- haven't really been on myspace much in the past few months, don't really plan on changing that. obviously haven't been doing as much writing lately either, not too happy about that. having an outlet helps. and facebook's notes aren't quite the same. or maybe i just haven't given them a chance. still, as useful as an outlet is, this could easily be my last post. or not. not cancelling until i get ownership rights and can transfer everything to a new home, but limbo is as good a place as any.

- a lot of news lately about gay rights advocates b*tching at obama for not acting fast enough. i'm not saying these are bad people, but i am saying they need to shut the f**k up. let's look at the practical reality- not only have the blues finally managed to elect someone with a brain, but they've also managed to elect any number of legislators over the years who are completely incompetent. the president's not the problem- the fact that they've elected idiots is the problem.
- i've heard the clip running several times of the stupid woman saying that it's like they're being put back in the closet. which is very catchy, and ironically very similar to the response from the religious right whenever a republican doesn't bend over to lick their boots. but looking at the choice of words, no one is forcing anyone to hide, and if the closet door is so significant a landmark, then imagine how powerful that crowd would be if they stopped hiding behind it. yeah, that's right- i said hiding. don't make the president or any other politician responsible for your future and your life. don't hide behind politics. if every single gay person in the military suddenly spoke up and the armed forces suddenly had to do without, how long do you think "don't ask" would stay in effect? it's not enough to vote for change, you idiots- you have to make change. either you own the world or the world owns you. if you choose to be owned, you deal with the consequences. you can choose to be the windshield or you can choose to be the bug, and standing in front of a mic and whining is choosing to be the bug.
- i'm no obama fan, but i'm not a sycophant either. if he jumps all over gay rights now, then the right goes nuts, billions of dollars get poured into the rnc, and suddenly the useless congressional majority becomes a useless congressional minority. and how useful would that be? let the guy spend a couple years doing stupid useless sh*t like trying to save the lives of american troops and trying to keep americans from giving their life's savings to blue shield. once that petty crap is done and the midterms are over and the party is rewarded for finally getting its head out of its *ss, then it makes sense to get into it. besides, if you've been hiding behind politicians for your entire life, what's another year?

- i get so f**king sick of people shouting "what about me?"

- some guy was sharing some observations with me today. listened to what he was saying, took in the part that was accurate and made sense, and disregarded the parts that didn't. i acknowledged what he'd said, and he stood there waiting for a reaction. nope, doesn't work that way. can wait as long as you like, you're never going to get that reaction. odds are, you're simply not worthy.
- i don't really do "friends". never have. and it's worked fine for me, so probably never will. oh, i have a couple friends that have access, but there's them and then there's everyone else. acquaintances. faces. people i've come across, either at school or at work or wherever. people i speak to, but with whom i would never in a million years open myself up to. say what's on your mind, i'll say what's on my mind, and that's that. you want more, get yourself a puppy. me, i was never good at sharing.

- bob the former roommate came by the other day while i was out walking. he appears to have survived his bout with alcoholism. after wondering if he would survive thru '08, over the past few months he's lost 70 pounds. i'm assuming there was some form of surgical intervention.

- logging into myspace, it turns out my ex is someone i might know. huh. imagine that.

- one of my staff has made two pretty colossal errors over the course of the past week. i feel pretty bad for her, but i can't sympathize too equally 'cuz i've never screwed up as badly as either of her two mistakes. still, sh*t happens. curious to see how well she pulls it together.

- picked up guitar hero 5 today, that may wind up being the extent of my discretionary spending for the next few months. kinda looking forward to my free copy of van halen, too. not because i'm a big fan of van halen, but, you know, free game. wooo.

- if you're ever looking for something interesting, check out any search engine and look for 'wtf'. there's bound to be something good. youtube brought up a vid of the angriest cat ever, and the sidebar was filled with kitten videos. watched a couple, none were particularly impressive. but some of the things had gotten millions of views. i sh*t you not, millions. people eat that stuff up for some reason. makes no sense. i almost want to go back to every vid i've posted and add a kittens tag just to see what happens.

- kittens, kittens, kittens, kittens, kittens, kittens.

- went to the dentist today. for the first time in maybe 12 years.

- i'll be going back.

- so, there's work to be done. several cavities, a root canal, and a crown. not quite as bad as i was expecting. that's right, i knew there was trouble. i've known it for a very long time. yet still it's been a dozen years since i've been.

- for several years i simply didn't have coverage and couldn't afford it. my mom would have covered, but who the hell wants to depend on their mom for every little thing? she had already saved me from enough disasters. then once the job finally ponied up and i had coverage, i still didn't go. but that was only because i was a wuss. wasn't afraid of the drill or anything, but i didn't want to face the fact that i hadn't taken care of them as well as i should have.

- but you've gotta go sometime, right? thinking my finances would allow for a little flexibility before year's end (boy, that turned out to be wrong), i went ahead and made the appointment, then started dreading it the moment i hung up the phone.

- going in this morning, the very worst part was over inside of the first 30 seconds. actually opening up and having someone take a look inside. that's what i'd been bugging about all along. i know there's a few problems in there, i know what a poor job i'd done, but now that fact was made real by someone with professional training. yay...

- sitting in the chair, the assistant started having a look at the bottom. "well, it's not as bad as you describe." "yeah, wait til you see the top." she looks at the top. "oh. eeuh." she was very cool through the xrays and the cleaning, assuming i was in some tremendous discomfort or pain, which wasn't the case at all. which perhaps is part of the problem. my teeth don't hurt at all. never have. a problem develops and i can see it, but can't feel a thing. if things had begun to hurt, that would have been much better, as it would have driven me into the chair years ago.

- the cleaning wraps up and the dentist comes in to have a look at the xrays and the actual teeth. she asks me if there's any pain, and i tell her no. "wow...you're really lucky. i mean, really lucky- that should hurt." she runs down the whole list. five fillings, one root canal and crown.

- then comes the other part i've been dreading, the cost side of things. my coverage has limits, and i have limits in what i can cover beyond that. i'm anticipating having to live with some of it at least until my coverage rolls over at the start of next year. the picture brightens a bit there, however. she acknowledged that the coverage wouldn't handle the entire cost, but that they try to discount the remaining so that lab costs are all they try to forward to patients. but we'll see. she offered to begin work on some of the fillings, but i declined. i want to see the authorization from the insurer first before i make that appointment. don't want to okay anything without first knowing exactly what the cost to me will be, last thing i need is for work to be done then be surprised with a massive bill a couple weeks down the line.

- so that's where things are at. the drilling is a few weeks away, but the worst is over with. time for lunch- i'm thinking cotton candy and jolt cola.

- it starts in some medical care facility, and i'm with benicio del toro, who's been diagnosed with an incurable fatal disease. he doesn't seem to be dying, more under the weather than anything else, and depressed about his eventual end. the phone rings, and it's his doctor. because things don't seem so bad so far, we're hoping for good news. the doctor explains that they've been doing all sorts of tests (a little hope), and based on everything they've found so far (a little more hope), benicio del toro's liver should fail within the hour and he'll be dead (oh, well).

- as del toro's condition now begins to rapidly deteriorate, it turns out that he's been an old friend of the family, and the place starts to fill up with aunts, uncles, and theatre people from over the years. 'cuz he was an actor, y'know? anyway, scores of people gather to pay their respects as benicio del toro begins to waste away, eventually shriveling up into some mick-jagger-looking caricature (all skin and bone and lips) and dying.

- as the crowds begin to disperse and people form small groups to share anecdotes and farewells, i'm walking and talking to two guys i don't know, and ben. the scene changes, and the four of us step into a rocky cave. from another passage crawls this guy, beat up and covered in muck, gore, and shreds of human flesh. it's apparently become a sequence from creepshow. the guy pulls himself to a corner of the hall and vomits all over the place before looking back up at us. he looks terrified and announces, "it's mini evil dude!"

- the four of us look down and see tracks of tiny bloody footprints, we hear the pitter-patter of tiny steps and an evil little cackling laugh. we take off running, because the chase is on and this time we're the prey. the scene has fully transformed into some james-bond-archvillian underground lair, and we pass through room after room that's been cut into the rock, making our way up open-cage freight elevators trying to get to the surface. that pitter-patter and evil cackle remain always one step behind.

- we reach a platform that overlooks a chasm, on the other side of which is the exit we've been looking for. the ceiling is cris-crossed with pipes we can use to monkey-bar our way across, but they're too far away to leap to, and we appear to be stuck. moving a bit further down the platform, the same pipes remain overhead, but this time they're within reach, as there's an array of tabletops spaced out between us and the pipes.

- someone shouts that we can get to the pipes by jumping onto and then from the tables, which are now occupied by parties of women and children as if it were some form of food court. they hear us shouting that we're going to stomp their tables, and start screaming and backing away from their seats. i look down and tell the other three, "wait, we don't need the tables, we can use the floor!" as a floor has appeared under the tables from the chasm below. we take off running, and the women return to their meals on the un-stomped tables.

- we reach the exit doors up ahead, and pass from the undergound lair into the exterior of the most posh funeral home anywhere. open vistas of the ocean on all sides, marble flooring and columns everywhere. there are armed guards running towards us, shooting machine guns in our direction for the disturbance we've caused. we make a break for it, firing back at the guards with our bare hands (pointing and shouting "bang, bang!") as the guards drop to the ground fatally wounded. we come to the outskirts of the space, and freedom is just a short swim through the ocean away. before diving in, i look around and see someone is missing. i ask the two guys whose names i still don't know, "wait, what happened to ben?"

- one of the guys suddenly starts sobbing. "i don't think he made it, man- i think the mini evil dude got him!"

- then the scene cuts to a shot of a cave wall with a hole cut into the face of the rock. just as the camera starts to pan backward, ben's face becomes visible through the hole. as the scene fades to black, you hear that pitter-patter little footstep sound and and anguished cry of "nooooo!" coming from behind the rock wall.

- fade out, end.


- and i swear, i went to bed sober last night.

- the fuss over obama addressing classrooms is pretty absurd. there's the irony angle, with previous republican presidents having done it without inspiring a constitutional crisis. then there's the wingnut angle, watching the circus animals lather themselves into a frenzy.

- i can't really hold it against the reds, though. i mean, sure they're being irrational and jumping at shadows, but at the same time they're just trying to do the right thing. look what happened last time their own guy got directly involved in the classroom- thousands of people died.

- and who wants to see that again?

- congratulations, that makes you an idiot. belief is a powerful thing, that defines much of any individual. belief that drives support or opposition to a cause can change the world. opposition to a suffix is nothing less than stupid. it's like boycotting the number 5. you simply can't do it, and you sound like a self-righteous posturing tool for saying it.
 
- against racism? fascism? capitalism? communism? socialism? cannibalism? awesome, good for you. open to all points of view? sorry- not that easy, since you're also opposed to pluralism, intellectualism, and rationalism. not gonna have a whole lot of fun in your life, what with being against eroticism and hedonism, much less autoeroticism. not much for conversation with neither optimism, pessimism, nor any witticisms to make up the difference. how do those hippie principles of yours hold up without pacifism, and if you deny your hippie roots, how are you gonna hold down a job without professionalism? what's worth believing in outside of the realms of cynicism, pragmatism, or idealism? (and don't just say that you're freakishly unique that way, since individualism has been ruled out too.) oh and by the way, without that metabolism of yours, you'd be dead.
 
- which might not be such a bad thing, since there'd be no risk of you turning to zombiism.
 
- and because you're an idiot. there's more than enough of those already.

- yup, whoopty-f**kin'-doo.

- don't know if it's all the smoke and ash i've been breathing for the past week, but my nose is going absolutely nuts. recently added a headache to its repertoire.

- was up early this morning, squandered far too much of my paycheck on bills. normally i'd be back asleep by now, but i've gotta eat something to wash the painkillers down with. pizza rolls and a blueberry turnover. the one good thing about being almost broke is the opportunity to spend a couple weeks eating through stuff that's otherwise just been collecting in the pantry.

- i've been taking a bunch of pictures of the station fire from my back yard, put a few up here. thought there were pretty good, then i saw this guy's stuff. the dude's a firefighter, so he's right in the middle of it. totally unfair.

- well, fook.

- the back yard reeks of ash.

- the forest out back is on fire, and it's all my fault. well, in a manner of speaking. see, god's got crummy aim. for the past few years, doesn't matter where i've worked or where i've lived, i've been driving home towards ground zero.

- from century and santa anita, i'd drive home towards the fires above chatsworth. from paseo and glendale, i'd drive home towards the fires in sylmar. and now i'm driving home towrds the angeles nat'l forest. the almighty needs to adjust his sight, he's consistently off by a zip code or two.

- the fire and brimstone thing seems to keep hitting more sorry sinners than i, but i'm stuck with having to replace my engine's air filter over and over. perhaps the supreme being is getting kickbacks from fram.

- or, "excuse me lady, but the entire theatre can see your phone. turn it off."

- i've heard it descibed as tarantino's best, but i would still give the crown to pulp fiction. that one was far more clever with the interwoven story lines, use of chapters, and jumping back and forth through time. if basterds had christopher walken pulling a watch out of his *ss, we could talk. but he doesn't, so let's not make too much of a big deal out of this.

- that said, i really liked it. it wasn't perfect. the tarantino extended conversations felt more shoehorned in than natural expression. the stiglitz introduction happened a little too far in, after the style had been set up as more traditional in nature. still, brad pitt was awesome (it's fun to watch him have fun with a role), and there were some crucial set pieces that happened inside a booth!

- i love it when the projection booth is brought into the film. it's probably like how albinos feel when they see an albino in a movie. 'dude, look- it's an albino! how cool is that!' and even better, the projectionists were mass killers! and not like the zodiac projectionist where it was just hinted that the guy could be the psycho, but like hardcore let's-slaughter-these-three-hundred-fascists! ain't nothin' wrong with that, mm hmm.

- but the austin powers thing was just stupid.



- oh, and for any of you who never really understood the concept of geometry, when you're sitting at the bottom of a stadium theatre, every row behind you can see you. every row behind you can see your phone flip on. every row behind you can see you fiddling with your phone with no sense of passing time or how much of the movie you're ruining. and when some dude you've never seen before asks you to turn your f**king phone off and doesn't dump a drink in your lap, you should consider yourself lucky.
- seriously- i get a hard time for smuggling a burger in with me that's gonna be done before the show even starts. this mindless fool was probably allowed to stroll right in, and she screwed up a good chunk of the 5th reel. let's try to show a little perspective, shall we?

- so i'm sitting there as the movie's starting, happy 'cuz the show's about sold out and i've got an empty seat next to me. awesome. i hate other people. then just as the show's starting, some dude comes in and takes the seat. dick. but at least he turns his phone off, so hopefully it won't be too bad.
- watching the movie, maybe halfway in, this fool whips out a blackberry and starts checking his messages. and it's not like some teenager with attention deficit disorder, the guy's like 40-something. so i've got this old guy with some fundamental breakage in his brain next to me, who knows to turn off his cell, but can't keep off the blackberry.
- and it goes on and on and on, this guy checking his messages, putting it down for a couple minutes, checking again, putting it down again, and checking it again. so now i'm stuck with no choice but to break my cardinal rule of acknowledging the existence of the lesser folk, and i tell the *sshole that his messages are really distracting.

- and he apologizes and puts it away, which makes him an even bigger *sshole. it's not like he defended it at all, or even acted surprised. so he knew he was being a dick for doing it, and did it anyway. wtf people?!? i don't (not) pay good money to see a show just to be bothered by your mother's inability to teach you manners! i don't come into your office and play movies on the wall! learn a little f**king self control!




- the movie was okay. a little slow to get going, but some funny moments. weird ending.

- got a new roommate as of this month. one of the rooms that had been vacant for a few months has finally been occupied. some lady, i've met her a couple times. she seems okay. keeps some strange hours, as if i'm one to talk. i woke up at two this afternoon, and i'll likely be turning in just as she's getting up.

- she seems to be up for contributing, which is cool. restocked the toilet paper before the old stuff was out, nice touch. only it was that crappy half-ply scott tissue junk. i didn't know anyone outside of the prison system actually used that stuff.

- having another female roommate got me to thinking how unfair the world has become. and all because i've been conditioned to be the victim. sure, i put the toilet seat down every time. it's only polite, right? but i do that even when there's no women living here- it's inside my head, man! and i never see a woman leaving the toilet seat up for me. what's up with that? and that's just the tip of the iceberg. opening doors, losing jackets to puddles and poor weather, dude- men have been bred to be the weaker sex! tell me- when was the last time you heard about some breast cancer march, and when have you ever heard about a colon cancer march? if i opened my pants after getting pulled over, i wouldn't get out of a ticket, i'd get arrested. and it's ten years into a new millennium, and i still can't hit a woman! what the hell? gloria allred can seriously f**k off.

- got an update on my wall just now, uk tour dates were announced for bad lieutenant. only i have no clue who bad lieutenant is. did some looking, turns out they're the group that the majority of new order members have morphed into, as new order is apparently now officially dead. which sucks. electronic, monaco, the other two, i was good with all of those because they were side gigs. it's what they were doing when they weren't new order. now this bad lieutenent thing has made their move to co-opt new order and force some kind of inheritance. which sucks.

- don't get me wrong, i get that it happens. new order rose from the death of joy division, only it wasn't the death of joy division, it was the death of ian curtis, and the remaining members wanted to move past that. but this isn't that. this is new order coming to an end and this new thing saying, 'hey, we're the new new order.' which sucks. not cool at all.

- so blue monday is dead, long live blue monday. f**kers.

- for a good 15 years, they were a staple of my collection, along with the pet shop boys. but i'm not so big on them lately either. they've gotten old, not as fun as they used to be. too thoughtful. bleh. i picked up their last album a few weeks ago, still haven't listened to it. mostly got it out of momentum 'cuz i've got everything else. their early stuff, loved every note. their previous album, i only liked three tracks. not a good trend.

- after half my life, two of the headliners are pretty much history. is this the point where i become my dad and stick with the stuff i like when i was a kid? i hope not. good thing for interpol and the killers.

- the kid started third grade on monday, i picked her up from school today and took her out to dinner. she had a fix for in and out, i did not.

- during the 4 years that i worked at the 6 in burbank, i got tired of in and out very quickly, but never got tired of baja fresh. loved that place. baja shrimp tacos or a steak baja burrito, i was good. so today i picked up some baja for me, and the kid had in and out. the birds had chunks of french fries that we threw at them.

- don't know how the kid's food turned out, but mine was total crap. very disappointing. baja shrimp tacos aren't even on the menu anymore, the carnitas tacos that i go were pretty weak. as far as the burrito was concerned, the steak was overcooked gristle, the quacamole more more plain avocado than quacamole, and it was drowning in too much pico de gallo. half my food went right in the trash. it's a good thing i don't work there anymore, i'd starve.

- well, there's always hooters, so maybe not.

- dinner with the kid was nice. i never know when she's gonna be talkative or when she's gonna clam up, but she was chatty today. it's always reassuring when she is, i get nervous when she's silent that it's a function of the distant parent equation. but today was good, so that dark cloud remains off on the horizon.

- guys, if your girl is decked out in a slinky dress, nice shoes, her hair all done up, and you're in a tshirt, jeans, and sneakers, you're a f**king idiot and you don't deserve to see that dress come off.

- girls, if that's you in the dress next to the dirtbag, you're not a whole lot smarter, and you should seriously consider getting professional help for that low self-esteem thing you've got going on.

- what the hell is wrong with people? why has it become okay for so many guys to have so little class, and why do so many girls put up with it?