Since You Went Away

I am beside myself!

2009-11-18T12:39:00.000-05:00

So we have a lot of empty wallspace in our apartment, and today I was looking through allposters.com's treasure trove of Disney art, and I had several ideas for filling in the walls. I would like to buy three similarly-themed art prints, frame them, and hang them in a row somewhere. First! The villains!
Or
Allison suggested Scar when I couldn't find a print of Jafar, and I would agree with her, except Simba is ruining this print for me. And while Snow White's Wicked Queen has the worst motive of any Disney villain ever (she's jealous that her step-daughter is hotter than her--and that's it), she looks pretty effing evil in that picture. So I like it.

Next! The lovers!
Who doesn't love that shared spaghetti strand moment in Lady and the Tramp? Aw.

Third! These have no theme connecting them, but I really like them anyway!

I especially like the Sorcerer's Apprentice print, as that is my favorite incarnation of Mickey Mouse of all time.

And then this is not a print--it is a full-sized poster, and it costs twenty dollars, but I really like it. I was totally into Mickey and Minnie Mouse when I was a very little child.
What do you think, internet?

Day old blues

2009-09-21T11:28:00.003-04:00

Man, the more I hear that song "Use Somebody," the more it bothers me. I mean, I didn't even know until, like, a month ago that that song was from Kings of Leon. I thought it was some whiny bastards who wanted to be The Fray.

Stop. Let's wrap our minds around this. I thought Kings of Leon were the poor man's The Fray for almost the entire summer.

WHAT?

I saw them live one time, and they were opening for Ben Kweller at Axis (fuckin' Axis), and like most of the cool music I like, they were given to me by Jess Bannon, and we were in college at the time, neither of us with cars, and we still found our way to Boston to see Kings of Leon and Ben Kweller, and I remember Ben Kweller seemed to think they were the coolest band ever, and he played a cover of "Molly's Chambers" in his own set, and damn, that was an excellent show.

And now they are the poor man's The Fray. And I am sad.

Therapy

2009-07-29T22:49:00.001-04:00

Right now, I'm in the middle of rereading all the Madeleine L'Engle novels I own, which is almost all of them, I think, and I am having such trouble getting through A House Like a Lotus.

I haven't reread it since before I came to the full realization that I was a giant dyke, and it might be because of the thing that happens to Polly at the end of the book (but toward the beginning of the chronology of the story).

I was almost going to go into a long explanation, but let's just cut to the chase. Basically, Polly gets sexually assaulted by her mentor, a wealthy, sophisticated lesbian named Max. Now, Max is painfully dying of cancer (or some other wasting disease--I forget, and I can't bring myself to look it up right now), and she's out of her mind with pain when she attacks Polly, and Polly escapes into the arms of Max's partner, Ursula, but still. The predatory lesbian thing. It just...

I feel like Madeleine L'Engle has betrayed me. When I read the book for the very first time, I was too young and naive to even really grasp what Max had done. By the time I did, I wasn't really out to myself, and now...

I don't want to read my literary idol, my never-fail source of comfort, telling a story of the predatory lesbian, no matter what Max's excuse for her behavior might be. It hurts it hurts it hurts.

This all may seem melodramatic to you, but Madeleine L'Engle has had an enormous influence on me as a human being, and books in general can affect me much more deeply than anything else in the world can, and I just can't bear this kind of story coming from her--when she has no other positive homosexual stories to balance it out.

I almost feel like Polly does, unable to stand the thought of Max, even though she's brought so much good into her life and meant so much to her.

It hurts it hurts it hurts.

Long one

2009-07-21T15:23:00.000-04:00

Days ago, I said something about following up with my thoughts on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and I have finally found the motivation to do it. Spoilers abound, because there was a lot of shit from the book left out.

First, let's talk about how I like it when they leave shit from the book out. For example, that whole thing with Tonks and Lupin is so gross, and Tonks spends the book being so pathetic, and ugh. They're still in the movie; they're together in the movie--I imagine because they're two of the three big deaths at the end--but it's not gross. And it's not a bleeding waste of time.

The only important bit of information we pick up from this whole werewolf romance shit is that a person's Patronus can change its shape. This becomes important in relation to Snape some hundreds of pages into the last book. I don't know if they'll, like, make that explicit in the movie, but the shape of Snape's Patronus is the reason Dumbledore trusted him.

As much as I lament the lack of older Weasley brothers in the movies, it is a relief that the whole weirdness with adding Fleur to the family is dropped completely. So is Percy's feud with the family--he was in the last movie, with the Minister, but no one ever talks about it. That's fine by me.

The Ministry of Magic is completely absent from the movie, which I found to be odd, if only because it becomes very important in the next book who is controlling the Ministry. I guess we don't really need to worry about that until the Ministry is in the hands of the Death Eaters, but still, there's this whole back and forth with the Ministry and Harry--now that they believe him, they want him to be their poster boy, and Harry's like, "Fuck you, dillweeds."

The trouble with making these books into movies is that there is so much information packed into the books, readers expect to see at least most of it presented in the movie. We learn so much about Tom Riddle in the book that is nowhere in the movie. What infuriated me most about the movie was its treatment of horcruxes. We get the explanation of what they are from Slughorn's memory, finally, and then Harry's like, "Ack! They could be anything!"

And Dumbledore actually says, "They could be common household objects," or something close to that, and I was like, "No! That was the whole point of your 'lessons' with Harry! To understand the way Voldemort thinks--to know that he would use trophies as horcruxes! Something from each of the Hogwarts founders, for example!" Blarg.

The way the movie ends, Harry has no idea where to find another horcrux. The way the book ends, he knows he is after Voldemort's snake, Helga Hufflepuff's goblet, and something owned by Rowena Ravenclaw or possibly Godric Gryffindor. The diary and the Peverell family crest ring have been destroyed, and Salazar Slytherin's locket is missing, possibly destroyed already. Three known horcruxes/three guessed horcruxes.

One thing I noticed in re-reading the book (spoiler!) is that Harry actually runs into Ravenclaw's diadem when he's hiding the Prince's book in the Room of Requirement. He puts a tiara on a bust of someone near his hiding spot so he can find it again. If only he'd known what it was, eh?

Anyway. One of the things I never really understand is why, when a movie leaves so much of a book out, it finds time to add things in. There is this truly bizarre scene in the middle of the movie where Bellatrix Lestrange just apparates right up to the Burrow, with two other Death Eaters, and sets it on fire. Like, what? The best I can come up with is that it was the movie's way of showing us how deep we are in the shit at this point. Throughout the book, we get news of Hogwarts students' family members being killed, and all the Ministry stuff and the emptiness of Diagon Alley and all that are a pretty good indication, but the movie uses the destruction of the Burrow, I think, to show us that no one is safe anymore. Nothing will ever be the same now.

Something else I find weird is how Lavender and Parvati have only shown up in the movies in relation to the boys. Parvati and Padma have to be in the fourth movie, because they're Ron and Harry's dates to the Yule Ball, and Parvati gets to face the boggart in the third movie, and Neville tell the boys he heard Parvati saying Hermione was bawling in the ladies' in the first movie, but we never even hear of Lavender until this movie, where she must appear because Ron starts going with her and making Hermione jealous. But now Parvati's missing. The books treat them as a pair, basically, so it feels lacking to have one without the other. At one point in the book, Harry and Parvati even briefly--and mostly non-verbally--commiserate over the madness their best friends are entangled in, which I thought was a nice touch.

Now I'm just over-nit-picking, so I guess I'll call it a day. On the whole, I enjoyed this movie a lot, but there's always so much trouble when you try to squash a giant book into 2 and a half hours. That's why I feel like the Narnia movies are such successful adapations--they took something small and expanded it into something wondrous. Anyway. When's the first part of the final installment come out, again?

Selfish post

2009-06-26T12:35:00.005-04:00

There are a number of internet t-shirts I want, like, right now. But I cannot buy them.

from Threadless
from Glarkware
Anyone rich? I take guys size large.

I've been updating

2009-06-17T16:04:00.002-04:00

Only I've been doing it here.

I think blogspot and I are breaking up.

Justice Moreno gets it

2009-05-29T09:37:00.003-04:00

Justice Carlos Moreno was the only member of the Supreme Court of California to stand up for us, and this is the best part of his dissenting opinion:

"There is no 'underlying' principle more basic to our Constitution than that the equal protection clause protects the fundamental rights of minorities from the will of the majority."

That does not apply only to the Constitution of the State of California, either. This is why we have constitutions; this is why we have a representative republic, not a pure democracy, because sometimes the majority will get carried away, and the minority needs someone to protect its rights.

Thank you, Justice Moreno, for understanding that.

Eh, I almost deleted this

2009-05-22T12:16:00.000-04:00

Do you know what I was thinking about earlier? Snow White and how the Wicked Queen had the worst motivation ever. She was jealous of her step-daughter's physical beauty, so she tried to kill her. What?

Cinderella's step-mother wanted her dead husband's money. Maleficent had some grudge against the king. Ursula wanted to rule Atlantica.

The Wicked Queen didn't want anyone to be prettier than her. WHAT THE FUCK?

Thus concludes this issue of bitching about things I love*.

*I hate Snow White, though. But I love Disney.

Another installment of Emily hates religion

2009-05-21T11:13:00.000-04:00

I still can't reconcile my unabashed adoration for everything Madeleine L'Engle has ever written with my utter disdain for religion, especially Christianity. I think especially Christianity because it's the major world religion with which I'm most familiar, but also because it centers on some dude coming back from the dead. And also because it insists that it is the one true religion, which is a characteristic it shares with Islam, I believe. Judaism is the only one of those three not interested in converting anyone, and that is why I love the Jews the best. Even though plenty of Jews can be just as retarded about things like homosexuality and feminism as Christians and Muslims, at least they're not trying to make the whole world Jewish.

Why I love Futurama

2009-05-18T10:27:00.004-04:00

Recruitment officer: Sign here on the dotted line, patriots, and I'll give you your discount cards.
Fry: Just outta curiosity, we can use the cards to buy gum, then immediately quit the army, right?
Bender: You know, playin' you all for chumps?
Recruitment officer: Correct. There's no obligation.
[Fry and Bender sign.]
Recruitment officer: Unless, of course, war were declared.
[Siren]
Fry: What's that?
Recruitment officer: War were declared.If that didn't make you laugh like a donkey, I'm just gonna tell myself it's because you haven't seen it.

Weekly mix tape 16

2009-05-13T10:39:00.004-04:00

I haven't done one of these in many weeks, so I thought I would showcase my playlist-creating brilliance here. Also, I make digital copies of these things for cute girls or people who ask nicely. (Let me pretend anyone still reads this, dammit.)

1. That's How You Know - Amy Adams
2. Never Had Nobody Like You - M. Ward with Zooey Deschanel
3. Mahna Mahna - Cake
4. Modern Girls & Old Fashion Men - The Strokes & Regina Spektor
5. And Your Bird Can Sing - The Beatles
6. People Got a Lotta Nerve - Neko Case
7. Wantin' Her Again - Ben Kweller
8. My Name Is Jonas - Weezer
9. Taper Jean Girl - Kings of Leon
10. On a Plain - Nirvana
11. Creep - Radiohead
12. We Get On - Kate Nash
13. Add It Up - Guster
14. Paper Bag - Fiona Apple
15. Vibrate - Rufus Wainwright
16. Fuck Was I - Jenny Owen Youngs
17. If There Was No You - Brandi Carlile
18. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart - Wilco
19. Turn to Stone - Ingrid Michaelson
20. Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
21. Explain It to Me - Liz Phair

"Gayer than a plaid rabbit"

2009-05-09T02:30:00.000-04:00

So the first time I read Wicked, I was all "OMG, Glinda is totally gay for Elphaba," but I was pretty sure I was just projecting. I project gaiety everywhere. But then I read Wicked again.

And OMG, you guys, Glinda is totally gay for Elphaba. I don't know how I didn't register this fully the first time I read it, but check this:

The Witch in fact alarmed her a little. It was not just the novelty of seeing her again, but the strange charisma Elphaba possessed, which had always put Glinda in the shade. Also there was the thrill, basis indeterminable, which made Glinda shy, and caused her to rush her words, and to speak in a false high voice like an adolescent.

If that is not how one behaves around a girl one likes, then what the fuck else is it? Now this passage is from toward the end of the book, when the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North meet again after the Wicked Witch of the East has been squashed. Apparently, Glinda has always behaved like a doofus around Elphaba, but I hardly recall such a thing. Oh well.

I can't really tell Elphaba's feelings--she's obviously fond of Glinda--but I'm pretty sure the only person she had romantic feelings for was Fiyero. Unless this means what I was projecting it to mean:

[Glinda] could scarcely dredge up an ounce of recollection about that daring meeting with the Wizard. She could recall far more clearly how she and Elphie had shared a bed on the way to the Emerald City. How brave that had made her feel, and how vulnerable too.

Here, again, it's obvious Glinda has a massive crush on Elphaba, but does "shared a bed" have the euphemistic meaning? The only thing that makes me think so is that last part: "How brave that had made her feel, and how vulnerable too."

Oh, and then there was this one thing Nanny says to Elphaba later, "You were devoted to Glinda, you were. Everyone knew it." That's a little gay. No?

There's a lot of explicit gayness in the Wicked books, but it's almost exclusively dude-on-dude. Elphaba's pops, Crope and Tibbett, Liir. Glinda has that unrequited thing for Elphaba that she can barely even understand, and I really couldn't pick out any other lesbianish thing. And you know I'd be able to pick out all the lesbianish things.

That makes me sad.

While I'm here, my favorite thing Glinda ever did was speak to the Wizard for Elphaba, when she was all paralyzed in front of him. And then Elphaba deserted her, and I was sad. Again.

Live Free or Die

2009-05-08T13:39:00.005-04:00

"House Republicans said the Senate version had important flaws. ... They said it will lead to lawsuits against non-clergy -- those with strong religious beliefs that prevent them from participating in any phase of a gay marriage, such as catering or photography.

Rep. Peter Bolster, R-Alton, said, 'This does not protect the Christian conference center, the church with a social hall, or its individual members who run limousine or photographic services who may conscientiously object to participating in a same-sex marriage.'" --from the Union Leader

That is the dumbest god damn thing I've ever heard. Any self-respecting gay couple would not engage the services of someone who was so opposed to their having equal rights. A caterer isn't obligated to serve anyone's damn wedding, for whatever reason he or she likes. Homophobia is a nasty reason, but hey. It's a free country. Right?

I mean, really. I would find a gay-friendly caterer. Or a gay caterer. Come on. There are plenty of actual gay people working in the industries that serve weddings. Even in barely-civilized New Hampshire! No one is going to make anyone take part in a gay wedding.

I can't take this anymore. My heart is going to explode from frustration, hope, and disappointment.

I've decided. Ella es la mujer más hermosa en el mundo.

2009-05-08T11:40:00.005-04:00

There was this part in Grey's last night that I can't stop watching. And it's not even the part with Sara Ramirez covered only by a bed sheet. It's this brief part at the wedding, in the montage of guests while Alex and Izzie make out at the altar (like, seriously, making out), when Baskin Robbins bumps Callie's shoulder and smiles at her, and then Callie leans over and kisses her cheek. It is adorable. And has finally converted me on Baskin Robbins.
Look, I loved Erica Hahn probably more than any lesbian who watched primetime ABC television, and Brooke Smith and Sara Ramirez were so hot together, but their story was a fucking disaster. Callie made the first move and then spent every episode after that freaking out and being weird and dicking around until the very end when she would finally tell Erica what her damn deal was, and then Erica would fix it. Because she is awesome. I had hopes that Callie would eventually get past the awkward part, and she and Hahn would be able to be cute like she and Baskin Robbins get to be, and from that interview with Shonda Rhimes from AfterEllen, I'm pretty sure the whole storyline with Callie's crazy dad was conceived with Hahn in mind as Callie's partner, so I swear they just subsituted (an allegedly) prettier, (inarguably) younger actress for Brooke Smith, and that's why I was mad.

But I can't hang onto principles when Sara Ramirez is kissing pretty ladies and getting naked on the tv. I just can't.Okay, but now I need to talk about this. I get that Callie is upset because she has no money to go on nice dates with her girlfriend, but hello, why didn't she fucking tell her girlfriend before being dragged out to apparently the most expensive place in Seattle? They're dating. Baskin Robbins is sweet. She will understand. Which she did. She understood. And I know Callie's proud; she doesn't want to cry about her money problems, but Jesus. Be smarter than going to out to a fancy place just because your girlfriend wants to when you can't pay. No one who matters is going to think any less of you.

Especially because Baskin Robbins is, like, the reason you have no money. I know it's her father's fault, but he never would have cut her off if she hadn't started dating a lady. And Callie could have easily said fuck this and chosen her family and her money over this girl. She didn't. And Arizona already knew that! So why did she even take Callie out to a fancy restaurant in the first place? She was there when Callie told Cristina she couldn't afford the rent!

And what is Callie's issue with communicating? She can't do it unless she comes face to face with losing the girl. She played that game with Hahn, like, eleventy times.

Also, also, as far as we know, Cristina is not an heiress. She's even a few years behind Callie in her surgical residency. How can she afford half their rent, but Callie can't? Hmm?

This fucking show. It wasn't just because of Brooke Smith that I stopped watching...

Oh the things that set me off

2009-05-07T10:04:00.006-04:00

Last night I was watching Veronica Mars with Allison, and some rando on there said, "Frak!" and then had to explain to Veronica and whomever else that frak is from Battlestar Galactica and is "the swear of the future," and I got all het up and said, "Actually, it's the swear of the past!" foamed at the mouth, and fell into the hole between my bed and the wall. As I disobeyed Allison's advice not to get mad.

I am still mad. So mad I haven't even illegally downloaded Caprica, because Netflix says there's a very long wait for it. Eff you, Caprica, with your creepy Eric Stoltz.

ETA: I'm so glad I didn't let Ryan ruin Veronica Mars for me. He tried, but by that point in our relationship, I was really good at only pretending to listen to him.

She didn't shudder at my paw

2009-04-23T10:53:00.003-04:00

In honor of my trip to Disney World on Saturday, I have compiled a playlist of all the Disney songs in my iTunes library. I have called it "Disney Explosion!" and I am posting it here just in case any of you had any lingering feelings that I might be considered, as the kids say, "cool."

Disney Explosion!
1. Belle
2. Belle (Reprise)
3. Gaston
4. Gaston (Reprise)
5. Be Our Guest
6. Something There
7. The Mob Song
8. Beauty and the Beast
9. Circle of Life
10. I Just Can't Wait to Be King
11. Be Prepared
12. Hakuna Matata
13. Can You Feel the Love Tonight
14. Cruella de Vil
15. Arabian Nights
16. One Jump Ahead
17. Friend Like Me
18. Prince Ali
19. A Whole New World
20. Prince Ali (Reprise)
21. Yo Ho! (A Pirate's Life for Me)
22. Long Ago... (Hercules intro)
23. The Gospel Truth I/Main Titles
24. The Gospel Truth II
25. The Gospel Truth III
26. Go the Distance
27. Go the Distance (reprise)
28. One Last Hope
29. Zero to Hero
30. I Won't Say (I'm in Love)
31. A Star Is Born
32. He's a Tramp
33. Sister Suffragette
34. The Life I Lead
35. The Perfect Nanny
36. A Spoonful of Sugar
37. Pavement Artist
38. Jolly Holiday
39. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
40. Stay Awake
41. I Love to Laugh
42. A British Bank (The Life I Lead)
43. Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag)
44. Fidelity Fiduciary Bank
45. Chim Chim Cher-ee
46. Step in Time
47. A Man Has Dreams
48. Let's Go Fly a Kite
49. Honor to Us All
50. Reflection
51. I'll Make a Man Out of You
52. A Girl Worth Fighting For
53. Prologue
54. Carrying the Banner
55. Santa Fe
56. The World Will Know
57. Seize the Day
58. King of New York
59. High Times, Hard Times
60. Seize the Day (Chorale)
61. Santa Fe (Reprise)
62. Once and for All
63. The World Will Know (Reprise)
64. Carrying the Banner (Finale)
65. I'll Try
66. Fathoms Below
67. Daughters of Triton
68. Part of Your World
69. Under the Sea
70. Part of Your World (Reprise)
71. Poor Unfortunate Souls
72. Les Poissons
73. Kiss the Girl
74. This Is Halloween
75. Jack's Lament
76. What's This?
77. Town Meeting Song
78. Jack's Obsession
79. Kidnap the Sandy Claws
80. Making Christmas
81. Oogie Boogie's Song
82. Sally's Song
83. Poor Jack
84. Finale/Reprise
85. When She Loved Me
86. The Bells of Notre Dame
87. Out There
88. Topsy Turvy
89. God Help the Outcasts
90. Heaven's Light/Hellfire
91. A Guy Like You
92. The Court of Miracles
93. The Belles of Notre Dame (Reprise)
94. Once Upon a Dream

1-8 from Beauty and the Beast, 9-13 from The Lion King, 14 from 101 Dalmatians, 15-20 from Aladdin, 21 from Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride, 22-31 from Hercules, 32 from Lady and the Tramp, 33-48 from Mary Poppins, 49-52 from Mulan, 53-64 from Newsies, 65 from Return to Neverland, 66-73 from The Little Mermaid, 74-84 from The Nightmare Before Christmas, 85 from Toy Story 2, 86-93 from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 94 from Sleeping Beauty

Just in case you haven't seen this

2009-04-21T13:15:00.002-04:00

I love this even more than Prop 8: The Musical. Thanks for being so ridiculous, NOM!

I know I've already said this before

2009-04-14T22:26:00.000-04:00

For some reason, the line "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" is, like, the most famous line from Romeo and Juliet. I guess cuz it's from the balcony scene, and that's the most famous scene? And I'm sure we're all familiar with various modern allusions to it, in which people always seem to be looking for someone when they say that. But let me show you something. The line is:

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?

NOT

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

Do you see what I did there? Fucking everyone, when they say "wherefore art thou," uses it as a direct address. But it's not. Juliet is bemoaning the fact that she and Romeo are children of feuding houses--"wherefore art thou Romeo" means, "Why the fuck is your name Romeo Montague, you unfortunate son of a bitch? If it weren't we could be together!" Roughly.

Yes, he's spying on her while she says this, but she's not looking for him. She's moping. Here's the whole thing she says:

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name!
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
and I'll no longer be a Capulet.

She might as well be saying, "Wherefore am I Juliet?" But that's not very poetic, is it?

Even aside from all of this, I just don't understand how you would see this word, wherefore, and just assume it's, what, like some archaic version of where. Use your brains.

Shortest fuse

2009-04-02T04:34:00.000-04:00

My 10 favorite Kelly Clarkson songs:
10. Beautiful Disaster
9. Long Shot
8. I Do Not Hook Up
7. Don't Waste Your Time
6. Maybe
5. Be Still
4. Chivas
3. Since U Been Gone
2. I Want You
1. Addicted

My favorite song she's ever sung, ever, though? The minute and a half of "Stuff Like That There" on her season of Idol. Still gives me shivers.

I don't even watch Idol anymore, but I read the Television Without Pity recaps, because Jacob Clifton writes them, and I think he is a recapping genius. The first thing I read of his was a Mondo Extra recap of the disastrous movie version of A Wrinkle in Time, and I've been in love ever since. So I am aware of what's going down on Idol, but actually dealing with it, with Ryan and Paula and the guy with the dead wife and the blind kid? I don't have the energy.

However, I do occasionally think about how fucking huge the show has gotten compared to the ghetto-tastic first season, where they auditioned for the top ten with only one plinky piano to back them up, and where they only had live musicians for the top six performance show. And I daydream sometimes about what it would have been like to hear and watch Kelly and, like, Tamyra Gray interact with a live band. I mean, the big band episode was the pinnacle of that season, and for the rest of the episodes, the contestants had to sing with canned music and backup vocals, which was the fucking worst.

Around season three, people started saying, "No fucking way Kelly Clarkson would have even made the top 36 this year," which infuriated me, because Kelly Clarkson is the best contestant the show has ever had and certainly the most successful winner, but now I wonder if those idiots may have been right, because she barely made the top 30 in her own season, when far fewer people even auditioned, because the judges were too dumb to pick up on her talent until America noticed her for them. Good work, America.

I don't know, I think the show has tried to get more interesting after the disaster that was Taylor Hicks, ostensibly giving the contestants more creative control over the songs they perform, but I just haven't seen anyone with Kelly Clarkson's talent, showmanship, and broad appeal. Which is really what this dumb show is about--broad appeal.

Also, I actually watched an episode on Tuesday, and it was awful. The judges are even worse than I remember--even Simon was not impressing me. Paula was a fuckin' hot mess, but not even in the fun way anymore. I mean, I like knowing what's going on, but I just cannot watch this disasterpiece theater. Give me some more stuff like that there.

I guess since it's April Fools, I should have written a post not about books

2009-04-01T21:49:00.001-04:00

For a long, long, looooooong time I was of the opinion that a movie could never, ever get a book right. Every time I watched a movie based on a book, I would simply be disappointed. This is largely true: movies always seem to leave out or change parts of the book I enjoy. It's just inevitable, because movies are limited in what they can present. I mean, you try to base a movie on a 1,000 page book, and you get four hours of Vivien Leigh being INTOLERABLE. You know? Sometimes you just gotta cut some stuff.

So I grew up a little and realized that the movie had to find its own way to tell the story of its source novel, and I began to see that some of them can do a good job, even changing things from the source. The Little Women with Winona Ryder is probably the best example of this; there are plenty of things that are different in the movie, but the movie still captures the story, the family bonds, everything. And so I love it. Plus, Winona Ryder is hot when she cuts off all her hair for money for her mother.

Lately, I've started to enjoy some movies better than the books upon which they were based, but this was only because I did not enjoy the books upon which they were based. The Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley, which purists hate, totally slayed me, because it was so fun. Like, the movie demonstrated what I did not get from the book at all, that these five girls were a family who loved each other, who laughed and teased and shared secrets and acted like a modern bunch of sisters might. I liked that a lot, how the movie showed you the affection between the Bennetts and the goofiness of Mr. Bingley, presenting these upper class characters from two hundred years ago as people we could know. These period dramas always present characters as, like, so far removed from the way modern people behave, and that is just not accurate at all. People may have had to put on more ridiculous airs in previous time periods, but everyone has always teased their sisters or gotten nervous around pretty girls, no matter how many undergarments they're forced to wear.

And Jane Austen's writing just did not convey that any of these people really liked each other. That made me sad. Don't tell me I was reading it wrong, either. I know how to read a book, motherfuckers.

Anyway, just a few days ago, I realized that this is why I really liked the Narnia movies: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian showed the Pevensies as a real family, siblings who fight and tease and love each other. That was largely absent in the novels, which were mostly about the plot. I guess you just have to take it on faith that the Pevensies are fond of each other in the books--I mean, there are a few scenes, of course, where you see how close Peter and Lucy are, for instance, but it's just not enough. Mostly, they feel like strangers thrown together on an adventure. In the movies, the kids got to be playful, to act like real kids, and the best part, for me, was that Susan was included. Susan feels much more like part of the family in the movies than she ever did in the books. Even Edmund, who full on betrays them in the first story, gets to belong to the family more fully than Susan.

So, you know, if The Last Battle actually gets made, and the director wants to let Susan into heaven? Totally fine with me.

Cranky

2009-03-26T10:25:00.003-04:00

Instead of Hera being, like, I don't know, the first us, she should have been the symbol of learning to live with the robots, instead of depending on them and growing complacent and having it all blow up in our faces. That way, when they start over again on the place where humanity first frakked up big time, all this will not happen again.

Having the Fleet populate this planet is still the dumbest god damn thing I've ever heard.

Hate
Hate
HATE.

I'd have joined your mutiny, Felix, if I'd known this is what it was coming to.

Frak Earth

2009-03-23T12:55:00.003-04:00

I could frakkin' let loose about my extreme disappointment with the finale of Battlestar Galactica, but I really want to just say this:

From the beginning, I'd been hoping and hoping and hoping that this wouldn't be how it ended. That they wouldn't find our Earth and basically be the first humans there. Because that is the dumbest god damn thing I've ever heard. When they got to Earth at the end of the first half of the last season, and it was all bombed out, I was like, "Oh! Yay!" But then they were like, "All these remains are Cylons," and I was like, "Whuh? That's not Earth, then, huh?"

And then they ended up here, on Africa, and they just... Ugh! Aside from being cheesy and stupid, it doesn't make any anthropological sense, but I don't even know enough about anthropology to tell you why, so I'll just skip that.

What I wanted to happen, ever since we found out Earth wasn't this planet we're living on, was that they would eventually find this ball of rock, and they would find the ruins of humanity's first try at civilization. And it would be enough thousands of years for the planet to be recovering from whatever kind of bombs and crap would have destroyed humanity in the first place. They could find humanity's real origins, not some place called Kobol where the Earthlings would have gone to start over and forget the disaster of Earth ever happened.

Instead they landed here before anything got going, and the whole series turned into a warning for us, the latest modern incarnation of humanity, not to frak too much with technology, because the robots will turn on you and blow your entire world to pieces.

In retrospect, "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again," is fucking depressing. I mean, it has been demonstrated that humanity is slow to learn from its mistakes, but the way the fleet decided to settle on Earth meant that they didn't even want to try. Because, you know, we modern-day Earthlings are entirely unaware of this civilization that went before us, so everything those 38,000 people may have learned was lost--literally hurled into the frakking sun.

And then there's all the things that came from this Earth that have appeared throughout the series. We'll ignore the most obvious, "All Along the Watchtower," and the Greek gods and the zodiac for now. What I want to talk about is the words--the words that Baltar and Roslin and Sam used that came from English writers. Baltar and Roslin both quoted Shakespeare. When Sam was all brain-broken, he babbled words from Milton, from Paradise Lost. Now. The way I was hoping things had happened, that literature had made it from Earth to Kobol to the Colonies, maybe in tattered form and not well-documented or something, but still, it had been written before, and it had been able to last through the years, because it was that pervasive throughout human civilization. Shakespeare, especially, has that gift.

But the way it seems to have happened now, after the finale, is that artists are just being divinely inspired to say the same things over and over again. Sam, Kara's dad, and Bob Dylan all wrote the same song. Sam and John Milton have the same exact words to say about existence and God and whatever.

The Shakespeare stuff, I guess I could overlook, because he is so pervasive it might be the writers didn't even realize they were quoting, but "shuffle off this mortal coil"? That just occurred to Gaius Baltar the way it occurred to William Shakespeare?

You know me. I think divine inspiration is absolute bullshit. So this is what bugs more than anything else. That there's no explanation for why Sam knows the words to Paradise Lost or why Laura Roslin would use the specific phrase "pound of flesh" in some kind of political situation. Damn, I can't remember why she used that--it was way back in the first season, I think--but I jumped on it right away as being the entire point of the play The Merchant of Venice. And since Roslin was using it metaphorically--you know, no one was asking for a literal pound of flesh, like in the play--where did she get it from???

Argh. I don't even care anymore about the lame thing they did with Starbuck: angel, demon, messiah, whatever the fuck. The language thing is such an issue. Like, the fleet arrived before homo sapiens sapiens even developed, because the people on the planet didn't even have language, and all the foreign humans spoke the same language, and yet, all these bazillions of different languages developed? And went through various stages of development? I'm sure no one on the staff thought about that, but oh my god, it is bugging the shit out of me.

And then the Greek gods, who have the same names as the Lords of Kobol. Did the Geminese (they were the fanatic planet, right?) end up in the Mediterranean and immediately establish their religion? I don't understand. It makes so much more sense to me if the humans who got to Kobol set up a new religion, a new civilization with the alleged best pieces of all the old ones from Earth, and over the years the story of how civilization on Kobol all started got lost, because I don't know, maybe it's because of the limited scope of the story, but it seems to me that all the people from the colonies speak the exact same language and have the exact same history/religion, and each colony has a variant take on aspects of this culture, but they have the same core. That seems to me more like what would happen after humanity's first collapse--they'd rebuild with bits and pieces of what they knew before. But here, on this Earth, a whole bunch of different cultures and religions and histories and languages developed, basically independently of each other. They all share certain similarities, certain myth patterns, because there are certainly shared aspects of humanity, but they're not similar enough to have the same core story as their base.

It was the easy way to go: to have the Kobol as the birthplace of humanity story be literal and to have the fleet be the first human inhabitants of Earth. They should have turned that story around, explored what Kobol meant, but I guess they didn't want to do another season, so they came up with this predictable-ass ending. Science fiction television has been doing this preachy "don't fuck with robots" ending over and over and over again. And that was what I liked most about Battlestar Galactica: it went beyond standard sci-fi tropes, like Ray Bradbury can do, like I thought the first season of Roswell did, and it was about the people, not about some message. But it ended up in a cliche sci-fi place: technology is fucking dangerous. The end. I mean, that was the actual end: fake Six and Baltar arguing about whether or not humanity would repeat its doomed relationship with technology.

And so I hated it. Hated it, hated it, hated it.

Tempering my crazy

2009-03-14T15:20:00.002-04:00

Kelly Clarkson songs I can't stand:
"Breakaway"
"Because of You"
"If No One Will Listen"

And "A Moment Like This" and "Before Your Love," of course, but those weren't her fault. I almost hate "Miss Independent," but she loves performing it live, and that has saved it.

There. I am that objective when it comes to Kelly Clarkson. Ahem.

Hard-hitting interviews on Entertainment Tonight

2009-03-13T10:16:00.002-04:00

"Just because I'm single and don't date a lot, that doesn't make me a lesbian."

Well, duh, Kelly. That's not what makes you a lesbian.

Teenage music critic

2009-03-10T15:48:00.000-04:00

Ohhh, tater tots, let's talk about Kelly Clarkson's new album. Obviously, it's been leaked for at least a week (I am always the last person to find out about that), but I am dumb and always wait for the official release date. Basically so I can put the music on my iPod without even thinking about it. But anyway, Kelly!
My theory is that this will appease the people who thought My December sucked, as it's more of a return to "Since U Been Gone" form, which is what everyone's been saying, I know, but it's true. Not to say that this album is in any way Breakaway, redux (it's much better), but it's much more in that vein than My December for sure. As for me, I'm taking the sure-to-be unpopular stance and declaring it not as good as My December. Nevertheless, I already love it fiercely.

I've already been obsessed with "My Life Would Suck Without You" and how adorable she looks in the video, so we'll skip that, and I'll just talk about some standouts.

First! "I Do Not Hook Up" is fun, but it sounds like a song I've already heard, and of course I can't fucking figure out what song or even when I might have heard it (recently? in elementary school? who knows). Also, there's this line: "I fall deeply," which, um, I heard as "I fuck deeply" while I was brushing my teeth this morning, and oh. It made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

2. "Already Gone" severely bummed me out, but I think it's my favorite song, which is odd, because I hate things that make me sad. Also, being laid low by a pop song? Embarrassing. If it weren't Kelly, though, with that voice, I'd never listen to it again.

C. "Whyyawannabringmedown" is my other favorite, because it's all...wail-y and stuff. And she reminded me of Tia Carrere wailing "Ballroom Blitz" in Wayne's World so forcefully that I loved it before I'd even heard the whole thing. Like, seriously. I'm sure no one else will draw this parallel (and if anyone does, I'll ask her to marry me), but it made me so happy. Also, it features the line "I'm not your love monkey," which makes me laugh every time. I love songs that are silly by accident.

IV. The other song I love is "I Want You," which is kind of a '60s doo-wop thing that seems to be popular these days, and it kind of comes across as taking advantage of that trend, because the rest of the album is pretty pop-rockish, but I don't care. It's adorable.

Anyway, the album is nothing less than I expected, but I was trying to think if I'd like any of these songs if Kelly weren't singing them. I really don't know, maybe "My Life Would Suck Without You" and "Whyyawannabringmedown" (except the wailing is crucial to that one, and so few bitches out there can really wail), but I do know this: Kelly's voice is what makes them worth listening to for me, and it's why I will pre-order every album she releases. Even if she actually does dive off the deep-end and put out a country album. Erp.

The girliest thing about me is my enjoyment of Bath & Body Works products

2009-03-04T03:35:00.001-05:00

I went back to Bath & Body Works last Friday because I wanted to buy a candle, and the White Barn candles they sell are the best candles around, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they updated the candles, so they sell all the signature Bath & Body Works smells as small, medium, and large candles instead of in just one frosted glass, medium-ish sized jar. So I bought the coconut lime verbena one, because that is far and away the best Bath & Body Works smell, but this is not really the point of the story.
The point of the story is that the theme of the month was apparently promoting the different families of smells, which were "the sexys," "the romantics," "the freshes," and "the cuddlers." Hilarious names, first of all. Second, moonlight path, the worst Bath & Body Works smell, is included in "the cuddlers" family, and girl, no one is gonna wanna cuddle you if you're wearing that smell, except your grandmother. Believe it.

Also, Mike's boyfriend works at Bath & Body Works down in Georgia somewheres, and he had to do a floorset on Sunday night, and oh, the sense of relief that I won't have to deal with that bullshit ever again was so delicious. David was heading off to work at 5:00 p.m., and I was still sitting on the couch in my pajamas, playing Super Paper Mario. That's what Sunday nights are for. I bet it's not that bad in other stores, though, because seriously, the Bath & Body Works at the Pheasant Lane Mall is quite possibly the largest Bath & Body Works of all time, and it makes changing the store around a grueling, thankless, hideous experience. Especially when the Devil was running the scene.

I miss the 30 percent discount, though, because $9.50 for a four ounce candle? Highway robbery!

Half-baked analysis

2009-03-03T04:06:00.000-05:00

In all the uproar over the remake of The Neverending Story, I keep seeing people lauding its "message," which is, I guess, "do what you dream," more or less, and that is the cheesiest (and possibly worst) thing about the movie. That's not what the story is about, okay? Remaking the movie and making the themes more compelling and less overt would be a good move. The Neverending Story is not about achieving anything; The Neverending Story doesn't have a moral. The Neverending Story is about using your imagination, for good and ill. What's evil in the novel is not what we would consider evil, not G'mork (although, as a servant of the Nothing, perhaps he would count...) or Xayide, but the Nothing. You can see this in the Childlike Empress; though she is the ruler of Fantastica, she does not condemn evil or praise good--what she fights against is the Nothing, against the thing that is destroying all of Fantastica, good and bad. And the Nothing is taking over Fantastica because people from our world are not using their imaginations--not creating anything. I forget, too, but I believe the Nothing threatens our world as well, because Fantastica is falling.

So while Bastian needs to obtain a kind of belief in himself in order to play his role in this story, that's not the point.

Look, it's been a while since I had to English major out on a book, but if I had to say what the book is really about it, it is about walking the line between imagination and reality. When you live too much in the dismal real world, that world itself suffers for lack of creativity, but if you live too much in a fantasy land, that world also suffers, even while the real world loses you--and you lose yourself. Creation is the theme of this book, filling the Nothing with Something over and over in an infinite number of ways.

It's not about achieving your dreams or whatever damn thing. It's about imagination and how that shapes you and the corner of the world you inhabit.

Venting my digital spleen

2009-03-02T11:51:00.003-05:00

There are some things I would like to know about Front Row, which I almost want to marry, but I can't quite make the commitment because it has some serious flaws.

On the real, I would really like to know where it's grabbing the files--does it go through iTunes at all, or does it just take the folders and files in the Music and Movies folders and vomit them onto its interface? I mean, it would seem to bypass parts of the iTunes library, because no matter what I do, I can't get Front Row to look like my iTunes library, particularly in the area of television shows.

So I get that Apple thought it was a brilliant idea to list the episodes of each show in reverse order, keeping the most recent on top for easy viewing after iTunes has downloaded the latest episode of the show. Fine. And I know there are dicey legal issues about ripping DVDs, even for personal use, so they just ignored that and organized based on episodes bought from the iTunes store, but come on. Plenty of OCD nerds want the episodes displayed in the correct order. So why can't Apple create user preferences for Front Row, so it displays content the way you, the OCD nerd, would prefer? Doesn't Apple understand about OCD nerds?!

Basically, my real problem is that Front Row will not display seasons of television shows in the proper order. Some of them are listed 1,2,3, etc. Some are listed 4,3,2,1 (for example). And some are listed ridiculously 7,6,1,2,3,4,5 (Gilmore Girls) or 11,5,10,6,4,3,2,1 (South Park). Friday Night Lights goes 2,3,1, and Grey's Anatomy goes 3,2,1,4. How does this happen??? I've tried organizing the files into folders named by season, and that worked on Popular and Xena, but that's it. So what is the deal? I feel like I should tell Apple that this is a big problem, but would they even listen? And then do I want to get into the fact that I've ripped hundreds of DVDs onto an external hard drive so I can watch them on my iMac because, maybe you missed this, but I am a(n OCD) nerd?

Really, I would just like to know how Front Row works, because this is driving me bananas. Also, why can't you play video playlists in Front Row? Come on, Apple. This interface could be totally awesome, and yet it's stuck at almost awesome but simultaneously fucking frustrating. Let's develop this, please. I give you the input; your OCD nerd engineers write the updates. This could be a beautiful partnership. And then you could give me a free Apple TV as thanks for my invaluable insight.

Yes, I know Blake Sennett also sings

2009-02-27T14:32:00.002-05:00

So I enjoy Rilo Kiley quite a bit, so their songs often make appearances on the Weekly Mix Tapes, which I play in the car, and Mike has asked me "who is this?" at least twice during a Rilo Kiley song, and every time I tell him, he goes, "I like her." He has heard of Rilo Kiley before, I know, but he doesn't seem aware that they're a band. This drives me crazy, that he thinks Rilo Kiley is the name of the singer (it's Jenny Lewis, nerds), and I corrected him once a million years ago, and he got all defensive and brought up, like, No Doubt and Gwen Stefani to defend his use of "her" instead of "them," but who ever listened to a No Doubt song and only referred to "her"? So I haven't brought it up since, but both subsequent times I have wanted to say, "Rilo Kiley is a band, you know," but I keep fighting this snobbish urge.

I guess I'm growing or some shit.

This reminds me of the time Carlos and I made fun of Jess for thinking Led Zeppelin was a guy, not a band, but apparently it wasn't Jess who thought that. I was sure this happened, and now I'm hoping it did, except Lauren was the maroon who thought Led Zeppelin was a guy, but she's that smart. Or maybe it was Martha! Oh, god, it could have been any one of our friends, huh.

(As an utter aside, I wikipedia'd Rilo Kiley to look up Blake's last name, and dude. He was Ronnie Pinsky on Salute Your Shorts. Bangarang.)

It shall be told another time! (I hope.)

2009-02-26T15:07:00.001-05:00

So, according to the internet, a remake of The Neverending Story is in the works, and really, I am super excited to see how that develops, but also super wary, because the original movie was such a mess.

Anyway, here's what I said a year and a half ago, after I read the book for the first time:

I really wish someone would make this a movie again, like Lord of the Rings style, because it could make a really great film. They could do it in two parts, you know, ending the first one right after Bastian finally saves Fantastica and beginning with his adventures in the forest/desert. But I doubt that Michael Ende's estate will ever let that happen--or that anyone would even want it to happen except for me.

Apparently, I was mostly right about that last thing. The place I found this information was full of maroons bemoaning the fact that this movie was being remade, because it's a childhood classic for them or whatever. And, listen, I understand hanging onto things you loved when you were a kid, but people: The Neverending Story was not a good movie. The plot was a mess; the acting was horrible; the sets were hideous, and it left out all the most interesting parts of the book.

As far as I'm concerned, the remake has nothing but potential. It can tell the story Michael Ende told; it can cast some decent child actors; it can make Fantastica a real place, like they were able to do with Middle Earth and Narnia. They can even make Atreyu green! But there's always a giant suckhole for error when making a movie based upon a novel, and since the first attempt was a fucking failure (I'm sorry--I know I am the only person in America (maybe even literally) who holds this opinion), the second attempt could quite possibly also be a disaster.

But oh man. Please, please, please, I would love to see Fantastica Middle-Earth- and Narnia-style.

And the navel-gazing continues

2009-02-24T10:30:00.006-05:00

While I'm somewhat loath to apparently be turning this blog into a dream diary, I keep having the most troubling dreams that I need to exorcise, so feel free to skip this one.

Anyway, last night I had a dream that my parents got back together (somewhat reluctantly? No one was particularly happy about it, and in fact my dad was not present in the dream at all) and bought a gigantic old house that was allegedly in New York City, even though, uh, New York City is not known for its gigantic old houses. But, you know, that was obviously not the weirdest part of the dream. So we all moved to this house, and I was lodged in the attic, and Tommy was lodged on the first floor, and Jeff was somewhere in between, I guess, and I remember very clearly what the downstairs of this ancient mansion looked like, but I'll be damned if I could actually describe it.

So we're living in this house, and my parents are still working at their New England jobs, and this all seems so very real, and I begin to panic, because how am I supposed to get to my job? Did I quit my job? Should I be looking for a new job? Then I remember that I moved out with Mike, and I have a place in Nashua, and apparently I'm just here in New York to see the new family pad. Then my mom comes home and pulls out this day-glo bottle that looks like Gatorade or something but turns out to be rodent poison gel, because apparently the house had a rat problem? The rats weren't in my dream, thank god, but now I am recalling the giant rats we saw outside the dining hall senior year. Ugh. So I express my concern for the animals that aren't rats in the house, namely Charles Wallace and for some reason, my dad's dumb dog, and my mom gives me this look, so I amended it to "animal," because we clearly both hate the dog, which is fucked up, but it isn't so much about the dog as, you know, my dad's wife. Which is the only tangible thing that ocurred in this dream that I can point to as evidence that my parents weren't, like, enjoying being back together. Because my parents are not supposed to be back together, ever.

So I was so nervous during the dream, and it all seemed so real, like I could touch the floorboards of the attic, and I was trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, and I couldn't until I remembered about my new house. I didn't wake up from that dream--it went away, and I woke up at 5:00 when Mike's stupid alarm went off, and but I still felt so much better to be awake, in my apartment, with parents who don't have any intention of reconciling for any reason ever.

Ugh. My dreams suck these days.

Sometimes I am close-minded

2009-02-19T17:10:00.003-05:00

There are several vehicles in my apartment complex with this bumper sticker that says, "Nashua belongs to Jesus Christ." Actually, it's "NASHUA BELONGS TO JESUS CHRIST," so I always feel like they're yelling at me. I've seen these fucking bumper stickers before, but now I have to see them when I go home, and they're making me madder than usual. Often, I just laugh and say, "Please, like Jesus wants Nashua," but seriously. It's so obnoxious. Who gave Nashua to Jesus? How many non-Christians are there in this city? I don't know, but there are plenty! There's even a synagogue in Nashua!

Fuck, people. Keep your outdated beliefs to yourself already. Jesus is unable to take possession of an entire town. Why? Because he is dead. And he's not coming back. You know who else is supposed to come back at a time of great crisis? King Arthur. How many people really believe that's going to happen? It's exactly as likely as this Jesus fellow coming back to claim pitiful cities in southern New Hampshire as his own.

Amen.

Nonsense

2009-02-16T09:47:00.005-05:00

Oh man, remember that time Chief thought he was a Cylon and went mental, and Cavil was the one who talked him down, even though Cavil was a Cylon and all, and Cavil knew he wasn't one of the seven (eight!), but holy balls, he knew Chief was one of the five.

Madness!

And he killed the favorite son (seven) because he was jealous and then wreaked utter destruction on humanity, which is, uh, way worse than anything Cain ever did. I mean, Cain killed one favorite son and was doomed to wander the Earth forever, unable to find rest. I guess that's true of Cavil--he'll have to wonder the universe forever, unable to find rest, because he will never get the acceptance from the five, Ellen especially, that he wants and refuses to admit he wants.

Cavil wants to be a machine, but the five made him the humanest (weakest?) of all the models, all old and stuff.

I am having such trouble with the religious allusions on this show, because the significance never quite hits me--or exists.
Like this promo image for season 4 from the iTunes store with Roslin, Xena, Tigh, Lee, Baltar, Six, Starbuck, Sam, Chief, Athena, Helo, and Adama is framed almost exactly like The Last Supper, except there's someone missing, and Roslin and Adama seem to be apart from everyone else. And it puts Six in the Jesus position. What is the significance of this? It's not an effin' accident. Baltar's in almost the right spot to be Judas, though, you guys.

And the amazingly Biblical names of some of the male Cylons (all of them except Leoben and Galen, actually):
Saul - a king of Israel
Samuel - a prophet, who anointed Saul and David kings of Israel
John - harbinger of the Messiah
Daniel - a prophet
Simon - the original name of Peter, Jesus's head disciple
Aaron - Moses's brother

None of them connect! Why bother with this if it doesn't mean something???

And this "twelve but not really" thing--twelve tribes of Kobol, oh except for this renegade thirteenth. Twelve cylon models, oh except there was one more, but oh he was broken, so never mind. Twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Olympic gods, twelve signs of the Zodiac after which the Kobolios named their planets. Those are constellations you can see from Earth!

How does Earth really fit into this? Did we abandon it and go to Kobol, and a couple thousand years later the thirteenth tribe returned?

When Ellen said Daniel was an artist, I immediately connected that with Kara, because of her eye of Jupiter painting and whatever, but Daniel's genetic code is broke, and his model never got off the shelf, except for one, obviously, for Cavil to be jealous of. And you know what the one Daniel did? Come on. He clearly fathered Kara Thrace. Ba-dah!

Are the final five machines or not? If they weren't, it would make sense for why Tigh and Six were able to make a baby. The centurion/human combo models can't reproduce with each other, but they can with the five, because the five aren't part machine! Hey? I don't effin' know. But then the thirteenth tribe, who went to Earth, were all Cylon. Were they Cylon when they left Kobol? Did humanity engineer the Centurions before the thirteenth tribe to its ticket outta there, or did they build robots separately from the robots the twelve tribes built?

The robots blew up Earth because they were mad at the way they were being treated, so the five, who had prepared the technology for resurrection, took a long, slow journey back to Kobol to warn them to treat their robots right--so the robots must have been created before the thirteenth tribe went to Earth, since they knew the Kobolios had robots. When they got there too late, they engineered the armistice by promising to help the Centurions build biological models. Thus, ~~the Powerpuff Girls~~ Cavil, Leoben, Xena, Simon, Doral, Six, Daniel, and Sharon were born, unbeknowst to the rest of humanity.

Long before the second holocaust, Cavil killed his creators and placed them strategically throughout humanity. What was he doing while he waited? How did Daniel get to Caprica?

I am so confused.

And also where did the five get the genetic material to make the eight models? From themselves? Then some of them are, say, Ellen and Saul's children and some Tory and Chief's? So, for real, Six is Saul's daughter. Eeeeeeew.

I don't go to sleep to dream. Dammit.

2009-02-13T10:38:00.003-05:00

Oh my GOD, I had the worst dream ever this morning. I was back in college, and for some reason, I'd skipped, like, two weeks of class just before midterms, and I might have missed the midterms, but I was too freaked out to check my syllabuses to see if I had indeed missed midterms or handing in papers or something, so I was just gonna wait until I had class again to find out what I had missed, and then in the middle of this, I just started fuh-reaking out, and I knew, in the dream, that there was some reason this would be all right, that this hadn't actually happened or something, but I couldn't calm myself down.

Then my cat knocked over everything on my bedside bookshelf, and I woke up. And I was like, "Oh yeah. You know why it's gonna be all right? Cuz I graduated. Three years ago, suckas!" God, that was such sweet, sweet relief.

All of that happened in the middle of a larger, even more bizarre dream about my having to destroy rings with gemstones that contained evil spirits, but I don't remember enough of that mess to tell you a coherent story about it. Plus, the midterms thing was way scarier. God! Skipping two whole weeks of class and not even keeping up with the syllabus! Who DOES that???

A collection of things I thought yesterday

2009-02-12T02:49:00.001-05:00

So I was lookin' up Brandi tickets at the Portsmouth Music Hall for April Fools' Day, and they had this whole paragraph about her, and it ended with this: "Come find out why one critic said, 'When she took the stage, you'd think the crowd was welcoming Jim Morrison, circa 1965.'" Which just made me snort, because, yeah, we lesbians can be pretty effin' enthusiastic. And then I was like, hey! Even Brandi Carlile is a better song-writer than effin' Jim Morrison. What was the deal with that douche, anyway? Have you listened to the lyrics to "Light My Fire"? "Wallow in the mire"? Is he an actual, literal pig? Someone abused that rhyming dictionary!

Anyway, yeah, I am so over my crazed Brandi Carlile obsession, but she's gonna be in NH, and her live shows are always awesome, so I'm gonna take my mom, since I have no friends, and I'm broke, and she'll pay!
Then I read something somewhere on the internet about someone studying for "the dbq," and my body went rigid, and I was like, "How do I know that acronym?" Then I fell down dead. DBQ stands for "Document-Based Question," and I experienced its wrath during the AP U.S. history exam. And I spent most of AP U.S. history practicing for that mess. And Mrs. Deblasio hated me. But it was cool--I hated her narrow-minded, preachy ass right back! God damn, I was in her class the year Bush stole the election from Al Gore, and that Wednesday in November was just odious. The only reason I took the class was that, clearly, I had to take as many AP classes as possible, and since the maths and sciences were so far out of the question, and AP Spanish wasn't even offered (!!!), I had to go with U.S. history, both Englishes, and U.S. government.

Sorry, that story was boring, but I had to exorcise those high school demons.
So I caved and watched two minutes of last week's Grey's on youtube, because I'm sorry, but I love to see Sara Ramirez kiss a lady, and then I was going to write this whole rant about how the Grey's people clearly just replaced Brooke Smith with a younger, "hotter" model (no offense to Jessica Capshaw--she's lovely in her own right, but I would pick Brooke Smith over her any day of the week), but I just don't have the energy. Mostly, that kiss was kinda lame. The elevator kiss was way hotter, and Callie was being taken by surprise there too! Boo! Brooke Smith 4-EVA!

I guess Callie has a rather specific type, huh?
In conclusion, I bought Ingrid Michaelson's iTunes Live E.P. today, and she does a cover of "Creep" with a ukulele, which is quite interesting indeed. Mostly, I love this album for another live version of "The Chain." That song hits me right were it counts--the hearthole.

Ingrid Michaelson is a talented and pretty lady who wears glasses, and every time she comes to Boston, she sells out her show before I even know about it. I need to be more on top of these things.

Wednesday afternoon answers!

2009-02-11T16:41:00.000-05:00

1. Who Will Save Your Soul? - Jewel
2. Building a Mystery - Sarah McLachlan
3. Every Day Is a Winding Road - Sheryl Crow
4. No Rain - Blind Melon
5. Fast Car - Tracy Chapman
6. Why Can't I? - Liz Phair
7. Everybody Hurts - R.E.M.
8. Something to Talk About - Bonnie Raitt
9. The Weight - The Band
10. Touch of Grey - Grateful Dead
11. Spiderwebs - No Doubt
12. The World Has Turned and Left Me Here - Weezer
13. Sleep to Dream - Fiona Apple
14. Don't Bother - Shakira
15. Stand - R.E.M.
16. Sunny Came Home - Shawn Colvin
17. Closing Time - Semisonic
18. Two Princes - Spin Doctors
19. Hand in My Pocket - Alanis Morissette
20. The Remedy (I Won't Worry) - Jason Mraz
21. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Deep Blue Something
22. Why - Annie Lennox (I skipped the "whyyyyyyyyyy" at the beginning, is that cheating?)
23. Me and Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin (aka Janet Jopler)
24. Til I Hear It from You - Gin Blossoms
25. Why Georgia - John Mayer
26. A Long December - Counting Crows
27. Babylon - David Gray
28. Ants Marching - Dave Matthews Band
29. Celebrity Skin - Hole
30. Found Out About You - Gin Blossoms

iTunes had a serious '90s thing going on. And two Gin Blossoms songs! Those are, like, the only two Gin Blossoms songs I have. I'll rework the shufflable pool again next time and see what spits out. This sure is fun for me.

An observation or two

2009-02-11T00:02:00.001-05:00

One day, when I was twitter surfing, I read on some rando's feed something like, "If Jack Kerouac were alive, twenty-three [I think? I don't know if Tegan and Sara were 23 when this song came about, but that's what the twit said], and a pair of gay Canadian twins, he would have written the song 'Nineteen.'" iTunes played me that song this morning, and the line "I felt you in my legs before I ever met you" totally made me remember that random twit I read. I don't know about the rest of the song being Kerouac-esque, but I've read four Kerouac books, and that first line totally jolted me for being like his writing. Also, I love the iTunes Live version of that song. The end!

I've been hard-up for mix tape inspiration these days, and even though the mix tapes are just for my own personal enjoyment, and no one notices when I don't update the sidebar, I love making them and listening to them in the car, and two weeks listening to the same one is too long, and then Sunday night my iPod got mad at me and only accepted 4 or 5 songs from each playlist, which of course I didn't realize until Monday morning in the car, trying to decide what to listen to on the way to work. I don't know what that mess was supposed to reveal to you, except that I need new mixes! And I really like calling them mix tapes, even though no one has tapes anymore, and I don't even put these mixes on compact discs--they exist entirely digitally--but whatever. So, anyway, for this week I decided to cheat with Genius. I picked a song (in this case, "She'll Come Back to Me" by Cake) and let Genius fly. I deleted the extra songs from the same artist, added four or five myself, and voila! Mix tape. So I don't hate Genius anymore, because it does dig up songs I would sometimes tend to overlook, but for making complete mixes, it's still lacking. I tried to do a Ditty Bops song, and it only gave me ten songs, even though it's supposed to do 25 at minium. Lacking!

Tuesday morning blog fun!

2009-02-10T10:18:00.004-05:00

Because this amuses me and possibly one other person, I wanted to do this again. I modified the shuffle settings a little bit, by which I mean I shrunk my library pool with the hope of eliminating the obscure songs and the Muppets soundtracks, so hopefully this one should be more entertaining. (The way I play this game for myself is that I try to write out the first line before it's actually sung. Just so you know what I get out of this.)

1. People live their lives for you on tv
2. You come out at night
3. I hitched a ride with a vending machine repairman
4. All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
5. You got a fast car
6. Get a load of me, get a load of you
7. When the day is long, and the night, the night is yours alone
8. People are talkin', talkin' 'bout people
9. I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin' about half-past dead
10. Must be getting early, clocks are running late
11. You think that we connect
12. The world has turned and left me here
13. I tell you how I feel, but you don't care
14. She's got the kind of look that defies gravity
15. Stand in the place where you live
16. Sunny came home to her favorite room
17. Closing time, open all the doors and let you out into the world
18. One, two princes lived before you
19. I'm broke but I'm happy
20. Well I saw fireworks from the freeway
21. You'll say that we've got nothing in common
22. How many times do I have to try to tell you that I'm sorry for the things I've done
23. Busted a flat in Baton Rouge, waitin' for a train
24. I didn't ask--you shouldn't have told me
25. I am driving up 85 in the kind of morning that lasts all afternoon
26. A long December, and there's reason to believe
27. Friday night, I'm going nowhere
28. He wakes up in the morning
29. Oh make me over
30. All last summer, in case you don't recall

Answers tomorrow afternoon! Guess away, anyone. Full disclosure: I got 25 of these, so they're definitely easier.

Answers!

2009-02-08T23:03:00.000-05:00

If you wanna play my dumb little game, skip this post and go here. Then come back to see how you did!

1. Right Through You – Alanis Morissette
2. Late Morning Lullaby – Brandi Carlile
3. Ashes and Wine – A Fine Frenzy
4. What’s This? – from The Nightmare Before Christmas
5. Made to Last – Semisonic
6. Circle of Life – from The Lion King
7. Chains – The Beatles
8. Hello Operator – The White Stripes
9. Least Complicated – Indigo Girls
10. Gravedigger – Dave Matthews
11. Night of the Iguana – Joni Mitchell
12. Can’t Cry Anymore – Sheryl Crow
13. Hey a Movie! – from The Muppet Movie
14. Don’t Cha Wanna Ride – Joss Stone
15. Daria – Cake
16. Seek Up – Dave Matthews Band
17. Summer Rains – The Ditty Bops
18. Movin’ Right Along – from The Muppet Movie
19. Careful – Guster
20. The Captain – Guster
21. Dusty – Kings of Leon
22. Your Body Is a Wonderland – John Mayer
23. Fantasize – Liz Phair
24. Follow – Brandi Carlile
25. I’ve Got a Theory – from “Once More with Feeling!”
26. Strong Enough – Sheryl Crow
27. Misunderstood – Wilco
28. I’m Looking Through You – The Beatles
29. Santa Fe – from Rent
30. Big Railroad Blues – The Greatful Dead

For some reason, iTunes was all over Sheryl Crow and the Muppets. And Dave Matthews and Brandi Carlile and those two Guster songs right in a row! Maybe I'll try again next weekend and see if I can get a more varied list of thirty songs.

iPod tweaks

2009-02-07T13:55:00.002-05:00

I wrote this a few years ago, when I still had a PC, long before everyone was using Vista (or maybe even before Vista had been released), but it might still come in handy to someone, so I decided to transfer it over here. Hopefully, these instructions work for Vista. If not, I can tweak them as I learn about Vista.

To transfer music from your iPod to your computer:

1. Connect the iPod to the computer. If iTunes opens and gives you bullshit about different libraries or whatever, tell it to cram it, then close iTunes.

2. Open My Computer.

3. Double click the icon for your iPod (should be Drive E: or F:).

4. Select Folder Options from the Tools menu in the iPod window.

5. Click the View tab.

6. In the Advanced Settings pane, select Show hidden files and folders. Click OK.

7. You should see a folder in the iPod window called iPod_control. Double click it.

8. Double click the Music folder. You should see a bunch of folders labeled F00, F01, F02, etc. All of your music files are in these folders.

9. Choose Select All from the Edit menu to highlight all the folders.

10. Choose Copy to Folder from the Edit menu.

11. Choose the folder to which you'd like to copy your music files, and then click Copy. It may take a while, but eventually, all your music files will be transferred to the designated folder on your computer.

12. Once the file transfer is complete, you can import these songs into iTunes--just choose Add folder to library from the File menu and select the folder in which your F00, F01, F02, etc. folders are now located (I would recommend the My Music folder).

*Your music files themselves will have shortened names, but as long as you have the track/artist/album info entered in the tags, all of that should be preserved once you add them to iTunes. And if you have iTunes set up to do so, it will rename the files and reorganize them into folders by artist and album name. Any troubles, let me know.

Saturday morning blog fun

2009-02-07T09:46:00.002-05:00

So I've seen this meme thing around the internet for a while, were you put your music library on shuffle and type the first lines of the first thirty songs and try to get your friends to guess, and I finally said, "Hey! I like songs!" so I did it. I don't know if anyone would want to play along--maybe I'd have better luck on Facebook where I would reach a broader audience, but truth be told, I have this blog so I don't post notes on Facebook. So anyway, here are my first 30 songs, except for the tracks that weren't actually songs (such as comedy from Margaret Cho or the Historian's Introduction to Act I of Spamalot and also that one Spanish-language song from Shakira I figured would be entirely impossible.

1. Wait a minute, man, you mispronounced my name.
2. Soon as my eyes shut the slideshow begins
3. Don’t know what to do anymore; I’ve lost the only love worth fighting for
4. What’s this? What’s this? There’s color everywhere.
5. Made to last a while and roll on
6. From the day we arrive on the planet and, blinking, step into the sun
7. Chains, my baby’s got me locked up in chains
8. Hello, operator, can you give me number nine?
9. I sit two stories above the streets
10. Cyrus Jones, 1810-1913, made his great-grandchildren believe you could live to 103.
11. The tourbus came yesterday; the driver’s a mess today
12. Took your car and drove to Texas
13. There’ll be spectacle; there’ll be fantasy; there’ll be derring-do and stuff like you would never see
14. I know you got the hummer for the summer, baby
15. When you tried to kiss me I only bit your tongue
16. Sometimes I feel like I'm falling
17. When the ices melt I admit I felt a lifting in my heart
18. Movin’ right along, in search of good times and good news
19. You walked out when I asked you to stay
20. I’ve come down with somethin’
21. Dusty and you are, dirty from chain
22. We got the afternoon
23. He’s a friend of mine, kind of special guy
24. Follow your heart and see where it might take you
25. I’ve got a theory that it’s a demon
26. God, I feel like hell tonight
27. You’re back in your old neighborhood
28. I’m looking through you—where did you go?
29. New York City—center of the universe
30. Well my mama told me, my papa told me too

Full disclosure: I wouldn't have gotten all of these, and they're from my own damn library. Anyone who gets more than half wins my love and respect. Feel free to comment with your guesses (song title AND artist), and I'll post the answers on Sunday night.

A film critic I am not

2009-02-06T08:39:00.002-05:00

So when I was a senior at my Catholic high school, we actually got to choose which religion classes we wanted to take. Well, I think we all had to take one semester of some bullshit called "Christian living," but the second semester, we could choose between, like, the banality of evil or Christian themes in film. Guess which one I chose. Seriously, there were like twelve people who didn't take Christian themes in film, and they're all maroons. But anyway, this class was basically a regular film class, because you can find Christian themes anywhere. It was a grand class--I don't think I did any work except present my film (American Beauty), and I got an A.

Anyway, the point of this story was that it was in that class that I first watched Fried Green Tomatoes, and it was right at the time when I was like, "Ohhh, I am, maybe, possibly, gaaaay," and watching Mary Stuart Masterson and Mary Louise Parker together in that movie made me feel all funny. And that food fight, man. So. Gay. So after a few classes of watching the movie, the group who'd chosen it did their presentation or whatever, and I think it was actually our teacher who brought up the, "Are Idgie and Ruth more than friends?" question.

People said no! Can you even believe that? Okay, so yeah, high school students at a Catholic school aren't exactly all up ons the lesbian subtext, but I was still like, "Hello, that food fight?" And come on, Idgie is so gay. Apparently, though, in the movie Idgie is actually Ninny, the old lady Kathy Bates visits in the nursing home? I never got that. That just doesn't make any sense--that old lady is no way Idgie Threadgoode. In the book, Ninny married one of Idgie's brothers, and that's how she knows all about the Threadgoodes. Anyway, that is neither here nor there, really, except I didn't get that from the movie at all.

One of the girls in the presenting group put the debate to bed by saying, "Yo, in the book they're totally more than friends. Idgie's a big dyke, and Ruth falls in love with her." (I am, perhaps, paraphrasing.) And everyone was kinda uncomfortable, the end, I kind of forgot about the movie/book.

I finally read the book last year, and I totally loved it, and the best part for me was how much of a non-issue the whole gay thing was not only to Idgie's family, but to the entire town. My favorite part is when, I think, the mother of the Threadgoode clan matter-of-factly informs all the children that Idgie has a crush on Ruth and not to make fun of her for it. This story takes place in the deepest of the Deep South, in the 1930s, and Idgie never has to hide who she is. As impossible as that seems, it was still nice to see it like that.

Mary Stuart Masterson and Mary Louise Parker are lovely in the film, but the part with Kathy Bates just drives me crazy, which is why I've only actually watched the entire movie once, in my religion class.

25 things about me that I will not post to Facebook

2009-02-05T14:04:00.001-05:00

I actually started this list of random things about me to add to, like, my blogger profile or the sidebar or something in November, but then that stupid Facebook meme started going around, so I figured I'd add to this until I got 25, post it, and be done with it once and for all.

1. I cannot stand to have fabric covering my wrists for any significant length of time. When I wear long-sleeve shirts, I am constantly pushing up the sleeves. When I'm not pushing my glasses back up my nose, that is.

2. I like milk. A lot. In fact, if you won't drink a glass of milk straight, we're not actually friends. If you'll only drink milk straight with cookies, I'll think about letting you be my friend.

3. Witnessing the misuse of quotation marks and apostrophes will be what brings about my demise.

4. I consider myself to be a good sport most of the time, but I simply cannot handle being teased about making a punctuation error. Those jokes eat at my soul.

5. This is how I justify how horribly I make fun of people I don't even know. I allow myself to be made fun of, because, really, unless it's about a punctuation error I made, it's funny. Like one time, my brothers and I were stuck in Utica for two days with our family (eep), so we escaped and went to see a movie, and I was driving Tommy's car, which is wider or longer or something than my car, and I smacked into a curb in the parking lot, and for the rest of the weekend, my brothers would both shout out "curb whamp!" whenever the mood struck them, and instead of getting mad for being teased at my horrible driving skills, I laughed. Mostly because "whamp" is a funny word. Jeff and I did that once to Tommy--he was trying to make fun of the way Jeff was talking, and he said, "Do you speak Englis?" You know, mispronouncing English, and Jeff and I jumped all over that one, and we called him Englis for the rest of the year. At least I did. Jeff lost interest. And oh, he did not take that well at all. However, that might have also been because he was, like, ten, and ten-year-olds tend to have undeveloped senses of humor about themselves.

6. I like television shows that take place at least 1,000 years in the future, largely in outer space.

7. If there is anything I hate more than misplaced apostrophes, it may just be the phrase "feel badly."

8. I only ever do laundry when I run out of underwear.

9. One time, I gave up smoking for Lent even though I don't believe in Lent, just to prove to my roommate that I was not addicted.

10. I quit smoking once and for all when I got mono.

11. If I've been paying attention the whole time, the part when the audience joins in for "Edelweiss" toward the end of The Sound of Music makes me cry.

12. My mom has this new, totally awesome practice of saying things like, "You need a car? You can have mine--I'll get a new one" or "You need a couch for your new swingin' bachelor pad? You can have mine, and I'll throw in this love seat. I'll get new ones."

13. One time I wrote a note to this girl I was fond of, and I signed it "~~Sincerely~~ ~~cordially~~ affectionately," and then, like, months later I discovered she'd never actually seen The Sound of Music, and I was so sad.

14. I really like Julie Andrews in general and The Sound of Music in particular, which I just thought I would make abundantly clear for you people.

15. When I found out Madeleine L'Engle had died, I actually got weepy. She's the first person whose death has upset me. I'm lucky that no one I actually know has died.

16. I named my cat Charles Wallace in honor of her. Originally, his name was going to be Mercutio. And, really, if I think people make fun of me for Charles Wallace, how bad would they make fun of me for naming a cat Mercutio?

17. I chipped one of my front teeth trying to grab an Allen wrench with them while my hands were holding pieces of my bed together--now I can't stop running my tongue along my teeth, like when I had braces, but even odder.

18. Katherine Heigl made me realize I was gay, but Jewel Staite is the one who actually turned me, when I was eleven, and she was on Space Cases in a rainbow wig. Also, I always forget that the geek set knows who she is now cuz she was on Firefly and shit. It's so weird when people aren't like, "Who the hell is that?" when I bring her up as my first-ever girl crush. Thanks, Joss!

19. I hate, hate, hate when people tell me what I'm like or what I clearly must be thinking. The two worst perpetrators of this are my mother and Ryan. The latter was never accurate; the former only accurate when telling me what I'm like--she knows, you know, having raised me herself and all. My whole life, there's only been one person who's ever been accurate about both things, and this is a recent and somewhat unnerving development I've not been handling with my usual grace.

20. I wish I had more time to read.

21. I may be twenty-four years old, but sometimes I find fart jokes to be the pinnacle of humor.

22. I hate going to the doctor/dentist/anything that requires making an appointment, but what I hate most about that whole process is calling to make the appointment. Talking to some unknown on the phone gives me anxiety like crazy.

23. I wish I had realized I was gay a lot, lot sooner. Back before I was a fully-fledged giant dyke and just going to gay places with Ryan and Mike, my mom used to worry about things like what if people there thought I was gay, which made me mental. I never cared what people thought about me--if they wanted to think I was gay, I wasn't going to dissuade them, and this was before I was just like, "I AM SO GAY." Ryan also used to get so mad if, like, the gays he knew asked him if I was gay, which I believe is a fair question if you're showing up to gay things a lot, but he seemed to think it was insulting, even though he knew I was beginning to realize I liked girls. I can't think of anything less insulting, myself. Perhaps if someone asked if brown is my natural hair color--that might be less insulting than someone asking if I'm gay.

24. I drank my first beer in Fennel Hall, one of the freshman boys' dorms, a few weeks into my freshman year of college, when I was trying to be social with my roommates and some dweeb guys they knew. It was a warm-ish can of Budweiser, and somehow it didn't turn me off beer--or socializing--forever.

25. Sometimes I actually miss working at Bath & Body Works.

Unintelligible squealing

2009-01-29T11:40:00.007-05:00

If I were ranking my imaginary girlfriends again, Kelly Clarkson would once again be at the top. I can't believe I almost kicked her off. She is the loveliest woman on the planet, and she sings, and I LOVE her. Last night, I watched the video for "My Life Would Suck Without You," which is just so...cute!

Oh my god, and then, internet, I actually wrote a review of the single for iTunes, just cuz. I don't write reviews of things! At least not anywhere other than here! It was an unintelligible bunch of baloney, but I really wanted to give the song five stars, and then they had this whole box for words, and I like words, so I wrote some. (Also, iTunes has a list of helpful suggestions for review writing, and one of them is "Take the time to copy edit your work so that you avoid embarrassing typos or grammatical errors." I LOVE YOU iTunes.)

Also, there's this brief part in the video where she's wearing a man shirt and boxers as, like, pjs, and oh man. So cute. I have to find her and pledge my love.

(I included both of these screen grabs cuz I couldn't decide which was better. Deal with it.)

I don't know. I can't take it. I love her so bad, and apparently her album is coming out on March 10 now instead of March 17, which, yay! But that's still too far away. I would like it now. And I would like iTunes to sell it with bonus tracks if you pre-order it like they did with the last one. Chip chop chip, iTunes.

I think I forgot how to write a blog post

2009-01-27T10:23:00.004-05:00

Hello, internet, how are you? I haven't felt much like blogging lately. I've been very busy lately outgaying myself by watching all seven trillion episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess, and gosh, Lucy Lawless is hot. And gosh, that show is gayer than I'd ever imagined. It was good times. But now that's done, and so what do I do with myself?

Well, internet, I am moving. My best boy Mike and I finally got our act together and leased an apartment. We move in on Saturday. I cannot effing wait. As nice as it is to live rent-free in my mother's basement, I am so sick of living with my brothers. They are giant pains. Also, I am sick of living in my mother's basement, just on principle. I'm twenty-four, and I'm employed. Time to bail. Apartments aren't cheap in this stupid area, but Mike and I found a good one we can afford. It's huge, too, and I have my own half of a bathroom! So sensitive Mike won't have to deal with the horrors of feminine hygiene.

Also, I bought a Wii as a housewarming gift to us, and soon we will purchase the Rock Band version of Guitar Hero. (World Tour or something? Whatever.) And then there will be a lot of bad fake instrument playing and off-key wailing in our house. The cats! They will love it! And the neighbors as well, I'm sure. Our next purchase, hopefully, will be a new widescreen tv, and then I will finally realize my dream of owning an Apple TV. Oh, joys. Then I won't need my DVDs at all! Anyone wanna buy some DVDs?

Several of our friends have already informed us that they will be hanging out at our swinging new bachelor pad all the time, and I, though I quite enjoy my privacy, am thrilled. I love having the hangout house. I did junior year of college, when four of us lived in a giant six-person suite, and now it will be happening again. We have a lot of second-hand furniture from our families, so there will be couches to sleep on and everything! So come on over, internet. Mike and I know how to party.

I read an article, then forgot where it came from

2009-01-16T10:35:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I'd heard vaguely of this "iPod concierge" service before, like, a year or two after the iPod was first introduced, and basically some nerd offers to fill up your iPod for you, either importing your CD collection or just going to town on the iTunes store with a list or selecting songs herself based on any preferences you may have. I was like, "Oh please, who on earth would bother paying for that?" Because I was as yet mostly unaware of how little extra rich people care for money. Also, I just could not understand why anyone wouldn't want to do this for himself.

Anyway, I totally want that job, but here's the thing. I would do it for free. Yes. I love messing with iTunes and iPods and organizing music libraries and even the mostly tedious process of importing CDs so much that I would volunteer to load up people's iPods for them. I could also do DVDs, but that would take a lot of extra time. So, you know, if anyone out there wants help with iPods/iTunes at no cost email me. Seriously, you'll be doing me a favor.

Nerdier by the hour

2009-01-15T16:24:00.003-05:00

So a friend of mine who is still in school (suckah!) is taking a Shakespeare class this semester, and this has caused me to think about Shakespeare things. I did a tally, and I have read 22 out of 38 plays, which sounds impressive at first glance (if you're into that sort of thing, anyway), but it's really only a little more than half of them. Now I must read the rest. Clearly.

Secondly, I was thinking about all the ways Shakespeare shows up in modern works. For one, NBC did a TV version of The Tempest some time ago, when Katherine Heigl was turning me gay--she was Miranda. And it took place in the Louisiana bayou during (or just after) the American Civil War, and like, it was terrible. I can't remember if I've seen a recorded staging of The Tempest. Stephen had us watch recorded stagings of some of the plays we read in class, but they were usually so dull that I turned them off after the first act.

For two, in the fourth pants book, Carmen gets a part in some theater company's summer production of The Winter's Tale--she's Perdita, in fact, and she has this strange flirtation with some mildly famous British actor who is also in the cast, but he's, like, older than she is, and he's allegedly playing Mamillius, but, uh, Mamillius dies when he's, like, five, from grief because he thinks his mother is dead, and he has about two lines. I hate that! When the author apparently just looked a list of parts in the play and picked one. In the pants movie, this fellow plays Florizel, who is Perdita's love interest, which, for Christ's sake, makes so much more sense. At least whoever was in charge of the movie was familiar with Shakespeare. Ugh.

Uh, okay, that's it, I guess. Viva Shakespeare! And down with Ann Brashares!

Alarming!

2009-01-14T10:07:00.004-05:00

I have a question, people of the internet. I know no one who regularly or semi-regularly reads this blog will be able to answer my question or know what I am talking about, but maybe a googler or two could offer some insight. Some day. At the very least, I must express my displeasure.

Okay. In The Patchwork Girl of Oz, why oh why is Ojo covered with a Klan robe when he is taken to prison? "the soldier put upon the boy the jeweled handcuffs and white prisoner's robe with the peaked top and holes for the eyes." Like, what? What??? WHAT.

This is disturbing. All the kid did was pick a six-leaf clover, and now he's got to wander around the Emerald City like a Klan member? What does that mean?

Also, I know I'm a completist, and there are, like, twelve of these Oz books left, but oh my god, they suck. I'm totally throwing in the towel after I finish this one.

(Still better than Twilight, though!)

Here are today's top stories

2009-01-08T13:27:00.006-05:00

image snagged from Full Metal Democrat

I know I'm probably the last lesbian in America (in the world?) to jump on the Rachel Maddow bandwagon, but that's because I can't watch cable news shows. Even hosted by someone I probably totally agree with. But I've seen enough of her to know that she's super extra smart, articulate, and totally adorable, in an "if Harry Potter were a lesbian" kind of way. (Uh, that's a good thing, really.) Anyway, the reason I am writing about her today is because I watched her appearance on The Daily Show, and I have discovered my favorite thing about her is not that she's a super genius or that she's a big lesbo with her own news show or even that she wears glasses. It is how hard she laughs at Jon Stewart. Like, he is funny, obviously, but she just lets go a number of times in this interview, like what he said is the funniest thing she's ever heard in her life. That is so endearing. And he obviously admires and respects her, and as fun as it is to watch him totally tear those he disagrees with apart, I love watching him talk to someone who's on the same side of the political spectrum as he is. I don't like political debating--it gives me hives to watch people fight, even in a civilized manner. In fact, uncivilized fighting is much more easier to stomach, because then there's always at least a small chance that someone's weave is gonna get ripped off! And that is nothing less than pure entertainment. No, I like it best when it's two liberals lightly ripping on conservative bigots. I know that's immature and biased, but I don't know how to let somehow have a differing opinion on important issues without wanting to hurl. I'm working on it, and in fact one of my very best friends in the whole world and I agree on almost nothing politically, but it still makes me crazy when I think about it too deeply.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Rachel Maddow

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Anyway, Rachel Maddow is adorable, and the way she laughs at Jon Stewart is utterly charming. I should really watch The Daily Show when it airs.

However! She doesn't own a tv! She claims she watches the good ol' Daily Show "on the online machine" (heeeeee), but is that for truth? At least she said she didn't own a tv without sounding like one of those snobs who think popular entertainment is beneath them. That's the other thing! This woman is so smart and so well-informed, but she's never come across as condescending. That's, uh, a minor miracle.

Okay. I am fully and utterly smitten starting right at this moment.

Soap box! (sorry)

2009-01-02T17:46:00.001-05:00

I know people feel the need to be overly cautious about air travel safety these days, but if a white family were talking which were the safest seats on an airplane do you think anyone would have said anything to an airline employee?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/burningIssues/idUKTRE5012XV20090102

Seriously, that is an entirely innocuous discussion. And if they were actually planning on hi-jacking the plane, I imagine travel safety would not be their concern. I guess the one good thing is that the FBI handled the situation well, according to the family they interrogated, and the agents even spoke to the airline on the family's behalf to get them on another flight. Why the airline refused is a freaking mystery, but whatever. The thing is that I'm pretty fucking certain the only reason this happened in the first place was because this family was Muslim.

And, like Margaret Cho said, suspecting people of terrorism because they look like the people behind the 9/11 attacks is like arresting Emmanuel Lewis because Gary Coleman punched that woman. Wise up, America.

Books of 2008

2008-12-31T18:25:00.000-05:00

Best new book: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (runner-up: Ely and Naomi's No Kiss List)
Best re-read: The Hobbit (runner up: The Hero and the Crown)
Best book involving dragon-killing: The Hero and the Crown (runner-up: The Hobbit)
Worst new book: Twilight (might be the worst book of all time) (runner-up: Tales from Silver Lands)
Most disappointing book: Special Topics in Calamity Physics (runner up: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)
Best new (to me) author: Margaret Atwood
Best book published in 2008: Passing for Black (It might be the only book published in 2008 that I read, but it was still good!)
Best hero*: Ely, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List
Best heroine*: Idgie Threadgood, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe
Best new lesbian book: Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis
Most wasted lesbian potential: Wicked
Total books read: 54

*New books only. These two categories were tougher than I thought they would be, because much of this year's list is rereads, and there weren't that many main characters that could compete with the main characters of the books I'd read before. I need to read more new books next year. Also, more books about boys. I love boys, but this year's list was almost entirely female-centric. (Also, by "new," I merely mean books I haven't read before.)

Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins
Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle
A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
Andersen's Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis by Ali Smith
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
Princess on the Brink by Meg Cabot
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Shadow of the Knife by Jane Fletcher
The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley
Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder
grl2grl: Short Fictions by Julie Anne Peters
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
Messenger by Lois Lowry
Passing for Black by Linda Villarosa
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley
Pirates! by Celia Rees
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Witch Child by Celia Rees
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Sorceress by Celia Rees
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Tales from Silver Lands by Charles J. Finger
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum

I want to shine

2008-12-29T18:33:00.000-05:00

Okay, so since this was my favorite album of the year, and since I totally flaked on the deal that got me the album in the first place, here is my attempt at an album review. I'm sure it'll be even worse than my movie reviews. I don't like to review things; I like to highlight or detract from specific pieces of the thing. Anyway.

I don't remember when I got it, this summer, I think, and I only listened to it a few times before putting it aside for something else, and I was like, "Yeah, I like it, Amy Ray, wee," the end. I don't know. But when Carlos and I went to Florida, we were stuck without any music to listen to, because we don't travel with CDs, and I didn't have any of my iPod equipment to play it through the car, so we actually bought CDs, and since I hate stealing, I actually purchased Amy Ray's album, and we listened to it and five other discs for the whole four days, and I started to totally, totally love it. It crept past Alanis in the final days of 2008, and so it is now my favorite album of the year.

It's weird, too, because I usually prefer Emily's songs when we're talking Indigo Girls, and maybe Brandi Carlile's backing vocals had something to do with it, but I love almost every song on this album (even those she doesn't sing on, yes), with the possible exception of "Birds of a Feather." That one just falls epically flat for me. Right off the bat, I loved "Cold Shoulder" and "Who Sold the Gun," without really listening to the lyrics. The lyrics of "Who Sold the Gun" are a little...I don't know--unoriginal somehow, but I love to sing along with that one in the shower. Then, in Florida, "Stand and Deliver" started to get to me, and that was definitely partly caused by Brandi Carlile's voice, so now I also sing that one in the shower.

I like "SLC Radio" sometimes and not others, depending on my mood. Either way, I like that Amy is calling out the Mormons, kind of. I am so frickin' fed up with Mormons these days. Which reminds me, there was this girl on my plane from Baltimore to Manchester who was flying home from Salt Lake City, and some other woman was also coming from there, and she asked the girl where she went to school, and the girl said, "BYU," and I immediately groaned and cursed the fact that we were totally not at the appropriate altitude to use electronic devices, because then the girl started talking about how she was so blessed to attend BYU, and blah blah, and then she wouldn't shut up. Like, about anything, her mom, her pets, whatever. And for the most part, Mormon people seem generally, like, doofy and kind, which should be like the least inoffensive thing ever, I guess, but oh my god, people like that, who are just so shiningly wholesome make me want to kill myself. And then they also hate gay people, so there's that.

Ahem. Anyway, I really liked Didn't It Feel Kinder--it's not anything original or innovative or whatever. The songs are rock-ish-er than the Indigo Girls' stuff, but they're just as easy to listen to. And I dig them.

Woof, that was awful. I'm no good at discussing why I like music or not. Guess I won't be sending Rolling Stone my resume.

No longer a music snob, part two

2008-12-26T02:17:00.000-05:00

Here's a horrible story: I only bought (or...otherwise obtained, ahem) nine full-length albums released this year. As opposed to the, like, nine I bought last year. One of these is a comedy album, and the other is a movie soundtrack, so we'll say seven. Seven!

Anyway, here's the order in which I like them:

Top Seven Albums of 2008
1. Didn't It Feel Kinder - Amy Ray
Favorite songs: "Who Sold the Gun," "Cold Shoulder," "Stand and Deliver," "Rabbit Foot"

2. Flavors of Entanglement - Alanis Morissette
Favorite songs: "Underneath," "Not As We," "On the Tequila"

3. Be OK - Ingrid Michaelson
Favorite songs: "The Chain," "You and I"

4. Summer Rains - The Ditty Bops
Favorite songs: "When's She Coming Home," "I Stole Your Wishes"

5. Volume One - She & Him
Favorite songs: "You Really Got a Hold on Me," "Black Hole"

6. Way to Normal - Ben Folds
Favorite songs: "You Don't Know Me" (with Regina Spektor), "Effington"

7. Weezer (Red Album) - Weezer
Favorite songs: "Pork and Beans," "Everybody Get Dangerous"

A lady-heavy list, indeed, including three lesbians, and the efforts from the boys I did not enjoy as much as I hoped I would. What did I miss this year? And where have I been?

The Florida Chronicles, Part Three

2008-12-24T09:07:00.005-05:00

So we did some other stuff around Tampa, too, including going to see some real live manatees at Apollo Betch and visiting two Gulf Coast beaches. Mostly, it was just fun to get out of New England and to hang out with the Potato.
Anyway, the other best part of this trip came on our last night there when we were driving home from the beach. We drove through this intersection where there'd been an accident, and then Carlos looked up and said, "Huh. O'Boobigan's!" He had found an Irish pub called O'Boobigan's. Since it was dark and stuff, we decided to return in the morning for a photo op:
Then we went to the beach one last time before dragging ourselves to the airport. We drove by Raymond James again, where the Buccs game was just getting underway, and oh how we wanted to snag some tickets from the scalpers at the strip club and forget our flights. Plus, getting home was a mess for both of us, and I got home right after the giant snow storm ended. Boo.
Other things: our rental car was from Missouri, and I wish I had remembered to take a picture. Hertz charged us an extra hundred bucks for being under 25, which is just painful, because we're almost 25! Boo. I was the driver, and Tater was the navigator, and I must say, while I generally loathe automatic transmission, it was nice not to have to worry about shifting when I wasn't sure where I was going.

It was a good vacation. I would like to go back, except I think I'd like to go to Disney World again more. But Disney World is fucking expensive. Oh well. Disney World or Hawaii. Who's in?

If you're so inclined, you can see all my Florida pictures here.

The Florida Chronicles, Part Two

2008-12-23T18:41:00.003-05:00

Okay. I gotta tell you about the Holy Land Experience. It's this Crazy Christian theme park of sorts in Orlando, and if you're coming from the west, you have to drive past all the Disney World and Universal exits, and can you even imagine being a kid and wanting to go to Disney World and having your parents drag you to the Holy Land Experience instead? Because Disney World is too godless? (Heh, I made that up--the Crazy Christians probably hit Disney World AND the Holy Land Experience, but oh man, it is such a depressing place compared to Disney World and Universal.)
Anyway, so yes. Crazy Christians. Apparently, people come from all over the continent to see this place--there were nutbags from Alberta, Canada, and I had never even seen an Alberta license plate before, and I've, like, driven around in Canada (yeah, so my driving area was confined to, like, an hour from the New York border, but whatever--still closer to Alberta than Florida!). Anyway, for all this it was kind of disappointing, but only because I was hoping it would be more absurd, but as far as Crazy Christian projects go this one was pretty even-keeled. I guess it's supposed to be, like, 66 A.D. Jerusalem, and there were various ancient-type buildings and people milling about in period dress. Also, statues of Roman centurions everywhere. I don't know why I found that odd, because, you know, Rome occupied that area at that time, but they were totally everywhere, these statues.
My favorite parts were the Crazy Christians in attendance (more on them in a bit) and the kiddie area, which featured Moses parting the Red Sea:
The whale that swallowed poor Jonah:
And Jesus walking on water:
This was the kind of absurdity I was hoping for in the whole park, but I guess they only crazied out for the young believers.
Okay, now onto the Crazy Christians themselves. There's this building there called the Scriptorium that features a tour of the evolution of the written Bible, and I guess curiosity got the best of us, because we waited in line for it, and while we were waiting one of the women who worked there was talking to this Christian fellow about all the snow that's happening--and about how it apparently snowed in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and the man smirked, "Global warming, right?" which made Carlos and me roll our eyes at each other, and then the woman said, "God's obviously trying to get our attention," and I muttered, "Yeah, he'd like you to stop ruining this lovely planet he gave you," but no one heard me, which was probably for the best. And I don't know how, exactly, we got involved in this conversation, but the woman was like, "God will do whatever he wants to get our attention. Do you believe that?" And Carlos just said, "It's crazy," but he sure was not talking about the snow in Vegas.

Then, later, we were in a gift shop, and there was a fellow who was talking up this tallis, trying to sell it, and Carlos noticed he was holding it upside down, but he refrained from saying anything until the fellow actually came up to us, and Carlos, bless him, couldn't help himself and said, "You're holding it upside down." The man insisted he was not, but Carlos stood firm, and so the man just asked him if he had a tallis, and Carlos said no, he didn't have cause to use one much, and the man got all wise, like, "How can you not have one, but not use it much?" So Carlos explained that they keep tallisim in the synagogues for services, and the guy asked if he was a Messianic Jew, and Carlos said, "No, just regular type." Actually, he said that to me later, and we both giggled about it--what he really said to the guy was that he was just Jewish, and the guy was like, "Prove it! Read this!" So Carlos took the tallis from him, flipped it the right way up, and translated the Hebrew. While that exchange was a little awkward, it was still fun, because it involved schooling a Crazy Christian. And this: "Are you a Messianic Jew?" "Nope. Just regular type."

Okay, so. The Scriptorium itself was a big load, yo. It was so cheesy, all about how the Bible was first written down and transported and then translated and copied and all the attempts to destroy it and prevent it from being translated into the vernacular, and blah blah, all the crap Carlos and I already knew from going to a Catholic college, where we were required to take four semesters of the development of western civilization. But the thing that got to me was the dramatic narrator's insistence that through all this copying and translating and strife, the words of the Bible stayed entirely accurate, and that is just god damn impossible. First, the old stories, like those in Genesis, for sure, started out as oral tradition before finally getting copied down, and it is impossible to retell a story orally without changing it. Second, seriously, how many times has the Bible been copied out and translated, and you're telling me no one's made a significant mistake? Please. And then you get some monastic scribe copying the book of Judges or whatever, and he sees something he thinks is a mistake, so he corrects it, but what if it wasn't really a mistake?

I guess the Holy Ghost is supposed to keep the message pure, working through these scribes to inspire them to get God's word down right, or whatever, but come on. The Holy Ghost is useless these days, running around with a sheet over his head like he's in an episode of Scooby Doo. The Holy Ghost did not prevent inaccuracies in the Bible, just like he did not make the Catholic Church infallible. Just think of how many competing translations of the Bible we have right now--how did that happen, huh? If the Bible's message stayed pure through these thousands of years, how come the Christians and Jews can't agree on things? How come the Christians or the Jews can't agree amongst themselves?

But the thing about being in a place like this is that you are surrounded by people who totally and utterly believe this shit, and even with my Catholic school background, I was staggered by seeing this. (I guess because Catholics don't traditionally put a big emphasis on Bible-reading like the Protestants do.) There were people on this tour who were on the verge of, like, praising the lord for making sure his word was passed on, and I just had to laugh. Quietly. Behind my hand. I mean, this is all a bunch of crap, obviously, how the myths of one culture could possibly be the ultimate truth for all peoples, but I didn't feel the need to be rude, since no one was at that time advocating preventing me from gaining equal civil rights.

Anyway, I was just baffled by all this. I was always aware that millions of people think the Bible is, like, the only truth on earth or whatever, but I guess I was never actually confronted with it, face to face. I did not enjoy it, except to just laugh at the absurdity of it.

I kind of wish we'd gone to Disney World.

Next on The Florida Chronicles: manatees, beaches, and O'Boobigan's!

The Florida Chronicles, Part One

2008-12-22T16:33:00.008-05:00

Since the rest of our friends are lame, Carlos and I jetted away on our own private vacation this weekend and spent four days bummin' around the Tampa Bay area. We saw feesh and manatees and crazy Christians, and we went to the beach 3 times! Also, they have good fuckin' food around Tampa: we had Thai, Greek, Indian, and exotic fast food, by which I mean Steak 'n Shake and Sonic. (Oh man, you guys, Steak 'n Shake is SO GOOD.)
Okay, so on Thursday, we explored downtown St. Petersburg a little, and then we drove around looking for a place to buy CDs, since I did not bring my iPod equipment, and the radio stations were dismal. We also had to find a place for Carlos to buy flip-flops since they apparently do not sell them in El Paso in December. It was not the most exciting of nights, but we made our own fun.
Then on Friday we went to the Florida Aquarium, which was quite lovely, but somehow not as exciting as the New England Aquarium. Maybe I'm just biased, but every aquarium I've been to has paled in comparison to the New England Aquarium, but I think the Florida one comes in second.
After that, we had some totally awesome Thai food and then went on a search for the places Carlos lived in when he was small, and then we went to Davis Island to take some pictures and see the water. We did a lotta driving, and the Tampa area is really quite lovely, and I could almost want to live there, except I don't think I could ever really leave the Northeast, horrible snowstorms and all. Also, Florida is one of the states that passed gay marriage bans, so fuck you, Florida.
Ahem. We took some night pictures in Tampa and accidentally ended up at a bum congregation area after dark trying to get pictures of some of the lit up buildings. Erp. But we escaped!
Part two, featuring the Holy Land Experience, tomorrow. That madness needs its own post.

Favorite Christmas songs

2008-12-22T10:59:00.003-05:00

All the cool kids like to bitch about how cheesy and awful and goddamn annoying Christmas music is, and that's true when you're in the mall, but now that I'm no longer forced to listen to it, I love Christmas music again. My favorites are the ones that have little to do with Jesus, because I'm a heathen, but despite the fact that I have no use for Christianity (or religion of any kind), I still do love the traditional songs, because they're familiar, and some of them are quite lovely. And if you look at the story of the birth of Jesus as what it is--a myth--then, you know, it's kind of a sweet story.

But anyway, this is not about Christianity, this is about my top five favorite Christmas songs:
5. What Child Is This? - as sung by Sarah McLachlan
4. River - Joni Mitchell
3. What's This? - from The Nightmare Before Christmas
2. Spotlight on Christmas - Rufus Wainwright
1. Welcome Christmas - from How the Grinch Stole Christmas

How do you feel about Christmas music, internet?

Preach it

2008-12-17T09:43:00.002-05:00

"But if nothing else, we can all look forward to the guest appearance of Lucy Lawless in the final season of the show. Chaiken may not ultimately deliver the peace, love and understanding that some L Word viewers may be seeking as the series draws to a close, but it’s hard to find fault with the decision to invite Xena to join the cast of the most infamous lesbian program in the history of television." --Karman Kregloe, AfterEllen

Now where's Gabrielle?

Wisdom

2008-12-16T17:46:00.000-05:00

Oh man, I got the best fortune cookie yesterday. It was actually a fortune! It said, "You need to forgive that person today. Just believe me."

"Just believe me," like the fortune cookie is alive. That's some pretty sweet anthropomorphizing there.

Except, who do I forgive?

A forest grew

2008-12-15T18:49:00.001-05:00

Okay. I need to talk about this. Last night, Mike IMed me to tell me that a live-action, feature-length film of Where the Wild Things Are is in production, and he said something like, "This might be pretty cool if they don't eff it up."

Let me tell you, people, Where the Wild Things Are is one of my very favorite books, children's literature or otherwise, and the point of it is its illustrations and its very simple story. Seriously, the book contains about ten full sentences. So I said, "How could they not eff it up?" I immediately figured it would be just like when Jim Carrey and co. shit all over How the Grinch Stole Christmas, bloating the hell out of it so that it would fill up an hour and twenty minutes.

But then I looked at the people involved in this film, and I became utterly conflicted. For one thing, Maurice Sendak is credited as a producer, so he must be involved somehow or other. Then, Spike Jonze is directing, and he co-wrote the screenplay with Dave Eggers. Dave Eggers! That bastard knows how to tell a story. And then! The thing that got me almost on board with this mess: Catherine Keener and Catherine O'Hara are appearing in this movie. Well, Catherine O'Hara is doing a voice, presumably for a wild thing, and Catherine Keener is credited as Connie, who is maybe Max's mother? I don't know. Either way. Catherine Keener and Catherine O'Hara. Also, Lauren Ambrose and James Gandolfini. What?

There are some good people attached to this film, but then the article said that they'd had to do a bunch of reshoots because test audiences of small children were fleeing the theater in terror, which sounds like a pretty good adaptation of this book to me. I mean, these are some pretty fierce monsters, rolling their terrible eyes and gnashing their terrible teeth until Max tames them with a magic trick. They're scary beasts, but as a kid you're never actually afraid because Max, in his wolf suit, is fearless and totally in control of the wild things. He even sends them to bed without their supper! So it would be interesting if the monsters were actually scary in the film. But obviously, the people making this movie want the small children to like it.

Also, how are they going to render the wild things? They can't CGI Sendak's illustrations. I guess I'm more intrigued than irritated by the idea of a live-action rendering of such perfect illustrations, so that's good. For now.

I don't know what to think. I guess I'll have to wait till October and see for myself.

Why I don't feel optimistic about enjoying The Five People You Meet in Heaven

2008-12-10T16:26:00.005-05:00

Why I won't "call in gay"

2008-12-09T18:37:00.004-05:00

Look, shirking work for a charitable cause is not a bad idea, per se, but ditching work and refusing to buy anything in the hopes that the country will notice that a lot its citizens are gay seems weak and petty to me. I'll leave that as my opinion, because the thing here is that we cannot change anything overnight. One day of not working and not buying anything might make some people say, "Huh. Somethin' weird's going on." I don't think anyone is going to say, "Gosh, we'd better give these queers their rights because they have such a vital impact on the economy," especially because on Thursday, everything will be right back to normal.

The way I see it, if we choose to withdraw from society, society will find a way to get along without us--in fact, there are plenty of people who would prefer that, don't you think? Sure, we'll be missed for a little while, but there are plenty of people, especially now, to take our places in the workforce. And then we'll be the ones who are fucked, alienated and more on the fringes than ever before. I'm not saying that this is what "Day without a Gay" is advocating, but it is what it's symbolizing--removing ourselves from society. But we don't want to be separate--that's why we're so mad about the passing of Proposition Eight, why we want marriage, not civil unions, because we are not separate. We want inclusion, equal rights, responsibilities, and privileges, so why would we voluntarily withdraw ourselves? This day is symbolic, because it won't actually change anything, so why do we want our symbolic gesture to be removal of ourselves from the rest of society? That's poisonous.

What will cause change--gradually, unfortunately--is making sure the people who would deny us our rights know we're not going anywhere, know that we're their neighbors, their daughters, their nephews, their teachers, their doctors, their soccer coaches, their elected officials. That's how they'll realize how many of us there really are--if we just keep telling them and refusing to back down.

Our best weapon against ignorance and bigotry is coming out. I know it's hard, and it's awkward, and it's uncomfortable, and there's a very real possibility of negative consequences, but in the end, it's the only way to fix this. Do what you can to make sure everyone knows that we are here; we are queer; we are not going anywhere, even for one single day.

Comedy is the only way to deal with this

2008-12-03T18:28:00.003-05:00

I had this as the video of the moment in the sidebar over there, but then I decided I wanted to talk about it. Plus, it's better enjoyed full-size, and this way I can keep Tina the Bookaneer on my blog forever.

So, this video features Margaret Cho and Doogie Howser, but they are not the best parts. Oh no. No, no, no. Maya Rudolph! Allison Janney! Hello, awesome and criminally underrated. Allison Janney is always the best part of whatever she's in, and this time was the best time of all, because when Doogie Howser started singing, he pointed to her when he said "lesbian." Yup. Allison Janney is a fictional (albeit closeted) lesbian!

Seeing things

2008-12-02T17:46:00.002-05:00

I just saw an ad for a Heather Locklear Liftetime original movie, and it totally looked like the poster said the title of this film was Flirting with Farty, which, um, what could be awesomer?

Unfortunately, it's Flirting with Forty, and I either need to get more sleep or make that eye doctor appointment right quick.
Oh, excuse me; apparently it's Flirting w/ Forty, which is just ridiculous. Yes, more ridiculous than Flirting with Farty, shut up.

Happy Thanksgiving, internet!

2008-11-27T14:48:00.002-05:00

There are plenty of things I have to be thankful for, like a job and a house and food, but this year I'm gonna be thankful for my brothers.

I know it's gross, and I know usually I can't stand them, but every once in a while, the three of us hang out, and the boys fight, and everyone makes fun of each other, and it gets loud and rowdy, and it's just...fun. To have a family. Even a loud, rowdy, smelly one.

Anyway, enough of this well-meaning crap. Time to drink wine and stuff my face and fight with my stupid brothers!

I haven't done this in a while

2008-11-25T11:07:00.006-05:00

So I got a request to write a blog post, even though I've been updating pretty regularly lately, but I'm agreeable, so I agreed, but instead of writing a post, I went to go look at Nintendo DS games. I miss Dr. Mario. I wish they had that for the DS. I did find this though! Almost as good as Dr. Mario for the DS. In fact, it's better! Because I could play it at work!

Anyway, the point of this blog post was supposed to be lists, so here are some lists.

Top ten most embarrassing songs in my iTunes library:
1. Crazy for This Girl - Evan & Jaron (Oh the shame. It's just so catchy.)
2. Girlfriend - Avril Lavigne
3. Call Me When You're Sober - Evanescence (I hate Evanescence, but Mike and I used to hear this at the bar all the time, and it was fun to wail along with it.)
4. I Turn to You - Melanie C.
5. Does Your Mother Know - Abba
6. Anytime - Kelly Clarkson
7. Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) - Beyonce (I have no idea why I love this song, because the lyrics and the message are abhorrent, but gosh darnit, it's fun!)
8. My Dad Is Rich - Draco and the Malfoys (Oh yes. Wizard Rock is embarrassing.)
9. Always Be My Baby - Mariah Carey
10. Leave the Pieces - The Wreckers

Top ten favorite words*
1. betwixt
2. halfwit
3. obdurate
4. nozzle
5. bananas
6. corroborate
7. blerg
8. faggotry (used only by the gays and those who love us)
9. weegeltons
10. scrumtrilescent
*Not so much because of what they mean, but because of how fun they are to say.

Top ten favorite meals
1. chicken pad thai
2. sushi and edamame
3. pizza and buffalo wings
4. pork chops and applesauce
5. spaghetti and meatballs
6. bacon cheeseburger and french fries
7. oysters, steamed muscles, and clam chowder
8. grilled cheese and tomato soup
9. steak burrito and beer
10. barbecue chicken flatbread pizza

My stupid cat has fleas, and I couldn't even get him to sit still so I could put the flea medicine on him, so half of it may have missed, and I had to vacuum everything and do more laundry, and I feel like ass. Frakkin' animals.

Let's talk about why I hate Twilight

2008-11-24T18:27:00.001-05:00

The girl keeps having to be saved over and over by the boy.

The boy is a stalker, and the girl just thinks that's romantic. Seriously, the vampire breaks into her house every night, and watches her sleep. First of all, that severely violates vampire mythology, because vampires cannot come in unless they have been invited. Which I know because I watched Buffy. Second of all, that is the creepiest thing I have ever heard of, and if Bella had a lick of sense she would run all the way back to Phoenix.

The boy is mean to the girl, not because he's a vampire, but because he's a boy, and she's a pitiful female who can't keep track of her own feet and keeps needing to be rescued.

I read somewhere that Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon and has admitted to using her novels to promote abstinence. Whatever, abstinence is fine--I just think writing a story about vampires as a metaphor for waiting to have sex till you're married is gross.

Knowing that Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon makes passages like this one take on a disturbingly allegorical tone: "Just because we've been dealt a certain hand it doesn't mean that we can't choose to rise above--to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted. To try to retain whatever essential humanity we can." This is doubtless almost certainly my reading too much into this, but I can't help it. Religious people who think homosexuality is wrong tend to believe that perhaps you can be born gay, but you shouldn't act on those impulses. Even if you're born that way, you can deny that part of yourself. And I bet for some Mormons (and other religious zealots), homosexuals are just as depraved as vampires.

And finally, if Bella makes one more reference to how achingly beautiful Edward is, I will vomit up everything I have ever eaten in my life and mail it in a ziploc bag to Stephenie Meyer herself.

So I haven't finished it yet, and I don't even really want to, but I've never abandoned a book after reading this far, and I sure won't start now. But one thing I really don't understand is why lesbians love these books. I know of two personally, and I'm sure there are more. I mean, I love a good heterosexual love story, but this is...not a good heterosexual love story, and even if the love story part were interesting, the main female character sucks! She's timid and clueless and likes being rescued and stalked and is entirely co-dependent. What is there to admire or identify with here?

Please, lesbians, tell me. What is there in Twilight for you? (I get it. Kristen Stewart is hot. THAT IS NOT ENOUGH.)

I do call myself a booknerd, after all

2008-11-21T18:28:00.002-05:00

So yesterday, Melissa came in to work and dumped the first Twilight book on my desk and said, "I read this in four days. Read it, so we can discuss."

Who am I to argue? I started reading it at lunch yesterday, after I went to the library to get a few more books I've been commanded to read. So far it's pretty blech, and I have a feeling it will only get worse, because I'm sorry, but the mortal lady/vampire fellow romance has already been done, like, quite well, and Bella Swan is no Buffy Summers. Not even close. Is Bella going to have to kill Edward to save the world from being sucked into a hell dimension? Then WHY SHOULD I CARE? Cedric Diggory is prettier than David Boreanaz, but that is neither here nor there, is it? Plus, the writing is ungainly. I hate it when a first person narrator has to describe her own appearance--there is no way to do that smoothly, and Stephenie Meyer doesn't even come close. Or when the narrator has to say things like, "I'm clumsy." Hello! Show, don't tell! And why are the vampires so beautiful? Is that a thing with vampires I was unaware of? Because they're immortal, they're all beautiful? Kind of...boring, I have to say.

Anyway, Melissa and I let curiosity get the best of us here, and we had to see what all the fuss is about. The fuss, it would seem, is more than this bloated romance novel deserves, so I have decided to make a list of my favorite young adult fiction.

1. A Wrinkle in Time and its companions by Madeleine L'Engle (aka The Time Quartet, plus An Acceptable Time: Here we have a story that is essentially about the battle between good and evil, and it is perfection. The best I've ever seen it done, honestly. JRR Tolkein can suck it.
2. The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder: Oh, these are classics, and I think they're a charming way to get insight into America's pioneer history.
3. The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley: Few authors can create entire new worlds so well, and I am utterly jealous of the way McKinley can. These books are engrossing and feature totally badass female heroes. I've only read each book twice, but I will reread them many, many times, I'm sure.
4. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman: This series does so many things well; it's characters are rich--no one is a cliche; it's a shot to organized religion, which I have to say I enjoy; and it also gives us entire new worlds. Imaginative, well-written, and it has the best young girl hero ever written by a man.
5. Judy Blume's ouevre: Really. I read almost everything she'd written when I was ten or eleven. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret is kind of quaint these days, but I couldn't get enough of it. She could write about young kids without sounding patronizing. Loved it.
6. Little Women and its sequels by Louisa May Alcott: Oh, come on. Classics. Everyone who hasn't read Little Women, do it right now.
7. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: Okay, I've become somewhat disenchanted with the Christian propaganda of these novels, but when I was a kid I couldn't stop reading them. Plus, they are very imaginative, and if you ignore the Christian subtext, the stories are quite good.
8. The Giver by Lois Lowry: This book is haunting and lovely. It's simply written, but it really gets to you. I can't recommend this one highly enough.
9. Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Leviathan: This is probably the most recent YA novel to worm its way into my heart. I'm way past the YA target audience, but when YA fiction is good, that doesn't matter.
10. Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden: I've said this before, I know, but this is the best gay young adult novel I have ever read. Lesbians of the world, read this book.

This list wasn't ranked; I just wrote down books as they occurred to me. Either way, all of them are better written, more imaginative, and more affecting than Twilight. I am getting the sense that this is just a PG-13 romance novel. Like Gone with the Wind for preteens. Plus vampires! Melissa's husband called it "literary fast food," which I think may be spot on. Easy to read, mildly amusing, but it rots your brain. Somewhere on the internet, I read that it was being called "professional fan fiction" which is also striking me as quite apt. We'll see if Bella goes through any kind of transformation--if any of the characters change. That'll maybe redeem it a little bit.

Beantown minutiae

2008-11-20T00:49:00.001-05:00

So Coco Crisp got traded to the Royals, and while I am going to miss him because he was a really good outfielder, I am even more going to miss the way the Fenway announcer would draw out the 's' in Crisp and give the 'p' a really good pop. Crisssssssspah.

The little things, you know.

My brother is a turd

2008-11-19T18:07:00.000-05:00

The other night my brother and I went to get Wendy's, and while we were driving, "Creep" came on the radio in his car, and because I am an asshole, and he hates it when I sing, I started singing along. Instead of telling me to shut up, he said, "Who sings this song?" like he was testing me, not like he didn't know.

So I, taking it literally, said, "Thom Yorke," because Radiohead does not sing.

And instead of even rolling his eyes he just said, "Let's keep it that way."

Schooled by a seventeen-year-old!

Another book rant! (Same book, though)

2008-11-18T21:08:00.004-05:00

Okay, so in my effort to better understand Wicked, I am watching The Wizard of Oz right now, and I have a problem.

In the novel, when Dorothy's house drops on the Wicked Witch of the East, she is greeted by two Munchkins and the Good Witch of the North. The Good Witch of the North* has no idea how Dorothy is to get back to Kansas, so her magical chalkboard (for truth) suggests Dorothy go to the Emerald City to seek the aid of the Wizard. Then she and the Munchkins depart, and Dorothy sets about preparing for her journey. One of the things she does is take the Witch's silver shoes, because hers are kind of worn out and won't last on such a long walk.

*Let me note that this woman is not Glinda. Glinda is the Good Witch of the South, and Dorothy doesn't meet her until she's killed the Wicked Witch of the West.

In the film, the Good Witch of the North meets Dorothy after her crash landing, but this Witch is Glinda. And in the novel it is Glinda who tells Dorothy how to use the magic in the shoes to get back to Kansas, so one would assume that since Glinda meets Dorothy in the film--and in fact, actually gives her the shoes to prevent Triple Dubs from getting them--she already knows that Dorothy can use the shoes to get back to Kansas. And it is Glinda, I believe, who does tell Dorothy how to use the shoes at the end of the film, right? (I haven't finished watching it yet.)

So why does the rest of the movie happen at all?

I could go on about how the Dorothy part of the story of Wicked more closely follows the film than the novel, but I'm not into it right now. Perhaps later.

Politics and religion! Everyone's favorite topics for a blog post

2008-11-15T01:55:00.003-05:00

Look, it's pretty clear I have no use for the Bible as some kind of guide to live my life, and for me it's basically a collection of ancient myths, which is what makes it interesting, but you know, that's just me. It obviously holds a much more significant meaning for millions of people, and that is just fine. But some of them take it far too seriously, and some of them twist its truth.

Anyway, I think every single Christian on Earth, especially those in America who have voted to legislate discrimination, needs to read John 8: 1-11. This story is my favorite story about Jesus, because he comes to the rescue of a skanky ho (ahem, I mean, an adulterous woman). If Jesus loved skanky hos, ain't no way he'd turn away from the fags. There are references to the unnaturalness of homosexuality in the New Testament, but never do they come from the mouth of Jesus. And Christians need to listen to Jesus, not to other Christians who may have gotten things a little bit mixed up. (I am looking at you, Paul.)

So don't use the Bible to condemn us. In fact, if you're Christian at all, you shouldn't use anything to condemn us. Condemning us isn't your job--it's your god's. And you know what else? In this religion, Jesus is God, so he is the only one who could condemn her. Does he?

According to Christianity, Jesus comes to the Jews to...revise the Law of Moses, to oversimplify things (as I do), which was much more strict than anything modern Christians follow. He gives them one commandment: Love one another. What a hippie freak. If he hadn't been turned into a messianic figure for a religion that brought about destruction and hate and division, I would love his ass. Anyway, since Christians no longer stone adulterers (and no longer follow, er, any of the laws laid down in Leviticus), I don't want to hear that book used to defend homophobia ever again.

It is November 15, the day to protest marriage inequality in the United States of America. Let's go, Americans. Act up. Fight hate.

Triumphant return of the book rant

2008-11-14T00:42:00.001-05:00

Here is something I have discovered this week: The Wizard of Oz bites--actually, the book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, bites. Also, the titular wizard. But anyway. Let me tell you a long and boring story.

Back in August when I had mono, and all I could do was lie on the couch and bemoan my fate, I decided to while away the hours by reading, since, try as I might, I couldn't sleep. Which is especially brutal when you have mono, and all your body wants is sweet, sweet sleep. I realized that I was out of books to read, and I didn't feel like rereading any of my old standbys, so I turned to one of my few friends who likes to read and asked her what her favorite books are. Apparently, her favorite book is The Lovely Bones, which made me puke (but she somehow made me agree to give it a chance when I was not ill and depressed--will I keep my word?), but the rest of the list seemed pretty okay, so I made my brother drive me to the library, and I checked out three of them.

One of these books was Wicked by Gregory Maguire, which I picked against my better judgment, because I had told myself if I were to ever read this book I would have to do the background reading first. The background reading being, obviously, L. Frank Baum's Oz books. All of them. But at that point in my life I was in no mood to do such extensive background reading (I was really sick, see), so I just checked out Wicked and plowed through it in four days.

Ultimately, I thought the idea was pretty brilliant, telling the Wizard of Oz stories from the point of view of the witches (wicked and otherwise), but the execution as a whole bummed me out. It seemed really cynical, even for me, and I don't think anyone would ever call my disposition sunny, if you know what I'm sayin', but looking back on it, that could have been because I was pretty bummed out about mono effectively ruining the end of my summer. Also I was trying way too hard to find some kind of, like, meaning in it, instead of just reading the damn story. I don't know why I was so hellbent on that--I never do that shit--but... I don't know. I ruined it. And I finished it, and I was like, "Well. Next bitch."

Then this friend of mine ever so kindly sent me a mix CD with not one but two songs from the Wicked musical on it, and I fell so crazily, madly in love that I immediately demanded the rest of the album with all the ferocity of a rabid animal, and this friend of mine ever so kindly obliged, and since then I have been listening to that album all the damn time. Naturally, it made me want to take another look at the book. Naturally, it made me want to actually do the background reading first. And what I have discovered is that I'm pretty sure Gregory Maguire took some stuff from the film version of The Wizard of Oz as well, and now I have to watch that shit again, because I think I basically knew the story of The Wizard of Oz from all the parodies and updates and blah blah--did anyone see that Muppet version with motherfuckin' Ashanti?--and I have no clear recollection of seeing the original film whatsoever. Except I have a vaguely unsettling memory of flying monkeys and dark mountains. Who knows if that's even a real memory.

Anyway, I guess the point of that story was to tell you how I came about deciding to read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Now let me tell you why it sucked! First of all, none of Dorothy's trials ever last that long or are the least bit suspenseful. An obstacle is presented; she goes oh crap; five seconds later, they're back on the yellow brick road. I couldn't bring myself to give an ass rat's.

Second, let me make a sweeping generalization! It would seem to me that when male authors write a fantasy story with a young female protagonist, they have no idea what do to with her, and she remains the least interesting character in the story. I mean, I think this judgment is at least a little fair, because male authors have no idea what it's like to be an eight-year-old girl. Some you'd think had never even met an eight-year-old girl. Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, L. Frank Baum: their young female protagonists are so boring: Alice just weeps, gets confused, and wants to go hoooome; Lucy Pevensie never has a naughty thought ever in her head--she's good and true and brave, which, you know, are not bad characteristics, and Lucy Pevensie is certainly the most fleshed-out of these characters, but...a little boring.

Now Dorothy, I just do not understand. She's a little girl, and she is good and pure and true, as evidenced by how she wants to help everyone she meets, blaaaaah. The whole time she's in Oz, which seems to be this rather fascinating land, all she can think about is getting back to Kansas, even though Baum made sure to make Kansas sound as unappealing as possible by only using the word gray (over and over and over again) to describe it. Even her aunt and uncle are gray. Why would you want to get back to that shit? Yes, she's in a strange place, and at least Kansas and Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are familiar, but she makes friends in Oz right quick.

Oh, god. I have to tell you about the preface Baum wrote to this story: he says something about how now (the turn of the 20th century) children don't need their fairy tales to teach them a lesson or moral or whatever, so he has presented a fairy tale which will only enchant them. This is the problem with this story: Dorothy doesn't learn anything. She doesn't leave Oz changed one whit. What is the point of telling a story if the main character doesn't change? (This is also why I hated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, I just realized.) I'm not saying she needs to learn some kind of moral or life lesson or anything, but her journey through Oz should have affected her somehow. But no. She does all these things, saves the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, helps the Cowardly Lion find his courage, exposes the Wizard for the fraud he is, accidentally kills an evil and powerful woman, and then she just runs on home to Kansas. The end.

And, I mean, maybe the fact that I didn't care about the main character could have been made up with an interesting story, but I already said the story was not interesting. The only halfway interesting part was the story of the golden cap and how it can be used to call the winged monkeys to do the wearer's bidding.

Anyway, despite all this, I want to watch the film and then read Wicked again, because I love the musical soundtrack that much.

Self-censorship

2008-11-13T03:27:00.001-05:00

This is the rough draft of an email I wrote to my college pals. Recently, some genius decided it would be a good idea to send out monthly emails, just so we could all be kept in the loop of each others' lives. I liked the idea in theory, but loathe thinking of something worthy to write about myself in an email I am pretty sure the recipients are actually going to read. It's quite easy to fill this blog with all kinds of self-absorbed nonsense, because I do it mostly for me, and it seems to entertain the 2-3 other people who actually read it. However, if they don't like it, I don't have to care, because I am not writing it for them! Nyer!

Anyway, here:

Hey ho bags,

As 'tis the twelfth day of November, I figured I'd do what I should and send out a mass email. I wish I had anything to tell you people, but the only things I have to talk about are boring or better saved for one on one conversations. I imagine Seth has no desire to hear about lesbian sex. And neither does Sarah for that matter, but she may not have a choice!

I may have set out to be as inappropriate as possible in this brief email. Hope you enjoyed it.

I also hope you all are well, and though I may not have much to say about myself, I quite like hearing about you.

Emily

Here is what I decided to ultimately send instead:

Hey people,

Since twelve is my day, I figured I'd do what I should and send out a mass email. I wish I had anything to tell you people, but the only things I have to talk about are too boring to be worth it (work) or better saved for one on one conversations (girls, how angry I am about the passing of Proposition Eight in California and similar measures in Arizona and Florida). In fact, the only exciting thing to happen to me in a long, long while is that I won a Dr Pepper hat by checking the code under the bottle cap of my eight billionth bottle of diet Dr Pepper. I can expect the hat in 10-12 weeks, and you best believe I will wear the shit out of that thing.

I hope you all are well, and though I may not have much to say about myself, I quite like hearing about you.

Emily

Ultimately, I think the boring Dr Pepper hat story was a better choice than the brief mention of lesbian sex for my largely conservative, Catholic group of friends.

Why does a heathen like me have conservative, Catholic friends, you ask? I have no idea. But I love them. And I have a fellow heathen in the group, so we get by.

Outnerding myself again (this time by request!)

2008-11-12T18:41:00.004-05:00

Things I have noticed on Battlestar Galactica that are unquestionably earthling in origin:

Laura Roslin uses the phrase "pound of flesh" (and I totally forget why--but it was apt), which is from Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice.
Dr. Cottle, astonished to learn Dr. Robert is refusing to give the Sagittarons medicine, demands to know what happened to "First, do no harm" which is widely thought to be part of the Hippocratic Oath, but is not. It is, however, attributed to Hippocrates, who came from Earth.
The Cylon siren song is "All Along the Watchtower"! That is even more unmistakably from Earth than the other two! (Unless Bob Dylan is a Cylon. Then all bets are off!)
Baltar uses the phrase "shuffle off this mortal coil" in one of his wireless broadcasts. That is from Hamlet.

Anyway, I mostly figure that all the signposts they find and interpret as the 13th tribe's path from Kobol to Earth are actually signposts of the Earthlings leaving Earth for Kobol--leaving markers along the way in case anyone needs to go back.

Listen up, bitches

2008-11-11T09:22:00.000-05:00

I want this

2008-11-09T20:51:00.004-05:00

I would have totally bought it five seconds ago, if not for the price.

"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him 'wild thing,' and Max said, 'I'll eat you up!' so he was sent to bed without eating anything."

More for me than anyone who might accidentally find this blog

2008-11-09T03:23:00.000-05:00

So on Tuesday, I started watching the election results at my dad's house, and for a while the only states CNN would call were Kentucky and Vermont, which meant the electoral tally was eight to three in McCain's favor, and my dad kept saying things like, "If this were a baseball game, we'd have to be worried," and "it's only the first inning," and, during commercials, "what're they doing? must be a pitching change."

I dunno, maybe you had to be there, and maybe you even have to be my father's child, but that crap kept me laughing every time, even as I freaked the hell out that we might elect another pair of maroons into office.

She got the hose again

2008-11-08T06:22:00.001-05:00

So what do I say about the whole Brooke Smith debacle? I really can't figure out what the crap ABC was thinking. Basically, it is a little too coincidental that the news of her firing comes out days after her character realized she was "totally gay." Come on. How can you not expect us to draw that conclusion?

Dr. Hahn was one of the best characters on that show; she was a fantastic surgeon who took no shit from anyone, sometimes to her own detriment. But then she made a friend, and through that friendship we got to see the human side of Hahn. Maybe Hahn got to see the human side of Hahn, too. And then she had the gay revelation, and that whole speech about how falling in love with Callie was like when she got glasses for the first time was the single sweetest thing I have ever seen on television (However! Why have we never seen Hahn in glasses? WHY???). And Brooke Smith acted the hell out of it. I don't think anyone is saying that Brooke Smith's acting is the problem. And she certainly didn't cause strife on the set, like the fool she replaced.

So there are two options here. ABC told Shonda Rhimes to can her because Erica suddenly got too explicitly gay without any negative consequences, or ABC told Shonda Rhimes to can her because she's not conventionally attractive.

Both of which are absolute bullshit. Brooke Smith, while not everyone's cup of tea, is lovely, okay? And especially when she does Hahn's sweet smiles. The way she looked at Sara Ramirez while Hahn was falling for Callie was adorable. I watched that scene where she watches Callie in the elevator, like, twelve times. I don't... Ack.

And, oh, Shonda Rhimes's statement that of course they didn't get rid of Brooke because her character is a lesbian, and they still have a lesbian on the show is even more bullshit. Callie JUST realized she was bisexual in the last episode that aired. That is not the same thing as being a lesbian! What a load.

A few people have suggested that Brooke deserves an Emmy for the leaves speech, and I sure do agree. What're the chances she'll submit it for consideration? Not that those aged fools on the Emmy-giving committee would ever award her one, but still. She should stand up and submit it, because it was some damn fine acting, and it may have made my eyes wet. And I don't know what happened to Callie this season, but the reason I stayed invested in their relationship was because of Hahn. I've never been able to identify with a character more in my entire life. And now ABC refuses to let characters that bear any similarity to me on television. That's like a kick in the gut. I am not worthy to be represented in the entertainment world.

Needless to say, I am not watching Grey's Anatomy ever again, and thank GOD I didn't buy the season pass on iTunes yet.

Processing

2008-11-07T02:31:00.002-05:00

What if there were a ballot measure that would amend your state's constitution so that only white couples could get married? Or only people of the same racial background could marry each other? Or members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints could not get legally married?

Would you vote for it?

I still cannot fathom why we can even put civil rights to a vote. If you were to put desegregation of public schools to a vote back in the fifties and sixties, do you think it would have passed? Or even if you were to put those laws that outlawed biracial marriage to a vote, it's quite possible some of those laws would remain. Maybe even slavery would have withstood a vote to abolish it. In fact, I'd be willing to bet it could have, because we had to fight a war with each other to abolish it.

Letting people vote on whether or not gay people deserve the same damn rights as heterosexuals is just as ridiculous as letting people vote on whether or not black people should have the same rights as white people. It's a forgone conclusion: of course black people deserve the same rights as white people, no matter what a majority of voters would say.

Which is why it really makes me sad that so many black and Hispanic voters supported Proposition Eight. I would never, ever vote for anything that would deny them the rights that white people enjoy. I would be just as incensed if Proposition Eight denied black couples the right to legal marriage. Because black people are no better or worse than white people. Gay people are no better or worse than straight people. We are all equal. Everyone says we proved that by electing a black President, but Proposition Eight says different.

The way things are in this country right now, we are not all equal.

But I have hope that President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama will help us change all that. I freaked right out when he actually stood up and recognized that gay people exist in this country in his acceptance speech. I've never heard any politician do that in that manner. And no one would have even given it a second thought if he hadn't. For the first time, a man we elected to lead our country has stood up and said, "I hear you too, homos."

I appreciate that from the bottom of my heart.

I can't do anything about California, but

2008-11-06T09:31:00.002-05:00

So in New Hampshire, Vermont, and New Jersey, we have civil unions. I wanna know how we go about making those civil unions marriages. Connecticut just did it.

How did you do it, Connecticut?

Resistance is futile

2008-10-28T23:31:00.000-04:00

All right, I caved. I have become a lesbian cliche in a new way.

I have a crush on Katee Sackoff.

Things I notice

2008-10-28T10:44:00.001-04:00

Look at this picture!
This is the new intern who's totally going to ruin Callie and Hahn's romance. She looks like Regina George, and she totally has Ariel's voice in that seashell around her neck!

See? Evil!

A list

2008-10-27T18:31:00.000-04:00

1. New England Aquarium & Union Oyster House
2. batting cages (locate indoor ones in New Hampshire)
3. Zoolander
4. meatballs
5. Julie Andrews
6. Battlestar Galactica
7. unwise purchases at certain clothing and/or lotion stores

Items will be added as needed. Hopefully, nothing needs be subtracted. Suggestions welcome.

Why I shouldn't ever know what's coming on a television show

2008-10-25T17:01:00.000-04:00

Oh, good, Callie's still running around on Hahn. It would be one thing if she were upfront with the fact that she's still sleeping with Sloane, but Erica has no idea.

And it is going to crush her when she finds out.

And then she's going to bang that new intern.

Stupid!

So let her be a lesibaaaaaaan

2008-10-24T13:01:00.000-04:00

Wait, wait, wait. Callie's the one who was bad at going down, and Erica was the one who enjoyed the sex?

HOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?

Unless Callie wasn't necessarily...bad...she just felt weird about the whole thing? Or Erica has never had sex with anyone before? Like, really! She cannot be this dumb. She can't!

Also, if you feel weird about, you know, your head in between another lady's legs, take it slow. Start with fingers! There are so many ways to have sex. Sheesh.

And! Going to Sloane for a demonstration? That is so fucking weird. I mean, even if he were another lady, it's still weird, because Callie is still having sex with someone so she can have better sex with Erica.

That's weird. And I just hope Erica doesn't find out about it. Because she will not react well, even if they are taking things slow and, you know, not going steady. She hates Sloane, and the girl she likes is still sleeping with him!

Oh. She is going to find out.

However! The lesbians got to have inappropriate sex in the on-call room! Just like everyone else. So yay for equal opportunity unprofessionalism.

But mostly yay for Sara Ramirez in a bra.

I am at my wits' end with this woman

2008-10-23T18:12:00.000-04:00

I read a thing on the internet the other day that said Sarah Palin actually asked women to vote for McCain because he picked a lady as his vice president, and Obama didn't. Really? REALLY? First of all, that's just as sexist as Joe Biden telling dudes to vote for Obama, because McCain's got a little lady on his ticket. Oh yes it is. Secondly, so what if Obama didn't pick Hillary Clinton as his vice president? That has no bearing whatsoever on his opinion of women. For whatever reason, he and his advisers decided Hillary Clinton was not the right vice presidential candidate, and I would bet my next seven paychecks that her gender had nothing to do with it.

As a matter of fact, I would say (boldly) that Senator Obama has a much higher opinion of women than you do, Governor. He would not strip us of our reproductive rights, and he would not support a Constitutional Amendment to prevent us from marrying each other. He also supports equal pay for equal work, which your running mate does not. And I am not one hundred percent positive on this, because I've not heard him say it, but I would bet seven more paychecks that he would never support legislation requiring rape victims to pay for their own rape kits.

How can you say a vote for McCain is a vote for women? How?

Nits, picked

2008-10-22T18:38:00.000-04:00

Oh, boogers. The recapper at Television Without Pity makes a good point: How on earth could Hahn fail to pick up on Callie's utter terrifiedness about getting serious? Heart surgeons are supposed to be smart! And I know she made that confession about being socially awkward and weird (which made me fall in love with her), but unless she has, like, Asperger's she should be able to see that Callie has some extreme reservations about getting intimate with a lady. Even though Callie's the one who made the move in the first place...

Though that happens on tv all the time, doesn't it? A character has hesitations, and it's made obvious to the audience, but whoever the character's interacting with is totally oblivious.

Oh well. All this unlikeliness made the restaurant scene possible, so I will overlook it. But, you know, still complain about it.

Because if I can't pick apart the things I like, then why bother liking them? I have a terrible habit of, like, looking for things to criticize, even in things I love. Like Grey's. Or musical retellings of novels. Or, you know, Brandi Carlile's dubious intelligence. The only thing I've never done this with is, uh, 30 Rock.

I LOVE YOU TINA FEY.

Below the Mason-Dixon Line...of your pants!

2008-10-17T18:48:00.001-04:00

So. Last night was madness. I kind of got discouraged with the baseball game, so I started watching Grey's, only checking in at the commercials and getting more discouraged. All the magic happened after Grey's anyway.

But let's talk about Grey's, because I really have no words for the baseball. Except. This is how it's done in Boston. Unbelievable comebacks in the ALCS and then sweeping the World Series. But first! One game at a time. And I still believe Josh Beckett can get it done. Yes I do. Last year's ALCS MVP will not let us down.

Okay. Grey's. I already forced Allison to listen to a crazed rant about how they don't give the lesbians enough screen time, like, at all, so...I'll drop that and talk about how much I love Hahn. Like, really. Before we even get into the gay stuff, let's talk about how she threatened to cut Meredith's heart out of her chest with a steak knife. Oh hell yes she did. I watched that three times, which means I may have liked it even more than the gay stuff.

But not really. Because Hahn was so damn adorable last night, asking Callie out on a date in this manner: "restaurant, candelight, bottle of wine...at the end of the night I try to take your clothes off." That's exactly how I think! Although I unfortunately have never asked a girl out this way. When I get my next opportunity, you bet I will! I don't really get why Callie is so neurotic about all this, though. I mean, I understand being a little anxious about what happens when the clothes come off, but... You're not there yet! Worry about that when you get there! But then it does allow Hahn to be all sweet and calm her down, and the way Callie looks at her after she reassures her... Oh man. It's so perfect.

And then mooning over Callie in the elevator and just bein' so sweet the whole time. And once again, these are two people who can actually talk to each other when they're having doubts or feeling anxious or whatever. Callie spends the episode freaking out, but she eventually spills, and Erica listens to her and reassures her. And that is when Callie realizes that Dr. Hahn is perfect!

I am going to be so mad when they break up.

Also, as much as I love Dr. Hahn, it still must be said: no one will ever, ever, ever be more awesome than Dr. Bailey. The end.

Lost

2008-10-16T18:26:00.000-04:00

Last year, when the Red Sox were in this exact situation, down 3-1 in the ALCS, Josh Beckett had the ball for the do or die game 5, and I had no doubts whatsoever that he would keep them in it. Josh Beckett has failed twice this post-season. Like, spectacularly. And it's not even him with the ball this time. I don't know what to do.

Back to back World Series wins would be fantastic. You know the last time that happened? 1915 and 1916. Although, at least it has happened in Red Sox history, I suppose. Losing to the Rays would be kind of embarrassing, despite the fact that they're clearly on fire this year. Still. They were the worst team in Major League Baseball last season, and Boston was, ostensibly, the best. You know, since they won the World Series.

Worst of all, it seems like the fans just don't care this year. I am beginning to include myself in this. I don't know. The curse is gone, and now we're all complacent? It's just baseball? Boston is not a town that says, "It's just baseball."

Fix it, Daisuke.

Spooked

2008-10-15T18:49:00.002-04:00

Forgive me for this rant, but all the news that supporters of Proposition 8 are gaining ground has really freaked me out. Like, really.

I don't personally know anyone who lives in California, except my dad's younger sister, but I'm not sure how to broach the subject with her--however I am hopeful she's opposed to Proposition 8. Anyway, I am almost more worried about whether or not California--the alleged haven of liberal hippies--amends their constitution to ban the gay marriages it just legalized than I am about whether or not Sarah (motherfucking) Palin becomes this country's first female vice president.

Listen. The California Supreme Court's decision on gay marriage was, like, fucking landmark, okay? Because it equated a person's sexuality with her race or gender or religion. Just as the governments of this country cannot discriminate against people based on those things, neither can they discriminate against people based upon their sexuality. That's what the legality of gay marriage is about: stamping out discrimination against one group of people for something that is as unchangeable as race or gender--and as little of the government's business as religious beliefs.

I just do not understand how, in this country, where one of our most prized founding documents proclaims all men created equal, there are so many fucking people who think it's perfectly fine--no, not just fine, but necessary--to make sure certain American citizens are relegated to permanent second-class status. This is not about whether you think butt sex is a sin. This is not about the "sanctity of marriage." That doesn't exist--and it never has. Why are we pretending that marriage is sacred? That people don't cheat and divorce and all that? I mean, ideally, sure, marriages are supposed to be lifelong and monogamous, but that is just not the reality, and it never has been. Humans are fallible. So that argument, as I am the child of divorced parents, too, really chaps my ass. All of these arguments are strictly religious--it's not the government's business how you have sex or whether you're faithful to your spouse, so--I don't know--shut up! This is not about forcing churches to marry two dudes or two ladies. That's the great thing about this country--you can believe in whatever you want to believe in. You, as a private citizen. But the government of the United States of America (and its individual state governments) can only believe in one thing: equal rights, privileges, and responsibilities for every, single one of its law-abiding citizens. Every. Single. One.

Marriage is not something that can only exist between a man and a woman. Marriage is for any two consenting adults who have decided to make a lifelong commitment to each other. And if a government awards special rights and responsibilities for heterosexual couples who make that choice then it absolutely must accord those same rights to homosexual couples who make the same choice.

That's all there is to it.

So let's go, California. Shoot down Proposition 8, and keep the gay rights movement moving forward instead of seventy-billion steps backward.

PS: Congratulations, Connecticut!

Red Sox ranting

2008-10-13T17:54:00.000-04:00

That is it, internet. Josh Beckett and I are so over. I mean, I could forgive the rocky start against the Angels--he'd been injured; he hadn't pitched in a while--but this mess Saturday night against the Rays? Eight earned runs? That is not Josh Beckett pitching. And it certainly is not Josh Beckett post-season pitching. Thank god Daisuke was on fire Friday night. Thank god Jon Lester is pitching today. And I sure do hope Wakefield's knuckleball is workin' tomorrow. I'd rather not have Josh Beckett pitch game 6 at Tropicana Field. Yeah. I don't want that at all.

I am super, super bummed my imaginary husband Mike Lowell has that effed-up hip keeping him off the ALCS roster. But oh I am so happy that my new imaginary boyfriend Dustin Pedroia smashed himself out of his post-season hitting slump. Two fucking home runs! Too bad they ultimately went to waste.

I must be honest, internet--I am kind of shocked the Red Sox are doing this well. Something is just not right about this team--all the injuries, I guess, are spooking me. Plus, it'll be hard to win the World Series with only two reliable starting pitchers.

Joshua Patrick Beckett, you get your act together right now!

Getting back into television

2008-10-10T18:06:00.001-04:00

So I didn't say anything about the premiere of Grey's, because...I had other things on my mind, and there weren't nearly enough of the lesbians. However, I adored the way Hahn snapped Callie out of her self-doubt free-fall during the hypothermia therapy thing. They're good for each other.

This week was, like, so much better, mostly because there were a bunch of scenes showing the doctors, you know, interacting like friends again. Like at the lunch table when Alex smacks Cristina to test her pain threshold and then does it to Izzie in the elevator. And Callie throwing grapes at Sloane for teasing Erica! I love it all! Oh, and then when Cristina and Callie are bonding over their new apartment, and Izzie loses her mind. Like, it kind of sucks to be Izzie, but Callie and Cristina's faces were so hilarious. Plus, the way Izzie told her about the apartment was so vague, I don't blame Cristina for thinking that Izzie was doing her a favor. It's kind of retarded that she didn't just say, "Hey, I found this place, I need a roommate, what do you think?" But it allowed for that funny scene at the bar, so hooray! Plus, Izzie's not homeless, so I don't have to feel bad!

The good thing about the lesbians these days is that they are talking to each other. Erica freaks out about Sloane, and Callie tells her why he knows. She freaks out about Callie telling him things, tells Callie she doesn't understand it, so Callie explains. How mother-effin' mature! I really like that the only functional relationship on this show is the gay one. I give it two more weeks tops before it falls apart.

Sometimes I hate you, Grey's Anatomy.

Lesbians and language--my two greatest loves

2008-10-08T17:48:00.000-04:00

Hey, lesbians, you know that scene in But I'm a Cheerleader when Graham and Megan finally kiss? (By the way, doesn't anyone else think Graham's root should be the fact that her parents named her Graham?) And they're all fighting, because Megan freaked out about seeing Sinead grope Graham, and blah blah, and Graham goes, "You want me to do what I want?" And Megan says, "I could care less!" And then kissing! And it's supposed to be the big romantic climax, right?

Every time I hear her say, "I could care less!" I get taken right out if. I can't even focus on the girlkissing!

It's "couldn't care less," because if you could care less, my friend, that means you at least care a little. But if you can't care less, why then, you simply don't care! Right, Pierre?

Angry and boring part eleventy thousand

2008-10-03T18:27:00.001-04:00

Here are some totally boring pet peeves of mine:

I hate whatever fool decided that numerals in titles of things precede the letter A when lists of titles are being alphabetized. That is ridiculous. The numerals always have a corresponding lettered form, you know? So. The 40-Year-Old Virgin goes where, children? Where does it go?

With the Fs. Next.

I also hate the notion that anyone would alphabetize their collection of books by title. Like, no. It has to be organized alphabetically by author. What a mess it would be otherwise! Um, mostly this bugs me because whenever I log in to librarything, my collection is organized by title, and the titles that have numbers in them are first, and then I have to fix it myself. Stupid! You would think the one place that could get this right is a website full of crazy-ass booknerds. Sigh.

OMG, did you know that if you google "since you went away" grey's anatomy song my stupid blog is the first thing that comes up? Just in case my stupid blog didn't help you find your answer, intrepid googler from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, (sometimes I love Canada) the song's "What Can I Say" by Brandi Carlile. You're welcome! Wee!

You can literally register to vote while you're pooping

2008-10-03T16:05:00.006-04:00

HollywoodDeclaresThemselves
by declareyourself

Look, I could register to vote on November 4 if I had to, because New Hampshire is crazy, but apparently, the rest of the states in this fine nation have deadlines. So hop to. Register. Vote. This country is a disaster, and the only way we have to fix it is voting. So let's go. Let's make some god damn changes.

There is one thing I hate more than Republicans: outright apathy toward our country's, toward the world's future.

Also, Sarah Silverman made me laugh, like, three times in this video, so I had to post it, since I'm pretty sure the three people who read this are all set for November 4. Also, is Tobey Maguire's head too big for his body or what?

Not as good as Fenway, but I'll take it

2008-10-01T18:11:00.000-04:00

Oh, internet! I finally got to see a Blue Jays game! Their last home game of the season, in fact! I have impeccable timing, and I decided to show up in Toronto on the exact day the Blue Jays were finishing their season. So I insisted that Allison take me to the Rogers Centre, and she was very obliging, and she didn't even yell at me when I got up to get the beer and then realized I'd spent more of my Canadian Monopoly money than I'd realized because of course I bought a super sweet hat with the old Jays logo on it as soon as we entered the dome. (It's so weird to watch a baseball game in a dome, by the way. Even with the roof open, it feels like you're inside--in fact, what it reminded me of was the University of Syracuse's gym where I got to see two games of the men's NCAA tournament a million years ago.) But it was so fun--I sure do love watchin' a baseball game in real life. And now I've been to one tenth of all the Major League Baseball stadiums!

Even better? The Jays totally murdalized the Yankees. Suck it, Yankees.

Emily Saliers

2008-09-30T22:52:00.002-04:00

And now we're talking about a difficult thing
and your eyes are getting wet
but I took us for better
and I took us for worse
and don't you ever forget it

Equal parts horrifying and hilarious

2008-09-30T18:00:00.000-04:00

"Blair is wearing a cape, with a little black velvet twist at the throat, and looks more than ever like the headmistress of a shady Home for Victorian Waifs where they beat you with sticks for taking off your clothes to bathe, and sell you to a fat man when you turn fifteen. Tell me you don't think that's an ideal job for Blair Waldorf." --Jacob, Television Without Pity

"Every morning, when Alaskans wake up, one of the first things they do, is look outside to see if there are any Russians hanging around. And if there are, you gotta go up to them and ask, 'What are you doing here?' and if they can't give you a good reason, it's our responsibility to say, you know, 'Shoo! Get back over there!'" --Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, Saturday Night Live

So much better than fetch

2008-09-26T08:51:00.001-04:00

Sarah Warn is a genius:

"I think the name 'Tina Fey' should become shorthand for smart, feminist, lesbian-inclusive behavior. As in, 'Donating money to fight Prop. 8 is so Tina Fey.'

"It could even be used in reverse — as in, 'Voting for Sarah Palin is so not Tina Fey.'"

Is it too late to move to California?