Linky, Clicky, Shiny Objects!

I had this thing planned, where I would write, like, an actual entry about real things, maybe even involving dialogue and a plot and it would be funny. But instead, I've decided on massive linkings around the internet to things that won't stop cracking me up.

(Completely unironically, almost every one of these things could be found by hitting all my Elsewhere links. Is it a double word score for the blog when you add multiple layers of unoriginality on the same page?)

• Disgruntled Harry Potter Fan Releases "Corrected" Version of Book : All the fandom wank condensed into one easy to swallow bite of hilarity. (For the darker side, the real compiled listing of the actual wanks that came out following the Half Blood Prince. Still amazingly funny, but as you get deeper into it, there's a lot more sad and creepy thrown in.) Once again, this one might be more geared to just be interesting to me, since I have a little background in it. (via: The Rage Diaries)
• Uwe Boll's Dungeon Siege : Go read the entire press release. All of it. Don't stop at the part where they mention King Burt Reynolds. Done? Okay, seriously, is there any way this movie cannot be completely awesome? Imagine Burt Reynolds, that That Guy from Goodfellas, the girl who got knee cancer in the worst movie ever made, that annoying guy from Scream, and Gimli from Lord of the Rings all sitting around a card table in a basement playing Dungeons and Dragons. I will be the first goddamn person in line at the ticket booth, I promise you that. (via: Videogamey)
• Penny Arcade and Found Cake : "No! I even asked somebody! I was like: Is this your cake? And he was like: No."
• I Harth Darth - Diagnosis: Lame : Everything about these comics is so cutesy that I almost shudder, but they make me laugh so inappropriately no matter the time or the place. (Bonus: my favorite one of all time. If I had a dollar for every time I quoted something in this 5 panel comic, I would have 14 dollars.)
• All On Sale: Jesus Videotapes! : I kid, all you Baptists, I kid. Also, it's so easy to tell that this really happened, because the description is so true to life in the semi-rural south. I've been to that garage sale, man. Also: "Hello? Skipper, I am NOT kidding you -- stay away from Ken! I know he's smooth down there! I like him that way!"

And one last one for the road:

• This just in: The terrorists have won, Glitter flopped. Mariah says movie was just too cutting-edge for it's own good.

I will at least think about posting something original before the sun sets. But I promise nothing! ...except, y'know, that.

Bits 'n Bats

Random things floating in my head right now that I wish to enumerate:

• I really hope whoever invented waffle fries won some sort of award for delicious inventiveness.
• If you bring banana bread to the office, you damn well better have enough for the whole class. Otherwise you're just mean.
• Man, did The Fantastic Four suck, and hard. A whirling vortex of weird filming, bad special effects, and really horrible acting. Throw in a "plot" that was basically "Hey, we're the Fantastic Four, aren't we cute?" / "I'm a bad guy RAR!" / "Defeated!" and, oh my how I wish I could have back both those 2 hours, and my $6.50. Lame to the power of four.
• Despite any newfound compulsions you may have, it is never a good idea to rub your head up against the wall of an elevator, like a cat. Especially if there are other people in the elevator.
• I finished Magic Street over the weekend. I did not like it enough to justify the purchase. That makes me sad. It was good, but it veered off track sharply at the end. I still think the premise is awesome, and I respect the effort, but I really should have just borrowed it from the library.
• I still have Shadow of the Giant to get to, but first have to get through the other books in the series again, to remember what's going on. Just now finished Shadow of the Hedgemon, in about 5 hours of pure reading. God, how on earth can a book be that compelling? It's not even that great. I have no rationalizations for anything I do anymore.
• I haven't watched any of the summer fare on TV this season. Except for The 4400, which is awesomely addictive. It has a pure evil, non-alien baby from the future and plenty of hot guys to go around. I can only hope that the rest of TV hasn't been great. I wish now that I had watched The Inside more than just that one episode, because it looks really kick-ass, but for some reason I can't wrap my mind around summer programming schedules. It's so much easier just to turn on TNT and watch 3 consecutive hours of Law and Order instead of thinking.
• I have oscillated between buying a new car, buying new furniture, and buying a new computer so many times over the last two months that my brain feels like a whirling centrifuge. I'm going to have to make a decision soon, if for no other reason than my mind will finally be silenced. It's so hard to decide, though. Compound that with the whole apartment-hunting thing starting up and you might as well prepare the straight jacket today. Y'all know I don't do well with decisions.
• Have you seen where the Mavericks might release Michael Finley for the luxury tax write-off? That really sucks, but it's good for him, I guess, so I can't feel too bad. But I love my poor Mavs as they are. We already lost Nash, must we also lose Fin? Where will I place my emotions? Dirk will be all alone, and everyone will be sad. And by everyone, I mean me.
• I planted some seeds in a little flower box out on my patio roughly 11 days ago. I have yet to see any flowers sprout, and am getting impatient. I tried talking to them at first, but it didn't work. I think I need to move on to yelling at them. Has anyone ever tried disciplining flowers? I need advice.

Okay, I'm done. Spotless mind, now that that's all out. I love spewing purely random noise out into the gaping maw that is the internet.

Lowered Expectations Theatre

What happened to me? I used to be a cinema snob. I could turn my nose up at even the most well-made film, provided it was targeted for mass-market appeal. The words "summer blockbuster" would create an internal shudder that could go on for days. I had tastes and distinctions and could complain about anything.

Now, we are about to hit the end of the summer, and I've had exactly one (1!) movie experience that I didn't like (burn in hell, Madagascar). Out of how many? Just off the top of my head I count 10 movies. That just will not stand, you know?

Do you think that maybe I just enjoy going to the movies so much, that it doesn't really matter what is showing? Perhaps I love sticky floors and the smell of old popcorn enough that I can forgive anything so long as the big screen entertains me with its bright shiny colors?

The latest entry in my ongoing fall into banality is the hotness-fest that is The Island. First off, we need to discuss exactly who directed this film. If there was anyone who personified my cinematic arch-nemesis in the past, Michael Bay was it. Look over that filmography. Bad Boys (I & II). Armageddon. Pearl frickin' Harbor. This movie already had so much badness going for it, and we haven't even got to the premise yet.

But guess what? Surprise, surprise, I loved this stupid movie. I am so shallow.

1) Scarlett Johansson fits this movie so perfectly it's almost like a meta-statement on the plot itself. It's like she was genetically engineered to play this role, perfect level of hotness calibrated to an astonishing degree. I'll be the first to admit that I totally did not get Lost In Translation, but I still recognize that it was very well done and she was excellent in it. But I think she fits even better here in the quinessential cheesy summer flick. She has Action Movie Face.

2) Ewan McGregor. If there is anything in the world that ruins me for a movie, he is it. Seriously. Just ends me. And there is some sort of weird inverse relationship going on, because the older he gets, the more hot he equals. And then he tries an American accent in this movie? Be still, my tiny, dorky heart. I give up, and I'm overwhelmingly happy that he sold out his indie cred for Michael Bay blockbuster - even though it is apparently a spectacular flop.

Which is insane, because it actually is a really well done movie. The action scenes are ridiculously gratuitous, but the whole movie works on its own as a vaguely creepy sci-fi story cross-bred with a futuristic action-adventure. It's funny, and creepy, and exciting, and would you look at me I'm gushing over a summer movie won't someone shoot me now?

Ugh.

Also, and I hate to bring this up because I don't think it's possible to sound more like a 12 year-old girl, but that first kiss between the two of them is the hottest hot thing that was ever hot. Yeah, okay, leave me to contemplate my own demise of taste in peace.

Ruined forever, I say.

I am easily amused

Google wins my affection today.

The Moon.

(Zoom all the way in)

Heh.

Yeah, it's a slow day.

Pinpointing

Let's see if we can nail down exactly what the best part of today was, shall we?

Was it:

• When I woke up 5 minutes past the time that I usually get to the office and realized that some how my alarm clock was flashing 12:00, despite the fact that no other appliances had gone out overnight?
• When I was rushing through the (pitch black due to maintenance) parking garage and some chick threw her cigarette butt out the window and into my hair?
• When some overly large woman with an orange perm from beyond the grave spilled her entire Coke down my back while I was eating lunch?
• Or when I was heading back to the office (with a wet and sticky back) and some blond girl in a red Mustang rear-ended the Truck of Malfunction and then sped off around a corner before I got any additional information?

I'm going to say it would have to be the part with the cigarette in my hair, because at least then I could enjoy the delicious menthol stylings of someone else's lung irritants with the added bonus of that great burning hair smell!

In other news, everything sucks. How was your day?

Interrupt

We interrupt the planned Harry Potter-fest for a discussion of candy.

(Aside: I doubt any of you go in for scary internet fandoms like I do, but seriously, the fallout from this book is some of the funniest shit in the history of time. Is LiveJournal just a magnet for people who are excessively dramatic? Whatever it is, man is it hilarious to watch.)

So all I eat nowadays is candy. How did this happen? Consider every place I frequent:

• Next to my computer at work - box of SweetTarts
• Next to my computer at home - bag full of M&Ms
• Next to the round chair in my living room - box of Goobers
• Next to the couch - half eaten bag of Gummi Bears
• On the futon - what's left of a roll of Sprees, another box of Goobers
• On my bed (which I found when I woke up this morning) - two Reeces's Peanut Butter Cups and an open pack of Big Red chewing gum
• On a chair by the dining room table - roughly 30 giant Pixi Sticks in a display box.

Seriously. Look at that list. Is there a patron saint of diabetes? I'm running purely on sugary adrenaline here, no doubt. Yesterday I was wondering why I hadn't had the urge to drink a Coke in a few days. Obviously my body was saving itself from total shutdown in the face of enough sugar to feed every remaining panda in the world. (I am told that pandas eat sugar. This person may be pulling my leg, however. I do not feel like doing a Google search on pandas and sugar at this exact second, so I'm going to go with it for now, because I like the thought of sentient pandas hiding Pixi Sticks up in their trees.)

The other result of this is that I will no doubt have an acne break-out of epic proportions like I'm 15 again, at any moment now. I can almost feel it happening as I type. I feel this is an equal trade off - all the deliciousness of taste is transmuted into a horrible visage. It's something to do with karma, no doubt - how I'm eating the closest thing to physical happiness in the world selfishly and it's reflected in my appearance.

Or, y'know, not. Whatever. All I know is that there is chocolate, and refined sugar to be had at every available moment of the day, and I will avail myself to it. There was nothing in the Prongs of Health that forbid eating my own body weight in Goobers. And I have totally stuck to the plan (maybe not so much in reality on the spazzing part, but at least in spirit), so I feel completely rationalized in my lifestyle.

So what? So there.

A Rambling Harry Potter Talk

(Wherein I try to discuss a book without discussing a book, because I was so adamant about not being spoiled, and then I got spoiled halfway through by accident and cursed the gods, but then it didn't really matter because I already had guessed, but I still don't want to ruin it for anyone else. Short form: No Spoilers.)

The last four times I have finished a Harry Potter book, I have decided immediately following it that I didn't like it. Each time, after a set period, I reversed my decision sweepingly.

With Prisoner of Azkaban, it took 2 hours. It remains my favorite book in the series so far.

With Goblet of Fire, it took maybe 5 hours. And immediately following that span, I read it again. I really like it, almost as much as 3.

With Order of the Phoenix, it took me more than a week. I appreciate this one more than all the rest. In that I think it is very well done and mature and what it needs to be, for all the badness that it was. It upped the stakes and despite some mind-boggling turns, was the perfect amount of dark, which was a ton. Lots of darkness is a good way to get in my good graces.

Half Blood Prince took only 6 hours. I don't like a lot of the decisions made with the story, but I've come around to almost all the points, which is insane, considering there are still occasions of OotP that I still seethe over. I'm sort of in shock over the entire thing.

Weirdly, I have the opposite problem with this book from the others, namely that I think the characterization was off in certain cases, which I never expected. Not in a horribly noticeable way, just, like, (this is so hard without actually mentioning the book) a couple of off notes in a mostly spot-on book.

Also, there were scenes missing. Which shouldn't happen in a book that is almost 700 pages long. I needed three additional scenes added to this book, and without them, I have to stretch on some things that I don't like. (But it gives way to a lot of juicy fandom issues, which is an entire post in and of itself, not that anyone who reads this would care about it.)

But I've made my peace. It probably falls in line after OotF in terms of favoritism, but that's after one reading. There are layers to go. I didn't really appreciate OotF until after the third reading. It might get bumped up.

So yeah. Final result, really good stuff. Bravo.

There will be more later, even though no one cares, but its all about me, dammit.

Also: Comments are free reign for spoilers, so don't click it or look down unless you are prepared for the consequences.

A Fairy Tale of Awkwardness

She was standing directly in front of the panel to the elevator. She had her hand hovering over the button. But she wouldn't push it. Her finger would dart forward and then stop, as she processed additional information.

"Yeah Mom, that sounds great. Well..." her finger moved forward in a move that looked like finality.

But the instant before depression: "...No, I didn't know she was getting married." Her finger rested literally on the button without the final bit of force to finish off the motion. She managed to tuck the cell phone into the crook of her neck and began fishing around in her purse for something, still all the while guarding that button like it was her own.

I stood there watching this dramatization go on, wondering exactly what I should do. I have moved far to silently, and she obviously did not realize there was someone else waiting. Knowing the level of reception one gets in the elevator, I fully understood her predicament and her plan. But how to alert her to the fact that I was waiting without bodily moving her out of the way?

She had now found what she was looking for (a pad of paper and pen) and managed to start scribbling furiously while nodding. Her hand had moved from the button, but her entire body still blocked off all access to the panel.

There was no good way to get into her line of sight without being very creepy and entering the realm of personal space. I could try to make some noise with my shoes and some excessive walking but my initial try left her still oblivious. And I felt it would not be prudent to start stomping loudly, because that would give the wrong impression. Namely, that I was insane.

Perhaps a light cough. "Ahem," one would say.

"Ahem." I said.

This was a poorly timed polite cough, as it coincided with her recitation of a phone number she had recently acquired. I was left with no actions.

By this point, I had been standing around far too silently for far too long. We passed the point of normalcy a while back, so now it was just ridiculously awkward. What if she turned around and realized that I had just been standing there for ages, mute for no good reason? I needed to find some way to alert her to the fact that I required the elevator, without letting on that I had just wasted 5 minutes of my life in silent contemplation of now ungainly timid I was.

One more try on the polite cough, and then I will just give up and take the damnable stairs, I decided.

"Ahem," is what I meant to say. But the cough was ill-advised somehow, and my tiny cough got caught in my throat and instead came out as a much more full-bodied "Cough, cough, (I am dying of pneumonia) COUGH."

She was bewildered, and spun around. By this point I was practically doubled over, trying to realign my windpipe, wondering exactly how these things happen to me.

We both get on the elevator.

"I hope you weren't waiting long. Sometimes I get distracted by my phone. You know how moms can be."

"Cough...no....ahem...not waiting long at all. I totally understand."

---------------------------------

This is how my brain works.

So thorough it's almost like depth

I try not to be, but sometimes I'm really self-involved. And by sometimes, I mean all the time. Let's not kid ourselves, just the simple fact that this blog exists is proof enough of excessive egocentricity. And lately it has extended well out from there.

Did you ever have a day where you felt, to borrow a line, irresponsibly hot? This is not something I am used to, as my general Cro-Magnon appearance and gait does not lend itself to levels of unbearable attractiveness. But Friday, man did I feel like I was working it and hard. My hair was actually doing its thing for once, my morning shave hadn't left me with the usual "just got out of an ice storm" burnt look to it, the new exercise routine seemed like it actually had paid off in terms of flattering my frame in my work clothes, and the outfit itself was totally coordinated.

All this just to set up the exact mood that I was in for the actual story. It heightens the effect, because the fall is generally greater.

So it's Friday and I'm in my office, working up some files and updating a database, feeling particularly cocky and self-assured. I have some business cards that I'm filing through and inputting into the computer. Now, in my office there are several of those big cubicle-type desk units, that basically cover three walls of the place. Each one is separated by maybe 6 inches of space from the others, so you can reach the electrical outlets behind them.

Somehow, I manage to drop a couple of the business cards into one of the little separations, deep in the back. Being the lazy person that I am, I try in vain to reach them by extending my arm from where I am sitting, but this is a no go. Still not wanting to have to actually get up and/or bend down to actually get to them, I instead just wheel my desk chair over as far as it will go, and just wedge my shoulder down into the separation to get to them. Again, I am about 5 inches too far off.

At another crossroads. I could: move the chair out of the way, squat down and crawl forward the requisite 15 inches under the desk to retrieve the cards. This does not appeal to me. I would rather just angle myself down a bit more while still getting to sit down. Because, as my oh-so-clever mind has realized, if I instead line up my neck with the gap, rather than my shoulder, I can actually slide into the crack and reach the cards.

This plan is flawless, up until the phone rings directly next to my ear, I freak out and manage to kick the rolling chair out from under me. The chair rolls completely out of my reach and suddenly I have no support for any part of my body, except from the sides of my jaw and upper neck that are both keeping my head from falling through the gap and simultaneously preventing me from breathing.

It is at this moment that the weekly courier chooses to swing by my office to check for any runs going out.

Just so we are clear, I am now wedged, in a corner, between two pieces of office furniture, by my neck, scrambling for purchase with my knees, gasping for breath, so that I don't manage to decapitate myself with my own desk, with a 275 lb man standing at my door, asking "Uhhh, so do you, like, have any packages going out?"

The only thing that got me through that whole situation was telling myself that while I did embarrass myself horribly, I looked really hot while doing it.

And that, my friends, is the highest level of conceited that you can get.

Worrying about Weird Habits

Does anyone else in the world keep a list of specific words that they really like? I think I may be unique (read: weird) in this regard, but certain words just feel very right when I say them. This is why sometimes when you are around me, if I have need of an exclamation or can't think of a proper response, I may just say a completely unrelated word.

The list as it stands today: ocean, recumbent, monkey, draconian, pineapple, dwarven (which isn't technically a word, but whatever), tethered, clever, hijinks, and specious (and its near false-cognate species).

I can find no common thread amongst the words, except for the tendency for the "hard K" sound to show up somewhere within.

The sad thing about this is that I usually keep the list on hand to make sure that I don't overuse the words too much in writing or conversation, because they usually stand out to a large degree. I find nothing in the universe more socially awkward than when someone says "Wow, you really use _______ a lot, don't you?" It stabs directly into the heart of my fear of being a dilettante language poseur. After that I feel like at any moment they might demand my preferred-patron library card and rip it to a thousand pieces in front of my face.

Luckily the current list has a lot of nouns in it, which means I have less to worry about. It's hard to jam a noun into everyday conversation, with the glaring exception of "Monkey," which is my universal exclamation that takes the place of a normal person's "Dammit." Which is always an awkward phrase to get past, in any situation, believe you me.

Eh, but I can't worry about all this too much. It's all a part of the rich tapestry that is my psyche. Mmm, tapestry. I like the sound of that word too. It's going on the list, by God.

Yeah, it's about Harry Potter. Leave me alone.

Oh man, just skip over this post right now, because I'm about to slide into geekland so fast, you might spontaneously develop a pocket-protector just by reading it.

So the new Harry Potter comes out first thing Saturday morning. I am ridiculously excited about this prospect. A 23 year-old should not be this into what basically is a children's phenomenon. And yet, here we are, wondering if I know any small children that I could borrow so I would have a legitimate excuse to get the book at midnight like the rest of the crazies. (Answer: No, I have not fallen that far. Yet. Also, I don't know any small children. (Apparently Frank doesn't count.))

I'm sure I've gone over this before, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Harry Potter books are the literary equivalent of crack cocaine. Probably not good for you in the long run, but absolutely impossible to stop once started. There are a few authors in the world that ruin me. Basically, I am so easily sucked into their prose that once I start, everything else in the world gets put on hold (up to and including: sleep, bathing, work, family, friends, and bodily injuries needing immediate medical attention) until I get finished. The two worst offenders of this are Orson Scott Card and JK Rowling. Honorable mentions go to Tolkien, Douglas Adams (which isn't too bad because there are only about 6 books in that whole group and they're all short), and Steven King (which is a million times worse, because there are 2000 books and they're all over-long and not that great.).

It's hard to explain the Harry Potter obsession, except to say that Rowling draws out very convincing characters. There are three things I am a sucker for in literature: Good characterization, a very well mapped universe, and a gripping plot. To explain further

• Characterization: This is where Card and Rowling always get me, by creating very real and accessible characters, enough so that you actively care about people that exist in a book. Card does this effortlessly and is great at tossing in compelling bit characters only to grind them to dust 10 pages later. Rowling builds up characters slowly and inexorably so that by the time you're 5 or 6 books in, you've got serious emotional ties to everyone in the plot. The sign that you're too into a fictional story: when you hear that a major character is going to die in the next book you have severe emotional reactions discussing the possibilities. (Aside [SPOILER]: I swear to God, if she kills off Lupin, I will be useless for weeks. Peter has a silver hand. Lupin is a werewolf. You have no idea how much pain these facts cause me daily. It's like the most protracted telegraphed punch ever.)
• Immersive Universe: This one is interesting, because I forgive a lot of bad stuff if you're at least consistent across the board. I love when people make up an entire ruleset and go with it. Rowling and her hidden magical side to the world. Tolkien and his complete exhaustive history of Middle Earth(there are actual languages involved). Terry Pratchett and his Discworld mythos. Also included, the craptacular Star Wars novelizations, of which I have read all, just because there's such a convincing background to it all. I don't know exactly why I find this so compelling, but attention to detail and expansiveness is a huge turn on to me (In a literature sense. God.).
• Nice Plot: This is the cop out one, but if you've got a good story to tell and can do it without even giving me the chance to lose interest, you win.

All that to say that Harry Potter has them all down, in spades. Which is why I'm hooked.

Also, I will be completely holed up once the weekend begins and will not come out until I am finished, because I really don't want any portion of the book to be spoiled for me. I still have flashbacks to how close I came to missing out on Book 5. An all-purpose bit of advice for everyone: If you do not want the ending of the most popular kid's book in the world ruined for you, do not work in a summer camp with 8 million children who have already had an extra week to read it before you. This time since I'm relatively a hermit anyways I should be fine, but will take no chances.

And I think I've pretty much maxed out my unattractiveness factor at this point. We'll leave the geekdom right there.

Would it help my sex appeal if I talked about sports for a bit? How about that Home-Run Derby, eh? I am told by Jim that it was quite the display of manly ruggedness.

Yeah, okay, I'll stop.

They call me Gimp Eyed Joe

My left eye is becoming non-functional. Apparently some time during the dead of night I was attacked by an unknown number of malcontent insect elements. Possibly a lone agent acting independently, or a whole gang out for no good, but in either case, I have a nice bump on my goddamn eyelid that is swelling larger and larger by the minute.

Everything was fine until I got in the shower, but hot water apparently angers the offending bump more than anything else in the world. I can only manage the half-open look at all times now and it looks like I was on the losing end of a bar fight (with an insect). It also throws off my depth perception something fierce, which is no good at all for me, since I'm already so prone to running in to everything. So far today I have misjudged: Two doorframes, a server casing, and the corner of the vending machine in the break room. Which shouldn't even be possible because the vending machine is in a far corner that I never even go near.

Also, have you ever had a time in your life when it hurt to blink? Suddenly you are hyper-aware of how many times a day you do it (hint: all the freaking time) and you actively start trying to blink less. Which just makes it worse, because thinking about not blinking just makes you want to blink more, and then your eyes get all scratchy and start to water and blinkblinkblink owww.

Repeat that over and over every 45 seconds for at least 2 hours. This is where I am coming from today. It's not a pretty view. And it lacks proper depth.

Transition Shopping

Once I hit the end of the summer, I go into full transition mode. I'll be moving apartments, and most likely roommates, and closing up a lot of loose ends on a bunch of things. And in order not to be caught completely unawares (such as last time when I was graduating in 4 days time and running around the streets of Dallas yelling out "Anyone have any apartments open?" while flailing my arms wildly) I've put in many pre-moving steps to make the transition peaceful and less coup-friendly.

Already many of the steps are in motion, a full three months ahead of time. The first major one of these was my great furniture expedition on Saturday. I have expounded on it many times, but I live much like a vagrant in my current setup. A 15 year old couch, a clashing 4 year old futon, and several plastic-y type round chairs make up my entire decor, and it almost hurts to look at them all at once.

So, in honor of my planning on living an adult life, we went in search of an adult furniture set, ie. one that matched, and contained either the word settee or ottoman. I was hoping for some sort of layaway plan, so I could have it purchased ahead of time and then delivered in one fell moving swoop, so as to minimize my backbreaking labor.

Sadly, the concept of furniture exists in an entirely unique world. First off, it has its own district in Dallas. Frank and I had adapted the Simpsons joke on hammocks earlier in the day:

Frank: "You're looking for furniture? You could try the Furniture Emporium, on 7th. Or Furniture Warehouse, also on 7th. Or Furnitures R Us, right in the same place."
Jason: "Oh right, the Furniture District! Hahahaha."

But....seriously.

Anyways, apparently Frank's house is right in the middle of said district, and we hit it hard and hit it fast. Furniture world is not like regular world. For one, everything there looks like it either came from the 1800's, or an alternate future reality where everything went horribly wrong somewhere around the Art Deco Period. There were things I loved, and things I hated, but mostly it left me just scratching my head.

Because I have paid, maybe in grand total, 300 dollars American for every piece of furniture in my apartment. And that's including the hideous shag area rug and fur curtains in the computation. In these places $300.00 for a 2X2 ottoman covered in a zebra pattern is de rigueur. The entire concept is just outside my grasp, and leaves me saying things like "Well, 1,200 dollars isn't that much for three pieces..." which is as antithetical to the basic Jason credo as you can get.

We also ventured in to a "warehouse sale" wherein scads of people climbed over each other to get the best deals on the most eclectic selection of items imaginable in, strangely enough, a warehouse. This place was no where near my element, partly because of the scads of peoples but more particularly because this sale was unique. Witness our salesperson:

Vance: You see that price? You forget that. You put it out your mind. You make us a offer and we go from that [sic times infinity].

Sadly, this was also where I found my dream furniture, a four piece set that included a sofa, settee, armchair and ottoman and was truly the most hideous spectacle of furniture I've ever witnessed. It was one of those cases where something transcends badness so completely that it's just perfect. I can find no representation of this in visual form (why didn't I bring a camera?!) but basically take this and cross it with this, paint the entire thing a dark maroon/purple and then multiply the badness by about 1500 and you come close to the look I'm going for. I wanted it so badly, I could taste what it would be like to own it. (It tasted leathery and delicious and a little smoky.) But I fear haggling more than anything else in the world and probably would have been unable to keep my poker face up about how much I wanted it and wound up paying 50% above manufacturer's retail.

So I'm no closer to any resolution than before I started, but now I have a profound fear of poorly lit warehouses, patterned fabrics, and fainting couches. Which is something, I guess. I'll keep you updated as we move forward.

Decadence in Books

Alternate Title: Amazon knows where you live.

There are a lot of ways in which I waste all my hard earned money. I eat out far more than I ever should, I buy the expensive kind of sandwich bread, and often times I will buy new socks just so I don't have to wash the old ones in the middle of a week.

But of all these different ways of throwing money out the window, the one that I think is the most frivolous and insanely heady is buying books at or near suggested retail price. I mean, in general, I live at Half-Price Books, a place that is built like the warehouse in my own personal heaven, where you can get a good paperback for under a dollar and a good condition hardback with change back from your five. But there is something inherently delicious and wastefully adult about spending full price for a first run book. It makes the reading that much more potent, when you can actually calculate the market value of each page as it goes by.

More often than not, when I do go the full price route, I do it through Amazon because the abstraction on the price is much greater from the privacy of my own home. Going into a Borders and actually watching the cashier ring up a stack of books in front of my face is more than I can handle, fiscally. My rationalization muscles start kicking in, and I'm hard-pressed not to grab the books out of their hands and run back to the shelves and out the door to the nearest discount shopping center. On Amazon, the numbers are cute and manageable, and when I save 60 cents by buying two Orson Scott Card books on the same order, it satisfies the bargain shopper within, despite the fact that it's 60 goddamn cents.

Seriously, Amazon is the master of direct marketing. To like, the deepest portion of my soul. It truly knows who I am. Since I am a slave to Firefox and its magical search bar, I use the Amazon engine as the most common search, besides Google. So the Amazon master computer has stored a seemingly endless account of things that interest me and uses that opening personalized front page to lure me in to exactly what I've been most recently thinking about. It's a little scary that a website knows my tastes better than the majority of my family members.

And I haven't even gone in to their most deadly weapon in their arsenal - the direct email. It is very sparingly used, at least on me, but it has the pin-point precision of a sniper rifle shot to the head in getting me to buy things. (Not that a shot to the head gets me to buy things. I think that metaphor wound up a strange place.) I have gotten a grand total of four of these emails in my life, and every single time I ended up buying the book that it was announcing. Granted, I would have bought these books anyway, but the emails a.) always came the week immediately before the books were actually released so I would have it on the first day available, and b.) link to the major publication reviews of the book, which I'm gonna have to read anyways, which then feeds into my immediate need to buy the book, and then, why not just order it now, save yourself the trouble of putting on pants and driving to the bookstore and yes Amazon, you love Amazon, Amazon rules all.

Man, this is a little depressing, how easily I become a member of a horde.

So anyways, I go through all of that to say that I ordered a couple of books on Thursday around midnight from The Website That I Will No Longer Refer to by Name Because I've Already Said it 47 Times in This Entry (TWTIWNLRNBIAS47TITE). And I chose the free-shipping option, because that's yet another one of those things that makes me feel completely frugal and smart for choosing TWTIWNLRNBIAS47TITE, expecting the books to show up in about a week or so. No big rush, I'm still trying to get through the last 400 pages of Cryptonomicon again. I put LaSister on alert, though, that the UPS guy might be coming by sometime soon.

Fast forward to Sunday. I'm pretending to clean up the apartment and generally being a layabout when I remember that when Mike was over on Saturday night, he had mentioned that my Gameboy was laying up against the patio door. Since I had lost the Gameboy several months previous, I went to retrieve it. I pulled aside the curtains and sure enough, there it was. But more importantly, out on the patio was a little box. A little box with the distinctive TWTIWNLRNBIAS47TITE logo on it.

I retrieve the package, and it contains both books that I had ordered less than 72 hours beforehand. It was at that point that I decided that not only did TWTIWNLRNBIAS47TITE know exactly where I lived, they had it nailed down to the point that they could air drop books directly into an 8X8 patio at a moment's notice.

This revelation was immediately followed by another: That I was probably overreacting. It's much more likely that in the dead of night an Amazon ninja secretly scaled the walls of my apartment complex to deliver my books as silently and efficiently as possible.

And that? Is some good customer service.

I'll Thetan You!

My one word review of the Tom Cruise extravaganza, War of the Worlds:

LAME

Thanks for stopping by.

Buying in Bulk and Hipsters

Okay, so I may have gone overboard on the grocery shopping over the holiday weekend. Because now that we're back in the cold reality of the workweek I'm suddenly having to deal with finishing off roughly 5 square feet of meat products that are occupying all the empty space in my refrigerator, and it's killing me.

I am a man of a delicate constitution, as you may be aware, and cramming myself full of a variety of meat based products is just not agreeable to my waif-like nature. But damn if I'm about to let all that food go to waste. The lesson has been well learned, however. We should never buy in bulk - there's a reason we are not a member of a warehouse club and it's not necessarily because they are tacky.

Plus, I'm pretty sure that polish sausage falls outside the realm of the healthy prongs of the master plan for avoiding an untimely death.

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On another note, I cannot get the song A Little Respect, by Erasure out of my head. I wander throughout Dallas, mumbling it under my breath. My head bobs unconsciously to its catchy tune. When I believe I am alone I sometimes do a little dance.

I used to think that episode of Scrubs was just a delightful joke, but now I know the hideous truth - the song will never leave me. On my deathbed, I will be all "Give a liiiittle reeespect, tooo--ooo--ooo meeeeee"...

This is a nice segue to update everyone on how dependent I have grown on my iPod. Because seriously. I was trying to run the numbers to give an estimate on how much time I spend with it on my person, and realized that it would just be easier to calculate the time that I didn't have it with me. Music at your fingertips at any given second? In a device that is smaller and weighs less than the pack of gum sitting next to it in my pocket? For the love of God.

Although more and more I feel very much the Hipster That Guy whenever I wear it in public. I'm starting to notice the glances now. The narrowed eyes whenever they see the white wires come out. I've become a symbol of conformity. People with wild hair and piercings look down on me with scorn. I've bought into The Man's system.

A nice guy explained it best to me last week: "I'm not saying that everyone who has an iPod is an asshole. But every asshole that I've met has an iPod."

It's one of those 'all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares' sort of thing, which I can completely understand (since I related it to geometry, naturally) but makes me very wary. What if I really am a hipster asshole and just don't realize it? I mean, you know that hipster assholes don't know that's what they are - it's part of what makes them assholes.

The entire enterprise makes me uneasy. And all because of a little tiny white box, that I love ever so much. Sigh. I will have to be on my guard for any hipster tendencies. (Oh crap. Double sigh.)

Just...Can't...Stop...Posting...

The most saddest of all my referral logs today?

Search for: "talking fast is a speech problem"

Way to bring me down, anonymous web searcher.

Master of Contradiction

I went ahead and finished off the health rant below, even though I knew the next thing I wrote would seemingly completely invalidate it. I have many layers of contradiction going on within me at all times. And I state right now that I am still within my rights under the prongs of my health plan.

Anyways, I spend the entire 4th of July weekend in an orgy of unhealthy food consumption. Seriously, I got up at 11:00 on Saturday and started cooking, and stopped eating at roughly 10:00pm on Monday. There were hamburgers, chicken wings, bratwurst, baked beans, corn on the cob, an entire 2 lb bag of cherries, and all manner of desserts that I tore through as though my life depended on it. It was the first holiday weekend I've spent alone in recent memory, and it was entirely worth it. Solitude, TV, and piles of food was the only thing that could have possibly worked for me and it was flawless.

Other points of note: I did not make it to any of the movies that I had planned on, which was shocking as I had a 4 movie rotation that I had carefully fine-tuned over the course of the week previous. But oh well. I did, however, go see Howl's Moving Castle.

Certain things I learned on this viewing: The Inwood Theatre is still creepy, but slightly less so with new seats. The employees there really want to get you out as soon as possible, as was evidenced by the fact that they shut off the projector 12 seconds into the closing credits. Small children are still the bane of my existence.

The movie was good, but not as good as usual. Miyazaki movies are held to a greater standard because they're always awesome. This movie was not awesome. Well, it was sort of, in that I liked all the characters and it was, as always, very well animated and the right amount of creepy/charming. But more importantly, large portions, particularly the ending, didn't make a damn bit of sense. Which is usually okay in these sorts of movies (Lord knows I didn't get all that was going on in Spirited Away) but in this one it was more that the parts were glossed over, rather than I didn't get them.

Also. For the love of little green apples, the title character was the gayest thing I've seen outside of a Pride parade or an Anthony Fedorov fan club. I mean, come on. Throughout the entire movie he was wearing tight black pants, billowy v-neck cut blouses, and dangly earrings. He also had a tendency to suddenly come onscreen and pause dramatically (read: strike a particularly gay pose) and/or put his hand on his hip in a jaunty (read: homosexual) manner. Include in the fact that he also threatened suicide after he got a bad dye job, and really, there are no conclusions left.

But whatever. I enjoyed it muchly. Not as much as, say, Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke, but still more than your average movie. Mostly it made me want to go pick up a copy of both of those movies, which is always a good impulse and one I plan on fufilling later on today.

And that was the grand sum of my weekend, if you include a whole bunch of World of Warcraft and the viewing of the entire first season of The OC for the 90th time. Good times.

Longwinded Health Post

So the last time I went home to visit my parents, my mom sat me down to have a little discussion.

Mom: Jason, you are going to have a heart attack by the time you hit 50. [pause] ...Well, I'm glad we had this nice chat. I need to go switch out the laundry.

I managed to tease out a bit more information from her over the course of the rest of the visit. Primarily that every single male member of my father's side of the family has had some sort of serious heart trouble by age 50 going back at least three generations. And this will no doubt be handed down to me, thus is the luck of Jason that we have all witnessed.

This news is not cool.

Because, I am not healthy. I mean, on a sliding scale of every person I know, I'm probably last in the line in terms of eating right. Heath food is just a nebulous concept out in the world to me. Something that other people speak about, like heterosexuality, or the enjoyment of Everybody Loves Raymond. I down Coke, Pixi Sticks, and pie as a common dinner meal. I have at least one cake available for eating in my apartment at all times. It's against the norm when I don't have at least one meal of fast food per day.

In general, I think nature supports me in this endeavor because no matter how much bad food I eat, I stay the exact same size. Even when I was downing protein shakes and working out 3 hours a day, I gained a grand total of 7 pounds. My weight is a natural constant, and eating healthily would just be spitting in the face of the grand design of things.

Or so I manage to rationalize. Whatever keeps me in sugars and tasty high caloric content.

Compounding this is the relatively new fact that with my day job firmly in place as Guy Who Sits Around Staring at a Computer Screen for Eight Hours a Day, sedentary is the new best adjective to describe me. As was made painfully obvious this weekend when I got winded again carrying the groceries from my truck to my apartment.

And now my mother foretells my doom - I am predisposed to having heart problems at an early age and she acknowledges my universal bad luck that if something can go wrong with me, it probably will. Perhaps I should have checked up on this preexisting health condition before I embarked on my quest to eat at McDonalds at least once every 54 hours.

In any case, now I'm all weirded out and certain that everytime I have heart burn it is the onset of a cardiac episode. Which is fun for everyone else, I am sure. LaSister has perfected the look of put upon/mild amusement/skepticism to adopt the second I go flailing through the living room, clutching my chest and running for the aspirin. We've taken to leaving a bottle of Rolaids prominently displayed on the kitchen counter to remind me to go for the obvious solution first.

Because I'm already a very nervous person. As alluded to above, I am one of the few 23 year-olds who needs to keep a bottle of Rolaids on hand at all times. Very easily stressed, with poor eating habits is a difficult but integral part of my life. When you throw in this whole malfunctioning heart thing into the mix, I become a ticking time-bomb of neuroses, actively checking the internet to see if they sell those little chest-paddle-shocker things to the public and asking LaSister if her First Aid training includes all manner of life saving, including that thing where you ninja chop people on the chest to get their heart going again (her response: eye roll).

So in an effort to cut down on my chances of freaking out and calling the paramedics after I have one too many cupcakes for dessert at some point in the next two weeks, we have implemented Project Get Jason In Mild Shape.

Project Get Jason In Mild Shape, is very simplistic in nature, because damn if I'm going to put forth any real effort into additional work. I'm tired when I get home, by God. There are three prongs to the projected plan of attack:

• Prong One: Better eating. This is the least effective prong, because I hate to compromise on food. I have to make detailed guidelines with many provision, like some sort of long drawn out union contract. The guidelines are: a) Real Fast Food may only be eaten in two meals per five day work week, b) At least one meal per week must actually be healthy, and c) "Cake and Coke" can no longer be considered a dinner meal.
• Prong Two: Active Lifestyle. Okay, this prong isn't effective either, but it's pretty straightforward. All current lifestyle choices are fine, no matter how video game oriented they are, but at least 30 minutes per day must be added that include a medium to high level of physical activity. That level will be scaled with time, depending on how winded I am as the weeks go on. Additionally and superficially, I would like to have my abs back.
• Prong Three: Being Less of a Spaz. The goal here is to be much more calm and centered and less clumsy and dramatic. There are no objectives to detail, other than "don't freak out, and work on your balance." I like to think this prong has a high chance for success, but I'm really just deluding myself. Heh. Less clumsy.

This is a foolproof plan, no? I'd like to see a heart attack beat this system! Actually, I wouldn't, which is why it's being implemented, but you get my drift. I am now taking bets to see how long I keep this up. For right now, I'm shooting on getting all the way through July, but I promise nothing, as I can already envision a night within the week where I'm sitting at my computer playing Warcraft, eating cake and drinking Coke all the night through.

But I feel better that it's at least all written out. Go me!