fun way to mess with someone: randomly walk up to him/her and say, "you know, it's people like you who make this country great." I tested that one tonight and the results were satisfying.

speaking of patriotism, is it wrong that I think omar osama bin laden is kind of...attractive? don't answer that.

I can't believe we're actually having some winter weather. bring it on.

david cronenberg says a lot of quotable things. I think my favorite is:

"my dentist said to me the other day: I've enough problems in my life, so why should I see your films?"

in closing, here's a picture of a capybara. no particular reason, I just like them.

it's taken me years to break down and watch it, but I finally have to admit: "the office" really is the best show on tv. not since the dearly departed "arrested development" have I been so enamored of a sitcom. however, I discovered something that should be distressing to fellow fans...there is no chili's in scranton.

watching "the office" has also made me come to an upsetting conclusion. its ratings, like those of A.D., have never been that high. so many of the best shows on tv just don't get big audiences, and I think I've ascertained why. no laugh track. it seems most americans need to be told when it's okay to laugh. if they don't hear other people laughing, it must not be funny. I'm glad I finally realized this. it makes me feel more secure in the knowledge that I'm better than everyone else.

most funnest fattening hobby ever: making ice cream. justin got me a machine for Christmas and it's so addictive.

mike huckabee = scary. so let's laugh at him.

that's hot. er, I mean shocking, terribly shocking. despite dr. anderson's assertions to the contrary, though, I can't believe that the exclusive use of cheerleaders as a sample didn't affect the results. I mean, really.

why is it that computer literacy and plain old literacy seem to be at odds? I can barely stand to go on any message boards anymore. I can understand taking shortcuts when you're texting, IMing, and the like. but let's have some periods in our posts, some commas in our comments. and PLEASE work on your basic spelling skills. whenever I'm reading someone's opinion or review, I immediately stop caring when I see that they can't put a sentence together. it makes you seem unintelligent. ergo, you must be wrong. it's not that hard to grasp. I'm terrified that in a few years people won't be able to use syntax or grammar if their lives depend on it. and if I get my hands on some of these nimrods, they will.

I know, it's nothing new. but it still hasn't gotten old.



oh, and happy new year!

well, the yuletide spirit has been purged until next season. low key holiday at home with debbie and her family away in a manger (read: harrisburg), but nice otherwise. I'm taking bets on when the cleanup process will finish. insider tip--we still have to completely straighten up from '06.

my biggest Christmas present was to myself, though: a new computer. it was time. my old machine hated me, that was the only explanation. I did so much for him and he repaid me with heartache. all the new hardware, repeated os reinstalls, to no avail. that's not to say--ahem--that I wouldn't recommend him to a new home, one who might be less demanding. so he's up for sale.

new pc, ergo I finally had to bite the bullet and switch to vista. I have likes and dislikes. even with a fast beast like this one I had to disable most of the flashier features to get full performance. according to my firewall it's MUCH more secure than xp, though, and it hasn't crashed yet...knock all possible wood. and reports of poor backwards compatibility have been, in my experience, exaggerated. I've decided to play dr. nerdenstein and install linux for a dual boot. why? because I can. getting linux up and running, however, is enough to make you want to kiss bill gates' ass. but hey, it's a constructive hobby.

I greet the upcoming new year with some apprehension. but then, shouldn't everyone with any sense do the same? 2008 is a nice, solid number though. I'm a big fan of multiples of 4.

another personal hero.

so dad had knee replacement surgery last monday. it went well; he's been doing some walking and isn't in too much pain. I'm totally getting him an oil can for Christmas.

speaking of Christmas, every year I can usually say definitively that I am or am not ready for the holidays. for 2007 I'm not sure. everything seems very neutral. the weather's been cold but not snowy. I'm staying on track doing my shopping--neither ahead nor behind. my mind accepts that Christmas music and lights are everywhere but isn't annoyed by it. it's all very...complacent. I can deal with that.

three homicides in gso over the weekend. significant for a city our size. word is that at least two were gang related. yet there are still bigwigs in this town who deny that we have a gang problem.

when it comes to entertainment, I'm naïve in a lot of ways. no matter how weak a plot twist is in a film, it'll probably take me by surprise. similarly, I have the tendency to read books solely for entertainment value. oh, I'll usually pick up on metaphors and allegories and whatnot. I just overlook them.

take the chronicles of narnia, for example. the Christian references are impossible to miss even as a kid, but they've never had an impact on my relationship to the series. and the great gatsby. despite analyzing it to death in senior english (particularly that damn green light), I managed to love it just the same. it's not that I'm anti-intellectual or boorish about literature, and I could still turn out a decent AP paper with my cliff's notes tied behind my back. it's just my way of doing things, and it's helped me give some of "the great books" a fair shot when I otherwise might not have done.

I ramble like this because I'm tearing through his dark materials, the philip pullman trilogy of which the recently adapted the golden compass is the first. I dig this stuff, and I'm leery of the fantasy genre as a rule. but before I'd read one page I'd heard loads about how anti-Christian pullman's work is; one reviewer said that he "pisses on religion." that's a little strong, but there's no denying the strong opinions voiced in the novels. and unlike narnia, his dark materials doesn't bother to couch them in metaphor--the author deals with Christianity as we know it. rather than say that his work is flatly against religion--although he's a confirmed atheist--it's easier to agree with the archbishop of canterbury, who sees the series as an attack on religious oppression and dogmatism.

and how much does all this matter to me? well, other than giving me an excuse to spout off paragraphs like the previous one here, not at all. I read to be taken out of myself. I read to fuel my own imagination. for a long time now my own worldview has been set enough (perhaps stodgily so) to prevent me from shifting my philosophy based on a work of fiction. reference my earlier spiel on ayn rand, for example. let other people argue about whether it's better to swim in a lake versus an ocean versus a pool versus a river. I just like to jump in and splash around.

now wasn't all that impressive? for someone who hates deconstructing, that is.

I don't know how many vinyl collecting dorks read this blog...well, that's not true. I'm pretty sure it's one. anyway, if you hanker after the prehistoric platters, I can't recommend musicstack.com highly enough. you don't get the thrill of the hunt, but there seems to be literally nothing that this site can't find for you. besides, bending down to sift through all those orange crates on the floor will kill your knees.

choosing a calendar is a big deal in my house. we have only one; it hangs just above the kitchen phone. it's a decision that must be lived with for a full year. 2008 has yet to be decided. if I was just a LITTLE more distasteful, I think I'd have to push for this one:







yes, it's real. a Mormon missionary beefcake calendar. tres funny.

I spent some time this evening looking between my reflection and old pictures of myself and came to a conclusion. I've suspected it for a while, and it's true.

four years of wearing headphones 7+ hours a day have flattened my ears.

before you scoff, keep in mind that I wear big 70s lookin headphones. no piddling earbuds for this fella. and my ears have always been unusually elastic. in high school, tiffany discovered that tugging upward on one of my ears can lengthen it by almost a full half inch (don't ask why we attempted that experiment; I don't honestly remember).

this is excellent news. my entire adult life I've wanted otoplasty, and since I've been self-supporting I've considered it seriously. I've always hated my jug ears, only now they're not so juggy. I got the benefits of surgery without the pain and expense--in fact, you could say that I got paid to have my ears "done." oh happy day!

now I can focus more on how I loathe everything between my neck and waist.

generally reading any of my old poetry makes me want to barf, but this one's not too bad:

youth wasted on children

I think about standing at washington square
in new york watching a tweed-clad boy
with a super 8 camera film pigeons and
feeling more envious than I ever had

and I wonder if I want a bonfire by the lake
or an old house filled with wood for my
children to slide down banisters and
smear peanut butter on the oriental rugs

and I hope that it’s not always necessary
to leave one life behind for another, and if
I can’t at least put off growing up long enough
to get away with a few more fits of hysteria

and I grow smug looking back on the
teenaged me that had so much fun affecting
adulthood with jim beam and cigarettes
and think man, if you only knew

if you only knew

© 2007 jeremy ball. all rights reserved.

I REALLY wish I had money enough to blow on projects like this.

my nasty cold is almost better, thankfully. I wish that I'd known about this stuff when I was still hacking away, though. I'm gonna try it sometime.

you know what I find offensive? jokes about men being raped by other men. why is it horrific to laugh at a woman being violated yet perfectly okay to snicker about "dropping the soap" and that oh-so-famous scene in deliverance? I guess I'm a little wacky, but I don't find any form of sexual abuse funny. I tried to make this point in college once, in a class about domestic violence. I was more or less pshawed--more evidence that male rape victims are, to many people, a non issue. grr.

earlier tonight I tried to make a list of everything that I'd need to accomplish to get my daily life organized and on track. I ran out of paper. true story.

I enjoyed barack obama's appearance on snl saturday evening. I hope that he gets the democratic nomination, but if hillary comes through I won't cry about it. I mean, if someone offers you a new car, you might keep your fingers crossed for a cadillac but you won't turn up your nose at a buick. especially not when you've been driving an amc gremlin for eight years. that's a rotten analogy, but I ain't no writer. it also doesn't allow for the potential election of a republican president, simply because that's an alternative that I refuse to consider.

can't remember when I've gone so long without posting, but I sho have had my reasons. my computer was stone dead for two weeks. for the first time I ran into a problem that I couldn't work out myself. I'd love to tell the whole sordid story, but I'll be nice and just sum up with some bullet points:

* if you live in the triad, do NOT take your computer to pc plus systems solutions. they seem to have a nasty habit of ignoring the customer's requests, assuming that said customer doesn't know doodley squat about their machine, and not making their self-imposed service deadlines. I paid them $120 for data backup that didn't even have the data I needed.

* if your computer ever highsides it, get recover my files to help pick up the pieces. it's $69.95 but worth five times that if you've got data that's irreplaceable. it's also proof positive that deleting something does NOT make it go away--pretty much the only foolproof way to do that is take a blowtorch to your hard drive, in my experience.

* I'm this close to becoming one of those creepy mac people. my problems stemmed from a windows issue that I tried to fix...using a utility provided by microsoft. I find myself lingering by the new imacs at compusa. well, it's a moot point for a couple of years anyway.

I've got more to say, but I've got sleep to get.

if you claim you never wanted one of these, you're a dirty liar. I sure as heck still do.

does anyone else think it's stupid that a lot of guys wear underwear inside their swim trunks? I could sort of understand if you were wearing old school trunks--clingy issues--but men do this in board shorts.

oh, and speaking of amazon:

[read in singsong voice. suggested tune: "nana-nana boo-boo"]

bought myself a present! bought myself a present!

bout damn time they released a set for north america, too.

huzzah! amazon has finally launched their mp3 store. it's easy to navigate, the tracks are DRM free, and they have damn near everything. I got so excited about this that I actually spent money on digital music. whoda thunk?

understatement: bluefield, west virginia is not the most interesting place in the world to grow up. I've always thought that it would make a fine place to raise kids until they hit about ten years old--that's when they'll start to get bored. but even when I was young I recognized what a fascinating place the 'field must have been in its heyday.

it's hard to explain unless you've been there. all the old downtown department stores are gone but most of the buildings remain. same for the old theatres. the big old victorian houses in north side, gone ghetto but with gingerbread intact. the shell of the matz hotel. what's left of "vito's alley"--once a disreputable strip of ginmills near the railroad tracks. bluefield was THE place to go for a hundred miles around, back when the mines still boomed and no one had conceived of malls or interstates.

I think what's really been lost is that underlying feeling of depravity that must have accompanied the small town charm. in it, stephen king discourses on the lumberman's town of derry, maine. how it was where all the tough guys converged to drink, whore, and gamble. bluefield served the same purpose (although I'm sure the chamber of commerce wouldn't care to hear me say it), only for coal-men rather than woodsmen. I've heard more great stories about floozies hanging out of windows in the drake hotel, the goings-on at the old bus terminal, the badasses at the overlook. I just hate that I missed it all.

I dream about this gothic conception of bluefield, and my dreams always take place in the early half of the previous century. the sidewalks teem with people even after 9 p.m. the high schoolers mob the woolworth's luncheon counter and drugstore soda fountains. in the shadows are still darker shadows that you look away from and hurry past. and over it all looms the big appalachian power clock, visible all over downtown from its perch on the hillside.

I thought of all this after reading a poem by rick mulkey, a bluefield resident and poet. it's called "cain's apology," and this is the verse that grabbed me:

"We were only boys, fifteen and ten.
But I used the man talk. A kid
apprenticed to movie tough guys,
I imitated the slurs of punch-drunk boxers,
spit hanging from my lip,
or the bound-for-hell curses of rednecks
at the Milner Matz lounge,
welts and scars on their cheeks.
I spat bruising words tongued in rail yards
where peroxide whores, numb from Mad Dog,
waited for Norfolk & Western brakemen."

I think that just about sums it up.

just wanted to take a sec and insist that everyone read running with scissors by augusten burroughs (if you haven't already; I'm years behind the curve on this one). I put aside ms. rand on a whim long enough to do so myself, and gee-whiz-wow. if you're the kind of person who gets offended by things like hunchbacks eating dog food, graphic descriptions of gay sex, and using bowel movements to predict the future, by all means read another tome. otherwise I can't recommend it enough. it's the most outlandish, horrifying, funny memoir I can imagine. it would be hard to believe in its veracity except for one thing: no sane person would make up a story like this. if nothing else it will make you thank your lucky stars for having a comparatively normal upbringing...no matter how twisted you think yours has been.

oh, and: I know this is awful, but does anyone else think that marcel marceau's tombstone should be blank? rest in peace.

this rules! raleigh and boone both participated this year; next year I say gso gets involved. who's in?

a bit late, but five thoughts on the emmys:

1) when did all these people get so old?
2) ryan seacrest is straight. here's why: it's so obvious that he ought to be gay that he circles back around to the other side of the spectrum. robbie williams does the same thing.
3) censor, schmensor. sally field should be able to say whatever she pleases on the air.
4) I never even watched "the sopranos," but I'm so glad it's over.
5) I promise, promise, promise to start watching "30 rock." I promise.