Thursday, June 18, 2009

I Feel Awesome!

No one is going to mess up the great mood i'm in today, no matter how hard they try.

I don't know what it is, and I don't care. Maybe it's the fact that i've finally, FINALLY managed to reset my sleep clock so that i get to bed reasonably early (when not going out) and wake up feeling rested.

Maybe it's the fact that I've actually been able to have some damned fun lately.

Maybe I'm still happily reliving the President's spastic, flailing performance on Meet the Press last sunday, safe in the knowledge that the only reason I'M not president is that I simply don't feel like it; since it's pretty obvious from Sunday's spectacle that any sack of shit in a suit can do it.

This morning, when my alarm went off, i shot straight up in bed and loudly declared to my two cats that i felt AWESOME, and that they can just get used to the idea. I marched into my kitchen and put a huge pot of coffee up in my brand-new, non-electrical-fire-starting coffee maker, while singing the "Folger's in your cup" theme song in my best Joe Cocker impersonation. And to my surprise, i still had a bag of baby carrots, or carrotinas, or whatever they're called, stashed away in the fridge. And it's pay day.

So it didn't matter that when i woke up to my radio alarm, C-SPAN had some jackass from Fox News on Washington Journal simply repeating "but we're fair and balanced" over and over again to each caller who called in to bitch about Fox's total worthlessness. It didn't matter that someone opened the door to the building right into my bad knee. And it didn't matter at all that, since i don't know how to operate my thermos properly, i ended up generously splashing molten hot coffee all over my face, sweater, pants and keyboard.

That shit doesn't matter, it doesn't bother me. Ain't nothin gonna breaka my stride, because I've decided that I'm having a FRICKIN AWESOME day today, which even I'M not capable of screwing up.

So don't bother trying.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

No Electricity = Playing Cranium Alone!

Mrs. Baby Blows a Fuse
There are signs all over my apartment building written in my landlord's horrible English (he once wrote me a note addressed to "Mrs. Baby"). They warn that using the "air-conditioned" with "other electrical like hair dryer or microwave" will blow a fuse. Did I heed these warnings? No. I was blow drying my hair yesterday, and suddenly I had no power. I knocked on the super's door, but no one was home. I left him a note, and went back to my apartment.

Playing With Myself
I hadn't really realized how dependent I am on electricity. I just sat there in the middle of my living room for a while trying to think of something to do. I could watch TV... no wait, that takes power. Oh, I'll listen to music... oh, yeah, can't do that. Um... I could read... no, it's too dark. I could watch TV... wait, no, I tried that already.

Eventually, I decided to get out this new board game I got called Cranium. You really need at least four people to play it, but I played it alone anyway. There are four different categories of challenges: Data (which tests your general knowledge), Words (there are spelling challenges, fill in the blank, and quizzes on what different words mean), Creative (you have to draw something and have your team guess what it is, sometimes with your eyes closed... or else make something out of clay and have them guess), and Performance (you have to convey the idea on the card either through silent gestures or imitation... or else hum a song and they have to guess what it is). At one point I was sitting in my apartment alone, humming "Born to be Wild."

"Wow, that was really good," I said to myself, "The team totally would have gotten which song that was. I'll roll again." That is how the game pretty much played out. Oh, and by the way, I won.

Boy Interrupted
After the game, it was really dark in my apartment, so I decided to take a nap out of boredom. I finally woke up around 9PM or so when Pam called to see if I wanted to hang out with her and Ximena.

I went downstairs to see if my super was home yet. I saw my note crumpled on the floor. Bastard!

I picked it up and knocked on the door. There was music blaring loudly inside. After several minutes, it was eventually turned down, and a Latino kid, who looked to be around the age of 12, opened the door a crack. His face was all red, he was covered in sweat, and he was out of breath. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and his pants seemed to have been thrown on very haphazardly. Did I just interrupt something? He looked 12 years old! Maybe younger!

"Um... hi," I said, "Um... my power's out. I left this note..."
"What?" he asked. "I don't understand,"
"My fuse... I blew a fuse. I have no power. Could you leave this note for the super?"
He looked very confused, but took the note anyway, and shut the door. I walked back up to my apartment with sure that I would never have power again.

I sat on my couch in the dark and listened to my upstairs neighbors fighting in the hopes of entertaining myself. The fight was just getting good, when my power miraculously returned. Even though I had electricity again, I still sat there listening to the fight for another 30 minutes before leaving to go meet Pam and Ximena.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly Movie

There's going to be a film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly."

Like most of Philip K. Dick's books (Minority Report, Ubik, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep [which was made into the movie Blade Runner], We Can Build You), A Scanner Darkly is a pretty f'ed up book. In short, it's about a guy who deals and is addicted to this bizarre and powerful drug, but who has also been hired by the police to tail and bust himself. He doesn't realize this, of course, because the drug's main side-effect is to split the user's personality into two distinct, exclusive entities that are unaware of each other. It's pretty standard Dick (yeah, get the laugh out -- people who like his work call themselves "Dickheads"), making satirical if somewhat insano statements about how drug prohibition has caused a symbiotic relationship between the drug world and the police culture formed to destroy it. I really like how Dick stays far from making any value judgements whatsoever, and just lets the absurdity of the situation speak for itself.

Movie adaptations of his books have ranged from pretty good (minority report, blade runner) to straight-up fing toilet paper (Paycheck, starring Ben[nifer] Affleck). But i heard two really promising things about A Scanner Darkly: First, that they are keeping the dialogue and storyline extremely close to the book, and second, they are casting some of Hollywood's most famous drug-enjoyers (Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson), in a nice touch. It could end up being another Johnny Mnemonic, but we'll see.