i just spent an hour at work reading this guy’s page which just ascribes sort of inscrutable letter grades to the flags of every country in the world. this is an important website although i wish he would have incorporated more fake science to explain the letter grades. i almost peed myself when i saw the “makes me nauseous” iconograph. i spent a lot of time when i was a kid doing the same shit. this guy comes down hard on countries with weapons on their flags. i don’t know how i feel about that.
Titles for songs i would write if i knew how to:
1. “Hot Girl on Crutches”
2. “Indian(-American) Hipster”
3. “Horse Face Indie Rock Person”
Does anybody know what I mean, how sometimes things appear in your head and it seems like a good title for a very stupid pop song that would have three verses and no chorus and just describe the situation presented in the title?
Cinema notes
Spartan: i am not here to judge: i merely re-present the following scenarios as they were presented to me by David Mamet with a minimum (sort of) of editorializing. you may not want to read this if you give a shit about enjoying the movie Spartan. i doubt this applies to you
scenario one:
Val kilmer riding in a car with the all-purpose ethnic guy who played the iraqi soldier who tortures the fuck out of marky mark in Three Kings (and also played the algerian nolty sidekick in The Good Thief). Saïd Taghmaoui (ethnic guy) is some kind of arabian dude who has been sprung from police escort (he has something to do with white slavery) semi-inadvertantly by val kilmer at what appears to be a roadside mom and pop diner somewhere in the american south, which is never totally cleared up. but they’re driving away from the diner now when this happens:
(this is all loosely paraphrased)
Saïd: help me flee the country and i’ll arrange things so that you, val kilmer, have many hookers.
kilmer: what about tonight. i require hookers tonight.
Saïd: i can work something out kilmer?
kilmer: (actual quote) Then I would call you a stone cold whoremaster.
then they drive to a convenience store and Paolo/torture guy/Said Tatooine is gunned down after almost killing Antwone Fisher with a bazooka or something. antwone fisher goes on to get shot in the head unexpectedly by a guy from an offshore fishing boat who is never identified or explained and then several other people play brief but pivotal roles and are then gunned down by people who appear to be working under the auspices of Ed Bundy who is some guy who works for some sort of high government official who is never identified as the president but is clearly supposed to be the president and his daughter got kidnapped and that’s what the whole problem is, at least for val kilmer, who apparently hates white slavery a LOT.
scenario two: Val kilmer is now posing as a tourist and then double-posing as a secret service agent in the presence of many other secret service agents who are attending to the wife of the high government official who has entered into some kind of grief rehab-scenario after the fake death of the daughter who was kidnapped, (whose english professor drowned with a naked girl at the same time as her being kidnapped). anyway an alarm goes off in the rehab place and the first lady stand-in is rushed to safety and val kilmer assures an onlooker that he is secret service and nothing is wrong. the onlooker then pulls a gun on kilmer and informs him that she IS secret service. then:
val kilmer: i just want to show you something (holds out plastic case with daughters earring in it)
secret service lady: “ten minutes to bomb squad so if its happy birthday do it now” (what the hell does that mean?)
then kilmer says the daughter is alive and the secret service agents breaks down crying because she was the one who raised the president’s daughter and no one cares, they’re going to let her die. she then gets out the case that the earring came in (she just happened to be carrying it) which also contained a strip of photo-booth pictures of younger secret service woman with the daughter, which is of course incontrivertible evidence that you have raised the child in the pictures. and then 30 seconds later val kilmer is in another country swearing at people.
also, this movie makes repeated use of tracking devices hidden in peoples stuff that reveals their location to the bad guys. i think we’re better than all that. despite my compaints, i did not get that bored and i think this movie was borderline hilarious at points, and i think david mamet wanted things that way? but yeah, don’t even bother paying attention to the plot.
My back hurts and my nobe is runbing agaib. Now, I have carefully examined the situation and what I have come up with is that this is dog dirt and I would like to take a nap in the near future. Unfortunately for you, I have to be at work from now until my untimely death sometime in the year 2095 in a flying train accident. People who made my list of things to do today:
Corner Bakery. I am into the abstract idea of corner bakery but i have some suggestions (or just cussing). one of the guys from work has claim that he once worked at the corney bakery (deeply plausible) and one day he rang up a bread bowl soup for Uma Thurman. I enjoy such celebrity-soup-purchasing anecdotes. Just the same, Corner bakery franchise, your process is TVed. Get some waiters or something.
look at this.
i love this country. don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. in more tangible news: i cleaned the house today. you are welcome to come see the destruction i visited upon the dirt community at 2237 n. kedzie. i dont have much else to say, i just wanted to make everyone aware that talking on an unprotected cell phone is like having a microwave strapped to your head. and plugged in and running. it would be fine to have a microwave strapped to your head so long as you didn’t use the microwave. but it would probably be bad for your back and neck situation.
and: You and Ellis Burks can view each other’s pages and each other’s friends.
this is/appears to be a dog dressed up like an old-timey motorist. i don’t have time to explain this to you. i saw the eternal sunshine movie. i dont have an especially weighty opinion to break you face with.
some general points of interest, compiled without the help of the internet from saturday afternoon until 30 minutes ago when i called comcast and made them give the internet back.
1. i remember why i don’t like going to concerts. the main reason is that people insist on talking. now, i understand and sympathize to a certain extent in that i also enjoy talking and will want to find out what that song was, or to make humorous observations such as “that girl is hot” or “can you smell that”. but why would you stand through a 3 hour concert only to talk loudly during the encore. some people might few this kind of behavior as rude to everyone who wants to hear the guy sing and not hear you talk. well, fine, that’s politeness for you, but i have hate for more complicated reasons. why would you pay money to get into a specific room at a specific time to listen to a guy do something only to then insist on talking while hes doing it, even though the loud nature of the thing makes it so that you can’t really talk all that efficiently. why not just stay at home and listen to the record while talking over it? the secondary reasons for not liking concerts are that it is hot and smelly and i hate people.
but i did get to do some people-watching, and i have the following information to report:
girls wearing legwarmers, whatever. guys wearing legwarmers, YES.
follow-up question: Is there an indie rock barber for guys out there? Is there some guy with rusty scissors and a 3 legged stool who will give you indie rock haircuts? there must be some webpage that posts international standards of bad haircut. like, leave the bit on the temples weirdly long and then don’t comb it and sort of rumple it a bit, and give yourself retarded square bangs that are much longer than the rest of the top. or do you go the barber and say “ok, i need a sort of greasy, limp shock of hair to sort of drape over my forehead and then totally incongrous oldtimey sideburns that make me look like a grange member from 1905, and i know you’r a barber but can you teach me how to act like i’m not trying very hard.” seriously, do barbers do this? or do all these guys get girl haircuts? or do they do it themselves?
also, how do you tell when the shirt goes past “indie rock looking like a fake cowboy shirt” to “actually cowboy shirt”? is there a printable rubric?
just the same, when does one of those old navy sweaters become too complicated for your average straight-looking jock/normal guy/casual potsmoker and become the ideological property of a slightly preppy gay dude? three stripes? four colors? shoulder stripes?
bonus notes: the brewers went 37 innings without scoring IN SPRING TRAINING.
acquired for free: teen-aged girl looking GSM phone
not acquired for free: roll of vitamin c pills i just ate all of it.
also not free: tacos i ate
so i watched a bunch of the audio commentary on the mr show season 3 dvd. i dont understand why someone bothered to book even the shittiest means of recording nine guys talking to get that on tape. and that’s why its great. because it’s really, really bad. also, i thought i was having some kind of moment of clarity while waiting for the fullerton bus but tne entirety of what came out of my brain was some mumbling and then i freaked out because somebody else came to wait at the bus stop so i walked away to a different bus stop but then the bus came when i was in between stops and i didn’t make it and i had to wait for a new bus. but then everything is ok now because i selfmedicated by signing my life over to ATT wireless and I HAVE A DIGITAL PICTURE OF MY CAT IN THE SINK and it’s INSIDE MY TELEPHONE. living in dystopia, or the actual world as people insist on calling it, is beginning to make me unstable. i successfully made the switch from diet coke to gatorade in the past two weeks. either this is manifesting itself in the form of violent mood swings and unfocused paranoia and fear, or that is an unrelated set of phenomena. also, if anyone wants to send me a text message with a picture of their cat in their sink, i can respond in kind.
well i am quietly proud of the feedback on sunshine mind of the spotless e-return. maybe i’ll just go see it twice. we should go see it on: sunday. and whet’s right about the kate winslet.
people who tried to screw today with varying degrees of success:
1. 74 bus. you drove right past me at approximately 4542 mph despite the fact that i was standing at a labelled cta bus stop with my transit card in hand. the only response i could muster was the international white man in distress semaphore. try and guess what that is. answer below.
2. the mcdonalds in the weird pedestrian grotto in between wrigley building and sun-times fuhrerbunker. the history of my stomach by charles h. sims: so for breakfast at around 10:30 i had a delicious roast beef and horseradish-cheddar omelet and toast of my own provision. i left the house for sundries around 2 (then the bus got me) did some stuff and found myself needing to eat something afore work so i didnt get hunger rage and stab somebody. so i went and had a mcchicken sandwich. now, for some reason, having made it clear that i ate lunch at mcdonald’s today, i feel compelled to apologize and explain myself. not because mcdonalds is heinous or bad for you (none of your damn business what i eat scum) but because their new ad campaigns are dumb. guys playing basketball on roller blades. guys playing. basketball, on rolling blades. then there’s the one where the asian motorcycle lady clearly murders a nerd in an alley and steals his mcnuggets. i am rambling. anyway, i ate the O’Chicken and now i feel like dying or dead. thanks a fuckign lot $2.51 (i had a drink) i should have mailed you to the marx brothers.
3. at & t wireless and friends. i went to try and get a new cell phone for free because at&t mailed me this thing that said i could do that. but when i went to the cell phone place, it was very crowded and i could not get the assistance of customer representatives. and then there were scumbag people who obviously come into the cell phone store to make personal phone calls on the display models. this big fucked-up lady with orange hair wearing one of them colorful leather motorstupid jackets that has incongruous words written on it came it and conducted the following conversation using the samsung vx3458324 i had just looked at.
this is roughly what happened. she’s clearly leaving a voice message for someone, having conducted a few other short phone calls. to prime yourself for this, think of the scene in boogie nights where john c reilly and mark wahlberg are getting kicked out of the recording studio for not paying and unleash a torrent of invective in the manner of a spurned 12 year old who has drank too much soda. with no further ado, paraphrased in screenplay format:
fucked-up woman: “i just wanted you to know that everything that begins comes around to an end, girl. you have lied and hurt me and this is the end. there are things that will come around and they will go around. i’m calling to tell you girl that it is coming around to an end. (hissing) Fag!”
OK, what the fuck? i was literally two feet to the right of this woman. couldn’t she have gone to a less crowded cellular phone service outlet to make this important personal weird hate phone call?
answer to the bonus question: the international white man in distress semaphore looks roughly like this:
just imagine jesus in a blue hooded sweatshirt wearing business casual gear and saying “what the hell you doin!” a la the 13th floor cleaning lady from ghostbusters, except saying it at a speeding bus and not the guys who just blew up her shit, and also imagine that i am saying it and not jesus or a black lady.
so, i ride the train to work this afternoon and i notice that the three women sitting behind me are talking in extremely loud voice mode to each other. i notice this despite my wearing headphones and being on a noisy train and shit. i write it off, figuring they needed to talk very loud to hear themselves over the train and all that loud rock music. and then i realized that they couldnt hear the music, because i was listening to it on headphones. goddamn loud talking assholes. can you imagine how loud they were talking? people were wincing, wincing, at how loud these scums were talking. the hilarious part is that one of them WAS wearing headphones, and talking despite this. does everybody know about how there are some things you can’t do at the same time? partial list go:
1. talk and listen
note to BYU: instead of sending missionaries to impoverished countries to spread the joy of mormology, why dont you: send me five of them mormon-dollars for tricking me into picking you today. i got all arrogant and refused to pick manhattan because everyone was picking manhattan. end result: egg in my bitchface. fuck all of you. no one likes a follower. i can live knowing i did the right thing. more on that later by which i mean never.
reading and review material
1. why is the cork on the fork?
2. someone get me one of them schedule booklets so i can plan social engagements. that is all.
3. also, i downloaded some/all of that indie rock the children listen to. i have some immediate notes. that one broken social system scene cycle song, it’s gross. do they have to keep saying “lover’s spit”? hint, probably. i haven’t gotten to the other stuff and i probably wont. i can recommend the following documents of recorded sound:
the raincoats’ cover of “lola”: the small child inside me that still marvels at the trickery of “lola” was bowled the fuck over by the additional mindfuck of having a girl sing a song written by a guy thats about how this guy meets this girl who probably has a weener but is not onto it but the guy writing the song definitely knows about the weener. does that make sense. click yes and die.
“whiskey river” by willie nelson: anybody who was spying on me through the windows at around brunch time yesterday was spying on me while i danced my way through stages i through iii of making hummus. also responsible for making this man da-aa-aa-ance recently: “take me out” by franz ferdinand and the applebee’s re-working of “so happy together” by the turtles.
final question: will things ever reach a point where i can wear that one hooded sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped off to work? if so how i can speed this process up?
other final question: can we go see that charlie kaufman movie this weekend
more bonus footage: this sentence from an IHSA ruling regarding what has been described as a melee is great: “There is no way to predict or expect that a melee of this magnitude could occur.” well, duh, assholes. and, while we’re doing stuff, how about a big round of applause for me.
then, this sentence from my tax signature form: “For Paperwork Reduction Act Notice, See Separate Instructions.” didn’t the guy who typed that notice that it sounded like a joke?
bonus footage: http://www.chicago-pizza.com/. check it out. i dont usually buy the premise that engrish is funny, nor is this engrish but you know, the general sentiment that wacky asians struggling with shit (i.e. that guy from american idol or whatever) is more hilarious than say, an aboriginal australian struggling with an equivalent thing or me struggling with building a pagoda or some such shit. follow-up question, what’s the deal with the bendy roof wood? how do you do that?
anyway, my point of points is that chicago-pizza.com is all crazy looking, especially in mozilla, where the main flash thing just gives you the broken link picture, so it could be the craziest thing of them all and i would never even know it. ok, well, go find something else to do with yourself. also, the computer is cheating.
answer me this: so i got 200 new checks and now i will have checks until 2070, since i only write approximately 3 checks per month. 3 x 12 months = 36 and 200 / 36 equals actually not that much and then you have the checks i don’t know i’m going to write. but then these checks will have the wrong address on them by september of next year anyway and then what. then what. i also realize that the “answer me this” portion of this note did not contain a question that could be answered. well, i don’t know what to tell you. i took a nap and then i had soup and a sandwich. i’m concerned that we’re not really breaking any new ground here, so i am going to take a good long think about what my goals are. my plan for tomorrow is to scumbag an unnamed smell phone company into giving me a free phone in exchange for betraying a different unnamed cell phone company. also, what the fuck is with those parking meters that only let you put in one quarter at a time. it’s not like you can’t openly flaunt the 30 minutes at a time rule by putting it in 29 minutes later. because you can. but they have to be dicks about it. well, fuck them.
so there’s a cat hanging out outside the back door of our apartment. he seems nice. i gave him some food and water and let him hang out inside for a minute but wiry cat has strenuously voiced her disapproval of his presence so i think i might have to give him his outright release. if anybody wants a free, skinny, somewhat dirty male cat with factory stereo, proceed to the laundry-hacienda area of 2237 n kedzie. this is a pain in the ass. all i was trying to do was watch indiana jones in peace. update: john doe the cat wandered off.
also, i filled out a bracket. ICC regulations prevent me from bragging about how awesome my theoretical sweet sixteen is until everybody else is done. but i can say this: actually, i can’t say that. never mind. i will brag about this later.
