| Independent Irony |
[Jul. 30th, 2009|08:24 pm] |
Irony Log, boredom date: the time devoid end of July:
Almost all indie songs sound the same and they all make music videos ripping off the part of no direction period where Bob Dylan flashes signs. |
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| At the movies |
[Jul. 26th, 2009|09:24 am] |
My family had a night out at the movie theater tonight. My parents wanted to see the new Harry Potter movie but my little brother really wanted to see G force. It's ironic that my parents tried the Harry Potter cure fur child reading apathy and instead got hooked on it temselves to the point that they debate which Harry Potter was the best/ most faithful to the books. G-force stood out to me because it was such a stereotypical children;s movie. it had talking animals and there were exactly 2 caucasian guinea pigs ( no they weren;t actually white but they had white voices) one fat and one straightlaced and then two wise talking minority ones, a latina and a black one (shit almost typed black pig). Also it had the standard animals fleeing mean humans in a funny version of a pet toy, a motirised guinea pig ball, and a giant robot. Oh yea and a pet shop sequence with one animal which has gone crazy in captivity and a chorus of stupid animals saying funny things. So yea the movie manages to reuse every children;s movie stereotype since finding Nemo including the speech about trying and that despite our disilluisionment we are still special as long as we don;t give up.
So the movie was bland enough and even had some funny moments but the evening stood out for what happened in the lobby afterwards. I had taken Michael to play time crisis whern a group of 14-15 year old girls descended on the arcade. One yelled "Hey!" at me.
I said "Hi how are you?" She didn;t actually respond she just turned to her friend and yelled at the top of her lungs "Oh my God, he looks like Seth Rogan!" apparently forgetting that she had been talking to me and that I had ears. Eventually they got tired of buying temporary tatoos and left. Myabe she lost sight of me because I had stopped to talk to her and we all know retarded teenage girls vision is based on movement. If you do not move she can only smell you and since I don't smell like barely pubescent male I am of little interest.
Now I'm watching a SciFi channel movie about I'm not kidding sharks and tsumnamis. It's a perfect storm of bad filmmaking. In most shark attack movies when the sharks go on a killing spree at the beach, filmakers assume the audience doesn't really care how all the victims got there. The audience figures they just decided to go to the beach for a day of drinking, sex, boating, and abandoning their children in the ocean like the rest of us. The director of this movie however doiesnt trust us to figure that out. For 30 minutes he jumps between extremely digital sharks swimming through the water and various people getting in the water in scuba suits, parasailing, going swimming, etc. Then a jump cut to contstruction workers throwing sand in a cement mixer and stacking dynamite for blasting (gee wonder what they are going to use that for?). So just when the director decides to let the sharks start chomping away at the cast which has been placed in the same time and with the same meticulous consideration as a chess master out to slaughter his pawns, an earthquake off the california coast trigeers a massive tsunami that floods Los Angeles. yes, I know that's not possible but now they are all stuck in a lifeguard station surrounded by goblin sharks. So that's why California has a budget deficit! We spent billions on building tsunami proof lifeguard stations! Okay, glad we got something for our financial hardship at least. Oh and movie, Goblin sharks are not long extinct. They have actually done very well for themselves because they live deep enough in the ocean to have escaped human stupidity. Just fyi, so next time you make an extinct mosnter movie just pick the freaking megalodon and have the tsunami reach downtown so that it can eat its way through a skyscraper. Now that wouyld be a good movie.
Edit: these sharks keep eating couples or newlyweds. Did the writer just get out of a bad breakup when he wrote this and accidentally write in his fantasies of people in happy relationships being torn apart by prehistoric sharks? In that case, wow way to cope dude. |
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| Ben's blog Boredom date 20.07.09 |
[Jul. 20th, 2009|10:52 pm] |
At the bottom of an article I read today was a link which said subscribe to your favourite white house reporter. It's hard for me to imainge myself so enamored with the news that only a specific reporters style would "do" it for me. it seems one step below watching wolf blitzer by candlelight with the curtains drawn and a bottle of champagne on ice while sitting on a double bed with red satin sheets.
"Oh Wolf I wish you could report to me forever...except I really have to change the channel in 30 minutes. I swear it has nothing to do with the nbc prime time line up, I could never feel the same way about them as I do about you errr honest!" |
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| Hmmmm |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|07:35 pm] |
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I tried going to facebook today but the computer displayed the message "Connection interrupted: Website contains no data." Is that a technical problem or has my computer decided to provide social commentary. |
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| which would you want? |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|09:13 am] |
Do you perfer a
kiss, a smooch, a muaah, an xo, or a peck? Or do you crave a specific combination eg: I do not feel properly loved until someone administers a peck, two muaaahs, a kiss and then a few air kisses which look like closed mouths (x's) and open mouths (o's). For optimal social interactions please divulge this onformation to anyone who has bought you more than two drinks.
Yea it's late and I'm on a smartass tangent. |
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| Experimenting on children |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|08:34 pm] |
My mum wants me to work wit hmy little brother to improve his reading and writing over the summer. She says as an english major this is actually work I should be well qualified for. This allows me to perform a little experiment. See, my little brother loves star wars and I should make him write about something he likes. So if I assign an 8 year old to write a short star wars story (5-10 sentences) would it be better than an equivalent amount of the star wars prequels?
Results in 1-2 days dependin g on how cooperative Michael will be. |
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| My new home |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|04:20 am] |
I rented a room in the house with the abandoned golf cart on the lawn. The landlord's name is Thor and he's Norwegian. He also looks like Donald Pleasance, exactly like him! The room is really big and as long as he doesn't take my money and run or as long as the other roomates aren't from hell this should work well.
PS: The house actually looks like the one from haloween two where the terrified little girl hides from Michael Meyer so just as well its rented out by Donald Pleasance. Who else can protect me. |
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| Hmmm |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|02:09 am] |
Choice 1: The nieghborhood is of nice wooden houses so it stands out as the delapidated stucco house with an old golf cart rusting on the lawn. The walls are dirty and the interior is rough around the edges, but the room is huge and the rent is 680 with utilities minus the internet.
Choice 2: ON Channing and warring at the top of frat row- blob...whatever. The room is on the first floor in the corner and small but liveable, smaller than choice one. It's nicely panelled and because its in the bottom of the victorian tower the outer wall is circular. Privacy would be an issue I suppose with rthe entrance right next to my room and the big windows. 650 with utilities minus the internet.
lets see how flexible the nleases are and whgat else the day brings. |
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| best criagslist add ever...edited for inane content |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|10:06 pm] |
First of all, I have amazing roommates. Aidan, 23, enjoys Naked Yoga in the living room; he spends most of the rest his time riding bikes and drinking beer. He and Tim (23) like to do a lot of that together (the beer drinking, I mean); they have actually been talking about brewing some beer at home. So if they start soon, you might be just in time to try some!
Erika (30) goes to Expressions for sound engeneering; she loves talking about her classes, and also enjoys Naked Yoga in the livingroom from time to time.
Tim has a pretty sweet job at a used book company, and likes to play a lot of Scrabble. He and Dash (also 23) have an ongoing competition. Dash just moved in a few weeks ago. So far so good. He is EXTREMELY ticklish and likes to eat Gu.
Everybody is way into music, so there is definitely a lot of it playing in the house, and there is a lot of music talk, too. We are cool with all the neighbors, and like to visit for potlucks and such; now and again we'll make house dinners and whatnot. They're a really fun bunch, and I'm pretty sad to be leaving them... but, life happens.
About the place: omitted for brevity- discusses rooms, utilities etc
then...
disclaimer: there has never been, nor will there ever be, any Naked Yoga, or equivalent thereof, performed in this house. Neither Aidan nor Erika, nor any members of the household, have ever been known to engage in any such activity. And they are certainly and absolutely not at all or even remotely okay with being videotaped while performing Naked Yoga.
What! Do they at least use a mat while doing the naked yoga you can under no circumstances videotape? |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 4th, 2009|07:38 pm] |
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The song 5:15 by the Who feels incredibly emotionally relevant right now. No more leaving sickness, exam tomorrow! |
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| Return |
[May. 29th, 2009|03:55 pm] |
End of the third to last week in Ireland. Unfortunately, I fell out of the habit of making livejournal updates this year, which was one of the things I was looking forward to doing a lot of on my year abroad. That doesn;t mean it was a boring year abroad. I had the most fun I've ever had in college here and have a lot of great stories; just somehow after the first few months they never felt exotic enough to share urgently. Maybe the lack of conciously feeling that I was having a adventure means Ireland became home in its own way. Now its summer, the sky is cloudless and blue and for the first time this year I can walk outside without a jacket on and everyone is outside. As the girlfriend mentioned, the Irish person's relation to the sun is incomprehensible to foriegners. As soon as the sun comes out, they all strip down to tanktops and shorts, even when its still chilly to replenish their melanin stocks for the winter. I myself can't help feeling mindlessly happy to feel the warmth from the sun on my now extremely pale body.
There is one downside though- the pale sunbathing British professor. I can actually gauge the temperature outside my room by peeking out the window to see if the old english lecturer who lives on the second floor has gone sunbathing shirtless with his reading. This man devotes his life to studying battle poems and is about 65, with a big buulbous british nose, a respectable old man paunch and grey hair. If its a hot day he'll be asleep on his chair, a big book of theory on his hairy chest like a young Dumbledore. Something about interacting with this man and his high british accent in a classroom setting somehow makes this all the more unusual.
In recent domestic news the fat spanish kitchen nazi has barred me from using the upstairs kitchen. Earlier in the year that would have been a problem because my kitchen only has a minifridge for 7 people, while the upstairs has a full sized fridge for 7. A week ago she stopped me in her kitchen saying "Could you not use this kitchen anymore? Things have been stolen and they're going to question people."
"Well there's no space downstairs so they can go ahead and ask me."
"Look just please don't use it and by dont use it I mean dont use it."
Oh right, so you've noticed that when you command people they tend to be resentful and exert irritating amounts of free will by not listening. Really is there any way to make a condescending please less annoying than to treat the person you're talking with as if they are mentally retarded? I'll have ye know I left my cod in the firdge, thats right I stuck my codpiece in your freezer! Suck on that...for about 20 minutes then it should have defrosted enough for me to cook.
I'm off to camp in the north for a weekend before my last exam. Sun, kayaks (which I cant use due to an englarged spleen as a result of mono) and a beach. I return to Southern California in two weeks, but on a sunny beach weekend its atmosphere is already echoing. |
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| An I don't want to study rant |
[May. 14th, 2009|12:48 pm] |
Why does every Bond film review online trash "The Living Daylights." Yes the plot seems a bit cobbled together, providing more of an excuse to take James Bond from Cezchoslovokia to England to Czechoslovakia again then to Tunisia and into Afghanistan, but really isn't that every James Bond plot? At least this one has some twists and turns instead of villain escapes Bond, Bond chases villain to point B, battles lesser henchmen C, than Bond fuinds way to villains lair, everything explodes. Also Daylights has some of the best charaters and lines "Yorgi, you're going home as well. In the diplomatic bag!" Alsdo the car/cello case chase is amazing and has some really good one liners. Goldeneye was perfection I know, but a lot of Goldeneye's legacy has more to do with the fact that shortly afterwards the game spinoff allowed us to shoot our friends in the face for the first time, something you just couldn't do in Mario Brothers. Goldeneye was Pierce Brosnan's only good Bond movie. The rest suffered from lame villains- really a blatant Ted Turner/ Rupert Murdoch standin on a stealth boat trying to nuke China? Or a North Korean guy pissed off at the world because James Bond blew up his sports cars and to restart his life he had to undergo a gene therapy, which keeps him from sleeping? Not even dwelling on the fact that for some reason gene therapy makes North Koreans either albinos or Swedish (not that theres much difference there) how is that movie, which halfway through just recycles the plot of Diamonds are forever, better than The Living Daylights.
Timothy Dalton is funnier, classier, and much more threatening than Pierce Brosnan and his post-Goldeneye barely concealed wrinkle lines- in his last movie his cheeks flopped around more than Halle Barry's breasts. People called his performance too gritty and not suave enough for James Bond, but when Daniel Craig copies Jason Bourne action move for action move and scar for scar, that's genius. Dalton played a rough around the edge Bond, who bled and bruised, but still deployed an impressive arsenal of verbal barbs and jokes to remind us he was still James Bond beneath those rough edges. That's something that's really hard to do, especiually in the framework of his movies more realistic plots. After Roger Moore's over the top camp barely wheezed to a finish in the 80s, Biond needed a new start. View to a Kill not only showed Moore's age but more importantly wasted Christopher Walken, a natural born bond villain if there was one, on a rip off of Superman. Dalton lost some of the camp and reminded us that Bond isn;t a smooth talking womanising geriatric but someone dangerous whose not just witty but scary as well. Until then only scary thing to comne out of England had been Prince Charles' smile.
Anyways long story short, Dalton brought to the screen the most balanced Bond, and if Craig and comapny can ever hope to make up for their last outing, as bloated with pretentious incompetence as the title, they should take a few pointers off him. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 4th, 2009|01:10 am] |
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The strangest sounds emenate from rthe french exchange students room down the hall. Usually its techno or scrubs, but when i went to the kitchen for a midnight snack just now I heard this rhythmic female chanting, high to low "Dahn- Duhm." I've talked with her before. Usually we make small talk in the kichen while I burn my dinner and she steams her vegetables and looks on in amazment at my culinary incompetence with a "are you really going to put that in your mouth expression." The poiint is that from our conversatyions, I've learned she's originally from MAdagascar, so maybe the chanting just summons lemurs. It would cut down the food budget... |
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| Place to Live in Berkeley |
[May. 3rd, 2009|10:30 am] |
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Urgently need place to live in Berkeley next year. Anyone who knows friends in need or has found a unfrequeneted streetcorner with internet and a kitchen please let me know. |
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| Come to Ireland |
[Apr. 27th, 2009|05:57 pm] |
Come to Ireland in the fall, just in time for the rainy season. As a californian this will strike you as novel and new.
Come to Ireland and stay through the winter when the temperature drops below freezing ona regular bases and rthere is frost on the ground. As a californian this will strike you as novel and new and when you get tired, you know spring and summer are coming.
Come to Ireland and stay through March, starting to mutter "Where? Where is the sun?" Occassionaly a tinge of blue creeps into the grey blanket over your head.
Come to Ireland and stay through the beginning of April, when the sun comes out from behind the clouds, oine or twon days you can walk around in a t-shirt and a light jacket the rest of the time. The trees cover the rain rich green lawns of college park in drifts of white blossoms.
Come to Ireland and stay to the end of April, when the new rainy season comes? Is it a new rainy season? I realize now tghat it is not that God does not love the Irish. He/She/It loves them, truely does, but God also loves the clouds, all of them. And this little islands, a landmass so tiny any decent cloud formation can cover it, is at last the place where all these little meteorological rejects can have their moment of glory. Oh and don't feel sorry for the little scraps of cloud just floating there either. That's why God made the Aran Islands, so even those cloudlets, 20 feet wide at most can be a weather system somewhere.
On another weather note: Hail while the sun is shining? swine flu, earthquakes in China, an upsurge of violence in the Middle East and South-East Asia, the economic crisis, and now this. THE END TIMES ARE UPON US!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
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| Carpal Tunnel Vision |
[Apr. 21st, 2009|06:02 pm] |
Carpal Tunnel Vision: n., Tunnel Vision to the point that it grows irritating and painful
eg: His parents' asking him will he attend grad school right after senior year gave Ben carpal tunnel vision.
Spending all day reading history books aggravated his carpal tunnel vision by depriving him of the Sherlock Holmes book he really wanted to read.
Solution: read sherlock holmes now and plan for grad school next year. |
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| Really Random Question |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|07:40 pm] |
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Why is does the curtain match the drapes considered a pickup line, albeit a bad one? Lets just say the person your asking that question answers you, how would you be ablke to supress the urge to make a freaked out face/laugh uncontrollably if they said no. Seriously, if the curtains and the drapes don't at least come from the same page in the sherwin williams catalouge I'm not sure whether to laugh or console. |
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| Quick observation |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|06:05 pm] |
Headline in cnn.com living section
"Don't show desperation when dating"
because nothing sends a date South faster than getting down on your knees and screaming please, please, I'm fourty, fat, and no one else wants me!
Actuallyt, I am going on a sushi date on Saturday. First time eating sushi since I came here. Well, I technically ate some from TESCO once but that doesn't count. The rice and fish were alright, but tasting the soy sauce, I felt the urge to return to the store and say: "No, try again." |
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| Happiness |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|09:46 pm] |
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Walking around a quite Irish coastal city in the evening as a light rain falls and lights shine on the river is strange happiness. Today and tomorrow Galkway, Thursday the Aran Islands. Hopefully, I can see the Milky Way there. |
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