying the world, but that it takes longer than "fire" which is why "fire" will be first. This poem makes me think about controlling my emotions before they control me whether they are fire or ice because either is bad.

1: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Movie Part 1

This was definitely one of the top most anticipated films of the year and I went to theaters to see it as I have for all the other Harry Potter movies. I didn't get into the books until a couple of years ago and I haven't been angry about the films "missing parts" of the books because of it. At first I was worried it would be slower than the other films because the book was made to movie in two parts, but the cinematography made up for that really well as I thoroughly enjoyed watching it multiple times.
The part I enjoyed the best was Hermione reading the three brothers of the Deathly Hallows. I loved being able to watch the story as she reads it. Also, even though it doesn't bug me, they really didn't leave out any parts of the book which made a lot of fans happy, I'm sure. I like the movies so much because it brings the books to a whole 3D level and when I read the books again, I can picture it much easier in my head and it makes the story much more enjoyable.