To Sir, With Love

Happy day-after-Valentine's Day! To those of you who had a sucky day yesterday (Single's Awareness anyone?) and to those of you who just want a laugh...RobertIsBothered.com!

RobertIsBothered.com

Hrm. So it seems like I've been cured of my addiction to blogging (and just in time for school to start again! YAY physics!) (If you didn't think that was sarcastic you obviously do not know me and are instead a blog creeper. Not that I have anything against blog creeping. I can say truthfully, from a first-hand experience, that sometimes browsing blogs (you know you love the "Next Blog" button) aka what I like to call "blog creeping" can yield pretty satisfactory results. I've found a blog detailing all the swanky concerts and exhibitions that I would just love to attend (but alas, my humdrum homework (yes, for those creepers, I have homework. Which makes me either a sixty-year-old retiree bent on enjoying retirement to the fullest by going back and getting my law degree so I won't be screwed at the end of the tunnel by greedy in-laws, or, a normal-aged student. Underage or over, whatever floats your boat.) compels me to remain at home.). It's blogs like those that make me not only want to blog creep some more, but also wish that I had a charming renaissance man to whisk me off to operas and fancy saloons (omg An Education reference!). Err...just kidding, you blog creepers, you.

Hey, for all you know, I could be a beer-bellied tranny with hair extensions as long as my fake boobs. Yes, "as long."

And my followers? Well, they could be my cell-mates. My padded-walls-cell-mates.) <--- hey it's the end of the parentheses! Bet you forgot about that! Ha, you end-parentheses-forgetter, you.

I could've gone on about my blog creeping endeavors, but I thought of more pressing needs that definitely needed to be addressed.

Needed.

Like, the reason why I've stopped being so addicted to blogging. What's the best way to lose an addiction? Duh, Giuseppe, by getting addicted to something else! (I have no idea why I'm talking to Giuseppe. But it's a name I like (after watching A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints, love that movie (but not as much as An Education (go Carey Mulligan!))), and I'm going to use it whenever I want to. It's my blog, suckers.)

So, you're wondering ("you" as in whoever bothers to read this far, you weirdo, you), what is this new addiction?

Why, I thought you'd never ask! Oh Giuseppe, why I'm addicted to New Kids on the Block of course!

... (chirp chirp)

Yes. When they were famous I didn't exist. (To which the blog creepers go: yeah! I know how old she is now! To which I go: what she? Oh the mysteries of life.) I hadn't even heard their songs until five days ago. But like how I get deeply obsessed with any old, pre-myexistence band or song or whatever, I saw them on something I watch/listen to/read/follow now. With the Beatles it was Across the Universe (Joe Anderson = what a man). With the Styx it was the a cappella group the Beelzebubs (from Tufts University! Saw them on the Sing-Off!). With The Who it was CSI. And when I saw Episode 188 of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (yes, I saw it on Hulu), NKOTB got me my new addiction. There's always something about boy bands (yes, even ones that reunite decades later with all their members being late-thirties, if not forty years of age) that makes me smile. I never jumped on the whole Backstreet Boys bandwagon (it's called consonance, foo!) when I was little, but now, I can't stop listening to NKOTB. Some of their songs are, I'd have to admit, under the music par I usually listen to, but like country music and Akon, I'd have to say NKOTB is another band I secretly like.

Secretly.

heehee.

I need human interaction. I need this Snowmageddon to end so I can be sane again.

I just noticed that blogger spell-check accepts "weirdo" as a word, but not "tranny." Or more importantly, "NKOTB." You wordist, you. And apparently not "wordist" either.

A Boy and A Girl

I wrote this for English last year. The date on it is 6/15/09, so no wonder I never got back a grade for it.

Anyways, I don't know what I was thinking or what I was taking (just kidding: drugs kill!) but for those symbolism freaks out there, we had just studied "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

---

Once upon a time, in a land not far away at all, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was simply called “boy”, and the girl was named Paullina von Wiersnichzel. The boy was a lonely shepherd, who tended to the Royal Princess’s flock of snow-white sheep, and Paullina von Wiersnichzel was the Royal Princess. She held magnificent, lavish parties in her towering castle, and the boy was never invited. Anyways, he was always busy tending her prized sheep.

As time wore on, Paullina’s parties became even more magnificent and lavish, and the boy started smelling like sheep. He didn’t even bother taking showers anymore, since the smell had permeated his entire being. On clear nights, he would wonder if, after he died, if his spirit would have a faint sheep smell. As he did so, he’d look over at the towering castle, and watch Paullina dance on the balcony.

On the eve of Paullina’s sixteenth birthday (and incidentally the boy’s, too), Paullina’s parents ordered the entire castle staff to clean and prep themselves. The boy heard the edict and took his first good scrubbing in five years. He cleaned his armpits, lathered his hair, and shook the water out of his ears. After all the grime and muck was washed away, one could tell that the boy had grown into a very fine young man. His arms were sculpted from lifting sheep, his legs were works of art, and his face, oh, what a face for the heavens. But he still smelled like sheep, and he was still just a lonely shepherd.

When Paullina’s parents came to check up on everyone, they saw his striking face, and the body that followed, and promptly lost their minds. What was this, this—angel—that was among their midst? Surely, surely he was some rich prince from some far away land? But then they smelled his smell, and smelled his sheep. You’re good, they told him, and went on to the next person.

That night, Royal Princess Paullina von Wiersnichzel held the sweet sixteen of the millennium. There was dancing, there was laughing, and there were non-alcoholic martinis galore. Everyone went wild, and the Princess was presented with a birthday present of five hundred fluffy, prize-winning white sheep. At three in the morning, Paullina hugged and kissed every one of her guests goodbye. She watched them leave, then bade her handmaid to take her sheep down to the shepherd.

When the handmaid got down to the shepherd’s little cottage, she gave a gasp of fright.

There, on the ground the shepherd laid. A trickle of blood ran down from his mouth, but when it was wiped away by the handmaid, his complexion remained as beautiful as ever.

When the handmaid, the maids, the guards, the cooks, and the rest of the servants went to bury the shepherd, they found that his smell permeated through the nine feet of dirt. So, dressing him up in shells and coral and pearls, they threw “boy” into the ocean.

Lovely Love Love Love

Done! Well, three more points and I'm done!

Why I do believe that Buddha approves.

There are some things in life that I can't live without: food, water, shelter, air, you know, the little stuff...and then there are those things that I don't necessarily need, but love to pieces anyways. Thus, in no particular order...THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY.

1) An Education

I saw this movie a couple of days ago. Yes, I saw it by myself, and yes I am that lame, but my oh my was this an amazing movie. Words escape me.

2) Capes and Corsets and Bustles and Gowns. Chivalry of course.

I wish the boys still dressed like this:

From "Tais Toi Mon Coeur" by Dionysos's official music video.

And I wish I could rock a bustle and corset. And a stagecoach. Oh, and don't forget the powdered hair and men in tights. Royal men in royal tights.

From Marie Antoinette (2006)

More!

Why darling, I do believe you look rather dapper this morning. Your new tights are quite the sensation, n'est-ce pas?

I would swap my entire closet for these in a heartbeat.

3) Han Solo

With Han Solo around, why would anyone need Skywalker?

Speaking of super-awesome super guys...

4) Duhduhduhhn...SUPER SPY!

Reason why I watch Burn Notice = Michael Westen = One hottie tamale who will never be burned in my books. Oh, but alas! Mr. Jeffrey Donovan is very much forty, and I'm no gerontophile :)

5) Musicals

To name a few: Across the Universe, Moulin Rouge!, Chicago, RENT, and of course Wicked.

More pics of this loveliness later, promise!

6) Podcasts

It's like radio...but downloadable...

7) Classics

Obviously.

Obvious.

8) ...and the list goes on.

Warning, spoiler alert! Truly awful movie endings.

I've sat through a lot of awful movies. (not to name names, but Swimfan anyone?) But what bugs me the most is sitting through an amazing, or even decent, movie, only to be mindraped at the end by a truly awful ending.

Examples? 30 Days of Night, American History X, The Life Before Her Eyes, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Grease 2. (Actually, Grease 2 was a pretty horrible movie to start with, but it's luau-themed ending deserved a dis-honorable mention.)

30 Days of Night:
As far as vampire movies go, this one was actually ok at the beginning. Torched cellphones, mutilated wolves, and thirty days of pitch darkness in the lonely reaches of Alaska? Bring it on. Even when the sickly pale and hollow-eyed things (I had to go on Wikipedia afterwards to find out they were actually supposed to be vampires) burst onto the scene, I was still cruising along (mostly to stare at Josh Hartnett * angels sing *), when the girl ruins everything.

I believe her name's Stella, and she's the estranged wife of Hartnett's character, Eben. She runs like a toad and subsequently gets trapped under a truck, and risks freezing to death. Granted, she does have a little girl with her as well who she's trying to save, but that doesn't give her an excuse to have survived twenty-nine days from the vampires just to get stuck under a truck. Eben, being the good person he is, decides to save her. He injects himself with vampire blood and goes to take out the evil vampires, creating a distraction long enough for Stella and the little girl to stumble their way to the safe house.

The fight scene is ok, with a super-vamped Eben punching a hole through the vampire leader's head (super-vampy-cool), but just when you thought everything was going to be ok, the sun comes up, the remaining vampires run away, and HARTNETT/EBEN disintegrates.

WHAT?

Yeah. He DISINTEGRATES.

I spent two hours of my life just to watch the only reason I even started watching the movie radially cremate. Needless to say, I was not pleased.

American History X:
This was a tough film to watch. Anyone who's seen Fight Club knows that Edward Norton only picks the good roles. In Down in the Valley, he was a pedophile/psychopath. In American History X, he plays a reformed skinhead. We the audience get flashbacks of his white supremacist, Nazi-saluting days, then his present-day jail happenings.

We are shown his crime, his pathetic jail sentence, his falling-in with "neo-Nazis", his falling-out with them, his subsequent rape by them, his healing process (both physically and mentally), and his relationship with the black jailmate who later becomes, his friend. There's a lot more to this gut-searching film, but the basic jist is that Norton is a reformed man when he gets out.

His little brother, on the other hand, has been sucked into Norton's past life. His brother's a blatant skinhead, and he antagonizes a black classmate. Stuff happens, Norton manages to make a dent in his brother's racism, and they both tear down the posters and Hitler flags on the walls of their room.

Everything seems to make a turn for the better. But life doesn't happen that way, and neither does the film. His brother goes to school one day, and is shot by the equally young black classmate.

It's a torturous, very real film. In real life, emotions don't magically go away overnight. People do change, but people also don't. The sad, awful truth was that a lot of the anger and bigotry and racism that these kids felt were passed on from their surroundings. The black student kills because precedents indicate that Norton's brother will. Norton's brother resorts to his life because that's what his older brother, Norton, did. Norton did because of his anger. Grown-up figures in Norton's life abused that anger, and taught him to direct it racially.

There was hope in this film, when Norton emerged from jail anger-free. But life doesn't work that way. The ending of the film reflected it.

Instead of being labeled "a truly awful ending", I think the better appellation would be "a truly real ending to a tough, amazing movie that Cindy's happy-ending-moviegoing self refused to accept."

The Life Before Her Eyes:
I didn't understand this movie at all. I think that it attempted to dramatize the events surrounding a Columbine-like school shooting, but instead of respectfully retelling the tragic event, it cannibalized it. I kept waiting for the ending to clear the confusion up, but it never happened. The ending was more confusing, and I had to Wikipedia it afterwards.

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back:
Han Solo gets frozen in carbonite. 'nuff said.

CRUSHING. ABSOLUTELY CRUSHING.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

This is why I don't watch football.

Be kind, rewind, s'il vous plaît.

Angst, Teens, and Perfect Blogging. Bonus points if you understand the reference! haha so corny

I enjoy good things: books that are written well, music that bursts into tiny fireworks, movies that make me laugh (or more often cry), food that smells as good as it looks as good as it tastes, people that drift about my memories, etc. A piece of writing, let's say a blog post, that rushes off the page, would fit in this category as well.

Which is why five years ago (timecheck?), I subscribed to a stranger's Xanga.

Sooo embarrassing. and creeper. But hear me out.

The Xanga was typical teenage angst...but bumped up to a diabolical "iwanttofuckingpissonthisshitcalled life" kind of mania. Its author alternated between angry rants about his trashy mother to little condescending games with the readers. Scroll down! He said, and after ten scrolls of white space, at the very bottom of the page was a few choice words for whatever sucker was stupid enough to do it. His layout was from kickgrass.whatever (net? com? I dunremember), and his vocabulary consisted mainly of four letter words bolded, capitalized, and repeated.

I thought all of it was totally badass.

It took me a while to subscribe. I remember sitting in front of the computer...thinking...sucking my thumb...tapping my feet...like this decision was life or death. When I finally clicked the button, I felt a sense of "this is it!" I thought that by subscribing to such a bold explosion of emotion and feeling and...really, bullshit, I could become more like the author and let my own inner headbasher out. Me and the author would become buddies: we would flip off babies and smoke pot behind his trailer and kick dirt at his mom.

A couple of weeks later, when I realized that he wasn't ever going to post anything else, when I myself had stopped posting to Xanga, I stopped going on the website altogether. I had nothing to say so strongly that an impressionable tween would stop, twiddle his thumbs, and anxiously subscribe. Even if I did, I didn't know how to write it.

Happiness is a Warm Puppy

Seriously, no copyright infringement intended. Just a proclamation of my amitié towards Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and swapping heads.

Why yes, I do have a blog.

After posting a few Facebook wall posts and putting up a Youtube video in my earlier, frivolously careless days, I've come to realize that things posted to the Internet are really, forever lost and exposed. The comments you make on a OMG! picture. The websites you delete off your history feed. The gchats, the uploaded pictures, etc. All roam free in this very public domain.

I've not had anything bite me in the butt yet. But I'm paranoid.

After restricting my Facebook privacy stats to Alcatraz standards, I proceeded to try to delete my Gaia account (which, to the chagrin of my awful, lazier side, will take longer than the click of a button).

And that's where I stopped to think. Registration is often mandatory to access the better portions of websites, and I've done it so many times now that I'm sure that anyone with access to these registrations could compile a tidy summary of my "private" exploits. It doesn't matter that I've not always entered the correct zip code or last name: my email ties me to all of them.

So unless I have a sudden change of heart and go "Into the Wild", I'm linked forever to my very public Internet life. The ubiquity of this scares me, but empowers me as well. Because where better to promote whatever image you want to promote than the Internet? On this massive web of liens and links, a con artist can become a deviantARTISTE, a graying senator can become an Argentinian hunk of love, a bird enthusiast can become an Anglophilic-rapper...and a girl can become a blogger. How riche.