Sweet Jesus! I feel like a whole new woman today! Just about all the other complications that made me feel horrible are gone, leaving me only with the actual gallbladder removal pain to deal with, which is an incredible relief. So I think I'm going to blog about the whole ordeal.

Day 1:

My family and I went to my favorite Chinese place for dinner, and then we rented a couple movies. In about the middle of the second one, I got really bad heartburn. I'd been having some heartburn problems lately, so it seemed logical. Only now I realize none of the heartburn I'd been having for the last month or so was actually heartburn. I loaded up on antacids, and went to bed in hopes that when I woke up it'd be gone. Only I couldn't sleep. And it wasn't gone in the morning.

Day 2:

We went to the emergency room bright and early that morning. They gave me a huge load of antacids. After that didn't work, they gave me a shot of muscle relaxant. After that didn't work, they said I had heartburn because I hadn't eaten since last night, notwithstanding the fact that it had started a couple hours after dinner. They gave me toast. They told me I had acid reflux, gave me a prescription for more antacids, and sent me home in as much pain as I had come.

After a few more hours I was just dying. It was the weekend, so we couldn't get into a regular doctor's office (which, I and my parents particularly wanted to get me in to see my gastro-intestinal specialist). Finally, we called the hospital and found out there was a guy from my gastro-intestinal specialist's office on call there. We called him, and he got me admitted to the hospital.

I have to say, I love that dude. He took charge. He got me in the hospital, figured I had gallstones, got me a sonogram to prove the gallstone theory, got me drugs for the pain, and lined up a surgeon for me all in a tiny fraction of the time it took the ER doctor to fuck around with me and send me home. And he WAS pissed at the ER for what they did to me. I don't fit the profile for gallstones (overweight women in their 40's are the typical gallstone patient), but I was apparently showing classic symptoms.

I spent the rest of the day drugged up at the hospital.

Day 3:

Surgery. Hurt pretty badly, of course.

Day 4:

Another day at the hospital recovering. Came home that night.

Day 5:

I started throwing up from the vicodin they gave me for the pain (before that I had been getting pain drugs interveniously). As bad as throwing up is in general, throwing up right after abdominal surgery: agony. Especially since you can't take your pain drugs because they're what is making you throw up in the first place. I was also constipated, which somehow had something to do with the throwing up, so I had to take a laxative which burned and I hated. But, all and all, the constipation went away, and the throwing up stopped once the vicodin got out of my system. I probably would've been in the clear if it weren't for my next problem: peeing.

That's right. I couldn't pee. I'd be bursting, and barely get out a drop. We still aren't even sure why this happened, except that maybe the vicodin was the culprit for this too. Finally, we went back to the ER and they put a catheter in me. Which.... actually, almost made me forgive the ER for what they did to me earlier. The relief I felt when the pee started coming out was almost religious.

I spent the night at the hospital. I couldn't get to sleep for hours. And when I finally did, it was less than an hour before some genius decided to wake me up to take my bloodpressure. And I couldn't fall asleep again.

Day 6:

This day was spent at the hospital as well. At this point I had started going crazy from sleep deprivation (I'd been having sleep issues since this whole thing started, not just the night before). I was totally mean to the surgeon (he was who re-admitted me to the hospital after I got the catheter), which I feel bad for now. But honestly.... when I am seriously sleep deprived, I get depressed and psychotic and lash out at everyone around me, and this was no exception. I about attacked him when he said I had to stay the night to make sure I could pee by myself alright.

Which, I hated the hospital by then. I couldn't sleep there, the bed was making my back ache, the IV was on a point in my wrist that made it so I couldn't move my hand at all*, the backache from the bed was making my headache, the food was living up to all the cliches about how bad hospital food was..... I just wanted to go home.

Day 7:

I got to go home! I slept nearly the whole day, but was still worrying about not peeing enough, and was freaking out.

Day 8:

Yesterday. And the peeing was the one count I wasn't sure I was out of the woods on when I posted that morning. But I am, now. So yay. I still felt pretty miserable though, because I'd gotten not much sleep because of freaking out about pee. And I had continous diahrea (multiple times an hour for 7 or 8 hours). And my back and head still hurt.

But today.... like I said, I feel much better. About the only thing I have to worry about now aside from the actual surgery pain is a lingering headache. And the surgery pain, while not fun, is a lot better than it started out. So things are looking up.

___________
* They really hadn't wanted to put it there, but at that point I had no good places left for an IV. I have horrible veins, and this was about the fourth IV I'd had at this point. The first IV they gave me for the pain drugs before the surger wasn't big enough to put the anesthesia in for surgery, the second one they had to take out because the antibiotics they give you burned out the veins around it, and the third they took out when I went home the first time. On top of this, there were several failed attempts to start an IV on me before they got the ones that actually went in properly. And also they'd taken blood about 3 times and failed at least once each time for that. Basically, I look like a heroin addict now.

On top of this, I really really really hate needles. I had a panic attack the last time before this someone had tried to get my blood. This whole incident has obviously desensitized me a bit, but it still freaked me out a whole lot every time they went at me with a needle. Especially since EVERY time they'd not just stick me, but dig around in there and go, "oh, your veins roll," like it's a big surprise even though I warned them of that before they went in.

I'm not dead..... I just feel like it.

I've not been posting because I went to the hospital to get my gallbladder removed. On top of that, I had some complications afterwards. I'm still not out of the woods yet on one count, even (nothing life threatening, though, so don't worry about that). I'll go into it later, probably, but for now I feel too shitty.

Wow. I got a new light fixture for my room AND a nephew today. Very exciting.

It actually took longer for my dad and I to install the light fixture than it took my sister to give birth. We actually made a mistake with the fixture, took it back to the store, and came back home to put it in. Whereas my sister, even though this is her first baby, had it in less than 2 hours. I'm hoping that if I ever have a kid (though I don't really plan to), that I can pop it out like that. She was a lot more peppy and happy than most women after they give birth, according to all the grandparents that came over to visit.

It was strange for me when I first saw him. I've never seen a baby that young up close before. And I've never held any baby at all. They told me to support his neck, but he kept moving his neck around and stuff, and I was deathly afraid of doing something wrong and messing him up. He seemed to like me, though, as well as any newborn baby likes anyone. He started opening his eyes (which he hadn't much up until then) and looking right at me after they gave him to me. I could just imagine him going, "mmm, I like Aunt Phoe. She smells like twizzlers. Even though I don't even know what those are yet." I didn't hold him too long, because it was so intense from the constant worry, but it was cool.


When you dream,
what do you dream about?
Are they colour or black and white,
Yiddish or English
or languages not yet conceived?
Are they silent or boisterous?
Do you hear noises just
loud enough to be perceived?
Do you hear Del Shannon's "Runaway" playing
on transistor radio waves?
With so little experience,
your mind not yet cognizant
Are you wise beyond your few days?

--"When You Dream," Barenaked Ladies

Last night, I had this strange dream that I found out that my grandpa's middle name came from this mountain I'd never heard of, Mt. Eugene (which, my grandpa's middle name is Eugene, obviously). Then, I found out that Mt. Eugene was the setting for a Weezer video for a song from the Pinkerton album.

...I don't know what led me to combine Weezer and my Grandpa. I hadn't really thought of either yesterday.

My dad said this to me today:  "We didn't know a baby could throw up that far until you!"
 
All the more funnier because he wasn't meaning to be funny.

Boy on a Stick:  It's hard for me to talk to people.
Boas:  I can't express exactly what I'm feeling.
Boas:  Heck!  Half the time I don't even know what I'm talking about.
Slither:  And yet, you continue to talk.
 
--Boy on a Stick and Slither

So I was walking by my Dad when he was on the phone:

Dad: (into the phone)...well, you never know with Colitis. Sometimes she's on the toilet the whole day.
Me: My ears are burning!
Dad: What?
Me: Nevermind.

And on an unrelated note, I was sure I had some weird degenerative achy leg disease, because my legs have been hurting lately, and I really couldn't fathom why. But today, when my Mom woke me up (yeah, I know I'm a loser, but she insists on waking me up if I don't get up early enough on my own, which I never do), I was laying in a crazy position.

Basically, it's like sitting indian style, and then bending over, so I'm curled into a bizarre ball, kind of. This has happened before, though not overly frequently. I never set out to be in that position, but I'll end up that way in my sleep.

Anyway, I was especially sore today, and I can see why what with that position. So I'm thinking some of the other soreness might be I had been sleeping like that for awhile, and then changed back to normal before I got up.

So I'm relieved not to be having a disease or something. But on the other hand, how do I stop doing something in my sleep? It's not like I was trying to sleep like a freak to begin with. Also, could this have a long term effect? Could I be all old and have arthritis and be talking to the other people?

Old dude: Yeah, I got my arthritis from playing too much basketball when I was younger.
Old dude2: Mine's from a football injury! How did you get yours?
Me: From sleeping. Yeah, that's right. I eXtreme sleep, bitch!
Old people: No need to call us bitches!
Me: Sorry. The eXtreme sleep makes me a little cranky.

Old man on the back porch
Old man on the back porch
Old man on the back porch
...and that old man is me

--"Old Man on the Back Porch," Presidents of the United States of America

Wow, I never realized how completely awkward it is to have two people looming over you and yelling their lungs out about something. Well... one person doing the yelling, and the other listening. But still. My mom is going whacko again about my grandpa and his girlfriend to my Dad, and since I'm sitting on the ground with my laptop next to her on the family computer (so that I can reach the internet jack) I'm in between. And feeling rather sorry for myself. That is all.

He's forgotten but not yet gone

--"Fred Jones Pt. 2," Ben Folds

Since I find it hard to access my school webspace from home, and I am not going to live in the dorm next semester, I am moving my comics to keenspace. Since it's a pain in the ass to move them all, and some are certainly sub-par, I'm thinking of getting rid of some. So if you would do me a favor, go thru them and mention to me the ones you think are particularly un-funny.

Also, I'm going to list the ones that I personally find least funny, and if you think I should save any of those, please speak up.

Least funny: bukkake, bogus, door, wax, the eternal struggle, chia, fall into the gap, alfalfa, Sousaphone4, Sousaphone2, coat2, ACS3, coke, coke2, coke3, eyes.

My mom can play the accordion. Or so she says. She's probably so out of practice that she can't anymore. But it still blows my mind that technically, my mom can play the accordion.

I've never actually heard her do it, though. She actually hates it, because her mother made her take accordion lessons when she didn't want to. And, obviously, because it's such a dorky instrument, though for me the dorkiness is a plus because I think it's hilarious. I'm always telling people that my mom can play the accordion. I wish she actually did. I would really get a kick out of being able to elaborate. "Man, my mom can belt out Roll Out the Barrel like nothin'! She's a polka maniac on the accordion!"

But anyway, I heard the BEST thing yesterday. My grandma also badgered my uncle into playing... the banjo. The banjo! I can understand maybe having a weird love of the accordion, or a weird love of the banjo, but both? This is insane! I wonder if she just did it as a punishment to make Mom & my uncle as dorky as possible, there seems to be no way that someone would just straight out choose both of those instruments to make their kid learn.

But the best part? My mom said she made her and my uncle play them together for company! Seriously, I have to build a time machine to go back and hear that. What song would you even play? I would spend every nickel I have to hear someone play the banjo & accordion together. Seriously.

10 to 1 if my Mom had another sibling, he or she would've learnt the bagpipes.


He may not have a clue
and he may not have style
but everything he lacks,
well, he makes up in denial!

--"Pretty Fly for a White Guy," Offspring

Pointless in-gossip, but I felt like posting it.

Phoemeister: when I'm graduated and have a real job and get vacation days I'm totally going to visit and rock your world
Phoemeister: in a non-sexual manner.
Talia: :: LAUGHS:: I was going to say :-P
Phoemeister: I knew you would take it that way, guttermind, which is why I added the extra bit :P
Talia: I'll have to hide you from X* and his buddies before they try to brain wash you into their cult
Phoemeister: I thought they never came around anymore anyway
Talia: if they found out you were here, they would... although they might not, considering A let X know how I felt about him hehe
Talia: which by the way, X says the reason he hasn't gone back to Mareks is because of me :-P I had no cause to jump on him publicly so he doesn't go there anymore
Talia: nice of him to tell you that after he recruited you to do that webpage
Phoemeister: That bastard! He never EVER told me, this is the first I've heard of it, I just thought he was dragging his heals like usual.
Phoemeister: I hate him so much. Actually, you should probably keep him away from me to protect him, not me. If I ever see him in person, I swear I'm going to kick him in the nutsack
Phoemeister: Maybe even hard enough to stop the flow of poorly named spawn
Talia: ::l aughs:: I just might pay you to do that
Talia: actually the second little girl hasn't got a bad name but I can never remember it
Phoemeister: I would do it for free, believe me.
Phoemeister: Yeah, I know. But the first kid's name still gets me.

Incidently, who else that reads this wants to meet me? I'm kind of fishing for invitations to capitalize on some day when I want to take a wacky roadtrip that I can record in my memoirs. And if you invite me, and I never do come, don't feel bad. I probably just think you're a psycho.

_____
* X being a mutual internet aquaintaince. Who has a child with an absolutely ludicrous name.

Gift giving, at least in my family, has gotten kind of sad. We all make a list, we all get exactly what's on it, and that's that. Not that it's not better than certain other alternatives, and not that I make a huge effort myself to do otherwise.... But anyway, registries are the worse. They certainly are convenient, but it's rather boring stuff to be buying. Wastebaskets? Flatware? Whatever. You need that stuff, but who cares? And then I realized today, when I was buying a present for a friend who's getting hitched soon, that I actually try and get myself worked up over these sorts of things, like my choice of cutlery or small appliances reveals something profound about my own character to the happy couple.

So a few months ago when I looked at the registry for the wedding shower, instantly I decided that I was all about getting a toaster. I was like, "It must be a toaster, nothing else will do!" I don't even really like toast that well, personally. But still, to myself, I was all, "A house isn't a home without a toaster! Your roof could leak, you might not have a kitchen table, but dammit! you WILL have freshly toasted bread products at the touch of a lever, my blissfully wedded friends! That, my friend, is what we're fighting for abroad! Long live democracy, freedom, and toast!" But I couldn't find the proper one, and had to get this cheesecake pan instead. Even I couldn't muster much excitement out of that one.

So today, I was shopping for a present for the wedding proper (girls are totally gypped, we have to give twice as many presents for weddings because of the shower), and bam! I became overwhelmingly convinced that the spice rack on there was the choice for me. Again, not something I'd use myself, probably. Even if I did cook, I have very bland, unimaginative tastes. But I got this image in my head of a spice rack as some sort of exotic James Bond-esque miracle gadget. BAM! Cumen, any time you want it, baby! Need some taragon? RIGHT THERE. Oh no! That sauce is too bland! Basil to the rescue! All in a day's work for the spice rack. Ah-thank you.

Yeah, I'm like an old lady who all loves to talk about her medical problems. So if you don't like hearing about my bowels, you might want to skip this post.

Colitis really screws with your values. Because of it, I actually LIKE being constipated. Not the type of constipated where you feel like you have to go but can't, but the type of constipated where you don't go for a really long time but don't feel like it anyway. It's like, a stay of execution. I know I'm going to have to pay the piper sooner or later. That I'm going to have two, three times the poo to deal with at some point later on, but it's usually worth it.

Another distorted value: the value of knowing where the restrooms are. You go to any place I've been before and ask me where the toilet is, odds are, I know. Hell, I'll give you horrifyingly detailed instructions if it's a place I go often. You need the bathroom at my local barnes and noble? No problem. Go up the aisle between the sci-fi and mystery shelves until you get to the children's section. Hang a left. Go until you get to the biographies, and you'll find it between the shelf with the books on Sartre and the shelf with Shakespeare. There is a convenient shelf right outside for you to put any unpurchased books on while you're in there.

Very sad.

Anyway, today's making me question the bit about constipation being good. Usually it's a pain to deal with after, but today I went 8 times, at least. I wanted to die. Stupid friggin' colitis.

Man. I have some bizarre dreams sometimes, but usually only once a night. Last night I had three.

The first one was a little less strange than the other two. I was at the pool (which I don't go much anymore. It's not so fun when you don't have anyone to hang out with out there, and it's getting way over crowded), only I'd skipped school to be there. And for some reason my Dad was there, so I kept having to hide from him. And then the professor from my london trip was there for some reason, and I stopped to talk to him, and my dad caught me.

The second dream was with my roommate last semester. I forget why, but she proposed marriage to me, and I said yes, because I was so lonely and I figured it was the best I could do. And things got tenser and tenser, because neither of us were lesbians and secretly wanted to not get married, but we didn't want to hurt the other one's feelings. Finally I just left without saying anything.

The third one, I was at this dance recital given by this lady who used to teach my sister and I how to dance. But instead of having people do the numbers she'd picked out for each class this year, she was calling up old students and making them do some of their old routines. Mostly she only called up students who were good (like my sister), but (even though I was not so good) she also called me up to do a dance with my sister because whoever had originally danced with her pulled out. I didn't know any of the steps, so I sort of had to watch what my sister was doing and improvise. Then, after I was done, I went into the audience and watched the other performers. At one point, I glimpsed my best friend from high school, but wasn't able to get her attention. I ended up sitting next to Dr. Cox from Scrubs, and in his gruff but lovable manner, he gave me dating advice.

Come, Mr. Tally Man, tally me banana

--Day-O, Henry Belafonte

Sometimes I'm surprised at how little I blog in the summer compared to during school. But then I realize that I do nothing during summer. Or rather, the same things every day. That's why I'm bummed that I can't even get a crappy summer job, because then at least I'd get paid to be bored. And I probably would be less bored anyway. Something bizarre always happens to you if you've got the type of job where you have to deal with other people, giving you a new interesting story to go and irritate your friends & loved ones with for awhile, which I enjoy. And I feel kind of like I'm wasting my life, just doing nothing every day. But, I don't think the same things every day. I DO have musings I could've put up here. So the answer basically is:

I am lazy. Being lazy probably edits out half the dumb crap I would put up here if I were energetic enough. But being at home, where I sometimes have to wait for the computer, and wait for it to dial up (had cable at school) is double the editor, for better or worse. So I think I'll just let drop a whole lot at once now that I've mustered the energy to get on here.

I guess one thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is about how old my parents are. They waited way late to have my sister and I, so they're much older than most people my age's parents. And, pretty unhealthy, they both have all these strange medical problems no one can solve. So anyway, I worry about them.

Worse, however, is the fact that an uncle on my dad's side (I don't really know Dad's side of the family so well, so I don't feel hugely directly devasted about this) is showing signs of Alzheimers. This is on top of one of Dad's other siblings having it, and one of his parents. Maybe both. My grandma had straight-up alzheimers, but my grandpa was more like Drew Barrymore's character in "50 First Dates," where she can remember everything up to a specific date in her life where she had a brain injury, but her short term memory's shot and she is stuck in this loop that repeats itself over and over. My grandpa had a head injury, and that IS what they thought caused it, but it got worse and worse over time, which is why it's not as much of a straight up case as it could be.

So... I'm a little shook up. No, I don't relish having the same genes as someone who might have alzheimers, but what really freaks me out is the prospect of watching Dad get worse day by day and remembering him like that, instead of like he is now.

Also, a good while ago I'd meant to blog this, he actually said something about me getting his books when he's dead awhile ago. I can see the logic: I'm the only one in the family who reads his books, or even really the same genre (SF). But just... out of the blue, him bringing it up after I'd asked to borrow one of them... disturbing.

I've got the pistols
so I'll take the pesos
yeah, that seems fair

--Banditos, The Refreshments

I am the biggest dork on earth.

I was at Farm & Fleet with my parents (dorky in and of itself), and I started looking at their tapes & DVD's, because they have a wide assortment of cheap ones, though usually old and/or B level films. I start going through it, yelling my various enthusiastic comments to my parents who are at varying distances during this.

"Wow! They have Jurassic Park! I love Jurassic Park! I can't believe it's in here! Eh.... I probably won't get it, though. It's on TV constantly. And it's a pre-owned tape."

"Oh! Mad Max! Dad, you're all about Mad Max, aren't you?" My dad makes some non comittal noises back.

"Oh my gosh! They have Cool Runnings on DVD! Do you remember that? That movie's awesome, man!" Dad's like, "Yeah, that's the one with the bobsledders, right?" I'm like, "Come on, you KNOW it's got to be some good stuff if it's got Doug E. Doug in it!"

"Wait! Mom! Have you bought everything yet? I've finally found one I want. It's the best EVER!" Mom has just gotten to the front of the line and tells me to hurry.

I hand over the DVD to the cashier with a flourish, "It's Grumpier Old Men!" I proudly announce, and I can tell he's trying his best not to laugh his ass off at me, though in a friendly way.

Good times.

I've got a mind that can steer me to your house
and a heart that can bring you red flowers
My intentions are good, and earnest, and true
but under my hood is internal combustion power
satan is my motor

--"Satan is my Motor," Cake

TV: "Lesbian Bandits" next on "Geraldo!"
Max: Ooooh Lesbians. Yummy!

--Grumpier Old Men

I'm glad I never get rid of CD's, no matter how crappy or lame I think they are at a certain point in time. This does leave me with a lot of embarassing baggage (the Spice Girls), but I do seem to have a weird pattern of not liking a certain percentage of the CD's I buy, and then getting into them insanely long amounts of time afterwards.

Right now I'm way into Marcy Playground's Shapeshifter , which I got like, 2 years ago, and haven't really liked until now. And this is despite liking their self-titled album immediately.

I guess I'm rather slow on the Marcy Playground front anyway. I got the self-titled 5 years after it was released, because I was like, "Hmm, I kind of used to like that sex & candy song," one day. Which is actually how I got into Ben Folds Five, and any number of the one hit wonder groups I seem to cherish.

I dunno. That all is kind of boring/babbly, but I felt like jotting it down for posterity.

So I came in the dead of night
climbed up into the satellite and
looked out over America
I swear I could see the buffalo
ooh, ooh, oh and I never wanna leave
ooh, ooh, this place
ooh, ooh, yes I always wanna be
right here

--"America," Marcy Playground

Phoemeister: If I hear one more damned person say "pear shaped"!!
Phoemeister: I will hurt them
Talia: having it called 'junk in the trunk' annoys me hehe
Phoemeister: yeah, that's annoying too, thankfully I don't hang out with the type of people who use that phrase
Talia: or ka dunka dunk
Phoemeister: I've not heard that
Talia: it's more of a black person phrase I've heard on tv
Phoemeister: lol
Phoemeister: I'm too white and out of it
Phoemeister: I noticed when I was writing that sitcom pilot where the one character was supposed to over use slang, everything I've got is from like, 1992.
Talia: I like to watch TLC's What Not to Wear and hear a black lady on there talking :-P
Phoemeister: LOL
Phoemeister: Man, I am REALLY lame if someone on TLC, albeit african american, can out street-talk me.
Talia: the lady dressed like a street walker and her family really wanted her to have a make over and be taught how to dress
Phoemeister: Oh. I thought you meant someone who helps give the makeovers
Talia: no, she was getting one
Phoemeister: Yeah, I don't mind being lamer than someone they had to drag kicking and screaming onto TLC. Just as long as she doesn't work for TLC.

The one good thing about colitis: if I don't want to do something, it makes the perfect excuse. I find it easy to fake being miserable from something that really makes me miserable 80% of the time anyway. And since it's normally erratic, there's no pattern. I can throw out fake colitis vibes at any time, and it's not suspicious. It's about the only lying I'm good at.

No, this does not make up for actually having colitis, or even for the things I actually want to do that I can't because of a colitis flare up. The sad fact is, the times I actually want to do something and get sick very much outnumber the times I use it as an excuse. The wolf is there far more times than not when I cry it.

But anyway, now I've become completely dependent on this excuse. I totally forgot to do something the other day for someone who doesn't really know about my disease, and that was the first excuse I thought of to tell them, but I didn't really want to bust it out just to use it as a fake excuse for not showing up for something that I quite frankly forgot about.

What? I should tell people the truth about things? Psh...

So.... this is what my sister and her husband do with all the baby equiptment they've gotten so far.



And yes, that really IS my brother-in-law, feel free to stalk him.

The last two days I've been working at staining my sister's deck. Why I get roped into all of these home improvement projects at her house, I couldn't say. So now it's that kind of bluey-gray that any "country" knick-knack (the type of thing you pick up at a craft fair and/or is made of wood and/or says "welcome friends") seems to have somewhere on it. I got some on myself, and it soaked in pretty well, so I pretty much look like I have some Grade A varicose veins. Good times.

We'd meant to do this ages ago, but it keeps raining. Every day for the last month or more, it seems as if it's either rained or looked like it was about to rain, it was good to get out and do it already. But the funniest bit of the whole deck stainin' experience was this robin who had its nest under the deck. I was a bit worried for her and her babies, because the stain tends to drip through some, but it all seems okay. The bird, however, was a lot more worried about us getting near her precious nest, particularly my dad. She (and eventually another robin who we assumed was the original robin's babies' daddy) chirped at us quite a bit, and finally started dive bombing my Dad while he was under there. More good times.

And my Mom capped off the day by making one of my favorite meals, stir fry. I feel bad, because she's been feeling really sick lately, I should probably cook myself some. She doesn't like to let me cook though, because she feels like it makes a mess of her kitchen even if I promise to clean up when I'm through. Suffice it to say, I've been eating a lot of fast food and frozen food lately. So I was sitting out on the porch before dinner tonight, smelling stir fry, and listening to Ben Folds on headphones feeling very content. It doesn't get much better than that.

Well I was right about going through the 5 books too fast, now I only have one left. But instead of starting the last one right away, I went back to Dorian Grey, since I despise it so much. The worse you like a book, the longer it lasts, I've found.

Though, I have realized it's a little faster going if I skip some of their pointless speeches about this and that. The book only gets worse, though. Of the three main characters, one is stupid and the other two have become hopeless jerks. The picture aging is a really interesting concept, but they hardly focus on it, more on how Dorian just seems to become more and more of a jerk from hanging out with the other one.

Anyways, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself if I don't pick up more books when I'm done. This is the problem with having neither a social or professional life.

The bookstore at The Mall is going out of business. Actually, we have 3 malls, but only one of them is "The Mall." The other two malls (College Hills & the Outlet Mall) are on their last legs. The outlet mall (which I worked at for a short time) never has been successful, whereas I'm not exactly sure what torpedoed the other one, I remember going there all the time as a kid.

I'm not sure if The Mall is starting to have this same problem or if it just happens to be something with the bookstore. A lot of big chain stores unnattached to the mall have popped up around here over the years, so I don't know if that's draining off their customers or what. I myself rarely visit the mall anymore (the only shopping I really like to do is at Barnes & Noble or Best Buy), so I might be contributing to this whole thing.

Anyway, I went to The Mall and bought a buttload of books, since the closing sale renders them 30% off. I picked up Pigs in Heaven, which is the sequel to a book called The Bean Trees, which I read a couple days ago because a friend said that the main character reminded him of me, and of course when someone says something like that the curiousity eats you up. Though another friend has compared me to this chick in a novel where she has to herd this group of ancient vikings around a modern town with hilarity ensuing, but it's obscure enough I haven't been able to pick it up yet, so the curiousity's still eating me on that point. I thought of getting another of the Bean Trees' author (Barbara Kingsolver)'s books, but most of hers are in that big format that costs twice as much that I abhor buying even at a discount, so instead I picked up a couple Michael Crichton novels I haven't read. I think after these (the first Jurassic Park novel, which I don't know why I've never read it, and The Great Train Robbery), I will have read all of his considerably prolific work except for Eaters of the Dead. Also I got a sequel to another one of the books I got last time (The Novice) and a random one that is about aztecs or parallel universes or something like that.

Though, the way I fly through books if they're any good, I don't know how long these'll last me, since I find myself bored and unemployed this summer. I already finished The Novice today (and a book I'd finished this morning before I left to get more). I should probably go to the library.

Tonight was the first meet for my 8-ball league. I was a little worried at first.... there's all these bizarre rules they play by, like you have to call all your shots and if you scratch the other person can put the cue ball anywhere, and scratching is defined differently too.

Buut... I actually played a little better than when Dad and I were practicing the other night, so it turned out not too bad. I actually won against this one poor woman who was even worse than I, and didn't get too slaughtered by the two people I lost against. So yay!

I have this theory that my circadian rhythm is longer than 24 hours, because I like to stay awake for longer periods of time, then sleep for longer periods of time than the standard for most people. I never feel like I'm done doing one when I'm forced to start the other.

On top of that, I think I just need more sleep than people in general. I've been going to bed at 3a.m. and getting up at 11a.m. (because my mom insists on waking me up at 11 no matter when I stay up to at night, so I better not stay up later than 3). You'd think with 8 hours of sleep, I'd be fine, but I'm dead tired lately.

Today, my dad and I were watching Return of the King, and I totally would've fallen asleep if my dad didn't like to cheer the characters on (really, he does do this. Even in theatres) thereby startling me awake when "Go Frodo!" or "Get 'im, Sam!" is shouted loudly near me at random intervals. I actually kind of would've rathered falling asleep, since I've seen it before and, as I've mentioned, am dead tired lately. But every time I try to go to sleep before 3, I can't sleep and then have just wasted the time I thought I would gain in sleep on thrashing around TRYING to get to sleep.

I don't think I've mentioned on here before, but I signed up to be on this recreational billiards league with my Dad. I thought it would be interesting, I could spend quality time with my Dad, and brush up on the ol' pool skillz.

Anyway, neither of us had played in a long time, so we decided to practice first, which we did today. It was pitiful.... my Dad's mediocre and I myself am absolutely awful.

My dad cracks me up, though, he used to be fairly good, so he knows all the lingo and sounds completely like he knows what he's doing, and I'm totally copying it all. I'm such the wannabe pool shark, though I'm incredibly poor. I used to be somewhat alright, because I took a weekend course at ISU once that told you how to do a couple things, but I've forgotten how to do all them. True story.

Ted's out in the seat right next to me
yeah, he's drooling on his sleeve

--"The Vast Spoils of America," Saves The Day

And Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me!

--George W. Bush

Today I got a package in the mail from Ryan. Usually I don't like my internet friends to send me things, because I'm pretty sure if my parents knew that I gave any of them my address they would hit the wall, because my Mom, at least, thinks everyone on the net is a hacker, a stalker, or a perv. Which is somewhat of a contradiction, as she spends a good deal of time on the internet as well.

Mostly, I agreed because he was being so darned mysterious about what he wanted to send me. So, stalkers and pervs: if you want me to give up my address, curiousity is my achilles heel much more than avarice. Most happily, my parents (who normally pick up the mail right when it comes in) were at the Dr's office today, so I could sneak it in without lying (which I hate and am horrible at) about where it came from.

Anyway, it was a signed copy of Ben Folds' Rockin' the Suburbs," which I can see why he thought of me when he found it lying arounhd, because he knows that I seriously want Ben to have my babies.

Which got me thinking: that brings my autograph collection up to 3. The other two being a signed copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, which is technically my Dad's but I stole it from him a long time ago. Neither Dad, nor I, even knew it was autographed until I took the dust cover off one day for some reason. I looked it up on Ebay once, and it's at least $100, but I wouldn't sell it. And...

A signed picture of the guy who played Ensign Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager (I don't really know the dude's actual name). Which, I DO enjoy Star Trek. But not as much as my cousin, who goes to all of the conventions and everything. According to my Dad (who knows her better than I), its not so much Star Trek that she loves, but Bill Shatner, which kind of frightens me*. This all boils down to the fact that she got Harry's autograph at one of the conventions and sent it to me for high school graduation. My mom was all, "Save it! It could be worth a lot of money someday!" but I doubt it because after Voyager tanked, I haven't really seen him in anything else.

So anyway, I think I must be the coolest or lamest ever. Not everyone can say they have autographs from Ben, Kurt, and the token Asian dude from Star Trek: Voyager.

Lore: They really shouldn't let me into these wax museums.
Lore: One of these days I'm going to steal a Jacqueline Onassis and a Moe Howard.
Lore: And make them do unspeakable things.

--Lore Brand Comics

___
* Though, according to a friend, Bill's been in a fairly good movie (in Esperanto, no less!) where he falls in love with a demon or something :P

Today I saw The Day After Tomorrow, which I enjoyed overall. The one thing that made me laugh, though was this:

There's this scene where some people want to burn books to keep warm, and these librarians are all, "No, don't burn knowledge!" but it killed me, because they're standing in this room full of wood furniture at the time they're arguing about this. Plus, various shots of other rooms are also plentiful in the wood furniture. Plus, whether or not you give a crap about burning knowledge, wood makes a helluva lot better of a fire than paper! I can see ripping out some pages for kindling, but whole books are nearly as hard to light as wood is, and just smoulders instead of making a fire capable of lasting very long or giving off very much heat.

Oh, also I found it a bit preachy, they keep talking about how our irresponsible ways brought on this ice age. Which... I am pro-environment, and I do find the way that we ignore global warming reprehensible. But there WAS an ice age however long ago that we had nothing to do with causing. The people in the movie might've sped it up a bit, but I don't really think it came on soley because the VP wouldn't listen to crazy fringe-group scientist Dennis Quaid's ideas and sign the Kyoto accord like, a month before the storms hit.

.....but still a pretty good movie :D


Boy on a Stick: God told me I'm precious
Slither: God said I was His right-hand man.
Boas: God invited me to His birthday party.
S: I went to God's slumber party last summer.
Boas: God helps ME with my homework!
S: God gave ME His lucky rabbit's foot!
Boas: God loves me best!
S: That's not what He told me!
God: ha ha ha! Man! It's fun to mess with people!

--Boy on a Stick and Slither

Sister's baby shower today. I never really like these sorts of things, but hey. One really nice thing was one of my sister's friends came over to talk to me for awhile and we had a good conversation. My problem with a lot of showers is not having anyone to hang out with. Technically, I did sit at a table with my Mom and this neighbor we've had all our lives, but they only wanted to talk about old people stuff,* and the whole situation with my Grandpa's girlfriend which I find to be a kind of torture, it's so depressing.

One thing that did burn me, though, is that my sister registered, so she got no duplicates. Save one. Yeah, you guessed it: someone went and bought her the same thing as me. She's keeping mine and not theirs (I got the actual brand she asked for on the registry, whereas the other person got some random one), but it really made me mad, because I wanted my gift to be special. I mean, technically it's not that special because someone would probably have gotten her the baby swing if I hadn't, but still. The whole point of registries is to avoid duplicates.

And, though this is a totally different topic, I'm going with it: Ronald Reagan's death. I know that Reagan was like, the oldest president ever in office, but it still feels weird to have the guy who was president when you were born die. It's like an age milestone or something. Honestly, though, I don't remember that much about Reagan, the only Reagan-related thing I can really remember experiencing is when that dude tried to shoot him.

Anyway, some of the clips of him they've been showing have been interesting. I mean, I know they aren't going to say anything bad about him, because he just died, but he's got some fairly impressive achievements going on, cold war-wise. And he's genuinely funny. Not that I think we should vote on presidents based on funny, but it was still interesting. It makes him seem like he would've been a cool guy to know when he was alive.

RIP the Gipper.

___
* Old people talk includes but is not limited to: illnesses, people who've died recently, gossip about people you knew 20 years ago but don't anymore but still feel the need to gossip about them, gas prices, and probably more I've left out.

Went to the bookstore today. As I'm trying to give myself a little rest from pulp fantasy/sf for awhile, one of the books I picked up was Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. It's something I've been meaning to look at for awhile, I learned a bit about him when I was in Ireland and he's a very interesting guy, and I've seen a movie adaptation of one of his plays that was quite good.

Not as good as I expected, though. I admit, I'm only about thirty or forty pages in, but the old style of writing is getting to me. Basically, one or the other of the characters will just start in on some subject or other and let fly. I DO realize they're trying to set up the premise (I haven't gotten to it yet, but I understand that basically the portrait of Dorian Gray grows older while Dorian Gray himself remains ageless), but it's still widely annoying to read long lectures about the virtues of beauty or beauty vs intelligence, or being special vs ordinary.

Also, most of them seem to be excuses for Wilde to throw in a bunch of one-liners. It reminds me of a really bad sitcom pilot or a really bad movie that's supposed to be a comedy, but instead of paying attention to making the situations or characters intrinsically funny so that the comedy seems natural, it's just throwing out quip after quip, which get less and less funny because they just scream "look at me! I'm so clever!" Add to that, 19th century one liners are rather more bland than the 21th century ones I'm accustomed to, and you get a long speechs full of mediocre jokes that don't make the dumb speech one iota less boring.

Also I got About a Boy. Lately I've been slipping into this habit of seeing movies and then buying the books they're based on. It is quite better than reading the book then seeing the movie, because you don't feel depressed that they cut stuff out of the book you loved, you more feel like the book is building on a movie you loved. But anyway, it makes me feel guilty to pay like 14 dollars (it burns me books famous enough to be movies tend to be only available in the oversized format that costs twice as much) for a book that I already know pretty much what happens in.

Aside from the guilt, it was very good, you got to see more what was going on inside the character's heads, which is one of the bigger atvantages books have over movies (though About a Boy the movie does have some voiceover).

Another thing I found interesting was that the book was purposefully set in '93-94 to sort of include Kurt Cobain's suicide (whereas specific dates and Cobain aren't really mentioned in the movie). I could see how it tied in very well with a number of things going on in the book, but I found it most interesting that the kid in the novel probably works out to be about the same age I was back then. And both of us were totally lonely and clueless about that time. I remember having no idea what grunge was, just knowing that flannel was big. And not even understanding that, going out and getting brightly colored flannels, even a pink and blue one I have to this day. And I really didn't know anything about any music recorded since 1969, unless you count Achy Breaky Heart. The parallels between Marcus and I made me kind of sad, though. Because he learns to integrate himself and make friends at school, whereas I was 16 before I made any, which I then lost when I graduated high school, so am back to desperately lonely loser again, even though I'm twenty freakin' two and should damn well know how to socialize properly by now.

The other book I got was a pulp fantasy novel despite my intentions, but I don't know how it is yet as I've not started.

I get depressed when I read the blogs of people my age. They always have these great things that happened to them that they're blogging. Whereas most of my "good stories," happened in high school, and even then they're not that great, they're more lame ones like that Flannery/Quequeg thing I mentioned in the last post.*

Right now most of my entries discuss some horrible thing that's happening to my bowels or something that aptly illustrates the ennui I am feeling lately such as "I read one of those mystery books where the cat helps solve the mystery, today." Which, both my bowels are acting up and I did read a book like that, so I guess that's my day for ya.

_____
* Which, I actually finally did remember what the names actually were. She was Yelena Ayatollah McNally, and I was Quequeg Flannery Rand. The extra bit obviously comes from Rand McNally, which I don't know why we threw that in. The Pinshaw bit I mistakenly put in before was from a different set of nicknames we came up one day when we were at a restaurant waiting for our party to be called for ages, and there was a "Pinshaw, party of two" called, and we came up with this elaborate scheme to prove that we were the Pinshaw twins (fraternal, not identical) so we could steal their reservation and eat. Of course we never actually tried actually executing this scheme, because that would actually involve something happening in one of my stories.

Flannery O'Connor wrote your book. Not much escapes
your notice.


Which Author's Fiction are You?
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H.G. Wells

The first major literary talent to make himself at home in the science fiction field, greatly expanding its popularity.

Which SF author are you?


The bit about Flannery O'Connor frightens me a bit because her stories are messed up. Like, the one story of hers I remember this guy is stranded out somewhere and this family marrys him off to their mentally challenged daughter, which he doesn't really want to marry her, but he wants their truck so he can drive out of there, so he does and then leaves the daughter in a diner somewhere and drives off.

I do, however, remember being greatly impressed by the name "Flannery," after reading the story, though. I had a friend at the time who I was pretty often giving bizarre nicknames to (who recipricated in turn) that I called Yelena Flannery Pinshaw Ayatollah or somesuch. And I was Something Quequeg Something. Ayatollah came from us talking about Iran one day, Yelena was some figure skater, and Quequeg was a character in Moby Dick, which we'd read in the same sophmore english class as the Flannery O'Connor story.

Also, we had to read the page-long biography blurb on her, and I have no idea why I remember this, but she would sit down to write every day for an hour, even if she didn't have anything to write (then she'd just sit on her desk). And particularrly distracting was a disease she had called Lupus, an auto-immune disease where the immune system attacks the connective tissues in the body causing extreme pain (which I can identify with seeing as how Colitis is the same only with my poor colon taking the attack instead of connective tissue, only I didn't have colitis back then), and for years afterwards I would pretend I was an expert on Lupus just from the information about it contained in the blurb.

A lot of my memories are like this.

Ha. I wasn't going to post the results, because I never really liked the Garbage Pail kids particularly, but I had to when I saw the name of the particular GP kid in the picture. *sigh* It was meant to be.



You're a Garbage Pail Kid!! You're dirty, foul,
disgusting, and wrong. But you're still funny
as hell.

What childhood toy from the 80s are you?
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So one of the local radio stations, WIXO had a "nothin' but ninety's" weekend. I couldn't believe how good it was, for the most part. I loved it. I have truly become a sad old nostalgic geezer ("they just don't put music like this out anymore," I would sadly complain to anyone who would listen), and also a hypocrite for all the times I complained about "80's lunch-hour" on WBNQ and how no one ever wants to hear that music again, because probably there are some sad old nostalgic geezers exactly like me only about a decade older who just love it. Sadder still, I was unconciously having my own version of 90's weekend even before I found out about WIXO's because I was totally rocking out to Dookie (Greenday) & Sixteen Stone (Bush) on Friday.

Also, to continue the adoption/childbirth bit I mentioned in the last post, I have to say my brother in law creeped me out a bit today. He and my sis came to have dinner with us for Memorial day, and the conversation, as it inevitably does anymore, went straight to my sister being pregnant. And all of the sudden, he was all saying that women shouldn't get the epidural, because it makes the baby-havin' take so much longer and yada ya.... and he was like, really invested in the non-epidural arguement. Like he was the one going to have the kid. Hell, I kept saying stuff like, "If it were me, I would get drugged up to the eyeballs if that's what it took." and he seemed invested in ME not getting drugged up for this hypothetical child I will never have. Finally I was just like, "whatever, dude, you're right, I'm wrong, I don't really care." Which is what I generally say when I'm arguing with someone particularly determined to continue an arguement and I don't even give a shit about the topic anymore. Which, by the way, takes quite a bit of arguing, usually I'm the one people want to drop whatever topic I'm going on about, not vice versa.

Saw Shrek II yesterday, it was AWESOME. I especially enjoyed the return of the gingerbread man, who again has a small but hilarious role.

Speaking of adoption, which I was in the last post but you don't know that because these go in reverse order, and The Time Traveler's Wife (ditto), I want to bring up something I find very weird, and that bugs me.

That is, the fact that everyone believes that having their own kid is better than adopting. Well, I know you have the biological imperitive to spread your genes, but come on! I would much rather have an adopted kid! (though I probably wouldn't even want one of those because I just know I'd terribly warp any kid that would have the misfortune of having me as a parent) Sign some papers, no morning sickness, no stretch marks, no shooting something the size of a watermelon out of your vagina, no fuss, no muss.

Anyway, I was thinking of it again because (mild spoiler) the woman in Time Traveler's Wife wants to have a kid, but keeps having these awful miscarriages, and if they ever finally suceed at having a kid, the time traveling's genetic, and the kid could have it, and with some of the stuff the guy's going through, you wouldn't wish that on a kid. But she's determined that they have their own kid instead of adopt. Also, they're the last people who should raise kids! What if the dad drops the kid because he disappears all of the sudden?

Also, my sister was talking about how all the crap she's going through right now is worth it for having a kid. I pointed out that we have crappy genes, and she said something lame like, "I'm quite proud of my genes, thank you very much!" but it's TRUE. The greatest gift I feel I could ever give to this planet is letting my genes die with me. Honestly, all of this I have or someone in my immediate family (mom, dad, sister) has had: severe asthma (my sister's been hospitalized), allergies, migraines, ADD, alcoholism (okay--this one is an uncle, but I count it because it's strongly linked with ADD which I DO have), diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, alzheimers (grandparents--but my parents aren't old enough yet to see if this affects them though I pray it doesn't), severe back problems know one knows what causes them (dad), severe muscle problems no one knows what's causing (mom), thyroid disorder, and the cap to all of this, colitis, which is as bad as most of those rolled into one in and of itself. I don't think I could stand seeing a child of mine going through the pain I go through just because I wanted a little copy of myself and my spouse to parade around the house.

Hmm... I'm talkative tonight.

Oh, also I recently realized that Jake Gylenhaal can't be my babies' daddy after all because I saw him do an interview with Dave Letterman where he goes on at length about having an abnormally large head, like he has to get special hats and stuff.

Alone, I don't know if this would bother me, but I, too, believe it or not, have an abnormally large head. I don't normally wear hats anyway, but I took dance class for 10 years and they were always making us do these dances involving these lame hats. And whereas on broadway, the hats are probably real, we got these thin plastic ones, and mine would always crack because I have an enormous head that I would try to jam it on, and no one else's hat did that.

So anyway, I don't want to push out a kid with a combo of my big head and Jake's big head. That's just too much, we're gonna have to adopt.

I spent last night reading The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffnegger, and it blew my mind it was so good. Even by the title, you can tell it is SF/Fantasy, but I feel like I transcended genre for once because I picked it up off the bestseller rack instead of the SF/Fantasy rack. Plus, it strikes me as having more depth than a lot of SF/Fantasy I read, plus the relationships are a lot more real. I kind of wish they'd not separate fantasy bestsellers from the regular rack, because then I never find them, and though I do find gems in the rack I normally am looking through, so many of them I am gradually realizing are awful. So many books get bogged down in explaining their little world or science gimmick that it seems to take away from the story, and the types of authors who can do it without being boring, such as Michael Crichton, are automatically segregated because of their wide appeal. But I hate going over to the bestselling rack, because I have to sift through a lot of stuff I know I won't care for before finding it. Plus, the bestsellers cost more, which cheeses me off.

Anyway, it's hard to explain, but I would strongly recommend this book to anyone, regardless of their usual genre choice. Though the time traveling angle is really interesting (to me), it's more about Henry & Clare's relationship, and how the time traveling has shaped it and put stress on it and to work in some nifty bits of foreshadowing.

I badgered my sister into hanging out with me tonight, so we did. We had orange juliuses that we made in the blender because the Orange Julius stand at our mall folded sometime in the 80's, and we were overjoyed when she learned a recipe for them in home ec sometime in the 90's and we could have them again. We hadn't had any in awhile, so that's what we did, plus pizza and a DVD.

My brother in law chose Mooseport, which I was a little surprised because it didn't strike me as his sort of thing, but it looked okay enough to sit through. I had thought it was a straight comedy, but it was really one of those romantic comedies that have the occaisional funny bit but really shouldn't be called a comedy because they don't produce belly laughs. And the romance angle was a little weak too, so it was overall somewhat mediocre, but I had fun anyway.

My sister and I talked a little bit too. We got to talking about my future career options and Mom, and it surprises me how much my sister doesn't realize how desperately Mom wants me to stay in town just like she has. Maybe she never ran up against it because she never thought about leaving this town. But Mom has a cow if I even mention trying to get an internship in Peoria, which is not that far away. And to a limited extent, I am kind of using her as an excuse not to apply in peoria. I don't really want to go to Peoria. I either want to live in a glamorous city, or stay here where I'm comfortable, if not glamorous. Not pick up everything and go to a crappy town a couple of hours away. I really, really, wish applying for jobs and internships didn't make me crazy. I wish I didn't dread them, and so not apply for many, and even those much later than I ought to. Speaking of which, Walmart and Family Video still have not called back.

Yep. I'm definately going to be working at Arby's* when I graduate. Or die in a gutter. Whatever.


* Just recently I learned that the ovenmitt is voiced by Tom Arnold. I just felt like mentioning it, because it surprised me for some reason when I found out. True story.

Whoa.... that last post was even more rambly and pointless than usual. That's what happens when I don't post very often, which is what happens when I've got not that much to say because I haven't been doing much.

Anyways, today I helped put together my nephew's crib, which went surprisingly well. Usually three of us (mom, dad, and I put it together) = arguements when putting things together, but this was like, the easiest thing ever to put together, luckily.

Yep.

Well, I finally got up off my ass and went job hunting. Though not far... only Walmart and Family Video. I hate filling out 80 applications and then not having anyone hire me, so I thought maybe I'd try 2, and see what happens from there.

The family video ap, it was actually nice to write down my film studies minor and feel like I was actually applying to something where I could at least prove that I have interests that marginally align with the job.

I'm not fooling myself that Walmart or Family Video are fun, just I want a reason to get out of bed in the morning. It's weird, but doing absolutely nothing gets more tiring than actually doing things for me after awhile.

I did get to see some movies in the last week, though, which was nice. Big Fish, which I've meant to see for awhile and was about as good as I expected, Timeline, which was better than my low expectations because while the book was good, it was totally panned by most people, and Troy, which my dad kind of dragged me to, though I didn't think it sounded very good.

It, too, surpassed my expectations. Especially Orlando Bloom. He usually annoys the crap out of me because they put him in action hero roles, but he's such a sissy! If he played Hugh Grant-y roles, I'm sure I'd like him better. But he's so girly, and they insist on giving him macho guy roles. But, I liked him in this because Paris IS a weanie, with a curly mullet no less, so it all works out. And the dude who played Agamemnon was totally awesome at playing a horrible bastard, and I liked the dude who played Hector who was all smart and told them what to do and then they'd all just go and do something insanely stupid instead. The rulers were all stupid, though. Even Paris, who's obviously not the brightest got to be like, "Burn it! Burn the bastard! Why would they leave it if it was something good! Burn it, you idiots!" about the Trojan horse, and of course no one listened.

(warning: long insane rant about crazy family follows)

Well... I think that dream was a premonition. Not of all the crazy stuff literally happening, but more trouble with Grandpa's new girlfriend & my mom.

My aunt called up my sister wanted to see if the girlfriend could come down with her to my sister's baby shower (so she has someone to drive down with).

Of course, my mom who already resents the woman, does not want her coming. And she's further enraged by them calling my sister and not her ("They're trying to sidestep me!") though my sister obviously called up and asked Mom about it.

I myself don't think it would be that big of a deal to bother with the woman. It's not like Mom personally has to hang out with her, the aunt would. But she's been off the deep end about it. And how she can never have a GOOD event, citing specific events.

I.E. 1. Grandma herself messed up my sister's wedding, she had major health problems. And not only that, she was a little bit of a jerk about it. Which... I really can't blame her. Before she died she had several years of being hospitalized all the time and throwing up all the time and taking tests that (having a similar disease I know from experience) are worse than the actual problem. I'm not exaggerating--literally worse. I would rather have my 1 or 2 normal 10 minute long blindingly painful bowel movements than take 6 cups of laxative mixed with fruit juice that doesn't cover the taste enough for me to not constantly be gagging and afraid that it's all going to come up and I'm going to have to start over again, then having that fruit juice shoot out my butt for 24 hours afterwards then having a scope put up there.

Stuff like this also makes me wonder why mom seems so fiercely loyal about grandma now that she's dead. When she was alive, she fully bitched about grandma (both recent incidents AND stuff from when she was growing up) as often as I bitch about her. I'm a horrible, horrible person, but I wasn't that sad when she died. Not only was it actually probably kind of a relief for her after all the health problems, but I mostly have bad memories of her saying horribly mean things to me ever since I got old enough not to be cute anymore. Not that I have many memories of her at all, since she hardly ever visited. My mom keeps going on about how she's going to miss the birth of her first great-grandchild. I was like, "Hey, my cousin has a kid." And my mom's like, "That kid was illegitimate, so she has never recognized it." That's a horrible attitude! I know you can miss someone even if they aren't nice, especially if they might've used to be nice, but do you really pine away for someone like that? When grandma died this line from a Ben Folds Five song, "She said I'd feel sorry but the truth of it is/that I feel guilty for not giving a shit," just kept going over and over in my mind because it was exactly how I felt about it. I'm glad grandpa's found someone nice.

2) my aunt ruined my sister's wedding shower by showing up. I didn't know this at the time, because it was a perfectly okay wedding shower. I myself was a liiitle miffed because I was the Maid of Honor and it was my job, and I wanted to do it really badly because my sister hadn't really let me do anything else because she's the type that has to do things herself. Anyway, my mom, the aunt, the mother in law to be.... all were kind of butting in because they thought that I didn't know how to do anything, and it cheesed me off. But once we actually had it, it was alright. Anyway, this makes me think, "Maybe if you didn't irrationally hate so many people, so many things wouldn't be ruined for you!" Because she does hate the aunt because the aunt is my uncle's second wife and they kind of hooked up before he was fully divorced from his first one, and she's catholic which my mom doesn't like for some reason. But anyway, my mom hates my sister's mother in law too, for no real reason, so she feels like they ruined my sister's graduation for her (they both threw the party since her and my brother in law graduated at the same time) because she forgot to offer for us to take home some of the cake we half paid for.

Lastly.... come on, the baby shower isn't (nor was the wedding shower) a paramount occaision. It's an excuse to get gifts! The actual wedding, the actual birth of the baby--important life moments. Showers--excuses to get presents. Which--I'm not downing showers. People starting a life together or having a baby need to buy a lot of crap, and this sort of lifts their burden. But a total snoozefest for everyone else involved, and not even a life-changing occaision for the one getting the gifts.

I had a whacked out dream last night, and I can't even remember all of it. Still.... the main gist of it was my Grandma, who's been dead a bit over a year now, was actually alive. Like.... they'd buried her because they thought she was dead, but she wasn't, and now she came back and got a divorce from grandpa because he'd gotten a girlfriend because he'd thought she was dead. And I remember thinking very clearly at one point, "Wow.... this is like my mom's soap opera with the midget. I HAVE to blog this." Which I still find it bloggable even though now I realize it's a dream.

And AWESOME! I just got my grades back while I was typing this. Straight A's! The second time EVER! AND I was only expecting an A for one of my grades (the internship). Go me!

I've had Tenacious D's "Tribute," in my head for over a week. I am not kidding. And I don't know why.

Yes, I have it on my computer, and I listen to it while I'm on the computer, which is a certain amount of the time, but I have plenty of other songs on the playlist and they're NEVER in my head. Nothing else is. Just Tribute. Maybe it's the greatest song in the world, alright, the best motherfuckin song in the world, the greatest song in the world. Or maybe it's just a tribute.

.....my babblings get more and more incoherent every day.

Well.... I'm so lazy. I keep thinking of applying for a summer job but then not doing it. The thing is I hate the idea of filling out the forms and going to interviews way more than I actually hate the idea of getting my lazy ass up and doing something. In fact, I think I'd kind of like getting out of the house and interacting with people, if only as a supermarket checker or something.

What I have been doing? Some cleaning of the room.

Lots of sleep.

Lots of Might & Magic 7. I started it last summer and got to the very end, right before the last quest, and quit until now, when I finished it. Then I decided I wanted to go back and start over playing it evil (at one point in the game you get to pick whether you're good or evil) and maybe with different classes. The funny thing is I started MM6 yeeeeeears ago, like when I was still in high school, and I did the same "right before the last quest" thing. And I still haven't finished it, because that last quest is so damn hard and I get killed every time I try, even after spending days and days at a time beefing up my party more.

Lastly, re-reading the Wrinkle in Time books, like I mentioned. Not all of them.... I think I got rid of the ones I didn't like (mostly the ones where the main char is one of Meg's kids, or where L'Engle departs from SF/fantasy). Of the four books I did read, Wrinkle in Time itself is actually my least favorite, I found. All of the books work better when you're younger and don't think to pick at the niggling details that don't quite come together, but Wrinkle in Time seems to have the most of those. But really(in all the books), I did notice things like:

--In wrinkle in time, Calvin does NOTHING but provide ego massage for Meg's low self esteem. There is NO reason for the people to take him along at all, he doesn't do anything or help anyone do anything, he's pointless! Not that I still don't enjoy his character. What nerdy unpopular girl with low self esteem could resist the popular, atheletic, but yet gentle and intelligent guy who hooks up with the nerdy unpopular girl with low self esteem?

--Charles Wallace is supposed to be the genius way ahead of everyone with all the powers no one else has, but of the three books he's in, he's only the one saving stuff in one of them. And in that one, he's more of an observer than actually doing things.

Yes. I am the type that does go back and re-read children's books, or even random other books I happened to particularly like.

Well, I'm finally thoroughly cleaning my room after several years, and it really needs it. It's amazing the amount of paper I've pulled out of there already.

One thing I found was a diary someone gave me for high school graduation. It has about two entries (one "this is the start of my memoirs!" entry and one, of course, about my bowels). I'm awful at keeping up diaries, I had another one before that that I would put in an entry every few years.

I think the reason I can keep up the online journal is that I hate writing, but typing is no big whoop for me. I wish I could keep a paper journal because unless there's a fire or something, it's not going to just up and disapear like electronic files. Oh well.

Ay.... blogger's got a new interface. What's up with that?

Anyhoos, after all the movies I had to watch for class, I thought it would be a relief to go without for awhile, but now I am going into withdrawal, I keep wanting to watch more than I am. Which is not that much, except the other night I saw "Wrinkle in Time," which is apparently a made for tv or straight to video version of the Madeliene L'Engle book. On one hand, it was truly crappy. A lot of the detail that drives the story is lost (stuff happens in people's minds, hard to translate to movie form) and character development is pared down to a bare minimum. I still liked it, kind of, because I could fill in the blanks on my own. It made me want to re-read the book, several of the books actually. Not all of the books though.... because some of them are strange but not in the good way the rest are.

Then tonight I rented a couple. Foolproof, which is about these people who like to come up with these elaborate schemes to rob places with hi-tech security systems, and act them out at home for the fun of it, rather than actually going and robbing anyone. One of their plans gets out, someone uses it, then the dude who did it sort of blackmails them into going along with another scheme, because of their involvement (though unwilling) with the previous. Pretty good, if you like heist movies. I also got Knock Around Guys, because it was free, which was pretty good for ANYTHING with Vin Diesel in, alright for anything else. I think it was saved by him not being the main character.

Also, I dream about movies. Last night I dreamt I went to watch Troy, only it turned out to be sort of like Love, Actually where there are several mini stories and the Troy I've seen in ads was just a small part of the actual film, the rest of it was set in modern office buildings or something.

Also, I have these freaky hives on my hands. I know I'm a hypochondriac, but they're there! My mom agrees! Except all she did was tell me to put cortaid on them, like she always tells me to. Anyway, they were just bumpy for awhile, but now I'm itching like crazy. NOT cool.

You know those stereotypes about the old people sitting around the nursing home alone while their kids and grandkids give them the brush off? I'm beginning to think it's the opposite way around.

My grandma and grandpa used to go to florida for the winter, and we're kind of on the route, so they would visit us. BUT, only for a day or two. During days I was at school. And we'd never visit them, because my mom (and hence the family) just won't travel. Anywhere. I used to beg my mom to let us go up there or ask them to stay longer, or at least come during a break or a weekend, but it would never happen.

So, somewhat over a year ago, my grandma died. And we actually started seeing my grandpa a little more often, (mom put in more of an effort to travel & he came over once for a little longer). Still not as much as I'd like.... I wanted to drive up there at one point but thanks to at one point my inexperience on the interstate and at another point wrecking my car and having no mode of transportation, that didn't pan out and he probably thinks I'm a big phony for saying I'd come and never coming. But here's the new complication: my 80 year old grandpa got a girlfriend.

So he and the girlfriend came up from Florida, and we didn't even get the perfunctory 1 or 2 day visit, because my mom resents the girlfriend and won't let her stay in our house. She made up an excuse about how dirty the house is (and it IS dirty, but she admitted to Dad and I that it was an excuse) and how she'd be embarrassed if the girlfiend stayed.

So... he said we could come up there sometime, and I was all, "that'd be great!" but my mom is all, "I don't want to go there! And see HER in my Mom's house! And her hanging all over him!" Okay, I can understand being a little weirded out.... but she's downright hostile! And the hanging all over him comment was doubly weird. I mean, they're old. They're not exactly about to start making out in front of us or something. And the lady's actually pretty nice, it's not like we've got Anna Nicole Smith on our hands, here.

So anyway, I fully expect to be deprived of interacting with my sole living grandparent until 1) I get a car (which.... I have no money) 2) he dies thus rendering the point moot, and the time is gone forever. Woo.... ain't life beautiful.

So, Bitsy finally got ahold of me, and I was right: everything from Hastily Paraphrased is gone. Forever. Well.... maybe not forever, as she has some scheme involving cached google pages. Really, I feel worse for her than me, she had a lot more things besides the blog up there, plus she was actually paying these people who, by the way, have not answered when she phoned and e-mailed, for the space, not I. Plus, by some horrible coincidence, her hard drive went off at the same time. And it's finals time.

Today I've not been up to much. I finally finished off latch-hook Tigger (from a set of three for my sister's kid. Eeyore was done long ago, and now its time for that bland straightman himself, Pooh.) I also played the Sims for like, ever, on my laptop out on the back porch, which I love the first day I can spend the whole afternoon out there on my computer or reading a book with the stereo on (because really, my idea of outdoor activity is doing indoor activities outside).


And here's a boring story I told someone over IM about "copper." Because I'm bored and I can.


Phoemeister: You'll never catch me alive, copper!
Sui: haha
Sui: dork
Phoemeister: Yeah
Phoemeister: See, my sister was putting the mineral copper on the roots of her oak tree
Phoemeister: and I started saying that
Sui: haha
Phoemeister: because I've seen too many movies from the forties lately.
Phoemeister: Coppah!
Sui: it would appear that way
Phoemeister: Then, I started doing the "you dirty rat..." spiel
Phoemeister: but it sounds more like I'm trying to do Jack Kennedy when I do that.
Phoemeister: So I started saying JFK-y things.
Phoemeister: Then I just started saying random things from tv or movies with boston accents

"Youah retahded! No you ah! Yoah wicked retahded!"
"That kid used to beat the shit out of me in kindahgahten!"
Phoemeister: True story.

Wow. I had a wiiiild dream last night. It was epic length.... but I can't remember a good lot of the beginning and middle, as I've been up for awhile and forgot. But I remember it's wiiild, and that it was another one that was sort of movielike, where half the time I'm watching what I'm in, or playing different roles.....

Anyway, at one point I get arrested for something or other, and they send me to this insane asylum. Not because they think I'm insane, but they think a good punishment for normal people is making them hang out with the crimnally insane, and that puts the criminally insane in a better mood, so it's win win for everyone except for the occaisional normal person who gets horribly murdered by the insane people.

Anyway, right before I go in to talk to the insane people (and I'm really frightened at this), the lady who arrested me, who I think has been a nemisis throughout the dream tells me that she stole these songs I wrote and gave them to Michael Jackson, and it's a black revolution! And then she hit me with a cattleprod or something.

Which, I don't think I've ever been shocked in my life, so I'm not sure what it feels like. But whatever she did to me in the dream that I thought was electricity hurt like hell, and I couldn't move any of my limbs and it was freaky. Anyway, partway through the being shocked, I finally realize it's a dream, and in my head I'm like, "wake up wake up wake up!" and I did.

So... yeah. Anyway: the final final went alright and I have most of my crap out of the dorm. It feels kind of weird to have this be the last time I go through this process.... (I am going to school one more semester but I'm going to live at home) But also a relief, because it is a pain in the asscheeks.

Here's another meme: you know the IMDB top 250 films? I've done it already, but since I've seen so many of the types of films heavily represented on the list (Japanese & classic films) this semester for class, I thought I'd do it again and compare. Only the other one I took was posted at the googlies blog. So really, I'm just taking it again.

Also, I wanted to do another thing that I've seen on a book meme going around, which is as well as bolding the ones I've seen, adding in italics for ones I've seen part of, underline for ones I want to see, and asterisks if I've seen something similar I want to mention, or read the book it's based on. Question marks are letters w/foreign accents that weren't recognized and I couldn't go through and fix all of them.

1 Godfather, The (1972)
2 Shawshank Redemption, The (1994)
3 Godfather: Part II, The (1974)
4 Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003)
5 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)
6 Schindler's List (1993)
7 Seven Samurai (1954)
8 Casablanca (1942)
9 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)
10 Star Wars (1977)
11 Citizen Kane (1941)
12 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) (* read the book)
13 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
14 Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
15 Rear Window (1954)
16 Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
17 Pulp Fiction (1994)
18 Usual Suspects, The (1995)
19 Memento (2000)
20 North by Northwest (1959)
21 12 Angry Men
22 Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)
23 Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
24 Psycho (1960)
25 Amelie (2001)
26 Silence of the Lambs, The (1991)
27 It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
28 Goodfellas (1990)
29 American Beauty (1999)
30 Vertigo (1958)
31 Sunset Blvd. (1950)
32 Matrix, The (1999)
33 To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
34 Cidade de Deus (2002)
35 Apocalypse Now (1979)
36 C'era una volta il West (1968)
37 Pianist, The (2002)
38 Third Man, The (1949)
39 Paths of Glory (1957)
40 Taxi Driver (1976)
41 Spirited Away (2001)
42 Fight Club (1999)
43 Some Like It Hot (1959)
44 Double Indemnity (1944)
45 Boot, Das (1981)
46 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
47 Chinatown (1974)
48 Singin' in the Rain (1952)
49 L.A. Confidential (1997)
50 Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
51 Requiem for a Dream (2000)
52 M (1931)
53 All About Eve (1950)
54 Bridge on the River Kwai, The (1957)
55 Se7en (1995)
56 Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
57 Saving Private Ryan (1998)
58 Rashomon (1950)
59 Raging Bull (1980)
60 Wizard of Oz, The (1939)
61 Alien (1979)
62 American History X (1998)
63 Sting, The (1973)
64 L?on (1994)
65 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
66 Vita ? bella, La (1997)
67 Manchurian Candidate, The
68 Touch of Evil (1958)
69 Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948)
70 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
71 Finding Nemo (2003)
72 Reservoir Dogs (1992)
73 Great Escape, The (1963)
74 Modern Times (1936)
75 Amadeus (1984)
76 Clockwork Orange, A (1971) (* read the book. Awful stuff)
77 On the Waterfront (1954)
78 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
79 Ran (1985)
80 Annie Hall
81 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
82 Jaws (1975)
83 Apartment, The (1960) 8.1/10 (8832 votes)
84 Braveheart (1995)
85 High Noon (1952)
86 Aliens (1986)
87 Fargo (1996)
88 Shining, The (1980)
89 Strangers on a Train (1951)
90 Metropolis (1927)
91 Blade Runner (1982)
92 Sixth Sense, The (1999)
93 City Lights (1931)
94 Duck Soup (1933)
95 Donnie Darko (2001)
96 Great Dictator, The (1940)
97 General, The (1927)
98 Sjunde inseglet, Det (1957)
99 Princess Bride, The (1987)
100 Dogville (2003)


101 Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1989)
102 Notorious (1946)
103 Princess Mononoke (1997)
104 Rebecca (1940)
105 Full Metal Jacket (1987)
106 Toy Story 2 (1999)
107 Lola rennt (1998)
108 Big Sleep, The (1946)
109 Best Years of Our Lives, The (1946)
110 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
111 Yojimbo (1961)
112 Graduate, The (1967)
113 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
114 Patton (1970)
115 Ladri di biciclette (1948)
116 Deer Hunter, The (1978)
117 It Happened One Night (1934)
118 Manhattan (1979) 8.0/10
119 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
120 Forrest Gump (1994)
121 Searchers, The (1956)
122 Glory (1989)
123 Philadelphia Story, The (1940)
124 Cool Hand Luke (1967)
125 African Queen, The (1951)
126 Mystic River (2003)
127 Ben-Hur (1959)
128 Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
129 Bringing Up Baby (1938)
130 Unforgiven (1992)
131 Green Mile, The (1999)
132 Hable con ella (2002)
133 Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
134 Stalag 17 (1953)
135 Grapes of Wrath, The (1940) (* saw a play of it. Yech)
136 Shrek (2001)
137 Elephant Man, The (1980)
138 Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
139 Night of the Hunter, The (1955)
140 Gone with the Wind (1939)
141 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
142 Wild Bunch, The (1969)
143 Christmas Story, A (1983)
144 Back to the Future (1985)
145 Straight Story, The (1999)
146 Platoon (1986)
147 Hustler, The (1961)
148 All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
149 Amores perros (2000)
150 Young Frankenstein (1974)
151 Smultronst?llet (1957)
152 Adventures of Robin Hood, The (1938)
153 Gold Rush, The (1925)
154 Die Hard (1988)
155 His Girl Friday (1940) (* I think I saw the movie this one was based on)
156 Monsters, Inc. (2001)
157 Grande illusion, La (1937)
158 Life of Brian (1979)
159 Lost in Translation (2003)
160 Spartacus (1960)
161 Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The (1962)
162 Battleship Potemkin (1925)
163 Charade (1963)
164 Gladiator (2000)
165 Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
166 Quatre cents coups, Les (1959)
167 Almost Famous (2000)
168 Festen (1998)
169 Conversation, The (1974)
170 Sling Blade (1996)
171 Roman Holiday
172 Toy Story (1995)
173 Magnolia (1999)
174 Ying xiong (2002)
175 Day the Earth Stood Still, The (1951)
176 Night at the Opera, A (1935)
177 Streetcar Named Desire, A (1951)
178 Insider, The (1999)
179 All the President's Men (1976)
180 Brazil (1985) 7.9/10
181 Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
182 To Be or Not to Be (1942)
183 Ed Wood (1994) 7.8/10
184 Being John Malkovich (1999)
185 Trois couleurs: Rouge (1994)
186 Killing, The (1956)
187 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
188 Exorcist, The (1973) )
189 Dog Day Afternoon
190 Mulholland Dr. (2001)
191 Stand by Me (1986)
192 Twelve Monkeys (1995)
193 Harvey (1950)
194 Terminator, The (1984)
195 Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
196 Gandhi (1982)
197 Hotaru no haka (1988)
198 Groundhog Day (1993)
199 Lion in Winter, The (1968)
200 This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
201 Trainspotting (1996)
202 Miller's Crossing (1990)
203 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
204 Whale Rider (2002)
205 Right Stuff, The (1983)
206 Adaptation. (2002)
207 Rain Man (1988)
208 Midnight Cowboy (1969)
209 Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
210 Network (1976)
211 Laura (1944)
212 Big Fish (2003)
213 8? (1963)
214 King Kong (1933)
215 Stagecoach (1939)
216 Ikiru (1952)
217 X2 (2003)
218 Snatch. (2000)
219 39 Steps, The (1935)
220 Strada, La (1954)
221 21 Grams (2003)
222 Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
223 Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, La (1928)
224 Others, The (2001)
225 Big Lebowski, The (1998)
226 Untouchables, The (1987)
227 Thin Man, The (1934)
228 In the Heat of the Night (1967)
229 Rio Bravo (1959)
230 Planet of the Apes (1968) (* saw the marky mark version)
231 Minority Report (2002)
232 Red River (1948)
233 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
234 Traffic (2000)
235 Beauty and the Beast (1991)
236 Fantasia (1940)
237 Being There (1979)
238 Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
239 Good Will Hunting (1997)
240 Henry V (1989)
241 Sleuth (1972)
242 Todo sobre mi madre (1999)
243 Die xue shuang xiong (1989)
244 Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
245 Heat (1995)
246 Quiet Man, The (1952)
247 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
248 Enfants du paradis, Les (1945)
249 Clerks. (1994)
250 Beautiful Mind, A (2001)

I have seen a friggin' lot of movies!

Also, there's this meme I wanted to try out (via Dragonpaws):

Invent a memory of me and post it in the comments. It can be anything you want, so long as it's something that's never happened. Then, of course, post this to your journal and see what people would like to remember of you, only the universe failed to cooperate in making it happen so they had to make it up instead.

(for example, the memory I invented for her was: Remember that time in grade school when we went to the vanilla ice concert? And he invited us backstage and we thought we were SOOOOO cool? But then he hit on us, and you were like, "Hey. We are children. You are a sick, sick man, Vanilla Ice!" and then his career went down the toilet soon after that, and we laughed and laughed.

Then, since we were in the city anyway, we went to a taping of "The Facts of Life." And Tootie hit on us too! And we were like, "Hey, Tootie. We don't swing that way." Except you DID swing that way and visited her later that night and were afraid to tell me, but you let it slip 5 years later and we laughed and laughed about it. Good times.)

So invent something good, peons! (if anyone even knows where I'm posting nowadays and reads this :P)

Thursday, April 29, 2004

I feel awful about the research paper I’m turning in today for Media Effects class. I’ve never done such a half-assed job on a research paper before. Not only did I purposefully muff up APA style just so I wouldn’t have to cite pages, because I didn’t know the pages the info was on, because I never read the articles, instead, I just found some other article on the internet that made a point similar to the one I wanted to make, and stole the citation after that. And apparently people on the internet aren’t big on citing pages either.

Also… I thought maybe my craptacular disregard for APA style might elicit some sympathy from the prof, because it IS hard to get those damn things straight sometimes. How do you cite a paper written by four people, in a magazine compiled by 8 other people, that is technically something besides a magazine, and you found it on an online database…. Who the hell knows or cares? But of course, yesterday he sent us a great APA cheat sheet, so I have no excuse now.

But what I have to say was the worst thing about this paper, is it’s supposed to be 10 pages, and I barely got a paragraph over 5. The first 2 parts of the paper (of 4) aren’t too bad despite the fudging I mentioned earlier. They pretty much lay out aspects of the theory I’m talking about, and research that supports it. But the second 2 parts are tiny and awful. They’re supposed to be “relevance” and “importance.” Which, to me, are the same thing. But for importance, I tried to link it to other theories. This didn’t work that well, because I only knew one research article that linked it to another theory, and the rest I had to pull out of my ass. And it’s obvious that I pulled it out of my ass, because I cite no one else in this section. And the importance section is pretty much, “It’s important to us all because everyone watches TV, and even if they don’t, they hang out with people who watch TV and that affects their views too, blah blah blah.” Also pulled out of my ass and barren of citations. Frankly, if I were a professor of a 300 level class, I’d be offended if a student turned this in to me.

I don’t know what my problem is… I’m not fond of research papers in general, but no matter how much I dread them I usually do pretty darn good, if I say so myself. How can I write a whole huge thing like this simply ABOUT writing a paper, but can’t write the paper itself?

Anyway… it took me so long to do the last page and paragraph last night that I had to go to bed at 2:30. And on top of that, I had no luck falling asleep, so it was more like 4:30/5:00 by the time I finally fell asleep. Boo. Especially as I have another paper I have to work on today (though—thankfully—not a research paper, a “how-to” paper on directing at TV-10).

I had to get the research paper rant out of the way first, but now I have to mention that I’m typing this in Word. It’s been almost a week since googlies.net went down. AND, as I have told several people: since it’s Bitsy’s space, and the only contact I know for her is an e-mail addy @googlies.net, I don’t really have any way to get ahold of her and ask what’s up.

I waited awhile to see if things were going to straighten themselves out, and maybe they still will, but I’ve gotten so used to blogging every day that it feels like I’m bottling things up if I don’t post, so I’m going to be making these secret Word entries until googlies.net gets back or I manage to fix my blogspot account. Which, I dearly hope that googlies.net gets straightened out, because I was a moron and didn’t make backups. That’s almost a year of my life lost.

Good news: I keep the comics on the school server, so they’re at least safe. Until someone hacks in and messes it up, anyway. I have made a couple new ones, partly as a procrastination technique during the making of the research paper:

http://www.ilstu.edu/~alscove/comix/monkeys.jpg
http://www.ilstu.edu/~alscove/comix/grammar.jpg
http://www.ilstu.edu/~alscove/comix/t.jpg

The last business for this entry is probably to mention some of the little things I’ve wanted to blog in the last few days. Of course, I can’t remember a lot of them. And some of them, I can remember the subject, but only vaguely. Like, I had a whole thing about how I saw Man on Fire, and though it’s not my favorite or anything, I realized that Denzel Washington NEVER makes a bad movie. If there is a bad Denzel Washington movie out there, I have not seen it.

Also, how I want Jake Gylenhaal (sometimes better known as Donnie Darko) to have my babies. I had thought that that movie, “The Day After Tomorrow,” looked stupid, but then I finally saw a trailer with my future babies’ daddy in it, and he looked so good in it that I totally want to see it now.

The last thing I can remember, also to do with movies, is the Shrek II ads. And how they have a snippet of Ben Folds’ “Rockin’ the Suburbs” in it, and how I appreciate them taking the time to stick something great but a bit obscure in between the requisite Smash Mouth songs.

That’s about it for now.

(later)

Oh, I forgot to mention another thing I totally wanted to post! I’m not sure why, because it only points out how self absorbed and absent minded I am, but hey. Anyways, there’s this guy I sit behind in two of my classes and does weather on TV-10 every Friday when I’m there to crew the newscast. Up until yesterday, the third to last day of the semester, I thought that he was two separate people! It’s not like he acts all that different in class from TV-10. Or that I would have ANY reason to believe that he’s two separate people. Yet, I thought he was. And I was just staring at his back in class yesterday, and something in my brain was like, “Dude. That’s the weatherguy from TV-10!”

He also probably thinks I’m a psycho with a split personality, I always talk to him at TV-10, and never in class. Which, I don’t think he’s a split personality for not talking to me in class, because he never initiates talk with anyone in class or in TV-10. I get the impression that he’s painfully shy, which makes me wonder why he’s willing to be a weatherman at TV-10. Thanks to equipment malfunctions, we make some unsuspecting weather-person look like a giant fool at least once a week. Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, though, I guess.


Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Hunh. I stopped thinking about blogging as much since I have to type it down in Word. Also, I have been awfully busy this weekend preparing for finals/finishing up last minute projects that profs stupidly assign DURING finals. Anyway, I just came back from the Japanese cinema final, and I think I did fairly okay on it. Go me!

Also, I had a dream last night. I was in a movie or watching a movie…. sometimes it becomes not so clear when it’s a dream… and the same song kept playing over and over. And the first time or two, I was like, “Whoa, this is a good song, I like it,” but after awhile I got really angry, because I couldn’t get anyone to stop it, and it was driving me nuts.

Anyway, the problem is I fell asleep while having my headphones on, with Lifehouse’s “Cling and Clatter,” on repeat. Which, that same dream thing happened to me a long time ago when I did the same thing with a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, but I obviously do not really learn from my mistakes. And most often, I only do the one song thing to myself when I want to lull myself into being calm before I sleep, I don’t actually fall asleep while listening. And I did it for like two months with the same Better Than Ezra song, because I was trying to train myself into a pavlovian response, but after awhile I got tired of it. So that’s the overly long explanation.

Oh, another funny thing about the dream—the song would go on in the background for awhile, and I wouldn’t really pay attention, but every time it got to the part of the song where it says, “Well it’s all good if you would stop the world from making sense,” I’d get like, really homicidal. Like, “Shut UP! Stop this song! Stop it!” And I actually like that bit of the song really well usually. Good times.