Okay so I haven't updated in a really long time, pretty much because my life is a boring vortex of boring.

There's no TV to discuss.

There's no good movies.

There is so little pop culture for me to cling to in a desperate attempt to belong that I'm floating, free-wheeling, like some sort of zombie.

Um, what has happened to me lately...I filled up the air in my tires! That was fun, one of them was almost completely flat.

I was going to go to Summerfest yesterday, but for serious my period just decides to DROP BY whenever I want to do ANYTHING FUN so those plans were 86'd right away. I might go today but I feel even worse :( I even had to leave work early, something I promised myself I would never do, but W/E I WAS DYING. Little bastard banging on my uterus like a timpani or some shit. ORGANS WERE NOT MEANT TO BE PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS.

I guess, as far as *life* update, for some reason I have decided on *leaving for the coast* in October, though that becomes more and more dubious when I have to pay $100 to heal the cat's ear yeast infection and it turns out 694,000 jobs were lost last month, leaving me with a very workable 9.5% national unemployment rate. Part of me thinks I should be happy with the job I have and stop whining, but the other part of me WAAANNNNTSSS MOOOOOREEE...

It's just a courage thing at this point. And self-confidence is the one trait I lack nearly absolutely. It only ever seems to appear when I get really really mad, so maybe one of these days I'll just get so mad that I storm out of the house, never to return.

Maybe.

I almost forgot:



I have my qualms, like everyone. But goddamn, when the camera peeled away and revealed the Fire Nation armada outside, EVEN THOUGH THAT NEVER HAPPENED, I had a little squee, nerdgasm, chill-down-my-spine thing going on.

That arrow looks fucking retarded though, and it better not be some cryptic hieroglyphics or prophecy shit that becomes a plot device, I swear to God.

But hopefully, this movie proves my theory that a movie directed, but not written by Shamalamadingdong will better align his talents.

What a piece of...what?

I was going to review this last night, but it had been 22 hours since I'd woken up and to be totally honest I wasn't exactly sure what I had just seen. That makes me sound like a moron, because it's very clear, to anyone who has either seen the trailer or a different Michael Bay movie, that what I saw was a perpetual 12-year-old's fantasy involving blowing stuff up and hot chicks on motorcycles. And I mean, if that's all this was supposed to be, great. But unfortunately, Michael Bay has chosen to unleash his frustrations of a world generally at peace and without hot chicks and stuff blowing up on a consistent basis upon a very very epic franchise with some interesting characters and a rich continuity, so I think I have a right to be mad.

But comparing this movie to the Transformers franchise as a whole is unfair. The first movie made it more than clear that Bay decided to ignore continuity in favor of, well, hot chicks on motorcycles and stuff blowing up. As much as I'd love a big-budget Transformers movie that stays a little more true to canon, this is what I've got to work with. So the only fair thing to compare this movie to is its predecessor.
( Full review of this nadir of filmmaking )

I just cleaned my room for one purpose.

So I could buy a $30 DVD player and hole myself away forever, to avoid any further conflicts with my brother and his retarded friends and my sister and her Super-Smash-Brother-loving gay friend on the set in the family room.

I had to unplug and move my TV a couple of weeks ago since my dad decided to buy me a new fan, because the old one was shooting sparks because of a mistake he made.

MY TV FELL ON THE GROUND DURING THIS

I THOUGHT IT WAS FINE

IT WAS NOT.

So now I have no TV to play the DVD player I planned to buy.

Boy oh boy.

But at least my room is clean, I guess. That's something, right?

bike fiasco '09 is officially *over*

I went to night court today. I was terrified. I am such a coward, you guys, seriously. Anytime I have to do something vaguely new, I just get really stressed out, shaking, dry mouth, everything. I seriously considered just blowing it off, just because I was scared of what was going to happen.

And, like everything I spend days and weeks fretting over, it was absolutely no big deal.

In these situations, most of the fear I have subsides once I actually get where I am going. Like once I checked in and sat down, I felt fine. They gave me a number. I mean, that is the system. Take a number, bargain with a court attorney, wait for the judge to address your case, sign the thing, leave. That is the whole process.

And, like most of the things I spend days and weeks fretting over, I learned a lot.

It was kind of cool, and kind of messed up, I guess, that all of the cases were heard in front of the entire court. Like the court room was this big room with a steeple ceiling, all of these plastic chairs, a group of people who were very differentiated, the people who could afford lawyers sticking out like sore thumbs. There were suburbanites, dumb teenage kids, and lots of normal people who just like to drive fast.

Anyway, the hard part was over very early. I talked to the court attorney, basically told him, yes, I blew a stop sign but I don't want the points off my license since I was on a BICYCLE and I do not need a license to drive a BICYCLE and the punishment would affect my insurance which I do not need to drive a BICYCLE. He reminded me that in Wisconsin, apparently, a bicycle is in fact a motor vehicle (motor in this case I guess meaning it moves, since it does not have a motor), but he agreed and lessened the charge. But it took all of three minutes and I was respectful and uninimidated because he was very young and had a slight lisp. And the bitch next to us was screaming about road construction forcing her to make an illegal U-turn, but it all worked out fine in the end.

That was probably the best part about the whole night. Just the ridiculous semantics of our justice system. My initial charge was "failure to stop at a stop sign." They lessened it to "interference with a sign." How is this different? Why does this incur a lesser penalty? I don't know. But apparently the difference means something.

I loved watching all of the cases. I thought it was fascinating. I always feel this vague paranoia, whenever I choose to do anything, that I am somehow breaking the law. Walk outside with a beer to get the mail, are you breaking the law? Cross the street and step out of the pedestrian lane, are you breaking the law? Probably, but tonight allowed me to *recenter* my concerns. Like most practical things, I guess, it all comes back to economics. Jaywalking may be against the law, but is issuing a ticket for that really going to earn the state any money? They have to pay the cop the time it takes to write the ticket and lecture you, and even more important (or at least expensive), they have to pay the lawyers and judge to deal with the case.

And, it turns out, if you're proactive enough to come down and contest the plea, they'll go easier on you. Pretty much everyone who went before me, besides a couple of dumbass teenagers who were charged with theft and a couple of drunk drivers (both of which, incidentally, were they because it was a mandatory court appearance), got their sentences reduced. And the way they do it is just hilarious. I thought it was so funny I even took notes.

Speeding x over the speed limit becomes "defective speedometer." Failure to stop at a stop sign becomes either my sentence or "improper signals." Some bitch who got in an accident and got a ticket for "following too closely" also got her sentence reduced to "improper signals." I mean, it's just a circus, no one is actually charged with what they did. The semantics are ridiculous, but you have to change the charge just to inherit the lesser sentence. It's so stupid, the way charges come with inherent sentences. I don't know. I thought it was just funny/ridiculous.

A couple of more observations, for those who might find it interesting--a couple of dumb 17 year old girls shoplifted. Since they were seventeen, they got the "lesser charge" of 20 hours of community service. Apparently all that entails is volunteering somewhere, having them write you a letter, and appearing in court with the letter by the due date. No orange jumpsuits and picking up trash on the highway. In Wisconsin, which is an "absolute sobriety state," apparently even being in the same room with alcohol and being underage is enough to get a ticket. But then the judge said something about "officer discretion" so I guess that's why they don't give tickets to kids who blow 0.0. Um, what else...oh, evidence has to be "clear, convincing, and satisfactory" in circuit court to convict someone. More semantics, idk. Finally, drunk driving is stupid not only because it's dangerous, but because it is expensive. There were two or three people who were first-time offenders, and the penalty is 6 points off your license (I think you get 12, but if you lose more than 9 your license is suspended, or something wacky like that), and like a $776 fine. I mean, yikes. Just wait it off, you know? Or get a designated driver. That is too expensive to risk.

Not as expensive, apparently, as hitting a car with a bicycle, but whatever, that is the last bitter statement I will make, because this shit is OVER and I am DONE WITH IT FOREVER. Chapter closed.

Speaking of chapter, to take my mind off of it today, I went half-price book shopping. There was a brand-new copy of the andalite chronicles there and I bought it, because it was $3 and my copy is falling apart. I just love that book so much, djmp. Then I bought some Faulkner just so I didn't look totally retarded.

I have been so bored lately

but I think I finally found a project to occupy my time for a while.

I am going to pimp out my iTunes library.

so idk how the rest of you guys organize your music. I know a lot of people, my sister included, who just upload burned CDs and grapple with a grab bag full of "Track 01"s through "Track 10"s. I cannot handle that kind of chaos and disorganization. I need structure.

It's not like my iTunes is a mess. Most of it is organized exactly the way it should be--the tracks are named what they are actually named, the albums are right. There is some ambiguity with artist names--when it comes to Broadway musicals, do you put the singer or the composer there? Well I guess now they have a "composer" tag, but that's not included in the library. What do you do?

I guess it's best to go by what last.fm says. But I won't talk about that because it's boring. This is a long process--I've got to make sure everything is named, labeled correctly, punctuated if need-be. I want to rank every. single. song in my library. I haven't ever listened to like, half of them. Automatic 1-star? That would be practical but inaccurate.

But the first thing I want to do is find cover art for every single song in my library.

I did a lot of work with this a few nights ago.

It actually didn't take as long as I thought it would. I developed a pretty efficient system, keeping a google image search tab open and right-click new-tabbing every time I started a new search. Found the most recurring album art, found the one with the highest resolution and the brightest colors, right-click saved-as on my hard drive. Not too hard. The hard part was uploading them to my iTunes, because my bitchy laptop is so goddamn slow. But now almost all of my albums have cover art :3 There are some random songs in some random albums I made, that are really just playlists I labeled as albums, like "Drag Show," "Running Mix 1," and "A" and "AA" which are just, like, the shit piles full of songs that didn't belong anywhere else, like the Power Rangers theme song and "Killer Tofu" by The Beets. Oh wait! I have a Theme Songs album now! Score one for Jenny's obsessive organization skillz.

I like things being grouped correctly on my iTunes. I hate when there is just one spare album with one song floating around in your cover flow. Yuck.

God this entry is making me sound crazy. I am so OCD. I need help.

ANYWAY I WANT TO POST SOME OF THE PRETTY PICTURES I FOUND, and argue that I think movie soundtrack album art is more epic than movie posters for the same movies.

Let's begin:

what why the hell is tinypic in Spanish? What the fuck is going on with that website?


ALBUM ART


MOVIE POSTER


ALBUM ART


MOVIE POSTER

hmm...I think my theory may be falling apart. Let's do some more.


ALBUM ART


MOVIE POSTER

derp derp derp


ALBUM ART


MOVIE POSTER

I just officially proved myself wrong.

Oh well.

I am going to go find cover art for a bunch of 1990s disney theme songs now! Or else just ironic pictures of dead chipmunks and ducks. I haven't quite decided yet.

I didn't think Pixar could make anything more bleak than the first half hour of Wall-E

I was wrong.

You know that credit card commercial that goes through a couple's entire life in thirty seconds? It shows their wedding, coming home with the baby, graduations, birthday parties, and then they're like sitting on a porch swing at the end of it, elderly, looking back at how wonderful their life was? But it's not a wonderful feeling at all, it's sort of hopeless and fatalistic and...really really depressing?

This movie does the exact. same. thing.

idk. Pixar sure can tug some heart strings, but the rest of it was really predictable and kind of boring. But that beginning...goddamn, post-apocalyptic robot maids have nothing on an old man and his unachieved dreams.

Now this is how you reinvent a stagnating franchise.

I need to stop listening to reviews. I mean, most of the time, they're right. They critique movies accurately, they point out flaws, but beyond that, I really think it is a matter of taste. This movie fell victim to almost exactly what the ew.com review said it did. But flaws are not always bad, you know? Sometimes they're quirky, sometimes they add something more to a work rather than detract from it.

Or it could just be I love anything post-apocalyptic.

I don't know what it is. I don't consider myself a "genre" person. I mean sure, I gravitate more towards speculative fiction, I like my sci-fi and fables, but I can totally respect a good period piece, a good romance, a good coming-of-age independent flick made for $5 and a can of tuna. But if you make a movie, and it takes place after the apocalypse, and consists of a rag-tag bunch of radiation-soaked humans who look like they could all use a good exfoliating scrub, then yes. Chances are, I will like your movie.

So, obviously, just due to that, this movie rocked my fucking socks.

But aside from that, I don't know...yeah, the characters were pretty bland, and yeah, this whole gritty, dirt-crusted, laser-guided, pebble-strewn future world is not exactly a fresh take, but I DON'T KNOW. I loved the pacing. I loved the conflict, about John Connor trying to save Kyle Reese, who's just a kid, and he needs in order to, you know, exist. I wish they would have had an awkward father-son bonding scene, because WHO IS THE FATHER AND WHO IS THE SON? I LOVE that the movie RESPECTED THE CONTINUITY *ahem Star Trek ahem*. I love that Bryce Dallas Howard and Helena Bonham Carter were in this, and no one looked like they were showing up just to sign for their paycheck. I mean, don't get me wrong, I did roll my eyes. "I'll be back"? Psshh. Naked, CGI-Arnold walking around as the T-800? Yeesh. But these are the little flaws I am talking about! The line worked because they didn't beat you to death with it. They realized CG-Arnold would be creepy and melted off his skin after a couple of minutes. Every little mistake was acknowledged, and either fixed or just lovingly allowed.

lol I am not explaining myself well. I feel like this is what they were trying to do with Star Trek. A fresh, summer-blockbuster take on an old, past-its-prime franchise. But with Star Trek, it felt insincere. The original charm was purged so it could be replaced with that fresh, popping, soulless big-budget wink wink nudge nudge. This had the original hopeless, terrifying, jesus-how-can-humans-survive-agaist-the-might-of-their-own-ingenuity flavor of the original, while still being a movie in 2009. This retained the charisma of the original Terminator movie without surrendering to its time period, to its slightly kitschy 80s flavor. It's a contemporary movie with the soul of its predecessor.

ugh, idk. I was trying to figure out at what point the now-infamous "IT'S FUCKING DISTRACTING AHHHH-DA-DADA-DADA" rant happened but I gave up after a while b/c I was SO ENGROSSED. It was the first really good movie I've seen this year. I was going to theater-hop into UP, but I figured I didn't want to spoil myself, because I'm at least 80% sure I will love that movie too :')

I am in a better mood.

I think part of it was that I skipped a period for whatever reason, so I had this placebo-effect PMS that lasted like a month. So everything was pissing me off. Now it's turned from passive aggressive annoyance to out-and-out rage, but that is much easier to purge, especially now that I'm driving so much (lol I just played a game of chicken with some guy at a stop sign and we almost crashed, but I won :))

ANYWAY, yeah, things are a little better. Thanks to my sister, I had this paradigm shift about my job. Between captioning calls, you're supposed to bring stuff to work on, right? Reading, homework (which no longer applies in my case), crossword puzzles. She and I worked a shift together, and before that shift, I thought that you worked on these things in between captioning calls. Then I told her how frustrated I was, how much I hated this shit, and she said "Think of it like you caption calls in between reading and working on crossword puzzles." I don't know why, but that helped tremendously. Rather than waiting in expectation for a call to chime in while I read, I work until a call chimes in, which is like a commercial. It's like my job is actually getting paid to not be able to fast forward through commercials. idk, this is tenuous logic, and the job still sucks tremendously, don't get me wrong. But this will get me through it. Now I have *projects* in mind, so w/e

Plus I finished the Fountainhead, finally. What a piece of shit. I am not even going to consider TOUCHING Atlas Shrugged until I'm 30. I just can't live without hope like that.

IN MY OTHER JOB, things are going well. I got yelled at (or coached, w/e) for the class that got monitored, but then she gave me all of this work so I was like "WHATEVER GIVE ME BAD TEACHING GRADES IDC AS LONG AS I COME AND YOU DUMP A BUNCH OF WORK ON ME!" This other tutor thought she had swine flu so I had to take over one of her students, and...jesus christ. The weird thing about Kaplan is that it's very expensive. I think one hour of private tutoring costs like $150. And these parents buy packages ranging from 12-32 hours, so I mean, they're paying a lot of money for their kids to score well on college entrance exams. Either they really believe in this investment, or they just have the money to throw on that problem.

Usually, and especially in this case, it is the latter.

My first girl owned horses. My second kid lived within visual distance of one of the Lake Country lakes. And this, my third student, the richest one by far, lives RIGHT ON LAKE MICHIGAN.

I've never been to California, I've never absorbed the opulence that is Malibu, but that is what Whitefish Bay is. The Malibu of Milwaukee. The first day, it was nice, and for some reason, my internal compass was all askew and I had no idea where I was. I rang the doorbell and looked through the house, through their bay window, and BOOM. There was a beautifully manicured lawn bordered up to the horizon by a slate blue Lake Michigan. A beautiful patio, a hammock, lawn furniture, a fire pit. This place is just CASH. I would have taken a picture but I didn't have a camera. I'll try to during one of our next sessions. But Jesus, I feel like I am just now being introduced to a whole population of Southeastern Wisconsin that I did not know existed, AND I LIVE IN BROOKFIELD. It's not exactly a trailer park. I mean, I don't think of us as rich, but we have a DVR, you know?

Anyway, that's work. Other than that, idk. I'm still trying to figure out what to do next. I read this article in Time Magazine that all the jobs are moving to the southwest, and though my parents spent 10 years trying to get out of Texas, I have an e-friend who lives in Houston and needs a roommate in October. That could be a good "Oh my twenties" adventure. I'm still thinking about LA, but it scares me, because the job market is just so bunk right now and I really don't know anyone out there. I could meet people, though. I didn't know anyone in southern Chicago when I went to school either. I'm good at making friends, and I'm about C+ at keeping them.

Ah well. Still saving money, slowly but surely. At least now there is money to be saved. No where near enough to support rent and food and everything else, but we're getting there. The future is a hazy place, and for some reason, I like it that way.

Hollywood And Vines - Michael Giacchino

seriously

let's go chase a polar bear

or run away from the monster

or talk to a ghost

or find a creepy abandoned medical hatch

SERIOUSLY

LET'S GO

This man:



NO LONGER A SYMPATHETIC CHARACTER

NOPE

CROSSED A LINE.

CROSSED IT IN A HUGE WAY.

NOPE

MORAL EVENT HORIZON

SORRY

I DON'T LIKE YOUR WIFE

AND NOW I DON'T LIKE YOU

the only one I care about now is your disabled son. Whose altruistic website you plan to launder your drug money through. I mean, seriously.

I like Weeds because you can still relate to Nancy. You know, she is a flawed suburban housewife. She cares about her iced coffee and her designer purses, that is a lot of her motivation for entering such a risky and dangerous business. But Walter...he's not just losing himself in it. He's given himself over. Willingly. It's like he's acting like a complete douche bag just because that's how good drug dealers do it in the movies. He's not just a guy anymore, he's like a little kid playing cowboys and indians. Except his guns don't just shoot caps.

w/e. One episode left in the season. I'll watch it just for the lawyer. He's the best character on the show.

Good night, sweet Prince.

May flights of angels wing thee to thy rest.

I THINK PROWL IS OKAY. I THINK HIS ROBOT-NINJA POWERS LEVEL-MAXED, AND HE ASCENDED TO A HIGHER PLANE OF EXISTENCE OR W/E. He pulled Optimus out of the All-Spark energy ball that contained Megatron and Omega Supreme. THAT WAS HIM. So he's "alive" but if there's another season, I think it will be a while before we see him :(

but starscream...

I'll miss you little buddy.

I have not worked seven days straight in a long...ever, I think. I think maybe for the CMSC Conference, but that was not bad.

This was.

So yeah, I started a new job. Usually very exciting.

Not this one.

God, not this one.

So what I do, thanks to an in with my sister, is caption telephone calls. Like subtitles on TV, except for phone calls. It's a service that deaf and hard-of-hearing people use...or at least, they're supposed to use it. In reality, it's a subsidized program that's free once you buy the special captioning phone, which is $600. So from my understanding, a substantial portion of the telephone calls that I caption are for people who neither need it nor care that I am doing it.

It's...frustrating. It's a single-track job. I do not do well in single-track jobs. Target, museum guarding, this. Do one thing for your entire shift and then BOOK. I need variety. I have a shit attention span...what was I talking about? Seriously though, I cannot stand these types of jobs. At first, I thought that meant I was lazy or a bad worker or something. I hated them. My attitude showed it. My bosses did not like me. But now I realize that they're just not for me. I need the possibility of things changing, of multiple tasks. That is what was so nice about UCSMP, and even canvassing. I could do more than one thing at UCSMP. Done checking e-mail? All right, let's go make copies! Printer out of paper? Send out prospective information? All right! And, when there was nothing else to do, there was the internet--the completely uncensored internet. I could have looked at porn all day if I wanted to, and, I'm not going to lie, sometimes I did.

But this...ugh. It should be nice, because when I'm not captioning I get "me" time, which, defined by the job, is basically reading time. This is good. I do not read nearly as much as I should. And, thanks to being chained to a desk for extended periods of time, I have plowed through all but about 50 pages of the Fountainhead. Which is one of the worst books I have ever read, I'm sorry Lacey, but godDAMN these characters don't communicate with each other except "Howard looked at the flash of Dominique's canine tooth and knew exactly what she was feeling" or twenty-page long soliloquies about...idk I stop paying attention after the first paragraph or so. Ugh. It is such a pain to read. And idk what it is, but her prose is just...like you know how authors give you details, little mimetic descriptions about how things look or how someone behaves, and it just WORKS and you're like YES I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, THE SUNLIGHT HITS DROPS OF WATER SUSPENDED ON A SPIDER WEB or w/e I'm no good at it but Rand just...like I can tell she is trying, and some of them work, the lines of water running off of Howard's angled body when he got out of the pool, boom, totally saw it, but most of them just DO NOT WORK. It's frustrating, because I want her prose to work, because it's reasonably well formulated, there's good vocab and sentence structure (but I swear to god if I see the word "bromide" one more time...) Long story short, I think that may be one of the sources of my frustration.

I've only worked two real shifts.

I'm already starting to pull my hair out. Like, literally. I sit there with my fingers all curled up against my scalp as I stare at the clock. It's awful. It's that weird impatient tension, that tedium, that feeling of sandpaper rubbing against velvet on your teeth. It's horrible. And at first I thought it would be interesting, captioning phone calls, but all of them are either old people talking about the weather or informing someone that someone else died, or "Hello? Yes. Oh. Good. Okay. Yeah. Right" FOR LIKE TWENTY MINUTES STRAIGHT. It's a prison cell. A prison cell with a color scheme designed by some self-important psychology grad student. Soft lighting and light gray carpet cubicles. And a break room, with a bunch of OSHA posters and band/local theater flyers hanging up on the bulletin board. And vending machines. And that tacky, linoleum flooring. UGH. I want a real job so bad you guys :(

I did not get many real life skills from college. And in fact, the only thing I think I did pick up was the arrogance to think, "You know what? I am better than this job." I don't think I'll last very long. I really only want to save up enough to finally move out, somewhere, hopefully LA but at this point I will take anything, and be able to pay a couple of months' rent and buy a bed. I really only want to save 2000-3000 grand. And at this point, the less I spend the faster I save and the sooner I can quit.

This is not a very good time in my life. There is a small kernel of me that is growing, every day, every shift, that is screaming "JUST SAY FUCK IT AND DRIVE AWAY, JENNY. WHO CARES IF YOU'VE SAVED $3000 or $4000? WHAT IS THE REAL DIFFERENCE?"

Ugh. Has there been an entry that is not angsty in a while? I don't know. My other job is really nice. There, something positive. I do really like teaching. It's definitely a multiple-track job. And it's fun. Except my boss sat in on a class, like outside of the door, without telling my last time. lol oops. She said I did good, but I have to sit with her on Tuesday and get the full report. I said some dumb things, some things I probably wouldn't have said if I knew she was watching. But I guess that was the point.

idk. I think I'm going to start working out again. I need to unleash this tension on something, and being passive-aggressive with my family just isn't cutting it anymore.

I just need to post this here because this makes me smile and I need to remember it, in case I am ever feeling down in the gutter or dumps or idk, nuclear fallout zone



:)

I have a big update brewing, but I'm too tired whenever I get home to unleash. Yes, I relent solely for your benefit, oh loyal readers.

first thoughts:

Zachary Quinto, I love you so much.

second thoughts:

JJ Abrahms, Damon Lindelof, entire production team, all of Bad Robot pictures, I IMPLORE YOU:

stop. fucking around. with time travel.

it is not your forte.

just...stop.

It was a movie saturated with awesomeness. For about the first 2/5, I totally bought into it. Yeah, space battle!! All right, space is silent, I love it when space is silent!!! Well...space was silent, for one very effective shot, but whatever now EXPLOSIONS yeah all right!!! Yeah, you pick on baby Spock YOU GET THAT AUDIENCE SYMPATHY!!! All right, a bar fight, I've never seen one of these before!!! Yeah, all right, gratuitous FX shot!! MORE I WANT MORE.

Then they just...lost me.

There is a very significant plot element that I think is responsible and I don't want to give away, but...idk. It's not Star Trek. I don't want to be a huffy traditionalist or anything. Some franchises ache for a good reimagining. The Dark Knight totally worked. And for the most part, I was on board with this one. But do you really need to undo almost half a century of continuity in order to obtain your precious little redo?

I just...hmm. The audience applauded, I guess. I was kind of left...I don't really know how I feel. I know how I am supposed to feel, but I feel sort of...idk, annoyed. I think I am annoyed.

Okay so I went to this new *family-owned business* that I'd never been to before. It was this high-end electronics store and it's my new favorite place on the planet. Or at least in Brookfield.

It's not so much "high-end" like the goods there are remarkably well-built and luxurious, but they sell all of these entertainment systems and stuff as sets. So it's like walking into American, where they have like a fake bedroom or living room or kitchen, except it's an electronics store! idk maybe I just haven't been to many furniture stores, and that's all it is. Idk.

Anyway I love this place. They have all these demonstration rooms. One of them was like this mini-theater where they had three different projection TVs and THE MOST COMFORTABLE CHAIRS I HAD EVER SAT IN. I went with my brother the first time, and I was like "Okay, you can go now. This is where I want to die." Omg it was so amazing. And it was only $1500! And I say "only" just because the chair was seriously that comfortable. It didn't have a vibrating feature, unfortunatley, but my god. This chair just...wow. It had an automatic leg-rest recliner thing...soft leather...holy shit. I seriously could have just died there.

They had this other room, too, which was pretty sweet. They had this really killer sound system hooked up to this TV, this room full of high-end speakers. I say "killer" only because I'm not that much of a sound nerd, but they had some really expensive shit in there whose purpose I could only imagine. Anyway, the catch of the room was that the whole sound system centered around your iPod. So you could plug your own iPod into this thing, choosing the songs from the 50-inch flat screen TV display, and listen to your music on all of the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of speakers in the room.

I tried my iPod. It didn't want to work for some reason, but one of these days I'll muster the courage to go back and ask for a salesman's help, hopefully maintaining his interest long enough for me to listen to "The Great Migration" in that awesome little room.

Unfortuantely, this trip, in addition to a trip I made to Best Buy, has made me realize that I have turned my iPod into a whore.

I love this gimmick. I love that they set up the speakers and sound systems now not only so you can plug your iPod into them, but they encourage you to do so. I plugged my iPod into like three different systems at Best Buy. Three different plugs inserted into her fragile little socket. I pimped her out. Unglorified, base, inhumane prostitution. Just so I could force any close passersby to listen to my ridiculous taste in music.

Oh well. idk, I think it's awesome. I never go shopping just to shop anymore, it's always to play with toys that it feels like I'll never be able to afford :)

But goddamn

That chair

Some day, buddy. Some day I'll buy you, and then anywhere from a month to a year later, my neighbors will detect a faint rotting smell coming from my apartment and call the police. And I will be dead. But at least I will have died happy.

Dear LOST:

You're a pretty good show.

Like, idk, you're on my DVR, I look forward to watching you every week, mostly from the misguided hope that you'll actually answer a five-season long looming question. Your mythos is a compelling enough drive to keep me coming back for more.

But you used to be a lot more compelling.

I'm starting to realize a sad fact, as I start to pull apart some of my favorite nerdy works. BSG. The Office. Early Lost. What do they have in common?

Great characters.

First season LOST was addictive, amazing entertainment. Why? Because it was such an interesting premise! The meat of it wasn't "what the hell is this mysterious island"--I mean, that became the meat of it, and rightfully so, but the most compelling thing about the first season was "holy shit we were in a plane crash and now we have to rebuild society."

Basically.

The flashbacks, remember them? They were an innovation of televised storytelling. The premise threw us, the viewer, into the same situation as the victims--we are with a bunch of people that we don't know and now have to trust entirely. How fucked up is that?

So the flashbacks slowly, surely allowed us to get to know these people. We forget when watching that the flashbacks take up about half of an episode. I mean, that's half of what has aired overall. Half of this show is devoted to character development. That's what made it so damn compelling. They all had their little secrets, their little indiscretions, and that drove the plot just as much as what the smoke monster is or what is that weird hatch in the woods.

But most of those secrets were unveiled. We've reached the maximum depth of these characters. And now, for some reason, they've lost their allure. They're not characters anymore. They're plot devices.

The most compelling line, at least to me, in last night's episode of LOST was "Do you have one for beginners?"

What would an episode of LOST be without a fucking shootout? This annoyed me. Jack and Kate locking and loading like a couple of renegade Will Smith wanna-bes. This is all that's left of their characters. And sure, why not drag Daniel along for the ride? Him asking that question made me actually stop and remember: Oh yeah. He is a particle physicist. He is a nerd. He shouldn't be going all John McClane on a bunch of Dharma mooks.

Something similar happened when Jack said, "Oh let me take a look at your gunshot wound." I had almost completely forgotten that Jack was a doctor. He and Kate and Sawyer and Jin and...hell, everyone are just kind of riding the Dharma wave, moving with the plot, but not moving it themselves. They're all just reacting to forces outside their control. I mean, I'm not trying to argue that this season sucks or anything, but...it's different. I'm not invested anymore, besides just to find out what the hell is going on. I don't care about any of them I only care about it. I just think that kind of storytelling isn't as effective.

Battlestar Galactica was very successful for a similar reason. Awesome premise. The end of humanity. And a bunch of compelling, developed, consistent characters dealing with it. The best episodes of Battlestar Galactica were the ones that explored different aspects of the premise using the characters without sapping them of their established identities. And THE best episode wasn't even about the premise at all. Lee/Kara otp

anyway. My point is you can have an awesome premise, you can be struck with muse's lightning, but if you can't create some compelling, well-developed characters to punish with your awesome idea, it's going to be okay at best. Storytelling truly comes from character.

My douche bag creative writing teacher was right :(

ANYWAY I STARTED A NEW JOB AND I KIND OF HATE IT. I have not been yelled at so much for doing nothing wrong since like, grade school. "If you have your cell phone out again on the call floor I am going to have to write you up." "Stop sitting in the same cube." "Put your iPod in your purse" AUGGHHH It's a punch-clock, soul-sucking, mind-numbing job. And I plan to leave it the instant I have saved the money to move out to LA and get some other punch-clock, soul-sucking, mind-numbing job that hopefully has to do with the entertainment industry. We'll see.

In the meantime, I am going to continue to wank about fiction and what makes it good/bad!

I overslept today. I was supposed to be at work at 8:45 and I woke up at 8:35. I set my alarm for 7:00 but then I turned it off instead of hitting snooze, idk what the hell I was thinking.

I hate oversleeping. It makes me feel so...vulnerable. It wasn't a big deal though, I rolled out of bed, threw on some clothes, and went to work. It was just a good thing I didn't have to drive downtown. I would have been screwed if that were the case.

ANYWAY, today was my first day of teaching an ACT prep class! I was a little nervous at first, but I'm not *at all* anymore. There's only four kids in the class, and they're all boys. I don't know why, but this relieves me greatly. Three of them are white and have solid white-guy names like David and John. The other is Indian. That is all I know about them at this point.

I read some Watership Down and listened to my iPod while staring off into space and getting paid for it! That's honestly my favorite job ever. If I could make a career out of staring off into space for a living wage, it would be very hard not to do.

That's pretty much all that's new in my life. Since *bike fiasco '09* and all monetary damages therein, I have pretty much put a moratorium on all extraneous spending. My goal is to only pay for my college loans and gas to get to and from work for a few weeks. I know this is a lofty goal, but I keep my goals lofty and don't really punish myself if I break them. So far, however, things have been going well. Food is the hardest thing to stop spending money on. It's frustrating, because my dad travels all the time, so there's never easy snack food in the house. I had to make pasta last night. And then this morning my dad sends my brother out for groceries! I could handle him not even leaving weekly money for milk and eggs if he was consistent about it, but why the hell would you send James out for groceries when he's

a) only home for like, 16 hours
b) THE WORST SHOPPER IN THE HOUSE. Dad gave him $30 and he spent at least $10 of it on expensive cookies and donuts. UGH. I could have bought a week's worth of groceries with that. Oh well. He did buy pancake mix, which has been another staple for the past week.

It's weird. I'm living poorer now than I did in college. Of course then, rent and about half of my food was paid for. Still. I should be able to find a job that pays more than my campus job did. But I can't. This fucking economy, I swear.

WHATEVER WHATEVER. I'm excited for my class. I start Captel tomorrow, which is a stupid job but at least it's a job. I'll keep saving, and hopefully by the end of summer I'll have saved enough to *give my dreams* a try.

Hopefully.

This bike fiasco is winding down. I paid the woman I hit her money, and she was very nice and we even had a friendly little chat. I was reading one of those bathroom books on the john this morning, this one was along the lines of "Things I've learned in life" or w/e and each quote is only attributed to an age, like "Mommy will forgive me if I wet the bed" - Age 4, but the one I happened to come across on that particular bowel movement was something along the lines of "I've learned that most people are honest" - Age 82, so that made me feel a little better.

Also I talked to my dad about it, and w/e I got a little *emotional* and got some stuff off my chest, and even though my dad and I are not particularly close, it made me feel a lot better. I prefer independence. I like being able to handle things on my own, to solve my own problems, to earn my own rewards, but I can't forget that *No Man Is An Island*^TM either, and it's okay to ask for help sometimes too.

Anyway. He recommended that I call a lawyer and ask for legal advice, because I really don't think I should get three points taken off my driver's license for running a stop sign on my bike. That would incur insurance spikes, which is stupid, since you need neither a license nor insurance to ride a bike. So I'll ask him what he thinks I should do, and I kind of hope he tells me just to pay the ticket, b/c I am STARTING A NEW JOB on Monday and would have to take off to appear in court to contest it.

Problems problems. But enough bitching. Let's go back to writing long entries about nerdy fiction that no one reads, cool? I like it.