As someone who started this summer with the modest goals of watching at least 50 movies and plowing through a few classic novels, I already had my work cut out for me. But perhaps you, gentle reader, were not so ambitious.  Perhaps you decided you’d get a job or travel or take a class or something equally blase. I take pity on you, and as one who has almost entirely avoided conventional productivity this summer–except for a bit of hard physical labor emptying my family’s storage space–I’m here to provide you with some resources for properly squandering your time.

Face it, friends. Most days, it’s so hot you could spit, and you’d really rather not leave the house/apartment/couch/bed. You would prefer not to lapse entirely into a state of mental atrophy, and hours of YouTube are hardly helping with that. Even CNN and MSNBC, usually bastions of escapist whimsy, thrust you knee-deep into a swamp of MJ funeral news. So you need some ideas–what to watch, what to read, what to listen to–and, as always, the internet’s got your back.

Looking for a nice evening in, alone or with friends? Take some tips from Movie Album Food, a blog that its creators call “a modest attempt to join our three favorite things in the world: film, music and eating.” In its utter direct simplicity, Movie Album Food was actually the inspiration for this post. What more could any loungechair lizard want than a snack, a fine film and some pretty pleasant tunes? I haven’t had a chance to personally test any of the combos recommended here, but #2, #5 and #6 seem perfect, and there are undoubtedly more worthy recommendations on the way from this fledgling blog.

For a decidedly less populist summer film-watching experience, check in with the cult archivists at Teleport City, a review site full of bizarre and unknown films across eras, genres and cultures. Next semester, you’ll be able to impress your friends at parties by telling them about the virtues of “The Horrible Sexy Vampire” and “Avenging Disco Godfather.” Or maybe by then you’ll be content to skip the party and settle in for your third viewing of “Warning from Space.” But be careful not to plunge too deep, or before you know it, you’ll be running back and forth to Reel Video and forgetting that classes have already begun. (Here’s hoping I can heed my own warning!)

If you’re up for some summer scares, I find plenty of interesting horror movies at Stacie Ponder’s Final Girl blog (warning: may contain gory/NSFW images), and anyone with a particular predilection for the genre might want to follow her Final Girl Film Club posts. On the flipside, if you don’t want to be scared EVEN SLIGHTLY, you should watch the infamous and hilarious Troll 2, now available in its entirety on Hulu. It was apparently intended to be a horror movie, but I promise you won’t be scared, unless you have recurring nightmares about shitty production values or a phobia of small children urinating on food.

If you’re not already up to your neck in books you didn’t have time to read during the schoolyear, you could do worse than Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog for some good tips on contemporary literature. Also, I keep expecting Lit Mob to be a totally sweet resource, but as far as I can tell, it’s not updated much at all, so bookmark at your own risk. Even so, the archives of their “Artist Picks” feature, in which various musicians discuss what they’ve read recently, look intriguing.

If you want to do a little book shopping while still confined to the climate-controlled caverns of your own home, you might do well to turn to the online McSweeney’s Garage Sale, where literary magazine and publisher McSweeney’s (mentioned in my previous post) is selling off “slightly damaged” books at nice prices.

If you’re lacking a summer soundtrack, you’ve got several options. You can check out reviews of new releases right here at the Daily Californian (SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT), or on the controversial but nevertheless influential Pitchfork Media. If you want something totally new, you should check out the sharity blog Mutant Sounds, which posts all sorts of out-of-print, marginal music for you to download. Some of it may not be summery enough, but who doesn’t want to bliss out to Spanish prog every now and again? Maybe you prefer the decidedly more novelty/retro bent of the downloads offered up at Weirdo Music. Or you can just do what I do, and religiously seek out anything Owen Pallett namedrops on his Twitter.

Oh, and if you must spend your valuable time on YouTube, do yourself a favor and visit Everything Is Terrible. Your mind won’t atrophy from these videos, so much as cave in on itself in a black-hole-forging plunge towards the center of time and space and the true meaning of life. Or, you know, something along those lines.

Armed with these tools of the trade, you should be more than prepared for a totally sedentary, intellectually stimulating rest of the summer. I tried to focus here on sites that primarily provide information on other media, but there’s always Coilhouse (occasionally NSFW), Ectoplasmosis, Topless Robot, copyranter, Pajiba, and countless other blogs to fill your time.

Or, uh, you could actually get off your ass and do something–swim, hike, drive around. But where’s the fun in that?

Image source: Picture Is Unrelated