Courtesy of the Onion:
Cancer: (June 22—July 22)
There are a million reasons you shouldn’t give up hope of ever finding love. None of them, however, are very good.
Monthly Archive for March, 2002
Fri
Mar
29
2002
My Horoscope 1 cmts
Thu
Mar
28
2002
Travel Diaries 1 cmts
3:18 pm EST – Logan Airport
I’m laying on the ground near the unused check-in desk, taking advantage of the only working power outlet I’ve been able to find in order to watch some highlights from Moulin Rouge on my laptop, which was returned from the factory (unrepaired, at my request) just in the nic of time, namely 30 minutes before my bus left.
The new deal is that one goes through the metal detector and, if it doesn’t go off, you’re cool, but if it does, they “wand” you. I’ve determined that 90% of alarms are due to metal in shoes, and about half of those are because the person is wearing a toe ring, the other half is because of metal in the shoe itself. Occasionally the under-wire of a bra upsets it. Sometimes its a hand ring. I can only wonder what happens when people choose to wear rings in other — perhaps less accessible — locations.
9:48 pm EST – Midway Airport
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Chicago in the daytime. I mean, all I’ve ever seen of it is out of the plane windows and the terminal windows, and from a plane cities look pretty much the same, and from the terminal all I see is whizzing cars. Anyway, I’m in the middle of a movie called Magnolia, and its very, very interesting. The use of music is for some reason very effective. I think because the mood of the music is often different then the mood I feel from watching what is onscreen, and that causes me to reevaluate what I am seeing and change my perspective. Its kinda cool, getting music that doesn’t seem to fit, and that reinterpreting the scene so that it matches the music. I’m about half way through the (very long) movie, and I still have no idea what’s going on, but its very interesting. I get the feeling that everything will link up in an interesting way.
12:32 pm EST – Somewhere In the Air
Okay, I’ve just finished Magnolia, and it was fucking awesome. I can’t remember if I ever posted a diatribe on language, and I don’t want to get into it now, because I have more important things, but basically it boils down to: I like to know as many words as possible, and use them when it is warranted. “Foul language” is appropriate, to me, when you want to put emphasis or impact on a statement. I could go into a lot about English syntax and expression, but I won’t, cause I’m not a linguist. Moving on.
Fucking awesome movie. I’m still processing it, and I have to definitely sit through it again before I can offer good coherant thoughts, but wow. The computer battery is going to die any minute, and I’m going to try to sleep, but let me try to describe what I’m feeling right now.
Pain, doubt, fear. Hope. Fate. It was like a Vonnegut book without Kilgorne Trout. It was like a Dennis Miller rant with poignancy. It was like…I don’t know, it was like a diary entry of mine, but with a point. And really long. Really, really long. But I was totally engrossed for the whole three hours. And the music. Wow.
Okay, I’m being incoherent, so I’ll stop while I’m already behind. But its a movie about life, about the past, and about dealing with mistakes. And about finding ones own place in the world. And about being open to all people, because everyone is flawed, and everyone is a special case.
And its about keeping pressure away from kids. There is a time for pressure, and it is not childhood. Pressure and pain and hurt on kids really screws you up as an adult. So don’t do it. Just don’t do it. A parent’s job is to shield their kid. Keep them safe. Please.
Tue
Mar
26
2002
Eek! 0 cmts
Um…Mr. TiVo? Yeah, hey. You do know that the Oscars never end on time, right? So when they say three hours, they mean four? You do know that, right? So you’re not going to stop recording after only three hours, are you? So that I can’t find out which one got best picture? GRRRRRRR!
Addendum: If you don’t mind some naughty language, read this, probably the best Hollywood-related article this year. And A Beautiful Mind won? Damn! After Lord of the Rings got like 50 other Oscars! Ah, well. At least Randy Newman finally won an award. I mean, geez, the guy has had sixteen nominations. How bad must he have felt the last 15 or so times?
Flirting 2 cmts
When you first meet new people, their initial impression of you will be based 55% on your appearance and body-language, 38% on your style of speaking and only 7% on what you actually say.
SIRC Guide To Flirting (via Maven.Sys)
They call me Mr. Tibbs! 0 cmts
Sidney Poitier was given the lifetime achievement award at the Academy Awards, which I just got around to watching now on my TiVo. As I watched the tribute video I realized for the first time that Laurence Fishburne is black. I seriously didn’t notice or think about him being black until I saw him among all the other black people in the tribute video. This is meant as no disrespect to black people or to Laurence Fishburne, but simply as a statement of fact. When nothing is made of color, it is my natural inclination more often then not to completely miss it altogether. Odd. Or, perhaps, cool.
Another question: why when they show everyone in the audience before the Poitier speech they show all black people, except Julia Roberts? Do her big teeth blind people to her skin color? Dunno.
Mon
Mar
25
2002
Oh, Woodrow! 3 cmts
I went before the Student Senate tonight (last night) for two club charters, the third and fourth that I’ve participated in so far. Everyone is starting to remember me. 
The Computer Operators Group (COG) was pretty easy. I expected the Societie Chaotique Brandeisienne (SCB) to be much more difficult. Boy was I in for a surprise.
I start off with an actual explanation, instead of my characteristic avoidance. Basically, it was something like this: “I have heard comments so I’d like to dispel some myths right from the start. SCB is not a club devoted to causing famine and strife. The best explanation is to go to the basic question of why bad things happen to good people, or, more specifically, why does shit happen?
“Discordianism recognizes that some things cannot be explained, don’t make sense, don’t have a purpose, and cannot be controlled. The secret is to learn to deal with it. Discordianism can be seen either as a religion disguised as a joke or a joke disguised as a religion. Only the truly enlightened can really tell. The religion was formed in 1958 in a bowling alley by two guys who were discussing order and chaos.
“We would like to form this club in order to spread the philosophy of discord through meetings and such.”
Okay, that was nice. Now questions. First, as a point, someone reminds me that the “S-H-I-T word” shouldn’t be used, as we are being broadcast live on WBRS. Which is cool, cause its the third time I’ve come before the senate and the third time I’ve been chastised for saying something bad on the air (the second time was for calling President Reinharz “Jehuda,” I can’t currently recall what the first transgression was, but I think it might have had to do with speaking out of turn). So, anyway, Josh Peck, student union president, raises his hand. Jon calls on him, and he asks, basically, what I’m doing there. Something along the lines of, “if your club discourages order and planning, why are you coming to us with this constitution?”
I answered, “there was considerable debate about whether we should come forward for approval. SCB does not recognize the power of the student union and we are only coming here to make you feel good. We figured might as well go with the system this time.” To this I got a lot of table banging, the parliamentary way of saying “I agree” or “you go boy!” Heh. I made fun of the Senate and they clapped.
Someone also asked when we planned to have our regularly scheduled meetings, as our constitution didn’t state. I told him that they would be irregular. Someone also wanted to know how we planned to keep order. I suggested that we would be perfectly happy with anarchy.
With that done Justin motioned to go back and vote by unanimous consent, but Wuhzeng “Woodrow” Fan, my arch-nemisis (in a playful way) objected. So they just went back and did a normal vote, and I passed by a vote of everyone (about 20) to 1 (Woodrow) with no abstentions. They didn’t even ask me about the provisions of the constitution that give the Chancellor complete power, allow him to appoint a Viceroy and a Chief Janitor, and remove all democratic process whatsoever from the club. Heh.
After all this I was still in time to catch the last production of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, put on by the Undergraduate Theater Collective, which was pretty darn good. Go Brandeis! I love this school!
Sun
Mar
24
2002
Mutant X 0 cmts
TiVo decided I might like Mutant X, a TV show about a band of outlaws running away from a secret government genetic engineering operation that is trying to get them back. They each have a crazy power, such as some cool animal agility, lightening bolt control, telekinesis, or whatever. The bigshot is this guy named Adam who apparently is just a normal guy (no superpowers) who is good with computers (go figure) and is keeping all the mutants safe.
First off, the camera work is really cool. They do the whole cutting around, speed up, slow down, Matrix stuff. But other than that, I don’t really see what the appeal of this show is. The romance, in the ep I saw, was farrrrrr overdone, for no real purpose. Also, everyone seems to get along too well. They have a very tricky situation, and yet the writing makes the arguments seem kinda disingenuous. Third: location. They have this secret headquarters that no one is supposed to find, but every time I see it I recognize it as the water treatment facility that they used in The Pretender as the secret base of The Centre. So I get confused. The good guys are the same people who stole Jarod from his parents and forced him to be a Pretender? What is going on here? Oh, and also, it shows that they’re filming in Toronto.
Final strike is the exposition. Its more absurd then West Wing has gotten. Ya know how on West Wing they repeat things over and over and over for no conceivable purpose? Like, someone says a line that you hear just fine, and the character says “what?” and the guy repeats the line….and then Toby says it to C.J. walking down the hallway, then she says it to Rob Lowe as she goes into her office, then he tells Josh, who tells Donna, who tells Charlie. For no real reason. Well, in this show, its different, but just as annoying, in fact more so: you see the fake broadcast, which the bad guys have already said is a fake broadcast, and the good guys go, “ooh, I think its a fake broadcast!” Then they decide to leave their secret water treatment plant and go to the bad guys layer, and even when they get there they just keep expositing. “Okay, we got in, now go get the secret MicroDrive to save our data!” “I got the MicroDrive, let’s go.” “No, first we have to put the virus in their system.” “Oh yeah, the virus.” Its just silly. Silly in a stupid sort of way.
So in summary, one more show that can be avoided, leaving more time for the important things in life.
Like Buffy.
Fri
Mar
22
2002
One more… 1 cmts
Take that! I feel so incredibly validated that I don’t think I really have any more desire to try to defend my obsession. Sorry dad, now it is just a wonderful thing that you don’t get. Are you scared yet?
Someone else’s life ruined by the slayer 0 cmts
Thanks to the crazy FX schedule, I was, for a time, trying to catch two Buffy episodes a day. Now that I’m caught up, I have only seen two episodes in the past two weeks. I’m proud of myself. But also kinda sad. This guy over at TeeVee says:
…I’ve been spending two hours every weekday watching this show. If I’d spent that two hours a day doing something useful with my time, I’d be fluent in Japanese by now. I’d like to think that I’m going to do something useful with my time when I no longer have a big section of my dayplanner devoted to “Watch Buffy reruns from years ago,” but I expect I’ll take the opportunity to schedule in some essential lying-around time.
Thu
Mar
21
2002
Train rides are tough… 3 cmts
I’m trying to figure out how to get to the airport on Wednesday. Apparently there is some kind of bus running. And there may or may not be tickets. Because I certainly don’t want to end up like this poor girl.
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