08:14 am - pro-war is the new anti-war NOAM CHOMSKY: In AfPak, Afghanistan-Pakistan, as the region is now called, Obama is building enormous new embassies and other facilities on the model of the city within a city in Baghdad. These are like no embassies anywhere in the world. And they are signs of an intention to be there for a long time.
Right now in Iraq, something interesting is happening. Obama is pressing the Iraqi government not to permit the referendum that’s required by the Status of Forces Agreement. That’s an agreement that was forced down the throats of the Bush administration, which had to formally renounce its primary war aims in the face of massive Iraqi resistance. Washington’s current objection to the referendum was explained two days ago by New York Times correspondent Alissa Rubin: Obama fears that the Iraqi population might reject the provision that delays US troop withdrawal to 2012. They might insist on immediate departure of US forces. Iraqi analyst in London—the head of the Iraqi Foundation for Democracy and Development in London—it’s quite pro-Western—he explained, “This is an election year for Iraq; no one wants to appear that he is appeasing the Americans. Anti-Americanism is popular now in Iraq,” as indeed it’s been throughout, facts that are familiar to anyone who’s read the Western-run polls, including Pentagon-run polls. Well, the current US efforts to prevent the legally required referendum are extremely revealing. Sometimes they’re called “democracy promotion.”
Well, while Obama’s signaling very clearly his intention to establish a firm and large-scale presence in the region, he’s also, as you know, sharply escalating the AfPak war, following Petraeus’s strategy to drive the Taliban into Pakistan, with potentially awful results for this extremely dangerous and unstable state, which is facing insurrections throughout its territory.
08:18 pm - hi This is my fourth entry in June and the month is almost over. I don't like going too long without posting here but there's nothing I really feel like writing about. Um. Hmm.
01:22 am - Room Dog's Secret Santa (and all her hospital friends) Hi, I did that thing I do about twice a year where I make a mix CD of stuff I want to hear or want myself to hear (there's a difference) and then I listen to it a lot. This will also be good to give some variety to my MP3 player because it doesn't hold nearly as much as it's supposed to.
If you want a copy of this let me know and I'll send you a copy of this (hopefully you live in the US; otherwise perhaps you could send me the equivalent of a few dollars) because I like inflicting my music on people.
06:12 pm - wofl My friend was wondering about the waffle making process, so I made a video of me making a waffle. It includes some non-great improvisation I did on my bass, which now only has two functioning strings; I should really get it fixed.
10:21 am - philanthropy I just watched The American Ruling Class, a "dramatic documentary musical" which examines the oligarchy that runs our supposed democracy. I liked it a lot, because it was very inventive and it said a lot of things that I agree with. Also, it had brief scenes with some of my favorite old guys: Robert Altman, Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn. (The first two are dead now.)
Here's a scene I found on YouTube that I think is really cool. It involves Barbara Ehrenreich and her book Nickel and Dimed, which I haven't read yet but I highly recommend it to myself. She says a bunch of things that affirm what I believe, and then there's a musical number (with bad singing but oh well) about the book by a band called The What.
Current Music: The Mars Volta - Since We've Been Gone
05:40 am - Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game I went to see the movie 12 at the Hollywood Theatre, which shows various movies, often of the "art" variety and a few months after their first run. kotra's mom volunteers there so she gets free passes, which she gives as gifts. The movie started at 9:30 and I got to the empty theater right before then; I thought it was going to be weird watching the movie in a medium-sized theater by myself but another guy showed up soon. He let out loud, long laughs at things I only snickered at. That became interesting when there was a scene in the movie in which a character berates the other characters (and presumably humanity as a whole) for laughing all the time. The movie ended a few minutes past midnight and I walked home for 40 minutes, worrying about being assaulted. I knew this was silly because muggings are probably very rare in that part of the city, especially the well-lit major roads I was walking on. Still, I panicked a little (I hope it didn't show) when a guy walked across the street to me. He said, "Hey, brother." I said, "Hey." He said, "Do you have 50 cents you could spare?" I said, "No, sorry." The end.
I will use this opportunity to write the huge entry I've been planning with my thoughts about the media I've seen, heard, and read recently. You will probably not read all of it.
Movies/TV shows:
12: A long, slow Russian remake/adaptation of Twelve Angry Men. It was good. I haven't seen the original, which involves 12 jurors deciding whether a young black man is guilty of murdering his father; in this movie, the defendant is Chechen. Much of the film involved Chechnya, which I don't know much about because I'm a lazy American. Despite the title change, all the jurors are still men. They talked about women, all of whom were either mothers or lovers, which I'm sure a feminist film critic could use to demonstrate that the film is misogynist but I'm not up to that task. Also, I want to complain about the subtitles. Most of the time they were a shade of yellow that kept blending in with the screen, making them hard to read (and reminding me of this dumb Austin Powers scene), plus sometimes there were spacesmissing. For a few minutes in the middle they had some subtitles that were white with a slight black outline that were much easier to read, but that didn't last. Whoever was in charge of adding the subtitles wasn't paying much attention, I guess.
This grumpy article accuses the movie of being pro-Putin and pro-corruption. I don't like either of those, but I certainly didn't get that impression from the movie (but I often miss subtexts like that, even if they're obvious). The director is a big supporter of Putin, and he apparently has said that Russians are too clever to follow the law, but I don't think that means this is what the movie's about.
Star Trek: This was pretty good overall, but it was filled with the sort of ridiculous fantasy/action movie clichés that make me tired of movies that make a lot of money. Is there some requirement that movies of this sort have to have scenes where a character is in a literal cliffhanger situation where he (never she) is hanging by his hands from some high place (say, a cliff)? I think it happened three times in this movie, two of which are shown in this trailer. It's probably supposed to be thrilling but I find it completely freaking stupid. Grumble grumble. Anyway, I liked the movie despite its silliness. I was expecting it to tell a story that didn't have much relation to the Star Trek story that had already been out, but they managed to do some trickery that made it exist alongside the original, so that was good.
Anvil! The Story of Anvil: A documentary about a formerly famous metal band trying to be famous again. It had many similarities with This Is Spinal Tap, such as Stonehenge, a guy named Robb Reiner, a volume control that went up to 11, and a performance in Japan at the end. It was good.
Towelhead: A movie about racism and teenage sexuality. It was very good and very disturbing; there were many sex scenes with the 13-year-old protagonist (played by an 18-year-old), consensual and otherwise, that I really wished hadn't lasted so long.
Milk: A good movie, but not as good as I was expecting it to be. I was surprised at how strong homophobia still was in 1978, even in San Francisco. I figured that such hatred had been diminished in general by the civil rights protests of the 60s; I suppose we have to fight each aspect of bigotry individually. I really don't understand the idea that someone should be hated for doing things that harm no one. (The film showed anti-homosexual crusaders seemingly convinced that homosexuality led to pedophilia, but I think that was just a pretext to justify treating others like crap while furthering political careers.) People just suck sometimes.
"Kings": An NBC drama that feels like an HBO drama but with less swearing. It has a few things that annoy me (it insists that people who live on farms are good and pure, for example), but overall I like it a lot. That means, naturally, that it gets terrible ratings. It was moved from Sunday night to Saturday at 8 PM, perhaps the worst time slot ever, and now they've stopped showing it until June. This doesn't really affect me, though, since I usually watch it on hulu.com. I'm just lucky they haven't cancelled it altogether.
"The Wire", season two: This show is great. I want more. Hurry up and give me season 3, library.
Books:
Watchmen by Alan Moore and five gibbons: I saw the movie and thought it was good and then kotra gave me the book. The book is excellent. I'm really blow away by how good the storytelling is. I think this is the only graphic novel I've really read (I started The Sandman by Neil Gaiman but then I got distracted and now it is gone). I've read that this was a breakthrough that inspired a whole new way of doing graphic novels, particularly the mood. I recognize the hypercynical attitude of Rorschach from people I've met who are presumably into comics such as this. I get the feeling that Alan Moore wants us to believe that Rorschach's point of view is reasonable, but I don't think it applies to reality. For one thing, the character is shown to have started on his crimefighting ways after reading about Kitty Genovese, who in 1964 was murdered in view of lots of people who didn't do anything about it... except that's not what happened. As Wikipedia explains, that aspect of the story was entirely fabricated by The New York Times, but the story remains a part of our culture as a supposed insight into the true nature of humanity or whatever. Anyway, this attitude makes the comics dark and shocking and stuff, but I don't think it's a valid attitude for real people to have.
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell: A highly opinionated history lesson about the religious fanatics whose colonization gave birth to the United States: not the original pilgrims on the Mayflower, but some who came a few years later, led by John Winthrop. It was very entertaining and informative. I don't know much about the history of Christianity; I was surprised to learn that before Martin Luther did his nailing, the Catholic Church only had Bibles in Latin, so only the elites knew what it really said. Vowell has gone from the Sedaris-like personal essays of her previous books to this, which has very little about her own adventures. I found this to not be as enjoyable to read as her others, but it was still good.
At the end there's an explanation that the reason she capitalized "God" in the book was because that's what the Puritans did. It annoys me when people don't capitalize "God". Theological considerations are irrelevant; it's a proper noun (unless you're talking about a god) so not capitalizing it is just incorrect.
True Grit by Charles Portis: A Western from 1968 which was previously made into a John Wayne movie, and now the Coen Brothers are going to do their own version. Some people think it's excellent (for example, the uncle who recommended it to me) but I just thought it was kinda good. I haven't really cared much about Westerns until recently.
Music:
The Bunny Boy: The latest album by The Residents, who have been doing stuff since 1969. This is based on a series of 66 videos they released online chronicling a crazy old man obsessed with rabbits and his search for his brother. The "boy" is played by the main singer; I think his name is Homer Flynn but they keep their identities secret. I've only seen a few of the videos, but in some of them he shows his whole face, which is amazing because he always wears a mask of some sort when performing. (Maybe the huge beard is fake.) The music is great but of course The Residents are very weird so it's not for everyone.
Octahedron: The upcoming album from The Mars Volta. They've let four of the eight songs out so I guess right now it's a tetrahedron. Ha, ha, ha. The songs I have have attached themselves to my brain and won't let go, which is what Mars Volta songs do to me. I think these songs are more accessible than most of theirs, not that I know much about accessibility. This album is their shortest ever: only 50 minutes! I ache for its release.
04:48 pm - woman o' 'Nam... ow Another entry already? Gosh! Well, I wrote most of the previous one yesterday.
I feel like writing about an encounter that is almost, but not quite, interesting enough to be written about. Today I went to the library and then I went to the nearby Walgreens, which is a drug store, which means that most of what it sells isn't drugs. I wandered around, seeing if there was anything I would want to buy (unlikely, since I don't really have any money) when an old Asian lady came up to me. I think she was Vietnamese, since there are lots of elderly people from Vietnam who live here but don't speak much English, which suggests that they haven't been here long. I wonder what their story is. Anyway, this lady came up to me, holding two products: an electric toothbrush and attachments for an electric toothbrush. Without seeming to speak any English at all, she managed to politely indicate to me that she wanted me to tell her if the attachments would fit in the toothbrush. As I've said before, talking to people I don't know makes me very nervous, and if they have trouble communicating it makes it much worse. In hindsight I realize to be helpful I should have taken the packages and inspected them to find out whether the things were compatible, but I just wanted to get out of the situation as quickly and inoffensively as possible. I looked at them a little and said, "I think so," and then I said, "I don't know," shaking my head. She walked off, hopefully to find an employee to ask. I think she understood what I said but maybe she thought I was saying that they didn't fit. I don't know why she came up to me; she couldn't have thought I worked there. Maybe she didn't yet realize that the thing to do in American stores is to ask for help from the employees of the store, not just whoever's nearby. Current Music: The Mars Volta - Desperate Graves
06:18 am - comical Backlog of things I've wanted to write about but haven't felt like writing about...
Political thoughts with which you will disagree: Members of the Republican Party want to start referring to the Democratic Party as the Democrat Socialist Party. On the surface this seems like one of the stupider things the Republicans have supported; today's Democrats are practically to the right of Nixon. On further consideration I think it's not so stupid, in a devious way. They keep calling Obama a socialist when he's nowhere near socialist, though I guess in a subjective sense you could say he's closer to socialism than they are. Well, if a large part of the populace thinks that we've already got socialists in power, then the drive to go further to the left is weakened: If we're already there, why bother fighting? Of course, many of us will go along with this because our brains turn to mush when our politicians and/or media personalities start talking. I wish we were more cynical about politics and less cynical about each other. (I just noticed I was being ironic. Oops.)
Tom Tomorrow, liberal cartoonist, says: "We voted for a centrist technocrat, who campaigned as a centrist technocrat, and who promised to govern as a centrist technocrat — and now the true believers are shocked to find a centrist technocrat in the Oval Office." I don't get the feeling that a lot of people on the left really expected him to be a centrist though. (Also, I'm not sure what Mr. Tomorrow means by "technocrat", even after consulting Merriam-Webster.)
Marmaduke: possibly the worst newspaper comic to ever get a book deal. I liked it when I was a kid, mostly because the guy who does it is from where I'm from. No longer am I of the same opinion! (My tastes have, naturally, changed a lot; I was just commenting about how I used to like Full House but now I think it's an abomination.) Anyway, I came across this and it, like, totally blew my mind. It's a Freudian interpretation of the comic that reveals its presumably unintended psychological whatsit: Marmaduke represents what we have to give up in order to be accepted by society. Even without the discussions of the comic, it's very eye-opening for me. I wish I were patient and/or intelligent enough to read more stuff like this, even if it may be true that pop psychology is useless compared to the pure stuff.
Also I must point out that Freud was mostly full of crap.
Perhaps interestingly, here is a list of fictional people I follow on Twitter:
John Campbell: An actual person, the guy who does pictures for sad children, but the stuff he posts to Twitter is fictional and fantastical and amusing.
El Borracho: The guy from the old Furcadia-related fake newspaper The Muskrat regales us with tales of alcohol abuse.
Parnassus Film: Well, I'm not sure what's going on here. It's related to Terry Gilliam's upcoming film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Heath Ledger's last movie; also contains Tom Waits). It seems to alternate between talking about the movie and talking from the perspective of its title character. I wonder if it's Terry Gilliam who writes this.
Stephen Colbert: The character of Stephen Colbert, not the real person. He posts amusingly dumb thoughts and comments on the show. I presume it's the real Stephen Colbert updating this, though the character seems to need a whole team of writers.
Roland Hedley: A character from Doonesbury, updated by Garry Trudeau (the guy who does Doonesbury). Doonesbury is, in my opinion, the best traditional comic still appearing in newspapers.
Fake Demetri: Someone pretending to be Demetri Martin, a comedian who recently had his own show on Comedy Central. I was convinced it was really him until he stated, vaguely, that it wasn't. A few weeks before that, he had the name DemetriMartin, but that account was "suspended due to strange activity", which really doesn't explain anything; the FakeDemetri account appeared in its place with all the same followers and such which just confused me. Fake Demetri said "Twitter CIA says I can't be RealDemetri", which I (and most of his followers, apparently) took to mean that Twitter just messed up and he was using the FakeDemetri name as a joke. Rainn Wilson, semi-famous TV actor, was also duped until someone told him otherwise. I think I originally found out about the account through John Hodgman, who also thought it was the real him. Shouldn't somewhat famous people know about each other? Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
Current Music: The Mars Volta - With Twilight As My Guide
Everything's clear now. I've become aware of how dirty our apartment is. I didn't know there were specks of cat litter in the carpet.
I was told they would be ready in 10 days, and that was 18 days ago and I hadn't heard anything so I figured they were ready and I just hadn't gotten the call. It turns out that I got the call right as I was walking there. Coincidence! It was raining a lot so I thought it would be a good idea to put this off, but I try not to put things off so I went ahead and got very wet. If I were smart I would have taken the bus. Oh well.
Yay, eyesight. Current Mood: glassy Current Music: 10,000 Maniacs - The Big Parade
04:00 pm - bork bork bork Things that have broken recently:
The washing machine. Yesterday, exhausted from not much sleep, I walked to a laundromat .8 miles away (says Google) with a large suitcase full of clothes. Halfway there I realized I forgot to bring laundry detergent, so I had to turn around. It wasn't too unpleasant, though. My suitcase has wheels so I didn't have to carry it. Also, despite the stress my mp3 player gives me, it was very nice to be able to listen to music as I walked.
kotra's computer. Hooray for having a backup computer which is very slow.
The cable box. Tetris, wounded cat with not much control over what comes out of her, peed on it. She's just a bunch of unpleasantness, figuring out how to get under the plastic on the couch and pee on it no matter how hard we try (though kotra says we haven't tried very hard but I disagree). Also, usually when I try to pet her she gets angry and suddenly there are sharp teeth and claws going for my hand. Anyway, the cable box isn't a huge loss because a few weeks ago the cable company sent us a new thing for their digital conversion and I hooked that up and the TV looks a whole lot better (the previous one must have had something wrong with it because the color was a bit off and the TV made an angry noise when the screen had too much white on it). It has less features, though; there's no channel guide so it doesn't tell us what's on when we change channels.
01:10 pm - you can't catch me Yesterday was full of stuff. There wasn't much food and I like to eat things (which means I'm a terrible person and I don't deserve to live, according to society; hooray for society) so I made cookies. I used this "egg replacer" which, mixed with warm water, produces a substance similar to eggs. By itself it tasted awful but within the batter it worked fine and the cookies came out well. I also played Settlers of Catan a lot. This is a board game that has a pretty decent online version. I enjoy it a lot, and I've played it about 50 times so far... but I've never won. I've come very close to winning but it just doesn't happen. This seems totally absurd.
Eventually I tried to go to sleep but that didn't happen despite my mental fatigue. I'm glad I was awake because everything I was waiting for in the mail arrived. First I went out to the mailbox and a computer part (SATA to IDE power converter, which I ordered through eBay cheap from someone in Hong Kong) was there. I thought that was the mail for yesterday's today but it must have been Saturday's, because later a mailman knocked on the door and I had to sign for two huge packages. I think he was deaf based on how he talked but he must have been able to read my lips. I am of course very nervous around most people, and people with difficulties communicating make me especially nervous. (How awkward it will be if I ever meet myself.) That and the haze of fatigue distracted me from paying attention to the door, and the little black cat escaped. Oh! how Tetris yearns to go outside; and oh! how we can't let her. I told the mailman I had to go catch her and I motioned towards the animal running away to make sure he understood and my feet were bare and it was raining. I chased her out into the, uh, dirt part of the, uh, place, and she didn't want to be caught, but eventually I got her. I ran back and put the cat inside and closed the door and signed the sheet the mailman had, then I waited while he went to get my boxes. He also had the rest of the day's mail.
In the boxes were things my mom had been intending to send me for about two years. There was a waffle iron, and I just had a waffle and it was good. There were clothes and books and measuring cups and various other things. Most importantly, there were flutes: the professional metal one I got in 10th grade and the little wooden one my mom got me at a few years ago when she was, ironically, visiting this city, long before I had any inkling that I'd be moving here. This is a video demonstration of said flutes:
Also in the mail was an mp3 player, which I ordered through eBay from someone in Hong Kong. It cost me $21, which I thought was a good deal; upon fiddling with it I thought it was a fair price; and upon learning of its deficiencies I think I paid too much. The file system is messed up. I try uploading things and it does crazy stuff like this and this in Windows and the failed files don't show up in the player. Plus it doesn't let me delete these messed up files unless I format the whole thing. Pfui! That doesn't happen with everything I try to put on the device, though; some of it plays fine. (I recently tried filling it to its 8 GB capacity and about 2 GB made it through.) I still look forward to being able to hold music on a tiny thing like this; I've been wanting an mp3 player for a long time. Perhaps if I fiddle with it enough I'll find a way to get it to work fine, but otherwise I will see about sending it back and then waiting a long time to get a new one and maybe that one won't work right either.
In any case, I'm going to stop buying things through eBay from people in Hong Kong. Current Music: The White Stripes - Hotel Yorba
12:11 am - the vegetable must be destroyed I haven't written here in a while. Often when I haven't written here in a while, I write here about how I haven't written here in a while. There are constantly things I want to write about, but... I just don't feel like it, I guess. I used to update this at least once a day, often with random thoughts and links, but I suppose that's what Twitter is for now.
Part of the agreement of my continued existence at this apartment is that I do work for kotra. He hasn't had much for me to do lately so a little while ago he asked me to grow some vegetables. My experience with my mom's garden makes me hate gardening, but so far it's been easy: take a pot, add dirt, add a plant, add water. I'm not too sure about what I'm doing (mostly I do what kotra tells me but he doesn't know a lot about it either) so I hope this results in benevolent growths.
Pictures: ( Pictures. ) Current Music: Primus - Constantinople
01:13 am - You know you're talking a lot of bollocks, don't you? Prediction: Misspellings of "bastard" will skyrocket when Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is released. The same thing happened with The Santa Clause; even though the (crappy) movie makes it clear that the E is tacked on to make a pun, the title has confused many people into thinking that "Claus" is spelled "Clause". Damn you, Tim Allen!
I think I'm a bit obsessive about words and their correct usage, even though I get things wrong all the time. I used to be kind of a jerk about it before I realized that English is a horrible, horrible language that no human being is capable of fully understanding.
It's amusing to watch this and then to watch this... or maybe it's amusinger to watch them in the other order. British people are funny. Current Mood: frivolous Current Music: you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man
12:56 am - I'm a wizard wizard a wizard wizard a wizard man Today I went to a bunch of places and spent a lot of money. I've known for a long time that I need glasses but I haven't really had a chance to get around to getting them. America's Best has not only a dumb name but also an amazing deal: an eye exam, two pairs of glasses, and five cents for $70. I scheduled an exam for today at 11:00. I thought it would take 45 minutes to walk there, but we left at 10:00 and arrived at 11:05 because I suck at being prepared for finding things and went the wrong way for a bit. I had to wait for a while anyway so it didn't matter that I was late. I looked into machines and answered questions for a while. If I remember correctly, I was told that one eye had 20/100 vision and the other was 20/120, which seems like a whole lot more than it should be, especially since I was able to pass the vision test for a driver's license a few years ago (maybe it's gotten worse, but I haven't noticed that). After that they set me loose on the small selection of glasses they had for that deal... although, really, I'm glad there wasn't a huge amount of glasses to choose from since I'm no good at deciding how things such as myself should look. I asked kotra to come along and help me decide because of this. The final decision between two pairs actually came down to a woman who just happened to be there; she said square frames looked better on me than round ones. Now I have to wait 10 days for them to be made (but it's cheap so whatever) and then I will be able to read things that are far away.
The person who took my money commented that I looked nervous, which makes me worry that it's easy to tell when I'm nervous. I don't want people to know when I'm nervous because I get nervous in situations where it's not expected for someone to be nervous so I'd rather they not be aware of it. I guess that's a silly thing to worry about. Anyway, I was indeed very nervous, which is to be expected when I'm confronted with unfamiliar things. It really feels like a blindness when I'm in situations I'm not familiar with. I find myself unable to see certain obvious things, or to think in ways that are easy when I'm more comfortable. I gather that the average person will notice, for example, the big sign that says "LINE STARTS HERE" without much trouble, but for me it's as if details like that physically do not exist until I've looked at them for a while or they're pointed out to me (and often someone has to point something out multiple times, when they're clearly only expecting an intelligent person to need pointing out once, and then I want to disappear). I've been told many times that the cure to nervousness is confidence, but the idea that I can get over this kind of mental block through confidence alone sounds far-fetched and leads me to believe that someone who suggests this doesn't really understand my problem. Nervousness often creates more nervousness (I feel stupid about being nervous and that makes me more nervous); confidence would ease this secondary nervousness but it wouldn't do much for the main thing.
Anyway.... After that I went to a nearby Target and kotra followed me around while reading Dune. There are lots of stores where I live but until I saw the Target I didn't know of one that sells new clothes for cheap... aside from Wal-Mart, but like any good liberal I'm morally opposed to Wal-Mart, though I'm sure there are reasons to be morally opposed to Target as well so I guess that's cheating. I got some shoes that were cheap (probably made by tragically exploited workers, but, as the kids say, pics or it didn't happen) because I'm tired of having secondhand shoes all the time. They are nice shoes.
We were both very hungry so I wanted to get food things to put in my mouth but kotra wanted to check out a Vietnamese tofu place near where we live (there's a moderate population of people in this area who seem to be recently from Vietnam; I wonder if there's an interesting reason behind this) so we walked most of the way back, tired and hungry. We looked at stuff in the tofu place and kotra, who is very serious about his vegetarianism, was worried that the stuff they had there would have meat in it and he didn't want to ask for fear of sounding foolish. We went to eat at a cafe nearby instead. I ordered a chicken sandwichy thing and kotra ordered a vegetable calzoney thing. When he started eating it he became suspicious of its ingredients. He went and asked the guy who gave us our stuff what exactly was in it and he was assured it was just vegetables. Kotra came back and looked at it some more but remained suspicious, which I thought was silly of him. Eventually he went to ask the guy again, and the guy came over to explain what exactly was going on with the vegetables, and then the guy felt terrible because it turned out that there was a mislabeling and kotra had been given chicken. The guy apologized profusely and kotra seemed to feel sick. He was given a vegetable calzoney thing as well as a voucher for free drinks, but I don't think he'll be going back there.
We went home and then we went out again a few hours later to go to a thing at a theater. We were too late for the bus I wanted and then the bus after that took longer than it was supposed to, so we got there at the time the thing was to start. Plus we were expecting to be able to use our debit cards but we couldn't, so we had to run over to an ATM. Fortunately, the thing was moved from 7:00 to 7:30. I wanted to get there early so that we could get seats close to the stage so that I could see okay. The last time we went to this theater was when Ralph Nader was there, and I had to sit way in the back in the balcony and everything was a blur. We lucked out again, though, because we managed to get some seats near the front. I still couldn't see the people's faces very well, though. In 10 days this will no longer be a problem!
The people we saw were Brendon Small and Loren Bouchard and Melissa Bardin Galsky and Ron Lynch. They were creators and/or voice actors of the animated show Home Movies, which debuted 10 years ago and ended 5 years ago. They're here for a big comedy festival that's going on. First, an episode of the show (this one) was shown on the huge screen behind them, and they were intended to provide commentary but they gave up on that after a few minutes. It was interesting to watch it in a big theater packed full of fans of the show. After that, they talked about the show and then the audience asked them questions and it was all very funny and I laughed a lot.
What I learned today: No matter how hard I try, I will always be late, but things will work out anyway. Current Mood: YAWN!!!
12:34 am - Come, pewter! My computer case finally arrived, so I was able to put my new computer together. This was a pain because there weren't many instructions, so I had to figure a lot of stuff out, which was frustrating and time-consuming. Things have changed a bit since the last time I fiddled with new computer equipment. I hadn't even heard of SATA hard drives until recently, but this power supply expects me to use those. It only has two connectors for IDE drives, so when I want to use two hard drives I have to disconnect my CD drive. Right now I'm using this to scan the hard drive that exploded. It seems to be finding all my files, but some of the filenames are lost, and it's taking a really long time.
This is a fairly good computer, at least compared to the previous one I had. It doesn't feel fast, it just feels not slow. It has 4 GB of RAM (which is the same amount of memory the hard drive in my first computer had), which is supposedly the maximum the motherboard can handle, but it's only reading 3 GB. I'm told Windows XP can't handle 4 GB anyway, so... oh well, it was cheap. I have that attitude about many of the computer's failings. There's a thing in the front of the computer containing a headphone jack, which would be very handy since my speakers don't have one so I would keep having to reach behind the computer to switch between the two. Unfortunately, it requires having some crappy software installed. It reminds me of a dog. Whenever you plug something in, it very happily informs you that you plugged something in, and then it asks you what you plugged in. Normally this would just be annoying, but it keeps telling me I've plugged in something when I've done no such thing. As far as I can tell, there's no way to turn this off. I've tried various ways of getting the driver loaded without the software but so far I've been unsuccessful. Current Music: John Vanderslice - Exodus Damage
08:05 pm - no baka for me, thanks; I'm full Today was easter than yesterday, so I went to kotra's mom's house to have an egg and candy celebration with kotra, his mom, his dad, his brother, his sister-in-law, his sister, his mom's roommate, and his dad's girlfriend. (It's amazing how well his separated parents get along, especially compared to my own parents.) We did an egg hunt in teams sorted by gender. First, the men (kotra, at 23, was the youngest person there) hid eggs and baskets around the house while the women walked the dog, then they came back and looked for the things we hid; then the reverse* occurred. It was lots of fun. For whatever reason I've been more comfortable around people than usual lately, but it won't surprise me if this comfort goes away. We each got a basket full of candy, which is good because I like candy, but it's also bad because I like candy. I have trouble resisting such things. (I think that if I stopped eating unnecessary things altogether and exercised more often, I would lose maybe 20 or 30 pounds, and then I would still be obese but more unhappy. Of course, I'm not an expert on this, so everything I think about it is completely incorrect.) Kotra was in a funny sugar-induced mood, so I asked him to make this voice post, the terrible transcription of which made at least one person think I really had broken my leg. When we came home we brought kotra's mom's old monitor, so now I can use both of the computers I use without carrying my monitor around, though it's a bit late to be useful at this point since my new computer will probably be ready tomorrow or übermorgens, which is German for "silly disaster movie".
I've been watching a lot of things lately. I will tell you about them!
The Wire: An excellent HBO series that neuk recommended. She gave me a torrent of the first season to download, and I watched the first 5 episodes and then accidentally deleted them all. I prefer DVDs anyway, so I requested the first season from the library, but it took a long time to be available. I've said that I admire The Sopranos for its realism, but The Wire feels a whole lot more real, except that the characters are constantly saying meaningful things. (I like realism and surrealism, but it irks me when fiction is just plain unrealistic. Of course, you can't replicate reality in any medium, which leads some people to conclude that trying for realism is useless, but I disagree with them! I further digress by pointing out that I think it's genius how realism and surrealism are used together in The Sopranos, which uses dream sequences to help tell the story in ways that can't be done, uh, literally.) I was surprised by The Wire's ultra-cynical tone, depicting police detectives who aren't interested in right and wrong, but just care about doing their job well. Apparently this is how most police really are, at least in Baltimore, and it makes sense.
Ranma ½: Anime shown on Japanese TV from 1989 to 1992. Kotra keeps borrowing the DVDs from the library and insisting I watch it with him, but I think we both agree that it's trash. Mostly it suffers from bad writing. The characters are improbably stupid and never change, the stories are mostly weak and extremely predictable, and, despite the fact that about 10 people are listed in the credits under "continuity", there really isn't much of that. Example: When the character Ryoga is introduced, a big deal is made about how nobody but him can lift his umbrella, yet soon after that we see many people picking it up without any difficulty. This is not the kind of thing that happens in a decent TV show. I haven't watched much anime but I hope most of it is better than this. I think a big part of the problem is that it's aimed at people much younger than us. However, despite the crappiness, it is often enjoyable to watch. The interactions between the characters can be interesting, and the show is frequently amusing, sometimes on purpose. Also, I get to learn a little about Japanese culture and language. (We watch it with the original audio and subtitles, because the English dub is an atrocity. The dialogue is a lot stupider and the sub-par voice actors portraying teenagers all sound like they're over 30.) Things I've learned about Japanese people: They can fly, and they're immortal despite often worrying about death, which is good because they are incapable of reproducing since no one is ever in a committed relationship. (Extramarital sex also doesn't exist, but that's to be expected.)
Adaptation: A movie written by Charlie Kaufman. I'd seen most of the other movies he's written and I liked them, so I finally got around to seeing this one. It was very good... until the "third act", which was terrible and completely ruined the movie for me. It wasn't a serious ending, in that it was satire, but that doesn't redeem it much. It could have had a satirically bad ending and still have been a good movie, but this is not what happened.
Choke: An adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel, which I read a few years ago. I think Palahniuk is only an okay writer, but I was still excited to see this movie. I often have a hard time watching a movie when I've read a book, because I don't absorb the information in the way I would if I weren't familiar with the story. This is especially relevant here, since (like in Fight Club, also a movie from a book by this guy) there's a big twist at the end. I found the movie to be mediocre; I think the director/screenwriter just isn't great at movies. I thought the performances by Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, and Kelly Macdonald were great, though. (I feel the urge to mention that Rockwell and Macdonald were both in the Hitchhiker's Guide movie; Rockwell was Zaphod and Macdonald had a tiny part as a news anchor.)
The Up Series: A British documentary-thing that started in 1963 with interviews of several 7-year-olds. Then, every 7 years, they were interviewed again, and comparisons with their earlier selves are shown. I think this is the sort of thing that's interesting to me but boring to most people. So far I've watched "7 Up", "Seven Plus Seven" (when they were 14, of course), and "21 Up". I wonder what's going to have happened to them next!
Words in this entry that Firefox says aren't words, and I don't understand why: mom, roommate, movie, anime, crappiness, olds, Firefox. That is some crappy spell checking, I must say. Current Mood: lucid
“Hello, this is Desta. I'm just sitting here at the Cultures Mom house I guess that's what you call it. I'm just sitting here I handed for some Easter egg to spend the night. So I was on the stairs and then I broke my leg and found in the hospital but I kinda contradict for those things earlier about being at the Cultures Mom apartment but you know how I am. I don't make much sense at all. What's that Aimee? Yeah Aimee says that I hit my head and now I'm kinda fucked up. So that's probably why I'm so indecisive about where exactly I am. So I don't know that's just how, that was going on 2 weeks ago inquang(?) and etc jelly beans and brengs(?) and off to bluetobega(?) falling from the sky. So that's how I am and I hope that see a lama guy. What's his name? ___ I hope, hope things to go Myles is to get, buy some dinner tonight because you know I kinda like him and I wanted to get to know him better. You know it's maybe we might hit it off so I like to hear from you ___ will you say, will you say you appreciate my call after I'm done. Hope so.”
07:10 pm - I enjoy social occasions. Thought that's too long for Twitter: The amount an online discussion annoys me is inversely proportional to how long it takes for the people in the discussion to go from talking about the original topic to talking about or just plain insulting each other. I gather that lots of people derive great enjoyment from insulting others or reading/listening to others' insults, but when I see that kind of thing it just makes me sick of people in general.
Actually, lots of things have been doing that lately.
On a wholly unrelated note, I took this "Asperger Test". It's one of those things that asks you how much you agree to a statement, and then asks it again later on in a slightly different manner, apparently expecting you not notice that it's the same thing. It makes sure you understand that this isn't meant to diagnose you or anything; that is quite obvious, but I disagree with the notion sometimes put forth by the terribly arrogant that something like this is completely worthless and should be avoided at all costs. In any case, I got a score of 26 on this, which puts me closer to Asperger Syndrome than most people but it isn't quite there. I used to wonder if I had AS until I read up on it, and I decided that, no, I probably don't. People sometimes suggest that I might have it, though others say that anyone who professes to have this or any syndrome is just making excuses for not trying hard enough; this view tends to come from the sort of person who tries so hard not to sound naïve that they just end up sounding stupid. Well anyway, the site describes traits of AS as "obsessive attention to detail, social awkwardness, and some difficulty relating to other people". The last two are definitely me, and the first one is not. Maybe I pay attention to detail, but not obsessively.
I wasn't intending for this entry to be a bunch of complaining about groups of people who annoy me, but... that's how it turned out. Oh well. Current Mood: grumpy and craving a burger
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