But Oh How It Feels So Real

I didn’t realize until today that both “X-Men 3” and the short-lived reincarnation of “The Night Stalker” were both really really bad. At first, I enjoyed them both greatly. I was vaguely aware that they were loosely based upon older source material, much like “Veggie Tales” and “Ten Things I Hate About You,” but as I had only a passing familiarity with the original content I was blissfully ignorant as to how utterly disappointing and frustrating these reinterpretations are.

Thankfully I have the Internet, and the fanboys what call it home, to let me know that I in fact did not like Stuart Townsend’s tortured Kolchak. I had no idea that he was supposed to be more goofy and sarcastic. And if only I had known the full backstory on Jean Grey/Phoenix, then I could have been appropriately disappointed and upset at the silver screen version. Unfortunately, I have not slavishly devoted enough of my life to the absorption and veneration of these, and other sacred texts. You can imagine my surprise, as I have slavishly devoted a large portion of my life to film, television, and comics (do online comics count?). For instance, I do not believe there is a “Futurama” quote or reference that I will not get. “Buffy?” Come on.

I think I’m lucky, though. Because while I would love to see a new Buffy film, or more episodes of “Futurama,” there is always the risk that the new can’t live up to the mystique and the greatness of what came before. Look at Axl Rose, and then imagine the torment he’s going through (aside from being crazy) trying to top Use Your Illusions I & II. I don’t think he can do it, but I think he’ll try, and inevitably fans will be disappointed.

And then there are those things that should never be remade. “Citizen Kane” comes to mind, as does the recent and annoyingly tepid Ben Folds cover of the Clash’s “Lost In The Supermarket.” Boo. I love Ben Folds’ music, but his covers (aside from “Bitches Ain’t Shit” and “Twin Falls, Idaho”) are woefully unnecessary and usually lack the punch that made the originals so great. But then again, if you never heard the original, maybe the covers don’t sound so weak.


[a late edit follows]

Question: what can brown do for you?
Answer: not deliver a package, 2 days in a row.

I ordered some tshirts from cafepress over a week ago, and UPS has spent six days not delivering them. Yesterday they "missed" the package at the warehouse, so it never went out on the truck, and today there was an "exception," whatever the fuck that means. I'm just going to pick up the package myself. AND, I'm adding UPS to my embargo list. You're dead to me, Brown. Dead.

I Need New Clothes, I Need Somewhere To Stay.

Heaven help me, but I liked Ratner’s version of the X-Men. I liked it better than either of Bryan Singer’s two films. The concept of curing mutation was very interesting to me, as was the whole Jean-Grey-as-Sybil bit. I think characters, especially those with superpowers, are at their most interesting and most human when they don’t have their shit together, and the X-Men in this film totally lost their shit. I’ve also got to respect a film franchise that takes a look at what, or who, made the franchise successful and then says “let’s get rid of that and see what happens.” The overall effect is dark. Empire Strikes Back kind of dark. Having lavished all that praise, I must say that the failure of the series to include Apocalypse is disappointing. Freakin’ Apocalypse! The next film needs to be him waking up, resurrecting the characters what died in this film, turning them into his evil horsemen, and then going buck-fucking-wild on humanity. That’s the X-Men movie I would buy on DVD. Not some damn Wolverine prequel. Backstory is all fine and good, but the series is picking up momentum, and going backwards to see how Logan got where he is today is not nearly as interesting to me as seeing where he will be tomorrow. If you really want to clog up your franchise with pointless backstory, incorporate it into the plotline, like J.J. Abrams has done on LOST. In the meantime, I’m going to go ahead and call for a moratorium on prequels.

In other news, this week marks the beginning of my last month in my apartment. Ah, the memories. Gameday traffic, fireballs from my oven, tales of Moussaoui, dumbass undergrads in my parking space. I’m gonna miss that shithole.

So, I guess I’m going to have to find someplace else to live. Anyone got any ideas? I have, of late, become annoyed with paying rent. It might be time for me to upgrade from dwelling in shitty apartments to living in a shitty house. Apparently, there are some really cheap houses in Oklahoma City. Who knew? I guess I’m going to start looking at condos and houses. It does not sound at all like something I’m going to enjoy.

Put It To Bed, Kick It In The Head

Sometimes an extra 30 minutes of sleep is just not worth it. I found that out today. I also remembered why the snooze button is so important. I think those two lessons normally follow quickly upon each other for most people.

At exactly 7:15 this morning my phone begins ringing, and vibrating against the thin metal step ladder upon which it sits. It’s damn noisy, and sometimes includes the added bonus of my phone vibrating itself off the ladder, causing that lovely noise that only consumer electronics and hardwood floor can create. In short: it wakes my ass up. Today, however, I just squeezed the button on the side, silencing it, and then drifting off to sleep with the delusion that I would get up in 5 minutes.

Instead, I had some weird ass dreams about people living at the University of Oklahoma Library, and pretending to know who David Spade was when he recognized me and struck up a conversation (in Spade’s defense, he was sporting some serious facial hair). And there might have been vampires. Most of my dreams feature vampires.

I snapped out of it a bit and looked at my phone. Seven. Forty. Fucking. Two. Ideally, I would be leaving the house no more than 8 minutes later. That didn’t happen. I got up, had a shower/shave/etc., packed my lunch, set my computer to burn a DVD, copied some songs to my iPod, and left. It was about 8:10. Meh. So I get to work about 8:50. Big deal. Thanks to my Montessori experiences in childhood, I was able to eat my lunch in only 10 minutes, so I’m basically on schedule.

And now for the weekend roundup:

I went to test drive the new Yaris yesterday. OMFG! It makes me happy. I don’t want to shill for them (‘cause they are not paying me to), but I must have one.

LOST was okay this week. It was good, but it wasn’t great. It suffered from the same problem as Terminator 3. Okay, it suffered from ONE of the problems of Terminator 3. That problem is pacing. This season was heavy, HEAVY, with character development. That’s awesome. I love me some good dialog and emotional gravitas. But it felt a little light on plot until the end of the season. Specifically, the last three weeks felt like somebody spilled a big bag of plot points all over the script and rushed that shit straight to Oahu. Consequently, the finalé felt a bit rushed. There. I said it. If you’re interested in what I think is a great example of a season finalé mixing heavy duty plot and character development, go check out the last episode of Carnivalé (featuring, coincidentally enough, Clancy Brown).

One last thing. Three hundred and sixty five days ago I was in London, watching Mamma Mia at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Just thought you should know.

It’s A Dirty Job, But Shooting Guns Just Makes You Horny

What does the [CRAZY-ASS RELIGIOUS TV SHOW TITLE REDACTED] have in common with the Militia of Montana, the Michigan Militia, and a few other antigovernment fringe groups? Well, my animosity, just so we’re clear, but also a disturbing fondness for conspiracy theories. I’ve been cataloging “Documentaries” today that attempt to expose “the truth” behind the “cover up” of the bombing that the “mainstream media” won’t report. I just watched the [CRAZY-ASS RELIGIOUS TV SHOW TITLE REDACTED]’s report on “the cover up,” and as I watch it I see some things, and some things are conspicuously absent. For example, very rarely do you find any rescuers, survivors or family members of victims involved in these reports. But I do see some errors. Not a slew, mind you, but just enough to make me realize that these people have packaged their lies with just enough truth to make them palatable and believable to the brain-trusts who watch this shit. I know I’ve gone off on [UNCOOL CRAZY-ASS RELIGIOUS TV SHOW HOST NAME REDACTED] before, and I know I can’t see what’s really in his heart, but this motherfucker makes me want to get as far from Christianity as I can. I think he’s a lousy example of Christianity, and I think he’s an even worse excuse for a journalist. And the fact that he uses Christianity to spread his paranoid, intolerant messages should be offensive to anyone who has read and taken to heart the teaching of Jesus. It is so objectionable on so many levels.

Speaking of dicks, the “24” season finale was chock full of them. Jack Bauer fought off terrorists to gain control of the missiles (phallic?) aboard a submarine (cock-like?) and even got to stab a fella in the throat (hmmm... penetration....). Add to it the opening of the missile tubes in preparation for launch, their closure after the launch was aborted, and the metaphorical money-shot as Jack popped two cold-blooded caps into Chris Henderson’s chest (come to think of it, the tubes closed right after Jack “shot his load” all over Peter Weller’s character). And the whole time, Jack’s running around with a man-bag over his shoulder. He’s had it all season, almost like he’s wearing his cojones on the outside. And, not so surprisingly, whatever Jack needs to accomplish his mission comes right out of that bag. Hmm. Plus, President Logan is a total dick. But the biggest dicks of all? Chinese Ninjas. Sneaky fucks kidnapped Jack in the last 15 minutes of the finale. Will season 6 feature Jack protecting the Fujian province from terrorists? We’ll find out in only 6 short months.

[props to Lars for inspiring the graphic design!]

You Had A Great Idea...

Maybe I’m weird.

I can’t stand tabbed Internet browsing, and became so cross with Firefox for not letting me open a new window with a simple Apple-Click, like Safari, that I have vowed to never use it again (in other vow-related news, my embargo on Taco Bell is still going strong). Just thinking about those smug little tabs makes me want to shoot my computer, Elvis-style, but people seem to like tabs on their browsers. And I like to use AppleWorks instead of MSWord, but I can’t figure out why in the hell Helvetica comes up as the default font. Is there an uglier font in existence? Is there a more useless font, in terms of academic acceptability? Even Courier gets a green light from APA! But someone obviously likes it, as it has been the default font in ClarisWorks, and now AppleWorks, for at least 11 years.

These are the thoughts that plague me.

Another plague-ish bit of consternation came to me today from MTV. Fucking MTV. Imagine at this point that I have made the ceremonial and obligatory mid to late twentysomething rant against MTV for ditching music in favor of shit like "Yo Mamma" and "My Super Sweet Sixteen," and I’ll get on with my point. MTV launched a music site this week (ah, sweet irony) to compete with iTunes. Okay. Did any of these geniuses stop to consider the fact that MTV programs (Jackass, Beavis & Butthead, Punk’d, etceteras) are available for sale on iTunes? Now, while I have an MBA, I wasn’t at the top of my class, so maybe I’m not seeing the big picture here. What it looks like to me is that MTV has decided to start selling a product that they stopped promoting about 15 years ago (music) while allowing the industry GIANT they’re competing against (iTunes) to keep selling the product MTV has been all about producing and promoting for the last 15 years (shitty television programs). Uh-huh. Well, all due respect to MTV and their corporate masters, but I hope Steve Jobs stomps their monkey-asses down. Honestly, MTV might have just become too stupid to survive.

But if they put episodes of The State on their dumbass music site, I’d probably sign up.

[Edit: due to my recent rageless angst, I have created a new shirt honoring the angry butterflies that set up shop in my stomach last week. Also available in pink. Enjoy!]

I Ain’t Got Many Friends Left To Talk To

That’s bullshit, thankfully. I’ve got a lot of friends, some ancient and some very recent. Some that warrant a simple nod from across the room at a party, some for whom I’d take a bullet (assuming that they didn’t fire it at me).

I even bought meat yesterday because a friend asked me to. That goes against my training as a vegan and a cheapskate.

Sometimes, though, I do feel like I shortchange my friends. I disappear, I don’t return calls, I get secretive and shady and retreat back into my own little Seth-World. And then I come back and act like nothing happened. I don’t communicate very well, except in blog-form, which is perhaps better than nothing.

On that note, I will go ahead and use my blogging skills to let you all know that I’m doing fine. The job is good, the apartment is still a wreck, and I’ve done 0% of what I planned to get done on my thesis this week, but it’s cool. And it wouldn’t be cool if it were it not for my friends and family. So, thanks.

I don’t have a whole lot to say beside that, which is a different experience for me. So, I’m just gonna shut up, and end the week on a positive note.

We’ll see how long Donny Downer can keep that up.

[Edit 1245: I am currently cataloging a video called "A Child's Grief," which features a ringing endorsement from Bob Baugher, Ph.D. His job title? Death Educator. I'll bet his life makes my world seem like a Puppy Christmas Party.]

Just Let It Go

I’m trying. No, I’m really not. And I don’t know why. Well, yes, I do. I just don’t like it. I don’t like the kind of person it makes me. Whatever. [Edit, 1358: I'm having some serious trouble today dealing with my job. I could feel it creeping up yesterday, but I wasn't ready for today. I've watched about 8 hours of news coverage from the day of the bombing (some of it I could speed through, some of it I had to watch multiple times), and now I just hurt. I'm on break, pulling myself together. I feel better now.]

Don’t bother commenting on this [feel free to comment]. I’ll stop acting like an idiot any time now. In the meantime, here’s the last 20 songs I’ve used to title my posts. And a new shirt.

4/10/2006
Oh God, She's Killing Me!
“Pulling Teeth” by Green Day

4/12/2006
Every Single One’s Got A Story To Tell
“Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes

4/14/2006
Despite All My Rage, I Am Still Just A Rat In A Cage
“Bullet With Butterfly Wings” by Smashing Pumpkins

4/15/2006
Six... Slowly...
“Straight To Number One” by Touch ‘N Go

4/17/2006
I'm Left With A Bag In My Hand
“Walk Away” by Bree Sharp

4/19/2006
Everything’s Subjective, Nothing Lasts For Johnny O.
“Carlotta Valdez” by Harvey Danger

4/22/2006
Cut Your Hair And Get A Job
“Common People” by Pulp

4/25/2006
You're Just Too Good To Be True, I Can't Take My Eyes Off You
“Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” by Sowelu

4/25/2006
I'm Sick Wit Dis, Straight Gangsta Mack
“The Humpty Dance” by Digital Underground

4/28/2006
I Know We Are, We Are The Lucky Ones
“Lucky” by Bif Naked

5/01/2006
Why You Punish Me?
“Time” by Hootie and the Blowfish

5/03/2006
I Got The Gestures And Sound, Got The Timing Down. It's Uncanny, Yeah You'd Think It Was Me.
“Best Imitation of Myself” by Ben Folds Five

5/04/2006
Make Everything All Right In The Window Of My World
“Window of My World” by Guided By Voices

5/08/2006
And It's So Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking
“Reckless” by Tilly and the Wall

5/08/2006
I Think It’s Strange You Never Knew
“Fade Into You” by Flickerstick

5/10/2006
Somebody Must Be Fucking With Me
“Batmobile” by Liz Phair

5/11/2006
We Are Far Too Young And Clever
“Come On, Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners

5/12/2006
And I Really Have Enjoyed My Stay, But I Must Be Moving On
“Goodbye Stranger” by Supertramp

5/15/2006
Step Into My Office, Baby
“Step Into My Office, Baby” by Belle & Sebastian

5/17/2006
Just Let It Go
“Sweet Troubled Soul” by Stellastarr

And I Really Have Enjoyed My Stay, But I Must Be Moving On

...or not. My landlord was kind enough to send me a letter this week reminding me that my lease is in fact not up until the end of June. Wow. Six weeks stretching out in front of me like that makes moving seem not quite so harrowing. I do have an enormous amount of shit, mind you, but now I have some breathing room. The to do list is daunting. I need to pack and clean the kitchen, empty out one more closet of nicknacks, clean the bathroom, pack up my computer, pack the rest of my clothes, pack up my art, pack up my cameras, and now I’m tired. At least I have more than two weeks to figure out where I’m going to live.

And today is my last day working for the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. That kind of sneaks up on you. I’ve got to go turn in my keys pretty soon. It will be weird not having that great bronze hunk of metal stretching out my pockets from now on. I did make it to the library this morning to interview for an assistantship position, and I discovered that I’m not under qualified for the position. No, I’m under trained. In case you’re wondering, that’s not just a semantic distinction. It’s also less deleterious to my sense of self-worth. All kidding aside, I can use Photoshop, I can use Imageready, I can use Dreamweaver and I can use Flash. I may not be an expert, but I can teach myself, and I can do it pretty quickly. That’s how I roll, yo. And the position will require a hefty amount of graphic design and some programming.

Still, though, it was a new experience for me to keep repeating “no, I don’t know how to do that, but I can learn,” or some variation, over and over during a job interview. That’s usually the kind of verbiage reserved for a third date. So, they didn’t offer me the job on the spot. Heaven only knows why they might want to interview someone else. I left with a positive feeling, but we’ll see. I did put together some quick graphics afterward to showcase my design skills. My mad skillz. My /\/\4D L33T S|<1LLZ!!!!1

Sorry. I offer my apologies in shirt form.

We Are Far Too Young And Clever

I had my first committee meeting today for my thesis. All in all, it went well. My committee members had some interesting ideas, helped me to clarify some points from my proposal, and no one told me the topic was boring or unworthy of study. So that’s nice. It was a bit shocking, however, when we first started. Apparently it is standard procedure for the student to walk the committee through the proposal. I had to present it to them, and I was oddly unprepared for that. Keep in mind that I have been working on the different parts of this proposal for over a year, and it has gone through several iterations, and when flummoxed I have trouble remembering how all the pieces fit together, and which pieces are still in there. I held it together pretty well, I think, and the Deans appeared to be on board. Also, Ralph called me later and thanked me for having my shit together (my words, not his) as it made him look good, and the Deans commented positively on that. It’s always nice to get external validation from people you respect, even if it is being relayed through a secondhand source. I told Ralph I was glad to do anything to help, and then he offered me a Guinea Pig. Totally unrelated, but his daughters have a Guinea Pig that needs a home for one month. I reluctantly said no. Then he went off on a Unicef-ish program from his childhood that took donations to provide livestock to Chinese farmers. One of the lower donation levels provided a “breeding pair” of Guinea Pigs for aspiring Asian Guinea Pig ranchers. I didn’t really want to know that.

I’m having a real problem segueing back to my train of thought (Ralph has derailed my train of thought in absentia, and if you know him then you know how appropriate that is). Anyway, the proposal meeting was pretty scary, but I think that was because I was emotionally unprepared. When the defense comes around, I will need to be more prepared. Fortunately I won’t have to worry about that for a while. The timetable I have, and this may be a little bit tight, has me finishing the data-gathering portion in August. Then I have to write everything. Don’t expect to see me hanging out in Pusan or Taipei any time soon.

But I still have not figured out where I’m going to live next month, and now I’m having doubts about the job, too. I just don’t know if I can work 40 hours a week and get the amount of work done on my thesis that I need to in order to stick to the time table. I did get a line on another assistantship, one which I am WILDLY unqualified for. I am a quick study, though (ironic considering the number of years I have been in school), and I have an interview tomorrow.

Lastly, in news of the sad, my paper was rejected from AEJMC. Two of the reviewers shat on it (one of them wrote in all caps, too, and that’s just rude), but one thought that it had some real merit and offered some (actually helpful) ideas for revision should I want to submit it in the future. Those other two, though, had some unkind things to say. Oh well. So this means no free trip to San Francisco. I’ll just have to figure out something else to do with my time.

Maybe I'll buy some shirts.

Somebody Must Be Fucking With Me

Okay, more drama in the Seth-kills-technology department.

Last night as I tried to drift off to sleep, soothed by the gentle tones of the BBC Newspod on my iPod, same said iPod did some shit I’ve never seen before. First it claimed to have no battery power and suggested, nay demanded that I connect it to a power source. That’s not new. I turn it off and back on, and it realizes that it has a decent charge and gets its happy ass back in the game. So I turn it off, only it doesn’t come back on. So I do the manual reset, like I’ve done a dozen times before. And nothing happens. Strange.

I turn on the light and look at the screen, and I see a giant check mark on the screen. What the fuck? It says “Disk Mode” at the top, and claims that it is okay for me to disconnect it. Disconnect it from what? I don’t know. But, the thing won’t turn on, won’t reset, won’t do a damn thing. So I get onto the Internet and find out what’s going on. Apparently you can put your iPod into Disk Mode, for what reason I know not. Getting it back was somewhat trickier. It wasn’t supposed to be tricky, but all the advice I was finding had assumed that a person put the iPod into Disk Mode manually. Not helpful. I found a few message boards where this problem had been addressed. One of the folks in my position threw his iPod against the wall, at which point it started working again. I shit you not. I must admit that I thought very seriously about following suit, but opted instead to “Restore” it, as others had suggested. “Restore” means reset the motherfucker to its factory settings by erasing it and starting over. This was fine with me, since I had already backed up everything last week when I recovered my music manually, and I knew I had the contents backed up nicely. So, I erased BOBCAT (my iPod), and started the process of dumping all the songs back into place. This was at 3:50 in the morning, so I set the files to copy and went to bed.

Yeah.

When I woke up, everything was right with the world. Even more so when I discovered that iTunes was now home to “24” and “The Shield.” Fuck yeah. So I downloaded 12, that’s right TWELVE, episodes of “24” with the intention of finally getting caught up on this season. When I finally got around to watching them tonight, some really interesting shit happened. And by “really interesting,” I of course mean “monkey rage inducing.” As I watched Jack Bauer do his thing in episode 15, iTunes started functioning in a way that is quite “mal.” First it froze, then it quit unexpectedly. I reopened it, and it closed again after about a minute. Then when I reopened iTunes, it made me agree to the license agreement again, as though I had just installed it. What the fuck? Then it froze up, and I closed it. When I reopened iTunes AGAIN, I noticed that it would no longer play anything. It just acted like I didn’t press play when I quite clearly did. So, I restarted it. And then I noticed that my hard drive, nine days out of the box, was no longer showing up. What? What the fuck?! WHAT THE FUCK!?

Mother. Fucking. Monkey. Rage.

So, I tried to use Disk Utility to find and fix the problem, but it kept freezing up. FUCKING DISK UTILITY?! That’s not supposed to happen. And I tried my new hard drive on my PC, which at least recognized that something was attached, claimed it was installed and ready to use, but never showed the drive. Neat. When I reattached it to my iBook, it showed up (Yeah!) but was now named BTTERSTIBK (What the fuck?) and all the files and folders had fucked up names (FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!), and now it’s not showing up at all. I’m running a virus check, just in case. But I can’t help feeling that Jack Bauer has somehow sabotaged my computer. If that’s the case, I will kill him. I will kill him with the power of my monkey rage.

[late edit: BestBuy gave me a new hard drive, so I guess Jack is in the clear. In honor of my murderous simeon proclivities, however, there are now shirts available at cafepress.com I thought the base prices were high enough, so there's no markup, so I'm not making any money. So what. I think I'll buy one myself.]

I Think It’s Strange You Never Knew

I don't normally like to post twice in one day, but I am officially disturbed.

Back in 2000 - 2001, VH-1 had a pretty neat show called Bands On The Run. I admit I was addicted. Shitty local bands competed against each other to see who could rock the hardest in different cities, who could get the love of judges and audiences, and who could sell the most swag. The winner got a chance at being a shitty national band, complete with a recording contract, enough Benjamins for a bomb-ass video and the promise that VH-1 would put it into heavy rotation (meaning it would be featured in the one hour of videos they played each day between 4:00 and 5:00 am). It was interesting to watch, simply because the producers framed the show as a competition between a feel-good band with a can-do attitude and killer work ethic (who everyone hated) and a band of ne'er-do-wells who sobered up before shows just long enough to get drunk again. Magnificent. Of course, the drunks won.

What was really fun to watch were the different challenges the producers invented for the bands to do along the way. The best was the cover song competition. Each band had to learn a new cover song and incorporate it into their set. The drunks, a Texas outfit named Flickerstick, put together a cover of Mazzy Star’s Fade Into You that was actually a little touching, if not overly earnest and borderline Creedish in its intensity. Pretty cool.

I now have at least two more covers of that song by various indie rockers (Doveman and a DJ Z-Trip remix of Run Run Run’s version), and I must ask the question: how many more times will this song be covered? Come to think of it, I recall that even Wakeland did a cover of this one back in the day. And in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that Fade Into You was one of the very first songs that I learned on bass, guitar and vocals.

Why?

For whatever reason, this song is like some kind of local whore that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, ends up visiting at some time or another. But in a good way.

Perhaps it is the vagueness of the song that makes it is so accessible and open to reinterpretation that it is a natural fit for indie rockers and fans, even 14 years on. I don’t hear covers of Smells Like Teen Spirit, Cannonball, or The Sweater Song, and I find it strange that I don’t wonder why those songs never got reheated for our listening pleasure. It just wouldn’t make any sense.

So why do I have three versions of “Fade Into You on my iPod?” Any thoughts?

And It's So Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking

I should have called this post “You Said This Would Happen And Just Like That It Did,” but I’ve already used Exodus Damage once. What do I mean by that? Well, check out this old chestnut from last week: “And while I love the Cadillac, it is 16 years old, not very fuel-efficient and, if current trends continue, likely to be the next bit of technology that I destroy.” I wrote that on Wednesday of last week, and the Caddie will be going to the shop this Wednesday. Why? Well, it rained here in Norman on Friday, Saturday, and to a lesser extent Sunday, and my car showed its displeasure by refusing to start when I wanted to go places. “No,” it seemed to say, “I’m too depressed by this Seattle-y weather to go anywhere right now. Come back later, after me and Chris Cabrerra have had a good cry.” This yielded some good old fashioned monkey rage for yours truly.

Ah, monkey rage. Truly, there’s nothing like it. If not for the seemingly divine benevolence of my iPod shuffling up two helpings of Günther and the Sunshine Girls today, I might be breakin’ shit right now.

Consequently, I’m thinking I need to find a new car. Jeb mentioned the new Yaris from Toyota. It gets great gas mileage, looks cool, is small, and is wicked cheap. There’s got to be some catch, like the car periodically eats your passengers to maintain fuel economy. And that’s not exactly a deal-breaker. So I’m looking into that.

Other shocks this weekend included the rediscovery of my course packet from FVS 3810: Introduction to Psychoanalytic Film Theory with Dr. Betty Robbins. It’s like a K-Tel classic collection for anyone into phallic mothers, fetishization, or the vagina dentata! All the old favorites are here: Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema;” Kaja Silverman’s “Masochism and Male Subjectivity;” Elizabeth Cowie’s “The Fetish of Ideology!” The list just goes on and on! Honestly though, I was excited by this find, musty and garage-smelling as it is, since it is a pretty damn thorough collection of thought on Psychoanalytic and Feminist film theory, or as I call “femory.” I don’t really call it that, but I should...

Make Everything All Right In The Window Of My World

When WIllie Nelson (not THE Willie Nelson) destroys Master Shake’s television, Shake exclaims “hey, that’s my window to the world!” It used to be mine as well. It’s shifted of late to a couple of little, expensive pieces of technology wrapped up in smooth white plastic. Truly, I only turn on my television when I want to watch a DVD or play a video game. I’m not actually one of those people who says “oh, I don’t watch television anymore, and I’m so happy.” I’ve already got the snooty vegan thing going and the pretentious art guy persona, so I don’t need to come up with new reasons for people to punch me. Instead, I download programs from iTunes, and I Netflick such gems as The Adventures of Pete & Pete or Veronica Mars. My news quota is filled through podcasts and websites. It's a different experience, certainly. The main difference is in the way that advertising works, but also my mass media consumption schedule is always in flux. I feel like a bit of an outsider.

I will tell you this one thing I’ve learned as an outsider: George Stephanapoulos is a pussy. I’ll tell you why. Last week, as I watched the Colbert Report on iTunes, there was mention that Stephen Colbert would be performing at the White House Press Correspondent Dinner this past weekend. I thought it was an interesting choice, given his semi-Swiftian use of satire and that his two largest targets-the President and his press corps-would be trapped in a banquet hall sucking down extra-dry martinis as he got his proverbial rocks off. And so it was. I read reviews on the Internet the next day about how he teed off on pretty much everyone in the room. I downloaded the video and watched it with an “oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-no-one-laughed-at-that” smile on my face. It was funny. Just not to anyone in the room, apparently.

How does this make George Stephanopoulos a pussy? I was listening to the podcast of his This Week show, and during the Sunday Funnies segment he devoted what felt like an entire minute to the lame-ass President & impersonator bit that W did (as though we weren’t already sick of W’s impersonation of a real President) with no mention whatsoever of the Colbert roasting.

Why the omission? It seems that the performance offended some people. They felt that it was not the right place, not the right time. In short, he had violated the evening's decorum. Decorum? Fuck decorum. We have human beings, our fellow citizens and citizens of another country, living and dying in constant danger because this President made terrible decisions and these journalists failed to cast doubt upon the wisdom of the course our country was so obviously taking. Fuck them (the White House Press Corps, just so we’re clear). They deserve a public spanking, the kind that captures the public’s attention and stays in our consciousness for a while. They need a reminder that they have a responsibility to be a nuisance, to doubt what they are told, to question authority, annoy the powerful and eventually arrive at the truth. That’s why we keep coming back, asking them to show us the world. But they need to realize theirs is not the only window we have.

I Got The Gestures And Sound, Got The Timing Down. It's Uncanny, Yeah You'd Think It Was Me.

While I was plucking songs from the digital abyss that TIAN TIAN has become, my iBook lost the ability to connect to the Internet. I don't mean that the AirPort stopped working, I mean it would not connect AT ALL. Ethernet be damned! I took it to the Apple Store yesterday, and they informed me that it was a software problem, and I needed to do a clean install. No biggie. Only not.

I discovered that Mei Xiang, my iBook, had developed some issues in regard to the hard disk. Issues that the mighty Disk Utility could not resolve. So I had to wipe the whole thing and start over with Tiger. Only Tiger doesn't come pre-equipped with AppleWorks, so I've lost that. And I'm now using TextEdit to write this. Sexy.

And I broke the power adapter for my new external drive. Is it just me? Did I develop some kind of technology-killing power in the last week? Is that my mutant ability? I guess I could be the most annoying X-Man. Codename: Luddite! Destroyer of all things digital!

I'm just starting to feel a little beat-down by technology right now. And the mess that my apartment is right now. And I know I'm not going to clean it until I move out, so it's kind of frustrating.

Speaking of moving out, I'm thinking about moving back to where I lived before I came to Norman. That's a convoluted way of saying "not moving back in with my parents, but in a house they own that happens to be next door." My heart falls at the idea, but the $1800 dollars I would save in rent could be pointed instead at a new car. And while I love the Cadillac, it is 16 years old, not very fuel-efficient and, if current trends continue, likely to be the next bit of technology that I destroy.

So now I make my peace with either living right next to my job and paying for the convenience, or living rent-free and paying for the convenience.

Also, I made a new friend this week that I won't see again until the fall. But that works out great, since there's no way in hell that I will finish my thesis this summer. My proposal meeting has been put off until next Thursday. I'm supposed to be working on my proposal right now, but I'm feeling strangely demotivated.

As weeks go, this one has been a wash so far, with the good and the bad balancing each other out to leave a nice neutral feeling: not good enough to start singing Brady Bunch Songs, not bad enough to want to cage-fight Susan Olsen. Not yet, anyway.

Why You Punish Me?

I listened to Hootie and the Blowfish today, and I was so happy I nearly cried. Okay, not really, but I was pretty fucking happy. Saturday night, at 7:18 pm, my iPod froze up 46 seconds into the Flying Lizards “Money, That’s What I Want” and refused to a) turn off; b) reset; and c) stop pissing me off. But when it froze, I was at work, unable to take any real action to try and remedy the situation, save for pressing and holding, over and over, the play button and the center click button. No joy.

After I went home, I decided to let the battery run down and see if it would reset itself. If not, I would take it to the Apple Store and start executing Apple Experts until one of them fixed it. Fortunately it did not come to that. The battery eventually ran down, it reset, and now I'm ecstatic that I can listen to Hootie whenever I want. But all was not totally bleak, for even as my iPod lay stricken, I comforted myself with the notion that at least all my stuff was safe on Tian Tian, my hard drive.

Then I dropped the fucker 8 inches to the floor. It made a strange noise, but kept functioning. Yipes, man. Just yipes. I moved it off the floor, which is a terrible idea. Paramedics will tell you not to move people who have spinal or neck injuries, cause you might leave them paralyzed. Yeah, that advice is also good for hard drives. After I picked it up, it quit working so much. Damn. Damn, damn, damn, damn. Now it has lots of damaged files, an inability to connect via Firewire, and an inability to connect to my iBook. One hundred and sixty useless gigabytes of storage space. Ninety gigs of music and video inaccessible. Over three hundred dollars worth of iTunes purchases in serious jeopardy. Well, not entirely. The thing stills shows up, spottily, on my Windows machine (yes, I have both Mac and Windows, a portable and a desktop, and yes I’ve customized them both; so now I’ve been outed as a dork) and I’ve been able to copy some of the files to Butterstick, my new 250 gigabyte external drive. But it’s taking for frickin’ ever. First off, my Windows tower has no Firewire (which perhaps doesn’t matter) and must rely upon USB 2.0 to move these huge folders of audio and video. They say it’s as fast, but I’m unconvinced. Secondly, every so often I will encounter a file that’s damaged that has not been spotted and removed yet. This causes the file transfer to hang, wasting lots of my precious time. Then the drive will fail and disappear from the computer. I turn it off and back on, and it reappears. That’s not good.

I have been able to make some choices about what I need and what I can leave behind. For instance, I had to ask myself “do I like Alison Krauss enough to dig through these songs and find the one damaged file that’s holding up the transfer?” No, I don’t. It’s not exactly like throwing away media, which I cannot do, but rather triaging survivors into life rafts and letting others go down with the ship. I’m looking at you, Tom Waits.