"Remember What I Said about People Seein' a Bright Light before They Die? It Ain't True. I Can't See a Damn Thing" Mortuary and Optometrist

There is a gun store in Salt Lake that seems to have a quite large advertising budget, since I have seen their billboards in a couple places.  It’s called Get Some Guns & Ammo, which is about as macho a name as a gun store can have without explicitly mentioning a penis.

Even though “Get some!” is not an exact quote from Bill Paxton’s legendary turn as Pvt. Hudson in Aliens, it’s close enough that I always think of Paxton when I see the billboard.  Which, of course, gets me thinking about other Paxton dialogue, and what sort of stores you could have based on those words.

  • “Ass Like a Ten-Year-Old Boy” Personal Fitness
  • “I Hate ‘Em When They Ain’t Been Shaved” Barber Shop
  • “Wash Day Tomorrow?  Nothing clean, right?” Laundromat

Hmm…on second thought, Bill Paxton is shit at naming businesses.

I'm Walkin', Oh Yes Indeed

Just because I’m living in a new place doesn’t mean that you won’t be regaled with awesome and hilarious(?) tales of my semi-daily walks to the grocery store: there’s one even closer to me here!

There is still snow on the ground, but luckily it’s starting to melt away, so it was easy to get to the store and load up a basket of goods, pay for it and then realize FUCK I LEFT MY DEBIT CARD ON THE BED AFTER PAYING MY CELL PHONE BILL.

So I walked back home, yelled at Stella for getting in the garbage, ate some taquitos, walked back to the store, filled up the basket with the same items all over again and happily paid for them.

End of story.  Wasn’t that thrilling?

——-

Aside: there is a shop in the same complex that houses the grocery store that is called “Player’s Bench: The Hockey Store”.  Two things:

  • I didn’t even think a “hockey store” was a possible thing, that one could even exist.
  • When did I move to Wisconsin?

My Roommate Has Never Seen STAR WARS

She says that she has “proudly” never seen it, because it’s so over-hyped.  How do you know it’s over-hyped if you’ve never seen it?

I mean, yeah, it is, but she doesn’t know that.  You have to see Star Wars.  You have to.  If you want to understand any pop culture from the last 30 years, you need to see fucking Star Wars.  Not because it’s a “great” movie (it’s really not…The Empire Strikes Back is, but that is a discussion for another time), because it’s an important movie.

She is also Star Trek ignorant, which is an even worse crime in my eyes.  “Wasn’t that a series on TV, too?” she asked.

NO, HEATHER, IT WAS FIVE DAMN SERIES ON TV.

I’m going to fix this.  I’m going to fix her.

OKAY, HEATHER?  I KNOW YOU READ MY BLOG.  I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU A BETTER PERSON.

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This piece of crap tabby-cat figurine is one of the most precious items that I own, and I adore it with Gollum-like intensity.  It has traveled with me from house to house since I was a child, except for a multi-year period in which it was missing and presumed lost or broken.  I remember often speaking fondly of this crappy little tabby-cat and being remorseful of the day that I accidentally broke it.  I was visiting my mother once and telling the tragic tale, when she walked upstairs, hunted for a bit, and brought down the very object.

It was nothing short of a miracle.  She might as well have been carrying the Holy Grail from the way I reacted.  It was as if somebody had said, “Hold on a second, I think I have your innocence and childlike wonder around here somewhere,” and then actually produced it.

Nobody understands my devotion to this cheap bit of Goodwill detritus, and I don’t really understand it either.  I just know that it was in my room when I was very young, I decided that I like it, and now I have to have it with me.  Don’t judge my tabby-cat, and I won’t judge the bullshit that you carry through your lives.  Deal?

New Digs

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Here are my new digs.  You may note that I have a bed in this room, and I slept on it with a vengeance last night.  That bed had never been slept in as hard as I slept in it.  This morning, things were sort of awkward between us as a result.  I hope it’s not feeling too sore about things, because I fully plan to sleep on it even harder tonight, possibly after masturbating in it.  Bed, your life has changed, so you’d better get used to it.

Nice Guys of Filmland #5-6

5. Theodore Donald ‘Donny’ Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi)—The Big Lebowski

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In a world of cynical con-men, sleazy pornographers and seedy private eyes, Donny is a welcome oasis of niceness and wide-eyed naivete.  Always a step or two behind the conversation, Donny doesn’t say much (an inside joke after Buscemi played motor-mouthed characters in previous films from the Coen Brothers), but he seems possessed of an almost Zen-like peace, possibly having something to do with the fact that he apparently loved surfing, something we all find out about only as his ashes are being dumped out of a coffee can.  It’s rather perverse of the Coens to kill off the nicest person in their movie, but that’s exactly the sort of shit these weirdos enjoy doing.

Nicest Moments: “Phone’s ringing, Dude.”  “Lebowski?  That’s your name, Dude!”  “I am the walrus.”

6. Captain/Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman)—Batman Begins/The Dark Knight

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Thank you to Christopher Nolan for finally giving us a James Gordon that is right.  After being played as a buffoon on television and the movies for years, we finally got a weary, kind, and decent man, and he’s played by Gary “EVVVVERYOOOOONE!” Oldman of all fucking people.  From the first moment you see him in Batman Begins, putting a jacket over young Bruce Wayne and assuring him that everything’s going to be okay, the decency radiates from him as intensely as the psychosis from Oldman’s showier characters.  Virtually the only good cop in a corrupt town and the first person to see Batman as an ally rather than a criminal, James Gordon is such a fundamentally good man that his “death” in The Dark Knight turned me against that otherwise excellent movie until it was eventually revealed as a hoax.

Nicest Moments: Comforting the grieving Bruce Wayne, turning down dirty money, joining Batman in his now two-man war against crime and corruption in Gotham.