Geh

Happy hour tonight for a coworker/friend who's leaving our company... lots of nice people were there and a reasonable amount of alcohol was consumed. Probably should've avoided the Old Bay popcorn, but you live, you learn. Just ask Alanis.

City That Reads, My Ass

Why the hell, when you have a job in the heart of downtown Baltimore, can you not walk to a bookstore at lunch and just kill some time?

I could walk to Barnes and Noble, but what's the point? Doesn't it say something about that store that there are 10 million magazines and as many greeting cards and that's THE ENTIRE FIRST FLOOR?

Who browses magazines at lunch? Why? You could go upstairs, sure, and wend your way around the table after table after endcap after table of remainders and series reprints of obvious classics and best-sellers and Christian favorites, but the store is horribly laid out, the shelves are about a single book deep in back-catalog, there are almost more romance novels than fiction, and the only reason there aren't is that fiction includes about 50% what is charitably called "beach reading".

I realize that downtown Baltimore is populated chiefly by financial types who don't read books that don't say "Clancy" or "MBA" on them, and I realize that the remainder is populated by tourists who make eating at Legal Seafoods seem like a prison sentence in Redneckia, but what's the rest of the city's excuse? There are a handful of tiny vanity stores around the city that are only open because they don't actually need to make a profit to remain so, there's a Borders in Timonium, there's another terrible Barnes and Noble in Towson, and Bibelot has long since shot itself horribly in the foot.

Where is our Daunt Books? Where is our Foyle's? Where is our all the places I forgot the names of because it's been an eon since I've been in London? Christ, we can't even keep 5 used bookstores open on 25th street!

Bleh. I need to get the hell out of this horrible idiot town. Shame about the being trapped and all. Shame about the friends and the liking my job and actually starting to make progress on my house. Thank fuck for Amazon.

You TRY to be a Good Citizen...

A while back I ran for office for my community association, more or less unopposed, and got "elected", woohoo. There were several not-terribly-useful meetings, then I got sort of sick of getting called continuously and randomly by the President of said organization, and maybe sort of yelled at her a little bit when she called me at work, and... there were no meetings for a while.

The first meeting in a few months was tonight, and while we SHOULD have been able to accomplish something, instead we set off the alarm at the community center (there was no police response, I am happy to report), wasted some time listing all the myriad petty crimes that have happened in the last few weeks, listened to a Guardian Angel speak briefly, wasted some more time pretty much agreeing that something needs to be done, wondering what could be done, being told what could be done by an ex-officer of the organization, ignoring him, wondering what could be done, resolving to do something, then hastily adjourning the meeting.

And not that I am wracked with pain over missing the paltry amount of decent network TV that was on tonight, but it would've been nice to have dinner, dammit.

In a few weeks I will be able to go to the larger umbrella organization meeting. Here's hoping for some more structure... as the ex-officer pointed out, they get paid. So we'll see.

Burf

Today one of my coworkers semi-passed a certification of some kind, and thus, there were bagels.

I bageled for breakfast, and again at lunch. I ate cock-flavoured soup (whaddya know, it tastes JUST LIKE CHICKEN) for dinner, and had one of these, which was excellent. I should buy beer more often simply because it resembles one of my pets.

Yeah, now I'm mostly feeling parched and regretting all that bageling. Still, House was entertaining. And I have secured my sister-in-law's solemn promise to DVR the current season of The Wire for me, which means I can force my brother to watch it while he's home, in his own house, bwa ha ha, etc.

No more egg bagels for me. LOOK OUT!

Grr

It has been brought abruptly to my attention once again that some people find me arrogant, condescending, show-offy, what-have-you. Some people also find me a little too pleased with my intelligence, and a little too eager to be right. Some people further added that I am boastful about my education and just plain not very nice.

I could point out that most of the people that say this sort of thing:

a) don't know me very well
b) don't say it to my face
c) are themselves incredible know-it-alls
d) don't like having to think about their own failings, but looooove to project them onto other people.

Yes, I am proud that I am intelligent. But I don't believe I'm The Smartest Person You'll Ever Meet (if I am, I'm very sorry; you should probably leave your bedroom more often), I don't think I'm anywhere near as smart as your average Famous Smart Person, and I am (despite an enduring legend) perfectly happy to admit when I'm wrong. I have very little else going on BESIDES intelligence; I am not practical, not particularly handsome, taller than average but not interestingly so, not remotely well-off, broadly well-versed but also very shallowly, fatter than I need to be but not pitiably obese, balding but unwilling to attempt entertaining facial hair, etc.

Yes, I am proud that I am often right. Who isn't? There is no one out there crowing, "I am hardly ever correct! Yay me!" It stands to reason that any thoughtful person will be pleased to be correct, and embarrassed to some degree when they're not. If you revel in your ignorance, you are a fool. If you can laugh it off when you're wrong, good for you. I try to, but I'm not very good at it.

Am I arrogant? Probably, sure. Most people, by and large, are annoying, and we all put up walls to keep the bulk of them out of our faces. Some people are painfully shy and avoid conversation, some people are loud and say stupid shit, some people look down their noses at you, and some people try to steer conversations towards things they can actually talk about. But arrogance is often less an attitude than it is an observer's perception; if you are someone that dislikes outspoken liberals, you're going to find a lot of them arrogant whether they are or not. If you are yourself an inveterate know-it-all, then anyone who doesn't bow before your Superior Knowledge is likely to be considered arrogant. Beats actually considering your own behavior, right?

Am I condescending? I try extremely hard not to be, but I like talking about semi-obscure things or about mainstream things in greater-than-average detail, and people very often defensively make fun of people that are not ashamed of learning. Because I have encountered that response pretty much since I was able to talk, I'm sure I do tend towards cautiously undershooting people's abilities. If they get annoyed that I am "talking down to them" I will adjust accordingly, but a lot of times I find that I've still given them too much credit. Overall, I don't think there's anything wrong with assuming that 50% of the people you meet are going to be below average.

Am I proud of my education? Well, I would be if I had had anything to do with it at all. To be honest, while I am glad that I had the opportunity to go to Hopkins, I mostly shamefully wasted my time there, and am extremely fortunate to be in the position I'm in now. I bought a simple class ring, it's true, but it was primarily to remind myself that I went there, and to remind myself that I could've done so much more. If someone notices my ring and asks me about it, I will tell them where it's from, because how could I not? What, they ask me where it's from and I say, "um, I don't remember?" and keep my hand in my pocket for the rest of the evening? I do not say: "WHY, IT'S FROM HOPKINS, BECAUSE I AM A SUPER-GENIUS, UNLIKE YOU POOR SLOB, WHO PROBABLY WENT TO A STATE SCHOOL!" Many people that went to state schools paid their own way, and I have nothing but admiration for that. But should I feel ashamed of my opportunity? Only because I wasted it.

Am I unkind? Well, I do like to mock people. I mock them to their face, and I mock them to the level I think they can handle. Have I mocked too far? Sure. So has everyone else. But am I supposed to be a mind-reader, and know that I've hurt your feelings when you laugh and say nothing? I don't think so. If I mock you, really, it means I think you have a sense of humor about yourself, and I welcome reciprocal mockery.

To sum up: I'm really sorry if you are threatened by above-average intelligence, particularly if you yourself are of same. But don't put that shit on me, and if you hate that you're an asshole, don't put that on me either.

Besides, I'm not the one that crows about being on Jeopardy!

More Nothing

Specifically: what I accomplished this weekend. I guess I got some laundry done, and got the trash collected, and so on, but no car work, no house work (unless you count planning the built-in bookcases on the third floor, which I really don't, because they required about $400 what I ain't got).

Really all I did that was remotely worthwhile this weekend was observe people in their natural habitats, but I don't know that I really learned anything, although I did gain a little perspective about my own situation, which is useful, I suppose, except that I've been doing it for quite a while without anything particular to show for it.

I have been reading Bob Harris' Prisoner of Trebekistan, which I highly recommend to pretty much anyone, but I'm only about 90 pages into it, so it's always possible that it will go horribly horribly wrong shortly.

To sum up: meh.

Whoops

I coulda sworn I posted yesterday. Ah well.

Nothing really exciting to report, anyway. The weather looks sort of crappy this weekend, so it's probably going to be work on house rather than work on car(s). And I'm not taking any more pictures until I actually accomplish anything. The basement isn't quite ready yet, so I've only moved out of the front bedroom thus far (you might recall the semi-finished floor pictures of, um, a really long time ago)... looks like January of 2005, sadly, I am that lame.

Anyway, that room needs:

• 1/2 floor sanded
  
• 1/2 floor polyurethaned twice
  
• whole floor polyurethaned once more
  
• walls spackled smooth
  
• walls painted
  
• ceiling painted
  
• baseboards replaced and painted
  
• radiator painted
  
• bookshelf built
  
• 2 new doors planed to size
  
• closet door found (I know it's somewhere in the house)
  
• two new doors stained to match closet door
• all three doors hung

That should only take me another 2 years, right? At least only the bookcase one costs money.

Tag

Never been much for the memes, I must say. And yet, this should be one that I can't but do, as I've been here for a million fucking years; if I've learned nothing about the city in that long, then what the hell have I been doing? I'm guessing you're about to find out.

Five things to do in your city. In chronological order, no less.

1. Pay a lot of money, preferably mostly someone else's, to drink your way through a Hopkins education, telling yourself that you're learning a lot more about life than you would be if you, like, actually WENT TO CLASS... fail Physics senior year and have to graduate a year later, even though you've managed to stack up almost 140 credits that somehow don't enable you to graduate. Medieval Architecture? What the FUCK, man? Look, I don't care, he's not the curator of the Walters anymore, OK? Christ.

2. Get a job at a record store; both the stores I worked at both during and after my desultory tenure at Hopkins are shadows of their former selves. An Die Musik is now a tiny cringing presence on Charles street, having failed to adapt to the fact that the rest of the world eventually caught up to their innovations (it didn't help that the audio guys embezzled heavily), and Recordmasters is gone daddy gone, etc (despite the fact that teh intarwebs still think they're at the Rotunda). It's a shame, really; you'll have learned a lot about music, life, people, and recreational drugs at both of them. If only you could've worked at one that still existed, you could sell promotional CDs illegally at a massive profit...

3. Meet the "love of your life", have fun for a while, take the relationship for granted, enjoy arguing at the expense of trying to plan for a future, any future, be a total fucking dumbass, demonstrate your lack of ambition by working at a record store after getting a Hopkins degree, coast, be surprised when it fails. Don't worry, there'll be at least one more...

4. Allow your friend to get you a job in DC. Console yourself by reciting the mantra: "although HE got me the interview, if I weren't TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME, I wouldn't still have the job". Gratuitously hate on Baltimore. Move to DC. Live beyond your means. Meet some British girl, get engaged for no particular reason. Live beyond your means. Live waaaaaaay beyond your means. Move back to Baltimore, pretend you like it again. Possibly have some sort of clandestine romance going on, despite your lack of having broken off the random engagement.

5. Having learned nothing, fuck up your entire life in a spectacular way that takes all the lessons you should've learned in 1-4, flagrantly ignores them, brings in some new stupid shit (except the recreational drugs, dude, those totally do nothing for you), abuse your friends, loved ones, pets (why not? little fuckers could clean their OWN litterboxes), etc. Buy as much shit you can't afford as you can pretend you can afford. Whimper.

Rinse, repeat.

Or, you know, maybe you should just do something else, instead.

Just In Case Such a Person Exists

Not that I expect there is, but if there is anyone out there that does not yet have Netflix, but intends to get it, I have a free month if you want it. New users only, or I'd be using it meself.

Um, act fast, like, operators are standing by. And stuff.

Don't Look Now...

Those seven of you that read this space know that I am, let's say, judicious with the truth. There's a whole heck of a lot of it that I don't actually LIE about, I simply omit, sometimes at mildly ridiculous lengths.

I'm omitting one of those things now, and quite a big one. Not because I fear stalkers or anything like that; I had one of those a long while ago and I cheerfully drove her away using nothing more than my scintillating personality. No, I am omitting it partly because it's no one's goddamned business, but mostly because talking about it would require me to talk about other things, and yet other things, and soon there are all sorts of things that I'm talking about that I've never wanted to talk about in this forum, although most of them I will happily talk about in any number of other forums, which I understand can be confusing.

The short answer is, whatever, it's my blog. If you want to read about feelings, go read someone who likes talking about them. The long answer starts with a lot of fulminating about the fact that people ascribe meaning to the written word that may or may not be warranted, and if the only time someone writes something is when they're in Mood X, readers who are poor extrapolators might believe the writer always to be in Mood X, when based on experience, is passing unlikely. Shit, no one's in Mood X ALL the time... but anyway, then I get bored. So no long answer for you.

Suffice it to say, if someone wants to read some dashed off sentence I wrote half-drunk at midnight and think they can draw reliable conclusions about my state of mind, I refuse to consider that my problem, particularly if they believe they know me better than that.

Anyone can say "I love you" but how do you know that they mean it?

Arrrrrrrr

Why yes, it IS International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Um. Shiver me timbers, and watch out for landlubbers out to scuttle your bunghole. Or, um...

ARRRRRRRRR!

Beh, By Popular Request

I sure hope tomorrow is more productive than today was. My boss was out Thursday and Friday last week, and it was only by accident that I got anything done, and when I found out this morning that he was sick, there was very little for it.

Actually, it's not so much that I'm not working as that I'm stuck on a database design problem that has rather far-reaching consequences to our future projects, and I don't want to fuck it up. And I've been distracted. My basement-dweller is apparently done moving out tomorrow, so I can start moving the 2nd floor down there. I'll be sure to let you know how that goes.

To recap: beh.

Eh

I have nothing today. I didn't find any entertaining food products in the grocery today, and I did a lot more moving stuff around and catching up than I did actual work. My friend who has been living in the basement is almost completely moved out, so there's a giant 'moving crap into the basement' project coming up shortly. I've resolved to try and do all the projects I can without spending any money at all, which is actually quite a few (including the bedroom floor, which I started last spring), because, well, I don't have any.

Good night and good luck, to coin a phrase.

Presented Without Comment

Orioles: Beh

So I got to the game in the middle of the 4th inning, Red Sox ahead 3 to 0, and then the Orioles got me all excited by scoring 5 runs in the bottom, and then nothing happened for a while, because the Sox replaced the pitcher who could throw nothing but singles, and then the Orioles retired Bedard, and went through a series of lame-ass replacements, culminating with the unspectacular but mostly adequate Bruce Chen, and then they fucking allowed 3 runs and lost. Goddammit.

Plus, there were more Sox weenies there than Orioles' fans, so the cheers for the Sox were not just a little bit, but NOTICEABLY louder for the Sox than for the O's.

And then, insult to injury, there were more Sox fans than O's fans in the Wharf Rat afterwards. They were so annoying that they eventually even seemed to be pissing each other off. Christ, they're not even that annoying at Fenway.

I should just like to point out that they are more games behind than there are games left in the season. Are they really getting that excited about a Wild Card berth? Who the fuck else was going to get it?

Beh

Shit, I've been drinking since lunch.

Actually, I had two pints at lunch, and was basically comatose until 5, not because of the alcohol, but because of the giant pile of fries. I recovered around 6, went out and had slightly too much sushi with A Happy Family, then had some not-terribly-impressive amount of beers, and now the day is done. Good lord am I lame.

I could probably say something trenchant about the gray area between having enough to drink that you're a little leery of driving, and having had enough that you think you're JUSHT FINE, THANKS! But it's not clear what it'd be in service of.

I was the former, and I was very careful. So bite me. Also, driving through Fells Point, it's extremely hard to get past 20 mph, unless you're a colossal ass. In this case, it would appear that I am not. I have decided one thing, though: I am SO getting the 6.3 on the road, ASAP. Wheeeeeeeee!

How do I become an Election Judge?

To become an election judge you must be a registered voter in the State of Maryland. Democratic and Republicans are accepted first. If the total number of Democrat and Republican Judges can't be fulfilled we will then consider Declines (Independents) and other registered parties to make the quota needed. You must be able to withstand at least a 14 hour day of work, read, write, speak, and understand the English language. You must also be willing and able to follow instructions concerning the election laws and the overall duties of manning a polling precinct.

-----------------------------------

First sentence: check. Second and third sentences: fuck you. Fourth sentence: had to read several times before I understood what the hell they were saying. Anyway, I mailed my application off this afternoon, so it probably won't be processed by November. Also, I'm registered Green (for which I was mocked earlier today by an avowed Republican, who didn't disagree that primaries, especially in Maryland, are stupid; in any case, he wasn't able to vote this morning for the same reason thousands of others weren't, so, whatever).

More importantly, Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy came out today, and let me just tell you, it fucking rules. Even more than LSW I, if you can believe that. Although it remains to be seen how long it is before the cheat book is purchased. Also, my thumbs hurt.

Also, this blog is unexploded. Let's be careful out there.

Basilica Bullshit in Baltimore

So there's an ongoing attempt on the part of the Baltimore Basilica (previously the Baltimore Cathedral, until the Diocese decided that a big ugly cinderblock of a builing in Homeland would better serve as the headquarters of the Catholic Church in Baltimore (which decision I'm certain had nothing to do with the relative blackness and whiteness of the environs of the two)) to raze a 100-year-old hotel building at the corner of Franklin and Charles street downtown (also known as the busiest intersection in Mt Vernon; pay attention, this will be important momentarily) in order to build a "prayer garden".

"It is our hope that this prayer garden will provide people of all faiths with knowledge about the church's long history in Baltimore and with a space for quiet prayer and reflection," William Cardinal Keeler has said. Because, you know, nothing says quiet reflection like rush hour Franklin street traffic. Possibly more important: "Eventually, church officials have said, they hope to use the site for a basilica visitors' center."*

So, in other words, they want to demolish this to build a vacant lot, with some shrubs and shit, that will pretend to be a prayer garden until they can soak guilty Catholics into funding some pointless visitor's center, a goal which is achieved at most beautiful and historic European churches with a corkboard inside the door.

Now, while I tend towards historic preservation, it is worth noting that while the Rochambeau building is in fact historic, and is fairly attractive (hideous Baltimore-specialty ground-floor retail cladding notwithstanding) before it was a 100-year-old hotel, it was this, which was most recently the historic mansion of Dr Osler, one of Hopkins Hospital's most famous doctors ever. Was Osler's residence deserving of demolition? Doubtful, but progress is in the eye of the beholder, and there's clearly no way to stick a viable hotel in a two-story house, no matter how grand. The Diocese's plan, however, says not that they can't put a visitor's center in the Rochambeau, but that they don't WANT to, and don't really care what anyone else thinks.

This reminds me strongly of UB's insistence that the historic Odorite building, which they had owned for years and deliberately let decay nearly beyond the point of salvage (something which typically results in municipal seizure if the owners aren't, say, intimately connected to Peter Angelos or O'Malley's good Irish Catholic guilty conscience) until they finally got permission to raze it and build a questionably attractive (I sort of like it, but I liked the Odorite building better) modern student center. They built this only after repeatedly and publicly proclaiming that they would LOVE to save the Odorite building, but they couldn't possibly, because there was no way the student center they wanted could be built on the existing structure, a claim that met almost instantly with a number of detailed plans from local architects for exactly how it could be done. UB ignored these proposals, razed the building, fucked up traffic for over a year, and built this. This was the Odorite building.

The Basilica's plan was a little different. They'd been trying to raze the Rochambeau since at least 2002 (that was the only time I noticed the zoning signs, anyway) but were told that razing it would jeopardize the historic tax credits they were applying for to offset their $32 million renovation of the Basilica itself. They dropped the plan then, but now that the renovation is nearly complete and the credits are spent, they're right back on it.

God only knows what unholy piece of shit they're going to build on the ashes of the Rochambeau. I will tell you, this is one more reason I want O'Malley the fuck out of this city, even if it does mean Mayor Dixon. I don't mean to imply that he was instrumental in this plot, but he sure as hell didn't stop it.

--------------------

* Quotes from this article

Chick-Fil-Ugh

I had occasion to go to White Marsh mall today, and may have gone on a bit of a rant about the ostentatiously closed Chick-Fil-A front...

While I am happy to recognize the prerogative of a business owner to do stupid shit because it reflects their beliefs, I have a number of problems with the approach of places like Chick-Fil-A. McDonald's very quietly features fish sandwiches on Fridays during certain significant Catholic holidays, and In-N-Out Burger prints Biblical chapter and verse numbers on the bottom of some of their soda cups (as does CFA). But what, exactly, is the point of closing on Sunday? They're really irritating about it, too; the prominent Chick-Fil-A signs on the 95 exit ramps do not indicate that they're closed on Sundays, and their storefront simply has the security gate pulled down and the lights off, no sign or anything, perhaps leading the uninformed to suspect there are a lot of end-of-the-week grease fires.

I mean, yeah, great, the owners think it's wrong to work on Sunday, fine. But why do they prevent ALL of their employees from working on Sunday? The action is pointedly intolerant; it says that they would rather lose a significant amount of potential earnings than compromise their Christian principles. But what Christian principles are those? CFA is noted as the largest corporate donor to Christian charities in American business. Domino's is another; they give 1% of their profits to Operation Rescue, a Christian Pro-Life organization with questionable tactics. Target spends a lot of money on Roman Catholic charities as well. CFA, for its part, is significantly associated with James Dobson's unbelievably intolerant Focus on the Family, and featured Veggie Tales toys on their kids' menu when that horrible brain-washy movie was in theaters.

My question is, why not hire employees willing to work on Sundays, like Jews and Muslims and god forbid, agnostics? What they are saying is, it is wrong for anyone to work on Sunday or to profit off Sunday work. Do the owners invest in companies that work on Sunday? Do they themselves work on Sunday? That's not clear, and I am far too lazy to research it. The smugness, the ostentatious piety (it's been pointed out to me that not trumpeting it means they're not ostentatious, but I think the way they do it is even more designed to draw attention than a simple sign would) is indicative of everything that is wrong with wearing your religion on your sleeve, regardless of the religion.

As far as I'm concerned, they're closed seven days a week.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: So, I totally wrote this yesterday. Blogger seems to have not responded to my "Publish Post" click, so there you go.

Content Challenged

The trouble with these Content Challenges things, for me, is that I am apparently an incredibly boring person.

Today, I woke up late-ish, fed my cats, drove to my brother's house for my nephew's fourth birthday, ate some food, was vaguely irritated by a bunch of waist-high folk, drove home, nearly died when I dozed off momentarily on 97, fed my cats, fed my friend's cats, took a nap, ordered and ate some Chinese food, watched the 2nd episode of last season of The Wire (still packing), and now this. Whooooo.

Eh. At least I got it in on time today. Tell you what, I'll do my best to win the lottery tomorrow. You'll know if I did, because you will never hear from me again. Except maybe David, because I'm totally going to open a competing store in that building I wanted to buy and hire away all your employees. Or, whatever the exact opposite of that is.

Daylight Savings ALREADY?

OK, so I'm late, so sue me. At least I started on the right day.

Also, I just watched the last episode of The Corner followed by the first episode of last season of The Wire, so I've been packing to move the hell out of this hellhole of a city. Man, you'd think the Mayor would have something to say about what all these shows are doing for our fair city's reputation... oh, wait...

I don't really have anything for y'all. I am currently reading Mark Bowden's latest book, Guests of the Ayatollah, and it is soooooo not the right book to read on my short light rail commute; I've basically been getting one episode of hostage interrogation and/or revolutionary posturing per leg. There are a million characters (there were originally 66 hostages) and a lot of them have foreign names, and they're described both as they are and as the revolutionaries fervently believe them to be, and it's really confusing under the circumstances. Add to that the fact that it's an uncorrected proof, and I left what little editing was done behind about a hundred pages ago, and I really need to sit down for a stretch and read a bunch of it. Somehow, I don't think this is going to happen if I start at 1:10 in the morning. Eh.

A Fine Use of Time

It's barely possible that I spent the last 5 hours playing Civilization IV, yes, why do you ask?

I did manage to catch up on the many weeks of laundry that I was behind, and have a dinner beer, and pee a number of times (I blame the dinner beer), and it's not like I kept playing until 3 am, that would be an indication that I have a problem.

No, my friends (and spambots), I am preparing for an epic battle, Mac Vs PC, one in which I annihilate David's eco-friendly civilization while it's focused on some silly diet, which will ensue just as soon as either of us have any spare time. Which is to say, sometime during the Jenna Bush presidency.

I have a feeling, actually, that David would be a total bastard in the game, eschewing the built-in tendencies to reward DailyKos-like behavior (the posting, not the ad policies) by concentrating all his resources on developing nukes. It won't help. Should the planets ever align, his theoretically duplicitous ass is going DOWN, yo.

Boy, it's lucky for me I'll never have to back any of this boasting up.

If it comes to it, I might have to skip the dinner beer, and that would just be wrong.

Steam... Already... Lost...

Boy, I knew there was a reason I hadn't posted since June. My life is depressingly samey and boring, and I've accomplished less in the last year than I have at any other point in my life. And I've had some boring-ass years, lemme tell ya.

I just finished watching the latest Jerry Bruckheimer Primetime Polished Turd, "Justice", and I'm pretty sure that the terrorists have already won. The basic premise of the show is that there's these lawyers, right? And they're all really fucking smart and hardcore, and they get all these spiffy high-profile cases, even though there only seem to be four of them in their massive shiny office in LA, and they have instant access to the best movie-quality crime scene recreation software and crap that Fox's money can buy, possibly because they found it in Bruckheimer's basement, and they try the shit out of these cases, and so far (it's only been two episodes) they win every time, by damn! And then, because we're all fucking simpletons and can't think for ourselves or have a moment of doubt, the last five minutes of the show is "What REALLY happened!!!!" in both cases of which, it was pretty much exactly the same line of bullshit that they fed the jury, hoping they'd buy it.

I'm pretty sure that you could show The Graduate to this show's target audience and half of them would kill themselves as the credits rolled, and the other half would begin stalking cast members hounding them to know what happened after the bus pulled out. This is hardly a recent problem; go watch the original Italian Job and then the remake, or whatever order Netflix ships them in, and then tell me which one you preferred. If it's the remake, you fucking suck, I'm sorry.

I spent some time when I should've been working today bitching about this movie Mr & Mrs Bridge, a Merchant/Ivory picture with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. I mostly watched it because I wanted to see them interact on screen, but I hadn't realized it was going to be 2+ hours of NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENING, like every other Merchant/Ivory production. It's not like it was a worthless experience, because if nothing else it was interesting to watch the made-up lives of some hopelessly wealthy yet trapped and boring people putter and trudge obliviously through some of the most exciting years of this century (late 1930's, that is), but at the end of the movie, there was a pointless little Animal House synopsis of what happened after they had used up all the film stock in the world, which is basically that everyone lived happily ever after, even though Paul Newman's character had a heart condition and Robert Seann Leonard's character joined the nascent Air Force in the early 40's, and Kyra Sedgwick's character was a waste of skin who decided to go live in New York to be an actress even though she didn't have any apparent talent, and t'other'n moved back in to her parents' giant fucking house because she couldn't make it work with her well-meaning but tragically shabby husband, and Joanne Woodward's character wrestled endlessly with the question of whether or not her stone-like husband knew what the hell love was, much less felt it for her... even for all that, the movie was somehow more satisfying than the show tonight.

It was so well-edited, and so well-produced, and so, well, BORING, and so tied up in an easily digested moral nugget of excrement, that there's no way anyone will discuss it, not really. No way anyone will lose sleep over it, why would they? What's there to wonder about? We KNOW what happened! We were SHOWN, and it was SHINY and well-lit and unequivocal. Oh, thank god there are such wonderful pretend defense attorneys in the world!

Long story short: don't watch this shit, the first several seasons of The Practice were entire solar systems better, and that show still ended up sucking.

Even shorter: won't someone please put a stop to the Jerry Bruckheimers of the world? I'll even let you film their demises with high-quality equipment, so everyone will know EXACTLY what happened... oh, fuck it.

CONTENT CHALLENGE, BITCHES!!!!

Ahem. Must have, um, nodded off there for a minute...

In a somewhat unorthodox move, David has thrown down the Content Challenge Gauntlet in what appears to be a naked attempt to get those of us who are preoccupied and/or lazy to write something for a while. It appears also to be working, although some might suggest that I have yet to achieve "content".

In other news, I am still 33. Yippee. I've been busy with some shit, yo. A partial list: trying to care more about my job while mostly waiting to see if I get a raise at the end of the year (I'll let you know; it's not at all that I don't like my job, it's that I don't like having to have one), working on the older younger Mercedes which I may or may not have stupidly destroyed the engine of several months ago, working on the newer older Mercedes that I may or may not have stupidly purchased several months ago, working on the vertical landfill I sometimes refer to as "my house", drinking not nearly enough, planning to call my ex-drinking buddy (who I squarely blame for my falling down in the drinking department) to tell him that the area around his old house is completely surrounded with orange plastic fencing and steel plates, trying not to spend money I don't have (very limited success here), trying to think of something to blog about (I have several things, actually, but none of them are fully-realized enough to bother blogging; look for their horrible misshapen embryos shortly), planning a quick jaunt to Kansas City to visit this guy, trying to sit down and figure out how the fuck to write my novel, and occasionally going on stressful vacation with my family.

There's probably some other stuff, too, but it's not NEARLY so interesting.

There. So now we BOTH can't wait until the month is over (it is a month, right? Oh please god tell me it's a month...).