Monday, August 29, 2005

Every Word Is Like An Execution

I apologize to thee. Five days between proper posts, when I had said in the morning that I'd be back that same evening. Technical difficulties interfered, you see, by which I do not mean that a large man reached through the window and stole the computer, nor do I mean that someone poured gasoline in the hard-drive, nor even that I locked the computer into a vault with fifty thousand other computers and then forgot what it looked like, thus, sadly, losing it among the other stale technologies. What I'm saying is that the fuzzy headache developing Wednesday night/Thursday morning became a fifty-clawed bone-shredder by Thursday afternoon, and there were no survivors. But Sunday morning, le mal finally broke, and a shiny feeling of unsickness moved in on the new digs. Which is me, feeling better. So last night, a friend back in town, we went to see The Forty-Year Old Virgin, which is excellent, and has dancing ("Age Of Aquarius"!), and a perfectly-ended montage, and subtleness about popular culture, and lots of unsubtleness, too, and is entirely what Wedding Crashers (according to this review) lacks. I'm not alone here, people. The entire theatre was laughing, too. I haven't heard this much audience participation since Snobbbier-Than-Thou-Thursdays at the local Indie Theatre had to be cancelled due to management inadvertently buying old mainstream films and trying to palm them off as ironically cool cultural references. I mean, Hayley Mills? There will never be anything cool about The Parent Trap, and that's just one of the reasons I love it, so hands off, indie-hoppers!

A lot's happened, you know? I won $13,000 in this one contest to find the buried treasure. The treasure was all these loonies crammed in clear plastic egg-cartons. My elderly Mexican friend and I went back through the old folks' home and tried to pick up the bonus prize, because it was worth a million dollars, but then I couldn't find enough information about the bonus, and we got antsy about leaving the $13,000 so we went back to the woods and waited for nightfall to smuggle it away. Then I woke up. Listen, I NEVER have dreams. And since I never have dreams, I was like, "Thirteen thousand dollars? My share will put my car back on the road and pay off the last of university! Yeah!" Tricks like this are why reality and I haven't been on speaking terms in forever.

Reading: The backs of various bottles of aspirin, mostly. Also, Sudafed, Tylenol, etcetera. This is a very limited genre, folks. Character arc is flatter than a Disney cartoon. Plot development, ditto. I get it, this is a non-fiction genre, but come on! Shaping a narrative, anyone? Creating more than a captive audience? I haven't read any reviews for the latest bottle of Maalox, yet, but I imagine it would be more of the same. It's the publishing houses who I hold responsible. "Fast acting," some hack writes, and the editor lets it slip. "Pain relief", another amatuer burbles, and the publisher nods encouragingly. Listen, overextended flame-metaphors, shoddy anatomical diagramming, I'll put up with so much. But not this, not sloppy lies like these, outright misinformation. Like I said, I know it's not supposed to be a fictional genre. Has anyone told the authors?

Listening: About a year ago I began listening to The French Kicks. They were a good band. Why did I stop listening to them? Lack of peer pressure, really. That, and the only CD of theirs I can lay my hands on (which, btw, is a VERY good CD and very hands-on-able) costs twenty-five freakin dollars at the local store, and I'm tired of all that, okay? Poverty blows, but even more extreme versions of poverty blow even more extremely, especially when that extreme poverty is due to the EXTREMELY HIGH PRICE of a CD. I thought, when nobody wanted it, that the thing became cheaper. And that CD has been there for a very long time now, and I think it's actually getting more expensive. That's why I'm listening to the very cheap online blog 3Hive

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