WWWhat in the World Wide Web

Bold means I’ve seen it, not-bold means I have some catching up to do…

• Transformers 5: Planet of the Earth (2011)
• This Must Be the Place (2011)
• Burn After Reading (2008)
• Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008)
• Friends with Money (2006)
• Æon Flux (2005)
• North Country (2005)
• Something’s Gotta Give (2003)
• City by the Sea (2002)
• Laurel Canyon (2002)
• The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
• Almost Famous (2000)
• Wonder Boys (2000)
• Talk of Angels (1998)
• Madeline (1998)
• Johnny Skidmarks (1998)
• Paradise Road (1997)
• Lone Star (1996)
• Primal Fear (1996)
• Fargo (1996)
• Palookaville (1995)
• Beyond Rangoon (1995)
• Bleeding Hearts (1994)
• Short Cuts (1993)
• Passed Away (1992)
• The Butcher’s Wife (1991)
• Barton Fink (1991,voice/uncredited)
• Hidden Agenda (1990)
• Miller’s Crossing (1990,uncredited)
• Darkman (1990)
• Chattahoochee (1989)
• Mississippi Burning (1988)
• Raising Arizona (1987)
• Crimewave (1985)
• Blood Simple (1984)

(source, dogg)

I have seen Fargo and Raising Arizona about a hundred times total, though, so it kind of evens out.

Due to the weakening economy (don’t say the “R” word!) many currencies have lost their value. A year ago, your problems could fetch as much as two shits. Today, I can barely give half a shit (0.47shit, to be exact). Also affected: damns, tinkers’ damns, hoots (in hell or otherwise), figs, flips, fugs, fucks, flying fucks, craps, tosses, a good goddamn (devalued to just a mediocre goddamn), and many more that I couldn’t find on google but probably exist even though they’re not Avril or Eminem songs. Anyway, the currency hardest hit has to be the poor rat. Lately I find I cannot even give a rat’s ass for the concerns and issues of the day.

To summarize: shit ain’t worth shit anymore!

And now, a favorite album for each year I have been alive on the earth planet:

1972: Rolling Stones – Exile on Main Street
1973: Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy
1974: King Crimson – Red
1975: Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
1976: Joni Mitchell – Hejira
1977: Television – Marquee Moon
1978: The Jam – All Mod Cons
1979: Talking Heads – Fear of Music
1980: The Pretenders – s/t
1981: The Cure – Faith
1982: X – Under the Big Black Sun
1983: U2 – War
1984: The Replacements – Let it Be
1985: R.E.M. – Fables of the Reconstruction
1986: Metallica – Master of Puppets
1987: Guadalcanal Diary – 2×4
1988: The Church – Starfish
1989: Pixies – Doolittle
1990: Uncle Tupelo – No Depression
1991: Slint – Spiderland
1992: Beastie Boys – Check Your Head
1993: Girls Against Boys – Venus Luxure No.1 Baby
1994: Rodan – Rusty
1995: Hum – You’d Prefer an Astronaut
1996: Failure – Fantastic Planet
1997: Yo La Tengo – I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
1998: Don Caballero – What Burns Never Returns
1999: Trans Am – Futureworld
2000: Sleater-Kinney – All Hands on the Bad One
2001: Les Savy Fav – Go Forth
2002: Ms. John Soda – No P or D
2003: The Sea and Cake – One Bedroom
2004: Laura Veirs – Carbon Glacier
2005: Kylesa – To Walk a Middle Course
2006: Mastodon – Blood Mountain
2007: Baroness – Red Album
2008: Boris – SMILE
2009: Baroness – Blue Record / Polvo – In Prism (I CAN’T DECIDE)
2010: The National – High Violet

NOTES:

1. 1977 and 1984 (and even 2009) were banner years for good rock, which made it hard to pick just one.
2. 1991 was no contest, but there were a few trying for “close second”.
3. If I were even older, 1966 would have been another such year.
4. I recycled this post from my el-jay, just because.

Sunday night I dislocated my left elbow. It’s like this (and like that):

1. The door to my apartment is on the parking lot side
2. Idiots are always parking too close to the door
3. making us 2nd floor fools have to squeeze through and then go off the side of the steps.

As I was taking down two bags of trash, I saw that I’d have to maneuver around an idiot parking job again, attempted to do this, and failed. My ankle slipped, I spun around, and fell off the side of the steps, flat on my ass. Luckily the trash bags broke my fall. Luckily, my right shoulder didn’t dislocate (which has happened a million times, sometimes completely unprovoked). UNluckily, my left arm went crazy. I thought I broke it at first, but it didn’t hurt THAT bad. After a nice neighbor gave me some water and unguent, I was able to relax enough to get my arm back in order, thus avoiding an ER trip and its too-high insurance co-pay.

Two days later, and my arm is stiff, swoll up to bejeezus and back, and I got a sexxxy bruise developing (pics to come), but much better than sunday night when I came very close to feeling sorry for myself (sitting on a pile of trash with your arm bent the wrong way can do that). I’m still in a little danger of whining, because now I have yet another bum joint to add to the list:

• ankles: often like to twist/sprain while walking
• right shoulder: been dislocated between 5-10 times
• knees: explode with pain if I get up from a kneeling position
• wrists: what do you think they’re like if I’ve been at a computer for half my life?
• (and introducing) left elbow!

I will be the first in line when they start offering full body transplants. They better start soon, while I can still get to the line!

List of legendary creatures from Japan

The best part is how specific some of these creatures are. My favorites, in list form (of course):

• Kappa—a famous water monster with a water-filled head and a love of cucumbers
• Kurage-no-hinotama—a jellyfish which floats through the air as a fireball
• Makura-gaeshi—the pillow-moving spirit (this one seems to like to torment me nightly!)
• Tankororin—an unharvested persimmon which becomes a monster
• Tōfu-kozō—a spirit child carrying a block of tofu
• Uma-no-ashi—a horse’s leg which dangles from a tree and kicks passersby (I want to come back as one of these!)

Then today is your lucky day, for I have come up with three AWESOME new baby names that would go well together!

• Bladen—meaning “strong”
• Flayden—meaning “sensitive” (or “food” if you’re a rabbit)
• Gladen—meaning “fresh, fragrant”

Oh, they won’t get beat up in school. You don’t mess with Bladen!

I had this awesome dream (for once), and was totally bummed-ass-out when I woke up from it. In it, I typed some random text into this Orator-like program (see this blogging), and it would sing the words back as an awesome lo-fi pop song. I tried it again, and this time it had musical backing and everything! It ruled. Then I woke up to a life where computers will not write my pop songs for me.

That night I also had a less awesome dream, wherein I heard a Sleater-Kinney song that was so awesome it made tears come to my eyes. Lots of them. This one’s actually more realistic. Something like that would happen on a regular basis if I were capable of displaying human emotions.

I am all the time having one of several recurring dreams. They get boring.

• I’m in the can, and someone opens the door, or the door won’t stay shut
• My guitar has broken in half while playing it
• Fighting with parents like a damn teenager
• Due to a clerical error I have to go back to highschool and take PE (at my age!)
• It’s the end of a semester in college and I suddenly realize I missed an entire class
• I missed the bus
• MONSTERS@_$*!@_%&!@_

And, rarest of all, and only if I’ve been REALLY good…

• kittens and bunnies doing hilarious things (such as dancing like people)

It doesn’t really take a freudian to pinpoint the source of all these dreams, but the main thing is it’s damn ass hell of boring to only have a few different scenarios to pick from each night. It’s a writer’s strike up in my brain.

*This was from a trailer for the movie “Phantasm II” way back when I was a youngling. Then the scary thing (whatever it was) pops up and goes, “No, it’s not!” Well, my friend Na and I thought it would be even funnier to say, “No, it ain’t!” and then we’d laugh for about 15 minutes.

I keep forgetting to write this down, and then when I remember, I don’t have time. Anyway, this is one of my favorite pastimes—one that also grosses people the hell out. I like to think of unholy food combinations, like chocolate covered steak, or deep-fried sticks of butter, etc. First, some famous ones:

• “Pork Soda”: a Primus album. (I tried to make some once, with a ramen noodle flavor packet and a bottle of seltzer water. The reaction caused a geyser before I could put the cap on)
• “Oatmeal Pizza”: a Nirvana lyric
• Those crazy Thanksgiving flavors that Jones Soda does every year.
• “Owl-flavored”: an ancient item on a Letterman top 10 list (rejected Jelly Belly flavors)

I like to tell my “special lady” that they were all out of Co-cola, or root beer at the store, so instead I picked her up a barbecue sauce flavored cola.

And once, long ago, I was at a friend’s house, and we were making a pitcher of koolaid. There was a packet of orange and a packet of grape, so we decided to mix the two. The color was brown, and so that was the name we gave the mixture.

The most recent idea I had was a banana split, made of dinner foods:

• one polska kielbasa, cut lengthwise (this is the banana)
• three scoops of mashed potatoes
• various gravies
• a cherry on top

Also, an “asian-style” dessert burrito:

• red bean paste
• sweet “sticky rice”
• ???? (my brain must be blocking out some ingredients)
• wrapped in a spring roll wrapper (or you can use an eggroll wrapper and deep-fry it, for a dessert chimichanga!)

Here are a few of the ways I’ve described my myriad aches and ailments (most often a type of ache):

• it feels like I am growing a new skeleton on top of my old one
• it feels like my skeleton is fusing together
• stabbed all over: that is the feeling in my head/neck/back/guts
• my head feels like a cell that is about to divide
• my brain is being crushed by giant hands
• I feel like that guy in the Bible what got a tent stake through the head
• I feel like a good trepanning may help the situation
• it feels like someone is squeezing my spinal column
• OWWW, barometric pressure: I am sensitive to it!
• that xacto blade just fell through my finger (the eternal model building hazard)