my dog fell out of the car window

Kahlua, my pooch, likes to feel the breeze when we drive in the car. Can't blame her, there's no AC. Most of the time she puts her whole top half outside the car, little chicken legs frantically trying to balance on the carseat.

Making a sharp left turn onto Main, physics kicked in I heard the fumbling of dog nails on the car door and looked over in time to see Kahlua's unbalanced ass tumble out of the window and into traffic. I slammed on the brakes and opened my door to oncoming cars, which thankfuly stopped. A woman in a stopped car yelled "Did you throw that dog out of your window?" I chased Kahlua, tail between her legs, leash clinking behind her, all the way to the curb. I picked her up and felt tears in my eyes. Holy shit people, I don't know if I've ever been that scared. She is fine. Unscathed. Another woman, the one who stopped to avoid hitting my car door said, "Did he jump out?" I nodded at her and she said, "Well, bless his heart."

Everybody thinks the pooch is a man.

8/23/08

Drunk again.

When I was parking to drink at campus corner, some band was playing in the alley between University and Asp. Didn't know the name. Almost ran over some hippies cradling skateboards.

Went to Louie's Too, on the corner of Asp and Boyd. Nice place, had a Blue Moon. Then we went to Logan's, and I had a big fucking stein of Old Style, topped off with a bottle of Old Style. It tastes like shit out of the bottle, but good from the tap. So you know.

I sat at the bar and watched an Indians vs. Rangers game. I don't even watch baseball, normally, but I was fucking rapt. Fucking pissed when they stopped the game to show a Ciara music video. People still listen to her?

Stopped at Taco Bell on the way home. Making typos a lot. Keep having to backspace.

Going to eat my tacos. Goodnight.

Here's a little equation for you:

"The Dark Knight" is the shit and everyone wants a piece of its nuts.

Plus:

"The Dark Knight" is dark.

Plus

"Superman Returns" flopped at the box office.

Equals

Retard studio suits greenlight a "dark" Superman movie.

Somehow they are going to fuck this up. They always milk things the wrong way. "Jaws" had an explosion and was huge, so we got twenty years of explosions, minus the solid acting and plot that "Jaws" had. "The Dark Knight" is moody, so now we're going to get twenty years of brooding emo superheroes.

I can't wait for the Thor movie, now. Probably be something like this:

Malekith: Thor. I have come to battle.

Thor: Not now, Malekith. I am wallowing in darkness.

Malekith: Pick up your mighty hammer, Mjolnir, and fight me.

Thor: What is the nature of this violence? (looks longingly out of a window)

Malekith: Fuck this. I'm out.

(It begins to rain outside. Thor takes off his helmet.)

Or what about the Captain America movie? I'm sure we'll have a whole bunch of "dark WWII scenes" where a shit ton of soldiers die and not one of them bleeds. Then the director can cram fifteen shots into one minute of a three hour movie.

problems with "the dark knight"

Drunk rant:

I saw this movie opening night at the Warren (no beer seats). There was a kid there who was dressed like the Joker, and he had a wonderful costume. There was a bald man who introduced the flick as "the best movie of all time" and the whole crowd went crazy.

I watched it and I liked it. You can go online and read probably a million reviews about why the movie was awesome. The funny opening robbery, the magic trick, the scene with the Joker and Two-Face in the hospital, the giant burning pile of money, the lights in the interrogation room coming on and OH SHIT BATMAN, all awesome. The score is great, the look of the movie is perfect.

But...there are some flaws that I noticed, though, that I feel like I have to put out there. I doubt I can rain on a a half-billion-dollar (think about that) parade too much, but here are some things that really kept me from digging it as much as I could have.

1) The fight scenes are shit. Every last one of them. Nolan cannot direct action to save his life. You see the flailing of limbs, somebody gets hit, somebody gets tossed, Batman wins. I gave up on trying to understand the action scenes halfway through. For a clinic on how to direct a proper action scene, watch Hellboy 2.

2) The introduction of Two-Face late in the game. Too much, too late. I went into the film expecting Dent to MAYBE get disfigured at the end...I didn't figure his entire villainous arc to play out in thirty minutes. And then the big finale: Dent gets tackled off of a high place! I've heard rumors that he's coming back for the next one, so it sucks both ways: Either I feel cheated if he comes back (I hate fake deaths in movies) or I feel cheated if he's dead (really? he fell?)

3) The fake death of Gordon. I fucking hate that shit as a plot device. Fake deaths are in the same category as "IT WAS ALL A DREAM" or "HE'S THE SAME PERSON" (which is excused in the case of "Fight Club", which was the first movie I saw that used that trick).

4)The Bat-Growl is hilarious and horrible. Every time Bale does it it makes me giggle.

5) The lack of sex, blood, or profanity. I understand that Batman is for kids, too. I get that. PG-13. $500 million. Sure. But I get pulled violently out of the movie every time Batman is talking to a gangster and not a single "Fuck" is dropped, or Joker caps some fool without even a little blood leaking out, or Batman develops sonar-spying shit which has like a million screens and on not one of them is someone fucking or shitting or beating their meat. That mess is whack.

That's about it. I'm done drinking for the night. Sleep well.

i can't fit in a laundry basket...but rios can

Today, I tried to fit myself into a laundry basket. My attempts were unsuccessful.

Some pictures:





And a video:



Then, Rios tried and succeeded. Video evidence:



Here are some pictures, because she rules:





I love her.

keep it shiny

My dog is running. On the couch. On the carpet. In the kennel, little toenails on the pebbled tray floor, scraping until she's back out and running some more.

I am more tired right now than I have been in a while.

I'd like this watch:


And this chain:




This pen:



Except not a fountain. Rollerball would be fine.

This shoe:




This T-shirt:



And so far I can afford...the t-shirt. Upper Playground ftw.

The Mont Blanc shit is out of my league right now. Shallow though it may seem, it helps to have concrete capital-oriented goals. It's hard to get the words flowing if you're typing for something nebulous, like respect, but it's pretty easy when you're doing it for shiny shit. The end result is self-gratification either way, so why the hell not? Good words + hard work = shiny. Keep it simple.

8/1/08

I didn't so much decide to quit drinking soda. Whenever I put it in my mind like that, all bolded and grounded and firm, it never sticks. I don't like being told what to do, even by myself. But Wal-Mart had Tropicana Berry Punch on sale, 4 for $3, so I picked it up and drank it out of principle and now I'm hooked. Soda, why? Why, when there's Berry Punch?

I'm a grower-into-er, not a changer. I won't start rigorously exercising tomorrow, carefully monitoring my carb and saturated fat intake, but what I will do, is maybe today I'll do some crunches and drink some OJ. Maybe scoop a little of my powdered "vanilla" protein into a cupful of tap water and choke it down. And it might become a routine, but not one that I plan for.

I rollercoaster up and down this line graph, the valleys being a day wasted reading a geek forum on the Watchmen movie ("There's no way it can adequately translate, Moore's already said that the story is tailor-made for graphic sequential storytelling"/"Give it a chance"/"But Zack Snyder makes juvenile films"/"So did Peter Jackson" etc.), the peaks being a day where Pooch and I run and I do a load of laundry, wash dishes, dust, clean, exercise, and unload ten thousand words into my novel.

Normally, I can't sit down at my computer and just write for hours on end, every day. Introspection is the hardest thing to do, so I either don't or refuse to know why I can't. What makes me happy, though, is that every once in a while, randomly, instead of sitting down and being blocked and bombarded by thoughts that snort and snarl and kick up all this dust but never break out of the stable, sometimes I shrug and start to write, and it's like a fucking snowball, and I can't stop until it's three in the morning. Pooch makes sure to wake me up at 8 AM for a walk, don't worry.

Does anybody live a regimented life outside of the military? They say laziness is encoded in the genes, and I can feel it, flecked like paint on my DNA, a morse code of productivity and vegetation.

I'm thirsty for Berry Punch.