(Shamelessly borrowed/stolen from Montykins, because I'm unoriginal like that.)
For the love of God, I watch too many movies. Going off this delicious list, I pulled together every newly released movie in 2005 that I've seen. Which is not to say that this is all the movies I've seen this year. No, it's just the ones that were officially released in the 2005 calendar year. Also, I'm including anything I've seen in the theatre or on video, just to make things simpler.
Anyways, y'all, I have seen 53 new movies this year. 53. For those of you uninitiated into our calendar system, that's better than one new movie a week. It is obviously a sickness that I have, this need to be continually entertained by bright flashing pictures of people I do not know.
But we can't let this achievement go to waste now, so I present a round-up of all the movies I saw this year, working backwards from most horrible to best. We will divide them up into 5 distinct categories: Movies that I Actively Hate, Movies that I Only Dislike, Movies I Don't Care About, Movies That Were Good, and Movies That Were Excellent.
Within the categories, there is some room for leeway on their order. And also, these judgments are made as of today in my mind, so movies that I may have liked earlier in the year might have gotten bumped down and vice versa. I am a very fickle person, you should know that by now.
Onwards!
Movies I Actively Hated
53. The Fog (otherwise entitled - 'Wasting 8 dollars on the words "Tom Welling/Maggie Grace"')
52. White Noise
51. Dukes of Hazard
50. The Wedding Date
49. Guess Who
48. Madagascar
47. Brother's Grimm (why is it that I've only seen this "gay Heath Ledger" movie this year?)
Movies I Disliked
46. Hide & Seek
45. War of the Worlds
44. Ring 2
43. Fantastic Four
42. Miss Congeniality 2
41. House of Wax
40. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (shut up, tragic yet brave dying girl)
39. Undiscovered (never thought I would ever say this, but - not enough Ashlee Simpson)
38. The Family Stone (because of that one scene)
Movies I Don't Care About
37. Be Cool
36. The Longest Yard
35. Cry_Wolf
34. Ice Princess
33. Chronicles of Narnia (this movie is forever ruined for me by things that are not its fault)
32. Pulse
31. Sky High (harsh, I know)
30. Sahara
Movies That Were Good
29. Rent
28. Stay (I am being mean to this movie unnecessarily)
27. Broken Flowers (I think this only made the good list because I was drunk when I saw it)
26. Hostage
25. Crash
24. Rize
23. Kingdom of Heaven
22. Exorcism of Emily Rose
21. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
20. Greatest Game Ever Played
19. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
18. Skeleton Key
17. Batman Begins
16. Jarhead
15. The Interpreter
14. Constantine
13. Red Eye
12. Flightplan
11. Shopgirl (oh Claire Danes. I wish I knew how to quit you)
10. The Island (best pure action movie in ages)
9. Sin City
Movies That Were Excellent
8. Proof (who knew Gwyneth could act?)
7. Constant Gardener (seriously, you should go see this)
6. Star Wars: Episode III (oh shut up, I'm allowed one vice)
5. Kung Fu Hustle
4. King Kong
3. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
2. Howl's Moving Castle (I know it didn't make any sense and I don't care. Love.)
1. Serenity (like you didn't see that coming)
I'm glad that more than half (29) of the movies I at least liked. And I was sort of extra mean to a few others, so I think it was a good year, movie-wise. I'm especially pleased with that top 5, each of which I really liked for entirely different reasons.
And since there is still time left in the year this will probably have to be updated, because I've still got Brokeback Mountain to see tomorrow, and either Capote or Munich on Saturday.
But seriously, I need to back off the movies a little bit, methinks. That's quite the investment on my part, time and money-wise.
....
Oh whatever, you all know that 2006 is the year I'll finally break 60.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Zombification
First off, I want to stress that by the title of this post I am in no way lessening the seriousness of zombie attacks and the need for zombie awareness in the world at large. It is a very serious problem, and I maintain my status on the forefront of zombie defense and am a staunch supporter of early zombie preparedness. We cannot let those filthy brain-eaters gain even the smallest toehold in society.
Ahem.
Anyways, so this whole holiday thing has thrown me so far off my normal schedule, I don't know whether I'm coming or going lately. My family tends to operate on something of a sleepless schedule whenever we congregate in the same house. Which means we never go to bed until after 2:00AM, after an unending night of jokes and cookies and as many other foods as you can name. And then we are up by 7:00AM for extended merriment and loud noises that make me curl up into a tiny ball and question our group sanity.
Which means when I get home, days seem really quiet and surreal, like a waking dream. This is further enhanced by the fact that all I do these days is watch movies in the dark. (Complete aside - this whole unlimited movies thing is going to be the death of me. There are a lot of movies in the world, and I apparently am going to 'catch them all,' like a set of Pokemon or what have you. I have watched at least two movies every day for the last 9 consecutive days. And one of those was a 6 hour mini-series. That aint healthy, y'all.)
So now that I'm back at work, I have to do something to keep me alive during the mornings. Because I do not do mornings. At all. My alarm will go off at least five times before I am compelled out from under the covers. And once I'm into the office, at bare minimum 90 minutes must pass before I am remotely productive. My latest stop-gap method of staying awake in the office is the creation of the most potent brew known to man - Hot Chocolate/Coffee. Which is a cup of my office's coffee, which is more like caffeine in sludge form, combined with several tablespoons of hot cocoa mix and stirred until mostly incorporated. It combines sugar, caffeine, more caffeine in the form of chocolate, and every preservative on the planet, in one tiny cup, which I gulp down like a man at an oasis after a week in the desert.
It's also like rocket fuel for my brain, and sends me into a flurry of nervous energy, all twitches and tics, for the 10 o'clock hour, which is usually the time when I crash the hardest, and it gets me all the way to lunch. Where I am free to crash as much as I want since, y'know, free time.
My machinations, they are awesome. And if I fall into a sugar coma, well we all knew I would end up that way eventually, right? Better now than later.
Ahem.
Anyways, so this whole holiday thing has thrown me so far off my normal schedule, I don't know whether I'm coming or going lately. My family tends to operate on something of a sleepless schedule whenever we congregate in the same house. Which means we never go to bed until after 2:00AM, after an unending night of jokes and cookies and as many other foods as you can name. And then we are up by 7:00AM for extended merriment and loud noises that make me curl up into a tiny ball and question our group sanity.
Which means when I get home, days seem really quiet and surreal, like a waking dream. This is further enhanced by the fact that all I do these days is watch movies in the dark. (Complete aside - this whole unlimited movies thing is going to be the death of me. There are a lot of movies in the world, and I apparently am going to 'catch them all,' like a set of Pokemon or what have you. I have watched at least two movies every day for the last 9 consecutive days. And one of those was a 6 hour mini-series. That aint healthy, y'all.)
So now that I'm back at work, I have to do something to keep me alive during the mornings. Because I do not do mornings. At all. My alarm will go off at least five times before I am compelled out from under the covers. And once I'm into the office, at bare minimum 90 minutes must pass before I am remotely productive. My latest stop-gap method of staying awake in the office is the creation of the most potent brew known to man - Hot Chocolate/Coffee. Which is a cup of my office's coffee, which is more like caffeine in sludge form, combined with several tablespoons of hot cocoa mix and stirred until mostly incorporated. It combines sugar, caffeine, more caffeine in the form of chocolate, and every preservative on the planet, in one tiny cup, which I gulp down like a man at an oasis after a week in the desert.
It's also like rocket fuel for my brain, and sends me into a flurry of nervous energy, all twitches and tics, for the 10 o'clock hour, which is usually the time when I crash the hardest, and it gets me all the way to lunch. Where I am free to crash as much as I want since, y'know, free time.
My machinations, they are awesome. And if I fall into a sugar coma, well we all knew I would end up that way eventually, right? Better now than later.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
A Million Tiny Monkeys. In my Lungs.
I am allergic to cats. This is not a revelation to most, it's usually pretty plain to anyone who has seen me come into contact with a feline. Only, there is a scale of allergic-ity that I have which makes things more interesting.
On one extreme, we have long haired cats which provoke an immediate and very alarming physical reaction. This may entail but is not limited to: sneezing, crying, running at the nose, vomiting, intense physical pain directly behind the eyes and swelling of the throat. And that's just being in the same room as the cat. People can attest, it's sort of creepy.
On the other end, I am perfectly fine around certain species of the domesticates, I just slowly but surely build up to a low grade allergy attack - stuffed nose, watery eyes, sinus headache, etc. It's just a cumulative effect, but nothing serious and I can go for days at a time with them around.
My sister's beautiful, wonderful cat Ishbu is a member of the second column. So whenever I go home, I am slowly subjected to his ministrations. Which I do not mind, since I actively love him and have to restrain myself from going all crazy cat person around him, talking in that creepy babble talk that people get. But when I go back to my own humble abode, my body has to return to its natural equilibrium, which means that my head begins to drain southward into the rest of my body. Which does not bode well for the day immediately following my return.
Right now, my lungs feel roughly half full of some sort of very thick liquid, and I have a worse runny nose than pretty much any 5 year-old in the world. This near pneumoniatic level of my lungs was brought to the fore especially well today when I decided to read some David Sedaris over lunch. You know what is the only thing that you can't do in this lung-filled state? Laugh heartily. Because it will send you into crazy wracking coughing fits wherein people openly discuss whether or not you may die before you can gain control of your breathing again.
And when David Sedaris is involved, you get to read about 4 lines at which point something tickles your fancy and you fall into one of the fits. 2 minutes later you have regained control of yourself, scared everyone else in the restaurant half to death, pop open the book again and read two more lines, and go right back into the spasms of laughter/coughing.
After about 20 minutes of this, the woman sitting next to me came over, grabbed the book from my hand and said "Maybe you should stop reading that book, dear. I think it's overstimulating you."
At which point everyone around us nodded.
Also, at that point, I decided that it was best if I leave. And never return.
(Do I need to mention that I was in Wendy's? No, of course not. Because if something embarrassing happens to me in a restaurant, you can just assume it was a Wendy's and always be right. Sigh.)
On one extreme, we have long haired cats which provoke an immediate and very alarming physical reaction. This may entail but is not limited to: sneezing, crying, running at the nose, vomiting, intense physical pain directly behind the eyes and swelling of the throat. And that's just being in the same room as the cat. People can attest, it's sort of creepy.
On the other end, I am perfectly fine around certain species of the domesticates, I just slowly but surely build up to a low grade allergy attack - stuffed nose, watery eyes, sinus headache, etc. It's just a cumulative effect, but nothing serious and I can go for days at a time with them around.
My sister's beautiful, wonderful cat Ishbu is a member of the second column. So whenever I go home, I am slowly subjected to his ministrations. Which I do not mind, since I actively love him and have to restrain myself from going all crazy cat person around him, talking in that creepy babble talk that people get. But when I go back to my own humble abode, my body has to return to its natural equilibrium, which means that my head begins to drain southward into the rest of my body. Which does not bode well for the day immediately following my return.
Right now, my lungs feel roughly half full of some sort of very thick liquid, and I have a worse runny nose than pretty much any 5 year-old in the world. This near pneumoniatic level of my lungs was brought to the fore especially well today when I decided to read some David Sedaris over lunch. You know what is the only thing that you can't do in this lung-filled state? Laugh heartily. Because it will send you into crazy wracking coughing fits wherein people openly discuss whether or not you may die before you can gain control of your breathing again.
And when David Sedaris is involved, you get to read about 4 lines at which point something tickles your fancy and you fall into one of the fits. 2 minutes later you have regained control of yourself, scared everyone else in the restaurant half to death, pop open the book again and read two more lines, and go right back into the spasms of laughter/coughing.
After about 20 minutes of this, the woman sitting next to me came over, grabbed the book from my hand and said "Maybe you should stop reading that book, dear. I think it's overstimulating you."
At which point everyone around us nodded.
Also, at that point, I decided that it was best if I leave. And never return.
(Do I need to mention that I was in Wendy's? No, of course not. Because if something embarrassing happens to me in a restaurant, you can just assume it was a Wendy's and always be right. Sigh.)
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
In which I admit I'm a lazy bastard
It's the holiday's y'all. And while I'm not exactly brimming with good cheer and well-wishes for the common man, I am not actively depressed, which is good in its own right.
So in any case, in lieu of an actual entry, allow me to ramble on in lazy bullet point fashion:
So in any case, in lieu of an actual entry, allow me to ramble on in lazy bullet point fashion:
- On heavy persuasion from Frank, I picked up the unlimited monthly movie membership to Blockbuster. I can already tell this was the best idea in the history of time and I've only been using it for three days. You're allowed to freely indulge in any weird movie taste that might strike you whenever you want. And there's no guilt for bad movies, because heck, you can just go trade it in for a new one - the store is like 0.5 miles away. This is akin to giving me a key to the biggest candy store in the world, and then attaching it to my house. I'm gonna be on this sugar high for weeks.
- As usual, I'm a little slow to the bandwagon, but this Sudoku thing is just crazy addictive. It's like crossword puzzles, except it's math. And math that I can do. Can you count to 9? Then you can play this game. I am all about that. Still takes me ages to get through a Hard one, though.
- I am actually writing again. And it's something that isn't fanfiction and isn't a lame blog entry. Do you understand how long it has been? Probably not, but seriously this makes me ridiculously happy. Even if it is total shite, it's written words that I made up. I feel all important and crap.
- I still have no soul, and my art still sucks, but that's not gonna stop me from completing my final Christmas gift to my Mom, who has requested homemade art, and by God, that's what she's going to get. Even if it is uglier than anything else in the world.
- Serenity is even better on DVD.
And that's all I got. Tune in tomorrow, when I ramble on and on and on about all the movies I've watched in the past 4 days. Because there have been a lot of them.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Mmm...Apple
This is a little late in coming, but I feel compelled to discuss the new Fiona Apple CD, Extraordinary Machine.
First off, I need to do my Fiona Apple caveat. The only way I can think to phrase it is that I'm weirdly, intensely protective of her. Like, when someone tells me that they don't like her music, I am immediately suspicious of them - much like if someone admitted to being a Communist, or Canadian.
Because how can you not love Fiona Apple?
Anyways, the new stuff is excellent. Back in the early days of yore with that whole dust-up about the CD not being released and the whole internet leakage and whatnot, I managed to procure me a pretty complete set of the music. And I did it without my normal crushing guilt over the illegalities of it all, since there was a possibility they would never see the light of day.
And it was fantastic. Delicious lyrics, some very nice rhythms, and some completely off the wall Jon Brion magic (In the form of Extraordinary Machine, which is my favorite song of the bunch by far). The final produced CD, (which I actually bought from a store with physical money) is just as good, but in different ways. Actually I think it's even better, because it has some cohesion, and like the changes or not, it feels very complete. The only thing I can confidently bring out of this whole experience is that having two versions of every song is an awesome way to go about it.
Some of the songs I greatly prefer off of the unreleased stuff (Window is a million times better with the less synthesized back-up horns, Get Him Back has a better edge on the earlier version), others absolutely kill in their CD form (O' Sailor, Not About Love, and Parting Gift all stand out for different reasons).
It's just an excellent CD. As always, the lyrics are ridiculously impressive, and the rhyming just ends me (if you know me in person, I've harped on this to you already no doubt, but "Take all the things that I've said that you've stole / Put 'em in a sack, swing 'em over your shoulder" might be my favoritest strange rhyme in the history of the world. It's all about the emphasis.).
So yeah, I love me some Fiona Apple.
------------------------
Pointless aside - Serenity is out on DVD today. You have no idea how awesome I find that, but I sort of need a graphing calculator to properly express my feelings right now. God, do I love me some Firefly.
Yay for purchases!
First off, I need to do my Fiona Apple caveat. The only way I can think to phrase it is that I'm weirdly, intensely protective of her. Like, when someone tells me that they don't like her music, I am immediately suspicious of them - much like if someone admitted to being a Communist, or Canadian.
Because how can you not love Fiona Apple?
Anyways, the new stuff is excellent. Back in the early days of yore with that whole dust-up about the CD not being released and the whole internet leakage and whatnot, I managed to procure me a pretty complete set of the music. And I did it without my normal crushing guilt over the illegalities of it all, since there was a possibility they would never see the light of day.
And it was fantastic. Delicious lyrics, some very nice rhythms, and some completely off the wall Jon Brion magic (In the form of Extraordinary Machine, which is my favorite song of the bunch by far). The final produced CD, (which I actually bought from a store with physical money) is just as good, but in different ways. Actually I think it's even better, because it has some cohesion, and like the changes or not, it feels very complete. The only thing I can confidently bring out of this whole experience is that having two versions of every song is an awesome way to go about it.
Some of the songs I greatly prefer off of the unreleased stuff (Window is a million times better with the less synthesized back-up horns, Get Him Back has a better edge on the earlier version), others absolutely kill in their CD form (O' Sailor, Not About Love, and Parting Gift all stand out for different reasons).
It's just an excellent CD. As always, the lyrics are ridiculously impressive, and the rhyming just ends me (if you know me in person, I've harped on this to you already no doubt, but "Take all the things that I've said that you've stole / Put 'em in a sack, swing 'em over your shoulder" might be my favoritest strange rhyme in the history of the world. It's all about the emphasis.).
So yeah, I love me some Fiona Apple.
------------------------
Pointless aside - Serenity is out on DVD today. You have no idea how awesome I find that, but I sort of need a graphing calculator to properly express my feelings right now. God, do I love me some Firefly.
Yay for purchases!
Monday, December 19, 2005
I am Sarah Jessica Parker, and Other Embarrassing Tales
So I went to log in to blogger this morning to post something, and my cache had expired. This is officially the longest I've gone without posting in over a year. (Those of you scoring along at home: 11 days. This is what you would call an obsession, apparently.) That's weird. Anyways, I refuse to apologize. I am my own man, and I post when I want. So there.
Also, it's slightly disconcerting when people call to inquire about your welfare because "you haven't blogged in a while." That, my friends, is a little very weird. But also, awesome, in the sense that people care.
Back to the business at hand.
Went to see The Family Stone over the weekend. I am Sarah Jessica Parker. Or, at least her character in the movie. Live and in person. Do you understand exactly how horrible that is? Probably only if you've seen the movie, but I'm going to go on and on about it anyways, because seriously, this has me at my wit's end.
SJP's character is almost utterly irredeemable. She is overly formal, has annoying mannerisms, talks inappropriately and for long periods of time, can be counted on to say exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time, and has a tendency to act as her own little physical comedy routine. Each of these things taken one at a time are not necessarily damning, but by the end of the movie, more than likely, you physically loathe her character. Or at least I did.
And then we are five miles from the theatre when it hits me: I am the complete embodiment of her character. It's so mind-meltingly accurate that the realization almost took my breath away. Cast a boy with a bad haircut in the role and it would be like looking in a damnable mirror. The entire movie turned out to be a concentrated exercise in self loathing. Seriously, if you know me, go see it. It will blow your mind.
In any case, it depresses the hell out of me. Because damn. She was, like, the villain, practically.
Also, that dinner scene at the halfway point is literally, hands-down, flat-out and every other cliched term possible, the most embarrassing and uncomfortable moment I have ever had watching a movie. For perspective's sake, I have watched the first-gay-experience moment in A Home at the End of the World with my parents and I wasn't as uncomfortable as I was on Saturday. Seriously, I almost had to leave the theatre. Maybe I was just overly high-strung that night or something.
-------------------------
Okay, so that was worth waiting 11 days, right?
See you again in a couple of weeks!
Also, it's slightly disconcerting when people call to inquire about your welfare because "you haven't blogged in a while." That, my friends, is a little very weird. But also, awesome, in the sense that people care.
Back to the business at hand.
Went to see The Family Stone over the weekend. I am Sarah Jessica Parker. Or, at least her character in the movie. Live and in person. Do you understand exactly how horrible that is? Probably only if you've seen the movie, but I'm going to go on and on about it anyways, because seriously, this has me at my wit's end.
SJP's character is almost utterly irredeemable. She is overly formal, has annoying mannerisms, talks inappropriately and for long periods of time, can be counted on to say exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time, and has a tendency to act as her own little physical comedy routine. Each of these things taken one at a time are not necessarily damning, but by the end of the movie, more than likely, you physically loathe her character. Or at least I did.
And then we are five miles from the theatre when it hits me: I am the complete embodiment of her character. It's so mind-meltingly accurate that the realization almost took my breath away. Cast a boy with a bad haircut in the role and it would be like looking in a damnable mirror. The entire movie turned out to be a concentrated exercise in self loathing. Seriously, if you know me, go see it. It will blow your mind.
In any case, it depresses the hell out of me. Because damn. She was, like, the villain, practically.
Also, that dinner scene at the halfway point is literally, hands-down, flat-out and every other cliched term possible, the most embarrassing and uncomfortable moment I have ever had watching a movie. For perspective's sake, I have watched the first-gay-experience moment in A Home at the End of the World with my parents and I wasn't as uncomfortable as I was on Saturday. Seriously, I almost had to leave the theatre. Maybe I was just overly high-strung that night or something.
-------------------------
Okay, so that was worth waiting 11 days, right?
See you again in a couple of weeks!
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Embarrassment (Part 875 in a series)
You know those days where something feels off? Like, you're getting ready to head out the door and everything is in place, but you feel like you're forgetting something? Today was that day for me. I had braced myself for the ridiculously freezing weather (by adding a scarf to my normal ensemble). I had my lunch, a book, my phone, my keys, and my contacts were in place. What could be off?
Belt - in place.
Hair - looking ridiculous (per usual), but brushed.
Lights - turned off.
No big things I needed to be worrying about, nothing pressing for the day.
Eventually I chalk it up to being a humongus dork (something which, of late, I am intimately accustomed to) and decide to go on with my day.
Which I do, without incident, for the majority of the day. Blah, blah, cold, blah, work, blah, oh dear lord there are people in my office and they are talking and why won't they just leave me alone, blah.
We make it all the way deep into the afternoon. Suddenly I am very very tired. I'm helping the new guy with some computer things in his office, when I'm struck by the intense need to yawn and stretch. Because it is late, and I have no shame, I go ahead and stretch to my hearts content.
New Coworker: "Uh, what's that?"
Jason: "What's what?"
New Coworker: "That. On your side?"
I realize that there is this huge bulge on my side, where my shirt tucks into my pants.
Jason's Mind: "Hmm, that's odd."
Now, a rational person would have just brushed it off and investigated at a later time, when they were alone and not in someone else's office. Maybe we haven't covered this today, but Jason, he's not exactly the most rational of beings.
Jason: (Because I'm brilliant.) "I don't know. Let's find out."
So I go rooting my shirt out of my pants, and digging through there to find the offense: somehow during my morning ritual, I managed to put on all my clothes without realizing that there were several socks statically attached to the inside of my shirt.
And by several, I mean 4 socks (all different kinds), and one paired set of socks, all lining my waist like some sort of deranged insulation.
It is somewhere around the reveal of sock #3 that I start to realize that, hey I'm not alone here, and this guy has only known me for roughly 6 hours, and I'm standing in front of him systematically pulling out socks from under my shirt, in the way a magician does with a multicolored handkerchief. But I couldn't really stop, the damage was already done.
And there not a lot you can say at that point - you've just revealed yourself as completely insane on the new guy's first day of work. Because let's face it, there are no rational explanations for why you have 6 socks attached to your body all day long and don't realize it. What?! I was cold and my clothes are really loose! I've lost a lot of weight recently! Leave me alone!
In any case, do I make AWESOME first impressions or what?
Belt - in place.
Hair - looking ridiculous (per usual), but brushed.
Lights - turned off.
No big things I needed to be worrying about, nothing pressing for the day.
Eventually I chalk it up to being a humongus dork (something which, of late, I am intimately accustomed to) and decide to go on with my day.
Which I do, without incident, for the majority of the day. Blah, blah, cold, blah, work, blah, oh dear lord there are people in my office and they are talking and why won't they just leave me alone, blah.
We make it all the way deep into the afternoon. Suddenly I am very very tired. I'm helping the new guy with some computer things in his office, when I'm struck by the intense need to yawn and stretch. Because it is late, and I have no shame, I go ahead and stretch to my hearts content.
New Coworker: "Uh, what's that?"
Jason: "What's what?"
New Coworker: "That. On your side?"
I realize that there is this huge bulge on my side, where my shirt tucks into my pants.
Jason's Mind: "Hmm, that's odd."
Now, a rational person would have just brushed it off and investigated at a later time, when they were alone and not in someone else's office. Maybe we haven't covered this today, but Jason, he's not exactly the most rational of beings.
Jason: (Because I'm brilliant.) "I don't know. Let's find out."
So I go rooting my shirt out of my pants, and digging through there to find the offense: somehow during my morning ritual, I managed to put on all my clothes without realizing that there were several socks statically attached to the inside of my shirt.
And by several, I mean 4 socks (all different kinds), and one paired set of socks, all lining my waist like some sort of deranged insulation.
It is somewhere around the reveal of sock #3 that I start to realize that, hey I'm not alone here, and this guy has only known me for roughly 6 hours, and I'm standing in front of him systematically pulling out socks from under my shirt, in the way a magician does with a multicolored handkerchief. But I couldn't really stop, the damage was already done.
And there not a lot you can say at that point - you've just revealed yourself as completely insane on the new guy's first day of work. Because let's face it, there are no rational explanations for why you have 6 socks attached to your body all day long and don't realize it. What?! I was cold and my clothes are really loose! I've lost a lot of weight recently! Leave me alone!
In any case, do I make AWESOME first impressions or what?
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Old People are Awesome
I don't really have anything to add to this, but seriously, whatever ESPN writer came up with this title officially owns my heart:
Elderly Woman's Birthday Wish: Touch Smyth's Mullet
Oh, also:
"It was my wish to see Smitty," Hosking told the newspaper. "I can't believe he's here. I love to watch him skate up and down the ice and bang in goals. And I love his hair. I hope he never cuts it."
There is nothing about this story that does not completely rule.
Elderly Woman's Birthday Wish: Touch Smyth's Mullet
Oh, also:
"It was my wish to see Smitty," Hosking told the newspaper. "I can't believe he's here. I love to watch him skate up and down the ice and bang in goals. And I love his hair. I hope he never cuts it."
There is nothing about this story that does not completely rule.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Waxing Non-Eloquently About Pain
Lately I have been absolutely methodical in my never ending efforts not to bite my nails. This had been greatly facilitated by the fact that a dentist has spent most of last month drilling around amongst my teeth, thus necessitating a brief respite from anything resembling enough jaw power to cut through soft bread, let alone pure cuticle.
But now that my mouth is whole again, I find myself losing the battle yet again. Just now I was lax and not practicing constant vigilance against my subconscious, and thus began gnawing away at my thumbnail, like some sort of misanthropic beaver. And somehow I managed to split the thumbnail vertically along the quick in such a way as to cause the most pain possible, per pure acreage of painful area. And as such, the pain can only be described as. . . exquisite. It's a level of pain that I've discussed before at length, something that is just beyond the grasp of mortal words to explain, yet close enough that you feel compelled to try.
But it is wholly distilled, pain concentrated and strained carefully by Tibetan monks at high altitudes to preserve only the most painful parts, carefully passed down across the centuries and generations, each adding their own knowledge to the sum total wisdom of pain extraction until near perfection is reached, and then delivered down unto you in just such a way as to make you doubt your own sanity and purpose in life. Right there in the palm of your hand, or more specifically, on the back of your thumb.
Thus: OW. Fucking OW.
But now that my mouth is whole again, I find myself losing the battle yet again. Just now I was lax and not practicing constant vigilance against my subconscious, and thus began gnawing away at my thumbnail, like some sort of misanthropic beaver. And somehow I managed to split the thumbnail vertically along the quick in such a way as to cause the most pain possible, per pure acreage of painful area. And as such, the pain can only be described as. . . exquisite. It's a level of pain that I've discussed before at length, something that is just beyond the grasp of mortal words to explain, yet close enough that you feel compelled to try.
But it is wholly distilled, pain concentrated and strained carefully by Tibetan monks at high altitudes to preserve only the most painful parts, carefully passed down across the centuries and generations, each adding their own knowledge to the sum total wisdom of pain extraction until near perfection is reached, and then delivered down unto you in just such a way as to make you doubt your own sanity and purpose in life. Right there in the palm of your hand, or more specifically, on the back of your thumb.
Thus: OW. Fucking OW.
Self-Flagellation
I am a great believer in the cataloguing of all my flaws. Because (1) I'm not just a little crazy and (2) for the most part, I can live with them and enumerating them lets me feel like I have some control over how they effect me. So without further ado:
I am unbelievably clumsy, I make horrible jokes, I cannot cook to save my life, I have scary deep-set eyes. I play too many video games, I'm horribly shy, and as such am a ridiculously bad conversationalist. I'm cheap, I read too many books, I'm crazy pale. I use too many big words and can be a grammar freak. I can't make a decision to save my life. I make terrible first impressions and am very off-putting to a lot of people. I'm a huge dork. I tell long and meandering and boring stories with little-to-no relevance to anything in the actual world. I'm way lazy and watch too much TV and never exercise. I have bad fashion sense and usually look like I was dressed by a colorblind person with no concept of style. I have a very oddly shaped head, with multiple points where there should be none. My hair looks like a ski-slope.
This is me, carefully and considerably condensed into bite-sized chunks. And I'm mostly cool with that. Some of the things I am able to mask through the magic of pretending to act normal (I can maintain a facade in public, wherein I don't use any big words, correct peoples grammar, or talk excessively about TV), other things I embrace as little quirks that are naturally a part of me (basically anything physical, primarily because I'm way too cheap to get any sort of corrective surgery). Other things I actively hate, but can seem to do nothing about, no matter how hard I try (see: shyness, conversation skills, decision making, and fixing my goddamn hair into something other than a freakin' ski-slope configuration).
Aaaanyways, (I swear I was going somewhere with this) this is to give you some manner of a guide to what is constantly going on in my head when I meet new people. Because in normal everyday life around people I know, the list is just sort of the background noise that is my brain. Only when I do something hideously dorky amongst friends does my brain assert itself ("Wow! Stupid!" it says to me). But even then, these people know what to expect since, by God, they've been around this long it should be expected by now.
But with new people it's like one huge ticker-tape marquee loop in my brain: "Why aren't you talking?! You're too quiet! Say something! But nothing dorky! No stories! Quit looking so shifty! I swear to God, I'll go on strike if you mention anything about TV or grammar! Don't knock that thing over! Don't trip..." And on and on, forever.
Which I'm pretty sure should probably require some form of therapy, because, come on. Although mostly this just resolves into me looking incredibly shy, because my brain can't complain too much if I don't say anything. It just gets stuck on "Why aren't you saying anything?! Why aren't you saying anything?!" and I can totally handle that. Sometimes I even say very innocuous things.
And now that I've gone through all of that, let me just say: Oh my God, why am I so awkward? For serious, people. I should be studied.
(This exercise in self-hating has been brought to you by Jason's total lack of common social skills. And the letter Q.)
I am unbelievably clumsy, I make horrible jokes, I cannot cook to save my life, I have scary deep-set eyes. I play too many video games, I'm horribly shy, and as such am a ridiculously bad conversationalist. I'm cheap, I read too many books, I'm crazy pale. I use too many big words and can be a grammar freak. I can't make a decision to save my life. I make terrible first impressions and am very off-putting to a lot of people. I'm a huge dork. I tell long and meandering and boring stories with little-to-no relevance to anything in the actual world. I'm way lazy and watch too much TV and never exercise. I have bad fashion sense and usually look like I was dressed by a colorblind person with no concept of style. I have a very oddly shaped head, with multiple points where there should be none. My hair looks like a ski-slope.
This is me, carefully and considerably condensed into bite-sized chunks. And I'm mostly cool with that. Some of the things I am able to mask through the magic of pretending to act normal (I can maintain a facade in public, wherein I don't use any big words, correct peoples grammar, or talk excessively about TV), other things I embrace as little quirks that are naturally a part of me (basically anything physical, primarily because I'm way too cheap to get any sort of corrective surgery). Other things I actively hate, but can seem to do nothing about, no matter how hard I try (see: shyness, conversation skills, decision making, and fixing my goddamn hair into something other than a freakin' ski-slope configuration).
Aaaanyways, (I swear I was going somewhere with this) this is to give you some manner of a guide to what is constantly going on in my head when I meet new people. Because in normal everyday life around people I know, the list is just sort of the background noise that is my brain. Only when I do something hideously dorky amongst friends does my brain assert itself ("Wow! Stupid!" it says to me). But even then, these people know what to expect since, by God, they've been around this long it should be expected by now.
But with new people it's like one huge ticker-tape marquee loop in my brain: "Why aren't you talking?! You're too quiet! Say something! But nothing dorky! No stories! Quit looking so shifty! I swear to God, I'll go on strike if you mention anything about TV or grammar! Don't knock that thing over! Don't trip..." And on and on, forever.
Which I'm pretty sure should probably require some form of therapy, because, come on. Although mostly this just resolves into me looking incredibly shy, because my brain can't complain too much if I don't say anything. It just gets stuck on "Why aren't you saying anything?! Why aren't you saying anything?!" and I can totally handle that. Sometimes I even say very innocuous things.
And now that I've gone through all of that, let me just say: Oh my God, why am I so awkward? For serious, people. I should be studied.
(This exercise in self-hating has been brought to you by Jason's total lack of common social skills. And the letter Q.)
Friday, December 02, 2005
Totally Smart, Stupid
Do you have any idea how boring today has been? I might physically collapse due to the lack of interest.
To give you just a taste, I actually took one of those damnable blog quizzes.
AND I'm posting the results.
It's quite the low point around here, in terms of actual content. But it's that level boring today.
Anyways, I'm totally smart! I have evidence.
Of course, the quiz didn't ask me about yesterday when I tried to add 5 + 6 and ended up with 14. But maybe they aren't measuring that type of smart.
To give you just a taste, I actually took one of those damnable blog quizzes.
AND I'm posting the results.
It's quite the low point around here, in terms of actual content. But it's that level boring today.
Anyways, I'm totally smart! I have evidence.
Of course, the quiz didn't ask me about yesterday when I tried to add 5 + 6 and ended up with 14. But maybe they aren't measuring that type of smart.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
It's Christmas Time, Y'all
Seriously, I did miss a memo somewhere? I guess I knew empirically that we were getting there, but shit, yo. Twenty-four days out? I literally have the (awesome, glowing, fiber-optic) Christmas tree up and decorated in my house, and yet it didn't quite sink in that, y'know, I might need to do a little Christmas planning.
There are no presents bought.
I have not organized my Christmas music playlist.
We haven't even started planning gingerbread house making night yet.
All the Christmas lights are still sitting in the closet.
And I still don't know how to make egg nog.
I'm slacking off on my favorite time of the year and I didn't even realize it. What can I say, I've been ridiculously distracted as of late. (Insert goofy smile here.)
I'm going to try to make some inroads this weekend, get the house in order, maybe do a little shopping on Saturday, get a time set for the gingerbread-fest, and all that jazz. But man. It's the most wonderful time of the year and I'm totally missing out! Lame.
---------------------
Oh, and in general round-up news:
There are no presents bought.
I have not organized my Christmas music playlist.
We haven't even started planning gingerbread house making night yet.
All the Christmas lights are still sitting in the closet.
And I still don't know how to make egg nog.
I'm slacking off on my favorite time of the year and I didn't even realize it. What can I say, I've been ridiculously distracted as of late. (Insert goofy smile here.)
I'm going to try to make some inroads this weekend, get the house in order, maybe do a little shopping on Saturday, get a time set for the gingerbread-fest, and all that jazz. But man. It's the most wonderful time of the year and I'm totally missing out! Lame.
---------------------
Oh, and in general round-up news:
- Only one final tooth thing next week and I will be finished until the new year. Huzzah for no more dentist. This gaping hole in my mouth is out to drive me insane, though.
- Contacts continue to rule my world, even if I do blink a whole lot more nowadays. I'm like a deranged owl, but I can see for miles.
- I'm finally getting a new phone, to replace my at-least-14 year old one. I'm wicked excited, and not just because it will end all those "Is that your giant, ancient cell phone in your pocket or are you just happy to see me" comments.
- How good has TV been lately? Apprentice, ANTM, Lost, Survivor, Grey's Anatomy all being awesome at once? It almost makes up for The Amazing Race sucking so hard. Almost. *Sniff*
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Spiffy is a nice word for it, if wildly inaccurate
Well that was refreshing, no?
It was a Thanksgiving of epic proportions, with at least 3 kinds of stuffing, 5 kinds of pie, and more random bits of pure deliciousness than I can properly count. And as much as it pains me to say it, I very well may have been singularly responsible for the decimation of literally (actual literally, not fake 'literally') 2.5 of those 5 pies. And all of one of the kinds of stuffing. How I am not some sort of beached whale after my shenanigans this weekend is a mystery for the ages.
I went over to my parent's house on Thursday morning, because Dallas traffic on Wednesday night was like a scene out of War of the Worlds, only without all the laser beams and less creepy Dakota Fanning. I made it by noon and we proceeded to take the path of greatest resistance - putting up all the Christmas lights during the day, while we waited for our ginormous turkey to properly roast itself. This led to me dangling off the side of their house on a 20 foot ladder with a hammer in one hand, a screwdriver in the other, a hook clenched in my teeth, and a string of multi-color lights wrapped around my arm.
Despite this virtual recipe for disaster, I came out of the entire thing unscathed, except for an incredibly sore back from when I insisted on raking the front lawn. Because apparently I have some weird sort of latent OCD when it comes to leaves. I also managed to get the bejesus freaked out of me, when it turned out that the wire-light-up reindeer that my dad installed in the front lawn was animatronic. There was a mad crazy moment there when I was all The-Shining-topiary-animals-out-for-revenge bugging out, because I was just standing there minding my own business, admiring our handiwork on the house, when the supposedly inanimate glowing reindeer turned its head and looked at me. Do you have any idea what that can do to a man's psyche? For one thing, it makes one scream like a little girl.
This was luckily witnessed by very few people, all of which I have enough dirt on to purchase their silence for life. Except when it's just our family at the dinner table, where they are free to mock me forever, and I them. We're very warm to each other, you understand.
In any case, the lighting of the house was followed by the Thanksgiving dinner from the gods, discussed earlier, followed by a mass exodus of all our family to the various parts of the state. With the exception of lazy me, who sat around and planned on loafing about for at least another couple of days. Because really, who needs a mortgage the day after Thanksgiving? No one I need to associate with.
Friday I was left to my solitary devices as even the people who lived in the house decided to make a run for the border or what have you. They invited me along, but as this run entailed at least 7 hours on a yellow school bus, I naturally declined. Family bonds only take you so far, you understand. Instead I stayed at home and managed to basically eat everything that ever was and potentially ever will be again. This was where those additional pies disappeared. Along with the majority of the dark meat from our prodigious turkey and all the broccoli casserole and that jar of olives. What can I say? It was Thanksgiving, it's practically required.
Saturday was pretty self-contained, as my family made our yearly pilgrimage to the Thanksgiving sales, only a day later than usual. There was precious little actual present shopping to be had, but I managed to pretty much double my wardrobe of 'Things that are acceptable to wear in a public setting' in just one, really thorough trip to Old Navy, otherwise known as My Mothership.
So yeah, flawless good times, good family, good thanks, and a lack of injuries.
Pretty spiffy, I'd say.
It was a Thanksgiving of epic proportions, with at least 3 kinds of stuffing, 5 kinds of pie, and more random bits of pure deliciousness than I can properly count. And as much as it pains me to say it, I very well may have been singularly responsible for the decimation of literally (actual literally, not fake 'literally') 2.5 of those 5 pies. And all of one of the kinds of stuffing. How I am not some sort of beached whale after my shenanigans this weekend is a mystery for the ages.
I went over to my parent's house on Thursday morning, because Dallas traffic on Wednesday night was like a scene out of War of the Worlds, only without all the laser beams and less creepy Dakota Fanning. I made it by noon and we proceeded to take the path of greatest resistance - putting up all the Christmas lights during the day, while we waited for our ginormous turkey to properly roast itself. This led to me dangling off the side of their house on a 20 foot ladder with a hammer in one hand, a screwdriver in the other, a hook clenched in my teeth, and a string of multi-color lights wrapped around my arm.
Despite this virtual recipe for disaster, I came out of the entire thing unscathed, except for an incredibly sore back from when I insisted on raking the front lawn. Because apparently I have some weird sort of latent OCD when it comes to leaves. I also managed to get the bejesus freaked out of me, when it turned out that the wire-light-up reindeer that my dad installed in the front lawn was animatronic. There was a mad crazy moment there when I was all The-Shining-topiary-animals-out-for-revenge bugging out, because I was just standing there minding my own business, admiring our handiwork on the house, when the supposedly inanimate glowing reindeer turned its head and looked at me. Do you have any idea what that can do to a man's psyche? For one thing, it makes one scream like a little girl.
This was luckily witnessed by very few people, all of which I have enough dirt on to purchase their silence for life. Except when it's just our family at the dinner table, where they are free to mock me forever, and I them. We're very warm to each other, you understand.
In any case, the lighting of the house was followed by the Thanksgiving dinner from the gods, discussed earlier, followed by a mass exodus of all our family to the various parts of the state. With the exception of lazy me, who sat around and planned on loafing about for at least another couple of days. Because really, who needs a mortgage the day after Thanksgiving? No one I need to associate with.
Friday I was left to my solitary devices as even the people who lived in the house decided to make a run for the border or what have you. They invited me along, but as this run entailed at least 7 hours on a yellow school bus, I naturally declined. Family bonds only take you so far, you understand. Instead I stayed at home and managed to basically eat everything that ever was and potentially ever will be again. This was where those additional pies disappeared. Along with the majority of the dark meat from our prodigious turkey and all the broccoli casserole and that jar of olives. What can I say? It was Thanksgiving, it's practically required.
Saturday was pretty self-contained, as my family made our yearly pilgrimage to the Thanksgiving sales, only a day later than usual. There was precious little actual present shopping to be had, but I managed to pretty much double my wardrobe of 'Things that are acceptable to wear in a public setting' in just one, really thorough trip to Old Navy, otherwise known as My Mothership.
So yeah, flawless good times, good family, good thanks, and a lack of injuries.
Pretty spiffy, I'd say.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
What was that, again?
There is a wicked long post just itching to spew forth, about my latest dentistry exploits, my inability to talk like a normal person, and my tendency to get caught doing really embarrassing things.
But my mood is a too insanely good right now for such things. Who would have thought a thing was even possible? If you've never seen my stupidly goofy smile, now's the time. It's a pretty rare thing, in general.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Back with more stories next week.
But my mood is a too insanely good right now for such things. Who would have thought a thing was even possible? If you've never seen my stupidly goofy smile, now's the time. It's a pretty rare thing, in general.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Back with more stories next week.
Monday, November 21, 2005
Blatantly Obvious
Being able to see is awesome.
Yeah, okay, I know, and that water stuff, I hear it's pretty wet. But follow along.
Previous to this week (AKA - the time before contacts), the only method I had to improve my vision besides Furious Squinting (the name of my 3rd album) was applying my glasses to the task. Glasses which were coming up on 6.5 years old, bent at about a 45 degree angle, and really, painfully, truly, dorky looking. Also, it can now be revealed, in a women's style. I picked them up at the start of my senior year of high school, when I realized that it really shouldn't be that difficult to read a chalkboard, especially when you're a suck-up and sit in the front row of desks (High school was an unfortunate time for me).
The result was a dramatic raise in my smartness-looking quotient (and a bit in the actual smartness area, since I could again see the board), but also upped my geekery to near astronomical levels. As one once said, the phrase uber-nerd was not necessarily out of the question.
Since then, I have grown, well, incredibly old and feeble (in many ways, mind) but directly correlated to my vision, all while maintaining the same level of dynamic dorkiness. This deterioration is best evidenced by my new-found, seemingly super-vision. Post Contacts, I can: see gas prices from the highway, pick out people that I know in a crowd from a distance greater than arms length, and watch sports on TV without really needing announcers to let me know what was going on. We won't even get into the part where I can actually see things while driving at night; I don't want to scare any of my previous passengers any more than they already have been.
Also, according to two people, my level of sexiness has gone up dramatically, sans glasses. Of course, there are others who say that the contacts make me blink too often and give me an insane-like quality, but since when do we listen to the naysayers? He also tells me that I have no ass when I wear jeans, whereas I believe I have a fantastic one. Which I'm pretty sure moves our conversation outside of the normal sphere of roommate relations, but no one ever said we were normal.
I just like the concept of not needing to go on a mission throughout the house to find your glasses, despite the fact that they're in your damnable front shirt pocket the entire time. Contacts add a whole new dimension to the adage of not being able to lose one's head, since it is already screwed on to one's neck.
And somehow (to continue the cliches at a record pace), contacts are just like riding a bicycle - it's easy to fall off, with a tendency to cause scarring. No, wait. I mean, you never forget how to work them: in and out in under 30 seconds.
The convenience is staggering.
Yeah, okay, I know, and that water stuff, I hear it's pretty wet. But follow along.
Previous to this week (AKA - the time before contacts), the only method I had to improve my vision besides Furious Squinting (the name of my 3rd album) was applying my glasses to the task. Glasses which were coming up on 6.5 years old, bent at about a 45 degree angle, and really, painfully, truly, dorky looking. Also, it can now be revealed, in a women's style. I picked them up at the start of my senior year of high school, when I realized that it really shouldn't be that difficult to read a chalkboard, especially when you're a suck-up and sit in the front row of desks (High school was an unfortunate time for me).
The result was a dramatic raise in my smartness-looking quotient (and a bit in the actual smartness area, since I could again see the board), but also upped my geekery to near astronomical levels. As one once said, the phrase uber-nerd was not necessarily out of the question.
Since then, I have grown, well, incredibly old and feeble (in many ways, mind) but directly correlated to my vision, all while maintaining the same level of dynamic dorkiness. This deterioration is best evidenced by my new-found, seemingly super-vision. Post Contacts, I can: see gas prices from the highway, pick out people that I know in a crowd from a distance greater than arms length, and watch sports on TV without really needing announcers to let me know what was going on. We won't even get into the part where I can actually see things while driving at night; I don't want to scare any of my previous passengers any more than they already have been.
Also, according to two people, my level of sexiness has gone up dramatically, sans glasses. Of course, there are others who say that the contacts make me blink too often and give me an insane-like quality, but since when do we listen to the naysayers? He also tells me that I have no ass when I wear jeans, whereas I believe I have a fantastic one. Which I'm pretty sure moves our conversation outside of the normal sphere of roommate relations, but no one ever said we were normal.
I just like the concept of not needing to go on a mission throughout the house to find your glasses, despite the fact that they're in your damnable front shirt pocket the entire time. Contacts add a whole new dimension to the adage of not being able to lose one's head, since it is already screwed on to one's neck.
And somehow (to continue the cliches at a record pace), contacts are just like riding a bicycle - it's easy to fall off, with a tendency to cause scarring. No, wait. I mean, you never forget how to work them: in and out in under 30 seconds.
The convenience is staggering.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Goblet of Awesome
It may have been 12:01 in the middle of the night and I may have been utterly exhausted beyond words. My eyes may have been ridiculously sore since I was wearing contacts for the first time in over two years. We may have been surrounded by more Highland Park High Schoolers than I knew existed in the world, and one of them may have been dressed as Draco Malfoy. It may have been at Cityplace, the worst theatre EVER, one to which I vow never to go to again, with no working surround-sound and only two front speakers that were horribly imbalanced so that the background effects were occasionally louder than the actual dialogue. And the projection room light may have been turned on with about 40 minutes left in the movie, so a huge yellow glare was projected onto the screen during the entire climax of the movie.
All these things may be true, but the important part is even more true: Last night I got to go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And it was awesome.
Let me preface that by saying that if you haven’t read the book, this movie will not make a damn lick of sense, the ending will feel ridiculously cheated, and you will have nothing but questions at the end.
But the movie is excellent, condensing practically every important part of a 700+ page book into two and a half hours of (amazingly surprisingly) good acting and effects. At first, I was sort of disappointed in the result. As the credits rolled, it felt more like a companion popup book to the novel, bright and exciting pictures to go along with the high points of the story with no substance. But really, if I were asked to work up a treatment of GoF, it would have been at least thirty minutes longer and 15 times worse.
Also, it doesn’t hurt that this movie is ridiculously funny. One thing that has been extremely lacking from the film version of HP is the quirkiness inherent in Rowling’s writing, and this movie is practically nothing but nice, well-delivered jokes interspersed with tasty action sequences.
There were a few things that I categorically disagree with: I hate their characterization of Dumbledore with a fierce passion (Dumbledore does not constantly shout and yell at people, he is quiet and effective and self-possessed) and it’s the only part of the movie that I think is actually at odds with the spirit of the book. I also really wish they would have used Snape more, and not just because I have a huge man-crush on Alan Rickman. I think that the dynamic there is really vital to the book, and just using him for a couple of (okay, really good) scenes is a big waste, artistically. My only other major complaint is about the really weird disconnect in the rising action up to the final task – it was like 4 completely random scenes that needed playing, but there was no way to link them together, so lets just drop them right in and move on. Just…weird. But not deal-breaking.
Something that is neither here nor there: it feels like the movie is utterly lacking in characterization for all the new characters (Cedric, Fleur, Krum, the Headmasters) and I was all ready to ding the movie for that, until I realized that the exact same thing is true in the book. Rowling’s characters are often excellently drawn, but done so broadly that you naturally can ascribe anything you want to them, even though they never have any characterization through the whole book you come out at the end with a fully-formed picture in your mind, regardless. Which makes me re-evaluate my entire theory on why I like the books, but that’s an entirely different long-winded essay.
And just to round it out, the things that I loved:
- Actual acting by all the principles that was really good, even by Daniel “HE WAS THEIR FRIEND!” Radcliffe. And Emma Watson sort of insanely rocks. In fact, all the casting was just top-notch (my dislike for the Dumbledore interpretation notwithstanding).
- So much Neville that I practically wanted to weep with joy. He’s easily my second favorite character and I was incredibly gratified to see him get some nice screen-time.
- The entire, utterly cracked-out, Yule Ball scene, which was both incredibly true to the book, and completely awesome. There’s a level of delicious awkward-ness to the entire affair that speaks to a place deep within me.
- Those two scenes about figuring out the egg. First with Cedric seemingly hitting on Harry to an insane degree (“mull it over in the hot water?” If that’s not a come-on, I don’t know what is.) and then Myrtle all “sexual harassment 101” in the bathroom? I know that they both were practically verbatim from the book, but man, put in video form and it was just… so damn perfect that it brought a tear to my eye.
- And okay, basically all of the jokes, which I won’t spoil here, but they just put me in an excellent mood for the entire movie. I don’t need a word-for-word reenactment if you’ve got some nice comedic timing. I am easily amused, don’t ya know
So, anyways. LOVE. Go see it. And take me with you.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
The Rhythm Finally Got Me
There is a new and disturbing wrinkle in my daily routine, here in the land of mortgages and bored attorneys. The management of our office building has decided that there is but one thing that is truly missing from our total office experience - elevator music.
Because our elevators previously contained nothing but the comforting whir and clank of ancient cables inching their way up the stories, always wondering if this would be their final hurrah before they gave up, you would think that some level of music, no matter how banal, would be a welcome distraction from the question of impending doom that comes with each additional floor.
You would be wrong.
Because this music is loud. Incredibly loud. Ridiculously loud. So loud that I can hear it in my office. Which is down a long hallway, through a door, and across a lobby from the elevators. And it's not just elevator music. It is elevator music via a calliope/deranged carnival. Instead of muted Muzak, we've got jaunty carousel songs that sound just out of tune enough to put you in mind of pure evil. Seriously, my clown avoidance senses are off the charts at all times of the day now. It's utterly maddening.
Plus, to top it all off, they've patched it in to the downstairs lobby too, so you can hear it all the way from your car. Trust me, you haven't experienced horror until you've walked through a darkened parking garage with distorted carnival music echoing off the stone walls.
This is not my beautiful office life.
Because our elevators previously contained nothing but the comforting whir and clank of ancient cables inching their way up the stories, always wondering if this would be their final hurrah before they gave up, you would think that some level of music, no matter how banal, would be a welcome distraction from the question of impending doom that comes with each additional floor.
You would be wrong.
Because this music is loud. Incredibly loud. Ridiculously loud. So loud that I can hear it in my office. Which is down a long hallway, through a door, and across a lobby from the elevators. And it's not just elevator music. It is elevator music via a calliope/deranged carnival. Instead of muted Muzak, we've got jaunty carousel songs that sound just out of tune enough to put you in mind of pure evil. Seriously, my clown avoidance senses are off the charts at all times of the day now. It's utterly maddening.
Plus, to top it all off, they've patched it in to the downstairs lobby too, so you can hear it all the way from your car. Trust me, you haven't experienced horror until you've walked through a darkened parking garage with distorted carnival music echoing off the stone walls.
This is not my beautiful office life.
Monday, November 14, 2005
On the Outs
Last Tuesday I went in for extremely minor oral surgery to finish work on a root canal process, and remove one of my wisdom teeth that was preventing the final cap from getting placed on said root canal. It's hard to quantify exactly how much this whole thing disturbed me, right down to my very (semi-sweet chocolatey) core, but man-oh-man I will try.
Because I don't like drills, or needles, and I really hate cutting, and then the scraping, and the numbness all day long followed by just intense pain, and the blood, and geez I'm grossing myself out and I haven't even gotten to the part where the dentist started singing along to Avril Lavigne during the procedure, ruining all Canadian singer/songwriters for me for life.
The whole thing was made infinitely worse by my necessity to be in the office all week long, including but not limited to, the three hours immediately following the procedure and the morning following. Other things that caused me issue during the adventure:
Because I don't like drills, or needles, and I really hate cutting, and then the scraping, and the numbness all day long followed by just intense pain, and the blood, and geez I'm grossing myself out and I haven't even gotten to the part where the dentist started singing along to Avril Lavigne during the procedure, ruining all Canadian singer/songwriters for me for life.
The whole thing was made infinitely worse by my necessity to be in the office all week long, including but not limited to, the three hours immediately following the procedure and the morning following. Other things that caused me issue during the adventure:
- The pain medication is, of course, awesome, but puts me in a state that isn't so much "out of it" as it is "out of it completely, with a tendency to drool onto the fancy new couch." Which, y'know, LAME.
- Not eating solid foods doesn't seem like a huge issue, until you try to find soft foods that actually have some sort of nutritional value. Campbells condensed soups provide basically nothing that you need to survive in the world, except 105% your daily recommended allowance of sodium, which I assume I was already getting from all those salt-water mouth rinses. And yogurt? I'm sorry, but Yoplait only has 100 calories per huge bucket of goop. Yes it was delicious, but damn man, my metabolism is such that I burned those 100 calories just trying to rip the little foil cover off the container. Not an exaggeration in the slightest, I dropped 4 pounds by Thursday when I got home from work.
- After my boss warned me of the horrors that were associated with the dreaded 'dry socket' I went online to read up and make sure I was doing everything right with my aftercare and not dooming myself to "intense pain and unpleasant odor of the mouth." And the Internet put me in such a right freak-out state that I'm still pretty much ruined. To express it in proper mathematical notation:
Let x = the amount of time that I spend obsessively worrying about the hole in my mouth to the point of ruination of everything else in the world.
Let y = the amount of time since tooth out.
With p = time while at work,
k = time spent hopped up on pain pills,
And z = time while is asleep.
Final Equation:
x = y
Because not only does it consume my every waking hour, I even compulsively dream about the hideous hole in my mouth. Unwieldy issues is what I'm getting at.
In any case, things are basically better, I get the stitches out tomorrow, and so far I'm pretty sure the whole dry socket thing has been avoided, because there is no pain associated with the hole, although the underside of my jaw still hurts like nothing else. But after tomorrow, the cap should be in place and I won't have to worry about any more dental hijinks. At least until January, when the other three wisdom teeth will be coming out.
Save me, Jebus.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Old and Prosaic
Now that I'm nice and old (just short of a quarter-century, now), I had planned on waiting until there was something of actual import to write, rather than just blathering on at the fingers to get something down, so it doesn't look like I've fallen off the face of the earth. With age should come discretion and the good sense of when to speak.
But that just doesn't wash. Normal weekend ramblings commence now.
In no particular order:
But that just doesn't wash. Normal weekend ramblings commence now.
In no particular order:
- Went to the Pigskin Review (yearly SMU band homecoming concert) which was delicious in musicality, if not in food. Other good things included an open bar, actual funny comedy, and a banjo, all of which added up into a totally enjoyable experience. I also got a new CD and managed to pretend to dance to a polka without falling once, which is a mini-miracle in itself.
- Saw Jarhead, which was good but taught me nothing except that I spend a little too much time nowadays focusing on perceived homosexual subtexts in everything I watch. Because...seriously. Bunch of marines in the desert and a mostly naked Jake Gyllenhaal? They make it too easy for me. Also, Peter Sarsgaard is a really good actor. Not that you necessarily need me to tell you that, but still.
- I bought Mario Dance Dance Revolution, because I love both DDR and Mario games with an unhealthy passion. Plus the review basically spoke directly to me: "With a short story mode that serves as a fun, linear introduction to sequential stomping, Mario Mix is suitable for a child, or for an uncoordinated friend."(emphasis mine, obviously) Because come on, if ever there was an endorsement for a game made with me in mind...
Later on there will be a discussion on exactly how much being old sucks, but it will have to wait until I get all my notes in order. The mind isn't what it used to be, you know.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Cliched Post of the Day
My new favorite referral log:
Search for: homoerotic dialogue in Firefly
You've come to the right place my friend, welcome home.
Search for: homoerotic dialogue in Firefly
You've come to the right place my friend, welcome home.
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