Odds and sods

--Over spring break, my dear brother Troll lent me his copy of The Life Aquatic, with Steve Zissou, because I'd only seen it once and felt I required another viewing to digest it fully. So this evening I settled down on the couch with a comforting beverage, and...discovered that he'd lent me his copy of the case, but apparently not the DVD itself. Color me crestfallen.
Ah well. That's what Netflix is for.


--I am getting MORE and MORE excited about this summer, which I will spend in my beloved Czesko. On the other hand, there's an assload of things I need to get done before I go. So many things, in fact, that I'm not doing any of them.
Then again, it's not like this is shocking, for me. It's more like, it would be shocking if I were on top of shit.


--While making a soft-boiled egg this evening I discovered:

PROOF THAT THE FORMS ARE INTERNAL

This Proof lies in the fact that the Pepper always comes out too slowly for me, while the Salt always comes out too fast. And yet there are only two of them.

If you try to argue with me about this I will seriously punch you in the brain.

Chronicles of Netflix: Meh

I watched a movie called In the Bedroom this afternoon. It had some good scenes and some good acting. Really good acting, in some places. But I don't think it stood up to the hype that it had when it came out. Mostly it might as well have been called White People Being Mean to Each Other. That was the defining characteristic, anyway: WASPs in Maine being terribly polite and bound-up inside. I myself was born and bred a WASP, and my conversion to the Roman persuasion has not altered my sensibilities much. But this movie was WASPy to the point that even I was looking at the screen like, for fuck's sake, people, unclench. I mean, damn.

The river has changed, but I've changed more

So I'm sitting around in my college roommate's apartment in San Marcos, after a five-day stint at the College. It was strange and good and culture-shock-filled, and now here I am away from it again. Wavelet is off teaching middle-schoolers, and I'm amusing myself by looking through her books. Right now I'm thumbing through the Mechanics, Waves & Optics manual from Senior Lab. That year we were in sister sections, so we used each other's books a whole lot, making for a compendium of notes inscribed therein. Mine aren't too enlightening...mostly what I wrote down were the lyrics to the various songs playing on the walkman in my head. That and unprintable calumnies about certain tutors, certain other students, and frequently the author of the work in question. So basically I spent most classes being either bored or frustrated as shit. Wavelet's are awesome...mostly they're snatches of mad mad conversations between her and Joe-ey. Clearly the two of them were not being challenged enough in Lab class.

Anyway, there's one particular page with my handwriting on it, and I've been trying to figure out what incident it refers to. It's at the end of the manual, and the page is annotated in this wise:

In pronouncement-style block letters:
Still buzzed the next morning.

In wobbly cursive with my [non-dominant] right hand:
When I shut my eyes the world spins.

In small block letters at the bottom of the page:
Note to self: At some point, find out what the fuck happened last night.

If this were a junior year textbook, there'd be quite a few mornings that it could refer to. But since it's in a senior year textbook, and given its placing within the book, I'm pretty sure these notes were written the morning after we all turned in our theses. Which, yeah. Whoa. I'm still not too sure what happened that night.

So that was kind of cool, finding a concrete reminder of the murky and melodramatic past. Exactly two years past, in fact, since I just watched the current seniors finish up thesis-time on Sunday night. I watched them all celebrating, and left them to their party, and went off and drank beer out in the cold elsewhere.

Which sounds like about what happened the night I turned my own thesis in. It wasn't just the same thing, though. I'm a different person now. In a good way, I'm pretty sure. Things change, but you keep coming back. The same things keep happening, but you've changed, so you bring better endings out of the same old shit going down. Different, anyway. That's a start.

Fears from within

When you’re afraid of heights, you’re not afraid you’re going to fall. You’re afraid you’re going to jump.


Why is that?

Pride cometh before

In the spirit of Lent, since I still can't think of anything to give up that wouldn't throw my existence into disarray*, I present this episode from my past, wherein I look Mildly Foolish.

It must have been almost exactly two years ago. We were sitting there in class about 2pm, me and Mel at the far corner of the table, with Grandpa Jack and the Summa droning away around us. Writing notes on a sheet of paper between us, as was our wont. Graduation was bearing down, and I was lamenting my employment prospects:

Ridley: (histrionically) How the fuck am I going to get a job, dog?? Here's my entire resume, every bleeding line of it: "My name is Ridley. I have not mispelled a word since the 8th grade. Please hire me."

Mel: Dude, I hate to tell you. But the word is 'misspell'.

I was a tad crestfallen. I'm pretty sure it was the first time since 8th grade, too. Then again, it was also a pretty awesome example of The Joke Is On Me, so I think it was worth it.

Man, being a senior was so scary. I wish I could go back and tell my then-self that everything would be ok. But then again, there've been lots of times between now and then that things weren't ok, particularly. It's probably a good thing that you just have to muddle through it, without knowing what's coming next.



*my life is a precariously balanced system of sticks and carrots and self-medication, ok? don't be judgin'.

Late at night, with no regard for narrative structure

So, the bitter (sort of) end to another 'meh' (sort of) night on the town. It was fine, really...hung out with my law school buddies at this charity auction type of thing, and then moved on with various people to other places with no real guiding purpose until about 1:30, when I was tired enough to leave and sober enough to drive home. And so now I'm sitting at home drinking more beer and typing without regard for sentence or solace, really. Enjoy.

Earlier, before my friends called and I went out, I decided to pop in Thelma and Louise, because I knew it was a film that would not be impaired by interruption. I did in fact purchase said film; oh be quiet, it was 8 dollars at Kroger and I wanted something that was not by any stretch of the imagination Intellectual or Deep.

Well, within the first 30 minutes, I pretty much loathed Thelma, and was on the road to loathing Louise just for continuing to put up with Thelma's damsel-putting-herself-in-distress bullshit. Then my people called and I took off...the rest of the movie will no doubt be an equally bumpy ride. Oh well. It has Brad Pitt in it at some point, they say, and while this is not the draw for me that it is for some women, I am not entirely immune to his charms. Although Legends of the Fall was quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen, on any level at all. Really, it just sucked.

In other news, my future flatmate and I have pretty much laid claim to an awesome apartment. It's in a brick building from 1928, with all the glorious impracticality that that entails. The place is like Prozac in apartment form, seriously, and I can't wait to live there. There are oak trees and magnolias on the lawn, and little shops around the corner. It has radiators. And the doorknobs are cut glass. It just could not be any more suited to me. We just found out today that they're giving it to us, so it's ended up being a damn good week, really.

Bear with me, I almost never wax philosophical

Basing your system of morality on the principle of avoiding pain (whether to yourself or others) is destructive and ultimately incompatible with its own goal.

Which is not to say that it isn't tempting.