And, now, for your enjoyment, a special Post-Thanksgiving rant!

Pass Me The Panacea

So, during a discussion of Thanksgiving, a friend asks me, "Have you ever heard of replacing the apples in an apple pie with Ritz crackers?" Yes, apparently, this is a suggested recipe on every box, or something like that. The texture of wet crackers is similar to apples, and seasoning can give you the same flavour. Now, the first thought I have is . . . That's not apple pie, that's cracker pie. How frickin' disappointing would that be?
"Oh boy, oh boy, a hot American apple pie! Mmmhmm, I love me some hot apple pie goodness!" You think, as you sink your teeth into a properly cooled (by blowing on it) fork-full of pie. As you notice that the namesake of the pie has been replaced with bland, tasteless, ground-up, oval-shaped grain patties, you spit it out in disgust, screaming, "What the fuck is this? This ain't no apple pie, this is cracker pie!" Then, you pause, and you repeat the phrase "cracker pie," and you break down laughing, because cracker pie is just frickin' funny to say. Come on, try it. "Cracker pie." Crah-kerr paaaieh.
Okay, never mind that...
Now, the second thought I have here is this: apples grow on trees. I mean, everybody read or heard about that stupid jackass Johnny Appleseed, who, supposedly, spread apple seeds everywhere in the colonial period, back when everybody was dropping dead from famine and disease, right then. Yeah, way to go Johnny Applejackoff, twenty years from now, when those seeds grow into trees, they can help feed the vultures that are feasting on the rotted corpses of all the colonists who starved to death waiting for trees to grow. But, okay, the point is: if some retard in overalls and a tri-pointed hat can throw apple seeds around like a crack dealer on the corner of the day care centre, then they're obviously not hard to come by. Apples grow on trees. On trees. You know that expression, "Money doesn't grow on trees." The implication there is that things that grow on trees are plentiful and bountiful, like from a veritable cornucopia of the Gods.
In conclusion, why the fuck do we need to be replacing apples in apple pie? Somewhere deep in the bowels of Ritz Headquarters (located in Crackertown, Vermont), some executive smoked a blunt and said, "You know... It'd be schwweeeeeeet if we fooled a bunch of stoopid Americans into thinking they need to replace the apples in apple pies with our craclers!" Then, the executive next to him nudged him in the ribs and told him to stop "bogarting the shit, dawg." But, after a long pause, during which there was much inhalation of marijuana, the C.E.O. of Ritz, who was sitting in the back making lines of cocaine and cracker dust with a razor blade, goes, "That's... That's genius!" In celebration of the idea, the entire personnel of Ritz HQ got the day off to snort crack cocaine off of the asses of prostitutes in neighbouring Crackwhoretown, Vermont.
This unlikely scenario is the only explanation I can fathom for why anyone would think we have some dire need to prepare for the Apple Apocalypse. Somewhere, I hope someone else reads the side of a Ritz cracker box and goes, "Hey, wait a fucking second, apples grow in my backyard, why would I ever be facing a conundrum of being unable to ascertaining a batch of apples for the procedure of proper preparation of apple pie?" (This other person, apparently, is very wordy and alliterative.) If I ever find myself at a Thanksgiving dinner where they're serving cracker pie, I think I may have to light the cook on fire and chant voodoo curses on all of his relatives for the utter stupidity of having felt the need to replace delicious apples with wet cardboard and apple flavouring.
Come to think of it, this isn't the only instance of replacing fruits in a recipe with artificial replacements. I constantly see on the side of fruit drinks or fruit desserts, "made with artificial flavouring." Who even came up with this? Was some scientist trying to cure cancer and accidently came up with something that tasted like banana, so now they use that instead of bananas in banana pudding.
What is wrong with this God damn world? Rationing water and fruit, but not, you know, expendable resources like fossil fuels. Come 2050, we're going to have an abundance of apples and oranges, but no God damn heat, and because the Sun will no doubt go out by then, we're going to freeze to death clutching our precious lemons we spared from having to make into lemonade so many decades ago. I just know an alien race is going to dig up our remains thirty million years from now and wonder why an entire race of beings was turned into ice statues wearing fruit bowl hats like the Tropicana girl.

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I just watched that movie, Martin & Lewis, about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and the effects of their partnership and what not, but, you know, as much as I enjoyed it, I'm not writing about it. Sean Hayes, most famous for his role as Jack from Will & Grace (which is also the character that made me detest his acting before) really did deliver a convincing Lewis, and this is from a Lewis fan. Don't ask me why I enjoyed Jerry Lewis' comedy.

Won't You Give Me An Algorithm For Living?

For no apparent reason to myself, my mind has been turning towards more . . . Broad and heavy matters, as of late. Maybe it's an escape route for my brain to take to prevent me from mulling over temporary and trivial matters, or the snapping of my cerebral capacity when it reached critical mass for emotional stress . . . I don't know, it could be that I've been reading William Faulkner's The Sound and Fury, while studying Frederick Edwin Church's artwork, and had recently watched the Cowboy Bebop movie. Whatever the reason, the affairs predominant in my thought patterns are above and beyond my usual boundaries of scope.
Life: it is why we are here, or is it nothing more than the act of being here? I am not a religious man, and I have my own set of morals and values that I've eked out through experience and observation. It is one of those beliefs that God only gives humanity one blessing: life. Nothing more, nothing else; prayer is futile, for God is, in my eyes, like a strict father who wishes the best for his children, but does not hold their hand due to the knowledge that the best way to learn is trial-and-error via the hard ways. All is a derivative of this ultimate blessing, and it is the core of my adherence to the idea of respecting all life.
None of this answers the nagging query, though: what is the purpose of life? Are we merely puppets by which God sees His own will completed? Are we here to prepare for a greater and higher afterlife? Is what we get on Earth the proverbial it, as the nihilists preach? In the annals of time, all that remains when the Astral clock strikes twelve is dust; time is an illusion driven by deterioration and cyclic existence. When the dark side of the Moon is drained, what is left but death and forgetfulness?
The key to happiness, in my personal world view, is improvement of the self and actualisation of the full amount of potential we are born with and cull in the struggle to survive and make good use of our original tools. Meaning, in short, that the self is the whole of life's worth. Education must be the centre of a child's early life, for it is the basis by which all intelligence is harvested for the rest of his life. If a child is left to his own devices, all you get is the lowest form of human known to Man, the toy-obsessed corporate cog that only knows how to act in accordance to rules and the whims of higher-ups. Artistic avenues must be explored, or the presence of such, at least, must be pointed to and acknowledged. Monetary gain is fruitless, property value is as relevant in reality as it is a rousing game of Monopoly. What I am, when stripped bare, is my mind and soul, the sheen of body is glossy but mere outer display.
So, given all of this, much of what I do on a regular basis becomes menial and acts of folly. I drink my coffee, as my teeth click together in the machinations of chatter, engaged in some conversation of nothingness with an acquaintance that will, most likely, vanish from my life in five, six, seven years. Don't get me wrong, here, I understand that a social life is healthy to emotional development, but people . . . Hmph, to be blunt, do me little good. It's not that I don't care about my friends, it's that I . . . They aren't essential to my progress towards the long-term and omnipresent goal of self-actualisation. Ergh, you have no idea how much I hate the term "self-actualisation," too. Unfortunately, it's a more convenient phrase than "the attainment of every feasible facet of potential in one's self."
What am I doing with my life, with God's truest and richest gift? Am I flitting it away like a fruit fly? I don't want to look back at my life in twenty years and think, "Damn, I sure wish I had done this, instead of that." The proverbial they always instruct us to follow our hearts. How many tragic plays end in disaster and ruin because of some man's heartfelt desire? Am I to answer to my brain or to my heart, am I to seek intellectual stimulation or the warmth imbued by the adoration of a significant other? It's a classic case of career versus marriage, in a way.
Life is to be respected, that's a simple enough concept. And respect is the root of almost all emotions, philosophies, principles, morals, values, beliefs, in my opinion. Honesty, charity, determination, persistence, consideration, selflessness, devotion, education, politics, poetry, literature, art, music, war; in one way or another, respect ties in to the cause and the effect of each of every single one of life's quirks and lessons. Love, though, love . . . Love is above respect, it seems. Love is without logic. This, actually, brings me to something I hadn't thought of writing.
A friend and I came up with this state of mind to explain . . . . Well, why we came up with it is moot, let me just state what we discovered. There exists a mental state that we have christened "mind-numbing confusion." In similar cases to the state of mind, there are scenarios that are "mind-numbingly confusing," on the flip-side of that same coin. The best analogy I could come up with, which I used to explain it to another friend of our's, is you have a puzzle. This puzzle, every piece only almost fits. The jigsaw edges are, inexplicably, rendered slightly deviate from matching. Mind-numbing confusion is the result of repeatedly attempting to fit these puzzle pieces together over and over, without realising, or being able to realise, that they aren't right. After awhile, emotion drains away, you are numb, but you still wish to solve the puzzle, but persistence's only reward is a null and void check for the amount of One (1) Solution. You can't cash a check that's null and void, of course.
I only bring that up because I believe it is the most succinct and precise way to describe the resultant for attempting to fit love into any area of logic, reason, or rationality. Love is it's own section in the library, it's own menu at the restaurant, segregated from all other aspects of human nature. Like a minority in the 50's, it's mistreated and misunderstand, but holds parades and demonstrations until you have to notice it and put it somewhere. So, so . . . So, you let it romp with the other cattle (which, in this case, is in reference to emotions), but it doesn't graze on the grass or low in the field, no – Love preys on, diverges upon, and rips to shreds the other cattle, like a wolf among sheep, a lion among zebra, a bear among salmon. But, you let it in there! You didn't think it would, but it did.
And, it's here that I pull away and realise none of this makes sense.

Adios.

EOF

The Differing Visage of The Worldhood in Accordance with Gender

"I have to have you far too much / I have to grab, I have to touch / I have to feel your every curve / I have to stir each little nerve / I want the pleasure, I want the pain / I want to overload my brain / I'm going . . . "
So, over the course of the past few . . . Mmm, I guess it's been months or so, I've been having a series of different conversations, for entirely unrelated reasons, about the same basic subject matter: the different perspective of reality between the two sexes.
". . . I want to squeeze your living flesh / Oh, to be buried in your chest / Or steamy breath and gripping bone / I may be lost but not alone / I'm going in, not coming out / I'm going in, not coming out / I'm going . . . "
I have one friend, she has this problem. Actually, it's a combination of several problems, at least that's my conclusion. She enjoys roleplaying over AIM, or the Internet, in general, whatever the medium, it's rather irrelevant (Surprisingly, she's in my Dungeons & Dragons group). So, she picks a character from an anime and finds various people via AOL to act out scenes, don't ask me from what or in relation to what . . . It seems to be just an ongoing, off-the-cuff, fictional set of scenarios that may possibly have occurred if an event went one way instead of the other.
Let's skip needless detail, here, though, which I've probably already failed at doing. What it boils down to here is that she's a woman, and she's roleplaying with, primarily although not exclusively, males. She doesn't give a flying fuck about these guys in relation to their real life, for the most past – But, she gives them her picture, she flirts with them in character. . .
(By the way, the first person to suggest I'm referring to myself in third person gets pummeled to death with a blue trash can.)
I think the result of this is pretty much blatant, she has a veritable trail of guys who have become infatuated with her. Not so much a problem, except for the fact, for one, she doesn't care about these guys, and, for two, she has a boyfriend.
". . . I stare at everything that moves / I look all over, pick and choose / Well, I don't want just anyone / I only want just everyone / I know it's not for me to take / I think my mind is going to break / I'm going . . . "
Let me give an example of one case in point. There was this Shinji Ikari roleplayer . . . While I was sitting at her computer, he messages my friend, and I (actually being nice for a change) respond with, "[my friend]'s not available at the moment, please leave a message." Yeah, normal enough, eh? This guy's response is to flip out about how my friend, apparently, is only a "fair weather friend" that constantly tells him she'll "brb" (be right back) and never comes back, or, mostly, just ignores his messages. For whatever reason, this jackfuck thinks that my response was her brushing him, so I tell him that she's in the shower, and when she comes and talks to him, he gives her a permanent farewell and proclaims he will never message her, again.
To paraphrase my friend's response, "Boo frickin' hoo." That, and a lot of eye rolling and sighs of exasperation. My response is, "What do you expect from someone who roleplays Shinji, in the first place?"
" . . . My self-control is very fine / Considering what's on my mind / But I don't want to hurt and hate / I simply have to copulate / The more I see, the more I want / The more I see, the more I want / I'm going . . . "
Heh, I chuckle thinking about this . . . Another case in point. This time, an Inuyasha roleplayer. It turns out this one lives near the college campus, by chance, and he decides to attend the anime club meeting which she presides over as the President. (I being the Technical Officer.) He shows up, and while he doesn't do anything overtly disconcerting, his laugh is loud and much like a girl's. In fact, when I first heard it, I looked over and thought it was my friend laughing, but a bit off. He has also brought plushies and is being rather protective of them, in a coddling motherlike fashion. All in all, this is an example of your typical nervous fanboy.
Sure, I'm probably a jackhole for categorising people like that, and I rail against stereotypes and societal standards all the time, but . . . Yeah, whatever academic intent I had with this Blog entry is gone, by now – I can't think seriously about this too long.
Oh, oh, that's right, I had an actual point to this . . .
As hard as I have tried, and with the assistance of another friend of mine (male), I can not explain exactly, in a such a way that gets through to my friend, why these guys all get infatuated with her, despite the fact that it's obvious to any man, if you ask me. It's interesting to me that these obvious implications that I can read from women and how they act, what they say, they, themselves, do not understand they're giving. This wouldn't be anything confusing except for the fact that there are plenty of instances when the same signals given the same way are intentional, not accidental.
" . . . I have to have you far too much / I have to grab, I have to touch / I have to feel your every curve / I have to stir each little nerve / I want the pleasure, I want the pain / I want to overload my brain / I'm going . . . "
Simply interacting with a guy over the Internet is practically flirting, due to an equation I'd like to take credit for, but my other friend (the same male one that tried to assist me in explaining this concept) came up with: computer + penis = social ineptitude. Yes, this is mean, but you have to understand that I'm a cynical bastard and the friend who said that is a cynical asshole.
In fact, both of us are Computer Science majors, and spend a large portion of our time on computers. Simply put, though, we don't pretend that computer-driven interaction is any semblance or satisfactory sort of substitute for real social stimulation, though. These guys are reading way too much into text on a screen, basically. I'd also like to point out I don't, in any case, advocate any form of an "online relationship." Your personality does not transmit through 1's and 0's anywhere near the same way it does in person, so it's almost like you are a different persona, even if attempting to be yourself. However, I digress from this point, that whole train of thought is better left saved for a less comedic entry.
Not only does she talk to this guys, extensively, but she gives them her picture. I think that is something she has learned is a bad idea, over time, at least. And it may be relevant to point out that she usually roleplays a character with romantic interest in whichever character the other person is roleplaying. She as Asuka Langley from Neon Genesis Evangelion, and some guy as Shinji Ikari. Or, she as Kagome from Inuyasha, with an Inuyasha player. Her as Rem Saverem from Trigun, with a Vash. You get the picture by now, I suppose. I hope I'm not the only one surprised that these guys gradually grow like a parasite on her side, utterly enamored and infatuated, clinging like a barnacle to a ship's hull. If you can't tell, I don't think too highly of those who develop feelings over the ‘net.
Hm . . . I think I've entirely derailed this entry from my original intent: women don't understand how men think, nor vice versa (but that's not the subject of this specific post, especially since I can't speak from a woman's point of view, nor will I ever be able to do so).
So, what all this does for me, this observation and careful note-taking, is completely and utterly confound me as to when and when not to take a hint from a woman. Here we have one woman, a friend of mine, who is appearing to flirt to some, but is not. Or maybe is, in a subversive way? Fuck if I can tell. I think it's all just an amusing game played by God on the human race, the mind game of opposite sex interaction. Yeah, God's sniggering as I write this, I bet. I'm just happy not to be a victim of this particular set of scenarios.
Ergh, this has turned out to be prolonged rambling, so . . .
" . . . SEX MAD! SEX MAD! SEX MAD! SEX MAD! SEX MAD!" - Nomeansno, "Sex Mad," off of Sex Mad / You Kill Me

Adios.

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I did actually write a few things on hiatus from Blogger, and this is one of them. Enjoy my malicious tearing dow... Er, excuse me, "review." Or don't enjoy it, whatever. Hey, I like reading my own writing, so everyone else should. I, also, like the sound of my own voice, is that relatively surprising?
(08/07/2002, 22:30 PM)

The Bourne Kitten

Okay, I figured I'd type up this review whilst the movie is ripe and fresh within the grey matter which is my brain tissue. The Bourne Identity, an action/thriller flick starring Matt Damon as a man who was pulled out of the ocean suffering from amnesia with two bullets in his back and microfilm implanted in his leg. From right off the bat with the fishing boat crew, get used to subtitles because this one has all kinds of languages, from French to German to Swahili–Kind of like in the fashion of an international spy-type thing but without the actual spies and, instead, with secret government organisations. Jason Bourne, or is it John Michael Kane or is it Cher or is it Elton John or is it Will the Janitor or is the Archangel of Death, spends the entire movie trying to uncover his identity, and in the process picks up a girl Friday to drive him around in this little British dinky excuse for a car. Amazingly so, between me wondering when the hand is going to come from the sky and push the car along then place it with its other Matchbox companions and me thinking that the woman looked better with long hair, there's this very intense albeit not very fast car chase scene which was the main draw for my friend wanting to see the movie. I'd say it was a very adequate chase scene, complete with motorcycle wrecks and the tried-and-true driving-through-a-pane-of-glass routine, not as bad as the ones from Mission Impossible 2: I Can't Believe How Impossibly Crappy This Movie Was, which I know I've reamed before and I'm reamin' it again, baby, because I like to. Anyway, let me just state it right here the same thing I thought about Matt Damon in Dogma as I did in this movie: this man can not scare me no matter what. This guy could be hovering over my face with a Colt .45 cocked and ready to blow my face off, but I'd still not be intimidated. He's like a kitten, you know he's angry because his ears are back and he's clawing and biting at you, but you still keep poking him because, well, damn it, he's so frickin' cute. You just smile and giggle and say, "Yes, you just keep right on biting me with your undeveloped teeth and clawing me with your tiny little claws about as sharp as a used toothpick, but I don't care, no, I don't care, who's my little snuggle-wuggle bunny, yes, yes, who's my little-wittle-snuggle-huggle-buggle...," and it's at this point that your words degenerate into a mass of burbling and gibberish reserved only for those speaking with the inanely cute So, yes, Matt Damon, and I say this as a very heterosexual man secure in his masculinity and not afraid to admit it, is too damn cute for a mean role. Also, along the way, I kept expecting him to stop at a chalkboard with a very complicated Calculus equation scrawled on it and solve it, then keep running on and proceed with the impressive capping of the bad guys. But, I really liked Good Will Hunting, but, then again, who didn't?
As for the movie itself, it's just like I told my friend, for what it was, it was very good and the execution was virtually seamless. I'd have to say it was a bit drawn out in parts, but I wasn't yawning like I was watching Citizen Kane on a sugar-low. The plot was a bit of a predictable one, but you can't expect there to be much originality left in the genre of guy-with-no-memory-strives-to-recover-his-past-and-falls-in-love-with-a-woman-who-helps-him-do-it, if that really is a genre is moot. He tells me that this is the first movie in a trilogy of The Bourne Suchandsuch's that are planned, which is a bit baffling to me. Just like with Minority Report, I didn't feel like there was much room for a sequel, it pretty much succinctly wrapped it all up as much as one would expect from a one-shot movie. Granted, the ending wasn't this great climatic scene of heartbreak, drama, and death, but it was a pretty sufficient ending to the entire ordeal, in my opinion. This makes me slightly curious as to what will be done in the next movies, what plot device will they enlist to keep the movie going for two more installments? The Bourne Identity was a good spy movie, but, you know, without any real spy, which included a fair amount of action, intrigue, and romance, but not too much to choke a camel or anything. I'd say, all in all, I'd register this movie with a Failure Rating of about 28%, an average but not outstanding endeavour to the theatres that I don't see getting nominated for any awards.

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