So I walked into the women's room and it was...fragrant. No big. That's what it's for. There was a woman standing at the sink, no one else there, and I assumed it was her. Again, no big. I did what anyone with bathroom etiquette would do and avoided eye contact and went quickly into a stall to do my business.
But then she left.
I immediately panicked, realizing that of course anyone who came in after me would think I had bombed the place and I wanted no part of that. It was a race against time to finish my business and get the hell out of there.
I made it.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what it's like to have bathroom anxiety.
Friday, December 19, 2014
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Sexual Discovery: What Are You Obligated to Tell?
Things that happened this morning:
- We almost got t-boned by a huge pickup truck when Wifey turned left at an intersection. The truck was sitting in the middle of the intersection opposite us with his blinker on signaling that he was turning left as well. Should of worked out except that when we started to turn he apparently changed his mind and started straight for us.
- I was almost for driven off the road by some bitch in a minivan who decided she didn't want to stay in her lane while we turned a corner. Had the nerve to curse at me and honk her horn. I caught up to her and blew a raspberry because I'm vicious.
- I almost got t-boned by another driver who was turning left while I was going straight.
But the thing that prompted this post was my favorite local sports radio show. Yes, again. Not in a negative way this time though. It just gave me something to think about and I thought I'd share those thoughts with my readers (or, reader. Hi Jeff!). They were talking about Michael Phelps and the stories circulating online that his girlfriend is transgender, a man, or whatever. Different "articles" use different terminology in their headlines. I'm trying to find a link that doesn't look like it came from the Enquirer. Let me see...I can't find anything, so here it is.
The story, in a word, is "Yuck". Not that she was born intersex and had the surgery and all that jazz, but that she's more than likely not at all involved with Michael Phelps and is using this for some sort of weird publicity. Bleh. The radio show this morning was also very positive and not at all disrespectful about the process and her history. The question they raised though, was this: "What, if any, obligation does a person have to tell their partner about their past?"
In this case it was clearly bullshit that if she did indeed have some sort of relationship with him she opted to go to the media with the revelation of her surgery and such without telling her alleged boyfriend first. That's a no-brainer and a clear money-grab move. Hence one of the reasons I call shenanigans (not to mention the lack of photos of the two of them together, etc.). Let's move beyond that to the generic. If you are a transgender woman/man, or were born intersex and got some things removed, whatever...do you have to tell your partner? And if so, when?
My short answer is this: if you're having a hook-up, kind've one-night-stand style, and everything looks "fine" down there (i.e. they're not going to find something they weren't expecting), I don't think you do. It's a one-time deal and I think there's some safety concerns involved. You don't know the other person all that well yet in the case of a hook-up, and trusting them with that kind of detail means you're opening yourself up for some potentially psycho behavior. I mean, do you tell them at the bar when you guys are getting cosy and heading "that way", allowing for the possibility of them making a scene to save face in front of their friends or something? Do you tell them when you're alone and about to get personal, introducing the risk of personal harm if they flip out? Have you ever seen "Looking for Mr. Goodbar"?
Personally, I've never met/seen a transgender person who didn't ping something. I'm sorry, I know this will probably offend some transgender folks, but I've never seen one that didn't make me think "That used to be a man" or "That used to be a woman". I just don't know how you could miss it. Even this chick, the one claiming to be with Michael Phelps—she's clearly had some surgery done and went the whole nine to realize her inner woman, but her face man. Her face would make me pause and ask some questions before we got too close. It still has masculine angles. But, if some hot woman managed to slip past my radar and we hooked up, I figure what I don't know won't hurt me. This is clearly not the case with STDs, but being transgender is not transmittable, so...play on! (All of the above is also clearly hypothetical since I'm both married and not likely to attract a hot woman other than my wife.)
If you're in a relationship though, if it's getting serious—yeah, you need to fess up. Getting serious is the line, you know, where it's time to come clean about everything because it's about building a relationship, and trust is a cornerstone there, if I may be cheesy. It shouldn't (hopefully wouldn't) change anything if you're with the right person, whereas if it came out somehow later on from another source it could threaten the stability of your relationship.
My two cents on a totally irrelevant subject.
- We almost got t-boned by a huge pickup truck when Wifey turned left at an intersection. The truck was sitting in the middle of the intersection opposite us with his blinker on signaling that he was turning left as well. Should of worked out except that when we started to turn he apparently changed his mind and started straight for us.
- I was almost for driven off the road by some bitch in a minivan who decided she didn't want to stay in her lane while we turned a corner. Had the nerve to curse at me and honk her horn. I caught up to her and blew a raspberry because I'm vicious.
- I almost got t-boned by another driver who was turning left while I was going straight.
But the thing that prompted this post was my favorite local sports radio show. Yes, again. Not in a negative way this time though. It just gave me something to think about and I thought I'd share those thoughts with my readers (or, reader. Hi Jeff!). They were talking about Michael Phelps and the stories circulating online that his girlfriend is transgender, a man, or whatever. Different "articles" use different terminology in their headlines. I'm trying to find a link that doesn't look like it came from the Enquirer. Let me see...I can't find anything, so here it is.
The story, in a word, is "Yuck". Not that she was born intersex and had the surgery and all that jazz, but that she's more than likely not at all involved with Michael Phelps and is using this for some sort of weird publicity. Bleh. The radio show this morning was also very positive and not at all disrespectful about the process and her history. The question they raised though, was this: "What, if any, obligation does a person have to tell their partner about their past?"
In this case it was clearly bullshit that if she did indeed have some sort of relationship with him she opted to go to the media with the revelation of her surgery and such without telling her alleged boyfriend first. That's a no-brainer and a clear money-grab move. Hence one of the reasons I call shenanigans (not to mention the lack of photos of the two of them together, etc.). Let's move beyond that to the generic. If you are a transgender woman/man, or were born intersex and got some things removed, whatever...do you have to tell your partner? And if so, when?
My short answer is this: if you're having a hook-up, kind've one-night-stand style, and everything looks "fine" down there (i.e. they're not going to find something they weren't expecting), I don't think you do. It's a one-time deal and I think there's some safety concerns involved. You don't know the other person all that well yet in the case of a hook-up, and trusting them with that kind of detail means you're opening yourself up for some potentially psycho behavior. I mean, do you tell them at the bar when you guys are getting cosy and heading "that way", allowing for the possibility of them making a scene to save face in front of their friends or something? Do you tell them when you're alone and about to get personal, introducing the risk of personal harm if they flip out? Have you ever seen "Looking for Mr. Goodbar"?
Personally, I've never met/seen a transgender person who didn't ping something. I'm sorry, I know this will probably offend some transgender folks, but I've never seen one that didn't make me think "That used to be a man" or "That used to be a woman". I just don't know how you could miss it. Even this chick, the one claiming to be with Michael Phelps—she's clearly had some surgery done and went the whole nine to realize her inner woman, but her face man. Her face would make me pause and ask some questions before we got too close. It still has masculine angles. But, if some hot woman managed to slip past my radar and we hooked up, I figure what I don't know won't hurt me. This is clearly not the case with STDs, but being transgender is not transmittable, so...play on! (All of the above is also clearly hypothetical since I'm both married and not likely to attract a hot woman other than my wife.)
If you're in a relationship though, if it's getting serious—yeah, you need to fess up. Getting serious is the line, you know, where it's time to come clean about everything because it's about building a relationship, and trust is a cornerstone there, if I may be cheesy. It shouldn't (hopefully wouldn't) change anything if you're with the right person, whereas if it came out somehow later on from another source it could threaten the stability of your relationship.
My two cents on a totally irrelevant subject.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Adrian Peterson Suspended? Good!
Time to write so that this poison in my heart can get out and I can get on with my day.
I heard some chatter on my local sports radio station this morning that almost made me break my texting while driving rule. I wanted to Tweet, Facebook, call in (and I never call in). Seriously.
So Adrian Peterson has been suspended for the rest of the season. You can read about it here and here, plus a bunch of other places. The show hosts, Toucher and Rich, along with their invited guest Greg Bedard (about whom I will say right now, "Eff that guy"), expressed outrage at the suspension. I heard a lot of "What AP did was wrong, but..." and "I don't condone this practice, but..." "Maybe he went overboard, but..." etc. If you agree that he was wrong, and that he needs to be punished, then what's the big fucking deal about him getting suspended for the remaining 6 games?
Oh. You're pissed at Goodell in general. Anything the dude does is automatically wrong, evil, insert adjective here.
Let me try and enumerate and respond to not only the arguments I heard on this show (which I normally love but pissed me off beyond belief today) but also in the comments on that ESPN article. I know, never read the comments, but sometimes there's this masochistic part of me that wants to test whether or not people are as shitty as I typically think they are. They are.
Goodell is only doing this because of public perception. He screwed up on the Ray Rice case so he's making up for it and going overboard.
And? Yeah, he messed up with the Ray Rice shit storm. He's making sure he doesn't fall into the same thing with Adrian Peterson. He doesn't want to be accused of giving this dude a slap on the wrist and letting him off easy. AP was suspended 6 games already—WITH PAY! He missed out on actual play time —which I understand would be a big deal for a competitive athlete— but he still got paid. What a luxury. You're getting punished for violating an agreement with your employer, but you're still getting paid. Now he gets suspended 6 more games without pay. That's too much though, right? Going overboard. Tell me—what is the proper punishment for beating a kid these days?
But look at all the other NFL players that do/did heinous things? Murder, manslaughter, abuse, drugs, drunk driving, you name it. The NFL never gave a fuck before and now they suddenly do?
Better late than never I say. What kind of argument is this anyway? "They never did anything about it before so they should probably keep on keepin' on. Too late now." How does continuing to not do anything help anything?
Goodell's making shit up as he goes. He's catering to public pressure.
Duh. He has a brand. His brand has had a shitty year in regards to reputation. Now more than ever the league seems full of unstable, bully-type agro dudes, and the cover is being pulled back on the league's implicit support and how they sweep these incidents under the rug. He'd be being irresponsible to his organization if he didn't take public perception into account and try to manage that. I reckon the folks most upset about this are the ones who want their business-as-usual football, hold the personal accountability please. "Yeah, yeah, beating bad, blah blah blah. Will he be back in in time to help us make a post-season run?"
But still, Goodell suspended Stallworth for the entire season in 2009 for killing a pedestrian while driving. Does AP deserve the same punishment as a dude convicted of DUI manslaughter? Isn't that a bit much?
There are people who would argue that Stallworth should have gotten worse than that. Did Goodell set a precedent that means that any other crime lesser than murder requires less time? Is the league not allowed to adjust as time goes on?
AP's actions were a product of his background/upbringing/race, whatever. He didn't think he was doing wrong, and plenty of people spank their kids.
Go fuck yourself if you can't tell the difference and you justify abuse with that tired-ass argument. I was raised being "whooped". I don't hit my kid. Argument nullified.
But Goodell is evil. Goodell is a coward. Goodell is a joke. Goodell is the antichrist. I'm never watching football again until Goodell is gone. Goodell is ruining the league.
So, let me get this straight. You're real problem is with Goodell. You don't actually care about what the players do. You'd have been happier if AP beating his kid had never come to light. You'd have been happier if that Ray Rice video had never surfaced. Because now the general public, not just the people who live and breathe football, know what's going on and are weighing in and putting pressure on Goodell to hold these dudes accountable and it's just fucking everything up. And you guys have some sort of bug up your ass about Goodell specifically. When he doesn't punish Rice enough, he's awful. When he punishes him more, later, he's awful. When he punishes AP, he's awful. He's just awful and there's nothing you can say to change my mind. Meh.
I heard some chatter on my local sports radio station this morning that almost made me break my texting while driving rule. I wanted to Tweet, Facebook, call in (and I never call in). Seriously.
So Adrian Peterson has been suspended for the rest of the season. You can read about it here and here, plus a bunch of other places. The show hosts, Toucher and Rich, along with their invited guest Greg Bedard (about whom I will say right now, "Eff that guy"), expressed outrage at the suspension. I heard a lot of "What AP did was wrong, but..." and "I don't condone this practice, but..." "Maybe he went overboard, but..." etc. If you agree that he was wrong, and that he needs to be punished, then what's the big fucking deal about him getting suspended for the remaining 6 games?
Oh. You're pissed at Goodell in general. Anything the dude does is automatically wrong, evil, insert adjective here.
Let me try and enumerate and respond to not only the arguments I heard on this show (which I normally love but pissed me off beyond belief today) but also in the comments on that ESPN article. I know, never read the comments, but sometimes there's this masochistic part of me that wants to test whether or not people are as shitty as I typically think they are. They are.
Goodell is only doing this because of public perception. He screwed up on the Ray Rice case so he's making up for it and going overboard.
And? Yeah, he messed up with the Ray Rice shit storm. He's making sure he doesn't fall into the same thing with Adrian Peterson. He doesn't want to be accused of giving this dude a slap on the wrist and letting him off easy. AP was suspended 6 games already—WITH PAY! He missed out on actual play time —which I understand would be a big deal for a competitive athlete— but he still got paid. What a luxury. You're getting punished for violating an agreement with your employer, but you're still getting paid. Now he gets suspended 6 more games without pay. That's too much though, right? Going overboard. Tell me—what is the proper punishment for beating a kid these days?
But look at all the other NFL players that do/did heinous things? Murder, manslaughter, abuse, drugs, drunk driving, you name it. The NFL never gave a fuck before and now they suddenly do?
Better late than never I say. What kind of argument is this anyway? "They never did anything about it before so they should probably keep on keepin' on. Too late now." How does continuing to not do anything help anything?
Goodell's making shit up as he goes. He's catering to public pressure.
Duh. He has a brand. His brand has had a shitty year in regards to reputation. Now more than ever the league seems full of unstable, bully-type agro dudes, and the cover is being pulled back on the league's implicit support and how they sweep these incidents under the rug. He'd be being irresponsible to his organization if he didn't take public perception into account and try to manage that. I reckon the folks most upset about this are the ones who want their business-as-usual football, hold the personal accountability please. "Yeah, yeah, beating bad, blah blah blah. Will he be back in in time to help us make a post-season run?"
But still, Goodell suspended Stallworth for the entire season in 2009 for killing a pedestrian while driving. Does AP deserve the same punishment as a dude convicted of DUI manslaughter? Isn't that a bit much?
There are people who would argue that Stallworth should have gotten worse than that. Did Goodell set a precedent that means that any other crime lesser than murder requires less time? Is the league not allowed to adjust as time goes on?
AP's actions were a product of his background/upbringing/race, whatever. He didn't think he was doing wrong, and plenty of people spank their kids.
Go fuck yourself if you can't tell the difference and you justify abuse with that tired-ass argument. I was raised being "whooped". I don't hit my kid. Argument nullified.
But Goodell is evil. Goodell is a coward. Goodell is a joke. Goodell is the antichrist. I'm never watching football again until Goodell is gone. Goodell is ruining the league.
So, let me get this straight. You're real problem is with Goodell. You don't actually care about what the players do. You'd have been happier if AP beating his kid had never come to light. You'd have been happier if that Ray Rice video had never surfaced. Because now the general public, not just the people who live and breathe football, know what's going on and are weighing in and putting pressure on Goodell to hold these dudes accountable and it's just fucking everything up. And you guys have some sort of bug up your ass about Goodell specifically. When he doesn't punish Rice enough, he's awful. When he punishes him more, later, he's awful. When he punishes AP, he's awful. He's just awful and there's nothing you can say to change my mind. Meh.
Speculation is that Goodell will be out. Fine. I hope he makes a lot of player's lives more difficult before he does. I hope he says, "Fuck it, I've been too lenient too long. Let me make up for this shit right now." I hope he starts throwing the book at everybody and stops the trend of NFL players being exempt when they fail the tests of basic human decency. Turn it into a survival game show: Who's Can Stay in the NFL? When there's a real threat to those 6-digit checks and not being able to participate in something you love maybe we'll see real change.
I'm not unreasonable though. I get that part of the pique is about a lack of guidelines. How do you know what you can get away with if there are no regulations clearly outlining the possible punishments?
Friday, October 24, 2014
The Cost of Recording
I'm a musician...sort've. I don't make any money off of it, but I play in a band and I launched a solo project about a month ago. I have a website with a blog and all that jazz and I would normally post this kind of music-related biznazz there. The thing is, this little rant is going to be about someone local, someone known, and I don't want to burn any bridges before I've built them, you know what I mean? So I'm just gonna go ahead and separate this out so I can get it off my chest but still maintain relations in case I need them again in the future. In the short term I have no intention of working with him again, but you never know what's going to happen.
When I decided to launch this new music project I had this great idea. I was going to release a single month. It would be a good way to keep people engaged, prevent them from burning out on the same old tune and losing interest. I happened to have a bunch of professionally recorded tracks that I'd done a couple of years ago. Wifey got me some studio time with a friend of ours who has a studio in town, and I went in with my guitar and laid down rhythm and vocals, had the dude from my band come in and play bass, and then had some local college kid do drums. I recorded like 6 or 7 songs during this time. They were essentially done and all I needed was some lead guitar work. I had asked a friend of mine to do it and he agreed, but he kept putting me off and finally the whole project just languished. When I re-committed myself to a solo project I thought, Cool, I have a bunch of pro tracks to start off with. I'll just play the leads myself. I planned to do a combination of releasing the professionally recorded ones and home-recorded demos of new songs.
There was a small snag in my plan though. Upon re-listening to the previously recorded tracks, it became clear that the dude with whom I'd initially recorded either had a tin ear (which I feel like he didn't because his other shit sounds pretty good), or just didn't really give a damn. The guitar was so badly out of tune it made me wince to go back and listen. I remember recording an EP with my band, using this guy (let's call him Scarf, because he wore a scarf one time) who has a studio in the same building as our practice space and having him flat out replace my guitar with one of his own to play because it didn't sound very good. That's a producer, and it makes sense. It's what I'd expect. I'm going to release these recordings and tell everyone that you recorded and produced them. It's in your best interest to make them sound good. For whatever reason that didn't happen with my initial recordings. I never told the dude either because I have no backbone. At any rate, I now found myself in a position of having to re-record all of the guitar, and some of the vocals too.
I decided to work with Scarf. He was a known, I liked the work he did on our EP, and he was conveniently located. No-brainer. I sent him the tracks I had and said, "Tell me what I need to do to make these sound good." His assessment? That much of it was unusable. He didn't think the drums were mic'd very well and therefore they lacked good levels, and he agreed that my guitar was out of tune. He said it would cost me more money to have him try and massage all of that into something listenable (and it still wouldn't be great) than it would be for us to start over. He would use what he could, but in the interest of quality replace whatever didn't rate.
When I decided to launch this new music project I had this great idea. I was going to release a single month. It would be a good way to keep people engaged, prevent them from burning out on the same old tune and losing interest. I happened to have a bunch of professionally recorded tracks that I'd done a couple of years ago. Wifey got me some studio time with a friend of ours who has a studio in town, and I went in with my guitar and laid down rhythm and vocals, had the dude from my band come in and play bass, and then had some local college kid do drums. I recorded like 6 or 7 songs during this time. They were essentially done and all I needed was some lead guitar work. I had asked a friend of mine to do it and he agreed, but he kept putting me off and finally the whole project just languished. When I re-committed myself to a solo project I thought, Cool, I have a bunch of pro tracks to start off with. I'll just play the leads myself. I planned to do a combination of releasing the professionally recorded ones and home-recorded demos of new songs.
There was a small snag in my plan though. Upon re-listening to the previously recorded tracks, it became clear that the dude with whom I'd initially recorded either had a tin ear (which I feel like he didn't because his other shit sounds pretty good), or just didn't really give a damn. The guitar was so badly out of tune it made me wince to go back and listen. I remember recording an EP with my band, using this guy (let's call him Scarf, because he wore a scarf one time) who has a studio in the same building as our practice space and having him flat out replace my guitar with one of his own to play because it didn't sound very good. That's a producer, and it makes sense. It's what I'd expect. I'm going to release these recordings and tell everyone that you recorded and produced them. It's in your best interest to make them sound good. For whatever reason that didn't happen with my initial recordings. I never told the dude either because I have no backbone. At any rate, I now found myself in a position of having to re-record all of the guitar, and some of the vocals too.
I decided to work with Scarf. He was a known, I liked the work he did on our EP, and he was conveniently located. No-brainer. I sent him the tracks I had and said, "Tell me what I need to do to make these sound good." His assessment? That much of it was unusable. He didn't think the drums were mic'd very well and therefore they lacked good levels, and he agreed that my guitar was out of tune. He said it would cost me more money to have him try and massage all of that into something listenable (and it still wouldn't be great) than it would be for us to start over. He would use what he could, but in the interest of quality replace whatever didn't rate.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Camp Belvidere: My Half-Assed Review
In my last post I mentioned a movie I'd seen recently called Camp Belvidere, and I threatened to talk about it. So, I'm gonna talk about it. It's a 38-minute short only available for rental via Vimeo. I find that incredibly disappointing because a) the movie's been out since April I think, and b) I could go broke renting it. I liked it that much.
I don't typically go in with high expectations when it comes to shorts. It's a challenging way to make a movie. You have a limited window in which to tell your story, and that often results in movies that are purposefully vague (re: "artsy") to avoid having to adhere to standard storytelling tactics which might not work well; movies with a lot of short scenes and quick camera changes, resulting in a frenetic feeling; or movies that just don't get to tell the whole story and leave the audience feeling disconnected and lost. Camp Belvidere rather masterfully avoids all of those pitfalls and leaves me feeling like I just watched a complete movie. A short one, but complete.
Ahem...there may be spoilers from here on out because I can't censor myself. You've been warned. I'll even make a little jump link for you.
I don't typically go in with high expectations when it comes to shorts. It's a challenging way to make a movie. You have a limited window in which to tell your story, and that often results in movies that are purposefully vague (re: "artsy") to avoid having to adhere to standard storytelling tactics which might not work well; movies with a lot of short scenes and quick camera changes, resulting in a frenetic feeling; or movies that just don't get to tell the whole story and leave the audience feeling disconnected and lost. Camp Belvidere rather masterfully avoids all of those pitfalls and leaves me feeling like I just watched a complete movie. A short one, but complete.
Ahem...there may be spoilers from here on out because I can't censor myself. You've been warned. I'll even make a little jump link for you.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Lesbian-related Media Thought of the Day: Soap Operas
I've just completed a binge re-watching of All My Children's Bianca/Marissa storyline. It's been a little light in new lesbian media these days (although I did just watch in interesting little short called Camp Belvidere; more on that in another post maybe) and when that happens I tend to go back to my old standbys for my girl-on-girl fix. Re-watching AMC is one of those standbys. As always, watching those clips made me start thinking about how odd the state of lesbian affairs is in the daytime soap world, so I thought this time I'd write it down and maybe not have to think about it the next time. Doubtful, but hey, no harm.
I don't know how many lesbians there've been in the history of US soaps. I'm not an avid soap watcher, although when I was a teen I tuned in to Days of Our Lives, Guiding Light, As the World Turns, and Another World whenever I had a chance. I of course didn't realize that tuning in to Another World simply because I was enthralled with Anne Heche, or that I really, really liked As the World Turns's Shannon O'Hara played by Margaret Reed might mean something...else. Like, it wasn't because of the stellar acting.
I became reacquainted with soaps by watching clips of Maggie and Bianca on AMC. I had heard about Lena Kundera but honestly, she wasn't all that attractive to me so I didn't really fancy going back to see any of that. It's kind've the way I pretend Callie and Erica didn't happen on Grey's Anatomy. I enjoyed the BAM storyline even though it just didn't make sense a good deal of the time, and it seemed that the writers were doing everything they could to keep them from having to actually do anything about the attraction between the two characters. It was so weird because they had already established this lesbian character in Bianca Montgomery, and that was such a big deal, and they'd given her a relationship already (two actually because there was Frankie I guess), but for some reason they were really balking about fully committing to Maggie and Bianca. Who the hell knows why? They kissed a total of I think 3 times during the series, and for all but the last time it wasn't mutual. You have the Maggie snogged Bianca while Bianca was with someone else kiss: http://youtu.be/Ery5wWUTgX4. I'd embed it but the user disabled that functionality. It's at the 3:40 mark.
The next time is the other way around. Maggie's in an abusive relationship with some dude and Bianca kisses her: http://youtu.be/ZYO-DcQcFc0. Same deal with the video, but this person seems to be the only one with any BAM vids on YouTube.
And the last kiss: http://youtu.be/LTmJLs4tgYk. It was still a sort've non-mutual kiss; it was a break-up kiss. They actually talked to each other and said out loud that they were lovers...right before Elizabeth Hendrickson left the show. I guess better late than never.
I don't know how many lesbians there've been in the history of US soaps. I'm not an avid soap watcher, although when I was a teen I tuned in to Days of Our Lives, Guiding Light, As the World Turns, and Another World whenever I had a chance. I of course didn't realize that tuning in to Another World simply because I was enthralled with Anne Heche, or that I really, really liked As the World Turns's Shannon O'Hara played by Margaret Reed might mean something...else. Like, it wasn't because of the stellar acting.
I became reacquainted with soaps by watching clips of Maggie and Bianca on AMC. I had heard about Lena Kundera but honestly, she wasn't all that attractive to me so I didn't really fancy going back to see any of that. It's kind've the way I pretend Callie and Erica didn't happen on Grey's Anatomy. I enjoyed the BAM storyline even though it just didn't make sense a good deal of the time, and it seemed that the writers were doing everything they could to keep them from having to actually do anything about the attraction between the two characters. It was so weird because they had already established this lesbian character in Bianca Montgomery, and that was such a big deal, and they'd given her a relationship already (two actually because there was Frankie I guess), but for some reason they were really balking about fully committing to Maggie and Bianca. Who the hell knows why? They kissed a total of I think 3 times during the series, and for all but the last time it wasn't mutual. You have the Maggie snogged Bianca while Bianca was with someone else kiss: http://youtu.be/Ery5wWUTgX4. I'd embed it but the user disabled that functionality. It's at the 3:40 mark.
The next time is the other way around. Maggie's in an abusive relationship with some dude and Bianca kisses her: http://youtu.be/ZYO-DcQcFc0. Same deal with the video, but this person seems to be the only one with any BAM vids on YouTube.
And the last kiss: http://youtu.be/LTmJLs4tgYk. It was still a sort've non-mutual kiss; it was a break-up kiss. They actually talked to each other and said out loud that they were lovers...right before Elizabeth Hendrickson left the show. I guess better late than never.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Your Bodies, Your Selves...Naked Celebrity Pics
I've read a lot of articles about the latest naked celebrity photo leak: Facebook, Gawker, Jezebel, Slate...well, hell, everyone has something to say about it. Welp, here's my two cents.
First, I'd like to address the way people are calling the theft of these photos a "sex crime". Lena Dunham was one of the first people I saw use that term to refer to this incident. I tried to find a standard definition of a sex crime, and in the majority of cases the definition always involved a physical component. From http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/sex-crimes.html
Now, I'm not saying that this was not a crime. It certainly falls under the criminalization of hacking in general, a breach of personal data that should be handled with the same levity as any data breach. The person(s) responsible, if found, should be prosecuted, along the same lines as Christopher Chaney. I can't imagine how violated and embarrassed the victims must feel. If it were me I'm not sure how I could show my face in public. It sucks.
But. But. It is not a sex crime, and frankly the unwillingness of some circles to acknowledge the other side of this —the responsibility on the part of the actresses in question—is perplexing and just plain stupid. People do foolish things, they make foolish mistakes. It makes you feel bad for them, but it does not negate their part in what happens to them. And this is the second thing I want to address, and it's an opinion that will get you flooded with accusations that you are victim-blaming, supporting rape culture, etc. GTFO.
Listen, you have every right to take selfies, naked or otherwise. Do you. Congratulations on feeling so secure in your body and yourself that you want to express it in that way. Don't be naive though. Know that just as hackers can grab credit card data from Target and Home Depot, your online data is vulnerable as well, and if you put that shit online you are assuming risk. It kills me when people do risky shit and then act all surprised when it goes pear-shaped, especially since this isn't the first time this has happened. Did no one pay attention when this happened to Scarlett Johansson? Christina Aguilera? Jessica Alba? Vanessa Hudgens? I mean, damn man. You'd have to be living under a rock to not have some reticence about uploading your naked pics to the cloud.
Okay, so maybe they didn't do it on purpose. Maybe they had some sort of automatic upload enabled through the iCloud service. Is ignorance an excuse? In many other circumstances we'd be quick to say no, it's not an excuse, but here we're willing to give them a complete pass and dissolve them of all personal responsibility. Again I say: GTFO.
I hope they prosecute the guy who did this. I applaud sites like Reddit that have been working vigilantly to remove links to the photos and shut down discussions about it. I hope the victims are able to recover from this and don't suffer too much emotionally or professionally. I hope they delete all of their nude selfies and refrain from uploading them without taking proper precautions (like stronger passwords, two-factor authentication, encryption, etc.). I hope others, celebrities and mere mortals alike, learn from this and do the same.
First, I'd like to address the way people are calling the theft of these photos a "sex crime". Lena Dunham was one of the first people I saw use that term to refer to this incident. I tried to find a standard definition of a sex crime, and in the majority of cases the definition always involved a physical component. From http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/sex-crimes.html
A number of different offenses fall into the sex crimes category, but they generally involve illegal or coerced sexual conduct against another individual. Every state has laws against prohibiting the various types of sex crimes, such as rape and sexual assault, and each state has its own time limit (or “statute of limitations”) in which victims of sex crimes may file a lawsuit against the alleged offender.The website http://sex-crimes.laws.com/ lists a number of offenses including child pornography, molestation, statutory rape. It does not list distributing personal photographs without consent. I found a rather broad definition of "sex offense" from fbi.gov:
Sex offenses (except forcible rape, prostitution, and commercialized vice)—Offenses against chastity, common decency, morals, and the like. Incest, indecent exposure, and statutory rape are included. Attempts are included.I don't know what an "offense against chastity" would even look like, but none of these say to me that this was a sex crime.
Now, I'm not saying that this was not a crime. It certainly falls under the criminalization of hacking in general, a breach of personal data that should be handled with the same levity as any data breach. The person(s) responsible, if found, should be prosecuted, along the same lines as Christopher Chaney. I can't imagine how violated and embarrassed the victims must feel. If it were me I'm not sure how I could show my face in public. It sucks.
But. But. It is not a sex crime, and frankly the unwillingness of some circles to acknowledge the other side of this —the responsibility on the part of the actresses in question—is perplexing and just plain stupid. People do foolish things, they make foolish mistakes. It makes you feel bad for them, but it does not negate their part in what happens to them. And this is the second thing I want to address, and it's an opinion that will get you flooded with accusations that you are victim-blaming, supporting rape culture, etc. GTFO.
Listen, you have every right to take selfies, naked or otherwise. Do you. Congratulations on feeling so secure in your body and yourself that you want to express it in that way. Don't be naive though. Know that just as hackers can grab credit card data from Target and Home Depot, your online data is vulnerable as well, and if you put that shit online you are assuming risk. It kills me when people do risky shit and then act all surprised when it goes pear-shaped, especially since this isn't the first time this has happened. Did no one pay attention when this happened to Scarlett Johansson? Christina Aguilera? Jessica Alba? Vanessa Hudgens? I mean, damn man. You'd have to be living under a rock to not have some reticence about uploading your naked pics to the cloud.
Okay, so maybe they didn't do it on purpose. Maybe they had some sort of automatic upload enabled through the iCloud service. Is ignorance an excuse? In many other circumstances we'd be quick to say no, it's not an excuse, but here we're willing to give them a complete pass and dissolve them of all personal responsibility. Again I say: GTFO.
I hope they prosecute the guy who did this. I applaud sites like Reddit that have been working vigilantly to remove links to the photos and shut down discussions about it. I hope the victims are able to recover from this and don't suffer too much emotionally or professionally. I hope they delete all of their nude selfies and refrain from uploading them without taking proper precautions (like stronger passwords, two-factor authentication, encryption, etc.). I hope others, celebrities and mere mortals alike, learn from this and do the same.
Friday, August 15, 2014
On Mike Brown
When I heard about Mike Brown's death, I didn't care. I saw the headline and thought very little of it. Very little of it. Do you understand that? An 18 year-old man-child was killed and I barely batted an eyelash. It seems that hearing about black people being killed —by police, by neighborhood watchmen and other self-appointed vigilantes, by paranoid people, by other black people —has become so commonplace, it's no longer worth noticing. Kind've like mass shootings. It's all part of the American landscape now. And you know what? It sucks. It sucks to be in a place in our "evolution" where we barely blink at death any more. We make the required noises, but it doesn't affect us. These things don't shock us anymore, and they should.
Ferguson is what made me start paying attention to this one. The protests, the riots, the images of neighborhoods covered in thick clouds of tear gas, of a police force that more resembled a Michael Bay movie than any police I've ever seen in real life. This got my attention, and so I started paying attention. I paid attention to the news coverage, Twitter feeds, and to what my own Facefriends were saying. What I've seen has gotten to me, and prompted me to write this. I had to write this because all of these feelings were bubbling up and taking away my concentration, making me angry, making it hard for me to move on.
Facebook is not helping matters. I've always prided myself on the diversity of my Facefriends. We have a tendency to surround ourselves (or try to surround ourselves) with likeminded people. It starts with the kind of school we go to, right? Conservative Christians don't typically enroll in Oberlin or Hampshire, and the more liberal-minded of us are not about to matriculate into Liberty University or Brigham Young. So you amass a cohort of people who tend to believe the same things as you, and then you graduate and maybe you turn towards cities that reflect your thinking. And within the cities you migrate towards neighborhoods or nearby towns that are populated by others like you. Sometimes you even gravitate towards professions/businesses that are in keeping with your social and political leanings. I missed the boat on this last one. I went into tech, which is dominated by white guys, and a pretty large number of them have mostly turned out to be conservatives/tea partiers/libertarians because, well...white guys.
There are of course exceptions to absolutely everything I just said because the world isn't black and white and doesn't neatly divide itself. It's messy and the universe is a trickster and contrarian and is always waiting to prove you wrong.
My Facefriends reflect a social and political diversity that is difficult to reproduce in real life, especially real life with a toddler and a demanding job. This wasn't done on purpose. I friended people with whom I worked, people with whom I have never engaged in a political conversation. They know me, we chat and joke and get along, we friend each other online...and then you find out what they think about "things". Things like gun control and immigration and social services.
People like Mike Brown.
And I start to wonder if maintaining this diversity—which admittedly fuels my ego and makes me think I'm so enlightened and egalitarian—is worth the assault to my sensibilities. For every gun control rant that has a few salient and valid points that I can admit to, there are more posts that make me cringe, and comments from their friends that make me wonder who exactly I'm dealing with.
Yesterday one such Facefriend posted a photo of Mike Brown. It showed him sitting at a table, pointing a gun at the camera, a bottle of Hawaiian Punch on the table and what looks like the neck of a liquor bottle just out of frame. Behind him sits another black male, and smoke is curling around him. I'm not going to repost it here. My Facefriend captioned it with: Here's the image of Michael Brown that the news doesn't want you to see. I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions.
Oh boy.
Ferguson is what made me start paying attention to this one. The protests, the riots, the images of neighborhoods covered in thick clouds of tear gas, of a police force that more resembled a Michael Bay movie than any police I've ever seen in real life. This got my attention, and so I started paying attention. I paid attention to the news coverage, Twitter feeds, and to what my own Facefriends were saying. What I've seen has gotten to me, and prompted me to write this. I had to write this because all of these feelings were bubbling up and taking away my concentration, making me angry, making it hard for me to move on.
Facebook is not helping matters. I've always prided myself on the diversity of my Facefriends. We have a tendency to surround ourselves (or try to surround ourselves) with likeminded people. It starts with the kind of school we go to, right? Conservative Christians don't typically enroll in Oberlin or Hampshire, and the more liberal-minded of us are not about to matriculate into Liberty University or Brigham Young. So you amass a cohort of people who tend to believe the same things as you, and then you graduate and maybe you turn towards cities that reflect your thinking. And within the cities you migrate towards neighborhoods or nearby towns that are populated by others like you. Sometimes you even gravitate towards professions/businesses that are in keeping with your social and political leanings. I missed the boat on this last one. I went into tech, which is dominated by white guys, and a pretty large number of them have mostly turned out to be conservatives/tea partiers/libertarians because, well...white guys.
There are of course exceptions to absolutely everything I just said because the world isn't black and white and doesn't neatly divide itself. It's messy and the universe is a trickster and contrarian and is always waiting to prove you wrong.
My Facefriends reflect a social and political diversity that is difficult to reproduce in real life, especially real life with a toddler and a demanding job. This wasn't done on purpose. I friended people with whom I worked, people with whom I have never engaged in a political conversation. They know me, we chat and joke and get along, we friend each other online...and then you find out what they think about "things". Things like gun control and immigration and social services.
People like Mike Brown.
And I start to wonder if maintaining this diversity—which admittedly fuels my ego and makes me think I'm so enlightened and egalitarian—is worth the assault to my sensibilities. For every gun control rant that has a few salient and valid points that I can admit to, there are more posts that make me cringe, and comments from their friends that make me wonder who exactly I'm dealing with.
Yesterday one such Facefriend posted a photo of Mike Brown. It showed him sitting at a table, pointing a gun at the camera, a bottle of Hawaiian Punch on the table and what looks like the neck of a liquor bottle just out of frame. Behind him sits another black male, and smoke is curling around him. I'm not going to repost it here. My Facefriend captioned it with: Here's the image of Michael Brown that the news doesn't want you to see. I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions.
Oh boy.
Friday, August 1, 2014
WeightWatchers
Weightwatchers is the best of times and the worst of times. It's the best because I honestly do lose weight when I do it. How could you not? The simple act of paying attention to what you're eating is enough to get you pointed in the right direction. That's pretty much its plus point (see what I did there, fellow WW subscribers?).
The downside to WW...well, jeez, where do I begin? How about finding out that everything you thought you knew about eating just doesn't matter when you start the plan? This is my second time doing it and I was still shocked when I started. I got up in the morning and prepared to pour my standard bowl of cereal and milk. We're not talking Reese's Puffs and whole milk, people. We're talking Kash GoLean and unsweetened soy milk. A nice healthy, well-rounded way to start my day I thought. Nuh-uh, not according to WW. They generously allotted me 27 points per day to start, and that bowl of cereal and soy milk? A solid 7 points. 7 out of 27. And that's only if I actually follow the serving sizes listed on the products. Do you know what a serving of cereal is? 3/4 of a cup. Have you ever poured exactly 3/4 cup of cereal into a bowl? It looks pathetic. Like, surely there's more, right? Nope.
I can't decide if this is an issue with the serving sizes reported by manufacturers or if we simply make our bowls too big, but this is the way of the world when you join WW. You start to realize that you can no longer eat the portions you used to eat, even if you didn't think you were overeating. It will break your spirit when you learn that a serving of pasta is actually only 2 oz and you see what 2 oz of dried pasta looks like in your hand—and that it will cost you 5 points. That's before you add olive oil, or pesto or red sauce or whatever you like on your pasta. You pretty much decide right then and there that it's not worth eating pasta any more because how depressing is that?
And hunger. If you try to eat the things you ate before but simply adhere to the serving sizes listed, you will never feel sated again. When I ate what was, for me, a normal serving of cereal in the morning I was usually hungry by mid-morning. What was going to happen when I ate even less than that? It's an impossible strategy, until you learn what WW is actually trying to do.
See, they fool you a little. Their literature and ads spend a fair amount of time reassuring you that you don't have to give up on the things you love. Yes, you can still eat cake or pie or a hotdog or whatever! The word "diet" brings thoughts of deprivation and denial. Deny yourself the things you like to eat. Everyone knows this eventually backfires and can often lead to bouts of binge-eating. But WW says, "Hey, no, we're not asking you to do that. That's silly. We just want you to think about what you eat, plan it a little. That's all. No big."
The things is, you absolutely can continue to eat pasta and pizza and cake or whatever, if that's your thing. Just know that if you eat a piece of cake, it'd better be the tiniest sliver known to man or you'd better plan to not eat anything else for the rest of the day. Go ahead, have a bowl of pasta. Same rules though. You have 27 points. You can spend it on whatever you want, but that's all you get so choose wisely. To be fair, they do also give you these extra weekly points that you can use, so technically you could go over your daily allotment, but I get the feeling that doing that a lot doesn't yield the same kind of results.
You eventually get the hang of it. You realize, okay, I want some pasta. It's 5 points. 2 oz of pasta is not going to fill me up. So, I'd better make it count. I don't want to be hungry in an hour after using 5 points (and then some unless you eat just plain pasta). So you layer your pasta with a shit ton of vegetables. Lots and lots of vegetables. Conveniently, most vegetables and fruits cost no points. You can literally eat a lb of grapes and WW will say, "Cool. Good for you." You learn to pile these foods on to actually get full, and you learn to live off of these if you plan to splurge and have that piece of cake.
This is a nice, clever way to get vegetable-adverse people to eat more of them. I get it. But a person like me, whose meals largely consisted of vegetables and tofu and brown rice and other shit that I thought was healthy? It's just frustrating. I'm not trying to eat cake. I'm not trying to eat fried chicken. I just want a bowl of fucking cereal and some fucking soy milk. Now I either have to accept that I'm going to never feel satisfied by breakfast again, start piling a bunch of berries on my cereal (whether I want to or not) and hope they help fill me up, or change my breakfast eating all together and decide I can only have cereal and milk as a treat to myself every now and then. That...that just pisses me off. Who uses milk and cereal as a treat?!
You know what started this rant? My company provided sushi for lunch for us today as a reward for good financial performance. I had four pieces of sushi—not fried, no tempura, just stuff like spicy tuna and squid nigiri and a california roll—and some edamame, and it cost me 20 points. 20 points for lunch. A small lunch even. I'm hungry again already. To add insult to injury, because I lost weight WW decreased my daily point allotment. I went from 27 points to 26. It's one point, but if you do the program you'll realize how precious one point is. I'm hungry and I have 6 points to use for the rest of the day. Dinner should be creative. Maybe I'll dive into some of those extra points.
But hey, I'm losing weight, right? And that's why no matter how much it sucks I will continue to do it. The reality of WW though? Shitty, shitty reality. I'm gonna go gnaw on some cardboard now.
The downside to WW...well, jeez, where do I begin? How about finding out that everything you thought you knew about eating just doesn't matter when you start the plan? This is my second time doing it and I was still shocked when I started. I got up in the morning and prepared to pour my standard bowl of cereal and milk. We're not talking Reese's Puffs and whole milk, people. We're talking Kash GoLean and unsweetened soy milk. A nice healthy, well-rounded way to start my day I thought. Nuh-uh, not according to WW. They generously allotted me 27 points per day to start, and that bowl of cereal and soy milk? A solid 7 points. 7 out of 27. And that's only if I actually follow the serving sizes listed on the products. Do you know what a serving of cereal is? 3/4 of a cup. Have you ever poured exactly 3/4 cup of cereal into a bowl? It looks pathetic. Like, surely there's more, right? Nope.
I can't decide if this is an issue with the serving sizes reported by manufacturers or if we simply make our bowls too big, but this is the way of the world when you join WW. You start to realize that you can no longer eat the portions you used to eat, even if you didn't think you were overeating. It will break your spirit when you learn that a serving of pasta is actually only 2 oz and you see what 2 oz of dried pasta looks like in your hand—and that it will cost you 5 points. That's before you add olive oil, or pesto or red sauce or whatever you like on your pasta. You pretty much decide right then and there that it's not worth eating pasta any more because how depressing is that?
And hunger. If you try to eat the things you ate before but simply adhere to the serving sizes listed, you will never feel sated again. When I ate what was, for me, a normal serving of cereal in the morning I was usually hungry by mid-morning. What was going to happen when I ate even less than that? It's an impossible strategy, until you learn what WW is actually trying to do.
See, they fool you a little. Their literature and ads spend a fair amount of time reassuring you that you don't have to give up on the things you love. Yes, you can still eat cake or pie or a hotdog or whatever! The word "diet" brings thoughts of deprivation and denial. Deny yourself the things you like to eat. Everyone knows this eventually backfires and can often lead to bouts of binge-eating. But WW says, "Hey, no, we're not asking you to do that. That's silly. We just want you to think about what you eat, plan it a little. That's all. No big."
The things is, you absolutely can continue to eat pasta and pizza and cake or whatever, if that's your thing. Just know that if you eat a piece of cake, it'd better be the tiniest sliver known to man or you'd better plan to not eat anything else for the rest of the day. Go ahead, have a bowl of pasta. Same rules though. You have 27 points. You can spend it on whatever you want, but that's all you get so choose wisely. To be fair, they do also give you these extra weekly points that you can use, so technically you could go over your daily allotment, but I get the feeling that doing that a lot doesn't yield the same kind of results.
You eventually get the hang of it. You realize, okay, I want some pasta. It's 5 points. 2 oz of pasta is not going to fill me up. So, I'd better make it count. I don't want to be hungry in an hour after using 5 points (and then some unless you eat just plain pasta). So you layer your pasta with a shit ton of vegetables. Lots and lots of vegetables. Conveniently, most vegetables and fruits cost no points. You can literally eat a lb of grapes and WW will say, "Cool. Good for you." You learn to pile these foods on to actually get full, and you learn to live off of these if you plan to splurge and have that piece of cake.
This is a nice, clever way to get vegetable-adverse people to eat more of them. I get it. But a person like me, whose meals largely consisted of vegetables and tofu and brown rice and other shit that I thought was healthy? It's just frustrating. I'm not trying to eat cake. I'm not trying to eat fried chicken. I just want a bowl of fucking cereal and some fucking soy milk. Now I either have to accept that I'm going to never feel satisfied by breakfast again, start piling a bunch of berries on my cereal (whether I want to or not) and hope they help fill me up, or change my breakfast eating all together and decide I can only have cereal and milk as a treat to myself every now and then. That...that just pisses me off. Who uses milk and cereal as a treat?!
You know what started this rant? My company provided sushi for lunch for us today as a reward for good financial performance. I had four pieces of sushi—not fried, no tempura, just stuff like spicy tuna and squid nigiri and a california roll—and some edamame, and it cost me 20 points. 20 points for lunch. A small lunch even. I'm hungry again already. To add insult to injury, because I lost weight WW decreased my daily point allotment. I went from 27 points to 26. It's one point, but if you do the program you'll realize how precious one point is. I'm hungry and I have 6 points to use for the rest of the day. Dinner should be creative. Maybe I'll dive into some of those extra points.
But hey, I'm losing weight, right? And that's why no matter how much it sucks I will continue to do it. The reality of WW though? Shitty, shitty reality. I'm gonna go gnaw on some cardboard now.
Dream
Last night I dreamed that one of my hot coworkers got me a pair of shoes. Well, it started out that we were actually doing a Yankee Swap type of thing and I'd just happened to get her gift. They were Crocs. But then we started talking about the size and it seemed more like she had bought them for me. She asked if they were the right size. They were 6 1/2, and I told her I probably needed size 6 because they were a little loose. She said she wore a size 1.
Maybe I ought to play the lottery today.
Maybe I ought to play the lottery today.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
How Warehouse 13 Did Me Wrong
Time for today's tv rant. It's late I know, seeing as how WH13 has been off the air for a good 2 months now. For some reason this morning's shower mental meanderings took me back to it though. At the time of the finale all I could muster was an outraged tweet. I suppose I've pouted and ruminated enough now to use more than 140 characters.
There's nothing new under the sun in tv and movies. Whenever someone thinks they've done something new and inventive, it's really taking an existing framework and implementing it in perhaps a different way. WH13 was no different. Their framework was the oft-used male/female duo solving mysteries and fighting the good fight. If I thought about it hard enough I could probably come up with a few shows from every decade since tv came into existence that uses this. Off the top of my head: Hart to Hart, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Father Dowling Mysteries, and Moonlighting for historical fare (is my age showing yet?); Bones and X-Files for something a little more current (probably reaching with X-Files, but my tv-watching dropped off with adulthood). Anyone remember Friday the 13th, the Series, which WH13 has been compared with on many occasions?
With a few exceptions (because yuck, Father Dowling Mysteries), this framework has been put to use to tell the story of partners working together and ultimately becoming "partners" in every sense of the word—even if it took several seasons (hi, X-Files!). Having attractive female and male co-stars whose characters don't eventually get it on? That's simply not done. It's become a given, something you can predict immediately. The crimes and mysteries may vary—and that's how the studios convince themselves that they're doing something "different"—but the romantic aspect is pretty much a done deal. This is why I was initially so impressed with WH13. In addition to being a funny show with a neat little plot (despite its resemblance to Ft13th), I didn't feel like the whole thing was just a mask for a romantic plotline. I enjoyed the sibling-like relationship between Pete and Myka. It was fun, it was funny. It worked.
And then the final episodes. They went and ruined everything by buying in to the played out romantic subplot between the two main characters. What made it extra ridiculous and frustrating was that it didn't even flow! Watching Pete and Myka kiss didn't feel like, "Aaahhh, finally; the romantic and sexual tension has been resolved." There was no sense of coming home, of closure, of meant-to-be. It felt like "Eeeewwwww" with a side of "What the fuck?!". It certainly didn't feel like this was something the show runners had intended to happen all along. If it was, then they either have zero skills in casting people or zero skills in creating romantic or flirtatious undertones.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that despite whatever their shortcomings in writing or casting they had—with little to no work on their end—an awesome alternative to doing the guy/girl partner/romance trope. Jaime Murray and Joanne Kelly had more chemistry in a handful of episodes than Kelly and Eddie McClintock had in 3 seasons.
You know what? Let's just lay the cards out on the table. If HG Wells had been realized as a male, and an actor had been cast that had the same chemistry with Kelly that Murray had...well, we would have seen another well-used plot device employed. How about the age old "good guy falls for the bad guy" story arc? Good guy tries to redeem the bad guy, maybe sees something in her that no one else does, sees potential for good? Or hell, maybe the bad guy is still a bad guy but the good guy really, really digs her? We probably wouldn't get a happily ever after, but we'd get some maintext, right? Yeah, except Jaime Murray is a woman, and they didn't expect the two of them to zing quite like they did. And rather than flesh that zing out, let it drive the creative process a little, give that chemistry a voice, the show runners decided to take the safe road. They used the chemistry to titillate, to draw in the fans, but never delivered, never committed, and in the end shored up the standard heteronormative story we've come to expect. And Jack Kenny is gay! I mean...that's not to say that every gay person has to put gay themes or characters in their creative work. But if the bug is biting and you swat it away? Feh on you. He had an interview with Collider.com where the question was asked: "How do you approach writing for this cast, to keep the great chemistry they have?" His response?
Sure, sure. Makes sense. Until you read this SciFi Vision interview that has him saying that Pete and Myka were endgame from the beginning. He describes a "dynamic between the two of them that there was a will-they-or-won't-they kind of tension". I'm beginning to think I was on the money with the theory that they don't actually know how to write romantic tension, because that there that he's describing? I've seen that dynamic done expertly on many tv shows, and this wasn't one of them. Actually, I'm starting to think that maybe he didn't watch his own show. He goes on to say that it was never going to be about Myka and HG setting up house together...but that was apparently good enough to have Pete and Myka do in the end? He even directly contradicts the actresses themselves: "If you seriously sat down with Jaime or Joanne they would say, 'Well no, they're not going to go set up house somewhere.'". Murray and Kelly have been pretty vocal in their support of and openness to a Berings and Wells "partnership". And somehow putting them together would have been "trivializing" their friendship, but not so with Pete and Myka. Ugh.
I kind of want to put together snippets from his own interviews and email them to him like "What the fuck, man? Do you even know what you're saying?"
I didn't expect a Myka/HG sunset. I was hoping that they'd get some respect, that we might get to see some maintext, that the show would be brave and different. A torrid romantic affair between the troubled villain and the quirky hero for a short while would have been pretty rad. Instead they play into the same tired themes that Kenny himself acknowledges in that interview. As he said in regards to the Pete/Myka pairing: "...it's not like we're breaking any new ground here". And that is the biggest shame of all. When you hear a creative person admit, almost cynically, that they were just following the formula. How disappointing.
There's nothing new under the sun in tv and movies. Whenever someone thinks they've done something new and inventive, it's really taking an existing framework and implementing it in perhaps a different way. WH13 was no different. Their framework was the oft-used male/female duo solving mysteries and fighting the good fight. If I thought about it hard enough I could probably come up with a few shows from every decade since tv came into existence that uses this. Off the top of my head: Hart to Hart, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Father Dowling Mysteries, and Moonlighting for historical fare (is my age showing yet?); Bones and X-Files for something a little more current (probably reaching with X-Files, but my tv-watching dropped off with adulthood). Anyone remember Friday the 13th, the Series, which WH13 has been compared with on many occasions?
With a few exceptions (because yuck, Father Dowling Mysteries), this framework has been put to use to tell the story of partners working together and ultimately becoming "partners" in every sense of the word—even if it took several seasons (hi, X-Files!). Having attractive female and male co-stars whose characters don't eventually get it on? That's simply not done. It's become a given, something you can predict immediately. The crimes and mysteries may vary—and that's how the studios convince themselves that they're doing something "different"—but the romantic aspect is pretty much a done deal. This is why I was initially so impressed with WH13. In addition to being a funny show with a neat little plot (despite its resemblance to Ft13th), I didn't feel like the whole thing was just a mask for a romantic plotline. I enjoyed the sibling-like relationship between Pete and Myka. It was fun, it was funny. It worked.
And then the final episodes. They went and ruined everything by buying in to the played out romantic subplot between the two main characters. What made it extra ridiculous and frustrating was that it didn't even flow! Watching Pete and Myka kiss didn't feel like, "Aaahhh, finally; the romantic and sexual tension has been resolved." There was no sense of coming home, of closure, of meant-to-be. It felt like "Eeeewwwww" with a side of "What the fuck?!". It certainly didn't feel like this was something the show runners had intended to happen all along. If it was, then they either have zero skills in casting people or zero skills in creating romantic or flirtatious undertones.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that despite whatever their shortcomings in writing or casting they had—with little to no work on their end—an awesome alternative to doing the guy/girl partner/romance trope. Jaime Murray and Joanne Kelly had more chemistry in a handful of episodes than Kelly and Eddie McClintock had in 3 seasons.
You know what? Let's just lay the cards out on the table. If HG Wells had been realized as a male, and an actor had been cast that had the same chemistry with Kelly that Murray had...well, we would have seen another well-used plot device employed. How about the age old "good guy falls for the bad guy" story arc? Good guy tries to redeem the bad guy, maybe sees something in her that no one else does, sees potential for good? Or hell, maybe the bad guy is still a bad guy but the good guy really, really digs her? We probably wouldn't get a happily ever after, but we'd get some maintext, right? Yeah, except Jaime Murray is a woman, and they didn't expect the two of them to zing quite like they did. And rather than flesh that zing out, let it drive the creative process a little, give that chemistry a voice, the show runners decided to take the safe road. They used the chemistry to titillate, to draw in the fans, but never delivered, never committed, and in the end shored up the standard heteronormative story we've come to expect. And Jack Kenny is gay! I mean...that's not to say that every gay person has to put gay themes or characters in their creative work. But if the bug is biting and you swat it away? Feh on you. He had an interview with Collider.com where the question was asked: "How do you approach writing for this cast, to keep the great chemistry they have?" His response?
"We write them like family members. We write them like brothers and sisters, and daughters and sons. Everybody can relate to family. Everybody has a mother or father, or a brother or sister that drives them crazy."
Sure, sure. Makes sense. Until you read this SciFi Vision interview that has him saying that Pete and Myka were endgame from the beginning. He describes a "dynamic between the two of them that there was a will-they-or-won't-they kind of tension". I'm beginning to think I was on the money with the theory that they don't actually know how to write romantic tension, because that there that he's describing? I've seen that dynamic done expertly on many tv shows, and this wasn't one of them. Actually, I'm starting to think that maybe he didn't watch his own show. He goes on to say that it was never going to be about Myka and HG setting up house together...but that was apparently good enough to have Pete and Myka do in the end? He even directly contradicts the actresses themselves: "If you seriously sat down with Jaime or Joanne they would say, 'Well no, they're not going to go set up house somewhere.'". Murray and Kelly have been pretty vocal in their support of and openness to a Berings and Wells "partnership". And somehow putting them together would have been "trivializing" their friendship, but not so with Pete and Myka. Ugh.
I kind of want to put together snippets from his own interviews and email them to him like "What the fuck, man? Do you even know what you're saying?"
I didn't expect a Myka/HG sunset. I was hoping that they'd get some respect, that we might get to see some maintext, that the show would be brave and different. A torrid romantic affair between the troubled villain and the quirky hero for a short while would have been pretty rad. Instead they play into the same tired themes that Kenny himself acknowledges in that interview. As he said in regards to the Pete/Myka pairing: "...it's not like we're breaking any new ground here". And that is the biggest shame of all. When you hear a creative person admit, almost cynically, that they were just following the formula. How disappointing.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
More Lesbian-ish TV That I Missed: Mistresses
I've mentioned before that I'm not on real time when it comes to watching tv. I usually don't find the time or energy to get into a show until it's long been available for streaming or something. I was just made fun of on Facebook for being on S1E3 of Game of Thrones. It's my thing though. I hate delayed gratification. I made the mistake of starting to watch Faking It in real time, and now I have to wait with this huge, ugly cliffhanger until MTV does season 2, however long that will be.
In the meantime, I take to Youtube to find out if I've been missing anything, and I came across this show called Mistresses—in particular the storyline of Joss and Alex. Joss is a real estate agent who is hired to help Alex and her wife find a house. Now, if you've watched any television at all you can pretty much write the storyline out yourself. Whenever a show introduces a lesbian character, especially if they're not part of the cast, it generally means they're about to send one of their main female characters (notice I didn't say lead) on a temporary trip to Sappho Island. I say temporary because while there are an increasing number of shows willing to take one of their main characters and send them on that journey, it's usually for a short time. There are exceptions of course, but there are far more OCs (Alex/Marissa) and Mistresses than there are Buffys (Willow/Tara) or Rookie Blues (Gail/Holly).
I'm gonna rip on Mistresses for its predictability, but I'll start off with a bit of praise and an admission. Admission: I know that this is based on the UK version of the same name (it's a trend to just copy someone else's show these days), and I've never seen that version. I don't know how much of what happens on this show is sticking strictly to the story as it existed originally and how much is being embellished upon, added, or subtracted. So it may be that what I'm about to say about this show is out of their control, although I don't think so. While they may not be able to keep Alex and Joss together in the interest of staying true to the source, I'm sure they way they do things is open to interpretation and artistic license.
On to the praise. One of the things that I did like about this storyline was the way they introduced the lesbian character and how they handled her sexuality. There was no big reveal—we didn't see Joss and Alex hanging out and becoming friends and then suddenly find out, oh hey, Alex is a lesbian. Joss and Alex become friends and there's no weirdness. You don't see Joss have to affirm her heterosexuality to Alex or warn her that she's not into women (because we know every lesbian really wants to bang straight women). It's all so very...human. Two women meet, have things in common, get along, and hang out. They go jogging together, drinking together, they talk about their lives and their relationships. It was beautiful.
Then we fall into the Well of Tropes. Alex is attracted to Joss. Alex and Joss sleep together. Alex has feelings for Joss. Joss really values Alex. They give a relationship a go. Joss actually isn't a lesbian. They break up. Here's where I start ripping into the show.
I don't have a problem with them getting together and breaking up. I have a problem with the reason for the breakup. What did her brother-in-law say? "You're not a lesbian." And that was sort've the shows way of summing up why Joss cheated on Alex and slept with her boss. She's such a hetero that she was missing the peen like crazy and couldn't help herself. One minute they have her sitting with this same dude telling him how her friendship with Alex was "the single most important thing in my life right now", and the next they show her getting all hot and bothered by this dude's mere presence. He's so steamy and dreamy, right? Suddenly.
Here's the thing. We've long ago established that Joss is her own woman and not into the whole relationship thing. It's an integral part of her character and likely the thing that's going to be her development as the show goes on. I can't tell you how many times I heard reference to her flighty, free-spirited, no-commitments ways in the few episodes that I watched. It's her thing. And that thing would have been enough to explain why she was not going to work with Alex in the long term. It would have been more true to the storyline, to her character, and more organic. No one expects the woman who has a series of casual engagements to actually have a long-term relationship.
Instead, they hang it on a definition of her sexuality, and a narrow one at that. So she's not a lesbian. Maybe she's bisexual. Are you saying a bisexual woman can't have a long-term relationship with a woman who identifies as lesbian? The way they've defined Joss actually leans more towards the possibility that she could be involved/in love with anyone. She even mentions that she had a threesome once before. She doesn't come across as a woman who would let a little thing like a label get in her way. Hell, she seems like the kind of woman who would actually bristle at being labeled. Why choose a hard-line definition of sexuality as the way to dissolve a relationship instead of using her inherent character traits? It's perfectly fine if she misses dudes and needs to get her hetero on. Again, it doesn't have to be at the expense of making such a hardline statement. A bisexual woman can miss men too. A bisexual, comittment-phobic woman could, say, enter a relationship with a woman, and then decide she needs to sleep with dudes again and that unless they can have an open relationship, they have to break up. This is all in keeping with the character.
Also, the whole "not a lesbian" thing as a reason doesn't jive with the way they've portrayed the relationship between these two women. Joss doesn't seem to have a problem with the whole "female" part of the relationship. One of my favorite scenes is this one:
Also, the whole "not a lesbian" thing as a reason doesn't jive with the way they've portrayed the relationship between these two women. Joss doesn't seem to have a problem with the whole "female" part of the relationship. One of my favorite scenes is this one:
Did that look like a woman for whom her partner's sex was a problem?
I wasn't surprised by what they did, but I was disappointed. It was just so easy and dismissive, and they started off so well. One day I'll be able to watch a show and see a girl-on-girl storyline developing and instead of feeling cautiously pessimistic I can be cautiously optimistic. Come on Rookie Blue Season 5!
I wasn't surprised by what they did, but I was disappointed. It was just so easy and dismissive, and they started off so well. One day I'll be able to watch a show and see a girl-on-girl storyline developing and instead of feeling cautiously pessimistic I can be cautiously optimistic. Come on Rookie Blue Season 5!
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Those Were the Days: 20 Years Later
Apparently I graduated from high school on this day 20 years ago. I would never have known this if it weren't for Facebook. FB is a really interesting social experiment still for me. My "friends" are an interesting mixture of people I actually see in real life on the regular, people that I still like but never see for various reasons (geography, time), people I'm meh about but keep in touch with for nostalgia (ex-coworkers), and —and this is the joint of this post —high school peeps.
The high school peeps...it's a weird situation, no way around it. I was friends with some of them and really enjoy catching up and seeing what they're up to these days. Then there are The Others. The Bullies. The Clique. The Popular Ones. The kids who laughed at me, made fun of my clothes, told me I smelled, teased me about being on welfare, and generally made my life kinda suck at times. The ones who even, at times, reduced me to tears. The ones who scared me. They send friend requests on FB, just throwing their net out like they literally picked up a yearbook and went through the list of names, looking everyone up and hitting the Request button over and and over again. What other reason could their be for them reaching out? They certainly didn't message me and apologize or try to make any kind of personal connection. I was just another name on their friend list. I don't understand their motivation, because it never even crossed my mind to look those people up. I had forgotten about them, and was glad for it.
Here's the really confusing part though. I don't know their motivation, and no one would expect me to, but I can be expected to know my own and for the life of me I cannot explain why I accepted their friend requests. Why I let myself get dragged into this strange world of retrofitting the past. To be fair, I don't think the worst of the offenders tried to reconnect. The guy who pulled his pants down and rubbed his ass on my shoulder? I've seen him comment on posts of mutual acquaintances but I haven't gotten a request from him. It may help that my first name is not the same. The requests that I have gotten from the worst of the worse? I've ignored. But there are a few that I let through. The girl who teased me in the bathroom in 4th grade for using "big words" and accused me of talking "white"? Yeah, she's my "friend". Some of the guys who, while not seeking me out for humiliation certainly had more than a few laughs at my expense (the girls are always the worse to each other), they're my "friends". So I've practiced some restraint, some selectivity. But I'm confused as to why I let even the milder offenders through?
It's through these connections that my feed is flooded with a bunch of nostalgia posts for what is the 20th anniversary of us graduating from high school and getting the fuck away from each other. Or maybe the last part only applies to me. Everyone is posting and tagging everyone else, people are commenting and waxing poetic and saying lovely things like "CSA Family Love!" and "Omg I miss you guyyysssss!!! (insert hearts here)", etc. Are they serious?
Do I sound jaded, and perhaps a tad bitter? Then why the hell am I "friends" with these people? I really don't know. I've de-friended people over less. One of them was a high school "friend" who was constantly posting uber-righty loony anti-government conspiracy theory gun talk. It was just talk, wasn't directed at me, but I was so very tired of seeing that shit on my timeline. And he was actually a nice guy in high school, a fringe element like me and the people I hung with. The high school contingent I'm still connected to on FB were definitely worse to me back then. But now they're all smiles and reminiscing. I have half a mind to comment on one of their posts and say something like, "Wow, 20 years! Can't believe it's been that long since I had someone tell me my hair looks like shit! Love you guyyyyysssss!"
Unrelated, but I really hate the new versions of the Kars for Kids commercials. Keep it Klassic.
The high school peeps...it's a weird situation, no way around it. I was friends with some of them and really enjoy catching up and seeing what they're up to these days. Then there are The Others. The Bullies. The Clique. The Popular Ones. The kids who laughed at me, made fun of my clothes, told me I smelled, teased me about being on welfare, and generally made my life kinda suck at times. The ones who even, at times, reduced me to tears. The ones who scared me. They send friend requests on FB, just throwing their net out like they literally picked up a yearbook and went through the list of names, looking everyone up and hitting the Request button over and and over again. What other reason could their be for them reaching out? They certainly didn't message me and apologize or try to make any kind of personal connection. I was just another name on their friend list. I don't understand their motivation, because it never even crossed my mind to look those people up. I had forgotten about them, and was glad for it.
Here's the really confusing part though. I don't know their motivation, and no one would expect me to, but I can be expected to know my own and for the life of me I cannot explain why I accepted their friend requests. Why I let myself get dragged into this strange world of retrofitting the past. To be fair, I don't think the worst of the offenders tried to reconnect. The guy who pulled his pants down and rubbed his ass on my shoulder? I've seen him comment on posts of mutual acquaintances but I haven't gotten a request from him. It may help that my first name is not the same. The requests that I have gotten from the worst of the worse? I've ignored. But there are a few that I let through. The girl who teased me in the bathroom in 4th grade for using "big words" and accused me of talking "white"? Yeah, she's my "friend". Some of the guys who, while not seeking me out for humiliation certainly had more than a few laughs at my expense (the girls are always the worse to each other), they're my "friends". So I've practiced some restraint, some selectivity. But I'm confused as to why I let even the milder offenders through?
It's through these connections that my feed is flooded with a bunch of nostalgia posts for what is the 20th anniversary of us graduating from high school and getting the fuck away from each other. Or maybe the last part only applies to me. Everyone is posting and tagging everyone else, people are commenting and waxing poetic and saying lovely things like "CSA Family Love!" and "Omg I miss you guyyysssss!!! (insert hearts here)", etc. Are they serious?
Do I sound jaded, and perhaps a tad bitter? Then why the hell am I "friends" with these people? I really don't know. I've de-friended people over less. One of them was a high school "friend" who was constantly posting uber-righty loony anti-government conspiracy theory gun talk. It was just talk, wasn't directed at me, but I was so very tired of seeing that shit on my timeline. And he was actually a nice guy in high school, a fringe element like me and the people I hung with. The high school contingent I'm still connected to on FB were definitely worse to me back then. But now they're all smiles and reminiscing. I have half a mind to comment on one of their posts and say something like, "Wow, 20 years! Can't believe it's been that long since I had someone tell me my hair looks like shit! Love you guyyyyysssss!"
Unrelated, but I really hate the new versions of the Kars for Kids commercials. Keep it Klassic.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Solange Knowles Finally Gets A Hit...Is That Funny?
I wrote this post title and flinched a little, because it make me guilty of the same thing I'm about to talk about. As of yesterday I've seen headline after headline about the alleged physical altercation in the elevator at the Met, wherein Solange Knowles looks like she's kicking the shit out of Jay-Z while Beyonce stands idly by. Most of the stories address the story with humor. There are already a ton of memes out there. Perhaps you've seen this
They are legion, and most at his expense. Here's the thing: the internet is full of trolls and folks who will find humor in some pretty unsavory things. People are finding it hilarious that this woman (a little woman it seems) wailed on this big hip-hop star. The big question on everyone's mind is: What did he do/say? Even major news outlets are asking this.
Come one now. Let's play the ol' "Situation Reversed" game. Let's say those elevator doors closed and Jay went HAM on Solange. Yeah, you'd still have your idiots out there laughing and talking about "What did she do to him?", as if there's something she (or he) could have done to warrant that kind of behavior, but you'd have a very loud majority screaming for his head. "Put him in jail!" "You don't put your hands on a woman!" Anyone asking what she did to provoke him would have been the victim of an online tongue-lashing. Your friends on Facebook would never share a meme that joked about the incident.
But it's a dude. It's Jay-Z. So, you know, it's okay. Instead we can talk about her behavior in tones that border on impressed ("Man, did you see how she went hard on him?") and talk about his misfortune in a manner that's almost gleeful. Instead of shaking our head in wonder and being proud of his ability to stand there and not physically retaliate (because many of us wonder if we could have done that), we're mocking him and calling into question his manhood. Really? What a double standard we have. I mean, I know that we know about the double standard, that this isn't the first or last thing to ever happen that will be subject to it, but it's just so blatant. I was reading this "article" on The Daily Beast about the incident. It I quote:
Are you kidding me? Do we really think this author would have been bold enough to make this kind of statement not only condoning but calling for violence if this had been a man attacking a woman? If it had been, say, some dude smacking Miley Cyrus (who is arguably just as polarizing)? I get that Jay-Z isn't a saint, but dude!
And for the record, when I see the photo of the the three of them leaving afterwards, I don't get "Stepford Wives" from Beyonce's expression as many have said. I get a woman seething inside and tired of her sister's antics but trying to hold it together and not act a fool in front of a crowd that would love nothing better than to start slinging dirt. I'm not a Beyonce fan in particular, not a Jay-Z fan in particular, but Solange has problems. Clearly.
Beyonce was in the elevator like... pic.twitter.com/1eLVNhhury
— Chubby Theo Huxtable (@SouthShotYa) May 12, 2014
or thisThey are legion, and most at his expense. Here's the thing: the internet is full of trolls and folks who will find humor in some pretty unsavory things. People are finding it hilarious that this woman (a little woman it seems) wailed on this big hip-hop star. The big question on everyone's mind is: What did he do/say? Even major news outlets are asking this.
Come one now. Let's play the ol' "Situation Reversed" game. Let's say those elevator doors closed and Jay went HAM on Solange. Yeah, you'd still have your idiots out there laughing and talking about "What did she do to him?", as if there's something she (or he) could have done to warrant that kind of behavior, but you'd have a very loud majority screaming for his head. "Put him in jail!" "You don't put your hands on a woman!" Anyone asking what she did to provoke him would have been the victim of an online tongue-lashing. Your friends on Facebook would never share a meme that joked about the incident.
But it's a dude. It's Jay-Z. So, you know, it's okay. Instead we can talk about her behavior in tones that border on impressed ("Man, did you see how she went hard on him?") and talk about his misfortune in a manner that's almost gleeful. Instead of shaking our head in wonder and being proud of his ability to stand there and not physically retaliate (because many of us wonder if we could have done that), we're mocking him and calling into question his manhood. Really? What a double standard we have. I mean, I know that we know about the double standard, that this isn't the first or last thing to ever happen that will be subject to it, but it's just so blatant. I was reading this "article" on The Daily Beast about the incident. It I quote:
(There is nothing more insufferable, in this writer’s opinion, than the vaunting of Jay Z as some sort of celebrity god. How quickly we forget that Jay Z stabbed someone! In 1999 he pleaded guilty to stabbing a record producer outside a Manhattan nightclub. He pleaded guilty to literally driving a knife into a human. Ugh, and then there was that pompous “I’m retired…just kidding! I’m not retired.” nonsense. Slap away, Solange!)
Are you kidding me? Do we really think this author would have been bold enough to make this kind of statement not only condoning but calling for violence if this had been a man attacking a woman? If it had been, say, some dude smacking Miley Cyrus (who is arguably just as polarizing)? I get that Jay-Z isn't a saint, but dude!
And for the record, when I see the photo of the the three of them leaving afterwards, I don't get "Stepford Wives" from Beyonce's expression as many have said. I get a woman seething inside and tired of her sister's antics but trying to hold it together and not act a fool in front of a crowd that would love nothing better than to start slinging dirt. I'm not a Beyonce fan in particular, not a Jay-Z fan in particular, but Solange has problems. Clearly.
Good luck to Bey and her family as they try and work through whatever this nonsense is.
Why I Ditched the Nexus 5
I wanted the Nexus 5. I wanted it so badly. I had finally paid off my Samsung S3 and decided to go for it. Over the years I've learned a little something about being a consumer though so I did my due diligence before dropping $350 plus shipping and some accessories on Google Play. There were a few things that gave me pause about the device.
- 16GB internal storage with no microSD slot. (I know I could buy the 32GB version, but still)
- Non-replaceable battery
- Reportedly inferior camera/video, especially the front-facing camera (although I typically don't even use the front-facing camera, so...)
- Reports of low volume on playback
Despite these concerns I was really drawn by the prospect of having a vanilla Android install to do with as I please, so I went for it. I ordered it and waited for its arrival eagerly. Of course, a day after ordering it I checked on its status and realized I had mistakenly ordered the white version instead of the black one. Whoops. No worries; a case would cover that up anyway.
I got the device and it was as glorious as I'd anticipated. It felt light and thin in my hands, despite being taller than my S3. Startup was a cinch. My apps downloaded from the Play store, I used a 3rd party app to pull over some other apps and files from old phone, and enjoyed exploring the new version of Android. I really dug the ability to say "Okay Google" and have it ready to do my bidding. "Okay, Google, make me dinner!" That didn't work obviously, but it was still a lot of fun to play with. I never use Siri on my iPad but I could see myself using this feature a lot.
I was about 3 days in to my exploration when the bottom dropped out. Lying in bed, I decided to set up Spotify and give it a listen. I played a song that's been on repeat for me for a few days now, "Sweet Nothing" by Calvin Harris feat. Florence Welch. It was, without question, awful. The high end was incredibly present, the sound overall tinny and weak. I played with the equalizer in Spotify and set it to exactly the same as my S3 and was blown away by the difference in sound quality. That alone was a deal breaker for me. I'm sure I could have looked around online for some software to tweak the sound, but that was more trouble than I wanted to go through for something that I think should have been better out of the box. I even had Wifey listen to it—she's not known for having a particularly discriminating ear—and even she was shocked by how bad it was. I made the decision then and there to box it up and go get an S5.
Overall I'm happy enough with the S5, but setting it up made me miss the simplicity of the Nexus 5. The most stand-out differences:
- The S5 is huge in comparison. Hell, it's huge compared to the S3. I actually struggle a little to get my thumb across the width of it.
- The EULAs. So many legal agreements about the software. I felt like I was selling my soul off with the agreements to not alter my phone, and to let Samsung or T-Mobile collect data for "performance purposes". Sure.
- So much included software that I neither want nor care about, and no way to uninstall it. At best I can disable the stuff. That's better than before I suppose, but I can't remove/disable all of it, so there're still background processes running that I don't need or want. That's as frustrating as it ever was.
If Google could throw a better audio processor in there, I'd have been happy as shit. As it is, I use my phone for listening to music a lot, so there was no compromising on this front.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Elfquest Revisited
I was a huge Elfquest fan when I was a tween. I remember going to the library and eagerly looking for the latest issue of the comic. My best friend Jim was a big comic buff and he took me to my first bona fide comic book store where I discovered the concept of "graphic novels" and saw Elfquest Book One. It was an amazing collection of every comic released to date, including those that I had missed. Love, love, love. (I actually shoplifted it from the store and never went back because the dude knew I'd done it).
Wifey and her bro were also Elfquest fans but because they were middle class suburban kids they actually owned every graphic novel in the series. Inevitably every time I visit their home I start reading through their collection, traveling back to my youth. I used to run around the yard with my thumb tucked in, pretending like I was a four-fingered elf and using a stick as a sword, so this was a big deal to me. It's funny how reading these now I have a slightly different reaction to them. I mean, I still love the artwork and the story is still compelling, but I kind've think the Wolfriders are...well...sort've assholes sometimes.
The Wolfriders flee the burning forest and barge their way into the trolls' caves. The trolls don't want them there; the Wolfriders are comin' anyway. The trolls have to trick them to get them to leave, otherwise they're just barging in and taking what they want. So okay, they don't get along with the trolls, they're running from their lives and have nowhere to go. It'd be nice if the trolls offered to help, but can you really blame them for not wanting to harbor their enemy?
Next the personable Wolfriders raid "Sorrow's End" (the home of the Sun Folk). Cutter actually abducts a woman. It's because of recognition (some sort of undeniable soul connection) but I don't think that really excuses kidnapping, do you? At any rate they essentially ride into the village, plunder and pillage and snatch a woman, and proceed to make themselves at home. The Sun Folk kind've roll over and let them because they're pacifist essentially (except Rayek). Cutter stalks Leetah and eventually wears her down and gets her to sex him up and give in to her feelings. Not creepy at all.
I still love the series, I'd be down for an Elfquest movie, and I'm still gonna devour this treasure trove of online copies of the original series I found (http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html), but it will be interesting to see how my reactions to the storyline have changed.
Next the personable Wolfriders raid "Sorrow's End" (the home of the Sun Folk). Cutter actually abducts a woman. It's because of recognition (some sort of undeniable soul connection) but I don't think that really excuses kidnapping, do you? At any rate they essentially ride into the village, plunder and pillage and snatch a woman, and proceed to make themselves at home. The Sun Folk kind've roll over and let them because they're pacifist essentially (except Rayek). Cutter stalks Leetah and eventually wears her down and gets her to sex him up and give in to her feelings. Not creepy at all.
I still love the series, I'd be down for an Elfquest movie, and I'm still gonna devour this treasure trove of online copies of the original series I found (http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html), but it will be interesting to see how my reactions to the storyline have changed.
Food for Thought
I'm very particular about food. Not in the way of, say, sending a steak back to the kitchen if it's a smidge over medium or something. There are just some things I will only eat a certain way. I will only eat a burger if it's a cheeseburger. I don't like omelettes with too much egg in them. As a rule I don't like egg yolk, but I do like deviled eggs. I only like pasta with pesto, not red sauce. If I have a taco or burrito, it has to have just the right fillings. And this is where the story begins.
Tonight I ordered a burrito from this Mexican place called Jose's. I've ordered delivery from there via GrubHub a few times now with great success. I took a chance on what they call a Super Burrito because by default it comes packed with all the stuff I need in a burrito: guacamole, cheese, sour cream, salsa, in addition to the usual rice and beans and meat. It sounded grand, and at $16 it was certainly a risk, but it turned out to be a huge win. Loved that thing. I ate the shit out of it. It's now my go-to thing when I'm craving Mexican and can't go somewhere.
I get my super burrito tonight, and it was decidedly not super. I took my first bite and got all meat and beans and rice. I thought, Alright, no big. Sometimes the good stuff is a little further down. I kept trying to convince myself with every bite that I was about to get some guacamole, that it just slipped down or something. Not the case. I finally gave up and realized that nope, there was no secret stash of condiment goodness in my burrito. It had simply been prepared poorly. And by poorly, I mean they'd just plain forgotten to put everything on it.
This is where my food particularity comes into play. There are people (like my wife) who could shrug and say, "Well, it's still tasty and I paid for it" and keep eating. Others would have called and bitched someone out to get a replacement. I stopped eating it. I just can't make myself eat something that is less than I want, especially if I've had it before so I have an expectation about what I should be getting. It also made me more than a little annoyed. This wasn't like some special order, where I'd added things to a basic menu item. This happens to me sometimes when I order, say, eggs, and ask them to add cheese. Sometimes the cheese just doesn't make it onto the eggs, and I kind've get that. This however was a regular menu item. It always comes with these things, so for it not to have a single one of these things on it means that someone was just not paying attention. To add insult to injury, they also neglected to include the tortillas that were supposed to come with my queso fundido—again, another standard menu item.
The bright side is that GrubHub is pretty awesome. I went back to my order and filled out a comment about it, and maybe 20-30 minutes later got a text from them asking if I wanted them to try and get a refund or give me a credit. I opted for the credit because I figured it'd be much harder for them to get a refund. Mind you, they credited $15 to my account for an order that was $36 all told, but it was something. More than I would have gotten had I called Jose's directly. This may be the end of my love affair with Jose's Super Burrito though.
Tonight I ordered a burrito from this Mexican place called Jose's. I've ordered delivery from there via GrubHub a few times now with great success. I took a chance on what they call a Super Burrito because by default it comes packed with all the stuff I need in a burrito: guacamole, cheese, sour cream, salsa, in addition to the usual rice and beans and meat. It sounded grand, and at $16 it was certainly a risk, but it turned out to be a huge win. Loved that thing. I ate the shit out of it. It's now my go-to thing when I'm craving Mexican and can't go somewhere.
I get my super burrito tonight, and it was decidedly not super. I took my first bite and got all meat and beans and rice. I thought, Alright, no big. Sometimes the good stuff is a little further down. I kept trying to convince myself with every bite that I was about to get some guacamole, that it just slipped down or something. Not the case. I finally gave up and realized that nope, there was no secret stash of condiment goodness in my burrito. It had simply been prepared poorly. And by poorly, I mean they'd just plain forgotten to put everything on it.
This is where my food particularity comes into play. There are people (like my wife) who could shrug and say, "Well, it's still tasty and I paid for it" and keep eating. Others would have called and bitched someone out to get a replacement. I stopped eating it. I just can't make myself eat something that is less than I want, especially if I've had it before so I have an expectation about what I should be getting. It also made me more than a little annoyed. This wasn't like some special order, where I'd added things to a basic menu item. This happens to me sometimes when I order, say, eggs, and ask them to add cheese. Sometimes the cheese just doesn't make it onto the eggs, and I kind've get that. This however was a regular menu item. It always comes with these things, so for it not to have a single one of these things on it means that someone was just not paying attention. To add insult to injury, they also neglected to include the tortillas that were supposed to come with my queso fundido—again, another standard menu item.
The bright side is that GrubHub is pretty awesome. I went back to my order and filled out a comment about it, and maybe 20-30 minutes later got a text from them asking if I wanted them to try and get a refund or give me a credit. I opted for the credit because I figured it'd be much harder for them to get a refund. Mind you, they credited $15 to my account for an order that was $36 all told, but it was something. More than I would have gotten had I called Jose's directly. This may be the end of my love affair with Jose's Super Burrito though.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Re-Imagining the Past , aka I Should've Said ....
Do you ever find yourself sitting around replaying some event over and over wishing you had done something differently? Probably, if you're human. I do it. Most of the time it revolves around some negative incident, some act that pissed me off so much and makes me wish I had been louder, more aggressive, more crazy. It's like some sort of ultra-violent fantasy.
Last week my wife and I were driving home from daycare as we do every evening. Our 2 1/2 year-old was in the back seat. My wife was driving. We were less than 2 blocks from our home, on a busy main street through our town. Traffic was heavy and there was immense sun glare that made it difficult to see far ahead of you. We were about to turn down a side street that led to our house when we heard/felt a thump on our trunk. We stopped the car and looked behind us. There was a family of 3 (dad, mom, kid somewhere between 9 and tween), and mom had just hit our car with her first. I leaned out of the window and asked why she'd hit our car. She replied, "You almost hit us." Neither of us had seen this family crossing the street. There was a crosswalk half a block behind us and another half a block ahead, but they'd apparently decided to take the shortcut and cross in the middle of traffic.
I responded, "A) there's a lot of sun glare and we didn't see you, and B) does this look like a crosswalk to you?" Dad starts mouthing off and I finish up with, "You're endangering yourselves!" before we continued down the side street. He's still yelling—we can't hear him at this point because I've rolled my window back up—but as we pass them I simply look at him and shake my head.
This was over a week ago and I still can't stop thinking about it and wishing I had been fiercer, said something better. It makes me so angry to think about. I wish I had said something like, "Illegally crossing a busy street during rush hour with your kid? That ought to earn you the Parent of the Year Award", something clever. I know if I had insulted their parenting skills, really clearly pointed out how irresponsible and dangerous it was, it would have pissed them off to no end. But I didn't. I also wish I had hurled some choice phrases like, "Eat a bag of dicks!" at them, but I realize my toned down response was probably a better choice since there were children around.
I probably ought to start meditating or something so I can learn to let this shit go. I'm sure it's not healthy to dwell on it.
Last week my wife and I were driving home from daycare as we do every evening. Our 2 1/2 year-old was in the back seat. My wife was driving. We were less than 2 blocks from our home, on a busy main street through our town. Traffic was heavy and there was immense sun glare that made it difficult to see far ahead of you. We were about to turn down a side street that led to our house when we heard/felt a thump on our trunk. We stopped the car and looked behind us. There was a family of 3 (dad, mom, kid somewhere between 9 and tween), and mom had just hit our car with her first. I leaned out of the window and asked why she'd hit our car. She replied, "You almost hit us." Neither of us had seen this family crossing the street. There was a crosswalk half a block behind us and another half a block ahead, but they'd apparently decided to take the shortcut and cross in the middle of traffic.
I responded, "A) there's a lot of sun glare and we didn't see you, and B) does this look like a crosswalk to you?" Dad starts mouthing off and I finish up with, "You're endangering yourselves!" before we continued down the side street. He's still yelling—we can't hear him at this point because I've rolled my window back up—but as we pass them I simply look at him and shake my head.
This was over a week ago and I still can't stop thinking about it and wishing I had been fiercer, said something better. It makes me so angry to think about. I wish I had said something like, "Illegally crossing a busy street during rush hour with your kid? That ought to earn you the Parent of the Year Award", something clever. I know if I had insulted their parenting skills, really clearly pointed out how irresponsible and dangerous it was, it would have pissed them off to no end. But I didn't. I also wish I had hurled some choice phrases like, "Eat a bag of dicks!" at them, but I realize my toned down response was probably a better choice since there were children around.
I probably ought to start meditating or something so I can learn to let this shit go. I'm sure it's not healthy to dwell on it.
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