March 30, 2006

"Crazyladysayswhat?"
"What?"
"Exactly."

Disclaimer: if you're my parents or a prude, you might not want to read this. Fair enough warning.

So I perused the gossip blogs the other day (and thank god for them, because it lets me hide my secret non-manly shame in the anonymity of the Internet) and I saw this choice quote from the current queen of outright weird, Sharon Stone:
Young people talk to me about what to do if they're being pressed for sex? I tell them (what I believe): oral sex is a hundred times safer than vaginal or anal sex. If you're in a situation where you cannot get out of sex, offer a blow job. I'm not embarrassed to tell them."

Um. First of all, if you're "in a situation where you cannot get out of sex" you don't offer alternatives. You call the fucking police because you're being raped. Second of all, I'm pretty sure that Sharon Stone is neither a medical doctor nor competent to give her opinion on which color is her favorite, much less on what sexual techniques are safest.

I know this has probably been beaten into the ground (see the aforementioned gossip blogs) but I'm more confused than anything else; is she just nuts? Was she trying to be funny? Do people actually think any of this is true?

Because this is my blog and, as such, I get to offer free and unsolicited advice to the masses, here's a little something to counteract the absolute insanity above:
-Don't give blowjobs to anybody you wouldn't want to sleep with.
-Don't have oral sex, period, unless you're in a relationship with the person.
-Sleeping with lots of people does not make you a better or more liked person. It just means you've slept with lots of people.
-Do not equate your ability to get someone into bed to your worth as a person. The two are at best unrelated, and at worst, inversely proportional to one another.

Bit of a prude myself? Perhaps. But Sharon Stone went and put me off sex for at least 2 days. If that doesn't sound like much, remember that I'm a guy. It's about 47 hours and 59* minutes longer than I usually refrain from thinking about it.

*58 if I've been knocked unconscious

March 27, 2006

Roommateless

Fridays (and the subsequent weekend) are much sweeter when you have to work 40 hours a week, and as such it was with no small amount of joy that I blissfully vegged almost the entire weekend away.

But just almost; I did go down to the beach a couple times, and shopped for food, and other various mundanities that must be accomplished during this oh-so-precious time period. But it was sort of weird, because with my roommate out of town, it even got a little bit lonely. Not in a "I'm lonely, sign me up for speed-dating" way, but I think I'm getting accustomed to having another person in the apartment. Even if she is as quiet as a mouse most of the time.

Work is going... on, I guess. It's hard to be a low-paid temp in a place where you, and everyone else, know that you could be doing a helluva lot more. Fortunately, some stuff has cropped up that allows me to do some work besides my usual 8 hours of administrative crap per day. And that's good not only for my blossoming legal career ("blossoming" in this case meaning "not dead on the vine yet") but also because I made more than 8000 copies on Friday and man, does that suck. We lawyers waste a LOT of paper.

Congrats to GMU for getting to the damn Final Four. That's crazy! What's next, Mary Washington goes to the Rose Bowl? How about if Longwood wins... okay I ran out of sports, but you get my point. Go Masons! Or, um, whatever they're called.

March 21, 2006

"I'm Not Dead. I'm Getting Better!"

The problem with a temp job, or at least the one I'm going to briefly mention here, is that you don't really have the ability to waste a heck of a lot of time. And since one of my chief time-wasting activities is, of course, writing in this silly little corner of the interweb, I've slack. A lot!

I'd promise change, if I thought I could keep the promise. I'd swear to mend my ways, to write 100 New Things About My Past or Why Girls Are Crazy or even Cats I Used to Own, but I don't like swearing if I don't think I have a good shot at living up to the blasphemous oath.

The good news is, it won't last forever. I still have ideas daily, I just lack the time right now. I also lack the work computer and the imprecise responsibility of a salaried position that makes daily blogging oh-so-easy.

Oh, and something tells me it's my step-dad's birthday today. Or tomorrow. I really need a wall calendar. But either way, I'm sure it's before the next update, so Happy Birthday Dan!

March 15, 2006

Who Would Have Thought...

...that working an eight-hour day would be so darn exhausting? It's not like I work in the salt mines or, as a friend put it, like I "live in Ireland during the 30s" (or was it the 40s? Either way, I suppose). And yet: I'm barely awake enough to compose this riveting bit of narrative.

I hope that this is just temporary (haha! like the job!) and that I simply need to reacclimate to a life of steady work. After all, I did it before, and for two years.

I totally stole MUNI today, by the way. Wasn't going to make it to the front of the train before it closed the doors, so I just jumped on. Never paid. I'm a thief. Thank god my moral character application is complete!

An uneven, ill-tempered sleep is calling my name. I hope it manifests in a more peaceful and fulfilling form than it has these last few days. And that I'm not roused by two-days-too-early Irish revelers.

March 14, 2006

Housecleaning

A few of you astute observers (or lazy ne'er-do-wells who haven't updated their bookmarks/links) will notice that the old blog is now officially gone. And by that I mean deleted.

It's something I planned to do all along (and I think I mentioned that before) but before anyone in the family gets all worried, know that I did save all the entries (one month at a time--3 years doesn't take THAT long) onto my laptop before giving it the axe.

One of the downsides is that I lose all the comments on the blog--there just isn't enough time to go through each entry and save the individual page. But, on the other hand, I switched comment handlers so many times (remember when Blogger didn't have 'em built in) that it's only about a year's worth, if that. There are a few I'll miss in particular...

On the upside, I can now begin recycling old blog posts, and though some of you may remember them, you have nowhere to turn for proof that I've already ranted about said topic! Suffer the wrath of reruns!

I'm off to work. No, not the good kind. The temp kind.

March 12, 2006

Holy Cow

Five whole days with no posts! I think that calls for a super-duper summary edition of TIIADU. Hold onto your hats as we go crazy, tilde-style!

~Flogging Molly! Pretty kick-ass show. Haven't seen bands like that since sometimes during high school. The Fillmore is a great venue.

~More crappy temp work! But this time, I met some cool people, and made slightly more money than usual.

~Even more temp work! Two (2) whole weeks worth, starting bright and early tomorrow morning. The downside: pay is marginal. The upside: at a law firm. Also, it's a job.

~Holy hailstones*, Batman! On Friday night, a mini thunderstorm tore through our little part of town, dropping two or three lightning strikes right on our heads (not quite literally, but damn close) and hail the size of M&Ms.
* please note: spellchecker caught my original typo, "hailtsones" and suggested (drumroll please) "waltzing". Bravo, spellchecker. How well you know me.

~PG&E responds in force! The above-mentioned lightning blew our building's power to hell. It was out for about 22 hours, which was fine for the first 12, but then became boring. When PG&E finally got going, they had one giant crane, three van/trucks, and two cherry-pickers on the scene. I'm pretty sure it was just one guy actually working.

March 7, 2006

In Brief

Here in the land of the gay cowboys (or at least, the land of the gays who really want to meet cowboys) we've taken the Best Picture award particularly hard. There are articles in the Chronicle ("SF Gays saddened over 'Brokeback' loss") and a general sense of melancholy regarding the whole affair. Probably a big part of it is that the Academy Awards have no bigger supporter, usually, than the gay community, and they sort of feel stabbed in the back by Sunday's outcome. I can't really say for sure whether they're justified, because I haven't even seen Brokeback Mountain. I have seen Crash, however, and that's what I wanted to mention (if you haven't noticed by now, "brief" to me is three paragraphs; I need help).

Lots of people hated Crash. I'm not really sure why, as it had lots of suspense, really intricate characters, and an interesting plot. The big criticism, from what I've gathered, is that (and this is quoting from Fish's blog--even though she liked it too) "it's a heavy-handed lecture on racism". Well sure, and don't see Star Wars because they totally overdo it on the outerspace stuff. It's not heavy-handed: it's what the movie was about. Yes, the movie's opinion about racism was blatant. It wasn't subtle at all. It wasn't supposed to be.

Some think that Crash sets us back by showing that every race can believe in stereotypes, and that knowing that somehow makes it "okay" for everyone to be racist. I don't think the movie implies that at all--in the film, everyone who is racist is largely incorrect in their racist beliefs. If you think the movie gives you a free pass to distrust blacks, whites, hispanics, or anyone else, you need to look at yourself and ask why you were waiting for such a "free pass" in the first place.

Anyway, if you didn't like Crash because it lacked in subtlety, I think you need to realize that's exactly what made it an excellent film. It said--loudly--what many of us often think, and then made us uncomfortable by showing how stupid we are when we think those things. Of course, if you didn't like it because you think it had plot holes or bad acting or was boring, more power to you.

March 6, 2006

Weekend by the Numbers

One: attorneys now living in this apartment. Big congrats to the roomie for gettin' her swear on.

Two: damn parking tickets. Also, coincidentally, the number of parking tickets I will be contesting. Not so much because I was in the right (I see it as a gray area, which probably means I don't have a chance in hell) but because I have nothing better to do with my time.

Three: free drinks at the bar because of aforementioned roomie's birthday. If anything ever goes wrong with this apartment--fire, flood, etc--I'm just going to move in to the pub across the street. I'll have to learn to decipher that Irish brogue, though.

Four: minutes the building fire alarm rang on Saturday night, around 12:30 a.m. It was finally shut off by my neighbor. I only learned it was OUR building's alarm when he knocked to make sure I wasn't on fire. Nice guy.

Five: hours spent working as web designer to a small-but-busy Michigan engineering consultant. He pays me the big bucks to put together webpages, and because he is obligated to, genetically. It's sort of like I never went to law school at all! Welcome to 1999, please stay seated until the time machine has come to a complete stop at the gate.

Six: ...is a digit found in my home phone number exactly once. Yeah, I've got nothin else on this one.

Seven: hours before I got dressed on Sunday. In my own defense I was, in fact, working (see above) so it wasn't a total slacker experience.

Eight: the time in the a.m. when the sun brightens to the point wherein I think a nuclear holocaust has occurred outside my window. On the plus side, with work as inconsistent as it has been, the sun keeps me on a fairly normal wake-up schedule.

Nine: the time I still get out of bed, stubborn as I am, despite 8 a.m. wake-up shine.

March 2, 2006

Walk the Line

It's Oscar time, and since I've had a cash flow problem of late (no cash to flow) I haven't seen too many of the nominated movies. I have seen Crash, and Walk the Line, and I really want to see The Constant Gardener and Syriana still, but the rest have eluded me.

But this isn't about the Oscars or any of those movies. It's about Walk the Line; specifically, the performances therein. First off, I thought all the actors did well. Joaquin Phoenix especially, and to a slightly lesser extent Reese Witherspoon. I say slightly lesser because sometimes it seemed like she was just turning up her southern accent a notch and acting like she has in countless other movies. She's good, but her performance wasn't groundbreaking.

Lately, though, I've heard a lot of people saying--usually with hushed voices, as if they were saying "Sometimes I wonder if Satan got a bad rap"--that Phoenix's performance of Johnny Cash's songs are better than the originals. I'm no music expert, but I like music and am not tone deaf, which probably ties me with a number of music critics, qualification-wise. Recently my roommate got the movie soundtrack on CD, and I've since listened to both the original and the Joaquin Phoenix covers of a number of the songs, often back-to-back. And frankly, though I appreciate the argument, Johnny Cash is still better.

Here's why: first of all, he wrote the songs. Cover bands are almost never as good as the original because of this important fact. Second of all, Cash's music is far less "produced", something you can tell just by listening to it. While Phoenix does a fine job (he's a great actor and his vocal talents are quite good), his tracks are all too clean. And that's not what this music is about... Folsom Prison Blues, for example, is one of Cash's most famous songs, and the live performance at Folsom Prison easily outshines any cover of that song, by anyone, anywhere. Finally, Joaquin is doing a Johnny Cash impression, and his best feature is that he can hit some of those low notes a bit easier than Cash. Unfortunately, he's still just imitating, and he pitches his songs much lower--and in a much safer range--than most of the originals are sung. Since everyone thinks of Cash's gravelly voice first, everyone seems to think Joaquin's ability to sing with more bass is a coup.

By the way, this analysis is true not only for Folsom Prison Blues, but also for Walk the Line (the song), Jackson, and Ring of Fire. Also, only the original Cash could sing with Kris Kristofferson and still retain dignity. Yikes.

March 1, 2006

Of Course They Screwed Up

So the big news today is that video that shows how informed FEMA and the President were about Katrina, days before it hit land. They knew it was Category 5, they knew the levees would likely break, etc. I am underwhelmed.

Not because it's not a big deal, which it is. It's a huge deal, but I thought so in the months after the hurricane when it was still fresh. It's still a huge deal, but here's the thing: so is everything else Bush has screwed up. I refuse to act like this is the last straw, or the final nail in the coffin, or any of those things, because it's just pathetic at this point. The Bush Administration cannot focus on anything it doesn't want to focus on, and the results of that--whether it be the thousands of lives lost in Iraq, or the thousands lost because of a natural disaster--are a constant source of confusion to me.

So this latest development doesn't shock or surprise. It doesn't even faze me. Nobody in Congress will do anything, and any sensible Republicans will be hushed up in favor of party unity. There is no excuse for this behavior, but hey--there hasn't been an excuse for anything they've done in the last 6 years. At this point, I'm fairly certain Bush could personally execute random tourists on the lawn of the White House, and the GOP would still rush to blame the media, Democrats, the terrorists, Europeans, and trial lawyers for good measure.

Post-script: Fantasy Life said it with more wit and fewer words.