So, I Saw SCOTT PILGRIM

Even though I didn’t really want to.  Jill was out of town, and I figured it would be nice to take her kid to see it, since he thinks random references to video games are just always fucking hysterical.

And…

I found it quite charming, actually.  It had more real things to say about young love than 500 Days of Go Fuck Yourself, and Michael Cera really surprised with his performance.  It was quite decidedly un-Cera-like.  There are a lot of laughs, and the comic-book sound-effects and video game shit isn’t at all as irritating or as prevalent as the trailers have suggested.  In fact, a case can be made for the crazier shit happening in Scott Pilgrim’s imagination as he learns to grow up and emotionally deal with Ramona Flowers and her intimidating sexual history.

That’s the way I choose to interpret it, anyway.

It’s a good movie; it deserves to do better.  I overcame my skepticism.  Give it a shot.

This Conversation Just Happened

Me:  Should I just triple the recommended water and milk for these three packages of pasta?  I’m afraid it’ll come out soupy.

Jill: It’s fine, but if you’re concerned, just do like two-and-a-half times.  We can always add more milk later.

Jill’s Son (nodding sagely):Yep.  It’s called a “chemical reaction”, scientifically speaking.

Me: What?

Jill’s Son: I mean, a chemical process…if two things make something physical, they can be broken down into their respective parts.

Me: What the HELL are you talking about?  I’m just trying to figure out how much milk and water to use on this pasta!

——-

The perils of a 14-year old who occasionally pays attention in class.

No Miracle for You

CNN has some quotes from the survivors of the Colombian flight that broke up on the runway and left 120 people with injuries and one dead.

Here’s one of them: “It’s a miracle from God. Thanks to God we are all alive.”

Okay, I guess it’s your right to feel the hand of God in a time like this, but one about the one person who DIED?  I guess God just didn’t feel like “miracling” him, huh?  He saved everybody else, but just couldn’t be arsed to throw one extra miracle out there, I suppose.

I hate the way the word “miracle” is thrown around.  I mean, frankly, I don’t believe in them, but this has nothing to do with my personal atheism.  It has to do with self-absorption.  Whenever somebody claims a “miracle” in a situation like this, they’re really saying, “God saved ME.  I’M SPECIAL.  It’s a MIRACLE THAT I’M ALIVE.”

Anybody else who may have been killed, or had a loved one killed, or may have been crippled, in the same event?  I guess they just weren’t worthy enough.  Or maybe it’s all just part of GOD’S PLAN, right?

I guess it’s a tragedy when somebody else is killed in a hurricane, but it’s a MIRACLE when YOU survive a tornado.

Just another one of the many little reasons that religious faith makes absolutely no sense to me.

In Style

One of the ways that human beings distinguish ourselves is by the way we present ourselves to the world.  Our own “personal style”, which is a bit of a misnomer, because almost any “unique” style is actually cribbed from somebody else.  It’s the easiest visual shorthand, a quick way to show people what you’re all about by mimicking the look of somebody who is famous for being into the same thing.

But what happens when you are just all fucking confused as to who that person is?

For instance, what if you can’t tell if your personal style icon is Tom Petty:

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Or Freddy Krueger?

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Perhaps you are one of those confused individuals who can’t decide if he wants to emulate Shaquille O’neal:

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Or R.J. MacReady:

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What DO you do then, hotshot?  I guess you could just cobble together disparate elements from both of your heroes into one compellingly baffling outfit, if you were a crazy person.  You could then actually appear, in real, live Technicolor, on the streets of Salt Lake City, USA, potentially causing Kevin to either crash his car or barf up his Burger King breakfast.

Nice try, guys, but I hate you.

Our English Is Advanced

I was at Burger King today, and they have a sign promoting Icees, and it reads: “BE CHILL.  COOL IT WITH YOUR FAV FLAV.”

It made me think a bit, because, I mean: wow, this counts as communication in today’s world.  If a time-traveller from 200 years ago was plunked down in the middle of a busy metropolis today, his greatest difficulty wouldn’t be in navigating the new technology, or understanding our modern laws; no, it would be just trying to figure out what the hell everybody is saying.

I mean, check out the text of that sign again.  Try to figure out what any of it means once you decontexualize it from its “coolspeak”.  IT.  DOESN’T.  MEAN.  ANYTHING.  Yet, still, we understand it, because we have all of the cultural experience of the past whatever years of slang and ad-speak to fall back on.  We can understand the craziest jargon instinctively, even though the words literally mean nothing.  I mean, for fuck’s sake, “chill” is technically a NOUN.

So that’s what I was thinking about while eating my food at Burger King today.

——-

EDIT: Okay, yes, “chill” is also a verb.  However, it’s only been a little while since we’ve been using it as an adjective.

The Adventures of Stake-Out Detective Vol. 3

From the stake-out recordings of Phillip G. Brickbeef, private investigator:

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10:12 pm, overlooking the city.

Moon!

O, moon!  Fulsome with rapturous intrigue, your siren’s pull urges me on to ever more dizzying heights!  Heights of madness!

Held in your sway, I can only bathe in your silvery light.  I bay at you.  I pray at you!  Moon, you cast the world in a pallor of the fantastic.  What is your ambition?  What is your desire?  Your potential is for either harm or love, but both with equal passion!  You are full with the ripeness of my loins, youthful, yet ancient, you see all.

O, moon!  You are my supernatural mistress.  How I long to shed this skin and run wild as the beast, showering in your reflected light.

I howl at you, and I chase but you remain forever elusive.

My prey; my lover.

Ahem.

Anyway, that’s some poem my kid wrote in his high-school creative writing class, and I can’t tell if it’s a pile of crap or not, but I’m pretty sure that he might be sort of half queer.

And that’s fine.

But…I mean: that wasn’t a good poem, was it?  I’m not even talking about how it didn’t rhyme, because Dolores says that poems don’t rhyme any more.  She’s a doll, and she means well, but look: I’m the kid’s father, and I’m saying it: He ain’t a poet.  He might be gay, but he certainly ain’t a poet.

Anyway, I’m up here on makeout point or whatever, and I’m supposed to be waiting for a clandestine meeting, and I’m so bored that I’m reading my kid’s homework.  The teacher gave him a C plus.  I don’t think that’s an enthusiastic grade, do you?  Who am I even talking to?  Who’s gonna listen to this?

Maybe I should start reciting my own poetry into this thing.

Hickory dickory dock
I wish Dolores would suck my cock.

We’ve been dating for four months, now, and she won’t even throw me a blowjob sometime?  She came along on a stake-out the other night, and we ate our sandwiches and everything, and there was nothing to do except watch Joe Spillgroove’s apartment, and the least she could have done was help pass the time with something more than a little groping.

*sigh*

I’m an old man, but I ain’t that old!

Jesus.  I got a girlfriend that won’t give it up, and a kid that writes lousy poetry about the moon.  The water bill is due, and if I don’t snap a pic of this client’s wife getting railed by somebody soon, I don’t know when my next shower will be.

I just had to go and drop out of college.  I could be sitting here writing poetry about heavenly bodies, not waiting to photograph a coupla pathetic middle-aged fornicators.

Shit.  The moon.  Yeah, right.  Fuck you, moon.  Whatta you lookin’ at?

—click—