Just a Shade

The buildings of my apartment complex encircle a small pond.  There are ducks that live in the pond.  These ducks have provided me with months of amusement.  Every time I see a duck, I laugh, at least on the inside. No, it's out loud, for everyone to see and to be made uncomfortable.

There's like 3 pairs of ducks that live in the pond, and one of the lady ducks is always squawking at the others (I actually have no idea if it's the same one or not... they're ducks, they look exactly the same, at least from my vantage point).  It's not really a straight up 'quack,' either, more like a 'whak,' or even an 'ack.' I don't really hear the 'qua' at all, and being someone who has never really paid attention before, I don't know if that's normal or not.  Onomatopoeia isn't an infallible practice! Maybe they've never quacked!  Maybe Big Grammar is just playing us, LIKE USUAL.  Everything I know is a lie!

I bet if I was some kind of duck scientist, I could tell them apart and know the secrets of her caterwauling.  I wonder if Ornithologists can specialize in water fowl, or if it's like just a blanket knowledge of birds and bird-related particulars.  Without looking it up, I'm gonna go ahead and say yes.  Yes, you can specialize in duckology.  

I wonder what strain of duck is the one that you can get fried up at Chinese restaurants.  Probably not some greasy mallard, that'd be like being served a street pigeon and being told it was a fancy squab*! 

*I don't actually know, maybe that's offensive to all my duck-enthusiast readers.  I claim ignorance and apologize. 

Anyway, this loud lady duck is hilarious.  I immediately anthropomorphized her:

Mrs. Eunice Duckington

She's a naggy old lady, always gossiping and disapproving of others.  She gripes to her old ducsband (duck husband) about, 'the world today,' and generally pesters him about taking out the trash and stuff.  Just blah, blah, blah, all day.  Always has an opinion about something. Mr. Duckington, Harold, had his spirit broken by the incessantness long ago.  Now he paddles around with his weird, webby feet in my pond, eyes glazed over, tail feathers lackluster, half-listening and half-alive, waiting for the day someone drops an entire loaf of bread in the pond so he can eat all of it until his stomach explodes and he dies. Damn, Harold, hopefully your lifespan isn't too long.  I really know nothing about ducks.

Sometimes, when I'm watching the pond, she's acting all feisty. She not only 'acks,' she rushes the other gals!  Feisty Duck, in my mind, looks like this: 

Brittanie CharityJasmine Mallard

Brittanie CharityJasmine (yes, that's ONE word) Mallard just lives in this pond until her lawsuit pays off, or her man gets out of prison, or her baby-daddy starts being responsible and pays her the money she's owed. 

Miss Mallard is personally offended by most things, and often thinks she's being insulted and/or challenged to fight.  When that happens, she takes off her earrings from the holes on the sides of her head where her ears presumably are (ducks must have ears, but I've never seen one.  Omg, I've never seen any type of bird ear! There's just so much in this world I do not know, you guys. wow), pulls her beaded and braided hair back into a fat rubber band that she stole from her part time job at the auto parts store, and flaps herself right over to bust some bitches up.  She's mostly talk though.  

The other ducks will be all, "W.T.F?!" 

And she's all like,  "Yeah, that's RIGHT! I'll mess you UP if you disrespect me again! 

Sylvia Plath is most DEFINITELY the best representation of feminist authors in the last century!!"  

Just kidding, she's mad about meth.  It's always about meth. 

The ducks also waddle when they're walking around, looking for crumbs (bugs? grass? Spicy Salsa?  Yet again, I know almost nothing), and that is also the most fun.  They have those flappy webbed feet and it's just so ridiculous. I have no idea why, but they make me giggle with delight.  Not those Canadian geese though. Those guys can get fucked.  Go back to Canadia!! 

I have seriously thought about these ducks a lot.  My bedroom window faces the pond, and I can hear the quacking all the time and I think it's just the funniest. 

 It has recently come to my attention that not many people see the world like I do.  I mean, ducks??  That's a weird thing to find amusing when you're not a toddler.  

But I think I've always been off like that though; my favorite movie when I was 12 was Terminator 2.  Total Recall was a close second, very good, watched it a lot (open your mind, Qaaaaid).  But I also loved Tiny Toons and played with my Aladdin-themed Barbie dolls and had a pink bike.  Then every Saturday I would stay up to watch Saturday Night Live.  Is that weird for a kid?  Maybe I was just poorly supervised.

Looking back on things, I feel like my much older sister taking me to see Natural Born Killers at the local theater when I was 13 may not have been appropriate.  But it was funny and weird and super violent and she thought I'd like it, and I did.  My dad had all the Monty Python movies on video tape, and we'd watch them all the time, and then quote it to each other. A LOT (neeigh).  

There are other things that make me feel slightly off in the world. Not completely out of place, superseding lonely or miserable, mind you, but just a shade different: 

- I'm the only person in my entire family that is left handed.  Aunts, Uncles, all sorts of cousins, on both sides of my family are all righties.  My kids and their dad and his family are all righties too.  I know a bunch of lefties, but a lot of them are ambidextrous.  ('I write with my left hand, but play sports right handed.'  'I pretty much only write with my left, but everything else is with my right.')  I am 99% left handed (ambi-mouser).  Let me tell you, it is not easy finding a small sized baseball glove for a left-handed 11 year old.  

Interesting side note: I remember when I was really young I had terrible hand writing.  'Well, she's left handed!" was about all the feedback I'd get.  I was a hopeless case when at  six, doomed to write messy and be backwards forever, just 'cause.  Grandma gave up trying to teach me how to crochet after one session because I was doing it backwards.  Or at least she thought I was.  Maybe Grandma had a drinking problem...

- In middle school, I was seemingly the average, normal girl: blonde hair and blue eyes, good smile, not a fatty, was generally nice, friendly and non-threatening.  But, when boys started to realize their own cuteness and tried to flirt with me, I would freak the fuck out.  Remember sixth grade flirting?  So terrible.  Those cocky kids that thought they were amazing made me want to punch their teeth out. My virulent reactions scared them all off eventually, which is exactly what I wanted, but completely unexpected.  I mean, what gave them the right?  Is that weird?  

I feel like my other friends loved it when Cutie McPopular came over to our girl-circle on the playground and said, "Hiiiiii, Giiiirls!" I saw his shit-eating grin and heard that condescending tone and told him to fuck off.  Twice.  

There are many, many other examples. 

On the one hand, I like being the way I am.  I find so much beauty and amusement in so many things!  I am comfortable with and excellent at layering my weirdness, dialing it way back when the situation calls for it. Not really because I want to 'fit in', I that's not going to happen, it's more because I don't want to waste my time.  I don't want to explain that joke, I simply have other stuff to do.

Dialing it back means I try to carefully pick out things I'm going to say, because most of the time I don't think my points come across properly, especially when they're peppered with quotes from the Simpsons; it's made me more concise and direct (or... maybe I just THINK that I think differently than other people.  Maybe it's a defense mechanism against my own banality.  Maybe everyone feels the same way, but I'm just uncouth and or conceited enough to break that 4th wall. Ugh, I'm exhausting.  It's like this ALL the time in my head), which can only be determined to be a good thing.

On the other hand, I don't connect with most people very well, even if I do try.  Practice has afforded me the ability to get along with most people, most of the time, but being friendly and having friends are two very different concepts.  I don't mind having only one or two friends, but that's just one more thing that makes me feel slightly askew.

I'm not very good at romantic relationships either.  I can say things pretty directly, and it has hurt people.  I am generally inquisitive and ask questions, and not everyone appreciates it.  I don't have judgmental and/or invasive intentions, but that's the way my actions seem to be interpreted.  Aggressive people make me anxious, so I usually end up with quiet, passive people that either don't know how or don't want to deal with that level of introspection.  

Example: When someone says, "Oh yeah, I have real issues with XYZ," and someone else (i.e., me) asks why, it doesn't usually end well.  Folk get defensive, and rightly so.  I'm no psychologist, and even if I was, they most likely weren't looking for therapy.  I can't help it though, questions just come out of my face!  Not knowing, in general also makes me anxious and I'm trying to let some of that go.  I'm working on it, future-boyfriend-that-probably-doesn't-exist.  I promise.

It also hasn't done me any favors.  I haven't been able to use my differentness to stand out in a crowd and get that big promotion, or shine in academia or achieve success in some other arena.  It mostly just makes me not want to drink the proverbial kool-aid, which gets you labeled as 'uncooperative,' and 'churlish,' and 'prone to setting fires.'   

Sometimes, not as much as it used to, but sometimes, these discolorations make me feel broken. Unlovable.  Useless.  Maladroit. 

But, on the other other hand, ducks. 

May as well be Magic

I haven't written anything in while. A long, long while.  There are things to catch up on, but not today.  Maybe not ever.  It depends on how much I want to pick that scab.  I do like picking scabs though.  And squeezing whiteheads and watching people cut open and drain various cysts on you tube.  Goddamn, I'm disgusting.

Anyway.

I was sitting in traffic the other day, idling my life away with the rest of the suburbanites commuting slowly towards our inevitable deaths, when I realized what a remarkable thing I was sitting in, being powered by one of the greatest feats of engineering that has ever existed: the internal combustion engine.

Think about it for a second.  Engines are everywhere:

Lawnmower?
     You know it, baby!

Rocket ship?
     YES! (times 1,000) Literal rocket science!

Ten trillion cars and SUVs and vans and motorcycles and buses and semi trucks and go-carts and trucks?
     OMG, so much yessing.

The motherfucking Titanic?
     Um ....Maybe?

I like the study of etiology, or origin stories for you comic book geeks.  I remember in sixth grade science class we were studying the color spectrum and wavelengths and such, and I had a hard time grasping the concept.  I eventually got the basic rules, but it wasn't until I was an adult, and I read how this amazing piece of science was discovered, that I finally, whole-heartedly got it.  I guess what I'm saying is that I can't just take someone's word for it that something is true.  In fact, I love learning how someone figured something out way more than the actual thing that resulted from said figurings.

Sometimes, the inspirations and computations of a regular-style scientist may as well be magic; ideas are plucked from the air, new math is created (or discovered, depending on how you look at it), and things that didn't exist are now things!

There's a great book about the history of astrophysics that really dug deep and explained some serious science; it turned a part on in my mind that I didn't know was there.  Sometimes, in that old brain-attic, where it's always musty and dark (and a teeny bit spooky because the overhead light (that's just a naked bulb on a string) is always wafting pendulously from some unknown draft leaking in through an old creaky rafter), there are amazing things hiding just beyond the shadows.  One day, whether it be out of desperation, boredom or drunken meandering, when you sneak up there, inch by terrible, horrifying inch, and shakily reach your arm up directly over your head to pull that beaded chain-string, your life is never quite the same.  I guess my long and rambly metaphor is trying to say that I didn't used to be super interested in sciencey and/or mathmaticalesque things, but I am now.

Back to engines.

I looked up some information on the internal combustion engine. I wanted to know how someone could have figured, invented and designed such a meritorious tool! There's so much mechanical engineering involved: formulas and graphs and diagrams; I had no idea what I was reading about. I downgraded my readings to a turbine, which is, as best I can figure it, akin to a windmill:  'something' (i.e. wind) pushes 'some stuff' (i.e. blades), which creates 'movement' and then 'some energy gets made' and it's all very mathematical and interesting.  I've got much more to learn. The point is, it's something that revolutionized the world, and we don't even think about how remarkable a thing it is.

Then I got to thinking about other stuff, like running water.  Think about this shit for a minute: we get clean, temperature controlled water DELIVERED inside our homes for practically nothing.  How many people in the history of the world can summon drinking water on command in their underpants at 3 a.m.?  There are places in the world, TODAY, this very moment, that do not have access to clean water and here we are, complaining that it doesn't get hot enough, or that it gets too hot, or that it 'has a taste' and is therefore unworthy of being ingested without being filtered using some fancy reverse osmosis process or charcoal bits or something.

Sewers!  Can you imagine what is was like some hundreds of years ago, when there was no indoor plumbing?  Our shit is whisked away, never to be thought of again.  Transported directly from our own homes, practically for free.  People used to shit in the gutters. Or if it was in the middle of the night, they'd shit in a small pot, then fucking toss it out the window in the morning.  TOSS IT OUT THE WINDOW.  Also, ever heard of Diptheria? Typhiod? Disentairy? Cholera?  Typhus?  Poo diseases. Sewers, man, they've saved millions!

And like, how many people did it take to map out those sewers?  Planning which pipes go where? How does that never get messed up and the outgoing pipe crosses with an incoming one and we get piss water?  That never happens!  Rain water even has a place to fucking go! Roads and gutters are designed in such a way to minimize flooding and maximize kicking ass.

There are so many wonderful, miraculous inventions that have made our lives longer, easier, and healthier! But it seems we just acclimate and remain unsatisfied and miserable with different things. Examples: I want a newer, shinier car, with a better engine! My co-workers get fed up with the climate controls in my office so quickly: 'omg, it is always way too hot in here and it's the worst- unless it's too cold and then that's also the worst.' (I should include myself in that complaint-athon, I'm not above hating that thermostat's guts). Are we so spoiled and privileged that we greedily snatch up the newest video game then immediately demand the sequel (version 2.0 has twice the disimbowlings!!) or newest and most expensive fad item?

"NO, Mom, you idiot! I have Bloodstorm, and Bone Squad and Bloodstorm II, Stupid!"

(I added the picture so people younger than me will understand the reference. And also, people older than me... Ok, if you're not exactly the same age as me, you probably won't get this and therefore don't know and love the Simpsons like I do and honestly I've lost some respect for you.)

It is entirely possible we are a species of limited appreciation, that we're spoiled and greedy and selfish, always out to take it all, at any cost.  But that's the easy answer.  The Matrix answer.  The Wall-E answer.  

That's right, we're not headed towards an apocalyptic future where everything is super fucked and we lost the battle with the machines because we greedily push the limits of AI for our own desire of domination and ultimate control of everything.  Nor are we headed towards a life so convenient and catered-to that we fill the earth up with trash and use up all the natural resources so we have to go on a spaceship and hang out in hover chairs with cupcakes-in-a-cup and leave some cute little robot behind to clean up our mess for 500 years (you wouldn't really expect that coming from Pixar, but that movie is sooo dark underneath the robot love story.  But then again, maybe you should expect it.  Ever seen Up?  Makes you want to pry your eyeballs out with a dull and rusty ice pick so you can stop witnessing the sadness that is making you cry like a baby. In the first five minutes).   

Our future is going to be Star Trek.  A peaceful, non-impoverished species dedicated to intellectual pursuits and exploring and understanding the universe so as to better understand ourselves.  And also having freaky sex with humanoid-aliens.

Us human folk, we're seekers.  We explore, we discover, we advance and grow.  We acclimate to the next best thing so quickly not to latch on to a shinier misery, but so we can be inspired and motivated and then invent another wonderful thing.  It pushes us up the evolutionary ladder, one rung at a time, for infinity.  I have hope bordering on reverence for our future.  

Maybe you think I'm being naive, imaginary reader of mine (yes, I am aware of the current POTUS, and also yes, I have seen what we've done to the shrinking rain forest and the melting ice caps). Maybe you think everything is so fucked up right now that we have crossed the tipping point and are sliding into annihilation.

Maybe you're right.

But I can see magic.

"Oh, loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix!"

I get discouraged sometimes.  Which is why there isn't going to be a February post.  Well, not a real one.  This is technically a post, I know, so shut yer trap!  It's not a proper post, I'm mostly just complaining.  Totally different than all my other posts.  Totally.  Different.

OK, here goes:
I'm almost done with college.  Like 18 credits away, that's how almost done I am.  That's including this current semester of 12 credits.  And I'm floundering.  And I totally know why, but I can't seem to stop my brain from feeling super anxious and scared and just dive in and get it done.  When I graduate, there isn't going to be any excuse for me to not start living my life properly.  My 'real' life is going to be there, all shiny and expectant like a new baby, and I just know that I'm going to drop that squirmy thing.

I'll have to find a job, start paying back my student loans, be an 'adult' and do all that normal shit that those of us in our 30's are supposed to do.  Both my kids will be in school full time this fall, I will be done (or very nearly done, depending on summer class availability) and things that have been on my self-imposed back burner will start boiling over, demanding attention.

I got my associates degree in 2010 and looked for a job in the corresponding area of the market.  For a year.  I didn't even get an interview.  So, I went back to school to get my bachelors degree.  What if the same exact thing happens again?  What if everything I've been waiting to do (I don't even really know what I've been waiting for, some kind of magical self-actualization, complete with an army of trained monkeys that I can command to do my bidding.  Or something), everything about myself that I haven't been working on or thinking about or trying to improve because of having kids/going to school/watching my dad die/dealing with anxiety and depression/experiencing the inevitable stresses that come with being alive are broken or have evaporated or are simply boring and disappointing?

 Anxious people like me typically don't handle the unexpected future very well.  We worry and fret and wring our hands while our hearts constrict in our chests and we fight until we've worked up a sweat to stay on the edge of that cliff,  because once we've slipped, once we fall down that deep, dark, cavernous pit, we are lost.  It can take a long time to climb back up, mostly because we have been beaten so soundly by the terrible monster that lives down there.  I call him Panistrosity (which isn't a great name, I know, but it's hard to be creative when you feel like gouging out your eyeballs just so you can stop seeing the terrible thing trying to tear you apart).  It's completely exhausting and traumatizing to have your brain misfire and cause your body to panic like you are about to die when you're not.  It happens over and over and over again to some people, and it is unpleasant.  I haven't had an encounter with my ooze-dripping monster in a long time, but a few days ago I fell down there close enough to see that puffy, orc-like face, and I'm still feeling shaky and uncomfortable and sad.

Um, this is all figurative, by the way, in case anyone that's reading is tripping on acid or mushrooms or something and thinks there's a real cliff somewhere with an actual monster below.  Just saying. Drugs are bad, Mmmkay?


So I'm preoccupied, is the point I'm trying to make, I guess.  I'm doing the best I can, so please don't judge me too harshly for missing my self-appointed deadlines that don't really matter because I don't think anyone not related to me by blood or marriage reads anyway.  That was very sad sackish of me to say, and I take it back.  I don't take it back enough to simply delete that sentence, but I do take it back to the point that I felt the need to say something about it.  Jesus, what the hell am I talking about?

BOOK REPORT ONE: #88- The Call of the Wild, By Jack London

Remember like, six months ago when I said that I was going to start reading the 100 best books on the best book list?  After starting and restarting and being confused and looking up a few chapter synopses on Wikipedia and then kind of understanding and then just crawling through each sentence and looking up a LOT of words, I stopped reading James Joyce's Ulysses and tried a different book on the list; The Call of the Wild, by Jack London.  Don’t worry, I haven’t given up on Ulysses, it’s very original and interesting, it’s just taking forever and hurts my brain sometimes.

I chose this book because it was a free download on my eReader.  A bunch of these books are free, which is an added bonus to a poor person that is too lazy to go to the library, but I had apparently purchased it before and it was already on my kindle app, so there you go.

Some factoids about this book:

-It was originally published as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post, and then published as a novella in 1903.

- It’s based on Jack London’s actual time up north during the actual Alaskan/Yukon gold rush.

- It’s fucking awesome.

Quick Summary:

Told from a big, burly dog’s point of view, it tells the tale of how Buck ends up in the frozen tundra working as a sled dog.  He has some good owners and some stupid ones, and travels all over the place in the meantime.  Throughout the book he feels he’s slowly becoming un-domesticated and tapping into the ancient instincts of his ancestors (i.e., the call of the wild).

My Opinion:

AMAZING. 

I loved it so very much. It’s encouraged me to tackle other books on the list.  It’s told very simply and straight forwardly, with little literary pomp and circumstance.  You know what I mean, right? Some books are written by people who write fancy, formal and complicated words and phrases for the sole purpose of being fancy, formal and complicated so other members of the literati will think they’re fancy, formal, and yes, complicated.  In other words*: superfluous. 

*Do you still say 'in other words' if you're only referring to a single word? 'In another word' just doesn't sound right.  Damn, I bet those literati that I was just talking about would know... 

That being said, pushing the boundaries of contemporary fiction is completely necessary and important, because without it, everything would stay the same and be super boring.  Remember in my super long and tedious favorite movie list how I said there’s a difference between the ‘best’ movies and my personal ‘favorite’ movies?  It’s like that, but, you know, with books. 

The Call of the Wild seems to be firmly entrenched in both of these worlds, as it’s on the top 100 book list AND it's a great read.  As previously stated, it was written so simply and perfectly that it completely sucked me in.  It seemed like every word written had the exact meaning and purpose that he intended it to have.  It was so clear and concise; you could feel the coldness, the emptiness, the danger of the terrain.  It was exciting and fast-paced. There was great peril and huge obstacles to overcome, impossible odds, love and violence, warmth and death, and the pure ecstasy of absolute freedom from everything but your deepest, most primal self.  And it was about a dog!  I love dogs so very much.  If it wasn’t for the limited funds and strict city ordinances, I’d probably have four or five of them.  Or ten. 

I read this book in two hours.  I couldn’t stop, I had to know how it was going to end.  My only complaint, if there is one, would be that since it was written more than 100 years ago, our ideas have... changed on dog training.  There’s dog-on-dog and dog-on-whip/club violence.  So that part was a little terrible to read, but it added another layer of harsh reality to the story, which ultimately made it more compelling because we felt sympathy for this dog that was abused (and totally kicked ass too).  

Side Note: Should outdated societal norms be accepted in literature (and other media) as simply a part of our unenlightened past, or do we censor and remove the now-offensive parts (or get rid of them in entirely)? I'm not a huge fan of censorship as a general practice, AND there's the whole, 'people who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it,' deal.  But, people could also get their ideas and beliefs from said history.  Does it perpetuate stereotypes or cause us to reflect on how far we've come? Deep thoughts, man. My neurons and synapses certainly can't create the appropriate chemical reaction that would generate an answer (is that how brains even work? I don't know anything!).

That’s it.  My first brainy book report.  On a scale of zero to ten brains, zero being the worst and ten being the best (duh!) I give this book nine brains.  I would’ve given ten if it was longer.  

DOGS! WOO!

9 out of 10 brains!

"I've Never Been Good with Words...

...Which is why I'm in such a delicate conundrum."

Did ya ever have writers block?  Did ya ever stare at blank screen and watch the cursor mock you with every one of its devilish, condescending blinks?  You-are-a-terrible-writer-that-won’t-amount-to-anything-ever! Also-I-fucked-your-mom-last-night.

I can’t believe you said that, cursor!  Dorothy Mantooth is a saint! And, more to the point, so is my mom!

Bitch-ass cursors aside, wanting to write and not having anything to write about totally sucks.  I’ve been trying to come up with various blog posts for about three weeks now, but they haven’t gone anywhere interesting.  So, what’s a blogger to do when the deadline is a week past? Panic and run around the house with my arms flailing wildly?  It involves me knocking something over or smashing into various pointy objects, eventually ending up with a trip to the emergency room.  That’s not very productive, so no, I'd better not. 

I think my main issue is stemming from my feeble attempts at fiction writing.  I’ve got a story that I think is pretty flushed out, maybe 75% but when actually starting to write the prose, I get stuck almost immediately.  I guess my problem is merging my... whatever this thing that I do is style with a professional descriptive narrative.  I know I need to keep at it, keep writing until I figure it out, but as a person that usually writes too much, writing slowly and searching for the right words and phrases and struggling for something to sound the way I want to it is, well, it’s annoying as fuck! 

I’m really bad at following through with things until the end.  I kind of run out of steam about 3/4 of the way there and just sort of stop.  There’s some sort of task tank inside my chest that’s mis-marked and runs dry before the job is done.  Maybe I just don’t manage it well enough and use up too much energy at the beginning thinking about it and getting psyched and convincing myself it’s worth getting off the couch for.  Whatever the reason is, I’m really trying to stop half-assing my way through life.  It’s not easy.  You know what IS easy?  Nothing.  That’s REALLY easy.  Sitting around in a messy house with bored kids and fat dogs.  I don’t want to waste my life though, and that’s exactly what I've been doing.

I have gotten a little better.  School's back in session and there was a day last week when I really didn’t want to go, but I did anyway, and it felt good, like I’d accomplished something.  Hell, the fact that I’m in school at all is a step in the right direction, isn’t it?  I’d like to think so, because college is not easy.  Well, the stuff that I’m doing is easy, but getting all the work done on time is difficult.  I did get all B’s last semester, so that’s something. 

I need to take little steps when all I want to do is long jump Olympic style.  I need to be patient and gentle and calm with myself, and cradle my fragile, broken inner-self like I would a singed kitten pulled from a fire, when all I want to do is whip that racehorse until it runs so fast we’re only a blur past the finish line (I do not condone whipping racehorses, or any animals for that matter, it was just a metaphor, duh!).

My point is, I’m inpatient for my life to start, but I keep re-breaking my brain-bones by trying to use them before they’ve healed, making my recovery twice as long and three times as painful.

Wow, I’ve made myself feel better.  Oh, sweet blog, is there nothing you can’t do? 

‘Yeah, a whole bunch of shit actually.  First and foremost is achieving sentience.  Damn.’

Sorry, blog. Didn’t mean to bring you down.  

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program...

I was working on a post about when I was kid, and about how the kid version of me perceived things much differently than the grown-up me, but it makes me sad and I don't want to post it right now.

I have a seven year old daughter and several other seven and six year-old kids were murdered a few days ago, and it's really made me sick, and angry and sad.  I don't understand the motives behind school shootings, especially when it involves adults going into schools that they are not affiliated with.

I was senior in a high school in Colorado in 1999, and I remember when those kids at Columbine killed all those other kids.  I remember how panicked my Australian and Illinoisan relatives were when they kept trying to call to see if I was a student at Columbine and couldn't get through for hours because that's what everyone else's relatives were doing and it overloaded the phone system.  I didn't go there, my school was a few miles away and in a different district.

My sixth-hour period was open and my friend Sean and I decided to skip our seventh (and last) hour and just go home.  We had heard some kind of rumor that a kid shot another kid at a school nearby, but no one knew the extent of it.  Soon after we left, they locked down our school.

Sean and I went to my house, sat on the couch with my mom and watched the coverage for hours.  No one knew if the murderers were still in there killing people, or had barricaded themselves in and were waiting for the cops to come in so they could mow them down too.  Was anyone still alive?  How many people had died?  Were there bombs?  It was chaotic and terrible.

Everyone was shaken and crushed.  We were all scared and confused and didn't know how things were supposed to be now.  The future was now filled with scary uncertainty instead of 'this is the way the world works' security.  We stumbled blindly, trying to find out where this dark new path would go, fearful that it couldn't possibly be anywhere safe and kind.

But you know what the worst part was?  The worst part was that it happened again.  And again.  And again.   And our hearts and minds were broken over and over, and our dark path kept splintering and veering off onto bumpier and more twisted trails.

Some people are calling for less guns, or no guns.  Some say there should be more guns.  More mental health awareness and funding.  More this, less of that.  All I know is that I didn't think the nation's collective heart could break this heavily quite like this again, and nothing will be the same from now on, no matter what we do.

Sorry, guys, but I'm pretty sad right now.  I'll post something with some degree of my usual normalcy when I can think of an acceptable topic.

Happy Holidays.

Latey Lateness

Since I'm a terrible procrastinator, I've put off writing a big paper that's due tonight for a class I'm taking.  Also, this is the last week of the regular semester (finals are next week) so there are projects and worksheets and various other things I have to do before I begin studying (or putting off studying) for finals.

Said procrastination is also the reason why I haven't started writing December's blog, and now it's December and I'm too busy with stupid papers and stuff to write one at the last minute.

So this is just a little note explaining why my post is going to be, most likely, substantially late.  I'll try to squeeze one in as soon as I can, but I'm not sure when that's going to be.

I'm also going to try to start writing blogs ahead of time, like starting February's post this month, and then having the month of January to edit it and stuff.  It sounds a little ambitious for a lazy, lazy person such as myself, but I feel like I should to something to be more reliable.  It makes me feel all guilty, and I'm going to do something completely unlike me and try to stop doing the thing that causes the feeling I don't like.  What?!  That's crazy!  I know, right?

Maybe one day it won't be such a struggle to get all the stuff done that I want to do.  Maybe I'll see a quadracorn too.   

"When I was a boy, just about every summer we'd take a vacation.

...And you know, in 18 years, we never had fun."

A 'fun' thing I did this summer was to go camping with my family.  I have a 4-year old son and 7-year old daughter in case I've never mentioned it (I don't want to go do something crazy like actually check (!)).  So we went to the local state park and camped about 10 miles from our house.  Since we live in south Denver, it's not too far from mountains and open spaces and stuff, but this park is  pretty much 3500+ acres of wilderness surrounded by suburbs.  It's still nature, dammit!

I like camping, in theory. As long as there's a bathroom and not a bucket to pee in, and we can have and are able to make a fire, it's fun for a few nights. I love the brighter stars and chirps and rustles and the mechanical quietness. I love relaxing outside when the morning is bright and the wind is still cool and we all smell smoky from last nights fire. There's no TV or Internet attempting to lure me into submission and no messy house to not clean up.

We went in June so it wouldn't be quite so hot and we packed crap into the borrowed pickup truck for what seemed like days: tent, sleeping bag, cast iron pans, pokey things to cook marshmallows with, canvas fold up chairs with mesh danglers attached to holes in the arm rests to put your frosty and refreshing beverage in, water, food, utensils, snacks, sun screen, rain jackets, hoodies, shorts, jeans, swimsuits, extra socks, insect repellent, bug bite cream, bandages, neosporin (or its generic equivalent), sinus medicine, headache medicine, sunglasses, toenail clippers, that pink tummy stuff that is all chalky, thick, looks and tastes like My Little Pony vomit, firewood, cooler with ice, and some other stuff.  Did I mention we only went for 3 days?

'Fun' #1: There was a crazy heat-wave this summer and the 3 days we were out camping in the sun were the three hottest days in June.  EVER.  104 degrees.  But at least for the rest of the summer I was like, "It's only 98 degrees today?  That's not so bad.  Remember when it was 104 AND WE WERE CAMPING?"

'Fun' #2: My daughter is a typical 7 year old and is, for some reason I don't understand, in love with horses.  So the two of us went on a guided horse ride for an hour.  And as if slowly meandering down an un-shaded dirt trail in 100+ degree heat on a gigantic, furry animal in jeans and a helmet wasn't enough fun, we did it in a group.  There was another mother-daughter combo in our midst, and they were annoying for several reasons:
1. They were late and we had to wait for them.
2. The horses kept trying to snack on the grass and it's not good for them (for some reason that I can't remember), so if they start a-grazin' you're supposed to yank up the reins to remind them they're not supposed to.  Now, if a 1000 lb quadruped really wanted to eat that fucking grass, my Caesar Milan-style jerk-and-pull wouldn't even phase it.  But horses are like, trained and stuff, and they know the rules, so you give 'em a tug and they're all, "Aw, man, this sweaty thing sitting on me knows the rules.  Can't get away with it.  I'll just keep biding my time until the horspocalypse and then I'll eat so much goddamn grass they'll be picking up my green, marshmallow-shaped turds until the end of time!  Bwah ha ha h- I mean neigh-h-h-h!"

These ladies, especially the squealy teen-aged one, didn't have the girl-balls to 'be mean to a horse' so they only half-heartedly tried to get their horses to stop eating the grass, which made the horses think they could control the situation, and soon they were veering off course into the brush to partake in the bouquet of the new summer's grasses. And by 'new summer's grasses' I mean, 'crispy, dried up weeds that probably cut those damn horse gums all up to hell and are also most definitely a fire hazard' So we'd have to stop while the increasingly irritated cow-girl-guide went and got them back on track.
3. DON'T CHECK YOUR FUCKING MESSAGES ON YOUR FUCKING PHONE WHEN YOU'RE ON A FUCKING HORSE ENJOYING THE MAGNIFICENCE OF NATURE!!
4. It was hot and I was cranky and they were strangers.

'Fun' #3: We also went to the 'beach.'  The park has a huge reservoir in it and they rent out boats and jet skis and stuff, and have a marina where people bring their own boats.  That they bought.  In a land-locked state almost exactly in the middle of the country.  That they haul to a man-made lake so they can float around for a weekend and play that game where you see how many beers you can drink before you run into another boat piloted by other stupid people in boats that they hauled to the park so they can float around for no good reason and play that game where they see how many beers they can drink before running into another boat.

Just to clarify, I'm not talking about sweet little paddle boats, canoes, kayaks, or even small sailboats or those little fishing boats with the motor somehow attached to the back with that little handle on it so you can steer; those are hobby boats. Those boats can be strapped to the side of the house or tossed in a shed or even deflated if you have a really shit one.  What I'm saying is they don't take up a lot of time, energy or space.   No, I'm talking about gratuitous speedboats and mini-yachts (or regular-sized yachts, I'm not sure exactly how big a yacht is supposed to be).  The boats that I think are ridiculous are the ones that need their own trailer and giant-wheeled truck to tow it around.  The boats that need insurance and winter storage places and are named less-than-classy ladynames (ever heard of a boat named The Maya Angelou?  No, no you haven't).  Those boats have no earthly business in Colorado and are just another notch in the 'Americans-are-so-stupid-they'll-buy-anything' category.  The reservoir is FULL of those fucking things.

It's shaped like a check mark, this reservoir, and the boats and drunk folk being pulled 30-miles-per-hour on an inner tube are up at one end (its ok though because they wear life jackets! Just kidding, that would make them look dumb) and there's this little beach on the other end with a roped off area of water that you can wade into and freeze your ass off and scrape you feet all up on the rocks because it's a fucking lake and not a swimming pool.  We went there and brought our foldy chairs (see list of camping gear above) and towels and sunscreen and water bottles and the kids forced us into the water with their manipulative statements like, 'we can't swim!' and 'I want to play with you because I'm still too young to know better!' and 'I love you, Mommy'. Pffff.

We would go in for the three seconds the kids could stand it then we got out and dried off.  Then we did it again.  And again.  And again until they started fighting and we went back to the tent. Have I mentioned yet that it was the hottest day ever?  Oh, and also, I got a sunburn even though I wore SPF 70.

'Fun' #4: The best part was that since it was so hot and dry, after the first night they increased the fire ban so we couldn't have a fire. No campfire while camping. Dinner and the next mornings breakfast needed fire, or at least some kind of high temperatured, concentrated heat source to be edible. We considered running the engine of the car until it was hot enough to fry up some eggs, but we had already wasted so much gas from sitting in the cab and blasting the air conditioning for short bursts that we decided not to. At least we were surrounded by city and could skip out to Red Robin.  Which we did and it was the best Whiskey River Chicken Burger I've ever had.  We went to bed early in the pitch blackness, woke up with the bright sun, packed up our numerous possessions and grumpily sweated all the way home.

That was the major event of my summer.  We cooked marshmallows and hot dogs over an open flame (the first night), and watched the bats come out.  We looked at constellations and played on the playground.  We laughed, we cried and no one lost any limbs or was otherwise seriously maimed.  I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Update 12/9/12- Fun #3

Two Things

1. I'm going to commit to one post a month.  If I want any sort of following, I'm going to need to be more consistent.  And awesome.  Awesomely consistent or consistently awesome you ask?  Why, BOTH, of course!  Also, why do you always interrupt me when I'm writing?  Lame. So I'll post at the beginning of every month, hopefully the 1st.


2. Look what I did for Halloween!

Now, I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no. I did not spend hours and hours and hours obsessively carving this pumpkin and trying to smooth out all the jagged bits with a flat toothpick until 3am last night.  I totally didn't do that.

To recap:
-Real post coming in a day or two, then once a month after that, most likely until the end of time
-I am an amazing pumpkin carving-type artist!  Skills like these will come in handy, like, once a year.  Bonus.

Technical Difficulities..

The previous blog does NOT contain redacted information enforced from the government.  It's simply a boring technical error that I'll fix as soon as I figure out what's going on.

Hold on to your butts, no one!

UPDATE:  I still don't know what's going on, but I fiddled with the background and text colors and at least it's showing up now.  But it's not right yet, and I'll keep looking for an answer.  Side note:  this has been a post from hell and it needs more editing.  It'll keep changing for a little while, but for now, I gotta go.

UPDATE #2: It's fixed!  Thanks, computer-genius guru Andy

"Grandpa, why don't you tell us a story? You've lived an interesting life."

 "That's a lie and you know it!  But I have seen a lot of movies..."

I would first like to say that I'm sorry it took me so long to post part 2 of this scintillating post.  I'm sure that you have been clinging to your imaginary seats, anxiously checking and rechecking my blog everyday, your unreal nails being chewed down to the pretend quick with anticipation.  In my defense, I took classes over the summer but my kids, however, did not.  That particular combination of "summer fun expectations" and "accelerated-schedule classes," took up most of my time and all of my sanity.  So, I'm sorry, no one.  I'm sorry real bad.  And now, without further adieu....

...a short recap.

As you may or may not know from previous reading... or from scrolling down to my last post, I am currently in the midst of a very in-depth and exorbitant inquiry into the inner workings of one of the world's most pointless and uninteresting pieces of literature:  a personal top ten list.

I had made the following conclusions in regards to the required criteria:  my list shall comprise of one master list of favorite movies, and it shall be regarded only as a snapshot in time of my current tastes and interests.

Part two begins!

Complication the third: What the fuck qualifies as a 'favorite' movie?!  Do I even need to have qualifiers?  Is, "I like it", going to be good enough to make the list?  I like hundreds of movies! I love hundreds of movies!  There are so many 5 star ratings in my Netflix account that it doesn't even know what kind of recommendations to give (An unimportant side note: my kids have rated a lot of their kid shows too, so that probably confuses that recommend-a-tron over at Netflix all the more.  Take that, smart computer database thing!  You won't take over MY country! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!).

Back to the qualifiers.  I think there should be some kind of system to standardize my decisions.  Personal and/or cultural impact, innovation for its time, heart warming, gooey-squishiness to cheesy, lame and annoying-squishiness ratio, originality, silliness quotient (that's an important one),  did it make me cry, did it make me laugh, was I surprised/scared/intrigued/angry by the end?  There are so many factors that make movies wonderful that I really don't know where to start.

A lot of movies I've seen can fit into most of the above categories; wonderful, amazing, groundbreaking movies: Citizen Kane, The General, Saving Private Ryan, A Clockwork Orange; the list goes on and on.  The first Saw movie created an entire new film genre, for chrissake!  That's gotta mean something, somehow.  But are they my favorites? No.  My list of the top 10 best movies ever made would be different from my top 10 favorites.  I  freely admit that some of my most beloved movies are not what the cinema-philes would call 'classics', or even 'worthy of not being set on fire'.  But I don't care about that.  I likes what I likes.


So it appears that the answer to question 3 is: because I say so.  No qualifiers needed.  Sure, I could come up with some important reasons over the course of many hours of painstakingly dull research and soul searching and traveling the global to meet with the best, uh, movie watching... dudes, but I'm not gonna do that.  I like movies that entertain me/keep my attention, be it through laughter, fear, suspense, action, whatever.


FINALLY,  in no particular order (seriously, if I had to rank them, I would have torn this place up), is my list:

1. The Sound of Music

    I love musicals so goddamn much, but this one is my favorite.  What makes this movie awesome, you  ask?  What doesn't make this movie awesome?!

    Julie Andrews, beautiful songs, suspense, laughter, love, impish youths, escaping from Nazi's, nuns, the list goes on and on.  From the opening scene of the glorious mountains shot from a helicopter and slowly closing in on our impetuous hero, Maria the nun, to the closing scene of the Von Traps hiking to freedom over those same peaks, it is perfect in every way.  I'm totally serious.

2. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

    Idiots and/or man-childs (men-children?) are, in real life, exasperating and usually giant wastes of everyone's time, but in the movies, they are hilariously adorable.  Or maybe adorably hilarious.  No one quite eptomizes this archetype like Will Ferrell.  Many of his movies belong on my list, and it was hard to pick just one (Taladega Nights, Elf, Step-Brothers, Old School, Zoolander spring to mind).  Anchorman created a hilarity trifecta that is often duplicated, but rarely as successful: a hilarious setting (the 70's), a hilarious supporting cast (Carrell, Rudd, Cordery, Parnell, Willard, plus a ton of cameos), and a plot that is pretty solid, but doesn't get in the way of the main objective, silliness.  Christina Applegate (one of the most underrated comedic actors around today) is so earnest and serious and that makes it all the more laugh-tacular.  

3. The Orignal Star Wars Trilogy (IV- A New Hope, V- The Empire Strikes Back, and VI- Return of the Jedi)

    I know, it's technically three movies, but I didn't want to take up three spaces.   I do like I, II, and III; they provided a lot of interesting back story to the Star Wars universe, and they were amazing eye candy, both with it's sexy actors (Natalie Portman, Ewan MacGreggor, JarJar Binks...) and visual effects (not sure if they'll hold up against the test of time though.  I haven't seen them in a while).  But they're just not the same as the scrappy, earnest underdogs fighting against the terrifying Emperor and his white-armoured henchman.  It's the fight against impossible odds, the battle with the darkest evil, and the fact that life goes on (i.e. debts, love, shitty transportation, annoying muppet dudes) in spite of said tribulations, that burns these movies directly into the worlds' hearts, and rightly so.

4. Lord of the Rings Trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King)

    Another trilogy, I know, but LOTR can be considered one very long movie.  And also, this is my list, so shut your face.  I will admit that I hadn't read the books when I first saw The Fellowship of the Ring (but after that I was completely hooked and read them before The Two Towers came out, so all you book snobs can just... continue to judge me because you're right I should have read the books when I was 15 like most people that like to read books do.  I'm sorry).  Like with Star Wars, this is an entire universe created by one  man's imagination about an unlikely and reclutant hero.  What sets it apart from Star Wars:

1. the wonderfully talented and respected cast of actors (Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortenson, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving! Come on!). 

2. A faithful, carefully written script based on an incredibly in-depth and well written story by Tolken.

3. The visual effects technology to give Middle Earth the justice it deserves.

This is the above and beyond any fantasy lovers possible expectations. All the chain mail was real and made by hand! Watch even a fraction of the hours and hours of special features and see how the dedication and love of this world by every person involved is dripping from the scenery.

*Geekish Anecdote: The only time I've ever waited in line for several hours to see the midnight showing of a movie was The Two Towers.  It was cold (January in Colorado), uncomfortable and lame.  Some of the fellow waitees were in costumes, capes and stuff.  At one point, some jockish-type dude that was leaving the theater in an over-sized truck yelled something mean out his window that I can't remember, "get a life, nerds," or something.  I remember at the time thinking, 'what a rude thing to say to these nice geeks', before realizing that I was among this group of movie waiters and therefore the insult was also meant for me.  The absolute best part was that by the time the movie started, I had a terrible headache and couldn't enjoy it*


5. Back to the Future

    I was a little conflicted whether or not to include the entire trilogy, but after some thought, I really do like the first one much more than the other two.  As a kid, I was hooked from the very first scene with the elaborate automated dog food dispenser, and as an adult I was surprised by the tounge-in-cheek enuendos and the traveling through time logistics.

    Michael J. Fox was at his most charming, Crispin Glover was still likeably creepy (instead of fucked up creepy), Christopher Lloyd was the perfect eccentric scientist, and no one has quite relished the job of playing a bad dude like Thomas Wilson did as the shit-eating sexual predator,  Biff Tannen (the best part of BTTF III was Buford 'Mad Eye' Tannen).

6. Mary Poppins

    Another Julie Andrew gem.  Another musical full of catchy tunes, magic and the precociousness of youth.  Except this one takes place in early 20th century England (I loves me those British accents), features cartoons meshing with real life, and Dick Van Dyke secretly playing a really old dude that dies from laughing at this joke: "I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith" says one bloke to another.  "What's the name of his other leg?"

Come ON, that shit is funny! But the fact that some old, serious banker dude DIED because he thought it was so funny makes it epic on a whole other level.  Who wouldn't want to live in a world with tea parties on the ceiling, talking parrots attached to flying umbrellas and endless carpet bags of delight?  No one, that's who.

7. Napoleon Dynamite

    This movie is small scale in every sense of the word.  No elaborate costumes, sets, musical score, actors etc.  It's a quiet, simple movie that doesn't answer many questions (What year is  it?, why do Napoleon and Kip live with Grandma? Who exactly is Uncle Rico? How can someone dance so crazy-awesomely whist wearing snow boots?) which sets the obscure tone for the entire movie.  Napoleon is a young version of the oblivious man-child that I love so much, but he seems aware of it on at least some level, and so is perpetually frustrated with himself and his environment.  He copes with being a weirdo by sneaking tater tots into class, drawing fantastical creatures, and dancing it the fuck out.  You know, like normal teenagers do.

8. The Big Lebowski

    The Cohen brothers make many movies, and most of them are good.  This one has an actual totally awesome film noir-type plot so convoluted by its own colorful characters that it's hardly noticeable.  Jeff Bridges is an aging, Californian pot head that doesn't ask for much.  He enjoys bowling, white Russians and rugs that really tie a room together.  He's the victim of circumstances, each one more outlandish than the next.  There's no real reason why the Dude continues to be involved in so many shenanigans, and there in lies the awesome.  The hilarious, traumatized 'Nam vet Walter (John Goodman) and poor, sweet Donnie (Steve Buscemi) are comedic icing on a funny cake.

Plus John Turturro as Jesus.  You don't fuck with the Jesus.

9. The Royal Tenenbaums

     Wes Anderson hasn't made a bad movie yet (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zoussu is my least favorite, but I still like it).  It seems I'm drawn to movies about weirdos, and most of Wes' creations are a little off-center, flawed, but have the best of intentions and that's why I love them.  The Royal Tenebaums is my favorite because it's about a remarkable family that is no longer remarkable.  They've all been heartbroken and/or traumatized in one way or another, and end up under the same roof again, brokenly dealing with the deadbeat Dad/husband that has returned to make amends before he dies (but actually he just needs a place to crash and isn't dying at all and is generally a giant asshole, but he is actually trying to make amends in his own fucked up way so it's ok).  It's a compact film, I guess.  Not too many sets or fast-paced, complex plot twists.  It flows comfortingly through the difficult times, blanketed by the Matriarch's love and concern, while life's complications continue within.  Makes me optimistic about my family, and families in general.  There's also the best epitaph ever: "Died tragically saving his family from the wreckage of a destroyed sinking battleship."

10. Star Trek (2010)

      I know this may seem blasphemous to those faithful to the orginal movies, but I don't give a crap what you turds think (just kidding, please don't stop reading)!  It's smart, funny, action-packed, emotional and for you purists out there, has Lenoard Nemoy in it.  I don't like the original TV show, and I haven't seen all of the movies, but I LOVE Star Trek the Next Generation; Kirk, Spock and McCoy just never interested me like Picard and Riker did (the sexy bastards).  J.J Abrams is an amazing and original filmmaker, and the shiny new cast playing these well-known and beloved characters sucked me right in.  There's something about catching a movie/band/TV show right at the beginning that makes us feel special and included, than simply watching history.

And if you aren't emotional invested and doomed to love this movie after you watch the first 10 minutes, you are a terrible person.  There, I said it.

11 (yeah, there's more than 10 in my top ten list). Amelie

      Most adorable movie ever, filled with quirkiness and romance.  Amelie is a shy introvert that has grand ideas of romance and decides to use her complicated schemes for good (and a little evil) and falls in love with another quiet weirdo.  And it's in French with subtitles, so you feel more smarter when you watch/read it!

12. Nightmare before Xmas

      Tim Burton, clay-mation, singing, nasty monsters, Halloween, Santa being kind of an asshole = awesome.  It's become some kind of counter-culture symbol, popular among goth kids that are all different because they're just like all the other goth kids.  I mostly like it because of the songs and sweet love story.  But a clay-mation skeleton and a Frankenstein's monster-girl are certainly a plus.

13. Monty Python and the Holy Grail

     If I need to explain why this movie is awesome, maybe you shouldn't be reading this blog.  Hmm, perhaps I should have put this as number one so as not to have wasted so much time of your time.  Oh, well.  Ni!

So, there it is.  I left a bunch off because it was only supposed to be 10, and I change my mind a lot.  But I am finally done with this infernal list and shall never mention it again! 

Until I inevitably mention it again....

*Edited on 11/11/12.  This post vexes me.*