Can't Stop

- eating chocolate. If anyone had tried to tell me how ridiculously good chocolate + ice cream was, I would have sworn it was a tall tale.
- avoiding writing my paper. I would really, really like to get it done.
- being unexceptional. I just did a little retrospective of my extracurriculars HS-present for one of my jobs, and I realized that I actually didn't do that much, even though I felt busy at the time.

The Godfather, Part 3

I caught the last hour of this movie playing on tv. I can't quite understand why this one is considered to be in a class by itself among the Godfathers; I thought it was just as boring and pointless as the other two "masterpieces." Seriously, I mean: I can't tell ONE thing about the third Godfather that was done any differently! The visual palette (perhaps the only plus), the lack of any understandable motivation behind the plot development, the way the slow-ass dialogue leaves everything important unsaid, the indistinguishability among the characters ("Hey, who's that old Italian dude? Isn't he the same old Italian dude who died in the last scene?"), the perfect opacity as to where our sympathies belong, and oh did I mention that all three Godfathers are BORING AS HELL?

This may haunt me for the rest of my life. I foresee that I will continue to watch and re-watch the Godfathers whenever I have a chance, hoping to catch what everyone else is raving about, only to conclude that they are in fact boring as hell, and pointless. I guess this was one of the "glitches" I was born with. Some people can't curl their tongues, I don't get the Godfathers.

Oh wait...

I caught one little plot detail that made the third Godfather decidedly worse, which was all that junk about the Vatican. I mean, come one. Let's get real. On the other hand, the Vatican story background allowed the setting to take in Italy and Sicily, which is more romantic than New York or Lake Tahoe. So, down a notch, up a notch.

The one thing about the third Godfather that was as painful as an aenema was Sophia Coppola. I knew for a while that she was a suck-ass writer/director, but it wasn't so clear to me that she has a huge nose and no chin. It's as if she fell asleep upside-down one night, and her chin melted away and accumulated in her nose.

One more thing: that whole deal about cousins wanting to marry each other and Michael objecting. Is it just me, or should that be a total non-issue?? To me, it was ridiculous that the movie wasted so drama debating the pros and cons, and making that the central conflict.

Are You a Sociopath?

Say there is a woman whose husband just died. At his funeral, she meets another man, one of the funeral guests. They fall in love instantaneously, and at the end of that magical day, they part. A week later the woman kills her sister. Why?

$$$

"...but you can give 'em to the birds and bees, cuz there's only one thing that's gonna pay my rent...and that's MONEY."

Oh dude, I need to get paid so badly. If that sonafa bitch D--- thinks he's going to scrooge his way out of this one...well, I don't know, but I'm going to have something to say about that. I met this D--- before, and I could tell he was a pompous butthead. Uphill battle ahead.

Legends of the Fall

This is one of those movies that I've always known I must be missing something about it. The first time I saw it (in an airplane) I thought it was awful, but then I think I rented it again anyway because somehow I suspected it surely must be better than that. It got a little better the second time, but still I had a hunch that I didn't quite "get" it. So long story short, ever since the beginning, whenever I saw this movie playing on tv, I would always have to sit through and watch it again.

The funny thing is, it does continue to get slightly better with each viewing (I must be on 5 or 6 by now). The first time I think I was perplexed because the plot is so sprawling - well, that and I was on a plane - and I mistakenly thought it was a story about Susanna (Julia Ormond). Thus, I objected that the story was not at all romantic. I don't remember when and how the rest of the meaning unfolded to me, but here are some of my interpretations now (subject to change every time I see this movie again):

- It's basically a story about familial love and the unbreakable elegance of the American spirit.
- The story centers on Tristan (Brad Pitt), which is a bit of a paradox because he's totally opaque (hence my initial dismissal).
- Tristan is coherent if you understand him as a Byronic hero. However, this can only make sense only insofar as you believe that Brad Pitt is ridiculously good-looking. Although I see now that this is the case, it should by no means be considered obvious. The movie's main incoherence stems from the fact that it makes this assumption; why does everyone put up with his ish? you end up wondering.
- It's possible to appreciate the tragedy of loving a Byronic hero (Susanna's story, the "romance" part) only if you've ever experienced the 100% randomness and unfairness that is the male mind when it comes to relationships.

Reservoir Dogs

After like five attempts to make it past the boring-ass first 20 minutes, I finally succeeded and finished the whole movie. Fucked up, as expected. I don't deal well with all that blood, and Tim Roth's screaming in the beginning was excruciating...that may be why I had a tough time sitting through it.

I could tell it was supposed to be a touching story about comaraderie in adverse circumstances (White and Orange), but it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me because I missed White's back story; nature called. Was his a story about guilt? or did he feel he had a connection with Orange because they knew each other's names? Or was he a sensitive guy susceptible to pathos? I couldn't tell exactly.

A pretty bad piece of verse, but...

Love not me for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye or face,
Nor for any outward part,
No, nor for a constant heart:
For these may fail or turn to ill,
So thou and I shall sever:
Keep, therefore, a true woman's eye,
And love me still but know not why—
So hast thou the same reason still
To doat upon me ever!

- Anonymous (1609)

For some reason I was thinking about how difficult it is to dance the tango of seduction, and I started to miss those rare rare rare occassions when it happens effortlessly. At the time you suspect that something must not be right, and so you take it a bit for granted; but it's such a vacation when all the insanity of love falls upon the other person! I ran into this quote from Proust on the web that sums it up neatly. I think it's from Swann's Way:

"He made what apology he could and hurried home, overjoyed that...he had not now, by a demonstration of jealousy, given her that proof of the excess of his own passion which, in a pair of lovers, fully and finally dispenses the recipient from the obligation to love the other enough."

And from Stendhal:

"If one is sure of a woman's love, one looks to see whether she is beautiful or not; if one is doubtful of her heart there is no time to inspect her face."

Heartbreaker: Confirmation

The original movie of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was playing on tv, and I was reminded again of how TOTALLY RIGHT I was to decide that Luke Perry's Pike is the dreamiest boy in fiction. First, his romantically sleepy eyes. Second, his willingness to get into fights. Meow, a generation of girls before me fell in love with Luke Perry, and countless generations of girls from the beginning of time have loved the bad boy; thus, far be it for me to try to explain the appeal. Suffice to say that these two reasons are fairly uncontestable.

But the third reason I love Luke Perry in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I noticed, is a bona fide oddity. His willingness to get into fights makes him a bad boy, but his consistently getting beat down is what really wins my heart. What is it about an ass-kicked man that is so irresistible? I wonder. Is it my nurturing instinct? Am I a sadist? Do I have keen anger issues about men? Or is it simply my identification with the underdog? Whatever the reason, it's something worth noting for the male lead of my great American romance novel, when I get around to writing it: make him get into lots of fights, and make him lose every one.

Not Sure Why I Find This So Funny

(The SP episode where Cartman et al. are playing Lord of the Rings.)

Kyle: Hey, what are you guys playing?
Kid: Harry Potter.
Cartman: HA! Fags!

The Bronx

tonight @ Spaceland. Pretty sick! I'm not the biggest hardcore guy, but they did it well.

Ps, Spaceland has one of the cleanest bathrooms I've ever seen for a venue of its type.

Audio:
Placebo
Infra-red

Ethnic Difference?

I've had it up to here with the lack of clarity and and general pussyfooting in all my dealings with Job #2, ie the boss who won't talk to me himself and makes me communicate with his secretary who can't speak English. My brother suggested that it might just be the ethnic way of doing business, and that I'm supposed to play it by ear and adapt according to what I think is expected of me. I asked my mom today if this was the case, but she said no, my boss is unusually incompetent. Ha, good to know! My mom suggested that given this pattern in incompetence, it's likely that Job #2 will continue to screw me over, so I should make my own plans. But isn't that unprofessional? I asked; it's not often that I get a paying job, so I wanted to take it seriously. But I guess if they aren't going to be professional toward me, I don't own them anything.

Old Joke

Blast from the past on the radio the other day:

When you're sitting in your Chevy,
And your shorts are feeling heavy,
Diarrhea.
Diarrhea.

My Neighborhood Starbucks

makes me feel (1) very, very old and (2) like I'm a brilliant fucking scholar. It's the oddest sensation, because normally I'm used to feeling like a totally inadequate dunce, and I'm used to going to coffee houses in college towns where most people go to study. Here, the patrons of Starbucks are giggling teenagers arriving by the droves, like 8 of them hanging out and getting caffeinated, and then giggling even more hilariously. I actually heard one girl say, "I feel like I'm too young to hang out at Starbucks..."

A lot to unpack there, so I'll just leave it.

Then there was me, with my squinty eyesight and bad posture, writing footnotes (the driest kind of writing) to document all the points in which Nehamas talks about whether or not irony is a form of deception.

$800

Ha! It looks I won't be showering for a while. $69 to diagnose the problem, $800 to fix the probable cause. I guess I can always go for the cold shower again, but I figure I'll save it for tomorrow, since I plan on getting some beach grime on me then anyways.

HOW Many Ways Am I Pissed Off?

1. I have HIVES.

2. Because my parents are off galivanting in Europe, and my brother is off galivanting to his girlfriend's, then to Alaska, I'M NOT ALLOWED TO GO SEE A BAND I WANT TO HEAR lest something dangerous happens to me while I'm helpless.

3. I HAVE TO WAKE UP EARLY TOMORROW to work for an asswipe boss who won't train me, won't give me any guidelines about his expectations, and yet doesn't even give me the freedom to do my job as I see best. I'm auditioning tomorrow for a job I thought was already promised to me, and I have no idea how to pass because my boss won't talk to me himself, but sends in his secretary with whom I can't communicate. Asswipe!

4. I have HIVES.

5. Then I thought, you know what, it's all cool, I can handle this; I can suck up a lame Friday night and use that time to take a long, relaxing shower, and get a good night's sleep, and be ready for tomorrow's hell.

THIS HOUSE SUDDENLY HAS NO HOT WATER.

So I'm crying and cursing and gnashing my teeth in this icy fucking shower, and I swear to God I hate this world and everything in it. The only thing that can make this night absolutely perfect is if I crawl into my sweet bed and find a dead body in it.

6. But you know what, it's all cool, I can handle this. I'm going do this job bullshit tomorrow, and then I'll call a plumber or whatever and take care of this shower nightmare. BUT THIS MEANS THAT NO ONE - CAN EVER - TELL ME WHAT TO DO AGAIN. And since everyone else is off having such a good fucking time all around the world, I'm going to treat myself to a shortboard lesson, and some new shoes, and afterwards maybe drugs or porn.

Oh Man, I'm So Irked

1. The OC. 22 hours of my life this season I'm never getting back.

2. My other job informed me today that I have to lecture about the SAT critical reading for an hour on Saturday. I thought I was teaching a class, but no, I'm being evaluated. How come they didn't do this before they hired me? Why are they doing this instead of training me themselves? What the hell do I know about SAT strategies? How am I supposed to fill up an hour if no one is there to ask questions?

3. I must have eaten something funny, because I'm breaking out in hives.

4. There are a lot of people who love to say, "Hey, it looks like the DOG is walking YOU!" I was out walking my dog when someone said that to me, again, and I swore that the next time I heard that I would say, "OMG, no one's ever said that to me before!" because there are only so many times I can force a polite chuckle. Then someone else said the dog is walking me...but I didn't have the nerve to be rude.

Complete Waste of a Day

I woke up early this morning to go to a meeting with my new boss, and then get my stitches taken out. When I got to my first appointment at 9:30 (after a scrumptious Sausage McMufffin with Egg), I found out that my boss had forgotten all about it, and so we had to reschedule for tomorrow at 9. Then I had an hour and a half to kill, so I did some work at Starbucks. Then I went to the dentist for exactly 2 snips of the scissors, lasting roughly 20 seconds. Some of the stitches had already fallen out on their own. If I had known it was going to be that easy, I would have pulled out the rest of the stitches myself and saved myself the drive.

The worst part is I have to do it all again tomorrow, except even earlier. You know, I gave up Alias last night for my morning meeting. TNT does this great thing on Wednesday nights where they play 4 back-to-back episodes of Alias from 11:30-3. Obviously I couldn't stay up until 3 and still make it to my meeting, and neither could I watch just one episode (like potato chips, you can't stop once you start), so I opted to miss them all...with great willpower, I might add. On the plus side, this means I'm allowed one excused fuck up on my new job.

I guess the other good thing to come out of all this is that I will wake up early enough to make McDonald's breakfast - not once, but twice this week.

Different Moods of Ice Cream

When it comes to ice cream, I'm not hard to please. I normally go for the classic, smooth, rich chocolate; with chocolate chips when I'm feeling adventurous, and with raspberries when it's available.

Today, for the first time in my life, I felt an active craving for ice cream with lotsa lotsa inclusions. Ie, Ben and Jerry's.

Another strange mood: I find myself listening to Megadeth, which was once the meaning of my life, but hasn't been now for some time (since 2002, maybe?). Megadeth is the only band I've seen live more than once, I think...well, of the bands that charged more than $20 for tickets. Then, I don't now, I guess as I became a happier person me and Megadeth stopped "getting" each other.

Does this mean that I'm unhappy now? I don't think so. I think it just means I'm bored. Bored enough to go over every arpeggio (sp?) with loving attention, which starts to sound like white noise to me when I'm busy.

Maybe inclusions are the ice cream equivalent to arpeggios.

Audio: Bluegrass

Last week I was listening to this bluegrass show on the radio. It's too bad the country western sound has such a bad rap these days, I guess on account of it turning into pussy serenade music (like, I don't even know, Lonestar?). Because I thought all the banjo and fiddlin' stuff of the bluegrass persuasion was really fun to listen to.

And yet this is probably the first subgenre that a self-proclaimed country music fan will denounce. How many times have I heard people say, half-apologetically, "I like some country...oh but NOT twangy country!"? Madness! The twangier the better.

Anyways, the other day I was arrested by an elegant little instrumental tune by Jim Mills. It had a great title: I Started Loving You Again.

Postscript

I had this thought that maybe conservatives aren't just plain evil; maybe they're idealists, while liberals are realists. That could account for why Bush is coming down on the side of amnesty this time (unless he has an ulterior agenda, which is entirely possible; like I said, I'm not totally on top of this issue). Having been a governor of Texas, he may know by now that we are way out of our league with this border control thing, so we might as well make the best of what we got, instead of letting people die or whatever. The representative from Iowa, on the other hand, thinks that a physical wall - like in prisons, or Berlin - will solve all our problems. As if walling a prison and walling the southern borders of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and TEXAS were even close to the same thing.

Immigration Policy on CSPAN

I can't believe I just watched over an hour of CSPAN without a break. Normally when I try to tune in, they just have a bunch of ugly people sitting around to elevator music and not saying anything. But this time, it was pretty interesting. Steve King (R, Iowa) was making an anti-immigration case and speaking out AGAINST the White House's amnesty proposal. Since I haven't made up my mind yet how I feel about these immigration issues, I was able to listen to most of the argument without my usual liberal dismissiveness, that conservatives are so stupid that we should just shove them into the backwoods and ignore everything they have to say.

Also, it's always interesting to see dissent among the Republicans, whose great strength is their unity.

I used to have a liberal friend from California who went to college in Texas. He once told me that there are two kinds of Republicans: those who are Republican because they're from Texas (and other equivalents), and those who have real opinions on the issues. My friend said that the latter group was surprisingly intelligent, whose whys and wherefores made a lot of sense in a certain evil way (but logical nevertheless). However, these Republicans often sounded like dumbasses too because they would never say what they mean, but instead throw out a lot of high-flying rhetoric. Like, instead of saying, "We need to take out Saddam Hussein because it's important to our world domination and control of oil resources," they would say, "Freedom...democracy...war on terror...God bless America" - leaving the more perceptive ones to wonder how Bin Laden suddenly transmogrified into Hussein. And then of course, we'd resolve that confusion by concluding that the president is a redneck dumbass, without considering that he was only TALKING out of his dumb ass. (Oh and ps, Bush is anything but a real redneck. Rednecks don't come from Conneticut royalty and graduate from Yale.)

Listening to the Iowa rep's anti-immigration speech reminded me of my chubby friend's old take on Republicans. I could tell that beneath a lot of the nonsense, the rep was addressing a very real problem, and I even found myself agreeing with some of his points. I too don't like the idea of taking in all the poorest of the poor of Central America and making them our problem. I think the rep's numbers were exaggerated ("it's like moving the Rio Grande to the Panama Canal, without annexing the natural resources") and I'm not sure the strain on our welfare system wouldn't be balanced out by what some of the other immigrants pay in taxes - but my goodness we have our own poor populations to deal with...including yours truly! I think it's silly to say that immigrants are taking way jobs that would normally go to Americans, but there is something to be said about how it's hard for small businesses to keep up with their competitors when they try to hire their workers lawfully (legal residents, minimum wage, benefits, etc).

Plus, there's what I see as the real issue behind all this: the cultural transformation of the American landscape. What people are really afraid of, but what they can't come out and say, is that this country will soon have a Latino majority. I don't think this means that the Latinos are going to turn around and start oppressing white people the way white people historically have oppressed everyone else; but some change is inevitable, and change is always scary. The idea of the LA protesters waving the Mexican flag over the American flag (upside down, according to Rep. King) was a little bothersome even to me. I like to party on Cinco de Mayo like the rest of them, and I too have certain dual allegiances to my mother land, but I still want the people who vote in this country to think that America is the bomb, second to none.

Then Rep. King started busting out a drawing of a wall he wants to build from San Diego to Brownville (?) - 4 feet deep and 12 feet tall with barbed wire on top; and like the Berlin Wall (!!!), 95% effective - and I realized he was crazy, so I clicked over to a Charmed re-run.

If Irony Were Strawberries

"Tom, if irony were made of strawberries, we'd all be drinking a lot of smoothies right now."

Falling in Love

The Bang's comment about unrequited love and love vs. relationship reminded me of this poem by Czeslaw Milosz that I've loved for a long, long time - since the wee age of 1998, when I first read it in the December 21 issue of The New Yorker.

Anyways, the poem. (There may be some inaccuracies.)

* * *

Tomber amoureux. To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment "already"? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a "cristallisation," so that it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different.

* * *

Speaking of things you miss when you're young: I only NOW got the Stendhal allusion, having read Red and Black in 2004. And yes, "cristallization" is such an interesting way to describe what happens in the wacky minds of his protagonists. Perfect!

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Back in February, after I saw Annie Hall for the second time, I blogged about how surprised I was to find it so different from what I thought it was:

'It's amazing to see how much time changes you, even though you think you haven't done much since then, or that you were pretty intelligent even in your girlish days.'

I just had a deja vu of that experience right now, after seeing Breakfast at Tiffany's for the second time. OMG, I can't believe it's possible for one person to see the same exact thing twice, but pick up such different details. The first time I saw this movie I thought it was exceedingly mediocre, being mislead by my expectation of a romantic comedy. Again, Menander vs. Aristophanes: Breakfast at Tiffany's is comic only in the Menander sense. It's about these two gold-diggers who, instead of taking responsibility for their lives and getting real jobs and setting goals and self-discipline for their futures, delude themselves into thinking that they're Somebodies when they're not, chasing false glamour and whoring about aimlessly until all their glamourous friends ditch them; at that point they settle for each other, because they're all they've got, and to compensate they convince themselves that they are "in love." So average, so bourgeois!

Again, I think I had all the details right (even in my girlish days), but my interpretation of those details was so whacked out! Or at least, it was very different from my interpretation now. Back then (I was what, 15-ish?), I thought the only way anyone could possibly like this movie was if he or she got sucked in by all that false glamour that had led the protagonists astray. I still think that's mostly true; there's no way a 13-year-old girl could love this movie if she knew what it was REALLY about. That 13-year-old girl just loves Audrey Hepburn and the diamonds and the gowns and the idea that Holly Golightly is a "wild thing."

So what is this movie "really" about? What I thought was so screamingly obvious and overbearing the second time went completely over my head the first time:

'You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-You-Are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other - because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness."'

The 15-year-old me heard this and thought, "Whew, Desperation is a stinky cologne!" (quote from Super Troopers ;-)). That's because the 15-year-old me did not understand, as I understand now, that life is essentially miserable and lonely and demoralizing and full of uncertainty and suffering and loss, and that the only, ONLY thing that makes it worthwhile is love - whether it's romantic love, or love for family and friends, or the passion you have for your work and highest ideals, or whatever. The 15-year-old me thought life sucked only if you made it suck - HA!

You can say I used to be a meritocrat. And necessarily, an (American) idealist.

Time has changed me. As a result, what was so screamingly overbearing the first time was actually kind of touching the second time. I'm talking about the last scene when Holly says she and her cat are both no-name slobs who belong to no one, and to prove her point she tosses her cat into an alley. Then she regrets it and runs after it crying, "Cat! Cat!" until she finds it with joy and then runs to embrace Paul. "Okay, we get it!" I shouted at the tv; the cat is a symbol for Holly, her finding the cat is a symbol for her finding herself, blah blah blah. Funny how her self-discovery ends in the most mundane of conclusions, which is that she belongs to Paul for no apparent reason.

Then I saw this scene for the second time, and I realized that it's not about falling in love at all. It's about admitting that you're vulnerable and weak, and letting love into your life as the only shred of hope and light you have within your reach, no matter how pathetic and unlikely it seems - even if it's only your love for a stupid cat. Love is our only chance for happiness, as Paul says. And perhaps, after all, if we let love in, we'll discover that it's not such a paltry comfort. It could be a beautiful kiss in the middle of the rain.

I'm ashamed to say I cried during this last scene. But then, I cry over everything. It's quite embarrassing.

Can't Think

All that's on my mind is the piece of string piercing through the flesh inside my cheek. Sometime I think I have a piece of food stuck there, so I try to push it over, but then I discover (painfully) its the knot holding my mouth together. It's very annoying, worse I think than the punched-in-the-face feeling of the procedure itself. I can't stand needles.

Yamashiro, Hollywood

Tonight my family dined at the Casa Bonita of Japanese restaurants for some birthday celebrations. (Casa Bonita is the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants.) It was awesome. It had a view and a garden and good food, and reasonably priced sushi. My only complaint would be the small portions, but then a restaurant couldn't be upscale unless it left you feeling a little bit ripped off.

Wisdom Teeth

I just got two of my wisdom teeth pulled today. One of them was growing sideways, and that one I think they just smashed into little pieces until they could extract all the pieces from my jaw one by one ("Okay Rex, you're going to hear something crack, so don't panic..."). I don't deal well with pain, and I can't stand the sight of blood, and the idea of stitches makes me nervous. I'm a damn soldier for doing this.

I learned today that kids born after about the 90s don't grow wisdom teeth anymore (how do dentists know this, if the oldest ones are still only 16?). When my mom asked why that was, my dentist, after a preliminary apology to Christians, said it was because of evolution, and we don't need those teeth anymore. Amazing how quickly that works.

I think I experienced a "first" today, as a result of my not dealing very well with pain. We were still in that phase when they were injecting shots to numb the jaw. By about the third or fourth injection, it was driving me crazy to think I had a needle sticking in me, and I started getting dizzy, and I couldn't feel my legs...

"Rex, are you okay?"
"Uh-huh."
"You're hyperventillating."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm cool, you can proceed."

I was totally lying, I was not cool! He waited until I calmed down.

A (Now) Rarity for the Initiated

All this talk about Quebec made me remember a certain conversation about this year's Canadian elections, that encapsulates the type of "little things" which, accumulated, help paint a fuller picture of why I find this so insufferable.

As if I haven't thrown out enough hate in this arena already.

A: Did you vote?
B: Yeah, I sent in an absentee ballot.
A: Good! Because, you know, you're about 1% of the population, and 2% of the vote. :-D
B: Haha. You think 50 of us actually voted?
C: Oh come on, that's your whole country! You know it's true, literally NO ONE lives in Canada. And for good reason, too, there's nothing there.

Notes:
- There are some things that can't be literalized.
- If you're going to repeat my exact same joke, at least don't make it LESS funny.
- In general, "doesn't get it" is the cardinal quality of a douchebag. I can't quite explain why it has to be such a terrible thing, and yet, in my book, douchebag is one of the worser things you can be.

Oh, Speaking of DFW...: The Bloc Quebecois

I just learned yesterday that the Bloc Quebecois - featured in Wallace's Infinite Jest as the militant Quebec separatist group that promotes its cause through a secret terrorist organization of wheelchair assassins - is NOT in fact fictional, but a real political party. !!

You can see where I got confused.

All this time I thought the idea of Quebec separatism was FUNNY.

Ridiculously Itchy

OMG, these allergies are killing me.

I wonder why there isn't more anxiety about playing with stray cats among society. This morning I saw a little orange striped kitty outside my window, so I couldn't resists going out and petting it. But when it tried to rub up against my legs, I realized how germy it must be, so I backed away. Then it hit me that normal non-hypochondriacs don't worry about shit like that. How come?

Not that I think the cat is what's making me sneezy. I've had these allergies all week.

A Day at the Races

I think that was the last of the major Marx Brothers movies that I needed to see. Can't ever go wrong with the Marx Brothers. This one was the best in dance, though perhaps the weakest in comedy. Well: weak comedy in the Aristophanes sense, but quite satisfying in the Menander sense (Aristophanes comedy = haha, Menander comedy = genre with love story and happy ending). It was a lot more like regular musicals...which made the musical sequences seem less awkward, at least. Like A Night at the Opera, more coherent in story, but you miss out on all the random craziness that makes those early movies so priceless.

Horse Feathers is still my favorite...

Or is it? Hard to tell because it was my first. I just remembered that Margaret Dumont (Mrs. Teasdale, etc.) was not in Horse Feathers - which would be a serious loss. I might have to watch them all again. Anyways, in looking up Dumont's ouvre on imdb, I ran across this bio:

"Margaret Dumont would probably consider it a tragedy that she is best-known for her performances as the ultimate straight woman in seven of the Marx Brothers' films (including most of their best). By all accounts she never understood their jokes (offscreen and on), which is of course a major reason why she's so funny."

Ha!

Quote of the Day

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it.

- H.L. Mencken (via the Economist)

Feels Like I'm Writing a Thesis

because this paper is never going to end, and I'm kind of content with just letting it drag on and on because I'm not on a deadline. The only negative is that you end up living and breathing this one subject, day in and day out, until you can finally commit it to paper. That feeling too is like a thesis.

I guess I'd better get used to it.

I once had a friend who was crazy in love with David Foster Wallace. He told me this anecdote about how DFW said that he writes about a page a day, and spends the rest of the day worrying about how he can't write. This was an astounding confession from a man who wrote a 2000-page novel, and at the time I was astounded. But now -

A page a day! Ha, if only! I know exactly the feeling DFW was talking about, but for me I'd be lucky to pull myself together long enough to write a full page. On a bad day, I can write as little as 0-100 words. This does not count those days when I'm organizing in my head what I think I'm going to write about, which can sometimes be more challenging than the writing itself (especially if the idea stage produces crap, and then you spend days just being confused). On good days, when I'm not confused, I can write about 6 pages; on Red Bull days, 8-10. But this only happens when I have deadlines.

If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.

spscriptorium :-(

Screw you Comedy Central...I'm going home. Up til now I've always relied on the scriptorium to get transcripts for my favorite South Park jokes. Now they've taken down half the episodes, at the demand of Comedy Central.

That just means I have to do this the old-fashioned way.

Kyle: Mom?
Sheila: Yes, Kyle 2?
Kyle: How am I related to him again?
Sheila: He's you're cousin, Kyle 2. I told you already.
Kyle: Yeah, but like...first cousin or distant cousin?
Sheila: He's my sister's son, that makes him your first cousin.
Kyle: So we have the same blood?
Sheila: Now Kyle 2, listen to me. Kyle is going through a very tough time in his life. His mother is very sick and he's in a whole new place. He's going to rely on you to make sure he fits in at your school.
Kyle: WHAT?! How the hell am I supposed to do that?
Sheila: I'm sure your friends will love him.
Kyle: What about Cartman, huh? He rips on me for being Jewish. He's going to tear this kid apart!
Sheila: Kyle 2, he's your responsibility.

Dos lados por todos cuentos

Wow, still got my Spanish. Maybe. I have no idea if I'm saying it right.

- ?Esta divertido, no, que dos personas pueden ver la misma cosa y pensar las conclusiones differentes?
- Ist das nicht amusant, wie zwei Personen etwas gleich sehen konnen, und die anderen Folgerungen denken?

I haven't learned how to decline adjectives yet, so the above is the result of a dictionary + grim determination. Also, I have a hunch that "to think a conclusion" is idiomatic in neither Spanish nor German.

I Would Have Posted Something...

but I guess I can only hold one post in my head at a time, and the content of this post was of questionable tastes. My brother and I were talking about radical solutions for unifying the left wing, and I think our ideas were pretty good - totally hilarious and possibly effective. But like many funny things, the strength of these ideas was in their politically incorrectness. Perhaps one day, when I'm a political stand-up comic, I'll debut some of our solutions.

In case I forget and need a prompt: affirmative action, gay marriage, abortion.

Writer's Block

Sophocles paper. Argh!

Brain Numb

I watched way too many episodes of Alias last night, including the new one. Sloan accidentally kills his daughter, which was oddly comic. I hope that doesn't mean I'm evil. I guess it was the anticlimax of it all: first he puts her in a coma, then he has to kill her temporarily before he can administer the cure (which was a big psychological battle for him), then Nadia (alive and awake) foolishly warms up to him, then he accidentally kills her in the wimpiest way (she falls through glass; like no one's ever survived that before on Alias), and finally he goes over the dark side like we always knew he would.

Maybe it's funny when you hope for the best and get the inevitable worst.

Anyways, I should stop watching TV, it's killing my brain.

Dr. Bikini's Theory on Child and Adolescent Development

Children must be given limits. That way, they can actually look forward to getting older, and plus when they're all grown up, they won't feel that their life has taken a 100% turn for the worse and lose the will to go on.

Relationship Minutiae

I tweeked my profile a bit, adding "friends' relationship minutiae" under my interests, because I realized that subject occupies about 90+% of our conversations.

:-p

Interesting dilemma. Some of you may know about my "stealth seduction" scheme to date - without his knowledge - my good-looking German teacher with whom I have absolutely nothing in common (our "conversations" consist of just a whole lotta awkwardness). I was very pleased with the cleverness of the scheme:

"I'm afraid I can't make your office hours. Do you think we could meet some other time to read German...like over a beer?"

Damn pimpin! I managed to (a) ask him out without asking him out, (b) get extra help with my German, and (c) feel less bad about being an audit by buying my instruction time in beers.

Anyways, the story took a boring turn because of finals, and the awkwardness, and all that. Before the semester ended, I gave him a translation of some German I needed for my paper, and asked him to double-check it. He must have forgotten, because I got an email from him just now apologizing for it, and adding, "I hope I can make it up to you next semester."

Doesn't that seem like a leading remark? I feel like I'm supposed to read into it.

The question is how to best take advantage of it. My first instinct - the polite instinct - was to assure him that it was no problem at all, that he need not apologize. Then my pimp instinct informed me that that was just plain foolish. Then my studious instinct told me that I should at least use this opportunity to enlist a reliable - say, weekly - German tutor.

Right now I think I'm sticking with the studious instinct. I'm not entirely comfortable saying, "I know how you can make it up to me: how about dinner and drinks?" - wink! But on the other hand, no need to be overly polite, because you can never have too many irons in the fire, or German tutors for that matter. Everyone in my field knows that German is the bitchiest part...it'd be nice to be hooked up with a knowledgeable source.

Anyways, I'm interested in hearing feedback from my hos, since I'm not on AIM so much anymore. In particular, I'm wondering if I should read into the "leading remark"; reminder that the dude has blown me off before, so he may just have an exaggerated sense of politeness, without any actual interest in being friends/+.

TMI

I've always maintained that there's no such thing as too much information. If you can't handle a person being honest and comfortable in his skin, then it's up to you to grow a pair...

Boy, have I learned my lesson! I've learned there is such a thing as TMI when it's, say, the diary of a person who dumped you. Sounds like a goldmine, right? but dude - you don't EVER want to know that shit. This should teach me to mind my own business.

Fart; and, the best pun in the universe

I was strolling along by myself, just minding my own business and walking my dog, when I hear this toot. That's funny, I thought, I don't remember farting. Then I realized it was the dog! I never knew that was possible...until my dog proceeded to have a mini episode of the runs, and put it all in context...

Ha, the kid cracks me up! I laughed my head off.

Totally independent of this, I woke up this morning and out of nowhere remembered this old schoolhouse joke we used to tell. I rolled it over in my phrenes a while, and decided that it had all the material of being the finest pun I've ever met:

How do you say "room 9" in Korean?

Afterlife

I was thinking about death and the afterlife, and how silly the idea of an afterlife is. If we're all headed to this other place for eternity, what does it matter what we do in these 70 or so years of life? Life has to be more significant than the afterlife, somehow, otherwise it would be pointless for us to go through with it all. Reincarnation, maybe, makes more sense (though it introduces a different problem of lacking a grand design; also scary). But neither of these is what my religion says is the case. My religion says that this life is the all-important test to see where I'll end up for the rest of eternity, also all-important.

Do the math, it doesn't add up.

In short, I concluded that all is vain but for the glory of God. A most absurd conclusion, I know, and I'm definitely not the first to make it. I guess the thought of death is so terrifying that I'd have to have a rock-hard heart to accept that there's nothing else after, that the ones I've loved and lost are obliterated forever like they were never even here. My head would explode before I can accept something like that. So the only other solution is to believe that some things lie beyond my comprehension. The logic of the universe is not my logic, but perhaps it makes sense to

All the finest of human achievements were done for the glory of some god. In the western world (the world I know best, unfortunately), art was religious all the way up to the Enlightenment. During the Englightenment they kinda stopped making art all together (except for some forgettable stuff), and it wasn't until Romanticism that people tried to find a new purpose: the universality of personal experience. That is, they tried to find to beauty of interpersonal connections as a way of replacing the beauty of a connection to God. Then they realized that it didn't quite work the way the old system did, that it still left one with a sense of purposelessness and loss, and hence came Modernism, the articulation of isolation, despair, and nothingness. Since then we (or at least I) have accepted these as synonymous with the human condition.

A teleological story of western art (and society) in a nutshell. All/vain/glory/God.