P.S. Etc.

"Breaking free from your own domestication and walking without fear allows you see the lies that hold so many bound in unhappy lives." A nice quote I stumbled upon here.

Also, this blog rocks:
Garfield minus Garfield

If That's What You're Into...

I was thinking about the sorts of things I like, and how I find out about them (books, websites, bands, etc.). Generally, it's a sort of extended word-of-mouth/word association chain that makes them stick in my mind long enough to remember to check them out.

Other ones, however, not so much. Like I said, if I've heard something mentioned enough I'll investigate to see what all the fuss is about. However, too much mention sometimes has the opposite effect -- Ayn Rand's book come to mind. If your book is such that you have to publicize a $1,000 scholarship just to get someone to read and write a book report on it, then I'm probably not going to find it interesting. It's probably about insect taxonomy or something equally boring. I hate bugs.*

*Note: I don't actually hate bugs. The above sentence is for dramatic effect. I recognize the important ecological role and right to life of all insects -- I am anti-choice when it comes to legalizing bugs abortions.

Retro-Fantastic

This is part of an unfinished post I began a few weeks ago. It has some points I'd like to make, some I'd like to elaborate on, and a few I'd like to finish. Here's what I wrote:

Television. Los Angeles. Grey. Sun?
"I don't know what physiological factors influence me to post blogs only when it's raining; perhaps I imagine I'm stuck inside with nothing to do (rainy day syndrome) or I got so used to it raining most of the time in Scotland that it only seems right to post when water pours from the sky. At any rate, that's what is happening in LA right now. The clouds are inflicting their pain.

I like it at any rate. I enjoy the feeling of raindrops on my face. The sorority girls in leggings & uggs? Not so much.

First off, updates on the driving front:
-Round trip to LA Union station, twice = feeling of bizarre accomplishment. Taking the 405-South to the 10-East to the 110-North to the 101-South is a bit of a struggle. And winning counts for something. Right?
-Fighting traffic down to Manhattan Beach on a rainy Wednesday night, departure time of 4.30pm = terrible. Terrible terrible. Anyone who was in the car with me at the time can testify to how many times it was said "I think we're getting near LAX now..." We were wrong all of those times. We barely made it there by 6.30. Just in time.
-Field trip to Malibu = Driving along the cost today (PCH, all the way!) on my way back from Malibu felt liberating. The sun on my face and seeing the deep blue next to me, it was a feeling of freedom and peace I hadn't realized I'd missed. Not sure if it's the grandeur of the California Coast, some fresh air, being away from UCLA, or just the boring phsyiological reaction of more vitamin D, but it was lovely. Aside from the whole having to drive there and back bit.

So, Television, the main point I'm trying to make."

So that's where I left off. A bit random, but I'll continue:

So, Television, the main point I'm trying to make. Several weeks ago I attended a couple TV tapings as fundraisers for our upcoming rugby tour to Hong Kong. (If YOU want to donate... I'm not going to stop you.) At any rate, the two tapings I went to were for The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and America's Funniest Home Videos (which is mysteriously shortened to only "AFV"). I don't own a television, haven't had regular access to one in over a year, and realized exactly why I hate TV and why the major networks are dying. TV sucks. The Late Late Show was pretty much utter dreck -- cheesy late night chat show at it's height, with a Scottish host thrown in for a little flavor. Craig Ferguson's watered down west coast/weegie accent was the only thing that kept it bearable. That and the fact that James McAvoy was a guest on the show -- the camera blocked him from my view the whole time, but he has a nice voice and I got to be the only person in the audience to laugh at the Scottish references he and the host made.

Also, this guy was a guest. Don't know his name, only that he's "the other dude from 'Two and a Half Men' who's not Charlie Sheen." Good enough.

(Apparently it's Jon Cryer. Who knew?) I suck at celeb-spotting/naming/caring. And to be honest, it makes life in LA just that much easier, despite the flak I catch from my friends. ("I'm gonna go find Fred Segal." "Oh, is he meeting us here?" "... No, it's a shoe store.")

On with the story! (Land the plane, Julia, land the plane!) Anyway, Craig Ferguson. I've never seen a Scotsman that tan, with teeth that blindingly white or straight. The whole episode taping experience was a hilarious/pathetic view into the artificial nature of television. There was some mid-life-crisis-aged middle manager charged with the job of getting us pumped up, telling bad jokes, waving his arms for us to clap, and throwing bite-sized candy bars at us. Horrible, laughable. In fact, that's about the only thing I genuinely laughed at the entire time. So all the things you think people are laughing at on the chat shows? They've been bribed. Or they're incredibly stupid.

America's Funniest Home Videos ("AFV", not "AFHV" for some reason...) was a slightly more enjoyable experience, mostly because I got to sit off camera and some of the videos were genuinely funny. The episode airs March the SomethingTH and I'm not allowed to tell you who won the big prize for funniest video, but I will say that my personal favorite was the baby getting clotheslined by two dogs fighting over a dish towel. Awesome. Most of the videos shared a common theme of fat people trying and failing to do things (two women getting stuck, trying to climb in a window of their trailer) which I find hilarious but sad at the same time. Pretty much a reflection of what our country's coming to these days. What's the word for that? Oh yeah, irony. Also, as with the chat show, there was a fat guy telling bad jokes and throwing candy at us to make us laugh. I'm sensing a pattern.

In conclusion, the artificial nature of the televisual episode taping process, as witnessed and reported firsthand, serves as both a useful indicator and reflection of the relative weaknesses of popular network television. Namely, it's crap. And they wonder why people increasingly turn to youtube and the internet for entertainment. It's fresh, it's not approved of by old white guy execs in a fancy office. It's democratic. Largely inane, but democratic nonetheless. Let the people choose the stupid shit they want to see, for free.

On that note, I leave you with a quote from one of the Kings of Snark:
"The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated." -Oscar Wilde

Monday Morning/Bar Italia

Did my radio show today, which was fun as usual. (For the record, you can catch me every Monday from 12-2pm on UCLAradio.com! If the stream's working.) However, since it's President's Day and we have no school, neither of the djs on before or after me showed up. This happened on MLK day, too. And last week I did my show in silence thanks to the fact that the stream was down. What dedication from members and management alike. Normally I censor myself a bit on this blog, since it's (obviously) public and I don't really need to go loudmouthing whiney opinions that will get me in trouble with the wrong people. I'm just sick of the general laziness that seems to abound at the station.

As for the post's title(s), again it's based on a couple of songs -- this time the titles instead of the lyrics. For the record, I'm feeling "Monday Morning" by Pulp off their album, Different Class, and the track "Bar Italia" follows it superbly. Here's the relevant bits:
"There's nothing to do so you just stay in bed,
oh poor thing,
why live in the world when you can live in your head?

Mmm when you can go out late from Monday,
till Saturday turns into Sunday,
and now you're back here at Monday,
so we can do it all over again.
And you go aah ah ah
I want a refund,
I want a light,
I want a reason,
to make it through the night, alright.

And so you finally left school,
so now what are you going to do?
Now you're so grown up,
yeah you're oh oh oh oh oh so mature oh...

Stomach in,
chest out,
on your marks,
get set, go.
Now, now that you're free,
what are you going to be?
And who are you going to see?
And where, where will you go?
And how will you know,
You didn't get it all wrong?
Is this the light of a new day dawning?
A future bright that you can walk in?
No it's just another Monday morning.
Do it all over again, oh baby."

No More Nurdles! They Kill Turtles!

An Environmentally friendly poem:

Ahem.

I see
floating out at sea
plastic pre-production industrial pellets
as far as the eye can see.

What are they?
NURDLES

And now there's animals swimming around
nabbing the plastic from the surface
choking and dying
TURTLES ARE EATING THE NURDLES!

We've got to stop the nurdles
even though it seems like there's a lot of hurdles
do it for the turtles
before their poor insides curdle

I've run out of wordles (that rhyme with nurdles)

Nurdles are actually real, believe it or not; they are the main component of the giant plastic/trash globs out in the ocean. Google them and ye shall not be disappointed.

Seriously, why did they have to call them "nurdles"? Now we're going to just sound crazy. I can picture a crowd of Greenpeace picketers outside a governmental building with signs and chants that go: "No more nurdles! They kill turtles!"

What I'd Like to See Happen

(Here comes a poorly prepared, not fully thought out, uncaffinated rant. Prepare yourself.)

No more oil. We wake up tomorrow and the headlines about who won what and where in Super Tuesday have been pushed aside, and in there place stand cool, dark, forbidding words telling of certain doom: No more oil. Somehow, every single oil well everywhere has dried up, all of a sudden. All we have left of the sticky black substance is all that we have left. People panic and, despite the government's and Exxon's and Shell's and BP's and Chevron's assurances that 'we will find oil elsewhere!', rush all at once to the gas station to get their one last fix. The lines go on for miles, but I laugh and instead make about a billion trips back and forth to the grocery store on my bike, carrying as much as I can, because only I (and my roommates and friends and people I like) realize what's going to go first -- not the commute to work, but the infrastructure of necessary services and goods.

In a matter of days, everything's come to a standstill. A few dazed people wander the streets, in silent panic, but there's no monster from which we can run, nor in any direction, safety. Electricity's availability comes into question, and soon we're limited to a few headlines every few days. Apparently, all the oil executives (and their ridiculously wealthy friends/board members) have all gone bankrupt from their vain attempts to find new oil wells, and they and their families and trust funds are out on the street. Too bad all that money can't buy much anymore, not even a phone call, since cellular and most landline service went out. Makes it hard to call home.

There's not a lot left for me here in L.A., and it's come to everyone's attention a little late that this city really is impossible to navigate without a car. School's out indefinitely, so cue a road trip as I decide to pack it all in and bike up to San Francisco. If I can't call my parents I feel I'd best go find them, make sure they're surviving. I fashion a sort of bike trailer to haul all my food with me -- I can leave the rest of my stuff in LA, it's not going anywhere -- and set off for the 101. The 5 runs through too much desert and if the 101/Mission Trail good enough for the Spanish Monks, it's good enough for me. Plus nice ocean views. Although lots of hills.

I arrive in Norcal a couple of weeks later, to find San Francisco hanging on, barely, though faring better than L.A. I cross the Bay Bridge on bike for the first time, with no daytime traffic (also for the first time), and find my parents to be well and at home, having figured out some really clever way of getting by because, after all, they had to produce a kid as clever as me.

San Francisco, thankfully, is equipped for the Green Revolution (hippies + silicon valley engineers = handy after all!), and leads the way in restoring things -- well, at least we think we're leading the way, we don't really hear much from the rest of the country or world these days (the only sad part of this story). In a few months time, there are glimpses of normalcy once again and within a year life has been restored to almost how we knew it, only better. People decided that, they didn't really like that commute and that job anyway, so they're going to stay home and help install the new solar panels in their complex or tend their new front-lawn-turned-vegetable-garden, and so the pace of life slows and becomes a very nice as-close-to-communist-as-you-can-get-without-actually-being-officially-instituted system of commune-ities where people find they get on just fine without Wi-Fi and HDTV. Also, no one can be bothered manufacturing chemicals or pesticides or Doritos or other harmful relics of the post-industrial era anymore, so everything cleans up considerably.

I spend a lot of time chilling and playing Beatles songs on my guitar until I decide to start a business transporting food around with my bike and little trailer, and it turns out to be pretty damn profitable, since people (though now more enlightened) are still too lazy to go out and buy all their (now organic) groceries themselves. Eventually someone invents an airplane or rocket or super fast boat that runs on sunshine or rainbows or something so I can travel around the globe and visit all my friends in other countries. And life is pretty cool. Also in there somewhere some media is restored and we find out that (although we assume Global Warming has been mostly stopped) drought and hurricanes and generally nasty conditions are affecting all the predominantly Republican areas of the USA, and that Dick Cheney has accidentally shot himself in the face (but no one can really tell). Oh, irony, you saucy mistress.

And I will never have to find a real job. Ever. :)

Super Tues-day Too-day

I'll be honest, I don't care who wins. People are getting all riled up and stuff -- which I suppose is good if they'd otherwise not be involved -- but to be perfectly frank, I'll be very happy to vote for either Barack or Clinton in the general election. I think they're both strong candidates who could easily crush any of the Republican runners, all while setting a first for race/gender in the White House.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm tired of all the roundabout political drivel I've seen endlessly spouted for/against various candidates the last year or so. Let it be over and decided already.

And for the record, I'd be happy with almost any Prez/VP combo ticket: Barack/Clinton, Clinton/Barack, Clinton/Edwards, Barack/Edwards... Just get over it, people. The Republicans will find any number of racist/sexist/mean things to say about anyone -- electability is really up to the number of people who decide they don't want to be close-minded morons, not the actual candidate him/herself.

This Is Friday Night.

I was just awoken from a nap in possibly the most pleasant way possible. I was splayed on my bed when I heard voices in our hallway. Suddenly, a knock on my bedroom door. A sleepy, "Yes?" "Would you like a pink cupcake?" "....SURE!" I don't think I've ever leapt out of bed so fast in my entire life. Gotta love neighbors and their baked goods.

Crazy party Friday night. There were about a billion people packed into a small apartment, it was sweaty and there were people cheering on vodka chuggers in the kitchen, but that's not what made it a crazy party. There were so many people I knew there. A guy from the radio station, a random girl from rugby, two separate groups of friends from second year (some of whom live in the same complex), a girl from one of my discussions first year, a girl who was friends with my roommate from orientation, lots of people I know as friends of friends and roomates, all packed into a little apartment that other friends used to live in a couple of years ago. Mental. It all made me feel very... old. But in a good, homecoming, sort of way. Maybe this is what I miss spending year after year jumping around the globe?

I spent pretty much the entire evening being flabbergasted at the situation. And dancing. Dancing always helps any crazy situation. Except maybe job interviews.

Pink cupcake wakeup. MMmm...