MORE THAN A MONTH?!

Go ahead and call me a slacker.
Go ahead!

Slacking on the internet - well, I can't really call that such a bad thing. I've been indulging myself in copious amounts of movie watching**, walk-taking, book writing, and music-listening. And if it's been a month and a half or so, then let's call it... five bottles of wine, a couple of daiquiris, and one extremely over-done Fourth of July.
I think there was a toga party in there somewhere, as well as the realization that I can (somehow!) pull a 900-ish pound cart uphill for about 200 feet by myself.
(I don't actually look like a She-Hulk in real life, so that was as much of a shock to me as it would have been to anyone else.) (Unless I do look like a She-Hulk in real life and don't realize it. Anyone who knows me - opinions?)
And reading, of course. Of course I've been reading. We might have established this previously, but I basically get paid stupid amounts of money to sit around and read.

I'm going to be honest - this probably all just has something to do with the fact that it's been so warm out. Winter beats the living fuck out of me, emotionally, so... as much as I hate being outdoors and being exposed to the sun, it would practically be criminal of me to squander winter's antithesis.

Seriously, though, there's been so much writing. The book that I've been working on intensively for the past year (and on and off in various iterations for the past... six?) is nearing what I'd consider to be completion.
You have no idea how fucking pumped I actually am about the fact that I can at least consider the beast to nearly be finished - publication thereof be damned.

So... that was the barebones status update. Regular posting should resume in the near future.

**Obviously, I've watched more than two movies in the past month and a half - that's just far too many movies to hyperlink in one fragment of a sentence. Let's be realistic here.

Where the fuck have I been, anyway?

I think it mostly boils down to the fact that it's summer, honestly. Doing things outside in the sun kind of kills my tendency to sit around and type about my weird little obsessions.

Pretty much any time I AM spending indoors is dedicated to Finally Finishing My Goddamned Book (It's Only Been Five Years Now, For Fuck's Sake).
That, and I finally decked out an office for myself to work in - I've got a kick-ass desk, my stereo, a lamp, all my books, my knick-knacks, my violin, my posters, a giant chunk of lead crystal hanging in the window... this place just needs a futon and another bookshelf and my den will be complete. (I'm told that I'm not allowed to call it a Man Cave because I'm not a man.)

There are certain things I do know, though. I've read 31 books cover-to-cover since starting my new job in February, 99% of which I completed during working hours.
I'm going on a small book-buying/possible futon-purchasing spree tomorrow.
I love summertime, sunshine, and all things not involving the winter.
At some point this week, I may go see X-Men: First Class. I'm told that it's relevant to my interests.

I may or may not be around more often now that my office is done.
TIME MAY TELL!

Nonsense, and stuff.

I'd like to speak, briefly, about the fact that I sympathize with Alan Moore on an creative level.

Does he use rape as a plot device somewhat too regularly? Yes.
Is he capable of waxing poetic at extrrrrrreme length (unitentional pun?) about drawing boobs? Yes, yes he is.
Have some of his comics been creepy as fuck? Again, I can only agree.

But at the same time...

'From Hell' was a good movie, but as an adaptation, it really blew.
'V for Vendetta' was an alright movie, but they butchered THE FUCK out of the adaptation process.
'Watchmen' was a glorious technicolor wonder, and while I'd certainly call it the most faithful of the films, certain things... maybe didn't need to be altered, or left out.

The absolute prime reason, though, that I sympathize with him as a creator?

Is the fact that this:

fucking beautiful example of storytelling, which obviously took a great deal of care on Moore's part** was shot, shat upon, kicked a few times in the ribs, and thrown through a turbine with a generous accompaniment of utter rubbish to produce this steaming pile of disgust:

and that I had to remain stoic when my stepmother told me how much she loved it "because it was fun".

There was something that set this post off.
I can't remember it now.

OH WAIT NOW I REMEMBER!

The complete omnibus of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen is out this fall.

** I'm not trying to say that any of his other works didn't take a great deal of care. What I'm trying to say is that it takes a decent amount of talent and deliberation to carry on convoluted storylines about other peoples' characters. Throwing a bunch of random elements into a stew isn't going to work unless you give a shit about it being palatable, let alone fine dining.


I'm also not trying to lessen what a horrendous botch From Hell was, adaptation-wise. I'm just pointing out that it was a quality botch, rather than a crime against humanity. V for Vendetta was only a mild crime against humanity.

This is a post. Make of it what you will.

I was going to write something really, really long and detailed about filmed adaptations of literature.
I was.
I just don't think I have it in me.
I don't have it in me for a whole hell of a lot this week, though. Maybe next week? Maybe in a few days?
That post is coming. Just... not tonight.

I do have something I want to say about books, though, having gotten myself mot of the way through A Storm of Swords. (That's book 3 of A Song Of Ice And Fire, for those of you keeping tabs.)

I think I officially want to hug George R. R. Martin.

Not in a sexual way.

Allow me to explain, and come with me for a moment on a flight of fancy, because I like to imagine that this is what happened.

He woke up one morning, took care of necessaries, and got himself all psyched up for an action-packed day of sitting around writing A Clash Of Kings.
He sat himself down in front of his (typewriter/word processor/computer/notebook/tablet and chisel), took a sip of his tea, and dove right in.
Five lines later, though, he stopped suddenly.
He looked out the window, and a smirk formed on his lips as a mad glint overtook his eye.
Fuck this shit, he thought to himself. I have this brilliantly crafted world populated by these carefully-wrought characters who have built this intricate and devious web of political intrigue amongst themselves, and... just fuck this. I'll finish writing this story, but I am going to make them cringe like nuns if they want to find out how it ends. I shall test them. Yes. This is what I shall do.
And, with a quiet chuckle, he carried on with his day.

That's the only logical explanation I can come up with for the end of the second book and the majority of the third.

And you know what?

 

Anyone who can just straight-up pull some of this weird shit out of thin air, toss it in, and still have me completely plowing my way through the actual story without being too bovvered about it... that takes skill.
He's probably aware of that fact, and just doesn't even care.

(Mr. Martin, if you're reading this? You're one of my heroes now, and also a fabulous troll king. I mean that in the best of ways. Any confirmation or denial of my suspicions would be appreciated.)

The point to this? I keep trying to decide if I actually want to find a way to watch A Game Of Thrones. (I'm violently allergic to paying for cable.)
It looks like it's really well done, and I've heard a number of good things... I just don't think I could stomach it if they tone down the more disturbing moments in the books.

Which, I mean... makes me sound a little bit twisted, sure, but you have to understand that when it's not people (killing/plotting to kill) each other, it's become this hilarious-yet-vomit-inducing horror-show, and I can't get enough.

On a final note, I recommend Texts from Westeros to anyone who is even passingly familiar with the series. (Though I've not watched the series yet, I know who the actors are supposed to be, so it's still magically hilarious.)

In which Turtle is my hero.

This has been one of the worst days that I can personally remember having had.
Fact.
Am I going to detail it here? No, because that would be shitty of me.
Suffice it to say, I've spent 24 hours crying on and off.
Mostly on.

I'll be okay. Really, I will. Everyone will be okay. Things have been dealt with, and life will move along. Wrong things might even be fixed, though time's gonna tell on that much.

But Turtle is a fucking superhero.

I came home from work to find that she'd made me a pie.
A pie. For me.

A pear-Gruyère pie.

Just for me.

Let me tell you something, internets:

Pear-Gruyère pie is just as head-splittingly amazing in real life as I always thought it would be.

Turtle is my favorite person in the whole wide world right now.

 

Think of her as an even hotter version of Anna Friel, and you've

got a rough idea.

So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that cheese baked into pie crusts could solve all major global crises. MAKE THIS HAPPEN, PEOPLE.

Remember how awesome Kenneth Branagh used to be?

He was.
I mean, nowadays, I think the best thing he's actually managed was (essentially) playing himself in the Harry Potter films. Thor wasn't that bad, either.

But... he used to kick ass at directing, and even managed to act well from time to time.

***

Dead Again is a very, very strange mystery film about reincarnation. Aside from his own performance as a private detective, we're also treated to:
- Emma Thompson as an amnesiac whose only memories... are of a past life
- Derek Jacobi as a hypnotist/antiques dealer
- Robin Williams as a foul-mouthed former psychiatrist
- Andy Garcia in... one of the most stomach-turning performances I've ever seen

It's basically one of the best things I've ever seen in my whole life.



Here, he offers up some of what he does best: Shakespeare. Blah, blah, blah, Henry V, blah blah blee. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, thank you.

I'll admit that there are some blatantly corny moments in this one, but it's still fantastically awesome. I mean, aside from Keanu Reeves being EEEEEEEVIL (or maybe Keanu Reeves being evil just helps it. I can't decide! I don't know, though. I think if a person is named 'John the Bastard', they're... kind of predisposed to being... a bit mean-spirited.)
Brian Blessed is loud (even as an inconsequential side character), Robert Sean Leonard's eyebrows are enormous (His character's only purpose? Eyebrows and stupidity.), Michael Keaton is fucking crazy as Dogberry (this man should only do comedy, ever), Emma Thompson is Beatrice, one of the most fantastic snarky ladies on the planet, and Denzel Washington is wonderfully smarmy as Don Jon.
My Mom and I have probably watched this 40,000 (or maybe 12) times and it never gets old. Ever.



Oh, Branagh.
What, what, WHAT WERE YOU DOING?
Look at your life. Look at your choices.
I like Helena Bonham-Carter and all, but...
Well, let's just say I think know where your career started hitting the skids.

Even if Robert deNiro was fuckin' awesome as The Creature.
(I'm not hyperlinking you to Robert deNiro, though. If you don't know who that is, there's no help for you.)



Maybe he knew his talent was tanking. Maybe he just recklessly burned it all out by powering through with this thing. Time may only tell.
1996's Hamlet is just... overwhelming. It's so on-point in every regard that it's difficult to try and write about coherently.

The weird visual mish-mash of criss-crossing anachronisms melds together into perfection. The costuming, the sets, and the color composition of the whole thing are all stunning.
Every shot is perfectly framed.
This owes a lot to the way it was filmed. Most films (before the advent of digital filming, of course) were done on 35 mm film (the same width as camera film). This particular film (all four hours of it) was done on 65 mm film.
That doesn't make the picture itself bigger; it makes it possible to capture wider, more inclusive shots. (It also makes for higher image resolution.)

I can't find fault with anyone's performance. It's a very, very long movie in its entirety (as the complete, full text of the play was filmed, which is quite unusual for adaptations of Shakespeare), and in view of that, the emotional nuance needed for the scope of the thing is incredibly well-realized. (In stage adaptations, that tends to get lost in view of the fact that it's more important for actors to exaggerate a bit in order for their voices and gestures to be seen and heard properly by the audience.)

Not only that, but in the style of his better movies, it's utterly jam-packed with blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameos.

So... nearly everything he's done since Hamlet has, indeed, SUCKED... but I'd say that's one hell of a ($18,000,000) magnum opus all in all.

Brian Blessed is the loudest man known to humankind.

And he's also one of my heroes.

Go watch Black Adder. Seasons 2 and 3 are admittedly superior, but they do not feature His Royal Loudness at any point.

I don't know what this has to do with anything, aside form the fact that if you don't know who Brian Blessed is, I think you've had a sad life and that you should educate yourself promptly.

I learned how to drive a forklift today.

And then I came home, and ate some Chinese food, and watched some stuff.

and a whole bunch of

A GLORIOUS EVENING.

Where the hell HAVE I been?

Well, I've been working. When I haven't been working, I've been writing with this fly motherfucker pasted into my earphones:

because fuck Ginsberg and fuck Howl, fuck Naked Lunch and William Borroughs, Jack Kerouac is my man.
(I allow that Gregory Corso is also face-clawingly good, but Ti Jean just has a way about reading his own stuff out loud that just... I love it.)
(And fuck On The Road. It's a good book, but fuck that. Come back and talk to me when you've read The Subterraneans and The Book Of Dreams and Satori In Paris.)
(I could wax poetical all right about just how much I love listening to Kerouac talk into a microphone, but we'll skip that for now. Let's talk about some other stuff.)

***

I saw On Stranger Tides tonight, and I was..... sadly underwhelmed. I loved Keef and Swearengen, as predicted, but the rest of the movie seemed largely unnecessary. And the things that weren't unnecessary.... I didn't quite... get.
For example: Blackbeard randomly has a magic sword that controls... ropes? And he can... zombify people? I... where the fuck are you guys going with this?
And Jack's been to the Fountain of Youth before, and knows where to find all of the hidden doodads necessary to get there, but he doesn't actually really know how to perform the ritual to get to the Fountain?
And why the fuck am I supposed to care about this Random Guy and his Random Mermaid Girlfriend who... go off to swim the seas forever together? I think?
And Jack and Barbossa have this bizarre buddy-cop moment midway through, but not really, and...
Penelope Cruz, you were a mess.
There's a moment that I wish to hell I had a screencap of, because... going back to the theme of Blackbeard Is Randomly All Kinds Of Magic... they discover that Blackbeard has a cabinet full of ships in bottles. Not like... model ships in bottles. Like... real ships, shrunk down, stuffed in bottles.
It feels like a bad Xibit joke that never pays off.
(Hey bro, I heard you like boats, so I put these boats in bottles on your boat, so you can gloat about how much better your boat is?)
I don't get it. I think that what they were trying to say was that Blackbeard was actually The Devil, but... still desperately wanted to find the Fountain of Youth?

Shit, Tyrone, get it together!

I propose a do-over. Just have Keef and Swerengen glare each other down and mock each other mercilessly for an hour. Flat-out. I'd watch that movie. I'd watch the SHIT out of that movie.


***

Speaking of Shit, Tyrone, Get It Together.

Gaga, what the fuck is going on here?
The Fame was alrightish. Monster? Was fantastic.
Way to completely drop the ball on the third try, dude.
Born This Way kind of blows.
Not all the way. Just mostly.
Judas has grown on me, but it mostly has to do with the video rather than the song itself.

(Ivan and I actually had a conversation about Why That Video Is Good, and our conclusions jointly go something like this:

"Let's look at what the MacManus brothers have been up to lately. The good-looking one has done... fuck all in the past decade. The fuggo? Has... done approximately the same fuck-all, but has managed to kick around with zombies and pour a beer on Gaga's ass in a jacuzzi. I.... think we have a winner here.")

***

I also had to keep Ivan from dying today. While I was off being trained, he decided he was gonna infect himself with strep some way or another, and he kept... just sucking on cough drops, as though they were going to cure an infection.
Shockingly, the cough drops proved not to be enough, and he finally decided he needed to see a doctor. I even made the appointment for him and drove him there.
He tells me that when the nurse finally looked down his throat during the exam, she pulled a horrified face and asked if he'd SEEN the state of his throat.
Needless to say, he has a round of antibiotics in a bottle in his possession now, and shall live to see the summer.

(Fact: If you don't have insurance and are deathly sick, urgent care centers are cheaper than a hospital visit. If you have a common variety of infection, they should be able to shuffle you in and out pretty quick and make sure you get the cheapest prescription possible. Just puttin' that thought out there.)

This had BEST be the fucking Rapture.

Look, I understand completely. Any job in customer service involves people taking metaphoric (and sometimes literal) shits on you.

But today? Had best well be the fucking Rapture.
There was flooding bad enough on the tracks in and around Albany that everything got delayed by hours.
Which is fine. These things happen.
But when 84% of Rochester decides to evacuate to Chicago for the impending cleansing of the Earth at the same time, and they all seem to want to take all of their Earthly possessions with them on said trip....

This had best be the actual fucking Rapture.

If it's not? I'm getting the fuck out of this job as fast as humanly possible, because this is not how I'm going to spend every Friday night for the rest of my working life.

On that note, I feel like I've spent a very comfortable amount of time pantsless in this life, and that I'm quite perfectly happy with how not-to-Heaven I'll be going... and that while I have regrets in life, at least I'll go out with my pride.
If this is the Rapture.

If.

(I don't have a song epic enough to honor the Rapture, should the crazies be correct about today.
Sadly.
I like to imagine it would be like David Bowie and Iggy Pop backing up Nina Simone and Freddie Mercury with a good healthy dose of Tom Waits on the piano. Or something to that effect, anyway.)
(We should make it happen, though, should the world continue.)
(Hint: It's probably going to.)

A Trifecta Of Thoughts

Huh. Well, looks like I'll be finishing off that series of music posts once I'm on the way home / once I am home.... yes, the blog will indeed continue.

With music, likely of the 1980's, and possibly some humorous selections.
And bears? Whatever.
Tomorrow's the final exam, and we all know what that means: Tuesday afternoon drinkin'.

 

(Thematically appropriate?)

Oh, and by the way? There's nothing more irritating than an instructor who simply will not admit that he sped through the course too fast and truly has nothing left to give us.

This is the face that all of us were making today -

- for about eight hours. (There were no bullshit Bob Dylan references telepathically linking any of us, as far as I am personally aware. Thank goodness.)

At lunch, we all pretty much managed to agree about how none of us have really been paying attention since Thursday, at least.

This is a half-assed excuse for a post at best right now. All I know is that I'm tired, and going to nap and/or actually sleep with some Netflix to lull me.

In the meantime, I bring you the only thing I could think of to tie this post together.
(Points go to whomever can name the theme I was going for here.)

Goodnight, everyone. I will likely inform you of my progress sometime tomorrow afternoon.

We have definitely done something to piss off Mother Nature.

Between all of those tornadoes a few weeks ago, and the rain that's going on now...
Obviously, the flooding is not as debilitating as a bunch of tornadoes just ripping shit up, but it's still kind of scary.
The creek at the end of my mother's street in Michigan is already level WITH the street, and they have a significant amount of water in their basement. This is Sunday. The rain isn't supposed to stop for another two days, at least.
One of my friends from back in Buffalo mentioned that they were having trouble getting home last night because of how the roads were flooding.
Various people in Rochester (including Ivan and Turtle) have mentioned that they have at least minor amounts of water coming into their basements.

I just want to be home to be able to deal with things.
I want to clutch my pillow and cuddle with mah boyfrenn and mah rommie (yeah that's right, I like her enough to cuddle her on the couch, come at me bro) and even Archie (that dumb, adorable feline).

Fook.

This would be depressing if it weren't so fucking hilarious.

Maybe it's because I've only gotten about five hours of sleep, or maybe it's hilarious because my subconcsious refuses to let this wreck my day.

I can't say for sure.


Quite, quite early this morning (quite, quite late last night?) a very strange thought occurred to me: I am now older than either of my parents were when I was conceived.

In my tired state, I decided to share this with the gang over on Ye Olde Book of Faces.

I phrased it in a way that acknowledged how weird of a thought it was to be having ("Thought that is vaguely creepy on many levels"), and ended it with a joke that was meant to seem as though I were phrasing it hesitantly to try and break the weirdness ("#reasontoparty?").

But then I went upstairs to bed. I thought to myself... does anyone in my life really wanna think about my parents doin' it? I don't really wanna think about my parents doing it.
So I did the only thing I could think to do: I pulled my laptop back out, logged on to Facebook, deleted the status. Nobody had even acknowledged its presence. No harm no foul. Right?

WRONG.


I went about my business... by which I mean I promptly fell asleep.
I woke up about 45 minutes ago, unable to go back to sleep.
Nothing was amiss in the world. I woke up in one of the comfiest beds ever, in one of the nicest rooms ever. Still tired, yet refreshed... nothing amiss.
Grabbed my phone.

Oh, come on.

Just when I think my father's proven himself mature enough to see my Facebook updates, things like this go down.
Essentially, his texts lead me to believe that he felt that the status (which was only posted for... what, 15 minutes, tops?) was a personal slam against him in a public forum. He even text forwarded me a copy of what I'd deleted.

Okay, first off... he gets specific text message alerts whenever I post anything?

Second... that wasn't... I... how the fuck is that a personal insult? It was a random late-night musing that I decided not to leave up for the eyes of my friends and family at large. Is it a personal slam to acknowledge the fact that everyone in the world is aging?
Well then, you know what?
FUCK YOU, WORLD. FEEL THOSE AGE LINES ETCHING THEMSELVES IN? 'CAUSE IT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
CLUTCH THEM PEARLS, BITCHES, AND MAKE YOUR REMAINING SUMMERS COUNT. 

In fact, though, it was indirectly inspired by this page, and when I realized that wow that is actually true isn't it,I decided to post about it. But then that got scrapped.

Five texts later, he's still not getting how I wasn't trying to insult anyone.

Normally, this sort of thing irritates the living hell out of me, but I cannot for the life of my figure out what part about that pissed him off.
Thus, today, today, it's just...

Breakfast time now, if I do say so myself.

(And if anyone could explain to me why it was so insulting to him, I'm listening.)
(I also realize that discussing this in a public forum has morphed into a personal insult all its own. I'm simply laughing at the reaction, not the imagined offense in regard to the initial comment.)

Some thoughts before sleep, and that's about all I'm good for right now.

I've been working on legitimate writing the whole time I've been away from home. If anything good has come from all of this, I actually have managed to get a decent bit of work done on my book - there were fundamental problems with the setup, and I think I might have hammered them into something usable.

I can't even begin to explain how tired I am, mentally.
I'm ready to come home, patch things up where it matters most, sit down on my couch, dogpile with Ivan and Turtle, and watch movies.
I'm ready to have my car back, to get in and pump some music, and take everyone up to the beach.
(I don't even like beaches. I just know that that is where we need to end up.)
I'm ready to sleep with my own pillow, in my own bed.

I have some more pictures of the Casa to share with you tomorrow, as well as the rest of DC - I have been down here for a third (and, for this trip, final) weekend.

There's going to be a third music post up. (And, likely, a fourth and a fifth.)

I started this as a way to distract myself in Delaware. It'll likely continue once I'm home...
Likely.
I'm enjoying it too much to see it die.

On that note?

Oh.

The big exam?
You know, the one that I had to come all the way to Delaware for, for a month?
I don't even know how you can count it as an exam. We're allowed to have all of our notes with us. We're allowed to have all of the handouts with us.

So............. this is just an exam to prove that we can read?


I..........

This has been what the past month led up to?

OH.

I SEE.

Massive Fucking Music Post, Part Two

Welcome to Part 2! The post can be found beyond yonder "Read More" link.

Fucking Massive Music Post, Part One

A quick note on the entry that's under the cut here:
I had wanted to arrange this so that each artist/category I was going to detail would have their own cut (like on LiveJournal), but I'm just not good enough at newer/different coding to get it to work here. Thus, for right now, everything is just as sectioned as I can get it behind one cut.
The lack of ease of navigation, therefore, frustrates me enough that I'm apologizing.
I imagine that nobody who's gonna read this is gonna give too much of a damn, I just figured I'd mention.

So now, on to what I came here to do tonight: ramble endlessly about music.

Problems, and general issues.

Here's the deal.
I wanted to make the music post tonight one massive, glorious monument to soundwaves - but one that wouldn't eat my feed page.
I just realized something completely fucking awful about Blogger code sets, though - there is no way to put more than one text cut in a single post without going through absurd amounts of html/css/things I simply do not know how to code, and I have not been able to find a reasonable way around that.
(I'd also rather not go back to Livejournal. It's a dinosaur at this point.)

I'll be making a big post later (after dinner) but it's not going to be quite as user-friendly as I'd anticipated.
It IS coming, though. Promise.

Some finishing thoughts before bed, and a preview of tomorrow:

Tomorrow (or the day after, depending on how tired I am), we will be featuring two different topics here at Pierre-Millay:
(1) Music
(2) Things that are actually interesting in Wilmington, DE. (This is the only one of the pair that's contingent on how tired I am; I haven't gotten out with the camera, and I feel like pictures can do more justice to some of these buildings than I can do describing them. For as tiny and boring as Wilmington is, there's actually some really nice architecture here.)

I would also like to welcome the Seattle contingency of my fledgling readership; you might not have commented, but I'm told that you're out there.

The Reason I Call It 'Casa del Pollo'

You may have read me ramble on about Tió Aparato quite a bit on here. (I've also been told that Tió Artilugio would be a better translation of what I was getting at with his fake name, but... well, he's already Uncle Apparatus, so that's what he's staying.)
My uncle has always been a bit of a character, but in the last decade and a half or so, he's been slowly amassing a collection of.... chickens.
This past month is the first time I've actually visited his home in about five years. He had... a few odd chickeny knick-knacks at the time, but nothing... overly noticeable.

The ensuing five years have, indeed, brought the deluge.
Thus, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you - the proof, presented behind a cut because it really is a ton of pictures.

SO MUCH JUDGEMENT.

Our class ran an hour and a half over today because 3/4 of my class STILL doesn't know how to read a simple reservation code set.
This is the beginning of week three.

I'm in a month-long class with people who can't learn twenty code designations.

And then they forgot me when they took the van to go grocery shopping.

Our guest commentor Señor Bale has a musical interlude to illustrate my thoughts on the matter.

 

Olé, bitches.

The party is not over, but sometimes, you just need to step out for air on the porch.

So to speak. But life goes on.

I spent the weekend in DC - a much more action-packed weekend than last weekend was. Aparato came down with a headcold during the week, so he was a little bit laid up, but it was still a good time.
When Mačka got home Friday night, he was... far more chatty and animated than I'm used to from him. He was trying to talk to the cat (they have two), and he was quite giggly about everything. We got a pizza, and he insisted that we watch Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus - an inspired choice, if I may say so myself.
(The pizza choice was, if I may say so myself, was INSPIRED - I'd been praying for a hangover-curing quesadilla, but a pizza with chicken on it was JUST AS AMAZING.)

Saturday, Aparato and I went museum-hopping finally, Saturday afternoon. The National Gallery (West Building) smells... disturbingly like sunblock. The building itself reeks of sunblock. It was making me laugh uncontrollably for some reason.
The museum actually closed soon after we got there, so we went across the street to their outdoor sculpture garden - which also promptly closed. (I didn't manage to get any pictures there, though - I finally had a goddamned camera with me in DC for once in my life, and I forgot it on the god-damned coffee table. Unbe-freaking-lievable. I should have good pictures of the sculpture garden next weekend, though.)
We then ended up, successively, at the Museum of Natural History and then the National Museum of American History, which were... well, okay, those two were kind of boring. I don't know. I like museum-hopping, but there's something about overloading on them. I prefer art museums to history museums, for some damn reason.

We then ended up at Legal Seafood for dinner, and as we're standing there on the sidewalk, I look up at the advertisement board for the Regal across the street. I mention offhandedly, calmly, as we wait for Mačka to show up, "...You know, I heard Thor was supposed to be decent."
But I didn't push the matter. I knew he had a head cold, so I wasn't gonna ask him to sit through some loud-ass movie for two hours or so.
Mačka shows up, and the only words Aparato can get out is, "What would you think of going to see Thor aft-"
"There's a 9:10 and a 9:50 show."
(MAČKA, WHY ARE YOU AMAZING AND PSYCHIC, I LOVE YOU.)
So we went in for a wonderful dinner at Legal. Can I just say that if you ever have the chance, go to Legal Seafood in DC if only to have the opportunity to experience the bathrooms there.
Pictures would not do it justice.
The hallway that the bathrooms are in is partitioned by a mirrored wall down the middle - the ladies' bathrooms are on the left, the mens' on the right. Each "stall" is actually an individual bathroom, walled off with a full door, and each has its own toilet, sink, and hand-dryer.
AMAZING.

Having said that, their food also amazing beyond belief. If nothing else, the crab cakes. Good lord.


Thor was also pretty fucking good.
I will admit that the story got a little muddy and over-jumbled because there was too much attempt to give equal screen time to Earth and Asgard.
I like Chris Hemsworth - he has some pretty good comic timing. He kind of looks like he got hit in the face with a cement block, though.
The guy who played Loki looks like a young Data (don't be a plebe and act like you don't know who Data is), but I enjoyed his acting for the most part. (I'm still not entirely sure what they were doing with fucking around with Loki's backstory. I'm not going to spoil it if you haven't seen the movie yet, but suffice it to say that if you're familiar with the traditional comic canon, you're gonna be a little thrown off.)
To quote the good Turtle, "Anthony Fucking Hopkins was Odin Fucking Allfather", and... well, I mean, what more can I really add to that?
Aparato and I geeked out like nerdy, nerdy children during Hawkeye's twelve seconds in the movie. I can't speak for him, but on my end, it was not only for the character, but it also means that I get to have a good ogle of Jeremy Friggin' Renner once The Avengers finally gets made. 
(Contrary to my thoughts on Data, I won't consider you a plebe if you don't know who Hawkeye is.)
(They really need to stop cockteasing us with these setup films and just MAKE THE FUCKING AVENGERS ALREADY, OH MY GOD.)
(I also like how I'm judging Chris Hemsworth for looking like all smashed-faced, but I'm a Jeremy Renner fan. I don't even know.)


After the movie, though... oh, I don't know. Being away from home for so long is just... stressful, no matter how good it is to be able to be in DC every weekend for almost a month.
Make of that what you will.


Today was pretty uneventful. I had to buy a new backpack before I left DC - one of the straps was fraying pretty seriously on the one I had.

We had dinner before I left - chicken and rice and corn), and dinner was just so... hilarious.
We were sitting at the (what I assume to be IKEA) table, listening to a Cure station on Pandora, eating a good home-cooked meal, and they would not stop arguing about the best way to cook rice. They're such bickery bitches, I love it.
(I've got certain proclivities of my own, I'm not judging harshly. Their bickering is just fucking hilarious, I can't even handle it.)



I'm sitting here watching Netflix, and all I want to do is drop out of training, quit this job, go home, and fix my life.
I don't want these past few weeks to have been wasted, though, so... looks like I'll be in class bright and early tomorrow morning.

I'm just so done here, you guys. I miss all of you.

(Even though I prefer the old music video for this song, have the song anyway.)

Things You Should and Should Not Do On Cinqo De Mayo

DO:
Agree to not be a Debbie Downer, and just go out for Thirsty Cinqo De Mayo Thursday with your classmates.

DO NOT:
Forget to eat a good meal beforehand.

DO:
Have a marvelously witty toast (TO HONOR!) to recite before commencing the eight-person 1800-shot wave.

DO NOT:
Get slopness too quickly in front of people you barely know.

DO:
Shock everyone present with the fact that you're able and willing to hold conversations when you're not stuck in a corner classroom for eight hours.

DO NOT:
Try and explain sarcastic witticisms to that one lady in your class when you're three shots down.

DO:
Make that one French dude in your class laugh at your butchered, half-remembered French language skills.
He'll let you have the rest of his nachos.

DO NOT:
Try and explain how amazing Cat Stevens' music used to be to certain plebians.

DO:
Refuse to take your shirt off when people ask to see your tattoos, for once in your life. Good job!

DO NOT:
Try and ostracize that one dude for refusing to participate in Hugfest 2011 At Bar #2. He's just a germaphobe.

DO:
Realize when you've had quite enough, and make sure not to attempt to walk back to the hotel by yourself.

DO NOT:
Try and have conversations roughly equivalent to emotional landmines via Facebook chat while you're still bombed. That's not going to end well for anyone.

DO:
Hydrate very well before bed, get to sleep at a reasonable hour, and maybe have a sandwich. You'll wake up refreshed and in better shape than people who had significantly less to drink than you did.
Pussies.

Quick Thoughts On Cultural Oddities, and also, The People In My Life.

(1) Joey Comeau, the writer (of the text) for A Softer World, also writes short stories. I am both enamored with and jealous of his skill when it comes to "writing stories about cocks", as I have previously described my own attempts.

(2) Turtle recommended that I watch RoboGeisha, and if nothing else, the hilarious dub work is worth it.

(3) It's about time I told you a little bit more about the people I have written / will write about.


***

I currently live in Rochester, NY. I'm not from there, though.
I live with two other people - Ivan, The Boyfriend, and Turtle, The Roommate. Turtle's cat Archie and her rabbit Jackie also live with us.

Ivan is about seven months older than me, from the Rochester area, and a wonderful person. That's not to say that our relationship is perfect. We're human just like everyone else, and there are things we have to work at on a regular basis to keep it going, but there's nobody else I'd rather come home to every day. (Unless I could have him as part of a live-in harem of super-hot people. Ivan, if you're reading this, can we turn the attic into a harem of super-hot people?) He's very good at drawing, he's very understanding, he's not dumb, and he has good personal hygiene. He covers all my baseline requirements for long-terms relationships, and he finds me the best youtube videos. (Example is seen here.) (Actually-well-sung versions of that song can be found here and here, with due respect to Bea Arthur.)
He is the Pumpkin to my Honey-Bunny, the Morticia to my Gomez, and one hell of a guy all around.

Turtle is about eight months younger than me, and she's a fantastic person, and even though she's only our room mate, I miss her. (If by just our roommate, I mean JUST THE BEST ROOMMATE, then that's 100% accurate.) She is my partner in the law firm of Ziggy and Turtle-Derby, Attorneys At Funk. (We are not actually lawyers. We're just funky.) She's the best baker ever, she's a pretty good cook, and she can enjoy a good shot of tequila just as much as I can. She also has impeccable taste in music.
She got me my job (the one before this one), and then we actually met and became friends.
People who don't know us mistake us for siblings (or at least relatives) from how stupid we act around each other.
Archie, her cat, is ADORABLE, but fatally stupid. (She may also be the Antichrist, but that's another story for another time.)
Jackie is Turtle's rabbit. She doesn't venture out of her cage much. That's about all we have to say about her.

Tami is my best friend in the whole world, even though I don't see him often anymore. (He lives in Buffalo, where I'm from.) (Yes, Tami is a he, and is not a drag queen or a transsexual. Yes, it's pronounced Tammy.) I miss him terribly, and we have the weirdest inside jokes ever. During the year I lived in Michigan, we would talk on the phone and watch Conan O'Brien every night. I used to stay at his house practically every weekend when I moved back to Buffalo. If I ever get married, he will be my best man. Yes, I'm a lady, and he will be my best man. There are certain songs that I like because they remind me of driving around in the car with him.
Aside from Ivan, he is probably my absolute favorite male person.

Mom and Stepdad should be fairly self-explanatory names. They currently like in Michigan, where Stepdad is from. She's an esthetician, he's going to school to be a teacher. He's an only child, she's the third of four children.
They have one daughter together, my sister Bug, who is one month less than seventeen years younger than I am. She is probably the most adorable child on the planet.
I miss the three of them awfully, but I ended up hating living in Michigan more than I miss them.

Dad and Stepmom live in Syracuse. We don't have the best relationship. I'll get into it if I feel the need, but I won't bore you with it here.
They have two children together - A.L., female, nearly 11 years younger than me, and A.W., male, nearly sixteen years younger than me. (I could be doing the math wrong there. I don't know how old my brother is exactly, because I'm a bad person.)

The Baron and Lady Baron are two of (our?) best friends - they live about four blocks away from us in Rochester. (They are my friends, they are Ivan's friends, they are Turtle's friends.) He is in IT work, she is a stay-at-home girlfriend (who should not be judged poorly for that choice). They are both completely fucking awesome people.

Turtle-Boyfriend is.... Turtle's boyfriend. He's part of a theater company in Pennsyltucky who also does carpentry work. He's one of those disturbingly thin people who isn't actually anorexic. He likes Zelda games and certain forms of LARPing. (Turtle and The Baron are also members of his LARPing group.) He has fantastic hair. This is all that I know about him.

Tío Aparato is my father's youngest brother. He lives in Washington and struggled for a number of years with the fallout from a back injury, but that seems to have been improving recently. He has always been one of my favorite people. 
Mačka is my uncle's... gentleman friend? I don't know. 'Boyfriend' sounds juvenile, 'life-partner' sounds robotic. I've never really asked them what label they put on it, as such. He's a cool guy, even though he's really quiet. He's also insanely smart. His quietness can be intimidating, unless you know that he's just usually like that.


Ma Cousine is my father's younger brother's oldest child. (There's three brothers there. Dad, Père Du Ma Cousine, and Tío Aparato.) She's got pretty much a full ride to AU, because she applied herself in every way that I managed to slack off in highschool. She's one of the coolest people I know.




These are all of the people that I might post about in the foreseeable future.

In less serious news altogether...

They're... re-booting The Crow? Well, much like the sequels and tv show, I find that fact... unnesseccary.
It could end up actually being good (I've been surprised by things like this before), but the original will have a place in my preteen heart forever.

And yet I'm excited for On Stranger Tides.
(Look, I can't help it. It's a Pirates movie minus Bloom and Knightley, with the added bonus of Swearengen and more gloriously piratey wisdom from Keef. I mean... how can I just reject that idea out of hand? I can't. I don't have it in me. Disney knows how to grab 'hold of my heartstrings with its casting choices, I'll give them that.)

A musical moment for you lovelies, as a retrospective on the fact that I was madly in love with this song for about a month once. (Excuse me while I go play Vampire: The Masquerade and cry bloody black tears as I bleed to death in darkness.)

And, in a musing that is linked to both The Crow and Pirates in a rather vague sense (and I'll give points to anyone who can point those links out), I ask myself this question: How in the name of heaven is there no Blu-Ray copy of Conquest of Paradise? That movie was, if nothing else, SHEER CINEMATIC BEAUTY. Ugh.

Our Nation's Capitol, Week 1

I think that I'll skip describing the actual first week of my training class here, because here is all you need to know: I was bored out of my mind. The instructor was teaching people how to use the 'Alt' key to get to the menu options in the program we're being trained in. There was nothing for me to take from this.

Last Wednesday afternoon, however, I took a brief afternoon trip to Washington, just to see how the trip would go. Once in Union Station, I took a walk up the the Capitol building, and then came back to the station, bought a sandwich, bought an umbrella, and came back to Wilmington. I'll be honest, all of my previous trips to DC have been in the summer - the foliage in the parks there in the spring is absolutely amazing.

Friday afternoon, it was time for me to go down properly for the weekend to visit my Uncle (Tío Aparato) and his gentleman (Mačka), two of my favorite people in the whole world.
I was originally supposed to go arrive at 6:30, and they would have picked me up... but I left for DC as soon as I was out of class, thus instead arriving at 3. I took the subway over to their house.
I have to admit, I've always loved the subway system in DC. The ceilings of the stop platforms are quite vaulted, and I've always thought that they're incredibly pretty, even though they're just cement blocks. In my agnostic mind, I consider the DC Metro stops to be cathedrals, of sorts... but I digress.

The Dynamic Duo moved since the last time I was there four years ago, but are still situated near the same Metro stop, so I knew the way... but nothing really looked familiar once I was street level. It took three blocks before I found the neighborhood Starbucks, and I instantly had my bearings back.
I headed South off of U street for a few blocks, and soon.... I had arrived.
Aparato was the only one at home, but that was alright - this was my first trip to the 'new' house, and he and I don't talk overly often anymore.
I must say one thing, first - their new house is amazing and perfect. It's four stories if you count the basement, and it's perfectly decorated, aside from the carpeting on the staircases. (In that case, the house is admittedly still a work in progress.)
But... it is a beautiful house. Tío Aparato and I sat out on the deck and talked for about two hours before Mačka got home, and then we decided to go out for food.
We ended up somewhere called St. Ex, and I had my first-ever Prix Fixe meal. The appetizer course was something akin to beef stroganoff minus the beef, the second course was roasted chicken with a some sort of large fritter (made of 'ramp', which the internet tells me is some sort of wild leek), and dessert was Earl Grey cheesecake. It was all, if I may say so myself, friggin' delicious.
When we got back to the house, we sat down to watch some television. We ended up watching Doctor Who, which I haven't done since David Tennant left... there was always just something a little bit too weird-looking about Matt Smith to me, I guess.

I was, however, pleasantly surprised - both by the fact that Matt Smith is actually sort of okay, and also by the fact that OMG, WAITER, THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME BADGER IN MY DOCTOR WHO, please give my compliments to the chef on this amazing and delightful notion!
(Things that make any show automatically better: Badger. Do I realize that he has a real name? Yes, but that point is immaterial.)

We watched some other stuff, too, but I'd been up since 7 AM, and it was nearing.... 11 PM? We watched an episode of Chopped, and we started watching Good Eats, but I was pretty much about passing out on the couch, so... it was bedtime for Ms. Millay.

I woke up around noon on Saturday, in the understanding that my cousin would be coming by and that we'd go museum-hopping... but that was, it seems, not to be. Ma Cousine was, this year, a freshman at AU, and she was caught up with helping some friends move out that afternoon.
Once she did finally show up, the four of us went out for Thai. On the way (I have no idea where were were - things not in walking distance of the house or certain Metro stops are kind of one big blur of city to me.) we had some sort of techno station blaring on the radio. I'm not overly fond of Rhianna, but the particular remix of 'S&M' we were listening to was actually pretty good.

But, as I was saying - Thai, pretty good place. We then went to see Source Code which was.... Hrm. Well. Look, I like looking at Jake Gyllenhaal as much as the next person, but... it was not a particularly amazing film.
In the same breath, I'm excited for On Stranger Tides and Thor. (I'm not usually such an unwashed plebe when it comes to movies. I don't even know.)
We got back from that and Ma Cousine went to go meet some friends, and then Aparato, Mačka, and I watched the second episode of the Doctor Who thing - MORE BADGER, with an added side-dish of awesome.
And then it was, once again, bedtime.

Woke up at around 1 on Sunday, and Mačka, Ma Cousine and I went to do some minor shopping. Not fancy shopping, shopping-at-Target shopping. We got home, and I went to evening church service with Aparato and Cousine.
Now, I was raised Catholic for a few years, but... I'm not. I don't consider myself Catholic, I don't identify as Catholic... but I never see these people. I figured I could do the decent thing and spend an hour with them.
It's also been a very, very long time since I was in a church for anything that wasn't a wedding or a funeral. Being in churches makes me nervous. I've never had that great of an attention span, and there's something about that Catholic Mass Incense that just makes me lose any chance I have at concentration. Then I get nervous that one of the really ardent older people will see me blatantly zoning out and think that I'm a heretic and try to have me burnt alive for heresy, and... well, I get nervous.
I might also add here that the church we went to was very elaborate inside, and I was very spaced out, and... all I could see around me were potential handholds.
The following text conversation took place directly after church with Ivan the Boyfriend:

(P) Well, I figure hell really is a forgone conclusion in my case, but… Still. I was in a church during mass going ‘it would be simple as fuck to get to that dome.’ lol.
(I) At least you didn’t start climbing? lol
(P) Basically.
(I) “LIZ! What are you doing?”  “I swear to god there’s a feather up there.”

It should be noted that I managed to not randomly free-run in the middle of Mass. I also didn't go to Communion... I don't care about ~desecrating the Sacrament~ or anything, it just would have felt... disingenuous, I guess.

We went to dinner at kramerbooks (having stopped to collect Mačka along the way), which took FOREVER even though it was delicious... and then we had to hustle back to the house so I could get my suitcase and get back to the train station. Père Du Ma Cousine had arrived just as we got there, though (he had come to collect Ma Cousine to take her back home for the summer). I literally had about 90 seconds to talk to him as I was running upstairs, and then back downstairs to the car.
We made it to Union Station with not a moment to spare - I ran back to the gate, out onto the platform, and onto the train. It left 45 seconds later.

I then came back to the hotel room once the train got in to Wilmington, and found that my cable was out.
Which isn't a big deal... I will watch TV when I have absolutely nothing else to do, but I do not watch it habitually by any stretch of the imagination. (I have recently begun watching television shows on Netflix, but that's not really the same thing as sitting down at a certain time every day or week to watch a certain show. If that makes sense.)
I decided to take a walk down to the river.
Along the way, I texted Ma Cousine to let her know that I'd gotten back safe. She texts back, "That's good. Also, apparently Osama bin Laden is dead."
I... didn't even know how to respond to that.
I sat down on a bench on the boardwalk to try to collect my thoughts, but... nothing was coming.
I walked back to the hotel room - of course my cable was out on that night of all nights.
So I fired up my netbook, found CNN, and waited for the live stream of Obama's statement to begin.

9/11 was the day before my thirteenth birthday. (Yeah, you know my birthday now.) Talk about a kick into your teenage years, right? Now, I'm not frothingly political, I'll admit, but there was really only one thing at the forefront of my mind:
Not that bin LAden wasn't a horrifically awful human being, but... at this point, was he really anything more than a symbolic figurehead? Please, someone feel free to prove me wrong on that point - and I don't want that to seem like I'm picking a fight with The Internet on that. If I'm legitimately incorrect in my assumption there, please correct me.
I've never felt so unaffected my the death of a human being, though. Like... I just cannot even care, for some reason. I remember airports before 9/11, and bin Laden's death isn't going to make the full-body scanners or the invasive searches go away. Nothing has changed.
I mean, call me cynical, but... will airport security decrease? Are any of the wars in the Middle East suddenly over?
No.

On that note, I think it's dinner-time, and I leave you with a song that always reminds me of the D.C. Metro lines.

How I Spent Easter

Not that I'm Christian by any long mental stretch, mind you, but I did almost twelve hours travelling last Sunday, and it had nothing to do with visiting family members.

On the leg of the trip between Rochester and New York City, I was stuck in a four-seater on a train with a snotty teenager, a rank-smelling old lady, and some film school douche who insisted on practically draping his arm over my chest to record footage of the Hudson River out the window. (Despite numerous attempts to at least switch seats with him, he refused - I just don't like strangers' arms being all over my rack, I don't know. Maybe I'm the weird one out on this.)
I will say that the trip along the Hudson was actually very nice to look at. You can see all of these trees growing straight up the sheer rock face on the other side of the river, and... if I were the sort of person who were inclined to enjoy boat rides, it would probably a lovely place to take a boat trip on in the summer.
Actually being on boats tends to send me into a panic more often than not, though, so I don't think that anyone has to worry about me trying to foist that sort of vacation on them.

Penn Station is a hole in the ground. A hot, cramped hole in the ground. My Easter dinner was a falafel-hummus pita from Chickpea.
There was a pigeon trapped in the waiting area while I was eating, too. That threw me off a little bit.

I can't remember precisely what time I got in to Wilmington, but I was immediately struck by two things - one, I was hungry. Two, the apartment/long-term hotel room I had been set up in was a cavernous, barren box. (Much like your mom.)

The people in my class are alright, and the instructor is an okay guy, I just feel like three and a half weeks is a little bit excessive for this job. Now, I'll admit, some people really do need to learn basic computer functions, and I respect that they need all of this training. I learned how to do my job in two days in real time, though, so... why isn't there some sort of aptitude screening test for people who take this course? Maybe some of us could have just shown up for the last week or so of training and gotten caught up on more advanced skills that would be useful.

On the other hand, though, I decided midway through last week that I would use this paid, unneeded training to get some writing done, so I bought a cheap notebook, and ended up writing... and honestly, I've been bored enough that a lot of it has digressed into hilariously bad pornography. I can't help but wonder what repercussions, if any, would come of me noting on the final course evaluation that they paid me to sit around writing about cocks for a month.

In the mean time, though, I took the train down to D.C. this past weekend, and will be doing so again this weekend, and likely the next.
I'll detail those shenanigans in a later post - for right now, though, I think it's high time I had a nap.

Oh! - a quick thought while I'm at it, though. The landlord's sole response to my renewed request that the bathroom mold be taken care of - 'Not a problem I wil[sic] send him back over'.
Thank you for that eloquent and detailed response, Sir Landlord. That was, however, a shockingly immediate response given your prior track record in that department.

In the next edition(s): Things that I've discovered in Wilmington, last weekend's trip to D.C., and the art of maintaining communications with Ivan and Turtle while I'm away.

For now, though, I leave you with Serge Gainsbourg, who was completely awesome before he got really kind of creepy a number of decades later.

Some words on things that I have read since I've been in Delaware, and the weeks leading up.

Now, my job itself is not exciting. Not to spoil what it is precisely, let's just say that I'm a glorified receptionist, and that I have a lot of down time.
Prior to this job, I spent a number of years in the food service industry. I got out because... I was not a lifer.
My current job involves providing customer service with large swathes of down-time inbetween.
For the first time in a few years, I can just sit around and read all day.

First things first, I flipped through The Club Dumas. This is the book upon which the film The Ninth Gate was very loosely based. (VERY loosely, it turns out.) I'd always liked the movie (despite my long-standing antipathy towards Roman Polanski), and I figured it was high time to get around to the source material.
The book took my brain and punched it in the face. Gone are almost all traces of the Satanic themes of The Ninth Gate, and in comes a long, fanciful riff on themes from much of Alexandre Dumas Pere's work.
Needless to say, I am hopelessly in love with the book now.
The Three Musketeers and related works by Dumas are, without a single doubt, some of my favorite literature in the whole wide world. Not only that, but I will never say 'no' to watching filmed adaptations of the same stuff. I went in expecting Satanism and the occult, and I came out with a book nerd's ultimate mystery adventure story.

I ripped my way through the first three books of Mercedes Lackey's Bardic Voices series next. I'd read them before, but it had been quite a few years.
I will admit that Lackey's work tends to be a little bit too heavy-handed when it comes to overly-lucky protagonists and romantic themes, but at the same time... she gives a lot of detail to the settings and clothes, so I think that that aspect is fascinating enough.
It's not deep, challenging reading, but I like it well enough.
(One of her Elementals novels, The Fire Rose, is a wonderful play on Beauty and the Beast. It runs in to a lot of the same problems that I mentioned above, but the characters get a little bit more fleshed-out than the Bardic ones tend to.)

I next made my way through The Complete Sherlock Holmes, though I admittedly skipped a few stories here and there. I can honestly say that for as much as I LOVE the stories for the most part, I also love the recent Guy Ritchie adaptation quite ardently; I always felt that the Holmes stories could have used a little bit more actual adventure.

I then moved on to Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. I know that a lot of people aren't fond of the emerging mash-up genre, and I can respect that. Someone taking a work (or historical figure) that you loved as-is and splicing in weirdness... I can see how that would be off-putting. At the same time, though, I find that I actually quite like the whole idea.
Theres not a whole lot I can say about the book at hand, honestly, than that making Abraham Lincoln a vampire hunter is almost as good as making him a werewolf hunter, in my eyes.
(See also: Abraham Lincoln Hates Werewolves, a companion piece to the Jesus Hates Zombies comics.)

The last book that I read before I left was Game Of Thrones, which was... well. Lots of things.
Firstly, I'd have to say that George R. R. Martin has a wonderful sense of intricate world-building. Next, I'd have to say that it took me until I was nearly finished with the book to realize that this entire book was pretty much a complex series of setups for what I imagine are going to be a very long-reaching set of payoffs.
There is some body horror, though, and that was distressing as hell. (WHAT THE FUCK, DANAERYS, is all I'm going to say here.)
I honestly think, though, that instead of 'A Song Of Ice And Fire', it should be re-named 'A Song Of Ice And How Tyrion Has Far, Far Fewer Issues Than Any Of You Crazy Bastards'.

On the train, I started Snow Crash. This is my first-ever Neal Stephenson, and I have to say that I'm a little bit in love with it. The way he slowly layers more and more nuance onto his characters, and the way he can invoke wonderfully-formed settings without going into gratuitous detail is amazing to me.
On the other hand, he goes into just enough detail during Hiro's conversations with the Librarian regarding the nature of human language and religion that I was astounded. I'm not going to spoil anyone here, but this book is basically flawless, as far as I'm concerned.
(If you have previously read this book, I might recommend the Otherland quadrology by Tad Williams. It is definitely not as casual of a read, by a LONG SHOT, however.)


I'm going to be starting A Clash Of Kings (the second book of Ice and Fire) fairly soon, so maybe we'll have that one posted about in short order.

In the mean time, it's time for bed - I'll most likely be posting again tomorrow afternoon. (THIS afternoon, I suppose I should say.)

The Issues With My Landlord, As They Stand.

Back home, I live with my lovely boyfriend Ivan (three years last month!) and our absolutely fabulous roommate Turtle. (I'm not using real names here, it should be noted.)
Ivan and I were having problems with our previous room mates, Turtle was having even worse problems with HER previous room mate, and so it was decided: a three-way split on a nice four-bedroom place.
It had small fix-up issues that needed to be addressed, I'll admit. Some walls needed painting, some ceiling tiles upstairs needed replaced, as did two windows, other tiny problems.
No big thing. Would get fixed soon after move-in.

Cue our move-in. The previous tenants left ALL of their belongings, practically. Well, that was a giant pain in the ass, but we were willing to get it all tossed out if it meant that we could move in as planned.


During the move-in, though, we realized that we had succumbed to a fatal mistake made by all too many D&D players through the years: we failed to check the ceiling - specifically, the bathroom ceiling. Hello, there, black mold spores, we didn't see you there!
No big deal though, right? Scrape the paint, slap some new paint down - the problem would be beautifully solved.

Well, here we are a month and a half after move-in. It took one full month of our landlord resolutely ignoring any attempts at contact on our part before he even acknowledged us... when we threatened to withhold rent money from him unless he would at least call us back.
In the meantime, we discovered a brand new problem when the spring rains finally hit: the attic roof leaks harder than Niagara Falls during downpours.
This is what it took to get him to acknowledge us.
One contractor came through for an estimate, and then... never showed up to work.

This was a week and a half ago, when I had to leave for Delaware. The second contractor showed up last Monday, and did various sundry repairs... but did nothing for the roof, windows, or mold. He claimed they "weren't on the list", or so Ivan and Turtle tell me. When I contacted Sir Landlord about this issue, he told me that he was aware of the windows and roof, and that they were being taken care of in short order... but that the second contractor swore him up and down that the mold had been dealt with.

Curious, I thought to myself, why would Ivan OR Turtle have any reason to fib to me about that?
I asked them to text me pictures of the bathroom ceiling, and I saw the problem straight away. Instead of scraping the old, moldy paint and reapplying a totally fresh layer, Contractor 2 simply decided to put a thin layer of paint over the moldy paint. The mold is still visible through the new paint.

Now, the kicker here: I told Sir Landlord that the mold was our primary concern when we finally got ahold of him, and it's the one thing that he apparently CANNOT get anyone to get done for us.
Now, to be fair, we're paying him 900 dollars a month, and we've been more than patient. If he isn't calling me at some point after dawn to tell me what's being done about this, I am raising hell and a half.

Well, here we are, I see.

My job sent me away for a month of training in Delaware. This is silly, as I've already been trained to do the job that I'm... being sent away... to be trained how to do.

So. A month in a strange city, three states away from where I need to be (read: home) as I'm trying to hold my home life together. (Read: our landlord refuses to repair our apartment the way it needs to be repaired. More on that later.)

It's currently 1:40 AM on the Eastern seaboard of the United States, Osama bin Laden was confirmed dead a little over 24 hours ago, and I have a whole lot to vent about in a more organized manner than Facebook updates are capable of handling. I'll break down Current Problems into later, individualized updates. For the time being, I leave you with the music of Adele, who is part of this week's general soundtrack.