| Selected Observations from the Watchmen midnight show |
[07 Mar 2009|01:52pm] |
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mood |
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 curiously well rested |
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music |
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Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi |
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A man gets doused with hot cooking grease. The crowd goes wild. It is at this moment that I know I’m among friends.
After giving us a very liberal ninety minutes of wiggling blue dick, Snyder seemed to become positively demure when it came to the matter of Ms. Akerman’s jugs. We finally do get them, though. They’re worth the wait.
They change things. They omit things. Some are kind of disappointing, but whenever they did it, I reminded myself of the already impressive running time. When one considers the trials that were necessary to get the movie made/released in the first place the changes become a little easier to digest. There will be an extended directors cut of the film. It might even get a theatrical run of its own, but even without it; it is a very good movie.
I came into the movie well primed and researched. It’s weird, knowing almost exactly what will happen in a given scene. Also, saying to myself a few times “okay, this is that preview scene I saw online”. For this reason, I had no trouble following the plot (since I already knew it) but I was wondering how people who knew nothing about the movie would fare. Having asked a few that fit the criteria, they told me they had no trouble following the plot either. Also of note, the movie was discussed emphatically all the way home and even after. However one feels about it, it’s making people talk, and it’s making people think.
I agree that some of the music choices were a little jarring or out of place, but they did keep some of the Koyaanisqatsi music cue’s in the final cut. This made me happy.
I’ve been getting more obsessive about this whole absolute pitch thing. Partially due to Watchmen, I’ve been listening to the Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack a lot. The main theme starts in D. Makes it confusing to find middle C after listening to it for a while. I must be driving my coworkers crazy randomly whistling C, C#, and D out of nowhere, trying to go smoothly between them. It is kind of fun to think about, though.I'm sure it's just a phase.
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| Who will watch them?… |
[05 Mar 2009|02:18am] |
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mood |
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in anticipation |
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music |
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Philip Glass - Prophecies |
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The Watchmen finally gets released on Friday. Twenty two hours from now I am in the theater watching the midnight showing. Thirty hours ago I order my tickets. I’ve been waiting for this for over a year. I’ve been tracking the news, following the production, reading the legal updates, watching the carefully rationed preview clips, reading the reviews, hell, I’ve even been watching Koyaanisqatsi again because of the music in the trailers (and damn if I haven’t forgotten just how good that one is). I have my gameplan set for tomorrow and fully intend to unleash the fucking fury on anyone who tries to mess it up. I don’t remember the last time I’ve had this much anticipation for a movie and I still can’t quite explain why. The movies that I really like, say the top six on my personal list, are there because they externalize certain facets of my personality. If one were to watch them all close together, one would probably notice certain themes. Certain trends that would probably give some insight as to how I think and operate. But I don’t really feel that way about the Watchmen. To be sure, it is a solid piece of literature and a cracking good story, but I don’t really connect with it the same way I connect with other books or movies. Can’t really explain it. Still, it does feel pretty cool to finally get to the payoff after all this anticipation. Sort of how my birthday used to feel.
Everyone apparently is now playing Halo online. Last week I played with Rob, one of his old coworkers, another mutual friend of ours that we see sporadically, and, get this, Rob’s dad, all the way from the west coast. A little weird considering I’ve known Rob for twenty five years and never met his dad. They were estranged before I met him. Now Xbox Live of all things is helping them reconnect. Wild. The games themselves weren’t terribly sporting, what with all the inexperience (as if I’m some kind of digital commando) but they were… interesting.
I still resolutely refuse to get a 360 of my own. Besides the fear that doing so will result in what remains of my productivity being flushed down the tubes, there’s also a certain singularity to our weekly Halo nights that goes beyond simply logging on and getting fragged. We eat hearty, shoot the shit, and, in general, just unwind, although I’d say that last one is more for his benefit than mine (as his friend, I feel it’s my duty to at least try to prevent his workaholic tendencies from killing him). Our old Monday night Halo LAN parties were like that too. Besides creating a reason to look forward to Mondays (no mean feat, that) it was a chance to just chill with a bunch of people that I might never see otherwise. All that gets lost if I can just log in from home whenever.
Which isn’t to say I don’t get competitive. I tried hooking up my old first gen Xbox to live last night. Nothing wrong with getting a little practice in, right? Apparently the Halo 2 servers are still up. Alas, no go. I thought I put all the info in okay, but it kept saying my DNS info was wrong. Can’t quite figure it out. Maybe it’s just as well, but I’ll probably try at least one more time before I give up. It could be something as simple as power cycling the hardware. We shall see.
I get to house sit my parents place again in about a week to make sure the kitties get fed. Always nice to see the old cats since I don’t have any living here any more; I need to get my fix from everyone else’s. The folks are taking a few days to visit my brother in Texas. Unprecedented in it’s own way, since my dad reacts to air travel about the same way as B.A. Baracus. My uncle and I have been trying to assuage him by explaining that if the plane does go down, death would be practically instantaneous and he probably wouldn't even have enough time to get properly terrified before being vaporized. Not sure if it worked, though.
I have a facebook now. I think I do anyway. I’m still trying to figure the damn thing out. Even though I’m gradually accepting the fact that true privacy, especially online, is largely a myth, I still don’t like the fact that it throws your full real name right up on the main page. Little Mike, who insisted I get it in the first place (exactly why is something he hasn’t gotten around to explaining) tells me it’s so people like my old gradeschool and highschool classmates can find me. Ironic, considering they are the last people I would want to find me. Of my gradeschool class in particular, I hated roughly 60% of it, was terminally indifferent to 39%, and maintained contact with the other 1% just fine without facebook. Still, I have it, though I have no idea to what end. But I imagine I’ll start friending people eventually once I get the hang of it.
I’ve been wondering a lot lately about whether I might have absolute pitch, like my uncle. I know my pitch has always been pretty good but never imagined it was as good as that because I’ve always had to count notes from middle C before I could name one. But I can usually whistle middle C without a pitch pipe or any kind of reference, so I dunno. I’ve been dicking around with a few of the virtual keyboards online lately, trying to identify notes and just messing around in general. Makes me want a real one again. I never should have quit piano lessons…
Oh, and as an FYI. I will likely be ditching my telephone landline at some point in the relatively near future. For those of your that call me but don’t have my cell # (I don’t think that describes anyone here, but just in case) you might want to get it off me soon.
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| On Movies |
[22 Feb 2009|11:58am] |
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mood |
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contemplative. |
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music |
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Freezepop - Less Talk, More Rokk |
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Sometimes it takes only the most innocuous conversational spark to set my mental wheels turning. Meatloaf posts an offhand comment about Eagles football, two weeks later we’re in the middle of an extended tilt covering drugs, politics, and drugs in political commentators. Wil makes a comment about lightsabres, three years later I’m working on a series of con worthy (I hope) panels originally conceived to prove him wrong. Gabi dashes off a short post about military headstones, two weeks later we’re talkin’ baseball. Insanity. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about movies. I love movies, and I am infinitely pleased (one might even say grateful) that I have the capability to seek out the movies I like, rather than having to settle for what happens to be available. The Academy awards are tonight, essentially a celebration of what happened to be available from the previous year. Now, don’t get me wrong, some of them were really good. Last year, into this one I had gone on this tear of trying to watch the winner and a few other nominees and significant mentions for best picture (on review, I missed more than I thought I did. I thought Eastern Promises had been in the running). For the same unnamed reason, I tried to see some of the acclaimed stuff this year too. Didn’t work out too well. I wanted to see Slumdog Millionaire, had planned to see it on two separate occasions, blew it both times (although I did see Benjamin Button instead on the second). I saw the Wrestler too, but it missed the Best Picture nom. Damn. I, like many, wondered where the Dark Knight would fall. Got a bunch of minor nominations, the biggest being best supporting actor, which, lets face it, it has already won. Wil has lamented that a genre movie will never get nominated for, much less win, best picture (Lord of the Rings notwithstanding, of course). Having pondered this for a while, because, y’know, what else do I have to do with my life?; I’ve come to realize that he’s probably right, and I even think I’m getting a handle on why that is, but this has also come with a realization that, in the end, it really doesn’t matter. Yes, I’m about to type at length about why I think something is not important…
So, what makes a good movie? In a nutshell, I’ve realized that how you answer that question determines what movies you will like. What does the Academy consider a good movie? Well, if the recent best picture winners are any indication, it generally has to be one of two things: taut, personal drama or, amusingly, the complete opposite: sweeping epic. If they have some basis in actual history, so much the better, the idea that real people have done things that merit heroic retelling definitely seems to resonate with the academy voting bloc. What doesn’t the academy consider worthy of best pic consideration? Pretty much everything else. Sure, every once in a while they have a “holy shit, other genre’s exist” moment, Shakespeare in Love was a comedy (about an actual historical personage, mind you) which inexplicably beat out Saving Private Ryan (historical epic), but for the most part the academy seems to stick to that with which it’s comfortable. There are no epics up for best pic this year, but there are three dramas based on real people/events. Slumdog Millionaire, which I would consider the frontrunner, is not one of them. Makes me wonder.
But getting back to the original question, the academy seems to favor drama. And what’s the opposite of drama? Action. What do genre movies need? Action. And lots of it. It’s what makes them genre movies. But the academy seems to view extended action set pieces as largely skippable when considering if a movie is “good”. Action, it would seem, does little to move the story forward. Yes, some action may be necessary, but if the action goes on for a second longer that is strictly necessary to push the story along, the academy seems to consider it wasted film. Does batman really need to take five minutes out of the runtime to beat the crap out of a gang of thugs? Will this have any effect on the final resolution? Does it do anything to help define the character? No? Not really? <shrug> must be crap. Now, they do seem to be a little more lenient with the epics. It seems to be a question of runtimes and proportions. If you’re fielding a three hour movie, you can afford to put a few more minutes of action in. Furthermore, a lot of the epics deal with wars in which, it could be argued, action if vital to the story. But, essentially, unless you’ve got a cast of thousands and a budget of hundreds of millions, anything more than a few scattered snippets of action will make a film anathema to serious academy consideration.
The academy seems to like movies that “say something”. I also like movies that “say something”. I find that a well made movie can achieve a level of poignance far and away superior to more vulgar forms of message sending like, say, some asswipe’s blog post. But that’s not the only reason I may like a movie, and it’s not the only type of movie I like. It’s also not the only reason movies are made, and it’s definitely not the only reason movies are watched.
Many, I’d go so far as to say most, people watch movies, first and foremost, to be entertained. And what people find entertaining is largely a very personal preference. Yes, working a moral, or a message, or some biting social commentary into the mix can enhance or, failing that, at least not detract from the viewing experience, but those things are not an essential ingredient of a good film. In fact, a message done half assed or ineptly can actually do more net harm than good considering the corners that need to be cut and edges that need to be buffed to make complex issued even remotely comprehensible in the average film’s run time, to say nothing of the whitewashing or sugar coating required to make some of the more bitter elements palatable enough to make the average filmgoer part with ten bucks to be subjected to them (a lesson that certain directors like Oliver Stone and Michael Moore could really stand to learn a little better). But a movie that eschews the message in favor of being straight entertainment does not, I feel, become a lesser film for doing so. And action is entertaining. A great film does not become diminished just because it doesn’t seek to change the world. But it would seem that the academy would disagree.
To admit the ultimately personal nature of entertainment would be to admit that comparing different movie genres and even, for that matter, comparing different movies in the same genre is essentially comparing apples to oranges to pears to plums and essentially throwing up one’s hands and just declaring every movie nominated for best picture, plus probably another dozen or more besides, are all essentially a best picture in their own way. But then, where’s the fun in that? More importantly, where’s the spectacle of having to narrow the choices down to one “best” (announced after sitting through four hours of ballyhoo)? Humans are competitive creatures. They like to see clear winners. But ultimately it’s an arbitrary set of criteria, no more valid than anyone else’s personal opinion. The sin is that it’s not admitted or presented that way, but rather as a near scientific process conducted by people who, allegedly know much more about the art than you do, and therefore their opinion is somehow more valid. Bullshit!
What I find even funnier is that, even in terms of raw criteria, the best picture award strikes me as one of the least significant of the entire oscar catalogue. Sort of like being selected as the MVP of the all star game. Yeah, it sounds impressive, but does it really mean anything? I mean, besides the institutional bias I’ve just gone over, what makes a movie best picture material? Is it the direction? Cause they already have an award for that. Acting? They already have awards for those too. Story? They already have screenplay awards (more than one in fact). By the time they finally get to awarding the best picture, the awards for everything that would determine which picture is best have already been bestowed. This, to me, makes the best picture award seem more like a bonus than anything else. Just tally up all the awards a film has already won, and then toss on one more for the hell of it. Wikipedia notes that the award for best direction seems to correlate heavily with best picture though there is the occasional X factor that makes it seem even more nebulous. Return of the King’s win was widely considered as more of an achievement award for the whole series. Titanic’s was essentially a people’s choice award. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s nom was another product of genre novelty (and since a genre is only novel once, will probably the last kung fu film we ever seen nominated for best pic). For that matter, so was Chicago’s win, though it might’ve been coupled with the academy’s realization that there was a time long ago when it wasn’t considered an embarrassment to award best pic to a musical. This isn’t to say that the best pic award winners aren’t good movies. They certainly are. It’s just that, by the time we get to the end of the awards show, based on all of the other awards the film has usually won by that time, it’s something that we already know.
I think it also bears mentioning that the categories, while awarded separately, are extremely interdependent. A good script can be undermined by poor acting. By contrast, good actors are often expected to elevate weak material (witness: Castaway). Good direction and be throttled by incompetent editing and good editing can dramatically improve weak direction (The Phantom Edit). The fact that the categories are presented and separate and distinct from each other is borderline disingenuous considering there are countless factors that must function invisibly for something like good acting or direction to be realized, most of which are only noticeable if they’re done poorly. But again, we love to categorize, and we love winners.
This brings me to the Heath. Yes, he’s going to win for best supporting, and he may even deserve it, I haven’t seen any of his competition, but while so much has been spoken of his sublime/transcendent/positively jokerrific performance, it should be noted that he had a lot of advantages. For one thing, he benefited from a strong script and a lot of face time. These are pretty obvious, of course, but I mention them anyway because you could technically make the case that the average Jason victim deserves an award for expertly and convincingly playing an oversexed, dumbass teenager. For another, he benefited from playing a highly distinct and extremely recognizable character. Any reasonably well played psychopath is going to leave an impression on the audience. Anthony Hopkins cleaned up playing Hannibal Lecter and Javier Bardem landed best supporting last year playing Anton Chigurh, and, shit, neither of those characters even wore face paint. Finally, the Joker character in particular is kinda tough to truly fuck up since it’s nigh impossible to overact while playing him, and virtually nothing he does could be considered too outrageous. The Joker is defined by his being completely over the top. This is the reason I would still consider Nicholson to be the better Joker. The Joker is menacing because ninety nine percent of the time he seems totally harmless. Then the other one percent he loses it, someone (often a lot of someones) dies hideously, and then he’s back to being harmless, giggling like a schoolgirl, surrounded by mangled corpses. Nicholson had that. The scene towards then end of Batman ’89 when he shot his right hand man out of frustration because batman stole his balloons perfectly encapsulated what the Joker is about. Contrast this with Ledger’s Joker who is always menacing. He certainly played a good psychopath (and as we’ve seen, that’s more than enough to win awards) but I don’t really think he played the Joker. More like he played Mr. Zsasz with a weirder than usual fashion sense. Now, granted, depending on the writer, the Joker of the comics does have a fluctuating level of outward menace, but all in all, in my opinion, Nicholson got closer to the source. But, again, this isn’t to diminish Ledger’s performance so much as to offer some perspective. If you’ll pardon the expression, the deck was stacked in his favor.
And, of course, he croaked, putting the ol’ Morrison/Vicious/Cobain exclamation point on things. Anyone who doesn’t think the sympathy vote will play a factor in his posthumous victory is fooling themselves. As I mentioned, it’s entirely possible he would’ve won without it; the fact that I’ve heard nothing about any of the other supporting actor noms makes me think so, but that it’s there totally seals the deal.
The fact that the Dark Knight got missed the nomination for best picture makes the nomination for Benjamin Button all the more confusing to me. I actually saw that one in the theater, and while the effects are really well done (and the film will likely win a few well deserved awards for them) outside of the whole aging backwards thing, the film is actually a pretty conventional love story where the characters meet, drift apart, come back together, and grow old. For those who haven’t seen it, you can pretty effectively simulate the viewing experience like this: pop Cocoon in your dvd player and watch it for about half an hour mentally replacing the faces on the old people with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, then take it out and watch Forrest Gump. Alternatively, just pick up a thick romance novel where the characters are young in the beginning and old at the end, start at the back cover, page back two chapters, and read to the end. Then page back four chapters and read to where you first started. Continue this until you get to the beginning of the book. Again, it wasn’t a bad movie, but I really don’t see how it’s best picture material.
What’s my vote for best picture? The huge computer generated elephant in the room? Wall*E. Wall*E was brilliant. By turns hilarious, touching, and really really cool, switching tones naturally and effortlessly, and doing it all with very little dialogue. But, it doesn’t fit the academy’s criteria for what a best pic should look like, so it gets relegated to the kids table. I also think that the academy is positively horrified by the idea that an animated film could be so good, replacing real actors and sets with cels and pixels. Beauty and the Beast came within an rch of winning best pic in 91; ten years later, a new york minute by academy standards, there’s a best animated feature category. The academy has stated that an animated film can still be nominated for best pic, but that’s bullshit. If it were true, Wall*E would have been nominated.
So, I guess my conclusion is that the academy awards are, in many ways a sham. They attempt to objectively quantify things that are ultimately subjective, and they separately evaluate things that are, in many ways, irreducibly complex. Watch if you want, but don’t get too pissed if you feel a deserving film gets snubbed. Ultimately it’s a matter of opinion, and some of the opinions are not terribly well informed. For my part, I keep an eye on the Tauruses, the Annies (where Wall*E actually got thrashed by Kung Fu Panda), and, of course, the Razzies where the criteria are a little better defined and are a better representation of my own interests. The Oscars might have the budget and the TV spot, but they aren’t the only game in town.
In other movie related news, the Watchmen finally comes out in two weeks. I plan to be there opening night. I don’t remember the last time I’ve been this excited to see a movie. All initial signs look pretty encouraging. I really hope they don’t screw it up.
I saw Coraline tonight. Fun flick. Had a beetlejuice-like creepyness to it that was really cool, if unsurprising, since it was based on a novella by Neil Gaiman. It was also really nice to see stop motion again, since it’s rarely used any more (with a very much appreciated, if subtle nod to King Kong). I only wish I’d seen it in 3D since it’s obvious it was primarily shot for that medium.
Wil played Halo for the first time on Thursday. He really seemed to like it, which was surprising, since he’d never been shy about bringing up how much he hated FPS’s in the past. We ended up playing with something close to a dozen people we all knew, including a slurring drunk Rob. Good times. Thursdays have just officially gotten more interesting.
I’ve been reading a lot about the ideomotor effect and temporal lobe epilepsy lately. Fascinating stuff.
Yeah, I know, tl;dr. But I’m happy with this post. I feel like I’ve finally returned to form.
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| Requiem for a Bichon |
[02 Feb 2009|07:41pm] |
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mood |
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sad |
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Kiri, I hardly knew ye. It seems impossible to believe you're gone. Impossible since you always made your presence known; usually by getting under foot or giving out with that piercing bark that always got me right around the base of the skull. The house will always seem a little emptier now that you aren't there. You were the background noise for so many memories. Rika loved you. Wil got kicked out because of you. Dan… will certainly never forget you. Me? I got used to you. Now you're missing. Kiri, you could be a raging pain in my ass, but you deserved better. Sleep well.
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| crawling back to life |
[22 Jan 2009|03:06am] |
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mood |
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determined. |
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music |
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YTCracker - Surge Runner |
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How do I begin after not posting for a year? I’d love to say that I’ve been busy doing something profound and important that has made an indelible impression on my life and how I lead it. I’d love to say that, but it really wouldn’t be true. Mostly I’ve been chugging along. Things aren’t really all that different from this time last year, although give how the economy has cratered, that’s certainly not as bad as it might sound. I do get busy, though. Just not on any kind of grand scale. I work, I roleplay, I print shirts, I write comics. This year in particular I went to a lot of shows. Thus are my weekends filled. I can’t say I’m unhappy for it. Isn’t that what counts?
One big thing that did change over the past year that some of you still might not know is that I got a new car, and I’m not just talking new to me. Now, this happened in March, so it’s almost a year old now, but when I got it, it really was brand, spanking, 20 miles on the odometer, comes with a warranty, gonna be paying for it for another five fuckin’ years new. I’ve never bought a new car before. It was kind of a big deal.
Remember when I wrote about my plans for my last car? How I was going to pay it off, and then just try to accumulate as many payment free months as I could until the next big expensive thing on it broke? Yeah, that plan worked for about thirty days. Then the radiator went practically before the ink on my title was dry and that was it. Still, I actually did my homework this time. Researched cars, checked interest rates, visited dealerships, everything. It was nice to actually do things on my terms for a change. Didn’t stop the dealership from trying to fuck me though. It really was unbelievable. I walk into that place fully with the intention of buying a car, my credit’s great, checkbook in hand to make a pretty decent sized downpayment, and they still try to bend me over. If Rob wasn’t there to help me out (as in, do most of the talking for me. I was never much for wheeling and dealing) I probably would’ve taken a bath, and even then it might’ve happened anyway, but it turned out Rob knew one of the sales managers, which helped (storming out of the finance office after they showed me their bullshit rates probably played a role too). In the end, I did get a pretty good deal, but damn if I didn’t have to work for it.
Didn’t take long for some stupid bitch to hit it, either. Three months actually. She backed into me while I was waiting at a stop sign down town. Nothing major, as far as accidents go, and the insurance company sided with me for a change. Not that there was any question, really. Her version of the accident was so verbose and ridiculous that I wonder if she even believed it. So it got repaired. You’d never know it had been dented, actually. Just a black spot on my carfax report to remind me. Still, three months. I got to have it pristine for three months. I guess I just can’t have nice things.
We did our first panel. This, of course, isn’t news anymore either, but the Knights are now officially experienced panelists. It was funny how the first time Wil was stressing over it for about two months prior, until the day of, when he became strangely placid and then I started stressing like crazy about an hour before go time. It the end, it largely took care of itself, like I figured it would, but at about t-minus five minutes you’d have thought I was on my way to the electric chair. I never did enjoy giving speeches.
Of course, now I’m thinking I might actually do the HK fight scenes panel I’ve been considering off and on for the past few years. I need to start marking off some clips. Maybe do a dry run.
This time of year seems to be the off season for my social calendar. No upcoming concerts. No cons. I should probably find a way to use the time productively. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve been listening to the Millionaires recently, particularly Alcohol. I’m not really sure what to make of this. The Millionaires could be best described as three (dark haired) Paris Hilton clones dropping the f-bomb, a lot, over tunes that are sparse even by pop music standards. On one hand, it is refreshing to see pop with its (admittedly thin) artistic pretext stripped off of it (sort of like what Beavis and Butthead did for evening television). On the other hand, they could just be as vulgar and talentless as they seem. The fact that I’ve listened to them more than once makes me wonder if it’s my horizon’s that are broadening, or just my standards that are eroding.
I got a new sink in my bathroom. This little fact had me in a decent mood all weekend. If I had known all the crazy maintainence type crap I’d end up having to do back when I bought my house I would’ve.. … probably still bought it anyway. But I’ve discovered it’s depressingly easy to get overwhelmed. Every time it seems like you get something done, something else comes up. Not that I’m anywhere near caught up, but at least now the faucet doesn’t drip any more. While the plumber was at it, I had him replace the guts of the toilet and fix my garbage disposal, which had inexplicably stopped working (it had a reset button… who knew!) This coupled with my getting my dishwasher fixed (part recall, so it won’t burn my house down. My mom had been riding my ass about that one for weeks) and it almost feels like I’m making progress. Now all I need to do is finish sanding/painting my living room, patch the back room ceiling, fix the light in my old room, finish the kitchen window, unfuck my skylight, and repair my front steps … and I’m done.
Wow, this post blows. I’m almost inclined to just delete it and not bother. But if I do that, I might never post again. So, up it goes. At least it’s a real post this time.
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[29 Oct 2008|11:46pm] |
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Woah
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| The beginning of the end? |
[11 Mar 2008|08:44pm] |
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mood |
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cool stuff |
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My uncle just tipped me off to this one. Not sure if it's made the rounds yet or not.
Jack Thompson gets bitch slapped by the Florida bar:
http://www.slate.com/id/2185966/entry/2185967/
The leaked Thompson-submitted pleading that brought it on, including (i shit you not) pictures
http://justicebuilding.blogspot.com/2007/12/pleading.html
Wow. if this thing is representative of the stuff Thompson usually produces (and I have it on good authority that it is) then it's a wonder he hasn't been institutionalized.
This is actually encouraging on several levels, Thompson's blatant and systematic abuse of the legal system isn't all that different from Scientology's tactics. The Florida bar's declaration that the aren't going to take it any more sets an encouraging precedent.
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| Ninmu Kanryo |
[03 Dec 2007|10:25pm] |
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mood |
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accomplished |
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music |
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nothin yet, but it's chargin' |
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I have just successfully replaced the battery of my ipod.
just thought i'd share...
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| Who’s the leader of the club… |
[04 Nov 2007|02:05am] |
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mood |
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got a wicked headache |
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music |
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Lisa Lougheed - Run With Us |
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Well, I’m finally getting around to posting about my Florida trip with my mother and grandmother. For a while, it almost felt like it followed me home, what with the unseasonably warm weather. But now that’s done, and I’m reminded that I’m not there anymore (the lack of parades kind of tipped me off too).
Anyway, the Florida trip was actually split into two very distinct elements: the con, and the parks. The con was a meeting/convention of the angel collectors of America, of which my grandmother is a member, and their biannual meeting was the primary pretense for the trip. Exactly what they need a con for remains a mystery to me. I mean, I’ve been to anime cons where I watched anime. I’ve been to horror cons where I watched horror films. I’ve been to comic cons where I bought comics (and watched anime and horror films). But angel collecting, that seems like more of a solitary activity to me. I only saw one or two tables that would even remotely qualify as dealer’s tables and nobody brought their collections for show and tell (and if my grandmother, who has random, angel related knickknacks scattered throughout her entire home, is any indication, doing so would be a singularly heroic endeavor indeed.) Technically, I (and my mom, who doesn’t collect angels either, for that matter) was part of this angel collecting con. I needed to be in order to attend the banquets and breakfasts they had and thusly get fed. By my observation, angel collection seems to chiefly involve distributing a ton of door prizes (all donated), electing officers (their duties being, again, largely a mystery), playing bingo (ahem, sorry, “wingo”), saying grace, and waiting patiently for death. Now, I’m not saying that the average angel collector (there were maybe about 30 or 40 all told, and they all knew each other’s names) is old, but I will say that when the closest person in age to you in a room (not including wait staff) is your mom… yeah, you feel a little out of place. This was compounded by the fact that I was, naturally, dressed in all black (button down and slacks, my mom insisted I dress “nice”) which made me look like a damn coroner among the whites and baby blues that seemed to be the defacto uniform for the average angel collector, and from the looks of some of them, I looked like I was on the clock (I told that to my uncle a few days ago and he said I should’ve made a show of occasionally checking my watch and looking around…).
But thankfully, my presence wasn’t really required all that often (or, really, at all). There was a catered banquet, and a catered breakfast, and another banquet type meeting with finger foods, all of which beat the hell out of paying tourist prices for meals by myself. Other than those, my mom and I left my grandmother to the rest of her companions and went off on our own. This was a minor logistical problem since the con location was an airport hotel whose primary purpose was a layover station for travelers and an expensive cab ride from anything remotely interesting (though it did have free internet terminals, so I could at lease check lj and my web mail). Still, the cabbies were cool and very polite. We dedicated a day to shopping, which turned out to be largely a bust. The “huge indoor flea market” I mentioned in my last post turned out to be a string a shitty wire walled kiosks selling the same merchandise as the average dollar store, and as for the rest, well, if you’ve seen one shopping mall, you’ve pretty much seen them all. I ended up amusing myself primarily by trying to get a decent close up picture of the little lizards that run all over the place serving as the local urban wildlife (as opposed to, say, the pigeons and cockroaches we have in philly).
We went to The Universal theme park at this time too, since it’s technically not a Disney park and not part of the magic kingdom. Universal actually consists of two parks, one with mostly rides, and one with mostly shows. We went to the show side, since that’s the one that had the Jaws ride and the T2 show. It was all really cool. Even the places that just held static displays of movie props (a lot of Van Helsing stuff was there) held my attention pretty well. My mom damn near had a heart attack from the Mummy ride as she found out a little too late that it was essentially a roller coaster. But over all it was a blast, and we got to see and do pretty much everything that we wanted to (The crowds were very tolerable, and only the Jaws ride had a noteworthy wait. September is definitely the time to go to these kinds of parks)
With the con over on Sunday, we then hitched a ride with a relative who lives in the area to the magic kingdom for phase two. Our second hotel, one of the theme hotels in the magic itself was a lot better appointed that the con one. Swimming pool, game room, hot tub. Possibly more, but I never saw it, as we didn’t do much other than sleep there. When visiting a Disney theme park, days start early and end, well, fairly early compared to my normal schedule, though I never did have much trouble getting to sleep afterwards. Monday was Disneyland, Tuesday was MGM, Wednesday was Epcot, (Thursday was airport). Some highlights:
I finally conquered Space Mountain. Okay, for anyone whose actually been on space mountain before, this might not sound like a big deal, but up until about seven years ago, roller coasters used to scare the living shit out of me. I rather like them now, actually, but the last time I was at Disney, I was maybe nine years old and would sooner face a firing squad than go on a roller coaster voluntarily. I always hated that “losing your stomach” feeling of momentary weightlessness that preceded a long drop and the thought of going through a loop was too horrifying to even contemplate. As it turns out, space mountain has neither of these things, but since it’s totally indoors (and in the dark to boot) there was no way of knowing this without actually riding it. For this reason, space mountain became a monolith of terror of near mythic proportions in my nine year old brain. Back then, walking into space mountain’s entrance would’ve been tantamount to entering the minotaur’s labyrinth.
But that was then. Having conquered my fear of roller coasters at a visit to dorney park @ 2000, I was finally equipped to discover what was actually in that mysterious building, the question of which had been niggling at me for over 20 years. And as it turned out, it was mostly hype. There were no really nasty sheer drops (I might’ve been able to deduce that years ago from the size of the building alone, but I don’t think my brain was developed enough for that at nine), no loops. Nothing any worse than thunder mountain, which I actually did go on when I was nine and thoroughly enjoyed, then as now. The only really distinguishing part of space mountain was that it was in almost total darkness, which could actually lead to some nasty whiplash if you turn your head thinking you’re going to go one way, and then end up going the other.
Space mountain being more style than substance drove home another point that I had never noticed about Disney before. That a lot of the rides were like that. Space mountain isn’t so much a roller coaster as an enclosed, immersive environment designed to evoke the wonders of space, complete with star charts, and moon landing dioramas, that just happens to have a roller coaster in the middle of it. A lot of things in Disney are like that. Splash mountain, the log flume, is a several minute trip through the scenes of Brer rabbit from the Song of the South before it finally deigns to drop you down the slide. (by contrast, the flume at Dorney park takes about 30 seconds to lift you up, turn you around, and drop your ass into the drink). It made me realize that to view Disney as a simple amusement park is to miss the point. (and if you really think about it, there aren’t really that many rides there, since each ride requires such substantial production and space) The point is immersion. To suspend your disbelief even when you aren’t actively on a ride.
Which, under normal circumstances, would be about 99% of the time. The first time I went to Disney, I remember waiting for what felt like an eternity just to ride Dumbo for 90 seconds (round and round, pull the lever to go up… wheee). I had wondered what the line situation would be like this time around. I could be pretty impatient when I was younger, and I’m sure we had gone in the summer rather than in September, so I was wondering if maybe my memory made them seem longer than they were. As it turns out, my memories of the lines were probably pretty accurate. I say probably because the this time around, half the time the whole line issue didn’t even apply to me (more in a second), and the times when it did, they really weren’t that bad. However, as I made my way through the rides to get to the actual boarding stations, I saw the yards and yards of chained off line railings and got an idea of how bad it could have been. Why anyone would go to Disney during the peak season is frankly beyond me. It’s hot as hell (it was hot enough in Sept, but tolerable) and the average wait to board any one ride would have to be over an hour. That’s means you get to go on, maybe 8 – 10 rides for the 80 or so bucks it costs to gain entry to the Disney park on your average day during peak season. That sounds less to me like a vacation and more like a trip to the local DMV.
As it turned out, though, the whole line situation applied to us a little differently. As we quickly discovered, having an elderly person with you is almost like bringing along a portable express lane (and this includes the airport). Oh, you have someone with special needs? Well, we’ll just move you to the front since the wheelchair doesn’t navigate those lines too well, and put you in the first available car. It felt a little weird the first few times, but I got used to it quickly enough. Between the grandmother linejump rule and the general reduced population of the late season, I got to see and ride practically everything I wanted.
The question of getting my grandmother around was something that my mom and I had discussed before we left (being in her 80’s and after two knee surgeries, she sure wasn’t walking) and the wheelchair wasn’t exactly our first choice, mainly because one of us (read: me) would need to push it and, even though it was technically one of the main reasons I was brought along, why do it if we didn’t have to? So the original plan was to get my grandmother one of those electric scooters to buss around on, that way we wouldn’t need to push her about the whole time, and she’d have a degree of autonomy if my mom and I both wanted to go on one of the faster moving rides (or any of the rides, really) that she wouldn’t be able to handle. This turned out to be a very bad plan, but we didn’t get the chance to discover that right away since by the time we got to the Magic Kindom on the first day, the last few motorized scooters were already in the process of being claimed by…. well, you’d think (hell, at least I thought) that the primary users of the scooters would be the elderly and/or infirm. Someone has their leg in a cast: they get a scooter. Someone is over, say, 70: they get a scooter. Who primarily gets the scooters in reality? Fat people. And I’m not talking about a few extra pounds neither. I mean really fat people. People who are so goddamn fat, that they’re well past the point of caring that they’re advertising this fact by driving around on a motorized scooter, looking like a vat of wax was poured into the seat, cooled, and grew a face, because walking a measurable distance is now beyond their ability. What they’re even doing in Disney is a mystery to me since more than half of the rides don’t have seats able to accommodate them. I wanted to beat one of these hutts to death with a glazed ham on principal alone everytime one of them rolled past me as I was pushing the wheelchair.
That was the first day. One the second day, at MGM, we actually were able to get my grandmother a scooter, but this turned out to bring it’s own set of unforeseen complications. See, I love my grandmother, as I am filially obligated to do, but my Grandmother and I are very different people, and this goes beyond a simple generation gap, though that’s definitely part of it. My grandmother has a certain unbuffed naivete that seems partially a product of growing up in the 30’s and 40’s, but mostly due to her being a housewife for nearly her entire adult life, ending about two years ago when she became a house widow. But to my observations, and this has been confirmed by my mom, she was never terribly independent, and never really went anywhere or did anything without my grandfather. So, even though she has over eighty years of experience, she is painfully ingenuous about anything outside of her established comfort zone. If she ever, god forbid, got onto the internet, she’d be broke within a fortnight once the phishers found her.
Not that she’d ever admit any of this. She has a very well developed case of that geriatric denial that I’m sure most people have witnessed at least once. “I know what I’m doing”, “I can see just fine” etc, etc, when it’s plain that she doesn’t and she can’t. Making her piloting of an electric cart anywhere from frustrating to terrifying as she zips along towards someone’s unattended child while her attention is diverted elsewhere. She actually managed to break the first scooter she got by crashing it into the back of a chair in one of the theaters (it wouldn’t start again afterwards), so we had to wait a while before the staff came back to us with a spare. Fortunately they didn’t charge us again. And though there weren’t any major incidents after that, the next day, we took the wheelchair voluntarily.
The park itself was cool. This was one of the major attractions to me, since MGM wasn’t even build when I was nine, and was probably my favorite park of the trip. The Star Wars and Indiana Jones shows were really fun, and the grand finale, with lasers, fireworks, and video projected onto mist was very well done.
The last day was Epcot. We didn’t stay as long there as the other two parks. Since the last time I was there, they’d built on a huge “international” addition with sections for representing some ten countries. Unfortunately, most of it was closed while they remodeled for some wine and cheese fest taking place the week after. I figured Japanland would be my best, and at that point, last hope to get some sushi while I was in Florida, but alas, it was not to be. All the restaurants there were closed.
Something else also happened to Epcot while I was away. They started rebranding everything. Now, to a certain degree I expected this. I was mildly irritated, though not surprised to see Jack Sparrow added to the Pirates of the Caribbean, but that’s in Disney World. When Epcot’s The Living Seas, which was pretty cool and educational in a mister wizard sort of way has now become Finding Nemo presents: The Living Seas, with exhibits now tied in to the characters from the movie, it just feels dumbed down.
The light parade in Disney World suffered a similar fate. The light parade was another thing I had really been looking forward to. In the 80’s the light parade was a fairly (by Disney standards) abstract affair. Yeah, there were Disney themed floats, but there were others that weren’t, or at least, weren’t so obvious. And the music, which was totally electronic and sounded like sped up Wendy Carlos, was awesome. But now, it’s kinda blah. I mean, the lights are still neat at night, but I could swear that they were brighter and more numerous back in the 80’s. The music was your generic Disney product, and the floats felt more like ambulatory commercials and anything artistic. Overall, a bit of a letdown.
So ended my triumphant return to the magic kingdom. Not exactly the life altering experience it was to be back in the 80’s, but still more fun than I expected.
Some other randomness: I came home with a few angel related things from the con that I have no idea what I’m going to do with (everyone got a bag o’ swag and at least one door prize) but for the life of me I can’t find my badge. Not that it’s a big deal, but I’m sure to keep the badges from every con I attend (with the exception of the goddamn, fucking, lost badge from Otakon 06, ahem, but I digress) and I figured an angel collector badge would look pretty funny among the anime and horror ones. Maybe my grandmother has it. I’ll have to ask her next time I see her.
I still have no fear of flying. I remember the first time we went to Disney, we flew, and I thought the plane ride was pretty cool. But that was the last time I’d been on a plane, and, of course, a lot has happened since then. I was wondering if I’d react to it any differently, but, no, it was pretty much the same, as well as I can remember. I had the window seat both times, and actually found it rather relaxing.
The company I work for has been sold. They’re merging with another bank from Canada and the Insurance dept will eventually be cut loose to become it’s own separate company. This won’t actually take place for a year or so, and it’s not like I’ll miss some of the circus aspects of the current company that I’d be leaving behind, but still, it’ll be a shakeup, and they’ll need to find a new location. Talk is that they’ll be keeping it nearby, certainly not distance of the magnitude that my last job moved and precipitated my departure, or so they say, anyway. Still I hate this crap. I really don’t feel like doing the job search all over again after only a year or two…
Rob and I have been playing Halo 3 co-op recently. Not quite the same as the Monday night fragfests we used to have, but as we get older, it seems we must take what we can get. We beat it on normal difficulty, which wasn’t terribly difficult, so we decided to ratchet it up to legendary for the next run through. For those who’ve never played Halo 3 on the legendary difficulty, it goes something like this: Walk into a new area, die. Respawn, walk back to new area, look up, die. Respawn, walk back to new area, look up, notice sniper, die. Respawn, walk back to new area, look up, kill the sniper who’s been capping you all this time. Walk forward a few more feet, die. Repeat until all the hidden snipers are dead. Then find a place with as much cover as possible, and try to do the same thing to the enemy ground forces, sniping with whatever weapon you have that has the best scope. Eventually, it will run out of ammo, at which point you have to plow forward, grabbing whatever was dropped by the enemies you sniped earlier and using it to finish off the remainder hoping that they aren’t wielding anything with a wicked area effect, like that goddamn gravity hammer thing. This done, you move along to the next area, until you suddenly drop dead, which alerts you to the presence of more snipers.
It can get a little frustrating at times, but you can’t claim it’s too easy any more.
Oh, and to Wil, Gabi, Kitt, and any other Wiccans on my friends list: as of April, your precious pentacle can now be displayed on military headstones. Congratulations.
End of line.
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| Communin’ with nature. |
[19 Sep 2007|01:52am] |
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mood |
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apprehensive? |
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music |
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Queen - All Dead, All Dead |
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I’m surprised no one who went has really posted much about the trip to Renovo. Personally, I had a blast. I’ve never been camping before, so spending a weekend smack in the middle of absolutely nowhere is the closest I’ve come thus far. I got to swing my sword and toss my throwing knives, stuff I really don’t do often. I also got to finally break in my shinai. The cord that holds the top on, and by exension holds it together, snapped almost immediately, necessitating that I tape it back together, so now it looks totally ghetto. I probably got the worst of it, injury wise (took a crack to the face and a nice strike on the arm/back of the hand that I still feel) though I learned later that I might’ve been a little more concerned with preventing injury to my opponents that maybe they were. I didn’t care, though. Honestly, it never felt so good to get hurt. It was like being 15 again playing tackle football. Bruises are just part of the fun.
Kitt wasn’t kidding about the river. It was totally clear and almost totally devoid of life. It was still cool to swim in, though. At first I didn’t think I’d bother, but in the end I went in. Took a little detour to follow a stream. Didn’t really find anything interesting, but it was still fun to look.
I ate a my first s’more. A lot of grilling and eating took place, actually. All in all, we squeezed an awful lot into about a day and a half of time, and I even got back on Sunday in time to see Within Temptation in concert. So for me the weekend was packed from beginning to end. I’ll be better still if we manage to get up there for more than just a weekend next time.
I actually played Bioshock a few days ago. Rob got it for the 360. Thus far I’m pretty impressed, but as someone who considers the Shock games to be among the best ever made for any system, I’ll want to get through the whole thing before I render a final opinion. The graphics are amazing, but since I don’t come into contact with a 360 very often, I guess they would seem pretty impressive to me. I still think Return to Castle Wolfenstein has amazing graphics. Some of the features, like hacking guard druids and vending machines don’t seem to have advanced much sincs SS2, but they still manage to be entertaining. And, thankfully, the voice acting is up to the high standards of the series. Heh, been a while since I was so interested in a video game.
I leave for a week’s worth of Florida in two days. Get to go to Disney and Universal. Maybe do some shopping, Mom says there’s some huge flea market near where we will be. Still, I find that I have to work at manufacturing enthusiasm. I guess it stems from the fact that nothing about this trip was my idea. I’m just going because my dad asked me to go and keep an eye on the women. I do want to see Universal (construction on it hadn’t even started the last time I was at Disney) and the electrical parade again. I’m be up at the asscrack of dawn one of the days to eat breakfast with the characters. Still not sure how to approach that one. But anything is better than polishing the desk chair with my ass in work. I still think the trip has the potential to be really enjoyable so long as it’s oppressively hot and airport security aren’t total dicks. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a gameplan. I’m really not sure exactly what we’ll be doing and when we’ll be doing it. Hopefully it’ll all come together nicely when I get there.
So, anyway, it’s a short update, but I wont have access to a computer again for a week and I’m trying not to fall so far behind with my updates. Besides, I have a feeling that the trip will generate a lot of words, one way or another.
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| i'm all over the map with this one.... |
[18 Sep 2007|10:21pm] |
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mood |
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huh |
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1.Industrial-Organizational Psychologist
2.Addictions Counselor
3.Clergy
4.Sport Psychology Consultant
5.Website Designer
6.Humanitarian Aid Worker
7.Desktop Publisher
8.Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator
9.Fashion Designer
10.Anthropologist
11.Multimedia Developer
12.Locksmith
13.Costume Designer
14.Set Designer
15.Communications Specialist
16.Religious Worker
17.Lobbyist
18.Print Journalist
19.Probation / Parole Officer
20.Activist
( and the rest )
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| Cons part 2 (the happy post) |
[30 Aug 2007|03:32am] |
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mood |
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awake and alert |
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music |
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Symphony X - Set the World on Fire |
] |
So I was looking again at my original post fragment before the car stuff happened. I've decided that instead of letting it go to waste, I'd just toss it up anyway:
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Warm Up.
We leave for Otakon in three days. I’m feeling good about it. I usually look forward to Otakon, but this year is a little different. I’ll be seeing people I haven’t seen in a while. I’ll also be there as an ambassador for the comic, with Wil and Gabi. I mean, Gabi will be doing most of the work, to be sure, but it’s still my comic too, and we’ve all been working these last few weeks to do our parts.
As of this past Saturday, my biggest part is now completed, and I’m feeling relieved for it. Wil and I printed the cheap FK t-shirts. They turned out okay. A few are a little crooked, but the overall design and formatting came out pretty well, I think. Making the screens almost got ugly. I had to make three, and I had six screens to work with, so I could make a total of three mistakes and still be okay. Well, the first three came out bad for one reason or another, and at that point I was convinced that I’d be scrambling to have the replacements ready by Saturday, but low and behold, I managed to rally and bang out usable screens with the remaining three. As it turned out, I ended up with more time that I thought I would’ve had anyway, but it was better that I got them done the first time. I hate having to scramble before a deadline.
So the FK shirts got done. Before that another small job got done. Before that, Kitt’s shirts got done. I do feel like I’m getting progressively better at this, but it seems I still have plenty of curves thrown at me too. (shrug) Practice makes perfect.
I actually found myself wondering a few days ago, ‘does posting about the shirts violate rule 1?’. I’ve decided that it doesn’t. Yeah, the shirts are work, but with them, I’m self employed. So I’m worker, but I’m also the boss. So it’s not like there’s any fundamental unfairness in the set up. It is of my own making. I’m in it because I’ve put myself into it. And besides, it’s a lot harder to separate the shirts from the rest of my life when the whole operation is run from my basement.
Not that anyone else cares in the least about the contents of that last paragraph.
AninmeNext was last weekend. (well, about ten days ago).
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That’s as far as I got. How innocent it all seems now. I truly never saw it coming. It’s still pretty serviceable as an intro, though. So two weeks before Otakon, there was Animenext. Most people decided to say away, due to it being scheduled so close to Otakon, but I, being a stubborn creature of habit, decided to make the trip. My car made the trip too, all three of them. Up and back to Secaucus (which is pretty much New York) three days in a row. There’s a certain cruel irony in the fact that my car could take that kind of beating but, two weeks later, frags itself on a routine trip home from the local taco bell, but I guess I shouldn’t complain. If it had died on the NJ turnpike I would’ve ended up just as screwed, only with the added bonus of missing out on the con. So Animenext was fun. Met up with the Barbers a few times since they were working staff. Actually got to see the musical act this year, which was pretty good (unlike last year, the con seemed near obsessed with having stuff start on time, which it mostly did. Blew off the cosplay for fan parodies (which were fun, but largely the same as last year. Not sure if I’ll do that again). Checked out most of the anime sampler block (which they seem to do every year) and in general just bummed from place to place as the whim struck me. Nothing extremely memorable happened, but it was a cool prelim to the big one.
Otakon itself was fun. Different for me in many ways from the nine that came before it. For one thing, I’m thirty now. I got the sense again that most of the people there were younger than me. Probably because most of the people there were younger than me. And I guess there’s nothing to be done about that. It’ll be that way from now on, but I still think I fit in just fine. I certainly didn’t feel as old and odd as I did at the otakon four or so years ago. Not sure what was going on then. Of course, it could just be that my sense of denial has become more acute. I suppose there’s no way to know for sure.
And of course, I was there to work this year, promoting Friday Knights. Even though I didn’t really spend much time behind the table, there was still setup to do. Moving shit back and forth between the room and the table each day. Distributing the flyers, and other miscellaneous duties. In fact, nearly all of us pitched in one way or another. Even the ones who didn’t have their own tables to manage were pressed into service wearing our shirts and helping to whore the comic (mostly Wil’s nephews). And we did pretty well, too. All of the cards and flyers were distributed (and I didn’t see any left of the tables where I’d dropped them either) and we even sold some shirts. Pretty cool, as I’d said before, to think that there were actually people willing to pay money for something that we’d invented from our own imaginations.
Another milestone. I finally did it. I finally blew off the cosplay completely. In recent years I’d been going to it less and less, but still making sure to catch some of it towards the end. Well, this year, nope, I didn’t even come close to it. This was partly due to the FK commitments. I drew table duty so pretty much everyone else could bail out for dinner, and that happened to coincide with the cosplay. And I seem to recall something else I wanted to do immediately after that also overlapped with the cosplay, so, in the end, no cosplay. I don’t really feel that I missed much. Having not watched very much of either naruto or bleach (I swear, those two series alone accounted for nearly half of all the cosplayers) most of the skits would’ve flown over my head anyway. But still, it was the first time I’d ignored it completely.
Actually, one thing I did this year that I hadn’t done a lot of in recent years was actually watch anime. The 35mm Kurosawa I’d already seen a few years ago, there was no HK to speak of among the live action offerings, and there weren’t even many panels that interested me this year. There were still some good ones, though. The musical guests were also very good this year. And I got to see them both since everything was kept inside the convention center again this year and I didn’t have to wander all over the city looking for venues.
Happily, I actually made it home with my badge this year. After forgetting it last year I was determined not to let it happen again. I’m going to regret the lack of an 06 Otakon badge for as long as anime interests me. I’d also had every intention of rebuying the shirts that I’d lost, but to my utter disbelief, none of them were available. Not a single one. So that was a little disappointing, but it did help keep costs down. In fact, the only thing I actually bought this year was a long Chinese robe type thing (gonna wear it as a coat when the weather cools off) that I had my eye on last year, but ended up not buying (and a good thing too, since I just would’ve lost it like everything else). I didn’t even really spend that much on food. In the four days (more or less) that I spent in baltimore, I think I ate maybe four times. This was probably due to car anxiety, but whatever the reason, I really wasn’t hungry while I was there. I did drink damn near my body weight in bawls, though. They had cherry. I haven’t seen it anywhere else…
So, overall, despite lack of sleep, lack of food, having to work every now and then, and the fact that I spent a lot of time worrying by turns about my car and the fact that my brother was in my house unsupervised, I still enjoyed myself. The oriels were away all three days, so no one had to deal with numbfuck baseball fans, and I even got to keep my badge.
But I’m home again, now. And I’ll probably go about reserving my hotel rooms for next year soon. In the mean time, I’ll be going up the mountains with pretty much everyone else in two weeks. Then it’s off to Florida for seven days about two weeks after that, for a trip that feels considerably less like a vacation that Otakon did, even though I’ll be going to Disney world. Maybe my attitude will change as it gets closer.
I’ve also gone to a bunch of concerts recently, with more on the way. For some reason all of the bands I like seem to tour in the late summer. It actually started with Slayer and Marilyn Manson that Wil scored from his employer. So viva La France, because I’ve gone to four shows on their dime, now, and I don’t even work there. The show itself was fun. I’d never seen Slayer live before. I saw MM once, at Ozzfest, but not as a headliner. Say what you will about his music, but he does put on a good show. And, of course, it was the VIP box. Reserved seats, free grub, side entrance. Nice enough, even if there wasn’t a concert included.
Went to Symphony X a few days later. Straight power/prog metal and damn if it wasn’t a wild show (I didn’t know you could even mosh to their music… apparently you can). I don’t get it. Two years ago you could fit the audience for a power metal show in my living room. Now the troc gets sold out, or nearly so, by the looks of it. Not that I’m going to argue with a spontaneous improvement in the musical tastes of the local concertgoers. But I’d love to know what caused it.
And then there was Dream Theater a last Sunday. Say what you will about their recent studio offerings (I listened to their latest album a little bit, but I haven’t bought it yet. Yes, I will actually pay money for a Dream Theater album. One of the few bands to which I will give the honor) but their live shows never fail to impress. The keyboardist got the extended solo again this time. Been a while since they gave one to the drummer. But it had also been a while since I’d seen a keytar.
Coming up it’s Within Temptation and then a little later Sonata Arctica and finally, FINALLY, Nightwish.
That’s about everything. I got a new phone today. Apparently I was due for one, according to my plan, and a good thing too, since my last one had taken a few nasty spills recently and was beginning to literally fall apart. The new one has a camera, and I think it doubles as a music player and probably has a bunch of other crap in it that I really don’t need. All I really wanted was something that could accept custom wallpaper and ringtones. But I do think I can do that, at least. I’ll have to experiment.
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| Not the life I left |
[09 Aug 2007|01:37am] |
| [ |
mood |
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shagged & fagged & fashed |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Chicago - 25 Or 6 To 4 |
] |
I’m just now getting around to posting about Otakon, though, it’s almost been a minor footnote to the past two weeks or so I’ve had. It’s funny, as I’m typing this I can see above it the beginning/rough draft for a post I was going to make a few days before leaving for Otakon, before it was blasted into irrelevance by the current crop of bullshit and assorted other goings on. Now that the new stuff is all past, I’m ready to try again.
I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. I mean, no one’s dying or anything, as actually was the case two years ago. No, this is the usual car related crap. The other shoe finally dropped. Anyone know what an ABS motor is? I didn’t until last week. I’m still a little unsure about what it does, exactly, but judging from the price it must be pretty fucking important. I’m going to try to avoid all the gory visceral details that accompany my usual narratives about the anatomy of a vehicular catastrophe, but without at least an overview I won’t have much to talk about.
Anyway, two weeks ago, the issue wasn’t with the part in question yet, the issue was about a light. Two lights, actually, on my dashboard, in a combination I’d never seen before. And when the recommendation that the owner’s manual gives for said combination reads something like:” stop vehicle as soon as possible and try to get clear of the blast radius” well, bad news is probably on the horizon.
What followed was a long night, consisting chiefly of walking lots and accomplishing little. I’ll spare the details, but I will say that, for as ugly as my car situation seemed, the bigger problem was that Otakon was in two days, I was the ride for four other people besides myself, and at the moment, I wasn’t transporting anything anywhere. Time to use some sick time and evaluate my options.
Plan A had a flat and possibly a bad fuel pump. Plan B was unwilling to be parted from it’s owner for a five day weekend. My mom offered the use of her Forester, which would’ve been perfect, but it’s a stick, which I never learned how to drive (and never had I regretted that fact more). With time running critically short and no other options available, I had no choice but to seek the services of professionals.
Budget’s website had over a dozen choices, some of which were very reasonably priced and, while a painful addition to the standard con costs, weren’t total budget breakers. Budget’s brick and mortar location, however, offered three choices, all of which were a little above the price range I was seeking. Of course, by this point, it was either eat it or hitchhike, so I had to take the plunge. Facing down my choices, and narrowed down to my only realistic choice, I’d had half the papers signed before I even remembered to ask about the cost. When I got it, I uttered words that I never thought I’d say in my life: “don’t you have anything cheaper?”, every syllable betraying my defeat. When I got the answer to that one I uttered a few other words, but those were much more familiar.
But at least I had wheels. Comparing the cost of my overpriced rental to the cost of my hotel room, it was a real kick in the nuts to pay so much for something that was just going to sit in the overpriced parking garage for the majority of the weekend. It felt like pure extortion. Oh, if I had known what was to come…
I’m going to skip ahead a bit here. Skip the part about having to limp my crippled automobile to a specialist repair shop. The part about waiting a week for shipped parts to arrive. The past about begging and borrowing to get around for about ten days. And definitely the part about writing a check. I won’t say how much this one cost me, but I will say that it officially set the record for the amount I’ve paid at one time for car repairs. Considering that roughly every third post of mine involves car repair of some kind, you could probably get a rough idea if you really wanted to.
Looking backward, I probably should’ve just heeded the advise of pretty much everyone else and put a bullet in the damn thing and bought a new car. Some of the new subcompacts go for about 10 grand brand new, which is about how much I financed on this thing anyway (correction, still financing). Would’ve included at least a five year warranty, which would’ve been a totally new experience since I have no idea what it might be like to go five full years without major car repairs. Not to mention the more base joy of owning a brand new car. Yeah, it would’ve been a subcompact, but then it’s only me. How much more do I really need?
So I have a plan for the next critical car mishap, though hopefully I’ll get at least a few months reprieve and the chance to build my reserves back up again. The main reason I decided to fix or repair instead of replacing is that I’m still paying for the goddamn thing. My last payment isn’t until February. I just could not wrap my head around the idea that a car could be ready for the pasture before it had even been paid off. Even for a Ford it just seems like pure lunacy. I was supposed to pay it off, then drive it for at least a year afterwards, relishing the feeling of accumulating cash that used to go to a car payment. That’s still the plan, and now it’s actually more of an imperative now that I’ve lost a measurable percentage of my net worth, because if I have another episode like this in the near future I’m gonna have to look into selling organs or something.
So, right, car. I have it back now. The mishap clock is reset once more. Pity I can’t see it.
My brother decided to visit the coast for a week or so. I haven’t seen him since he lit out for Texas over a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, he dropped in the day before I left for Otakon (with his over-four-years-his-senior girlfriend in tow) so I didn’t really see him all that much. He doesn’t look any different. Only one new tattoo (thought he got a second in New York a few days later). In his typical style, he was running the whole trip by the seat of his pants, so he needed to crash on my floor on Thursday night. This was after I’d left for Otakon so it was up to him to lock up and, I dunno, not burn the place down or anything like that while I was gone. As if I didn’t have enough on my mind. But it went okay. The house was still there when I got back. So he spent maybe two days in Philly, went up to NY to get a new tattoo and see a few of his friends there, then came back to Philly for another day or so, just long enough to collect his cat and hit me up for a ride to the airport.
Yes, Percival went with him. To his credit, he did ask my permission to take her, but she is his cat, and I really couldn’t forbid him from reclaiming his own cat. Besides, I’m gone so much, for work if nothing else, that even I was beginning to feel like I wasn’t giving her the attention she deserved. Mom was none too pleased when she found out, though. A little upset that she didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to her “grandkitty” and just concerned in general about his historical lack of responsibility. To his credit, he did mention that one of his primary motivations was to take responsibility for his charges, considering that he was the one who acquired Percy in the first place and then left her here with me when he left… pretty heady stuff coming from him. I only wish I was able to take a few more pictures of her before they left. I finally got my pocket digicam working, but the resolution isn’t too hot and there’s no flash. So I got a few, but they aren’t very good. Maybe I’ll post the best ones.
It’s weird not having her around. The first day, it almost felt like she had died or something. Her water dish was still on the floor. Her litterbox was still there. There was still a half can of food in the fridge. But the biggest adjustment has been the silence. Personally, I love silence, but it was surprising to realize how long I’d been without it. It seems paradoxical to associate having a cat with noise, but I hadn’t noticed how ubiquitous the sound of her bell had become, or her demands for food or attention, or even her purring. But I’m getting used to it. And it’s nice that I no longer have to hide the trash can, or bar the basement door, or closely guard my comings and goings through the front door, or keep all potential foodstuffs out of reach, or any of the hundred other minor modifications to my life that she required. For her part, my brother tells me that she handled the trip back just fine, thought she is having to face some adjustment of her own since she now has a roomie in her new home. I wonder how she’s taking to that. The was the lord of her domain when she was here.
Just in case anyone’s wondering, I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to get another cat or not, and I don’t plan on even really thinking about it until at least October. I’m going to Florida for a week or so in September and I don’t want to have to worry about anything pet related while I’m gone.
So, anyway, after two weeks I’m now broke and alone, almost like it was when I first bought the house, only I’m not as young as I was back then…
Actually, it’s not so bad. I’m not destitute or anything, and for the first time in a while I’m blissfully responsibility free.
I just have to watch my ass for the next few months and I’ll be fine. Got some kickass concerts coming up too.
Heh, I just noticed that I haven’t posted anything about the cons. Maybe in a few days. I’m not going to try to tack it on here.
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| The dreadful hour draws near |
[15 Jun 2007|03:18am] |
| [ |
mood |
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Dazed Confused, & fuckin tired |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Apparat Organ Quartet - Romantika |
] |
So it’s one thirty in the morning and I’m killing time. I’ve been in the middle of another tshirt situation for the past few days. Getting better but still not immune to the occasional complication, especially considering I was hoping to be done by now. As it stands, I’ve found it necessary to produce a few more screens. This involves spreading photosensitive emulsion onto them, for which I’m presently waiting to dry. I can’t just leave them out overnight because they get fucked if they’re exposed to sunlight, so I need to get them covered up sometime tonight. But I need to lean them together when I cover them up, and if I do that too soon, they’ll stick together. I figure I’d give them another hour and a half or so, but I need to stay awake until then, thus here I am, typing away.
I’ll probably be able to sleep in tomorrow, though. My car decided to pull its usual shit on me again. A little behind schedule this year. Usually it hits me right as my tax refund comes in, making sure to devour all of my anticipation of that wonderful lump sum cash infusion, to say nothing of the lion’s share of the cash itself. As it happens, the cash has already been spent, so hopefully whatever is wrong, this time won’t be financially devastating.
It’s probably the alternator, or the battery (by now, possibly both). I needed a jump to get to work yesterday. It had been totally fine the day before and honestly, I wasn’t overly worried because this had actually happened once before when I went to a previous monster con. Drove to the place just fine. Parked. Came out a few hours later and the car wouldn’t start. Got a jump, and then it ran just fine, like it never happened, for something like two years, until yesterday. (for those who’ve actually been in my car, this was also when my clock was thrown irreparably out of whack). I knew I was in trouble when I got to work, and it wouldn’t start again after I turned it off. I needed another jump to get it out of the lot and that sustained me most of the way home. I say most of the way because the fucking thing went dead about 100 meters from the tollbooths of the bridge and maybe a quarter of a mile from my home. Totally dead. I couldn’t even turn on my hazards and, instead, had to sprint across the street to a nearby gas station and have the guys there help push me to the side, hoping that everyone buzzing down the road would be paying enough attention to dodge my now derelict vehicle and not plow into it. Three hours and one tow truck ride later, I left my car in the lot of my mechanic (feeling not unlike I had just deposited a corpse on his lawn) and went home to await the verdict.
The verdict has not yet arrived. He told me he probably wouldn’t get to it until tomorrow, Friday. I’m hoping it’s minor. I mean, I don’t imagine that an alternator or battery is in the same league with the fragged timing belt that took my car down last time. Of course, it is my car, so who the fuck knows. Still, as usual, I hate not knowing.
It’s honestly not even worth it to me, now, to bitch about what a total piece of shit my car is. I know I’ve already done that at length before. What I will say, is that this would all be a lot easier to digest if the damned thing was paid for, but it’s not. I’m still married to it until February. Even after that, I plan to keep it for a while. The car, of course, may have plans of it’s own, inasmuch as it is rather disheartening that it has what seems to be a deathbed level of problems while I’m still financing it.
These past two months have been one of those times when nothing happened for a while, and then a bunch of shit happened all at once. I went to a Type O concert…. and that about wrapped it up for April. Not a bad show, and it was nice to see them on tour after a few year hiatus. Peter did almost the whole show sitting down, owing, apparently, to some sort of back problem, but other than that they sounded as good as they ever had and the setlist was fun and varied.
Then my fucking roof leaked during that blast of bad weather we had right before winter officially gave up and it started to get warm (that took care of the a nice chunk of the refund check).
Then I had my Living room ceiling redone. Had lights put in on a dimmer switch. It’s pretty nice. (that was most of the rest of the refund check. Car insurance claimed the balance). Most of the wallpaper had to come down for that, and since I was planning on repainting the walls anyway, I decided to leave everything as is, while I tear down the rest of the wallpaper and then sand the walls. This is still ongoing, so my ground floor is pretty much uninhabitable. My dining room has all of my living room furniture stuffed into it, while my living room is still bare, dust covered, and unfinished. Not the most cheerful thing to come home to every night, but I tell myself it’ll look great when it’s finished (whenever that may be).
Which brings me to the past two weeks, where at any given moment I might be working on tshirts (we completed another small job in may, too), harvesting emails for one of Rob’s latest schemes, trying to bust my ass on the track and the bag, which I do almost ritualistically as I get closer to Otakon, trying to coordinate and determining the requirements of FK vis a vis Otakon with Wil and Gabi since we got a table in the artists alley, and now, of course, my car throws another layer on top. And this is all happening when I’m not at my day job.
So suddenly things have gotten a bit more chaotic.
And then there’s Saturday.
Saturday is my 30th birthday. It’s a weird, vaguely unreal feeling. They say you’re as young as you feel. And I still feel pretty young. I’m told I still look pretty young, too. My hair’s still long, I still wear band tshirts and jeans and use my student ID to get a discount on movie tickets. I throw spin kicks at a punching bag on a near-daily basis and dream of eventually doing more ambitious feats of wushu styled acrobatics. I’m still very much attached to my childhood. When I was younger, I concocted an elaborate theory that overemphasized the importance of childhood experiences, since they came with little prior experiences and at a developmentally critical stage, to justify a bitterness and depression that I carried well into my 20’s. I’m nowhere near as bitter and depressed as I had been, back then, but if I really think about it, those experiences still shaped me and, to a greater or lesser degree, made me into the person I am today.
But I am older, now, too. I own a home. I have a car (such as it is). I hold down a full time job. I pay all my bills and have and don’t live paycheck to paycheck.
Maybe I’m just thinking about this too much. Maybe I’m just tired. But it still feels like I’m crossing a threshold, somehow. As of Saturday, my 20’s are over. I’ll never get them back. Did I use them wisely? What have I done up to this point? Should I be proud? Disappointed? Am I stagnating? Am I really an adult? Am I still a child? Do I want to be either?
Am I being overdramatic?
I’m going to regret typing this when I wake up aren’t I?
Screw it. Time to get the screens. And then go the hell to bed…
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| Hey, check it out |
[24 May 2007|08:23am] |
| [ |
mood |
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cool |
] |
That's me with Brad Dourif from this past weekend's monstermania con. If you don't know who Brad Dourif is, look at my userpic (or the left side of my main page)
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| Snap…. Snap…. Snap….. snap….. |
[29 Mar 2007|03:20am] |
| [ |
mood |
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fluctuating |
] |
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music |
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Rockbitch - Up & Down |
] |
Everybody hear that? That’s the sound of children dying in Africa. Hear it? … No? Oh, well, I guess it’s louder when Will Smith is doing it…
Just for laughs, and also because I figured that virtually everyone utterly forgot the entire affair as soon as the last chord faded, I actually did a little follow up to the whole G8 conference to see if the overhyped concerts actually had any influence on world economic policymaking. Short answer: not really. The G8 nations did pledge to increase funding to impoverished African countries…. over the next five or six years, which is essentially saying that it really is a nice idea and they think that the next administration should definitely make it a priority. They also really did cancel some debt, though in financial circles, this would more accurately be called a write off. In other words, they figured (rightly, lets face it) that they weren’t going to see any return on the loans anyway, so they just wiped it off the balance sheets and collected their tax break.
Not to keep bashing Africa or anything, but since it is related: Back at the old job, someone brought in a stack of national geographics, most of which made their way across my desk during the slower hours. One of them was a special issue totally devoted to Africa with the challenging byline: “forget everything you know”. So I figured, okay, I’ll drop all of my preconceived notions of Africa as an impoverished, war torn, largely cultural and technological backwash (though with a few anachronistically charming, if quaint tribal units) run by sociopathic warlords who rob, fuck, and kill (not necessarily in that order) anything that isn’t already dying of AIDS, and started turning pages. So what did I learn? Well, apparently poverty is rampant, AIDS is endemic, crime would be rife if there were actually laws that could be broken and war between tribes carrying on centuries old grudges with modern weapons is a constant. And yes, there is the occasional tribe eking out a living the old fashioned way. I am enlightened.
Y’know, I had that opening planned for over a year. Not long after the concert, I was thinking about it for some unknown reason and remembered that there was a summit meeting attached to the whole spectacle (not nearly as important as the Pink Floyd reunion, certainly, but still), so I did a little reading and birthed the first paragraph. But I figured that the beginning was a bit morbid, and since this was right around the time my grandfather died I didn’t want it to look like I was dwelling on such somber subject matter. I mean, I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was a goth or anything. So I kept it in reserve, but every time I thought of using it, something else bad happened. Well, I’m still in the same predicament, but I figured, to hell with it, I’ve waited long enough. Maybe this will trigger some subconscious desire to finally write some other stuff that’s been lying dormant for a while.
I’m finally starting to go back to my old exercise routine. I was floored for the better part of a month a little while ago thanks to not one, but two bouts of sickness. The first was a wicked strain of what I took to be a variant on captain tripps since I was congested to the point of wondering if I might suffocate in my sleep. The second was a more conventional fever type that lent itself more to fatigue and muscle aches. Between the two, I have a new appreciation for the ability to breathe through my nose.
One of the reasons the first bout sucked so bad is that is lasted close to two weeks. I might’ve kicked it sooner, but I probably set myself back a bit seeing Dir en Gray in at the TLA in the middle. This was when it still felt very much like winter. If the place had heat, they didn’t turn it on, possibly because there wasn’t a coat check so mort people had to keep their winter stuff on through the show, but still, it felt pretty cold in there to me.
The concert itself was what I would call “artsy” which means there was a lot of screaming, screeching, falsetto vocals. The lead singer (who was about three feet tall) cut himself a few times and appeared to fishhook himself a bit as well. The background visuals were, uh, interesting. And, of course, the entire set was in Japanese. The band wisely decided to tour now, and not a few years ago when their look could be best described as gothic drag queen, though I got the sense that it really wouldn’t have mattered that much since a dishearteningly large percentage of the crowd seemed to be teenage girls drooling over the pretty boys on stage. They also seemed to only play their newer material, at least, I wasn’t familiar with any of the songs they played, which was a little disappointing since they were also all in a foreign language, it’s hard to get a point of reference. Still, it wasn’t a bad show. Just different. Now that I think of it, I can’t say I’ve ever really been disappointed by a concert I’ve gone to. Some were definitely better than others, though.
The concert front has been looking pretty encouraging of late. Nightwish finally announced another American tour. This would be a good place to mention that the last time they toured America they ended up skipping their Philly date due to visa problems (I probably still have my unused ticket lying around somewhere) so it’s nice to have the second chance. I already bought a ticket (even though the concert isn’t until October) and grabbed a Type O Negative ticket while I was at it (which happens tomorrow). I’ll probably pick up one for VNV Nation too. Although that’s another one that’s guaranteed to make me feel old, I had fun the last time I saw them live.
As dynamic proof that karma and justice are, indeed, bullshit, I learned recently that my brother has landed a job as a teacher. 40k, full benefits, and training. I shouldn’t feel surprised, he was always the one to follow me through the minefield, that is, when he wasn’t accidentally slipping on dollar bills. It’s still kinda disheartening, though. I mean, I’ve been humping away at the (more or less) grownup life for some six years or so, gratefully taking my cost-of-living raises and trying to be content with my, at times seemingly meager, lot. And there he goes, with his four year degree in animation or art or whatever, that I’d figured was one of the few things more useless than a bachelors in psyche, and he steps into a situation starting out making more that I’ve managed to build myself into going a piton at a time. Apparently they’re pretty hard up for teachers in Austin. I console myself with the news that the school is in a shitty area, the fact he has considerably more debt that I do, and that, to my knowledge anyway, he doesn’t own a house. Still, for the first time in a while I really felt discontent in work. Not the usually frustration with the dumbassed callers and inane procedures. But a more deep seated feeling that, whatever potential and intelligence I might possess is being totally wasted in that environment. I mean, it’s a stable job, and I do value that, but maybe it’s time to think a little bigger. I dunno.
In the short term, I’m kicking around the idea of sending the little bastard an invoice for the substantial pile of back rent he owes me. He denies that he owes anything, of course, but that would suggest that I let him live here for over a year and a half for free… I didn’t. Though in an amusing twist, the last time I talked to him, about a month ago, he was apparently trying to get an apartment and he put me down as a reference asking that, if I was called, to say that he was an excellent tenant who always paid his rent on time, his rent being, get this, $600 a month. I don’t think he paid me $600 total in all the time he lived here and I had to laugh at his sheer audacity. But I never did get a call from anyone, so in the end, it didn’t matter.
Wil and Gabbi and I have been catching up on our South Park recently, which led to an interesting discussion over how New York has “symbolically” banned the word ‘nigger’. I’m a bit thrown by the whole symbolic business. From what I read, there are no penalties for ‘infractions’, but if that’s the case, why bother at all? The whole thing sounds fishy to me. I mean, I’m no fan of the word, myself, but I like censorship less. I can envision the creation of this ‘ban’ as the result of one of two potential scenarios, neither of which is terribly encouraging to ponder: either the politicians knew that banning a word (without context) is a gross and unenforceable violation of the first amendment, but then went ahead and did it anyway, thereby consciously wasting taxpayer time and money that could have instead been wasted on something with loftier pretenses, or they didn’t know that you can’t ban words, and as such, have no business making policy. My fear is that this is just a baby step towards an attempt to ban the word for real. It sounds ridiculous, but in a world where traffic lights take your picture and airport security can see beneath your clothes, nothing can be that unrealistic.
If that is the ultimate goal, it is hopelessly misguided. Ideas thrive under oppression, and making the use of a word illegal can only make it more shocking and offensive when it is used, which is the whole point of using it in the first place. Randall had the right idea in Clerks 2, we need to take the word back, somehow. Not ban it. Acknowledge it’s place as a quaint relic of a rather shameful part of our past, until it becomes the equivalent of calling someone a Philistine, or a heretic. Banning the word can only stifle informed discussion about it. The people who use it regularly are motivated by hate or ignorance and neither of those qualities harbors much respect for the law anyway.
I did find myself wondering, though, what if it was banned. How would that work, anyway? For one thing, 85% of rap would suddenly become illegal, which wouldn’t be a problem. However, Blazing Saddles would also become really illegal, and that would be a problem. Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, all those albums have to come off the shelves. And would it extend to the written word? (does the ‘symbolic’ ban specify?). If so, the first casualty would, of course, be ‘Nigger’, Randall Kennedy’s etymological history of the word. Mark Twain would get banned (again). And lets not forget Iceberg Slim.
Any way you look at it, it would be a disaster. So congratulations, New York! Once again you are at the vanguard of another movement to fuck up the country.
When my mom took Chloe on her final visit to the vet she elected to have her corpse cremated. This is apparently done by some other outfit in a different state, but sometime in the next few days, if it hasn’t happened already, we should be getting our cat back in powdered form. I personally don’t see the point in doing this other than, I guess, it’ll give my mom a little more closure, but I suppose that, in itself, is a good enough reason.
I turned on the TV for the first time in a little while yesterday. For some reason, Anna Nicole Smith has been on the news non-stop for weeks. Gawd, I wish that bitch would just freaking die already so we wouldn’t have to hear about her anymore…
And one last thing:
INFIDEL, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does. A kind of scoundrel imperfectly reverent of, and niggardly contributory to, divines, ecclesiastics, popes, parsons, canons, monks, mollahs, voodoos, presbyters, hierophants, prelates, obeah-men, abbes, nuns, missionaries, exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis, high-priests, muezzins, brahmins, medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders, primates, prebendaries, pilgrims, prophets, imaums, beneficiaries, clerks, vicars-choral, archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, preachers, padres, abbotesses, caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs, bonezs, santons, beadsmen, canonesses, residentiaries, diocesans, deans, subdeans, rural deans, abdals, charm-sellers, archdeacons, hierarchs, class-leaders, incumbents, capitulars, sheiks, talapoins, postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons, reverences, revivalists, cenobites, perpetual curates, chaplains, mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas, sacristans, vergers, dervises, lectors, church wardens, cardinals, prioresses, suffragans, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs and pumpums.
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| Cat’s in the Cradle |
[07 Mar 2007|09:33pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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Morose |
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I once answered a trivia question on one of the memes about how many pets I had. The answer was one, but it was a little more complicated than just that. I live with a cat, but she’s not mine. Technically she’s my brother’s, I just take care of her since, at the moment, my brother is in Texas. My cat is Chloe. She doesn’t live with me. She went with my parents with three other cats when they moved out. Chloe was a stray that we took in, something I never thought we’d ever do (especially since we already had three). I met her when I came home one day (from school, if I recall). A neighbor pointed to a cat n the porch next door and asked if it was ours. We’d never let our cats out of the house, but when I looked over, for a moment, I thought she was one of ours. She looked a lot like Max, except she had a white mustache. I called her over, which I do almost compulsively whenever I see a cat and she came right up to me. Very friendly and affectionate. I’d never seen her in the neighborhood as a stray before, but her fur was matted, suggesting she’d lived outside for a while. Looking back I guess I knew pretty early that we’d end up taking her in. After petting her for a while I went inside, but she didn’t leave the patio. My parents noticed her too. But even after night had passed she was waiting there the next morning. We gave her some food, which pretty much guaranteed she’d never leave us alone anyway, then a day or so later, we brought her inside. Kept her quarantined in my room to be sure she didn’t have anything contagious that would spread to the others. (worked great for about half a day until she realized there was a world beyond the door and made no end of her desire to investigate it). I took her to the vet myself to get her checked out and paid to have her fixed with my own money.
Chloe was initially a street smart personality among the other three totally domesticated cats. Upon meeting them, she beat the shit out of each one in turn, one would assume to establish dominance. She was a scrapper, with a very stocky body for a cat, acquired, I guess from living on the streets. She was small, too, so we originally thought she was pretty young, but a few years later, when we took her to a cat specialist vet he told us that she was actually a lot older than we thought. Eventually, though, she settled into the easy life of a house cat. Anyone who owns cats knows that they adopt people as much as people adopt them. Chloe adopted my mom. Spent most of her time with her and slept in my parents room. Still, I always thought of her as my cat.
My mom discovered a lump on her body a few weeks ago. Cancer. Had it removed. It came back. Had it removed again. It came back. A week ago she started limping. Had intermittent pain. A few days ago her activity level dropped. She stopped moving. Started sleeping more and more. Was in more pain. Wasn’t herself any more.
We put Chloe to sleep today. I was fourteen the last time we put one of our cats to sleep. It affected me sufficiently that I never wanted to get another cat. But after a few years, Mercedes was acquired over my objections. Then Max over less. Then Alex over none. Then Chloe, by me. I knew, even as I held the kittens that I’d eventually have to face a day like today, again. But it doesn’t make it easier.
I try to take the pragmatic view. We’ll never know how old Chloe was, but she lived some seven years or so with us, many more than she would’ve had as a stray. With us she became part of a family, and none of us ever looked back. I envy her, in a way. After the shot, she died purring in my mother’s arms. As a cat, one would suspect she has no real concept of death. She could go to the end without fear or anxiety. But she knew what pain was. And all a cat knows about pain is that they want it to end. From a loving family, I would grant her that wish.
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| Gandahar |
[26 Jan 2007|03:39am] |
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mood |
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tired, full, strung |
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music |
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Pain of Salvation - Vocari Dei |
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Or, in English, Light Years.
Many years ago, some time in the 90’s I was flipping channels on an afternoon (possibly a Saturday). There’s usually not a goddamn thing on tv on a Saturday afternoon, but on this day I stumbled over the final reel or so of a distinctly maturely toned animated feature. I didn’t know much about animation back then, but i knew it wasn’t American, and I knew it wasn’t Japanese. It reminded me most of an old Czech animated movie called Fantastic Planet, but this one looked a lot better and the english voice work was very well done. I watched it to the end, but they never listed the title in the credits and I didn’t have a tv guide or anything nearby to find out what it was. The memory of this movie had followed me since then. It was so damn cool, mainly since I remember it being so damn weird. Weird character designs and weird environments. Even Heavy Metal at it’s most drug influenced wasn’t that weird.
I’ve watched a lot of animation since that day, and learned a lot about it too, always hoping that sooner or later I might by chance stumble across it again. This finally happened on Monday. It was Wikipedia that finally did it. I’d tried searching for it through IMDB, but their search engine isn’t the best at narrowing things down. But Wikipedia, with their member’s compulsive need to make lists of everything, finally got it done. The mystery is solved, all is right with the world. So the movie was called Gandahar, a french film, and, amazingly enough, directed by the same guy who directed Fantastic Planet. Unfuckinbelievable, it was a click away the whole time. So now I have it in English and French subtitled. I haven’t really had a chance to sit down with them yet, but I’ve watched a little bit and they’re every bit as gleefully odd as I remember them.
Movie acquisitions have been good to me lately. Besides Gandahar, I finally got to see A Scanner Darkly and also get a decent, English subbed copy of dragonblade, plus a bunch of HK stuff I’d been meaning to get around to. I’d actually been watching a lot of movies lately, and was almost starting to feel like I was running low.
I’ve gotten back into anime a bit too. I’ve been working through GANTZ over the course of the week. I’d planned to check it out a few months ago on account of the totally unrelated fact of it sounding like my name, but I never really bothered until I read a quick review that attached the term “ultraviolence” to it. They were right too, about the violence. The story is a bit meandering so far, and the director seems to have fallen a bit too deeply in love with the computerized backgrounds they were using, but it certainly is compelling. I usually watch more than one episode at a stretch because I want to see what happens next.
I’d thought that Blind Guardian was going to be the last concert of 06 for me, but it turns out I was wrong. Thanks to Gabi’s.. uh.. “connections” (and the no-showing of their first three or four choices) I ended up seeing the Trans-Siberian Orchestra a few days before Christmas. I was pretty psyched for it too, mainly because I really like Savatage. Very theatrical and family friendly, but the musicians were tops, and there were a lot of them. Eight piece strings, two (sometimes three) guitars) choir, two keyboards. To be honest, they probably could’ve gotten by just fine with about half of the personnel but it certainly wouldn’tve looked as impressive. And, in a really sweet bonus, they brought out Jon Anderson for the encore sing a spot on rendition of “roundabout”, which was very nice for me since I’d only seen Yes live once, and the version of roundabout they played then was this modified blues type version. Overall a very good show that sounded amazingly well considering it was in a big stadium type venue.
Christmas itself was fairly quiet. I slept in, then drove my grandmother to my parents house and had dinner. Got a decent amount of stuff, though. Not that getting a pile of gifts matters so much to me now, but apparently the parents have been propping up my brother’s finances more than I was aware, so they felt a little compelled to spend some cash on me. Not that I’m complaining. And I have a flash drive now. Damn is that little thing cool.
New years was similarly understated. I spent it mainly shooting the bull with Wil after mistakenly grabbing the wrong UFC ppv. So, the year ended largely with a whisper, but it was nice. At least there wasn’t any pointless drama or anything.
I actually bought some lottery tickets yesterday. Didn’t win, though. Some undeserving fuck in Missouri or Minnesota or someplace beginning with M got it. 240 million. Normally I wouldn’t waste my money on something so improbable as a lottery, but the whole department was going in on it, and I figured I’d be a team player. Besides, I didn’t want to be the only schmuck left out if, by some cosmic miracle, they did hit. I can just picture it, the whole department, minus me, dancing out of the office to claim their riches, with me ahead a mere five bucks. And then the phones start to ring….
Work has, tragically, been on my mind a lot, lately. I don’t want to dignify it and pound the crap out of rule one in the process by laying it all out here, suffice it to say that I’ve been a little frustrated by our aggravatingly inefficient procedural requirements, compounded by what have turned out to be dramatic inadequacies in my training. I’m battling through it, but it’s a bumpy road. I had my 90 day (give or take) review on Tuesday, and my reviewer, who was also my trainer, asked for my honest opinion on the training I received and how it affected my transition to the live floor and, for better or worse, I gave it. Not sure what the long term ramifications of that might be, but she did seem appreciative of my input. It made me feel a little better, anyway.
Gas prices finally dipped below two bucks (in jersey anyway) over the past day or so. Lest we forget, it’s still extortion. I haven’t brought this up in a while, and I probably wouldn’t have bothered, but it turns out that, all this time, I wasn’t alone after all. Among the torrent of terminally boring and useless crap that floods my inbox in work are these economic capsule articles by a guy named Joel Naroff, apparently an economist of some renown. They’re mainly about trade deficits, inflation, income tax, housing starts and the like, interesting in macro, but often numbingly dull in micro. This Naroff guy, though, actually manages to make them comprehensible and, dare I say it, almost entertaining (and a lot more sensible than that Jim Cramer mutant I sometimes trip over during late nite channel surfing sessions). His take: gas is ridiculously high, and had been for a while. People are spending more on gas, which means less on consumer goods, which means sluggish economy. So there it is, right from the horse’s mouth. Why the fuck has this not been taken care of?…
The state of the union was last night…. No one cares. I’ve decided that, in addition to being areligious, I am officially apolitical. I’ve come to realize that political parties are obsolete. I know what I believe. Some stuff leans right, some left. And It’s pointless to worry about which party comes the closest, there’s always going to be something that doesn’t fit. Selecting a political party attaches too much unwanted baggage. Candidates should just lay out what they believe and people should just vote on that, instead of worrying about a “platform” and whether it conforms enough to the accepted party precepts. And people should actually consider the individual issues instead of just going down one side of the ticket and bringing up such irrelevancies as if someone is perhaps too “liberal” to be a true republican, or too “conservative” to be a true democrat. Besides, without a political party to hide behind, people like bill o’reilly and ann coulter, who turn profit by flinging vitriol over the fence, would be revealed as the sociopathic lunatics they really are.
I’ve been meaning to mention this one for a while, but I always forgot, remember those huge monuments to the ten commandments in front of public buildings that cause so much consternation every few years? Turns out that they were originally put there as promotional tools for Cecil B Demille’s Ten Commandments movie. To think, all that hoo hah over glorified billboards. Funnier still, if you actually read the bible, all the thou shalt not stuff etched into said monuments aren’t even the ten commandments. The actual ten commandments are all about the kinds of animal sacrifices god likes and how you’ll apparently go to hell if you cook a kid in it’s mother’s milk. (that is, a young goat but I personally think it’s more effective the other way). Who knew, huh?
Oh, and another thing I’ve been neglecting for a while:
MIRACLE, n. An act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king.
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