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.)
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.
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.
