Saturday, September 26, 2009

Seventh Inane Dream Entry

Currently Listening To: Walking With A Ghost by Tegan And Sara

I am really bad at this blog thing. It's been a month.

Here is my best dream from last night (I say best because it is the only one I remember):

We're in New York. Also, we're in Paris. We're at the World Trade Center/Eiffel Tower, which is currently being attacked by a mad engineer. Fortunately, superheroes R. Lee Ermey and One Of The Kids From "Toddlers and Tiaras" were there to save the day. Except the villain's plan went in to effect quicker than expected, and Toddlers & Tiaras' mom and I watched helplessly as our heroes were instantly vaporized by an enormous, super-hot fireball.

The only "meaning" behind the dream I can come up with is my innate desire to see the GI Joe movie, which showed the Eiffel Tower being attacked/destroyed.

The real culprit behind the dream was likely my excellent evening last night. Carrie (my radio-show co-host) and I went to see Yeah Yeah Yeahs at 9:30 Club, which was indescribably excellent. Toward the end, Karen O (in between deep-throating the microphone) threw a towel in to the crowd, and a group of six or so people spent the next ten or fifteen minutes fighting over it. Lolzy.

Coming home on the Metro (the beloved, eventful Red Line), we saw a guy get punched in the face. This group of guys and gals got on at Dupont Circle. They'd clearly been "out"/drinking. At the next stop, one of them heard someone on the platform talking very loudly/excitedly to his buddy, and the guy on the train pokes his head out and shouts, "Yeah, I know, right?"

The guy on the platform didn't appreciate that. He runs over to the train. At this point, he is blocked from my view by the wall of the train, so all I see is a fist come through the door and slam in to a guy's face. A different guy than the one who shouted. The fist disappears, the intercom beeps, the doors close and the train pulls away. We see them man who punched the other guy standing on the platform, beating his chest as the train goes by.

Once we got to our stop, Carrie and I went to Seven-Eleven for our post-concert tradition. She gets a slurpee, I get a Double Gulp/diabetes. I paid with a five, got a dollar and change back. Took the dollar, bought a scratch off lotto ticket. My winnings? Five dollars. This was about 1 am, so the cashier told me to come back tomorrow (now today) to redeem my prize, which I will spend on five more scratch off lotto tickets.

This is how people get addicted to gambling, right? Fantastic!

Monday, August 24, 2009

This Video Needs To Be Everywhere



I saw this video on YesButNoButYes. I'm not nearly as creeped out by this kid as they were. Quite the opposite; I think this kid is hysterical and in no way deserving of the moral-panic bullshit observed in the comments section. Glad to see that Helen Lovejoy now has internet connection.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Prince of Prolonged Pronunciations

Currently Watching: South Park (Eek! A penis!)
All I've got to say about the new Harry Potter movie is that the extent to which Alan Rickman acts is he just drags out whatever he's saying.
"That's... a bold...


...

...

accusation."

He's a great actor, except, well, this isn't really acting. I don't recall any time in the Potter books being devoted to how dragged-out his words are. It makes him seem more sinister, but really, that can be done a little more subtly. I know this because I'm an expert, because I've been to one year of college.

This is the town where I went to high school:


Don't worry, less than 500,000 views at this point.

Saturday, August 01, 2009

Currently Watching: The 40-Year-Old Virgin

I'm watching it on Oxygen.

Seriously? Isn't this the exact opposite of the demographic they're supposed to be going for?

This post is incredibly Twitter, both in terms of length and importance of the subject matter.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Marbles Harsgrove

Currently Watching: Being Human
I haven't posted in a while, because frankly I haven't really had any thoughts in a while. My head is an empty void.

To make up for it, here is (in accordance with Wired's less than 500K views rule*) a series of YouTube videos I have recently fallen in love with.

I bring to you, Marbles Harsgrove:







Marbles seems to have disappeared after this last video, from early 2008.





*This month's Wired has a section with Brad Pitt's tips for the digital gentleman. One of these rules is the never post anything with more than 500,000 views, at the risk of being on the tail end of what may be a very brief fad. If it's less than 500K, it hasn't really exploded yet.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

The Greatest Hour Of Television I've Ever Seen

Currently Watching: Aqua Team Hunger Force
As I've discussed -- at length-- Lost is my favorite TV show. I am obsessed. I am in various stages of watching the show; new episodes on ABC, random episodes online and the two syndication cycles on SciFi channel (SyFy as of next Tuesday). So if you asked me the best show on TV, I would answer "Lost".

The best episode of TV, however, will not be found in Lost. There are some extremely good episodes of Lost, but none have really stuck with me like this one episode of Law and Order SVU.

I watched it during one of those SVU marathons back when I could stand to watch the show, about four years ago. I had just gotten a satellite receiver in my room, and had similarly just gotten sick, so I was sprawled out in my bed all day, watching the conveniently timed marathon.

The episode starts out with two people arguing in a car. The conversation is brought to an abrupt end when a body lands on the windshield. He's been thrown from a roof and, as we find out later, castrated. The cops find out that he was on the roof to rape, and was forcing a woman to fellate him before she chomped it off and threw him from the roof. She fled, leaving them without a victim, so they look around, and the episode wastes some time developing some shelter-dweller's story. She may have been on the show before, and that's why the characters and writers cared. I didn't. Something about a nun? There was a mildly attractive nun on several episodes, and this may have been one.

Finally the cops end up at a prep school, where there is an extracurricular graffiti-ing team, but unfortunately the team does not abide by Title 9, so homely girl is excluded. To prover herself, she climbs on top of the building from earlier to spraypaint a visible-yet-inaccessible billboard. Halfway through, rape. Dick bite. Cut and dry, until forensics reveal the saliva on the penis was a male's. This is where it gets interesting.

Homely girl has a twin brother, whose DNA is a perfect match. Obviously he was the dick chomper. But he's got an alibi, and it checks out, so it's not him.

It WAS the sister, except she's not a sister. She was born a male, but during circumcision, they took a little too much off the top, and it was decided to just go all-in. That's right, circumstration.

And (s)he didn't know, thanks to the dilligent hormone therapy of the family doctor, who sees the twins with some frequency. Also, has sex with the twins with some frequency. The investigation brings this to light; the jig is up.

Then the doctor turns up dead. There's some DNA on the body, but it matches both twins, and they're not talking. As the cops bemoan their inability to move forward without any other evidence, we see the twins in separate interrogation rooms, with their heads against the wall, communicating telepathically, as twins do.* DUN DUN.

That shit give me more nightmares than spiders on Lost ever could. Creepy kids are the pinnacle of terror.

*I do not trust twins and their twin talk in the same way that I don't trust people with heavily tinted windows; what's going on in there that we're not allowed to know about.

Also, yes, you did just read a post that was just an SVU recap. I'm sorry.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Giant Spiders

Currently Watching: Outbreak
I wouldn't consider myself an arachnophobe. I don't hate spiders. I don't like them by any means, and I won't seek them out, but they don't send me on top of chairs when I see one.

But judging by the dreams I've had about spiders, I'd say they may be the greatest irrational fear I have.

The last time I had a nightmare about spiders, it was after I watched the episode Exposeeee, of Lost. I dragged out the e because I can't do accents, despite the best efforts of every Spanish teacher I've ever had. For the uninitiated, that episode is about two minor characters and they're arguing and lying and backstabbing, and at the end they're both bitten by spiders. First, the girl throws a spider on the guy, and then another one shows up and bites her. Except these spiders don't kill, they just paralyze. Except no one else on the Island (who is alive) knows this, so everyone assumes they are dead and the couple is buried alive. And right before the others start shovelling, HER EYES OPEN.

Oh, the terror.

And I had a nightmare that night, about being bitten by spiders while being underground. Obviously my subconcious wasn't paying too much attention during the show.

Then last night I had another spider-mare. I can't remember it nearly as vividly as the Lost dream, but I do remember man-sized spiders chasing me and characters from Indiana Jones (spoiler alert: Sallah got eaten). And at the end, Indy and I defeated the spiders, except I knew that it was only a temporary victory and that mankind would some day die at the hands of these arachnids.

Now, I'm a believer in interpreting dreams, and the first spider dream makes sense; I was just re-capping an episode of Lost I'd seen hours prior.

But what the hell does the second one mean?

Monday, June 22, 2009

This Post Now With 100% Less Relevant Title

Currently Listening To: Saturday Night by Kaiser Chiefs, a sophomore-year classic
Tonight was a big night in our house -- the "big announcement" episode of Jon and Kate.

My littlest sister was going to watch it later -- she and a friend were occupied with something else -- but my older-younger (I have long struggled with how to differentiate between the two of them without using names, for when I'm talking to people who don't know my sisters) sister was ready to watch now. Junior (as I've taken to calling her lately; youngest is Nugget) was ready to watch now, so she came in to my room.

Blame it on my short attention span, but I was on my laptop while watching TV. Five minutes in to the TV, I saw on IMDb that the "big announcement" had leaked early. I clicked on the headline, which led to a page with all of IMDb's related articles. The first to catch my eye was a Huffington Post article begging readers not to support this show any more.

So I didn't.

Normally I try not to be so swayed by someone else's opinion. While I'm not of the mind that there's always two sides to a story (sometimes people are just right), I do like to weigh options. But I saw "don't watch" and was just compelled. Huffington Post's reason for the boycott was the Helen Lovejoy argument. I don't subscribe to Helen Lovejoy's beliefs; fuck the children. The reason I didn't watch is because my recent obsession with this has made me into a hypocrite. This is a reality show. I don't watch reality shows.

Now, I am not completely averse to documentary shows. I love Anthony Bourdain's show, and really any travel shows. Anything that isn't hyped on drama, which is exactly what Jon and Kate has strayed from, unlike the other sideshow-shows on TLC (I'm looking at you, Midget House 1 and Midget House 2). Jon and Kate has become the Hills. It's not about "How does a normal couple deal with the day-to-day of a large family?" anymore. The episodes are no longer, "This week, how they deal with shopping," et cetera. It's now half-soap opera ("Will they or won't they?" I have LOST for that, thanks so much), half rich-people-day-to-day. As happy I am that they now no longer face financial problems, the fact that they no longer deal with penny-pinching and coupon clipping (and thus there is no need for a shopping episode) has driven the human element from the show. They aren't normal people any more.

So I turned it off five minutes in. National Geographic had a show on about the history of the US and Iran's relations, so I went for that.

Junior asked me if I was retarded. Then she left.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Creepy Kid In Checkout Line

I was in line today at the Terget... I was buying a shirt because I was all sweaty and I don't manage money very well. Seriously, twice I bought underwear instead of doing laundry while off at school. I'm terrible, and thus I'm broke.

But back to business. I'm in line at the check-out, shirt in hand. In front of me is a woman with a cart, and there's a kid in the seat in that cart. And he's staring at me. I normally don't like it when people stare at me (does anyone?) but this kid was particularly unsettling. He wasn't staring, he was staring daggers; he was glaring at me.

So I'm alternating between looking away (because like I said, staring makes me uncomfortable) and looking at the kid to see if he's still staring. I don't know, in case he jumped me or something. You never know, a three year old could have a knife on him.

But he kept staring. He was like determined. To stare at me.

And finally he starts talking (toddlers can talk? Whaaaa?) He says "Boo boo" and starts rubbing his forehead. A forehead that is clearly untouched; he's talking about my forehead. He stops saying boo boo and starts shouting it. This kid is freaking out about the "boo boo" on my head. To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing wrong with my forehead, and there wasn't anything wrong with it six hours ago.

What the hell was that kid talking about?

I may never know.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Comment Section

Currently Listening To: Cuddle Fuddle by Passion Pit
This whole web 2.0 nonsense (and yes, I realize that would include, say, my facebook, youtube and blogspot accounts) is based upon user-created content. And you know, there is some stuff of value coming from it. Every so often I'll see a funny or insightful video on youtube, or read something of interest on blogger, and facebook is good for keeping in touch with friends over the summer and planning events during the year, and also talking shit about people I know with other people I know.

But then I'll read an article on a news site. Pick any news site. Almost all of them do it. At the bottom there will be a comment section, and nothing thoughtful or coherent will be contained within. If the article in anyway references politics (or even if it doesn't), within five comments it will have been reduced to "liberls r ritarded" "no conservitivez sukkk big tyme" "no u guse r pansies GO 2 FRANCE!!!" "hay fuck u racist"

I actually really enjoyed typing that.

But I digress. The four comments leading up to that disintegration will more than likely be "first". You'd think that only the first one would say that, and then the second would say second and so on an so forth, but usually they will all say first because people are so refresh-happy that that will all see the article the second it is published and immediately and simultaneously head for the comment box. That's my first issue with the "first" phenomenon. My second is, as I'm sure everyone else who isn't guilty of this nonsense, "How on earth is this in anyway relevant to the discussion?" Very rarely do these ever have anything beyond the "first". They just leave it that. Never a "first"+"The Great American YouTube Comment".

Web 2.0 has given voice to the voiceless, and shown why they were voiceless to begin with; they had nothing to contribute.

And yet, the once-respectable news sources like CNN have been reduced to asking what we think. To consulting twitter, to giving polls and asking for viewer videos. The results on this rap are then presented alongside the news. The already non-news Letterman-makes-a-joke-about-Palin's-daughter bit becomes even less interesting when I hear that it's only still on Fox News' homepage because 60% of readers think his apology wasn't enough. The news shouldcover events. This story skidded to a halt when Palin accepted the apology... but now they've left it open-ended.

I suppose, as dearest freshman year at college has taught me, I should suggest some sort of solution. I don't have one. At least, one that doesn't evovle removing these people from the gene pool. It's only like this because people eat this shit up. Ooh, CNN wants my video. CNN should have specified; they need your video or your tweet when you're on the scene of the downed plane or the riots in Tehran, not when you have some inane commentary. They've already got guys for that.

Monday, June 01, 2009

Juno Betrayed

I'm watching Juno on HBO. Haven't seen it in a while, and at and hour and ten minutes in, I'm reminded why I don't rewatch this movie as often as I do some of my other favorites.

Jason Bateman's betrayal floors me every time. I suppose it isn't a betrayal the same way 006 betrays James Bond in Goldeneye, or something like that, but it still hits hard. This kid trusts him. Jennifer Garner (whom I loathe, except in this movie) trusts him. He fucks everything up! Enter my over-thought, self important analysis of this movie: Obviously it's about kids, being that it tracks a teenager's pregnancy. But beyond that, it's about grownups who are still kids. Juno, though a minor, is an adult in the freshman-year-biology-class sense of the word. She can reproduce. And yet, she is completely unaware of what a perv Bateman is, despite her stepmom's warning. Bateman himself is also a kid, thirty-something and still dreaming of being Cobain, as Jennifer Garner puts it, rather than wanting a family.

What's worse is Juno will probably find herself in the same situation as Jennifer Garner in ten years. Bleaker is obsessed with "the band", and in true childlike fashion, thinks of pregnancy in terms of being what "moms and teachers" do.

It's this level of douchebaggery that tell me that I really have changed after a year of college.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Sales Call I Had The Other Day

Tuesday morning, I'm sitting at the breakfast table. The phone rings. No one in our house ever wants to pick up the land-line; I hesitate.

Caller ID looks like its a sales call, but I pick it up any way.

At that very moment, I can hear my mom running to the phone upstairs, picking up the receiver at the very same instant that I do.

"Hello?" I ask.

"Hello?" the woman on the other end responds.

"H-Hello?" This awkward exchange seems to happen every time talk on the phone; how are you supposed to answer? "[surname] residence, [name] speaking"? I guess that makes sense. I'll try it next time.

The telemarketer starts her script. We've won a cruise, or there's a deal for refinancing the mortgage or something. There's a wide variety of subjects covered by these calls, but they all run together in my mind. She gets a few sentences in before I hear a click. My mother gave up, and hung up the phone.

There's a pause.

"WELL FUCK YOU MOTHERFU--" click

I'm going to try and time my picking up these calls such that I get to hear that every time we get a sales call.

Friday, May 01, 2009

That's So Twitter

Currently Listening To: The Fear by Lily Allen
Everyone's all about twitter these days. CNN.com has it in at least one top headline daily (and it makes me puke... seriously. Missing children* are newsworthy compared to the Ashton Kutcher/CNN twitter-off). So if you don't know what twitter is, just ask me, dad.

But Twitter is, quite simply, twittarded. If you can say it in 140 characters, you don't have anything to say. And it shows. What you had for lunch, sitting in traffic, your American Idol live blog? No one needs to read that. And yes, blogs are equally as moronic, but I at least invest time in to this (when I actually write). Twitter = blog - content, so it's basically titles to blog posts. If it matters, you can expand on it.

But I digress. The minutia of Twitter has resulted in mon ami Johanna and I's "That's so Twitter". Whenever someone comes in the room and announces "I just finished a paper" or some similarly irrelevant comment, we reply, "That is so Twitter." It's code for "no one cares" but I can't say that because passive aggressiveness is in.

*Missing children are not newsworthy. Well, most of the time. They're newsworthy when they go missing, when they're found, when it goes to trial, etc. But Nancy Grace and whoever her counterparts on Fox and MSNBC shouting at parents, accusing them of the crime because goddammit she's Nancy Grace and if she didn't know this shit, why would she have a show?

Nancy Grace, we have a justice system for a reason. You are not Judge Judy and executioner, so stop pretending to be.

Friday, April 24, 2009

It's Apparent It's All Over

Currently Listening To: Not Fair by Lily Allen
Oh why hello there, blog. It has been quite a while.

I don't know whether it's been disinterest or business keeping me from updating my lil diary. Probably a little bit of both. Disinterest because I've become quite the little attention-deficit... dwarf. That's a good d-word. But yes, I've been well assimilated into the geezer's stereotype of the youtube generation of short attention spans... wait what. I mean seriously, I actually got distracted while typing this. Went to change the song on iTunes and lost my train of thought. Seriously?

Busy because, well, I tend to be doing shit this year a lot more than I have ever done in my entire life, like, combined. This college thing is working out quite well for me, if I do say so myself. While I may not always be galavanting around our nation's capital, I'm usually up to something. I've got a radio show (our last show of the year was tonight), I go to concerts a lot more than I used to, or I've got some scheme running... Three weeks ago I was trying to dye my hair with Kool Aid. That was quite an experiment, with many linens lost in battle. My green comforter has several red sploches on it.

In early March, my radio co-host Carrie and I begged for money to buy batwing hoodies from American Apparel. We put the change in a water-cooler jug and hauled all of this change down there. Paid in change! Poor Ralph Alston had to count out more than fifty bucks in coins. But I'll be damned if we didn't look trendy as hell.

I've really got little else to say, at least for now. Maybe I'll be struck with an inspirational burst sometime soon. Maybe?

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Resolve

Currently Listening To: In Step by Frankmusik
Last year I set out to make one-word titles for posts on here as much as possible. Of course, I subconsciously-simultaneously set out to post less, so see how that went. Hopefully this years resolutions will go better.


I was driving around last week, spending money I shouldn't have on things I don't need (stimulating the economy -- need to do less of that). I had taken my mom's Mustang out, because it's smaller and has the satellite radio, meaning I don't have to bring CDs and feed them in and out of the player. Except, now that Sirius has merged, they dropped a few channels I liked and muddied up the ones they kept, so I now pretty much only listen to BBC1, since it's unaffected. The host was talking about resolutions and said one of his was to learn to play the ukulele, which I decided was an awesome idea. I'm currently on the prowl for them, scoping out music stores when I drive and looking up prices online. I'd say this is my most-likely-to-succeed, I'd say.

in addition to wasting money less, I also need to find a job, both at school this semester and at home this summer. Ideally, I'd work at the Best Buy near campus, because that seems easy enough and that's where I waste the most money. Finding one on campus might be better, though; those seem to pay a bit above minimum wage, would look much better on a resume and would be more accomodating to my schedule, seeing as they wouldn't need me during the semester and on brakes, seeing as the student body, including myself, wouldn't be there. Yeah, that's probably the way to go.

A resolution that I've done before but will likely not follow through with is to stop washing my hair. It's really just an endurance test; how long before I become so disgusted with myself. I'm also going to grow my hair out, except that my understanding of... hair dictates that those two in combination will result in dreadlocks, and the washing will definitely re-commence at that point in time. Can I call not growing dreads a resolution? But I digress; not shampooing is being undertaken so I can style my hair without gel or hairspray, which I've very rarely done but now cannot do because of my eyebrow ring, and taken better care to clean that little bugger could be another resolution, but I really do need to do that and don't want to jinx it by putting it in bold.

Finally, I want to be more honest with people, and by that I mean be meaner to people. So instead of holding my tongue and abiding by the 'if you don't have anything nice to say' adage, I will tell people how I really feel. There's nothing wrong with this ideology; if anything, there's something wrong with being 'fake' and doing the smile and nod. Of course, I don't really believe that. I just want to be meaner to people.

So that's that. Any suggestions/one-ups? I'm always open to additional resolutions.