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March 20, 2006 A Few Thoughts on V for Vendetta More than a few, I suppose... When I watch a movie adapted from a comic book, I don't compare it against the books, make sure they have everything just right, or act like a fanboy in any other way. V for Vendetta is actually more like an adaptation of a novel since it's a limited series without the decades of mythos that Spider-Man or the X-Men have, but the principle is still the same. Some things work better in a movie than they do in another medium, and vice versa. Obviously, I don't have to tell you this. It was hard for me to do that with V for Vendetta. I love V for Vendetta, I have for a long time. It affected my thinking when I was younger, and while I'm not running around advocating an anarchist revolution, the message of the comic book has stayed with me for a while. What I was watching for in the movie wasn't faithfulness to the original plot, but a maintainance of the integrity of the theme of the original story. I don't know that it did. V for Vendetta is a difficult and ambitious project to take on here and now. Sensibilities in the 80's were different than they are now. It's impossible for us to watch scenes of mass destruction without looking at it through the prism of 9/11, like it or not. It's the elephant in the theater in any big action movie where something blows up, and even more so in V for Vendetta. Five years later, people will go and see a movie like V for Vendetta, but I think there's a collective demand among the audience that you better come up with a pretty fucking good reason to blow up Parliament. That's what most of the movie amounted to for me: selling the audience on why V blows up Parliament. In the comic books, blowing up Parliament is the first thing he does. What that does is tell you what V's about from the start. He takes out the most recognizable symbol of government in England and spends the rest of the story taking out the rest of the power structure. The reader knows what he's about and has to buy into V's belief system immediately. Blowing up Old Bailey and its statue of justice isn't the same. (Not to keep comparing the book and the movie, but there's a great scene in the comic book where V excoriates the statue, symbolizing justice, his old love, for cheating on him with the totalitarian government. He explains that he's found a new love, anarchy). I don't know if they really did explain it. The government seemed shitty, no doubt, but I didn't feel like they did a good job conveying the fear of the people living their everyday lives under Norsefire and the High Chancellor. The best they do is the letter from Valerie, which is fucking great both in the movie and the book. But I don't know if that scene really brings home how the average person feels under this regime (though it's clear that geeky little girls aren't a big fan of the High Chancellor). The flashbacks and news stories try to show how the slow erosion of our civil liberties and our willingness to trade them for security can lead to totalitarianism, but in an age where the majority of Americans think it's okay for the President to ignore the law if he thinks he needs to for public safety, I don't know how well that works. The other problem is that a lot of V's philosophy is missing from the movie. V isn't supposed to just want to rage against the machine, he believes in a new order. He's an anarchist, who believes that the people should govern themselves. I think a little more of his thought would've gone a long way to justifying his actions. There was an article in the New Yorker this week where David Denby pointed out that "the Wachowskis have stumbled into celebrating an attack against an icon of liberal democracy." It's a valid point. V for Vendetta is supposed to be an allegory, but we live in a time when this stuff seems to real. They did say that irony died on 9/11. Still, I don't know, you have to be a fairly prissy establishmentarian not to even get the slightest charge out of watching a symbol of authority go boom. What's the scene everyone remembers best from Independence Day? It's in our nature to rebel. It's also in our nature to want to be safe. We're complicated people. That's a tension that V for Vendetta exploits very well through Evey. The Wachowskis really pussed out by changing Evey's curfew breaking escapades from an attempt to being a career in prostitution to a relatively innocent late-night tryst, but whatever. I liked everything else about Evey. Yeah, she bailed on V at the bishop's, but seriously, what the fuck would you do? She's V's human counterpart, the one who doesn't have the luxury of superpowers and a batcave. She has to make harder decisions, and when she finally does come back to V and his plan, you feel like it means something. Presumably, she's a stand-in for all the other normal people of London who eventually put on their masks and go celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. If there was one thing the movie had over the book, that was it. I'm a sucker for cheap sentimentality, and maybe that's all it was, but I got chills when the army of V's marched to Parliament. Even if that had been in the book, the visual of all those people on the move would've still beat out the representation in the book. As for V himself, eh. Not bad, but I always imagined him with a little more panache. But I get that it's hard to get a hold of that character in real life, so I'll give it a pass. It's a tough movie to judge. I can't really say whether or not they pulled it off. In that New Yorker piece, the Denby wanted to ask the Wachowskis, "What in the world are you doing?" I can see that. Myself, knowing what V is all about previously, I bought it. But I don't think the movie stands on it's own. It's a very good companion piece to the book, but without it, there are too many important parts of the story and the meaning that you're missing. January 11, 2006 40 fucking votes for Albert Belle for the Hall of Fame is bullshit. That's 7% of the vote. Jim Rice got almost 65%, and there's no rational argument to be made that Jim Rice was a better ballplayer than Albert Belle. Of course, that doesn't prove that Albert Belle belongs in the Hall of Fame, especially if I'd argue that Jim Rice doesn't. But I would say that Albert Belle should be in. And I'm all for keeping the Hall of Fame selective. For a decade, he was one of the half dozen best hitters in the game, measured however you like. If you just want to look at the counting stats that the vast majority of the voters in the BBWAA swear by, that's fine. Nine years out of his twelve season career he was in the top ten in RBI, six of those times he was int he top five, and three times he led the league. Eight top ten finishes in homeruns, seven in total bases, six in slugging percentage. What impresses me most is that almost every year he was in the major leagues he was a great hitter. And this is also sort of what is working against him, since he only had twelve season in the majors, and only ten of those were really full seasons. Another five years of even marginal play would've given him the gaudy counting numbers that guaruntee entrance to the Hall of Fame. But of course, he had the hip injury that ended his career prematurely. Given the level he was producing at right up until the injury, and it's worth noting that he while he was below his career numbers in his final season, he was still a very good hitter, I think he deserves the Koufax/Puckett consideration. I know a lot of people say it's not fair that a guy who has a sudden debilitating injury gets more consideration than a guy whose can still play but whose ability has been hampered by injury. But those people are bitching about Don Mattingly, and the argument doesn't hold up. Mattingly only had a few great season, and then a few more really good ones. We're talking about six, maybe seven seasons, out of fourteen. Belle had ten very good seasons, 8 of which could be considered great. Every single season he was a full time player, he was valuable. If that's not enough, then why is ten season the minimum for a player to be considered eligible for the Hall? The two other knocks on Belle are that he was a surly dick, and that he played in the steroid era, so his stats aren't as impressive anymore. The former was one of the things I always liked best about Albert Belle. I'm not saying that he was right to throw baseballs at reporters, smash clubhouse thermometers, or try to run down trick-or-treaters in his car, but at least you always knew where you stood with Belle. He had his rules, and even though they were mostly entirely unreasonable, if you played by the rules, he wouldn't bother you. But I don't know if that really cost him that much. Maybe a few votes, but I don't think 480 people didn't vote for him because of the kind of person he was. Probably as damning as his short playing career was the era he played in. Offense exploded in the nineties, possibly due to a number of factor, but most commonly attributed to athletes using steroids. If you don't vote for Belle because fo the times in which he played, are you saying that you think he was on steroids? I don't recall that there were any rumors specifically about that while he was playing. Granted, people might have been too busy talking about his corked bat, but I don't think that anyone singled Belle out for steroid use during his career. That's not to say he didn't use them, I have little doubt that he, like pretty much everyone else in the 90's, was using them. But I don't think that we're keeping everyone out based on a general suspicion. I guess we'll know more about how the players from the steroid era will be treated when Mark McGwire comes up for election next year. Even if Belle did play in an offensively inflated era, he was still at the head of the pack. His OPS+, which admittedly probably would've declined had he played a full career, places him at a respectable 57th all time. I know Hall of Fame voters don't care about OPS+, but there are still all those top ten finishes mentioned above. I don't really know how history is going to look at the players from the steroid era, and maybe the feeling will be that they don't stack up as well against the all-time greats, but being the best in the game even during the steroid era should probably count for something. Fame should count for something too. I'm not saying that Bob Uecker and Jose Canseco should be in the Hall of Fame, but you should get some credit for being well known. I'm not a big fan of Jim Rice or Don Mattingly's candidacies, but I know that more people would be interested in seeing them in than half the guys who are in there. Albert Belle was certainly famous. Not always for the best of reasons, but he was one of baseball's biggest names for a while. And honestly, whose induction speech would you rather hear anyway, Albert Belle's or Bruce Sutter's? Ultimately, it's not really that big a deal that Albert Belle's not in the Hall of Fame. It's not that much worse without him. There are a lot of guys, quite a lot of guys, worse than him who are in, and there are better guys who aren't. I'm mostly pissy because Albert Belle is from my time, and I feel like he's fading into Bolivian without his due respect. This could be a little bit of projection on my part. Even if he didn't make it in, he should've gotten more than 7% of the vote. He'll be lucky to stay on the ballot next year. I guess it could be worse for him. He could be Gary DiSarcina or Alex Fernandez. When you don't even get the one joke vote that Walt Weiss got, that's rough.
January 4, 2006 The worst thing about being a fan of a crappy college basketball program is that you only get to see your team on TV when they're playing a ranked opponent, which means you usually only get to see them when they're getting their asses kicked. I've seen two UMass basketball games this year, and both times they got whupped pretty good; once by UConn, once by BC. What really pisses me off is that I managed to miss the game last year where they actually upset UConn. I suppose at least one of the games against Temple should be on TV, they stand a chance of actually winning one of those. December 12, 2005 The worst of it was around Christmas time. Naturally, decorations specific to Christmas were not allowed on the walls of the dorm of my public university. You could put Christmas decorations on your own door, but not on common walls or in the lounge. What was and wasn't a "Christmas decoration" was open to some interpretation. No Santa and no reindeer were allowed. Obviously, Nativity scenes were right out. Snow men and snow flakes were fine though. No tree, but a wreath was allowed. There was a good deal of discussion whether or not lights were okay. There was some resistance from the Resident Director, but ultimately she couldn't determine that colored lights were purely a Christian display. One Jewish kid wanted to put a menorah in the lounge, which naturally resulted in a fight over him being able to have a menorah, but the Christians not being able to have a tree. Sounds like a real fucking fun Christmas season, doesn't it? Fast forward about ten years. The pendulum has swung the other way. I don't know whether it was the PC movement that did this or just a general trend towards blandness and non-specificity, but by and large, "Happy Holidays" has replaced "Merry Christmas" in most retail outlets. Which pisses off the religious right who now think that there's a War on Christmas, to borrow a term from Bill O'Reilly. They're very upset about the homogenization of Christmas into a secular holiday season that people of all creeds can enjoy, and more importantly, spend money during. They're boycotting stores that say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. They're protesting the Post Office's discontinuing of religious holiday stamps. They've threatened legal action unless the city of Boston renamed their holiday tree a Christmas tree. I realize now that I never disliked the Political Correctness people for their own sake as much as I really hate all the whining. And more to the point, one group of people pitching a fit because everyone doesn't feel the same way they do. There's something unseemly about one group trying to force everyone else to celebrate Christmas the way they want you to. Always has been. Is it stupid to have "holiday" trees and to pretend that this season isn't really primarily all about Christmas? Yes. Is it that big a fucking deal? No. Christmas is going to be just fine. It's not going away, and no one is going to confuse it for anything else. No Jew or Muslim or Hindu looked at the announcement for a holiday tree lighting and got all excited because they finally get a tree of their own. I actually think that everyone should celebrate Christmas, and do it however they want to. If they want to buy presents and worship Santa, Christians, Jews, atheists, and Buddhists should do it. And if you want to go to church and celebrate Jebus's birth, no one's stopping you. But it's up to each family to decide how they want to spend the holidays, not Wal-Mart. And if the religious right was really concerned about the fate of Christmas, they'd spend more time on their own people, reminding them that the season shouldn't be about buying and consuming, but about caring, worshipping, and whatever other stuff Jesus liked to talk about. But that's not what this is about, this is about scoring points back from the left in the culture wars. Let it go. Everybody, let it go. If you don't like Christmas, tough fucking luck. You know where you live, deal with it. If you like Christmas, great, but don't worry so much about making sure everyone knows it. Your place in this country is not insecure. Christmas isn't a club with secret passwords and initiating rites. It's just the best time of the year, and if "Happy Holidays" is a way of including those who don't share your faith in this special season, then so be it. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
December 1, 2005 Why's my wife such a misfit? I finally got my wife to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with me last night. She's never seen the entire thing because as a kid she was afraid of the animation. She's really not to fond of it now, to be honest, but she got through it. It wasn't the reindeer or even the Bumble that weirds her out, but actually the elves that she really doesn't like. I can see the head elf, always yelling at Hermie like that, but she hates the little elves too. She's a weird one, my wife. * * * I hadn't received a water bill since I moved into my new house, so I called the Salem Water Division, and asked why that was. It turns out that they send out the bills quarterly. I told the lady that I just wanted to make sure they were charging me, and she seemed to think that I was exceptionally honest. The truth is that if I thought I could get away with not paying for my water, I'd do it in a second. I don't care about the right or wrong of that. I just know that if they don't charge me know, they'll catch up with me eventually, and I'll be stuck paying thousands of dollars years down the road. * * * I was never really a big Joe Thornton fan. I know dick about hockey, but he always reminded me of Eric Chavez: the guy who was supposed to be a superstar, but never really brought his game above the mere start level. * * * I get pissed of when I see Kentucky Fried Chicken commercials. They always show people enjoying their buckets of chicken, and that's just flat out wrong. KFC is probably the worst fast food place in existence (my personal vote is for Taco Bell, but so many other people hate KFC more that I'm willing to concede it the top spot). There should be some kind of truth in advertising law that requires KFC commercials to show people regretting buying a bucket of original recipe. * * * Fox 25 News sent a reporter on a mini-tour of America to see how many people recognized Mitt Romney's name or face. They were trying to guage how successful he'd be in a potential presidential run. Not too many people knew who he was, but to be fair, if you asked the same amount of average American to find Canada on a map, you'd probably get similar response. * * * My wife was telling me that they don't have any Christmas decorations up at her work. They're actually specifically not allowed to by company rules. She does work in a soulless corporate office in a downtown high-rise, but I was still a little surprised. We have decorations up all over the place in my office, and I work at a university, a bastion of politically correct liberalism, in the Political Science department, no less. Go figure.
November 30, 2005 Last week, I finally got around to seeing Good Night, and Good Luck. Good movie, but when I saw it, the sound in the theater was pretty bad. There was very loud static every time someone spoke, and I found it pretty distracting and annoying. I ran out to complain at the beginning of the movie, but nothing changed. After the movie was over, I went to customer service to ask about it. The guy there told me that it was supposed to sound like that, to replicate the feel of watching TV in the 50's. I thought that was pretty dumb, but I accepted this guy's explanation. But when I was talking to my brother-in-law and his girlfriend on Thanksgiving, they told me there was no static when they say the movie. I confirmed this with John, and then I happened to talk to a guy in one of my classes who had seen the movie, and he also told me there was no static when he saw Good Night, and Good Luck. I was pretty pissed off about this. It's not so much the sound quality as the fact that the guy at the theater gave me a bullshit story. I called the theater yesterday to complain and get my money back, knowing that I was probably just going to get a couple of free passes to another movie. The manager I talked to was very apologetic and instantly offered me four movie passes, exceeding my expectations. The lesson is that it pays to whine. Thinking about how readily the manager set me up with movie passes, I wonder how much money I was really costing them. I'm sure they do want to keep their customers satisfied, but really, it's not much skin off their back to give out passes. They're going to show the movies anyway, so unless I use these passes on a sold out show, I'm not costing them any money. I guess there's the money that I theoretically would've spent on a movie I wanted to see, but I don't really go to many movies, and I'm a lot more likely to actually see a movie in the theater if I can see it for free. I was probably never going to pay to see Aeon Flux. So, if I go to see a movie that I wouldn't have paid for, if it's not sold out, and if I buy any concessions, they've actually come out ahead by giving me these passes. Assholes. They can keep their fucking passes. That'll teach them to give me bad service. November 23, 2005 - Thanksgiving Eve I like to eat more than most people do. That's why I love Thanksgiving. And ever since I met my wife, I've loved Thanksgiving twice as much, because now I get to go to two Thanksgiving dinners. We do an early dinner at my aunt's house in the afternoon, and then we go to her parent's house in the evening. It takes a little strategizing to be able to handle two Thanksgiving dinners in one day. I'm kind of fat, but not fat enough to just polish off two full dinners. What I do is take it easy at the afternoon dinner. But you don't want to take it too easy, because then what's the point? I compromise with myself and merely eat normal, healthy portions at my aunt's and forego dessert entirely. Not eating dessert is a bit of a sacrifice, but it all pays off when we get to my wife's parents' house. Originally, we planned to alternate years, having dinner with
her family one year and my family the other. But then I found
out what an unbelievable cook her mother is. There's no fucking
way I'm ever missing Thanksgiving at their house. So, I do my
"pre-eating" at my aunt's, sort of as a warm-up for
my mother-in-law's meal. It is tricky though. Obviously, I don't
want to eat too much and get there already stuffed. But it's equally
important to not eat too little. If you starve yourself all day
long, then your stomach shrinks and then you're looking at only
two, maybe three, helpings at Dinner #2. Thanksgiving only comes
once a year, and you just can't be fucking around and making stupid
mistakes like that. November 22, 2005 Just like our brave men and women in Iraq, I'm fighting a battle that I don't think I have any chance of winning. I got another fucking wet newspaper this morning, and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. When I first moved and changed my Globe delivery to my new address, they asked me whether I wanted my newspaper on my front step on in my mailbox. I asked for the front step. What I got was it alternating between being left on my driveway or in my mailbox. It didn't really bother me until the first time it was left in a puddle in my driveway on a rainy morning. I called to ask that he leave it on my front step, which I was assured would happen. Well, it didn't. I had another couple of weeks of driveways and mailboxes, except that now the delivery guy seemed to take care to always leave the paper in the mailbox on rainy days. Not ideal, but it worked for me. Until the next time it was raining and he for some reason left the paper in the driveway. I called again, this time to ask that it always be left in the mailbox. This time a guy at the Globe told me that it's not actually legal for the delivery guy to leave the paper in my mailbox. That's a federal offense. But he'd be sure to tell the deliverer to put the paper on my front step every day. That did not happen. What has been happening is that the guy has been putting it in my mailbox every day, rain or shine. That was fine with me, the law notwithstanding. Yes, it would be nicer if I didn't have to walk out to my mailbox to get my paper, especially on cold or rainy days, but after everything, I was just glad that it wasn't going to be soaking wet anymore. Alas, this morning, of all mornings, my delivery guy suddenly decided to leave the paper in the middle of the driveway again. He might have picked a day when we weren't getting two inches of driving rain. I called again this morning, and they assured me that they would get in touch with the delivery service and make sure that the paper gets delivered to my front step. By now I realize that this is nothing but lies and my paper will be wherever the delivery guy damn well feels like leaving it. I'm not really sure what to do about this. Obviously, I could cancel my paper, but that would seriously fuck up my morning routine. I wake up every morning, eat Cheerios and orange juice, and read my newspaper. I have for years. I even did this in college, sitting in the lounge on my floor. I could just read online, but eating cereal over my laptop doesn't feel the same. The only thing I can think of is to set up a video camera to see if I can catch the guy stuffing my paper in my mailbox. Then I can send a copy to the FBI, and maybe I'll get a more responsive paper boy after the feds have shipped this guy's ass to Guantanimo Bay. November 14, 2005 I'm a bit of a latecomer to the Netflix experience, but I'm having a lot of fun with it. I actually haven't watched too many movies that have come out recently, but that's not really why I got it. I mostly wanted to subscribe so I can watch older movies that I've never seen and aren't always available at Blockbuster, and so I can catch up on TV series that I always wanted to watch but never had time for. I just got through the first season of 24, which was a little disappointing. I had wanted to watch it way back when it debuted, but having to listen to Keifer Sutherland scream, "WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR?!" about a thousand times during the 2001 World Series turned me off. I don't know if I missed too much. It started out strong, but got a little boring around the third or fourth time Jack Bauer's daughter got kidnapped. The wife coming down with amnesia for a couple of episodes was probably the low point of the first season. It wasn't terrible though, and I may swing back around and check out Season 2 at some point. For now I'm going to try to watch Oz from the beginning. I think I've seen about half of the episodes at points during free HBO previews and the time when I had to have HBO so my wife could watch the last season of Sex in the City. I've also been using Netflix to catch my wife up on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I got her into watching Angel after we got together, and she was bummed when it went off the air. We went through the DVD's that I owned, and then when we were done with that, we started at the beginning with Buffy. She was skeptical, mostly because she had seen the final two shitty seasons of Buffy after we got together, but after that rough first season, she really got into it. I only have up to season three though, so Netflix is getting us through season 4 and 5. I'm not going to bother with season 6 or 7. I also caught up with Arrested Development, a little bit too late to join in for the start of the third season, but just in time for it to be pretty much cancelled. After getting used to watching so much TV on my own terms, it's jarring to have to wait a week or more to see a new episode of Lost. And then to have to sit through commercials every week. It might be time to get a DVR. I don't want to wait a year to see all of the episodes of my favorite shows at once, but I can certainly wait an hour so that I can at least watch each episode uninterrupted.
November 8, 2005 Peyton Manning finally beat the Patriots. Big fucking deal. He has actually done it before, twice. Now he's 3-8 lifetime against the Patriots, which by my counts means he needs to beat them five more times before he can be considered average against the Patriots. A couple of playoff wins wouldn't hurt.. Not that there's a lot of shame in getting beat by the kind of team the Patriots have been over the past four years. When they were winning 14 games a season, they were obviously going to beat a lot of teams. But it has to be kind of a bitch for Manning to know that he was the best quarterback in the league during that span and he could never win a game against Tom Brady. It also has to suck knowing that even though you're a better quarterback, he'll always be able to land hotter chicks than you. I just don't see last night's game as a big deal. The Colts beat the Patriots because the Colts are the best team in the league and the Patriots are a middling playoff hopeful. I don't see what Peyton Manning proved there. No matter what he does from here on out, the 2000-2004 Patriots will always have had his number. Which doesn't really count for much anyway. If Manning wins a couple of Super Bowls, then he's not going to care about his early career frustrations, just ask John Elway. November 1, 2005 - All Saints Day We didn't get any trick-or-treaters at our house last night. Granted, we are at the end of a dead end street with too few houses on it to make it worth a kid's time, but it does seem like trick-or-treating is a dying tradition. People are afraid to send their kids out to knock on strangers' doors and take candy from them. I guess you can blame a lot of that on the fracturing of neighborhoods. People don't know their neighbors anymore. They'd rather look at porn on the Internet than exchange pleasantries over the picket fence. I think there's also this vague feeling that it's not safe to go trick-or-treating "these days." I'm not sure if it's terrorist, sex offenders, or road rage, but everything seems to be a lot more dangerous "these days." I'm not so sure. What exactly has happened to make the world so much more dangerous than when I was a little kid, barely twenty years ago? I'm guessing that things are pretty much the same, which means that either we were all once woefully naive, or that people are overreacting to stuff they just hear about more now. I'm guessing it's the latter.
October 29, 2005 Sleighbells ring, are you listening... Snowstorms before Halloween are a big part of the reason why people move out of New England to places like Florida and Arizona. Even though an October snow flurry isn't as potentially deadly as a hurricaine or an earthquake, it sure is annoying. To be fair, this is rare even for up here, and scientifically speaking it means nothing about how much snow we're going to get this winter. But it doesn't feel like a good sign. October 27, 2005 Your 2005 World Series Champions are the Chicago White Sox, one of the more unlikable collection of dickweeds you're likely to ever see win it all. I wasn't a particularly big fan of any of the Yankees or Marlin championship teams (isn't it weird that the Marlins are part of a two-team duo that has won six of the last ten World Series?), it's hard to top a group that includes Carl Everett and AJ Pierzynski, two of the lesser liked players in the game. I think I'd actually find Ozzie Guillen funny if he was just a dick, and not a stupid dick who insists on letting a team that hit 200 home runs this year run themselves out of innings on a regular basis. One nice thing about the White Sox winning this year is that the Red Sox totally stole the "ending the championship drought" thunder last year. I'm actually hoping the Cubs win the World Series next year so White Sox fans can be pissed off when the media pays more attention to the Cubs. I'm always sad when the World Series is over, even when it's
a shitty World Series. And it was a shitty World Series, no matter
how close the games are. And even though Game 4 was only 1-0,
it might as well have been 10-0, because the Astros clearly weren't
going to score any runs. Turns out they were pretty fucked without
any contribution from Morgan Ensberg, huh? But even though I get
to go to bed on time now, it still means no more baseball until
April. There should be baseball in the winter. People in the Dominican
Republic are so lucky they get to live there.
October 26, 2005 I went to my wife's five-year old niece's birthday party this weekend. She got a lot of the standard toys, clothes, and savings bonds that you give to little kids, but what really surprised me was this charming little doll:
I hate to be a prude, and I'm sure people my age once thought the toys I played with heralded the end of society as we know it. But seriously, come on. I am told that this is a Bratz Baby doll, a spin-off of the Bratz line. The Bratz are similarly whorishly dressed, but are all older, so while the children they are marketed towards are still too young to dress like that, they are at least not guilty of over-sexualizing two-year olds. I know it's hypocritical of me to call those clothes "whorish" when I enjoy seeing girls wearing them. But A, "whorish" is a funny word and I like to say it, and B, the girls I like to see in those clothes are usually just a little bit older than the baby in the picture. A girl should at the very least be old enough to go to an R rated movie before you start leering at her. If they're not yet old enough to see a PG-13 movie, that's way out of bounds. And if they get into movies for free because they can sit in their mother's lap, then they probably shouldn't be wearing miniskirts and eyeliner.
October 25, 2005 Rosa Parks has passed away, which means two things. One, OutKast can go nuts and call their songs whatever they want. And two, we're going to hear a lot about about how one woman, simply tired from a long day of seamstressing, made a fateful decision to stand up to racism and started a movement that gave a spark to the civil rights movement. Except it wasn't really as simple as that. Rosa Parks had been involved with the NAACP and the civil rights movement for years before she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. It's hard to imagine that this was the first time it occurred to her that the rules of the bus were unfair, especially since she had recently worked to raise money to defend another black woman who was challenging the law. Rosa Parks herself always denied that her actions that day were premeditated, that they resulted from anything but a sudden and overwhelming frustration with the unfairness of black life under Jim Crow. If I know anything about being a black woman in Alabama in the 1950's, and I think I do, it seems pretty unlikely that she never imagined refusing to give up her seat. I fantasize about telling people who only minimally irritate me to fuck off every day. But even assuming that Rosa Parks was far less of a beligerent jackass than me, she must have thought about it. So, when the tipping point comes, and you're finally pissed off enough to do something that you've wanted to do for a long time, something that leads to goals that she's been actively working towards, was that really one small action? Ultimately, it doesn't matter why she did it. She did it, she took a stand, and she made a big difference. Maybe some other day it would've been someone else, and Rosa the crazy old black lady would've died yesterday unnoticed. But to think that she was just some tired working woman whose feet hurt too much to move that day isn't really telling the whole story. Once upon a time it might have been easier to sympathize with a tired seamstress than an civil rights rabble rouser, but by now I think she deserves a little more credit. She made a choice, she knew the consequences, and she did it for the right reasons, not just because of her achin' bunions or even just because the bus driver got all up in her face.
October 24, 2005 You know it's a slow news day when the Boston Globe is forced to run an article about the decline of wristwatch wearing . This just doesn't seem like a big problem to me. I guess someone got sick of writing stories about floods and hurricaines. Speaking of floods, I learned something else about my new house: the basement doesn't respond well to ten straight days of historic levels of rainfall. I'm pretty sure I know what I need to do to fix it, but I won't be able to get to it before the remnant of Wilma, Alpha, Aleph, and whatever other fucking alphabet wants to come up here and dump five inches of rain in my cellar arrives.
September 23, 2005 Movin' On Up I haven't had much time for updating lately. I've been working on my house every weekend and a few days during the week, and when I've actually been at work, I've had to catch up on stuff that has piled up while I've been out. On top of that, I'm taking a class this semester, and I have to do all my research at work, because all of my time at home is spent packing or painting. I've been unsure what to call "home" for a few weeks now.. The point will be moot tomorrow when I finally move for good, but it's been tough lately. When I'm up in Salem for the whole day working on the house, I'll say, "I want to go home." But I've spent more time in my house over the past two weeks than I have in my apartment, and obviously I have a lot more emotionally invested in the house. But most of the stuff I need to live is still at the apartment, even if the place actually looks like it's in less liveable condition right now than the house. What I settled on last night, as I waited for hours upon hours for my new bed to be delivered while I listened to my stomach eat itself, was that home is where your food is. Speaking of my new bed, I've realized that you do get what you pay for. We bought one of the cheaper beds at Bob's Discount Furniture, and even though it looked nice in the store, it is, in fact, a cheap piece of crap. I'm going to try to tighten up the screws in the damn thing, but it wobbles a lot more than I'm comfortable with. I don't see how anyone could have sex on that thing, you'd feel like you were on the Slingshot at an amusement park. I have to find out what Bob's return policy is. Not only is the bed crappy, but I think I made a huge mistake when I bought my mattress. I got this nice pillow top mattress at BJ's for pretty cheap, but the damn thing is so big that the top of the mattress comes up to my waist. Not sure what I'm going to do about that. I guess if I can return the headboard and footboard, then I'll just get some low lying rails for the foolish thing. I did know that it was going to ride a little high, but not that high. We have low ceilings in the the bedrooms, so the ceiling fan is only about four feet above the top of the matress. At least the rest of the house is coming along nicely. All the rooms are finally painted, and everything's cleaned up and ready to move in. I hope to be up with all of our stuff at around noon tomorrow. Pretty soon I'll be moved in and unpacked. Then all I'll have to do is sit back, relax, and figure out how I'm going to pay to keep the place warm this winter. September 12, 2005 Jeff's doing his "Things I Learned Today" thing over on his Head, but this weekend for me was just the opposite. The only thing I learned this weekend as I worked on my new house was how much I didn't know. I don't know where my storm windows are. I don't know who owns the wall in my back yard, me or my neighbor. I don't know how to change a ceiling fan. I don't know how to get just about anywhere in Salem. I don't know who to call to get a chimney re-pointed. I don't know how to get pet odor out of a basement. I don't know why anyone would put up so much fucking wallpaper in their living room. I don't have any idea what I'm supposed to do about the garden in the backyard before the winter comes. I did, however learn a few little things, some good, some bad. I learned how much tape it takes to cover all the trim in my house. A fucking lot. I found out that my wife had never done any painting before. So, not only did I get to learn, I got to teach, which was really special, let me tell you. I found out that once you close, anything on the property now belongs to you. That means I know own two pairs of cross country skis. Apparently the realtor's sign on my front yard is mine too, but I'd much rather get rid of that. I actually did have to call my real estate agent the other day. She was happy to hear from me and all gushy about my wife and I settling into our new home. I felt kind of bad telling her that the only reason I called was to tell her to get her sign off my fucking property. Thanks to one of my new neighbors, a charming old lady with plenty of time on her hands to talk to us, I learned that "the Puerto Ricans are taking over the whole neighborhood." Though the people she was pointing to as she said that had blonde hair, so I'm not sure what to make of that. She also told me that my next door neighbors have a college age son who "doesn't want to do anything and can't even buy his own shoes, the poor father." Oh yeah, I learned that I have a crazy, nosy old lady for a neighbor. September 8, 2005 Whoo-hoo, three day weekend! Actually, I'll probably be working harder over the weekend than I usually do at work. But that's cool, I'll finally be able to work on my new house, and I think I'll enjoy that. Even if working means painting, which sucks ass. But it's been torture over the past month to not be able to get into my new home. We dropped all that money, and we didn't even get to play with it. But we're going to play all weekend, fucking finally. We have to be up in Salem early tomorrow, which is too bad because it's a big night tonight. I'm going to watch the Red Sox game until the Patriots season opener starts and then switch to that. I'll still keep an eye on the baseball game, of course, but I'll primarily be watching football. It's hard to get too excited about football when the Red Sox are in the middle of a pennant race, but I feel like I should make the effort to watch. After all, there are so many baseball games in a season, while the Patriots only play 19 in a typical year. Finally, to switch gears just a little, TNT pisses me off. They
got me sucked into watching Charmed every night at 6:00. Charmed
is a pretty crappy show, but I got into it because I would always
catch the last couple of minutes of it while I was waiting for
Law & Order to come on at 7. There always seemed to be something
important going on, and I was curious to see what it was all about.
So I started watching it, and got sucked in, as will happen to
me, because I wanted to know what happened next to the three sisters.
But for some reason, TNT is skipping episodes here and there.
Sometimes they skip as many as three or four at a time. That's
bullshit. The other day I watched Phoebe agonize over the fact
that she lied to her sisters about not killing Cole, and then
the next day Cole comes walking through the front door and Prue
and Piper are barely even surprised. I'm watching the show solely
for the continuity, and they can't even help me out with that.
I think I might just have to stop watching this shitty show if
TNT doesn't knock it off.
September 5, 2005 "Every day is a holiday, another muthafuckin'
holiday." Yeah, except there's no holiday for me today. I have to labor on Labor Day. Though, to be honest, there's not much labor going on. I'm dicking around on the computer and listening to the Red Sox game. Still, I'd rather be doing that at home. The rationale is that since classes are starting Wednesday and since I'm a student advisor, I should be here in case students have any questions. That makes sense, except not a single student ever comes in or calls on these stupid days they make me come in. Why would they? It is Labor Day after all. Then again, we did get one call today, but the caller was looking for the department administrator, go figure. At least I'll get a comp day, which I'll need because I'll be taking a few days off to close, pack, paint, move, and upack. But this still bugs me. It's not right, I should be home on Monday when everyone else is at work, not the other way around. Such bullshit. I have it harder than all of the victims of Hurricane Katrina combined. August 31, 2005 I had to walk over to an office in one of the other buildings on campus to pick something up this morning. Apparently, they had had some kind of reception there this morning, because there was a bunch of left over coffee and refreshments. I passed it by on my way to the office, but on the way back I decided to grab one of the last bits of food left, a slice of coffee cake. I walked back to my office munching away on my coffee cake, happy as can be, but on my last bite of the coffee cake, I bit into something hard. I pull it out of my mouth and found that I had bitten down on a finger nail. Gross. That's kind of a bummer. You could say that I learned my lesson and that I shouldn't go around picking up and eating strange food, but all the same, there really just shouldn't be finger nails in coffee cakes regardless of the situation.
August, 29, 2005 I can't believe I have to work today. I have Mondays
off in the summer, but the summer's just about over, so now I
have to come in to work, just like the rest of you chumps. It
just isn't right. On the new this morning I saw the inevitable stories about people who are going to keep partying on Bourbon Street or even go down to the water during the hurricaine. Hey, that' pretty funny guys, I hope you realize you're going to fucking die. I'd say just let them go, except that there are rescue workers who are going to end up having to risk their own lives just to rescue these clowns. Seriously, if I was a EMT or FEMA agent or whoever they have out during a storm, I'd be tempted to turn a blind eye if I saw some jackass blowing by me.
The home -buying process is proceeding in the irritating fashion I've become accustomed to. My realtor called me today to tell me that the personal check we gave her for the down payment on the house is no good because they need a bank check. How she didn't know this when we were there Monday is beyond me. So, my wife had to run out and get a bank check today and we have to drive up to Salem to drop it off tomorrow. I don't know why the personal check wasn't acceptable, and I honestly don't care, I just wish our realtor had let us know earlier. What makes it even weirder is that today was the day that the down payment was initially due. As it happens, we had to push it back to Tuesday because of a few issues with the housing inspection, but if we hadn't, then one of us would have had to take off of work in the afternoon and get up there right away. I can't even tell you how glad I'm going to be when we've signed the papers and don't have to talk to realtors, bankers, appraisers, inspectors, or insurers for a little while. On a completely unrelated note, there's something that's been bugging me for a while: prayer. I don't get it. No, actually, I do get saying Hail Mary's and Our Father's and stuff like that. You're showing your devotion to God and, I don't know, relaxing or something. I get that. What I don't get when you're asking God for something. How does that work? A lot of people told us that they prayed for us to have good weather for our wedding. Isn't that kind of trivial a thing to bother God about? If you're asking Him for a favor, why don't you make it something good? We did have nice weather on our wedding day, but I certainly would've preferred, say, to win the lottery. Even besides that, there are a lot horrible things that happen to people in this world, it seems kind of silly to ask God for something like good weather. Now, I know that one thing wouldn't have to preclude another, and that God could easily cure cancer and make the day sunny at the same time if He felt like it, but that just proves my point. He's going to do what He's going to do. Think of how that conversation would go: Prayerful Christian: "God, I really would like-" God: "I KNOW WHAT YOU'D LIKE!" Prayerful Christian: "Of course you do. Does that mean You'll help me get that job?" God: "WELL, I WASN'T GOING TO, BUT SINCE YOU ASKED." I just can't imagine that it works like that. What I get even less is people who pray to the saints. They have a patron saint for just about everything. Again, how does that work? St Peter: "Hey, God, Prayerful Christian wants-" God: "I KNOW WHAT PRAYERFUL CHRISTIAN WANTS." St. Peter: "So, can you help him out with that job?" God: "I DON'T KNOW, WHAT DO YOU THINK? IS THIS GUY A GOOD GUY, OR WHAT?" Isn't the point of Christianity that there's only one God who's in charge of pretty much everything? Once you start divvying up responsibility for all this shit among different entities, you might as well start praying to Apollo and Aphrodite. It basically boils down to polytheism. I guess faith defies reason in many cases, and I'm probably just
being a dick by bringing this up. August 17, 2005 This has been a busy frickin' couple of weeks for me. My wife and I are buying a house in Salem, a process I'm finding to be extremely complicated and stressful. It's a weird process too. Sometimes I don't know if everything is being done exactly right. For instance, the seller's real estate agent contacted us and put us in touch with a buyer's agent from her office. Seems a little cozy to me. What seems even cozier is that when we were having trouble with the lender we were originally going with, our real estate agent put us in touch with the mortgage company that the real estate agency owns. Or is it the mortgage company that owns the real estate agency? I'm not sure how that works out. The other funny thing was how we arrived at the final sale price. The asking price of the place as $299,000 (which is also kind of weird. Why price a house like you price a bag of chips or a gallon of gas? Am I supposed to think, "Hey, it's only in the two hundred thousands, that's not so bad!"). Our agent told us to offer $279,000 if we wanted to get the price down to $289,000. We did, and they came back with $294,000, which I'm assuming is what their agent told them to say so that they could get $289,000. And that's what we settled on. I don't know why the two agents didn't just tell us both that that's what the price of the house was going to be. Anyway, this is our new house:
It's in Salem, which is roughly a zillion miles away from everything I grew up with. But it's near my wife's family, so even though our mortgage payment will be much more than what we currently pay in rent, we'll make that right up in gas money spent on her trips to see her mother. The nice thing about this place is that it's on a dead end street, and it's nice and quiet. After living in apartments for five years, it's going to be nice to be far away from people. It's a small place, only 1050 square feet, but we honestly don't need too much more than that for now. Down the line, when we have kids, we'll need more space, but this will certainly do for now. The really nice thing is that there's not tons of work that needs to be done. There are cosmetic changes that will need to be made eventually, like getting rid of the wood panel in the living room:
But that's not really that bad. At least there are no crippling structural issues it will cost us thousands of dollars to repair. Or at least, if there are, the housing inspector didn't tell us about them. I'm just going to hope he was right about that. The big selling point of the place, and the reason why my wife wanted it before we ever actually set foot in the house, is the kitchen.
It's big and it's pretty nice. Down the road, we'll replace the countertops and the tiling, but for now it's more than adequate. We won't be bumping into each other every night while we're cooking dinner anymore. And we'll actually have space for all of our wedding gifts. They've been sitting at her parents' house since May. And her shower gift have been sitting there since March. It will be nice to actually use all that stuff we own. Of course, this all means that September is going to be a bitch of a month for me. We close on the 9th, and then we'll be spending all of our free time painting and otherwise getting the place ready for habitation before we move two weeks later. At the same time, work picks up for me and my semester at UMass starts. But once that's done I'll be able to relax in my new home. At least until something goes wrong and I'm suddenly faced with dealing with it myself instead of calling the landlord. August 2, 2005 August is the Sunday of the summer. It's nice that it's still the summer, but you know it's almost over and there's still a lot of stuff you want to do, so you can't help but feel a little anxious. Thanks for fucking nothing, August. Anyway, when we drive to the T parking lot in the morning, there's this one particular car we see a lot. I notice it because it has vanity license plates that say "LUV GOD." What I want to know is whether the owner of the car is trying to say that they LUV GOD, or that he is, himself, a LUV GOD. It's a small twist in how you interpret it, but it probably makes all the difference in what kind of person it is who owns this car.July 28, 2005 I got a call from my mother last Friday about my uncle, who's also my godfather. I guess he's been having headaches for a while, and Thursday he passed out. They took him to the hospital, where they did a CAT scan and told him that he had to have emergency brain surgery the next day. Now, "brain" and "surgery" are already two words you don't like to hear together, never mind throwing "emergency" into the mix. I won't keep you in suspense, they operated, removed a benign tumor, and he's going to be fine. But I just can't even imagine how you react when you go into the hospital for headaches and they tell you that they have to saw open your skull, like, right now. You don't often wake up one day and find yourself scheduled for immediate brain surgery by the end of the night. And brain surgery is something that you have serious concerns about waking up again after. Imagine having barely a day to get all your shit in order in case anything happens to you? That's fucked up. And it's not like you can put it off. If a neurologist tells you he needs to open you up tomorrow, he's not doing it because he had a couple of cancellations and neds something to do. Now he's got a titanium plate in the back of his head, and a special card to give to airport screeners to tell them not to bother walking him through the metal detector. He's in good spirits, but he's annoyed that they didn't save the tumor after they removed it. He was actually discharged before I got a chance to go visit him at the Brigham. Probably for the best. Right now I think all I'd be able to say to him is, "Dude, they cut open your fucking head!" Just something to think about next time you come down with a migraine. July 26, 2005 I can't believe that it's the last week of July already. I know summers tend to go by fast, but this one is really flying by. I really haven't done shit this summer. Usually in the summer I climb a mountain or two, run a lot, go up to my uncle's cottage in New Hampshire, and generally play outside. But I've done absolutely none of those things so far, and I don't see any of them happening in the next month. I have done a few things this summer. I went with John, Jeff, and Lance on our yearly Six Flags trip. I've been to a few ballgames. And while I haven't climbed any mountains, I have climbed that big hill by the Trailside Museum at the Blue Hills. Oh, and I saw Batman. It's because this summer has been too fucking hot to do anything. We have a pool in our apartment complex, and you'd think I'd use it, but there are too many shitty little pre-pubescent kids running around acting like little dickturds at the pool. It would be one thing if I could just relax and read a book by the pool, but I don't want to listen to shrill, girlish little boys screaming "Suck my dick, motherfucker!" Kills the mood. So, I've been sitting in my air-conditioned apartment, which kind of sucks, because I could sit in my apartment playing video games any time of the year. At the very least I should sit out on my balcony and read a book. I'm too stuck in my routine though. Every night I do the same thing. I come home, watch Charmed, even though it's stupid and shitty, and then watch the Red Sox game. If my wife is lucky, I pull myself away from the game for long enough to have sex. If she's really lucky, I don't. Seriously though, I can do better than this. Before you know it, it's going to be November, and I'm going to be pissy about the cold weather. Starting as soon as I beat Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, I'm going to start making the most of my summer. July 15, 2005 Well, I'm not fired or anything. They were supposed to change the locks on the room next to mine, but my boss made a mistake. That's good, it means that no one knows about all the porn I look at while I'm at work. * * * I saw the guy who played Cooter on the old Dukes of Hazzard show interviewed by Matt Lauer this morning (I never remember if the show with Matt Lauer and Katie Couric is Good Morning America or Today). He's upset about the new Dukes of Hazzard movie. He's not mad that it looks to be horrifically stupid, because, really, the old show wasn't exactly Shakepeare, or even that the producers have tinkered with God's natural design and have made Boss Hogg skinny and Rosco P. Coltrane fat. He's upset that it's not family friendly. If I recall correctly, wasn't the Dukes of Hazzard about two guys running from the law and a girl who wore cutoff jeans that ended just below her crotch. And besides, why is what Cooter thinks important enough to justify a segment on a nationally televised show? Why don't you get the guy who plays Clark Kent's father on Smallville? At least he was an actual Duke boy and is still low-to-moderately famous. Man, if this is how it's going to be, then I guess the guy who played Devin on Knight Rider sure is going to be bullshit about all the dick jokes KITT tells in that movie. July 14, 2005 Happy Bastille Day, bitches. I'm having more Grand Theft Auto moments. Every time I pass a wall that has graffiti on it, I think that I have to remember where it was so I can go back and put a Grove Street tag over it. * * * Weird moment at work today. I was hanging out by the front desk talking to the receptionist when a couple of locksmiths came up and asked for my boss. I said, "She's not here, what's up?" They said, "We just wanted you to know that we changed the locks she asked us to." Me: "Oh, really? What locks did you change?" Them: "The ones to Room 206." Me: "That's my office!" Thankfully I still have my master key, so I can get into my office,
but I'm awfully curious what that's all about. I haven't done
anything that warrants immediate dismissal, so I have to assume
there's some mistake. I'll be asking my boss about that first
thing tomorrow. July 10, 2005 I'm really not very good at video games, especially sports gamesI bought MVP 2005 a few weeks ago, and I finally tore myself away from San Andreas long enough to play a couple of exhibition games. They didn't go well. In my first game, my Red Sox lost to the Yankees 29-0, with Randy Johson pitching a perfect game. Clearly, I needed to work on all facets of my game. I haven't given up more than fifteen runs since, but I still can't hit a lick. The only game I've won when I played as the Mets so I could use Pedro Martinez. He managed to hold the Devil Rays to five runs and I actually scored 8. I should probably mention that I switched the difficulty level to Rookie from Professional for that one game. What can I say, I suck. It'll probably take a bit more practice before I get good enough at it for me to attempt playing a season. I think I'll be holding off on that until I'm done with San Andreas though. I find San Andreas pretty frustrating at certain points, because, again, I suck at video games, but at least in San Andreas you can blow off some steam by just fucking around and murdering civilians if you find yourself stuck somewhere. Unfortunately, in MVP, you can't just go off on someone when you get annoyed, even if you're playing Kenny Rogers. July 7, 2005 I know movie reviews are John's thing, but I just got back from War of the Worlds. That's the type of summer blockbuster (didn't you once upon a time have to actually have to sell a lot of tickets to be considered a blockbuster? Now it seems like movies are awarded that title before they're even released) I usually avoid spending money on. And I didn't spend money on this one either. I got gift certificates to AMC theaters for my birthday, and I have plenty of time to kill, so I went down on my "lunch" break. It wasn't all that bad. Tom Cruise is sucky, and I don't buy him for one second as a blue collar crane operator and deadbeat dad. I've actually always disliked Tom Cruise, I'm not just hating on him for being an obnoxious nutbag running around yelling about anti-depressants and flaunting his child bride. Anyway, he's crappy, but it's a pretty straightforward plot consisting mostly of him running, hiding, and freaking out, so there's not much he could do to fuck it up. The movie is a lot like Signs (or, you know, the novel War of the Worlds). It's not concerned with the larger aspect of Earth versus the Martians, though I say there should be a sequel where we take it to the fuckers. It's all about how one family handles an alien invasion. This is where I think the movie suffers in comparison. There was a lot more going on with the family in Signs. I cared about what happened to them. In War of the Worlds, I abstractly thought it might be nice if Dakota Fanning didn't get vaporized by an alien death ray. Actually, now that I think about it, it would have been pretty fucking funny if they did that near the end of the movie. She's just standing there looking cute, and then all of the sudden, "Zzzzst!" and she's dust. But the movie is still decent. It looks nice, gives you a few spooky, scary moments, and adequately conveys the sense of how much it sucks when your entire world is methodically being eradicated. The first two thirds or so of the movie are much better than the last third. The problem is that you know how it ends, the aliens all catch a cold and die. When HG Wells originally wrote the story that was probably an original and interesting twist ending. However, knowing that that's what happens, that human kind has no part in repelling the invaders, you're pretty much just reduced to rooting for Tom Cruise to live as long as it takes for the aliens to get sick and die. The climactic scene where he shoves a grenade up an alien tripod's ass isn't bad, but it's not really that satisfying as the culmination of his quest for his family's survival. I really was hoping that they would come up with a different ending. Something similarly unexpected, but actually unexpected. I also find it somewhat implausible that this advanced alien race who has been planning this invasion for millenia never took germs into consideration. All in all, the movie was a fantastic way to kill two and a half hours for free. It's not retarded, like Independence Day or Godzilla, but it's not brilliant either. I'm pretty demanding when I spend ten bucks for a movie, so I probably wouldn't recommend it, but anyone who's happy to be moderately entertained for that money would probably be happy with War of the Worlds. July 6, 2005 I've been playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas now for a few weeks, and I have something to say to all those people who think that video games, this video game in particular, have too much influence on children. You're absolutely right. I'm 29 years old, and this game is exerting way too much influence over me. As I'm sitting here at work on a shitty, rainy day, I'm thinking of how little I want to ride the T home and how simple it would be to just drag someone out of their car and ride home. Of course, it's not that easy. I'm not as big and strong as CJ, and chances are that people would put up more of a fight if I tried to jack them. Also, most parked cars in the real world are locked. This is a good thing, of course, since if the police come after me, I don't have the handy map to direct me to the nearest Pay'n'Spray. However, driving my own car is presenting a problem. I constantly have the urge to run red lights, drive on whichever side of the road I want, and run down pedestrians on a whim. And I actually could do all of those things. Probably best that I don't though. At the very least, it's probably best to save before I try it, so I can just restart my life from that point if I end up getting in too much trouble. I think I'm getting a little too emotionally invested in the game. I actually called Jeff the other day because I was pissed at him for not telling me that Grove Street was about to get set up. Looked me right in the eye and never said nothing. Thanks, Jeff. At least I have real friends, like Cesar, who will watch my back. When I decided to go back to Los Santos, even though I wasn't supposed to, I was honestly offended by the sight of all those Ballas strolling around the territories I had won in the gang wars. Then, to add insult to injury, I see them walking around on Grove Street. Grove Street! Right in front of my fucking house. Motherfucker. A'it, a'it, that's cool. Have fun now, while I'm stuck up in San Fierro. But just be aware that some niggas are gonna get laid the fuck out when Carl Johnson comes back to town. Busters. |
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