Animal Crackers

I have always hated Tom Cruise. Katie Holmes, on the other hand, had dreamt of marrying him since he appeared in "Risky Business," a movie first released when she was four. I'm reminded of the story "Monkey Paw" and its moral--the age-old adage, "Be careful what you wish for." Hell, at four-years-old, I wanted to either work at McDonald's or open my own supermarket. Anyhow, whether her engagement is a dream come true or a strategically-planned publicity stunt, Katie has ended up with a furrow-browed monkey who rabidly poops his diapers every time he's interviewed...

I don't remember exactly how old Camille P. is, but she is much too talented for her age. Her poem* below always cheers me up.

"The Camel walking blues"

     Going to Constantinople on a
One way trip, I'm walking and walking
Getting hit with a whip. Ouch!
     Carrying incense, jewelry, Silk
And cloth. Boy I hope that they don't
Find any moths. ewww!
     All this stuff is weighing me
Down I hope that I don't sink through
The ground.
     Boy I hate the people that
Are giving me smacks, why can't I be
The one giving them whacks. So long
For now I'm getting quiet tired to bad
That I can't, get fired.

*Spelling, punctuation, and capitalizations preserved.

Angry Candy is a Philomath, But This Posting Has Nothing to Do with Her

1. I was sick all weekend and could barely move. I feel much better today, but still grow fatigued amazingly fast when I move around. I visited my doctor, and she was pretty certain I was hit by some virus whose name I cannot recall (even though the doctor repeated the name for me a few times). For the first time as an adult, I was subjected to a blood test. Just seeing all that blood of mine sucked into test tubes was enough to make me feel sick. But I can't wait to see what a blood test report looks like.

2. I rented the entire Season 1 Dead Like Me dvds and watched all the episodes. I enjoyed the show--despite its crummy score--and look forward to the release of Season 2 (out July 19). I'm very disappointed that it's gotten cancelled. If you like the show, too, sign a petition to revive the show. If a crappy show like Family Guy can do it, let's cross our fingers! (No comments on how Family Guy doesn't suck, please.)

This Week in Tinseltown

I haven't read my Word-of-the-Day emails nor Hollywood tidbits in quite awhile; how should I deal with this crash course in vocabulary and pop culture? By rewriting WENN's celebrity news, of course. (Ok, ok, I do already know a couple words.)

Ya Gotta Do Better than Bettany, Please
While I do not find the Joker to be the ineluctable villain choice for the Batman Begins sequel, certain quotes suggest he does appear in the next movie. PageSix.com interviewed an unnamed source: "[Katie Holmes] won't be in the sequel...Warner is happy that people are now focusing on who'll be playing the Joker rather than Katie and Tom." In the running for Batman's archnemesis are Crispin Glover, Mark Hamill, Lachy Hulme, and current fan-fave, Paul Bettany, the self-proclaimed poor-man's Jude Law, who in turn is--in Chris Rock's opinion--the poor-man's Russell Crowe. Such early casting reports, of course, are hardly beyond a peradventure of a doubt. In addition, I must set the record straight--Paul Bettany is the blind-man's Jude Law.

O No-no
After she was snubbed by the Paris Hermes store, Oprah Winfrey publicly issued the couture chain a commination. Hermes representatives claimed they were holding a private public relations event for staff members; Oprah pal Gayle King stated that other shoppers where allowed to peruse the store while she and Oprah were denied entrance. Hermes is by no means an exclusively Stateside store, but their public relations staff--if indeed they were meeting--should have realized that pissing off America's Real First Lady will result in the loss of spondulics and perhaps their unavailing jobs and ironic job titles.

Wifebeater to Exhibitionist
Ex(?)-drug abuser Bobby Brown hopes his reality show will not only help rehabilitate him by providing him a job and something to do, but also dispell the public's odium towards him by presenting him under a positive light. Brown said, "[The] main reason I wanted to do this is really for my kids. They're always saying, 'Daddy, why do they always make you look so bad in the press?'" His children's ingenuous, but misguided comments and his own peccavi aside, the irascible star's show reportedly contains many crude jokes about other celebrities.

For more celebrity news, visit http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/. To sign up for Doctor Dictionary's A-Word-a-Day, visit http://signup.dictionary.com/wordoftheday. To sign up for AWAD, visit http://wordsmith.org/awad/subscribe.html.

Times to Come

Injury Magnet

I wasn't in the mood for a softball game last night, but since our team had to forfeit if I didn't show up, I decided to oblige.

In the Engineers' League, we are not allowed to slide. I can understand their averseness to potential injury-causing moves, but not being able to slide causes other injuries. Not overrunning second and third base is difficult if you can't slide. Since the second and third base players have to tag the base to make a play, the runner has a good chance of colliding with them.

Last night, I had already made it to second base for about 3 seconds when the shortstop and second baser battled over catching the ball. The shortstop grabbed the ball--his back towards me--and as he didn't see that I was already safe, his aggressive move back towards the base knocked me off and sent me sliding on my left knee. Of course I was safe, since you can't knock players off bases after they've already gotten there. But this sort of thing happens to me every season.

In other news, I declared to Chemical Brother that I would no longer use the word "f*ck." Instead, I would use the popular Red Dwarf curse word, "smeg." But of course I would have to find out what it really means. According to various Urban Dictionary entries, "smeg" is short for "smegma."

smegma n. A sebaceous secretion, especially the whitish cheesy secretion that collects under the prepuce of the penis or around the clitoris. (Source: The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.)

That seems much fouler. Except most people won't really know what it means, so it might sound tamer.

Chemical Brother pointed out that I used to learn new words from classes, such as philosophy (eudaemonia or eudaimonia n. A contented state of being happy and healthy and prosperous. [Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University]), but now I am learning new words from science fiction shows. So be it!

Proving My Sister Right

This weekend I told my sister that Angry Candy and I discuss words and grammar. She said that I was boring.

Tonight I attended a meeting where someone referred to a talented fundraiser as a "hustler," but in an exaggerated, complimentary way. I started thinking that this was the opposite of a euphemism (not the logical opposite, as "plain" or "literal" would be), but I didn't know the word for it. I called up Johanna, but then did the modern thing and looked it up online via thesaurus.com's antonym collection.

The word is dysphemism n. An offensive or disparaging expression that is substituted for an inoffensive one; "his favorite dysphemism was to ask for axle grease when he wanted butter." [ant: euphemism] (Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University)

Master Shake and I also use the following terms differently: moving a date back, moving a date ahead/forward; this weekend, next weekend, the following weekend.

When I say, "This meeting will be moved back to next Saturday," I mean that the meeting was originally scheduled before the Saturday following this Saturday. The same sentence, if uttered by Master Shake, would mean that the meeting was originally scheduled after this upcoming Saturday.

I found an online source that discusses the first difference as well as the second. I need to add this site in my list of links.

Craptastic!

My sister broke my mp3 CD player, and I'm too cheap to buy an ipod. But I knew I needed something for my road trip; that cassette player just doesn't cut it. I saw the Polaroid Hip Jam mp3 disc player on sale on Overstock.com for $29.99 during a free shipping deal, so I bought it.

You get what you pay for, that's true, but to be fair, sometimes fishing out the extra buck won't help you in the craptastic world of electronic devices. I tested out the player once or twice in my car, and it seemed to work decently. The only thing that annoyed me was the unreliable lcd screen.

Friday morning I prepped my car for the LA trip. The player would not turn on. I disconnected the power plug and used batteries instead. The player would not turn on. I changed the batteries. No luck. I screamed, but kept it connected. Once in awhile, I would hit it and scream some more. On the 580, it suddenly turned on and played music. But if I moved the player, it would stop again. It would also jump from song to song without finishing any. Getting it to work properly was harder than finding a fart in a jacuzzi (I've been watching a lot of Red Dwarf lately).

The player actually grew slightly more reliable as the trip progressed, but the buttons were sometimes confused about their own functions. I pressed the "Mode" button to switch to "Random All." At first it switched to another mode, and then it started adjusting the volume, and then it turned itself off again.

Well, I would say stay away, but I am the only one without an ipod, right?

Reality Extravaganza

I drove down to LA this weekend to move some of my things to my mom's. My sister also visited, and got me hooked on reality television. I saw the following shows for the first time:

1. Kept. Jerry Hall handpicks a boytoy out of 12 candidates. I'm pretty sure this is what I'll do if I ever get rich.

2. Inferno II. Previous Real World and/or Road Rules contestants team up for challenges that may lead them to more moola. My sister's excitement rubbed off on me. Unfortunately, the finale wasn't part of the marathon. Another reason to watch: Jamie, the cutest reality show Asian chick yet.

3. Stripsearch. Guy strippers duke it out. One team had to duplicate dance moves from an O-Town video. One team had to duplicate moves from a Britney video. Beefcakes (and one flabbyman) bicker and fight. Classic.

4. Fight for Fame. Five "actors" audition (my favorite was Justin--he could act, but alas he did not win) and one gets signed to a talent agency called "Acme." If that doesn't tip you off, well, you deserve that contract. And I deserve my couch sweat stains.

5. 30 Days. Morgan Spurlock and his brave vegan-chef fiancee try to live the minimum wage life for a month. From that description alone, you can tell that was by far the best reality show saw this weekend.

Weekend capsule: I saw Penguin's Boyfriend this weekend, and had the nerdiest but funnest conversation ever (yes, it was about rewriting the Star Wars prequels). I realized that my mom's and my grandma's cooking will always be the best. I found out I have two long-lost cousins. I hate 100-mph traffic weavers!

Batman Begins

As I used to say, a superhero movie is only as good as its villains. "Batman Begins" proves me wrong. I don't mean that its main villain doesn't hold his own; Ra's Al Ghul is magnificent. I simply mean we finally get to focus on Batman.

I was worried that a movie that had to show Batman's origins and his current enemies & their machinations would leave insufficient time for either. However, "Batman Begins" weaves all these stories together in a way that makes it a more cohesive movie than any of the previous installments.

Though I approved of Christopher Nolan as director, I was wary of "Blade" scribe and "Blade: Trinity" director David S. Goyer as the writer. Thankfully, he didn't disappoint, and finally, I got to meet the Batman I always knew was out there.

Ten Things I Hate in Movies/TV Shows

I haven't been too good about posting the last few days, so I stole this idea from Mr. Fett. In no order of importance:

1. Baguettes in grocery bags. This is a cliché that shows the producers think that you won't really believe someone has been grocery shopping unless food peeks out of their bags.

2. Actors who are obviously older than their characters. Example: Beverly Hills, 90210. I know show biz likes actors who look younger than they are, because those actors supposedly have more experience than their rightful-age counterparts. But we're not willing to suspend all disbelief--Luke Perry hadn't been in high school for a long, long time.

3. Reserving the cure for main characters. Example: In the 1963 version of "Jason and the Argonauts," Jason ditches his fallen comrades and only uses the Golden Fleece on Medea. Bad long term choice. Also, in "The Mummy," Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz carry a cat around to scare off the forming Mummy, but don't think to supply the Americans--those who really need protection--with a feline friend.

4. Using crazy camera angles or movement to indicate excitement when there is none. See "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" tv series (thanks to Angry Candy for pointing this out years ago). Whenever witches chant, the camera swirls around to make up for the fact that chanting will never be interesting. Also see last battle scene in "Azumi," which, fortunately, had enough good action scenes to counteract this phenomenon.

5. Last minute plot twists. Twisting last minute helps save the writer from explaining inconsistencies. Twisting at all can just insult the audience's investment in the rest of the movie. It can be done well if paced correctly ("Vertigo"), but see tv's "24." Of course, people like a lot of the movies/shows I hate: "The Usual Suspects," "The Sixth Sense," or for that matter, the entire M. Night Shyamalan catalog (just kidding; no one liked "The Village," right?).

6. The abadonment of stop motion animation in non-cartoon movies. Sure, I think "progress" is great. But Ray Harryhausen gave creatures a nightmarish quality CGI hasn't yet been able to duplicate. Perhaps it's because CGI bases motion on existing creatures?

7. Tom Cruise, the Megamoviestar. That man only furrows his brow; he can't act! I hate actors who bring too much of themselves into a role because of their public profile. They have a hard time convincing me they're Joe Blow. It's unfortunate so many things are based on money and marketability.

8. Movies that were greenlighted solely on its pitch. It's "Independence Day" meets "Fatal Attraction"! Since when did combining two shitty things yield something unshitty?

9. Character studies of boring people. As much as I like French movies, the French can be best at the kind of cinema verité that bores me to death.

10. Marketing sex when there is none. See original poster of "Star Wars" and the DVD cover of the Cantonese thriller "Infernal Affairs." As if we were all driven by sex. Christian Bale does look hot as the new Batman, though...and Ewan McGregor clones? Send me one!

Pet Peeves

Today I embarked on a very special journey: the annual Oakland litter index. It was a lot less complicated than I thought; there were no graphs or charts. We merely drove in designated areas and then assigned a number to that area, ranging from 1 (no litter) and 4 (extremely littered).

Each team has a leader who is supposed to inform her members what area they are in, and when to start and stop scoring. The scorers are not supposed to talk about their scores, as they can influence one another. Each bus is supposed to work from the farthest point and converge at the meeting spot.

I thought the directions were clear-cut. But apparently very few people follow directions. This bothered me, but then I became frustrated that an entire neighborhood--each block with its own degree of cleanliness--got only one score from us. Once I accepted the inherent inaccuracy of this survey, I felt less compelled to dwell on our disregard for the rules. I reminded myself of the organizational purpose: we needed to do this in order to remain an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful. I converted my personal purpose: free breakfast, free lunch, free tour of Oakland (my very first visit to the Mormon Temple!).

Desert Island What???

Ipods are taking over, and before long, the desert-island-discs concept will become obsolete. Or maybe it will be a desert-island-list-of-mp3s-that-will-fit-onto-your-300GB-player...but until then, I thought I would make my one and only list of the ten albums I'd want to be stuck with on an island. In no particular order...

1. Beck: Sea Change
The most beautiful music I have heard. Of course, being stranded on an island might put these emotionally-distraught-because-of-failed-relationship songs in perspective.



2. Arcade Fire: Funeral
The amazing arrangements will remind me of complicated civilization. Some nights I'll cry; some nights I'll celebrate.



3. Def Leppard: Adrenalize
I considered the best-selling Hysteria, the early rockin' On Through the Night, and even Vault, their greatest hits. But the truth is I know all the words to this album. I'd love to shout out, "Don't call me gigolo, don't call me Casanova. Just call me on the phone and baby come on over...when you need someone...when you need someone to...make love...like a man! I'm a man; that's what I am, yeah!"

4. Camille: Le Fil
This will satisfy not only my French fix, but also my faux-tribal one. I'll probably listen to this next to the bonfire. I'm not sure I can start a fire in the wild, though. I'll probably die before I finish this album.


5. Queen: A Night at the Opera
I was considering the cheesier The Game, which has potential roleplaying tracks like "Dragon Attack" and practical desert-island tracks like "Don't Try Suicide." But I'm willing to forego those for "The Prophets' Song" and "Bohemian Rhapsody."


6. Teenage Fanclub: Songs from Northern Britain
Songs for every occasion! Getting used to the new life: "Start Again." Feeling good about my situation: "I Don't Care." Hiking and Killing Time: "Take the Long Way Round." Bearing winter: "Winter." Accidentally burning down the forest: "Can't Feel My Soul." Hey, "It's a Bad World."

7. Al Green: Let's Stay Together
Even when no one else is around to appreciate it, I'll still need to boogie. Hmm. Don't think too hard about that.



8. The Stills: Logic Will Break Your Heart
And mogic will break my fart. I have nothing to say about this because I think it's pretty self-explanatory.



9. Talking Heads: Sand in the Vaseline
Ah, here I demonstrate my propensity for cheating by including this double-disc compilation.




10. Erasure: Pop! The First 20 Hits
Now that I've already cheated, I don't feel bad about including another greatest hits album. I was reviewing my list and noticed a lack of great dancing albums...so this one's it.


I would also be tempted to sneak in an Enya album, any of which is great for pretending you're lost on Middle Earth...

Nightmares and Dreams

Johanna is the only person I know who doesn't have plot dreams. I also have not met anyone else who has my obsessive-compulsive-type dreams. I arrange things in accordance to rules that keep changing. Or I have to solve an equation, or repeat certain phrases until they're perfect. Those are very taxing dreams, and I usually wake up tired.

When I do have plot dreams, they seem to resemble other people's. However, I generally use one of two defense mechanisms whenever a dream takes a wrong turn: (1) I develop superpowers and become invincible or (2) I relive the scene over and over until it is to my liking. Do other people do this?

Time Says Aloha

The day I have been dreaming about ever since July 2000 has finally arrived! Today is the first work day since I quit my job.

Today: (1) Work out. [Check] (2) Buy groceries. [Check] (3) Clean dishes in sink. [Check] (4) Continue to digitize CD collection. [In progress] (5) Fold clothes and do laundry. [In progress] (6) Cook dinner. (7) Relax.

On a sadder note, the quick passage of time means that I'll soon have to say ciao to my friends here in the Bay Area.

Most likely the brainchild of school administrators sick of teenage deliquency, students in my junior high had to keep a journal. Teachers would read those journals weekly, comment on the entries, and keep track of any warning signs. I once wrote, "Time goes by so quickly that before I know it, I will be on my death bed." My teacher commented, "Next thing you know, you'll probably be getting married and having children. Don't worry about death yet."

Whenever I feel bad about time slipping away, I think back to my journal. I think of how I haven't even gotten married yet, and then I feel better.

Meet Pointy

Every December, my office orders poinsettias. Right before the new year, employees are asked to take the poinsettias home. I never took one home, but I did adopt one at work two Christmases ago.

Now that I'm leaving, I decided to take Pointy with me to Durham. I know he is no longer a flowering poinsettia, but he's still healthy and doing well. My orchids now have a friend, and maybe the two of them can start filling the hole that Rat left when he passed away.

I Have a Place to Live!

North Pointe Commons offered me an apartment a couple weeks ago, and I accepted. However, I just called Alexan Farms, and they reserved an apartment for me as well. Alexan Farms, here I come!

I am proceeding with utilities setup, since I think it's unlikely Woodstone will have an apartment for me. However, should I be wrong, I would still have some time to transfer my activation plans.

I think I will be happy enough at Alexan Farms.

To revisit my choices, you can visit this page.

In other exciting news--albeit financially detrimental--my last day of work is tomorrow. Hoorah!

Star Wars Prequels Rewrite Update, Part 1

The research phase has begun. I borrowed two Star Wars books (The Annotated Screenplays and the Visual Dictionary) published pre-Episode I from the library to see what was "known" about the prequels before they were released.

Lucas had originally intended Owen Lars to be Obi-Wan Kenobi's brother. Though some explanation of their different last names is in order, I like that relationship better. Perhaps Owen could be a half-brother.

Luke was sent to the Larses, and Leia and her mother Padmé hid in a distant planet until Padmé passed away. Then Leia came under the care of Bail Organa, who was not only a senator but the viceroy of Alderaan.

Currently, an age/time problem exists. Supposedly, nineteen years separate Episodes III and IV, but more than nineteen years seem to separate Ewan McGregor ca. 2005 (34) and Alec Guinness ca. 1977 (63).

I would personally like to start the story when Anakin is already in his late twenties/early thirties, married, and even with one kid. Being married spares us from any horrendous "falling in love" scenes, and having a kid whom he will lose can enrich the Luke/Vader scene in "Return of the Jedi."

Comment away, please.