Saturday, December 10, 2005

The up-sell of mediocre employment...

There's something debilitating about a "job." Note that a job might be distinguished from a career because a job is typically a means to an end, at least for those of us inured into the dredges of higher education. In particular a job, though promising a moderate to negligible stipend come the end of a two-week or one-week period, rewards little. Much of the work feels purposeless 1) because it is routine, which means it will necessarily have to be repeated again and again and again and 2) there's only a faint hint that anyone's life will have been graced by one's efforts; it is doubtful, after all, that a memorization of corporate up-sell technique will have brightened a beleaguered individual's perspective, or that a nimble ring-up at the cash register will shatter the gray wall between people and change the community for the better. At the very least, were I able to make a movie, it could, even for a moment, affect someone. A job is more or less devoid of those opportunities on a regular basis. I don't deny that here and there one may produce the kind of profound changes that lead to elusive "fulfillment," but as a cog in the machine, the glitter of individual spark typically erodes under the dimming tide of commercial grease.

My pessimism no doubt is part and parcel of my problem. Still, I hold onto the hope that I can be both a caregiver (of sorts) and a corporate lackey at the same time.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Marred

One of my wittiest friends says "marred" instead of married; humorous as that conversion is marriage does have a way of making its mark, oftentimes in brutal awakening. Honestly, though, I have no complaints... it's my spouse that suffers. No doubt she's perplexed my ease (as am I) or perturbed by my goofball behavior. Surely I'm not THAT prone to playing video games, am I? But anyway, I thought I'd drop another note into my negligible corner of cyberspace and say unequivocally that marriage, while challenging, is as sweet as it was formerly cracked up to be.

Friday, July 08, 2005

Internet acrimony

I'm not a fan of relationships; mind you, I'm really excited about the one I'll be forming in little more than a month's time and all that it implies, but I don't enjoy those awkward, half-formed devils that usually emerge from an acidic pool of emotional constipation or lack of communication in general. Furthermore I don't like them when I'm made to feel guilty when they end/subside though I have only a vague idea as to what kind of ludicrously obscure or unspoken code I've overlooked.

Anyway, I just don't like internet acrimony, though I'm hypocritically wont to retaliate once the hammer comes down.

So... nevermind.

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Recent thoughts

  • No doubt everyone has their horror stories from the dentist's office. What perplexes me is that little has changed since I was a wee lad, except that I get a gourmet cookie instead of a lollipop. (The hypocrisy of providing the dentally debilitated unadulterated sugar seems too obvious to mention---conspiracies abound! The miniature spit sink/armrest must be bugged also.) My dentist resembles a leather-skinned slick used-car salesman/shady Wall Street mover-and-shaker, not the dowdy kind-spirited Santa-types I was so fond of as a pubescent metal-mouth. He refers to me as "studly." His assistants are all wafer-thin, well-tanned and/or smooth-skinned, polished and bright as their teeth. On my most recent visit to the dentist I was hurriedly asked whether I wanted anesthesia or not---his words: You want me to numb you...? Before I had time to bleat out a "%$#@*&%$ Numb me! Numb me, you cretin!" a voracious drill was feverishly applied to an already throbbing molar and a very thin temporary crown. Thankfully my agonized contortions were ample sign that he should stop or risk a wild bony elbow to the forehead, and I escaped his sadistic predilection momentarily. To make a long story short, I've now got a new crown, and no matter how incongruous the fit may result in the next month I have no desire to return to this house of horrors.
  • My dearest Amber took me to see The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and it was a well-crafted movie, though I understandably was not immersed in the story despite my best efforts. There were tear-jerking moments, giddy girl fun-times and so on, but I couldn't help but pay more attention to the whispers and sighs in the estrogen-riddled audience around me. In one moment in particular the a female behind me testified, "Oh, I love her dress! I want all of her outfits! The only time I feel that way during a movie, I remarked to Amber, is when I'm watching Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson in Guys N' Dolls. Additionally certain yelps and oohs caught me by surprise, though in one or two cases I understood the implications. Suffice it to say that my masculinity, although challenged in a sports venue or toppled in a contest of car knowledge, was validated and then some. (As for other forms of criticism, I have yet to breach the feminist rumblings stirring within... Don't ask.)


Wednesday, June 01, 2005

I should have been a farmer...

No doubt the packs of ravenous Potter fans have already masticated, digested, and er, excreted the latest news on the fourth installment of the movie version coming this November, and will soon enough be perched ominously over the carcass of the sixth book arriving this month.

Likewise Star Wars fans' creative saliva is dribbling down their sagging jowls after a hearty helping of the Dark Side, and they'll be twenty years down the road foraging in a video game bin for a relic copy of a Star Wars first-person shooter just for old-times sake.

Even the bedraggled vestiges of Lord of the Rings majesty hover like the skeletal reinforcements of the last installment over the media-frenzied populace.

The aftermath of them all? A drought of creative elbow-room. I speak from a creator's standpoint when I whimper that I can't make a viable "stand-out" wizard/fantasy story in the wake of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Were I to attempt a sci-fi epic it would get caught like a dolphin in a net meant for tuna. They would see my personal "babies" and call them by other names. My Jonathan would be their Anakin... My RedGuy would be their... I dunno.

Perhaps it's just that my timing is terrible. I want to make a work that inspires... and I don't know how to surpass something like Harry Potter , etc. when I'm still geeking out about them myself. Ugh. To quote a movie that thankfully isn't so "epic," (or at least so prolific) "I should have been a farmer."

Friday, April 15, 2005

Holding her

If I were a versatile blogger, I'd probably have better words for the contentment I feel when I'm holding her, my angel. (Henceforth angel will be code for the all-too charming, intelligent, sunny and stunning woman of my life. I do so because I fret that somehow the cheap air of cyberspace will dim the glory of my admiration to the eyes of its sometimes callous denizens.) More specifically, I don't think I can do justice to the palpitations, pinings, etc. that persist both in her presence and in the rosy-colored imagery she induces with my over-flowery self-expression.

As a writer, I have yet to "kill my darlings" so I'll have to pine in silence until I can muster something less maudlin.

Friday, March 25, 2005

My medieval princess

I feel a wee bit withered. Last night my medieval princess jaunted off to her Californian Camelot to be with family and friends, and I retire to yet another cave today, albeit sunshiny and sprinkled with chocolate paraphernalia galore: my grandmother's house. We agreed that I identify with Disney's "Beast" and she identifies with Belle... so I suppose our destinations are perfectly apropos.

At any rate, I miss her... I began missing her when I parted from her doorstep Wednesday night... Sigh... Were I a better writer I could guise my goofball swooning/sighing in delicious prose, even poetry. As it is I can't muster more than ugh, meeeeeeeeeeh, ... oh, and siiiiiiiiiiigh. Me Cro-Magnon. Me bash computer. Go ape. Ooogah-boogah.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Word of the Day

I get a daily e-mail from Dictionary.com which occasionally proves phonetically/lexically fruitful... (i.e, just plain fun)...
Case in point:

Word of the Day for Sunday March 20, 2005

spoonerism \SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun:
The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of
words.

Some examples:
* We all know what it is to have a half-warmed fish
["half-formed wish"] inside us.
* The Lord is a shoving leopard ["loving shepherd"].
* It is kisstomary to cuss ["customary to kiss"] the bride.
* Is the bean dizzy ["dean busy"]?
* When the boys come back from France, we'll have the hags
flung out ["flags hung out"]!
* Let me sew you to your sheet ["show you to your seat"].
_____________________________________________________

Spoonerism comes from the name of the Rev. William
Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), a kindly but nervous
Anglican clergyman and educationalist. All the above
examples were committed by (or attributed to) him.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=9&q=spoonerism

Geek? Who me???



Going faster than a speeding bullet, being transformed into the world's fastest man via a chemical spill ---(usually when those happen there's serious cosmetic surgery to be had and then a hermit's life holed up in a middle-of-nowhere house; super powers are then only employed to bound over stacks of newspapers and last weekend's pizza leftovers... but I digress), etc.: a geeky guy's delight. Why? Why does an oppressed woman dig a female empowerment flick? Why does Donald Trump remain oblivious to his hairpiece? Expectations fulfilled, kids.

I want a world where at least one someone does what is right at all costs against all odds and mostly because it's right (and wearing clashing colors). Furthermore, in the traditional super-hero"verse" up and down are crystal clear. Even w/ my Gospel goggles on I detect a palpable void between what I know is right and wrong and the application of said understanding. (Proof positive that only God is fit to judge in the ultimate outcome...)

So, before I make any more grammatical errors (or have to puzzle about where I put the colon... haha! Nevermind)---I'll be signing off yet again, fellow adventurers.

Comments? Criticism? Koo-koo-ka-choo?

So I'm thinking that my BLOG banner looks creepy. Anyway I can make it happy, happy, joy-joy? Any suggestions?

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Hopped-up OR Begin a Rockin' Boogie

What sugary magic is there in romantic aspiration that makes even the most plain and mundane seem potent and lofty? I'm listening to sappy old love songs, which on their own are fantastic enough, and yet they begin a rockin' boogie on the inside. That's right. I said boogie. Boogie, boogie, boogie.

The experiential plusses of what otherwise I would leave lingering on the doorstep of my peripheral contemplation I find now carry me aloft on wings of newfound inspiration. I was listening to Gene Pitney's? "Only Love Can Break a Heart" (only love can mend it again) and felt myself lilting with each cutesy bob and tuck of the melody.

It's rare, I know, but I can say for once w/o any clausal back-door that I am happy, with all of the hopped-up idealism that entails. Whoooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! etc.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Muscle factor

It's odd how straightforward we want romance to be (or male-female relationships in general, for that matter), and likewise no surprise that our clear notions about what makes a man tick or a woman va-va-voom get halted. Our frail hope that the "secret" to the opposite sex is somehow buried in a dusty tome or outlined in geometric perfection in some trumped up self-help manual is continually frustrated by new feelings, recurring yet rudely refreshing epiphanies.

Some time ago I had deluded myself into thinking that all I needed was flowers and fudge to woo my would-be. (Some oversimplification inherent in the aforementioned.) True, there are those women who are easily snared by those fleeting tokens, but they're not the kind of woman anyone wants for long, at least not in my reckoning, if only because they're so cheaply won. My issue is that I honestly have a drought of character, of... whatever it is that makes a man seem manly. (Hence the need for a supplementary arsenal.) I'm not adventurous, nor courageous, not too smart, funny or charming... I don't have that muscle factor that though women suggest is not important still seems powerful enough to secure their affection anyway.

Is it wrong that I still want, nay demand that at some point a woman will swoon because of me??? Ugh. This tired "me" again... I should have left it chained and gagged in the archives. Poo.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

A ghastly void...

A sugary free dozen donuts. That's how they got me.

Picture, if you will, a bleak, chilly Thursday night; workers at a Sandy, Utah Krispy Kreme are scurrying like worker ants around rolling carts upon carts chock full of the trademark treats and loading them onto trucks. One short, goateed recent hire is hefting boxes almost as big as he is onto a large dolly. In the midst of it all a rather lost, disconsolate spirit is hovering, already anxiously anticipating the end of the day's work.

The night yawned across intermittent instructions on how to fill out a day's report, how to unbuckle the menacing clasp securing the tall donut carts in the back of the truck, how not to drive all the way back to Sandy to pick up a neglected order/item. The supervisor training us, we'll call L, was a no-nonsense, rustic 26 year-old with child-support payments. He and "Goatee" seemed comfortable enough rolling around in the behemoth with the stock of fresh donuts in its belly. I could only look longingly out the windows at darkness.

If Utah in the daytime is boring (as some have insisted) then it's a ghastly void of sensory experience in the bleakest hours of night. Granted, I don't mind the night so much, but I can't imagine being alone in it with nothing more to do than to regularly hop in and out of the cab to open the back, pull out the loading "plank," roll out the cart, take it into a store, etc., etc., etc.

Granted, to some it may seem like just another job; to me it was a harrowing venture into the true meaning of "graveyard shift." (Try visiting Smith's at 3:30 a.m. and look for a beaming smile. Go on, I dare ya!)

At any rate, my apologies and condolences to you who may have been prematurely promised a bundle of donuts...

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

PLUGGED IN...

So I figured since other bloggers do it, why shouldn't I? Just in case anyone had the same ambitions of collecting cool artwork should they ever be rich and famous, here's one of my favorite artists, whose work I first saw here at BYU! Top notch!



Edit: A weird link-shift-vortex-something-or-other happened above that led to www.thepage.com instead of Aaron Jasinski's website. Ah well... I changed it but maybe I'm not allowed to "hotlink" his site...

Somersaults and hopscotch

My vocabulary is school children playing: somersaults and hopscotch, so I can skip from seemingly erudite (oh the deception!) to utterly juvenile in one bounding leap of little feet or slide right down to the devilish and scrape my small behind on the scorching slope. And maybe my fluid imagination vexes me because it wants similarly to keep venturing on unknown roads, to spelunk mysterious caverns. With one hand I would stroke the heavens and with the other plumb the sinister bogs deep below me.

And were there a parental figure in the mix, I would no doubt have a gentle hand turning me around before I bounded in and out of trouble; I'm just no longer ignorant, and it irks me into an interminable tantrum. Now my forays into forbidden forests betray not only the wonders of discovery but the perils of awakening.

I'm amazed by the dichotomy of scripture, that we should walk the infinite by a narrow road.

Sunday, March 06, 2005

FYI

So yay. I got the job. At the very least I'll have some "dough" to spread around...*yuk yuk*... just a little cream filling for everyday living, you might say.

Just FYI, specters of my mind... Yay for me!

Oh, and BTW, here is where most of my meager funds will be going...

MOVIES! MOVIES! MOVIES!

March 11th
  • Hostage AND/OR Robots
March 18th
  • Melinda and Melinda OR Ice Princess???? (Meeeh.)
March 25th
  • D.E.B.S OR Miss Congeniality 2? OR Guess Who???
April 1st
  • Sin City***
April 8th
  • Sahara? OR Kung Fu Hustle
April 15th
  • Valiant?
April 22nd
  • The Interpreter OR A Lot Like Love? OR King's Ransom?
April 29th
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*
May 6th
  • Kingdom of Heaven?
May 13th
  • Kicking and Screaming? OR Unleashed? OR The Beautiful Country* (if I can find it locally)
May 20th
  • Ep. 3 of Star Wars***
May 27th
  • The Longest Yard? OR Madagascar*
June 3rd
  • Cinderella Man?
June 10th
  • Mr. and Mrs. Smith (eh?*) OR The Bad News Bears? (shoot me now)
June 17th
  • Batman Begins***
June 24th
  • The Dukes of Hazzard? (okay, you spared me before... SERIOUSLY, KILL ME NOW!) OR Herbie Fully Loaded... <--- I'm kind of intrigued...
July 1st
  • War of the Worlds***
July 8th
  • Fantastic Four*** AND Bewitched?
July 15th
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory*** AND Into the Blue?
July 22nd
  • The Island OR The Perfect Man?
July 29th
  • Elizabethtown OR The Brothers Grimm OR Stealth? OR Sky High???
August 5th
  • Doom OR 3001 OR (a still as yet untitled remake of the Sons of Katie Elder starring Mark Wahlberg and directed by John Singleton)
August 12th
  • Aeon Flux** OR Everything is Illuminated (if I can find it)
August 19th
  • Romance and Cigarettes OR The Cave OR Zu Warriors

...and that's just through August... MUuuuuuuuuuuauauaaAAaaaHAHAHA!




Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Traffic school tirades... and Galaxial Gayness

This morning at 10 a.m. I went to traffic school where a mountain of a cop bellowed out in precise "Police-ese" where we violators could stick it. Tomorrow I go to a job interview also at 10 a.m. at Krispy Kreme doughnuts... anyone see the cosmic tapestry unraveling? (Cue Twilight Zone track here)...

10 a.m. traffic school by 11 turned into a tournament of tirades. One woman in the back was prepared to keep some fifty people or thereabouts holed up in the city council chamber while she contested an apparently personal grievance with a traffic citation. "What if it's your word against the cop's?" Another woman previous to her felt that being ticketed for going 15 miles an hour over the posted speed limit was unthinkable because she was traveling downhill. Someone pleaded that there be better lighting on 800 or 700 North because they couldn't see the pedestrians well enough to avoid them.

I remained quiet. I routinely contemplated my legal pad already awash with notes from months ago. (It has become a pastiche of assorted miscellaneous doodles, poems or random lecture highlights of recent history---a personal cave of Lascaux. I was fascinated by how the disorder became a unique yellow cosmos as a botched love sonnet, a quick haiku, a smiley face and notes from a stake meeting collided and caroused lazily before me.) There was no such justification for me (as is often the case). I remember racing in wanton disregard toward the Provo Town Center to see a movie one Friday or Saturday morning, and once I'd breezily cleared a round-about the police officer cordially noted that I was going 17 miles an hour over the speed limit, but graciously knocked it down to 9. (The upside to wearing one's emotions on one's sleeve is being able to LOOK aghast when one feels that way---undoubtedly the officer recognized I was on the verge of sweating to death.)

That being said, I may have an additional arsenal if I'm driving around doughnuts: before a patrolman can issue a ticket, I'll reach into the back and pull out a New York Cheesecake or a Chocolate Iced Glazed Cruller... Eat that, pig! No... really. Eat it.

P.S. I was trying to find another word form for galaxy... like galaxial (which I don't think exists) and Dictionary.com referred me to this acronym. Go figure... :)

P.P.S. I realize "galactic" might be what I was looking for... but I like galaxial better. :)

Monday, February 28, 2005

My indoorsmanship...

As I sit here, my eyeballs are being squeezed like bubble bath balls, and if it weren't for a coma-strength medication pulsating through me I'd have pulled them from their shrinking sockets twenty minutes ago. Allergies. What I get for staying indoors as a child. (Charles in Charge and the A-Team, amongst others, get the credit for that...) Of course, my indoorsmanship is most likely the lamentable cause of my ghastly pallor and an associated revulsion for sunlight as well. I should just give up now and get vampiric teeth surgically installed. Then I could walk around eerily cooing, "Blah, I want to suck your blood" or for the kids, "One vampire victim! *Muffled scream* Ha-ha-ha! Two vampire victims! Ha-ha-ha! *Choking/gurgling*..."

Or I could just commit myself to the local mental institute and save the psychoanalysts and a concerned community the trouble.

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Verbal tussle

I just got in an argument of sorts (argument=me getting hot-headed, other party looking at me like I'm bonkers) with my roommate... Clearly I'm not going to be this servant of God I keep dreaming about... not if I can't help but get into a contentious verbal tussle with anyone who pushes my buttons or contests my opinions. Now I'm surfing the ocean tide of remorse and emotional toxicity that washes in whenever I manage to get out of line... At times spiritual clarity is a curse, if only because it hones the edge of reason and regret.

Friday, February 25, 2005

Fun with demons

So what can I say about Constantine, except wow, wow, and wow? "But it's special effects detritus," you say. "It stinks of convenient deus ex machina moments and other assorted plot devices," you protest. And I say, au contraire, my little cherubs. That's right. Considering my doubts about the movie just on the cusp of buying a ticket, I could have fried the $5 and served it w/ a nice Chianti. Maybe not having been to the movies in a month, being over-stressed about not getting a job, or poring over some mind-wrenching film genre text just minutes before the movie all contributed to my overall wonderment at the pulse-pounding, rip-roaring, and smartly executed occult thriller. So many "occult" films tend to spill over into a rarified mix of one-liner misfires, overdone action sequences, and spectacular and widespread demonic creatures shoddily churned out of Hollywood's CGI machine. Somehow all of the rank-and-file of disappointments like "End of Days" and "Spawn" seems to fall gingerly in place in this film, sprinkled with sardonic grumblings from Reeves's Constantine, constantly cradling a cigarette.

I don't know whether I'm surprised at the film or myself for relishing it, even to the point of getting goosebumps when an ambiguous female angel Gabriel unfolds a pair of ashen wings or being dazzled by the dark host of fallen rogues hanging out at a sort of voodoo/Catholic priest's lounge. Sadly, I left before the rumored extra scene after the credits... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaarggh!

So anyway, if you're up for some fun w/ demons, this one gets my whole-hearted vote...

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Lil' Roundie

I was cruising Wal-Mart today w/ really no money. There are perhaps few levels of humiliation more agonizing than to wander half-starving through America's consumerist bane longingly eyeing the cheese section, a swarming pool of eager saliva just on the cusp of my tongue.

I did so while waiting for my passenger side front tire to be put in... I'm a little misty-eyed at the removal of the faithful doughnut spare that kept my car moving (albeit under 45 mph) for the interim. We grew very close, lil' Roundie and I.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Oh my lord, I'm a liberal... almost

So last night I was thinking just how terrified I am of apocalyptic terror, and based on the news of some $200 billion dollars spent on the continuing conflict in Iraq, thrown into a spicy soup of post-apocalyptic imagery (the most recent and notable being that of a charred Washington, D.C. on USA's "The Dead Zone"---thank you, late night television!) I realized in one of my overwhelming mental torrents at around 2 this morning... I really don't trust George "W." This understanding isn't as shocking as the numerous emotional (and sometimes comedic) arguments I had (around the same time) against political conservatives' war-mongering...

I get the impression that some "W" crusaders think in a peripheral way that the U.S's mucking around in the Middle East is some kind of holy war; that in fact we're saving the world by stirring the hornet's nest or dancing in a pit of cranky cobras. That's right. Cranky cobras!

While I subscribe to the LDS ethos of submission to governmental authority---(we believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law) ---I don't believe that means exonerating/disregarding the obvious frailties and/or lack of "inspiration" in our secular leadership. Anyway, I can feel the level of bile surging inside me... I'd best let things lie until I can write a cogent (but scathing) letter to the President. :)

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Just over the railroad tracks OR industrial pockets

Today I finished off a roll of "people" photos as per the assignment in my cinematography class, and again struck gold by finding an "ugly" industrial pocket of the Provo/Orem area. Last night, I went w/ someone kind enough (and available on short notice) to snap some shots along Center Street and fortuitously, in a gated area left open to the caprices of a novice photographer next to Provo Power. There were giant spools of electric cable, some aged wood and others pale aqua with rust-colored edges. Unusual, rugged, almost urban: a delightful backdrop for a fresh face, a fragile hand, brown eyes brightening boredom.
So it was this morning that upon venturing just over the railroad tracks and down a stretch another kind helper and my camera chanced upon the mangled ruins of a semi-truck and several trailers stacked atop one another like some monumental post-apocalyptic relic. The scenery alone assured some very unique photography.
It's fascinating just how the "ugly" of things man-made can still be made beautiful if cast in a sunny light, warmed by a smile, or made more intriguing by a probing pair of eyes.

I'll no doubt have to scan a few slides of the best shots, that is, w/ the permission of both occupants...

Friday, February 18, 2005

ROOFLES... which makes me think of waffles, and then marijuana, and ....what am I saying? ...

Funniest. Blog. Ever.

RIMA XI

Rima XI
by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
translated by Howard A. Landman


- Yo soy ardiente, yo soy morena,
yo soy el símbolo de la pasión;
de ansia de goces mi alma está llena;
¿a mí me buscas? -No es a ti; no

- Mi frente es pálida; mis trenzas de oro
puedo brindarte dichas sin fin;
yo de ternura guardo un tesoro;
¿a mí me llamas? -No; no es a ti.

- Yo soy un sueño, un imposible,
vano fantasma de niebla y luz;
soy incorpórea, soy intangible;
no puedo amarte. -¡Oh, ven; ven tú!

--------------------------------------------------------------
- I am burning, I am brown,
I am the very symbol of passion;
my soul is full of yearnings for pleasure;
you look for me? - It is not for you; no

- My brow is pale; my gold braids
can offer endless delight;
I guard a treasure of tenderness;
you call for me? - No; it is not for you.

- I am a dream, an impossible,
unreal ghost of fog and light;
I am incorporeal, I am intangible;
I cannot love you. - Oh, come; come now!

Monday, February 07, 2005

Bisson barber

Perchance the hair-cutting experience is different for a dame. (That's right, I said dame because I'm feeling like Sinatra.) I've just found that it's just a hair's breadth---hehe---away from the agony of the dentist, sitting in that leather chair upholstered with metal buttons. It's more like a medieval instrument of torture than a hair styling implement. "Yes sir, would you like the draw and quarter or a shampoo today?"

Today, when I was buzzed Gomer Pyle instead of Brad Pitt, I felt more like a sheep than a sado-masochistic experiment gone horribly wrong. My problem? I can't decide which is more harrowing. There I sat, tufts of my salt and pepper locks whipping around me, forlornly parted from my crown and drifting down the slope of my slippery dark-olive smock, almost waving farewell. Meanwhile, I'm trying nervously to keep from catching my hairdo in an open eyeball and simultaneously maintaining my head in a planar rectitude so that I don't have a lopsided flat-top come the end of the shearing. Throughout these complex and subtle manuevers I'm finding myself hypnotized by the stylist's? (is barber PC anymore?) frantic pace so that come the end of the shearing I really don't recall what happened. In fact, the only signal I have that the nightmare is over is a mirror w/ a neon lavender handle being thrust in my hand. This is the portion of horror films where the audience either yells or whispers to themselves "Don't open that door! Don't go in the room! Don't take your clothes off!" Fortunately in this instance the haircut manages to mask the oblong thrust of my melon toward the back and also avoids the mushroom-cloud formation. Kudos! So I gave the lady a $2 tip. Yay.

Someday I'll have to share the story of my experience with the Von Curtis Academy and the student with a bloody eye. We'll call her One-eye Wanda. She runs a chicken joint and a voodoo lounge.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Another people processor

I went today to pay the now notorious speeding ticket and was presented w/ the option of traffic school. Despite costing $3 more the promise of having the ticket kept off my record and the lure of a potentially lower insurance rate (at least that's the vague whisper circling in my mental vortex) prompted me to wade through a brief encounter w/ local bureaucracy to make it happen.

I ended up on the 3rd floor of the 4th judicial district courthouse next to a strange blend of "perps": I remember a guy clad very casually in what seemed to be an aqua jogging suit, though it may have just been that the overwhelmingly gaudy color made me think it was a full-body ensemble. An elderly couple sat cheerfully speaking with a tan, young-looking smile and a haircut, who, when he was next on the list for the hot seat, sprang up from his seat and bounded to Room 307 like he was in a pasture full of sunflowers.

Sitting there contemplating the pasty blue paint, the sullen looks of another traffic violator next to me, and unable to entertain myself by eavesdropping on a conversation between a very pregnant woman and her "ex-representation" (who seemed to have forgotten her name), I took the elevator down and went home to get my sole textbook for my film genres class.

After I returned, I noticed a few others had joined in the line (each has to sign up on a clipboard and then be called in) who better matched the seedy surroundings of relatively small-town vice. A muddy blonde miscreant w/ blood shot eyes was directing traffic: he smirkingly tried to show an uppity fellow ---himself quite out of place in an olive dress shirt, tie, and dapper overcoat--- to the clipboard.

On a side note, I was struck by the sinister scent of cigarettes in the elevator. Keenly aware of (and relieved by) Utah's Clean Air act, I'm certain that the parade of smokers entering any public domain cemented their stink into the floor carpeting, the faux wood finish, and the electronic paneling so that others will know the same corruption... LOL. I speak of cigarette stink as if it's a contagion, and I suppose it is.

At any rate, cinematography was relatively uneventful, except that I was enthralled by the various glimmers of talent in the room. Some of the photos were just plain stellar.

Good night!

Saturday, January 29, 2005

$&%@#$%&--- the fundamentals of Mormon swearing...

It's probably an oddity peculiar to the Ned Flanders-types of the world: the religious zeal that prompts one, when angry (though perhaps sinning in the anger itself) to feebly attempt to keep their language from matching their mood. I myself am guilty of a number of them, until my self-mastery dwindles and I unleash the more unsavory counterparts of the following...
Just a few words/choice phraseology from the bellicose lexicon of Happy Valley:
"a" (as in, "I'm going to come up there and kick your "a"---really threatening! I wonder what part of me corresponds to the letter z),"am" (a variant of damn that one of my roomies conocted---say it w/ gusto and you'll get the connection), dang, darn/darn it, fetch/fetchin', freak/freakin'/g, fudge, gosh (usually paired w/ darn it), heck, schnikes, sheist?, shoot, ship (no, really) Much of the above is used in combination; also, foul language will be omitted w/ the innuendo still included, as in "What the (pause)?" or "Let's get the (pause) out of here."

There are also the more sophisticated variants on "curses," as in "Oh drat" and "darn it all," "My heck!" and others...

Just an observation... No judgments, just linguistic curiosity... *devilish grin*

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

WARNING!!! A slew of parentheses ahead! Slow to 55 MPH!
Holy domesticity, Batman!!! A few observations:

#1---The prevalence of domestic "drive," as in, the celebration and exulting in courting, marriage, marriage, marriage, and child bearing, most vividly (and somewhat disturbingly) depicted in song and dance. For example, in the "June Bride" sequence, wherein the six young brides-to-be for the remaining brothers dance, clad essentially in their underwear (which was patently addressed by the more prudish sisters' attempt to avoid the window), and sing an almost ceremonial tune regarding an eventual (and quite impossibly perfect) wedding day, prompted no less, by the news that Millie, played by Jane Powell, is having a baby. I chuckled, but was inwardly traumatized.

#2---The aforementioned disregard for "chaste" behavior w/ regards to the movie audience, but high moral standards w/ regard to the world created in the movie. Why was it acceptable for the movie audience to voyeuristically view these women clad in undergarments from an earlier time (the name of which eludes me) and yet to the other characters in the film the portent of tawdry behavior was frowned upon, even shunned? Maybe it's a question that really has no answer, or maybe it's the two-faced moral treatment as old as Hollywood; satisfy the limits/parameters of the Hayes code/Legion of decency by demonstrating a revulsion for immodesty, only to draw the deviant elements of the populace with the promise of a glimpse of young starlets in their skivvies? I'm not certain. Obviously, the "immodesty" is a far cry from today's blatant music video debauchery, but it nonetheless fascinates me that we'll accept one element of immorality and reject another. Why the trade-off? I say be heinously wicked or doggedly pure, but not between! LOL... Sorry, I get carried away, and usually about things that may not really matter in the ultimate evaluation.

#3---One cannot enjoy a musical in the presence of film academics. I, myself, could not repress a scoff at the 1950's gender identities/values evident in a) women longing for marriage---it's not that the same cannot or does not occur in modern-day movies, it's just subdued and less... less patriarchal, less domestic. b) In this movie, men are still "men," whatever that means anymore, barrel-chested, burly, and boisterous, almost bullying--- (Let's face it: when the lead is Howard Keel our expectations of a man are assuredly stereotypical, almost cartoony.) c)Courting is a breeze; dancing is mastered at an acrobatic level almost instantly; emotional/romantic woes/angst is resolved in a song.

#4---Now, having said that, may I declare my unequivocal love for song and dance. (I LOVED the Nutcracker ballet, for example.) Furthermore, I LOVE musicals (Singin' in the Rain, Hello Dolly---thanks again Sam!), but whenever I sit in this semi-cerebral setting, the movie I'm watching, no matter how superficially I contemplated it before, becomes an object of excruciating analysis. And, as is the case with any true escapist film (especially the genre of musicals), save a rare few, this movie broke under the slightest investigation, as Darl Larsen astutely pointed out to me previous to our watching it. I don't remember disliking, or even demeaning Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, even though I know I've seen it at least in part. Truthfully, I want to like it, even embrace the sugary goodness. But, well .... eh?

#5---Our society, not necessarily smarter, (though perhaps more diverse) is one that is decidedly more self-conscious and film savvy (the holes of which statement do not elude me (e.g., the successes of TERRIBLE films like Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, etc.)) If anything, as homogeneous, light, hopeful, whimsical, and escapist as musicals are---perhaps the perfect representation of an illusory America---they just don't stand for long in modern-day USA. (My guess is that Chicago and Moulin Rouge were either so self-aware, and/or racy, and/or pastiche, and/or heterogeneous, etc. that they could survive the roaring current of eclecticism and cynicism. Admittedly, I'm simplifying.)

SAM, IF BY SOME TWISTED MIRACLE YOU'RE READING THIS, YOU'LL WANT TO SAUNTER ON AHEAD OR ABANDON THE PAGE COMPLETELY.

#6---One last note: the women in this movie SWOONED. I won't say more. (Er, I did, but I deleted it.... sigh. Anyway....)

So, I think I'm frazzled just thinking about good ol' fashioned values, easy courtship, and rosy cheeks. Au revoir...

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Pygmalionesque

Someone recently accused me of objectifying women. While the semantics of said slander are debatable, I cannot argue that I have not put women on an unfair pedestal, both to them and myself. I'm guessing this individual feels that I see women as simply physical spectacles, which is invariably false; in fact, the true reasons for my intrepidation are the numerous evidences that there is something else internal a hundred times more provocative than their physical facets will reveal. Granted, this "else" is perceived chemically, metaphysically, in the vague way I understand much of the world around me, so I may be misleading myself down again more romantic roads. There could be little else but physical beauty inducing an ignominiously overpowering euphoria.

I, being so introverted, cannot deduce more. I can say that for many long years I've been exposed to the aesthetics of Hollywood, magazine covers, etc. and have thus become something of a connoisseur (or dilettante) regarding feminine beauty. However, instead of confining my perception of beauty to a certain twisted mold (I, for one, despise the Barbie look) I've found that innumerable tiny non-traditional features make a woman more than lovely. The crook of a nose, the gleam of a robust cheek, a heartfelt and thus heartwarming smile, a lilting walk, a tuft of hair hanging about the ear, etc. And these observations (in their infinite variations and combinations) only lead me to wonder what's on the inside, and that's where I make my approximate (and rarely final) analysis. In short, I do not assume that a beautiful woman is kind, understanding, profound, versatile, intelligent, engaging, etc. Rather my experiences with women both recent and long since past have taught me the opposite.

Though no one else but me is likely reading my BLOG anymore, perhaps because I've managed to unintentionally piss off the whole of my small circle of might-have-been friends, I still hope that my defense stands, if only to provide an explanation.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

The Lens Cap Caper

I spent the better part of my day taking pictures in order to consume the roll already in my camera and make room for another roll of slide film I need for my Cinematography class. Of course, w/o suitable and/or willing persons to shoot, I went up 'round the mountains looking for some lofty perch and/or natural, hence beautiful setting. This, of course, is winter, so I was more or less halted by the bare spindle-trees and yellow grass, which in a way may be considered lovely but not for my purposes. I did, however, stop behind the temple and snap what will most likely turn out to be silhouettes of the Moroni capstone on the Provo temple. Some poor college girl taking a brisk walk gave me a nervous look; whenever I'm in public w/ a camera people get skittish. No, I don't want to take a photo of YOU. Not that I'd mind, of course, but I was attempting to get into a mode preparatory for the assignment, which precludes photographing people, at least this time. So I'm reduced to snapping picturesque architecture and nature scenes, though there's no dearth of those if I look hard enough.

Anyway, as I was taking photos I put my camera case down as well as the lens cap, all the while worrying I'd forget to pick them up as I was leaving. So I packed up after taking what shots I thought were worthwhile and jaunted down to campus to see what other photos I could take. I managed to finish the roll, though too late to really take many photos for the class roll. I couldn't find my lens cap, and with some frustration contemplated the debris circling my bed, my cluttered desktop, and the backseat of my car. It was lost to the gremlin-ruled oblivion of my memory. Lacking any means to locate the cap I went to grab a bite at Bajio's.

(By the way, Bajio's is a crude copy of its former residence; it used to be Q'doba's, and the burrito wraps were much better in those days ---(there was lime and cilantro in the rice blend)... now it's really as plain jane as I consider Cafe Rio to be... Not that I'm as proficient a gourmand as people w/ greater financial means, mind you.)

Just as I sat down to eat the goodies in my apartment, I realized that I may have actually left the lens cap behind the temple. So I left my food sitting on the couch, vaguely nervous that according to some sit-com turn of events a roommate would return and eat it in my place or sit on it .. . well, you get the picture.

Suffice it to say that my search at the temple was as hurried as it was nigh impossible. The sun had already rested on its haunches next to the horizon by now, or at least as far as one could discern through the cloud cover. I could barely tell what color the grass was, let alone if a lens cap was hunkered down in the grass. Scooting a dark spot around with my shoe I descried a shuffle of particles and a consistency that was familiar in my younger days: dog "stuff," feces, excrement... ick. Naturally I decided on a less direct examination of the mottled spots. Despite some 10 or 15 minutes of searching, with my skeletal fingers stiff w/ the cold, I could see nothing resembling my lens cap.

Why the effort? My camera was given to me by my father, and, given that the bond between us is slim (at least in my opinion) through no fault but my own, I hold on to what pieces of family I can. It's silly; I know.

I came home, and thankfully though my roommates entered just before I did my momentary nightmares were not realized. Also, as is the irony w/ my lost items, and I'm guessing others' also, I found the lens cap resting in a box in my room, along w/ other camera accoutrements. I had done some attempted cleaning of my 135 lens earlier and forgotten all about the lens cap. Guffaw. Chortle. Phooey. :)

Monday, January 24, 2005

A captive audience ...

I've just realized the ignominy: the flaming counter at the bottom of my BLOG doesn't distinguish between visits I make to my BLOG and those of true "visitors." Therefore, I am likely the most faithful patron to my lonely corner of the cyberverse. That's right. Cyberverse. Somebody copyright it quick!

Of course, what this also means is that my BLOG is less me reaching out into the void than me finding another void in a virtual world, another case of me judging myself a better sounding board than everyone and their dog. Admittedly, I long ago dispatched any hopes of being truly humble, unless a miracle happens---(naturally there's a vast difference between crossing one's fingers and taking up one's cross)---so I'm really just relishing myself again, not superficially, since being so superficial I hate the way I look; it is my mind, however, in which I've come to exult. No, I do not consider myself a genius---that's too lofty a title. It's this labrynthine means of examining everything and strangely in that exploration making everything ten times more intriguing than it most likely should be that captivates me. How did I come to it?? Too many hours musing upon fictional landscapes, home-made narrow escapes, and partial adventures? Maybe I've lingered in my personal expanse, absent-mindedly forgetting ultimate realities... or perhaps embracing them more than immediate imperatives. I don't know... and again, that's the spectral punctuation that fuels my fascination: the question mark.

Maybe the tragic reason I'm not married is because I want someone who can walk this imaginative, pseudo-obsessive road with me, even though it clearly is a road that I've taken deliberate pains to protect against intrusion. Maybe the reason I've ever been alone is because I, in emotional, possibly romantic, fatalistic martyrdom, feel like I'm doomed to it. This because I've probably seen too many movies... or too few.

I wrote more, but got lost in the rumination, and didn't like it afterward. Yet another joy of the internet and associated technologies: the power to edit! Hurrah!

So adieu, me, myself and I... brethren. Until next we congregate.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Calumnious cacophony

I'm not certain about the rest of the world; I spend too many hours sequestered in my cavernous corner of the Villa to have peered into the minds of others, but I'm regularly beset by a stream of pestilent voices, bellicose, sneering and senseless: anti-social to say the least. It's yet another reason I abscond with my heart tucked away, lest I "radiate" any of my sinister tendencies to the typical gaggle of Mormon goody-goodies spelunking very near my doorstep.

Of course, over the years I've painted careful portraits of these motley characters, some of them bent-faced ogres, others poisonous beauties, all of them adding to my narrative lexicon. I suppose it's a mixed curse. Suffice it to say, however, that I wonder if when I'm flustered by their bickering and derisive tones I don't reveal a twitch or a tick commonly associated w/ the clinically insane. Once a friend noted that I was moving my jaws without parting my lips, sort of talking with my mouth shut. Too creepy, eh? Maybe I should locate a shrink, or find myself nouveau riche before things get terribly atrocious. That way my dreams of having some macabrely-dressed secret passage-way (or 2, or 10) in my future chateau would be counted eccentric and not psychotic.

Ah well ... here's to early lunacy...

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Mirrors behind a woman's magic...

So I visited my "ex" last night/this morning, and can say little for my new steely bravado. Where was the Dirty Harry in me? In the fog-ridden ride up I was nothing but grimacing grim; however, as I approached, my reserves of macho misogyny turned tail and I transformed into a fawning fop again. Wishing to remain impervious to the rather impish inclinations to which I have typically clung when it comes to women, I maintained what moxie I could as I hunted for her door. It was short-lived. She's... well, she's sensational.

Not surprising, as to whether my amazement was reciprocated I do not know. How women can remain so apparently unaffected by men is beyond me, but I think I've covered that before, and to no discernible conclusion. Let's chalk it up to the nature of gender differences. I only wish that we actually followed nature more (or as it's portrayed on the Discovery channel) wherein at least a few species exhibit the male as alluring, like in the case of the peacock... LOL. Not that I want to be a peacock.

Of course, this is me going on again about the same ignoramus rigamarole as always.

I've also realized that besides being a mangutang, I'm also a porcupine. So no peacock; I've enough of the animal kingdom in me.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Pseudo-productive...

I also like "pseudo"... sounds like a martial-arts style or italian pizza bread. Anyway, amongst other things I tried to pay off a speeding ticket that for some air-headed --(I must be doing marijuana unintentionally... you know, like sleep-bonging)-- reason I thought was only $9. You're thinking, "Yeah, right, in Guam!!!" So I'm half-skipping (in a manly way, just so you know) to the local courthouse to pay the niner and go on my merry way with little more than a slap on the hand. Ha! Not so, my dear speeder friends... it's $82 "dalla." That's right. (BTW, if anyone wants a crack at the stuff I must be smokin', you just need to give me a good offer--?-- and a kilo or two is as good as rolled in your pocket.)

So I'm going to put my arm and a couple fillings in hock to pay this off, and then I'll have to walk the earth like Cain from Kung Fu. Hopefully not like Cain from the Bible.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled madness...

So, what to write??? I've been busily indulging in video games and forgetting the mirthful outside world... even to the point of my roommates' endearing attempt at an "intervention." Why? Who knows, except the coterie of odd-ball characters now burned into my brain, thanks be to the miracles of RPG. (That's Role Playing Games, not Rocket-Propelled Grenades for you kids at home.)

I've just decided that I'm not cool enough to "hang," ... that I'm too cowardly to bear the brunt of my numerous insecurities that only show themselves when I'm forced to have a conversation with another person; additionally, I don't feel as if I'm being my true self when I talk to people at times, though anymore as to what the true me is I cannot ascertain. Of course, it may just be that I revel in my own madness/eccentricity and delight in seeing others perplexed by it. Muuuuahahahaaha!

Ultimately, it may just be that social inadequacies and assorted idiosyncracies aside, I'm a melodramatic oaf. I like that word. Oaf, oaf, oaf. Oafmeal. Oaf de toilette. Oaf a cryin' out loud!

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Not so back-to-school

Wow. I may not get to take classes this semester!!! Darn parking tickets!!! Must they give me a parking ticket at 3:45 p.m. if the parking limitation only lasts until 4?!? Nazis. Parking Nazis!!! Hehe.

Anyway, I'm suffering super-lag after going several hours w/o R.E.M. sleep. I had about 0-1 hours of half-waking slumber before I hopped on the plane at Houston's George Bush International... I got my first bit of sleep this morning after taking 5 minutes to manage the whopping ton of debris on my bed... (This debris would include a decrepit VHS camera, my framed diploma, and a slew of papers that most likely were relevant six months ago... I need a secretary! or personal assistant! Any offers?)

I'm using too many exclamation points considering how proverbially wiped I feel. Oh, and I look it, too. It's no small coincidence I'm wearing my scrubs because I am one this not-so-early morning. Ugh. I look like a binge drinker. :) Much to my chagrin, I don't have a snazzy digital camera I can use to show you, mah peeps.

Anyway, kids, this is where I leave you... lingering on the edge of suspense... (How bad could he look? ---That much and more will be revealed: Same Bat Time! Same Bat Channel! Nanananananana---aw, nevermind.)

Toodles!