A physical manifestation of awesomeness

11:55 pm - I thought this would be an easy way to let people know...

My mom died about 30 minutes ago.

I really don't know what to add to that...

10:38 pm - I got cupchicked...

Well... thanks to my useless friend Tim, I just got cupchicked.

This has to easily be the most repulsive video I have ever seen in my life. There is a page filled with videos of people watching cupchicks for the first time which is rather hilarious. You can watch those here:

http://cupchicks.com/

There is a link to the actual video at the bottom of that page, or you can go directly here:

http://cupchicks.com/cupchicks.php

Watch the videos of people watching it to see what you are in for.

Don't blame me for sending you there either, I warned you. :)

Current Mood: nauseated

12:20 pm - Just cuz it made me giggle

Is this a canology which I see before me,
Its handle toward my hand?

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

Current Mood: groggy

02:21 am - Well met, friends!

I got weary of always using "Greetings!" as the subject line.

Not too much going on. As many of you may know my mom has been in the hospital for something like the last six weeks, and now she has been transfered to a convalescent hospital. I'm starting to come to realize that she may not be able to come home at all... which saddens me greatly.
I'll post more about this as it comes to pass...

Do any of you guys read Pajiba? It's a movie review page that has several different writers who are usually rather insightful and sarcastic. I guess the site has a primarily leftist reader base (based on reader comments), and two weeks ago there was a really outraged review of Captivity and a landslide of reader comments. Of course the bulk of them were sycophantic "THAT'S JUST WHAT *I* THOUGHT!!!!" sorts of idiocy, but there were a lot of really angry comments about how vile torture porn is. I found it interesting that several of the people that were decrying the genre were advocating that the same torture be actually meted out to the directors and producers of these films, and in a couple of cases meted out to people like Ann Coulter. There was also a hue and cry for these films to be made un-makable in some way, (they never use the word censored). I was one of maybe two people that was livid at the idea of censoring movies based on what a particular group of people like or don't like.

This week's reviews included I Know Who Killed Me which the reviewer described as "torture-porn". I read through the usual pile of "best. review. evar!" posts and came across this one:

As for torture porn... The influx of this type of movie is really starting to upset me. I'm tired of just 'wileding my consumer dollar' and not seeing them: obviously this is not an effective form of protest. Any ideas anyone??

Yeah, here's one, shut up.
Censorship is bad even when it's stuff you don't like.

Current Mood: curious

02:05 am - Well, that didn't work...

I tried to go to bed while it was dark outside. I was even kinda sleepy. Two and a half hours later I am wide awake. It is now 2am and I am not even in the same area code as sleepy.

Bah!

I was having an odd dream, too. I had traveled back in time somehow and was trying to trade future stock tips for sex from my childhood best-friend's mom. Weird, since I don't recall thinking she was hot back then, but of course I was 12 the last time I saw her, so I probably wasn't the best judge.

Not much else to update (but at least I didn't wait a year to do it this time).

My mom is still in the hospital, and nobody seems to have an idea when she will be released.

Have any of you other guys out there received one of those Gillette "Fusion" razors in the mail? (I know, wow, what fascinating topics you write about, Rich, why aren't you writing professionally?) Anyways, it's kinda cool, in a "free razor" kind of way. It has a 5-blade (!) disposable cartridge that you can pop on and off the handle. The handle is what's cool tho... It's like some ergonomic wet dream, I just keep wanting to pick it up and feel the weight of it distributed so perfectly.

So that's life in the fast lane for ya.
Sitting with a time-travel semi while hefting a razor at 2:30 in the morning and posting about it on LJ.

03:43 am - Being a memesheep is fun!

I decided to try some more of lolcat type pics.

I like the last one best... though I did them all around 3:30am and I can't vouch for my sense of humor at this hour.

Current Mood: cheerful

01:54 am - Sundry stuff

Game Night got canceled this evening due to sickness x1+1, sleepiness x2 thus leaving just me, creepingivy and iamtim to stare blankly at the walls for several hours. Oh, we did do some Vampire online RPing and of course we tried to out-offend each other. I'm not sure that creepingivy tries to offend us, but she does get offended fairly often, so I guess it still counts, kinda.

After reading joemorf's recent post on lolcats, etc, I tried my hand at creating a... a... lolthing...




I'll probably make more of these... I have a lot of pics in my avatars folder that cry out for lolificationment.

Current Mood: amused

01:19 am - An evening of loafage

I spent most of the evening working on my wargame (fooling around with Photoshop is a wonderful way to make time pass in the blink of an eye).

Then I watched a movie that I NetFlix'd a few weeks ago and hadn't got around to watching yet.
It was called Haute Tension (I watched it in the original French with subtitles, so I am allowed to use the French title).
It was pretty good if you like horror movies (I am reticent to refer to movies like this as "horror" though... more on that later). The bulk of the movie is about the character Marie trying to avoid the serial killer that has slaughtered her friend's family and abducted her friend. Besides being totally hot (see pic), she is smart and resourceful and brave.



The directors (there were two) did a great job of ratcheting up the tension without lots of "jumping out of shadows" bullshit.
The last 20 minutes or so of the film were disappointing after such a buildup. I won't spoil it for anyone, but it kinda cheats, and I hate that.

I was about to wrap this up and then remembered that I was gonna get back to the phrase "horror movie".
I don't think that the term "horror" is adequate for dealing with the number of films that it is applied to. Alien, Dawn of the Dead, Hostel and 1408 are all "horror" films yet have almost nothing in common. Supernatural stuff is waaay different than "torture-porn" (another stupid term) or monster rampage movies. We need new terminology, otherwise there is little way to understand what we are talking about.
I suppose that now you all expect me to pull some brilliant Mark Twain shit out of thin air and wrap this up tidily.
I don't have any brilliance this evening (perhaps next time), but from now on I will refer to anxiety producing films more explicitly to give some idea of what type of scary movie it is.
Alien: Monster movie.
Dawn of the Dead: Zombie movie (this of course is its own genre).
Hostel: Carnography.
1408: Ghost/Haunted Place movie.
Devil's Rejects: Murder movie.
The difference between carnography (or torture porn if you prefer that term) and the others is the focus of the film. The first Hostel was the only movie that I have seen that I would put in the carnography camp (though I understand the later Saw movies were similar). The term "torture porn" is overused in my estimation and usually used incorrectly. The use of the term keys on "porn" rather than "torture" and in most cases that is silly, as the definition of porn (in this case, assuming we aren't talking about "real" sexual porn (Cum Hungry Whores Part 87, etc)) usually means "a movie where the parts in between the "porn" segments seems like filler and a waste of time". Like I said, Hostel is the only movie I've ever seen where the story seemed superfluous to me, and I just wanted to watch the idiotic characters get slaughtered. Even then I got to the point where the torture overwhelmed my dislike of the characters and I was actually rooting for the survivor to get away.

Whew... that was more than I was planning on saying about that.

On a final note, "torture porn" gets used way too much by morons who seem to think it means movies with lots of sex and violence. Which is just retarded.

Haute Tension is mostly a murder movie in case you were wondering.

Current Mood: content

05:41 pm - I is a company now... sorta

Wheee!!!!

My DBA was filed with the County of Orange and I can now do business as Cavalcade of Whimsy!

The announcement still needs to run for 4 weeks in a newspaper (which was handled by LegalZoom, who rock, btw) and I'm not sure what happens if someone sees that announcement and contests the DBA...

Hopefully that will not occur, and I will be free to pursue my plans for world domination thru small desktop publishing ventures! < laughs maniacally >


Apropos of nothing the phrase "Anaphylactic Hog" just popped, unbidden, into my head. Perhaps there is still time for joemorf to change his band's name?


Anyways, now I can work on designing (which is code for asking iamtim to help me) my new business website!

Current Mood: excited

06:02 pm - Feelin' WAY better

Howdy all!

In case you hadn't heard, I am feeling much less depressed. While I haven't solved one damned issue in my life, I am feeling much less whiny about it and that is a good thing. Now if I can just stop sleeping all day...

I have been working a lot on a wargame that I am working on...
That made a whole lot of sense. What I mean is that I have been doing a lot of work on my wargame idea. As a benevolent dictator, I have decided to solicit input from the masses (you guys).

Does the drop shadow behind the numbers look good, or does it detract from the legibility?





Now I need to get showered, go have dinner with ladyazure and then off to iamtim's for Hell's Kitchen.

Just as a test of my willpower, I am going to try to wait at least 10 minutes before I refer to him as a fag. Keep your fingers crossed!!!

Current Mood: okay

05:57 pm

Ganked from joemorf

1. Go into the archives of your LJ.
2. Find your 42nd entry ever. Yes, this may require some counting and basic math. Deal with it.
3. Link to that entry in a new entry. This is the meaning of your life.

Well, this is very sad...

01:20 am - Only 42 weeks since my last post!

I'm not sure if that is a personal record or not.

I don't even have anything interesting to talk about. I am probably the most depressed I've been in many years right now and venting a bit on LJ seemed like a good idea.

I'm not even sure what to vent about. Many of my friends are going through more rugged times than I am so it seems kinda lame to be whining about nothing at all.

All I seem to be doing is sleeping and eating.

I can't get enthusiastic about anything...

I haven't taken any photos lately
I haven't worked on my roleplaying campaign I'm running (not much anyways)
I haven't done any writing at all
I haven't really worked on my wargame that I designed
I now own a game company (Cavalcade of Whimsy) and that doesn't inspire me
My room is filthy and I don't really care
I am late with all my bills
My mom is in the hospital
I feel like I am fucking up my friendships in various ways
Everything seems like a massive effort or futile (flip a coin)
The thought of going out on a date overwhelms me with ennui
Which is OK cuz the Prozac (which I ran out of 3 days ago) killed my sex drive execution stye
etc etc ad nauseum

Any advice would be cool, however, I'll just ignore suggestions to off myself, I've already got that covered with my lack of exercise and my eating habits. :)

Oh goody... Cat's Cradle just came on my playlist... where did I put that X-acto?

Sorry that this post is such a buzzkill... I just needed to type some of this shit out... though it was less than cathartic. ::sigh::

Current Mood: depressed

10:06 pm - Gainful employment, etc.

Greetings All

Just my usual very late update of life in the Gazley Lane.

The most obvious update is that I have a job. Yup, the first one I've had in four years or so. I'm working at Pacific Sunwear through a temp agency and the job lasts from the beginning of August (I said this was a late update) til the end of September. I'm not sure what will happen then, but I guess that I could see what else the temp agency can find for me. I got the position thru a friend of mine and reviresco but I don't think she has the budget to hire me full time after the "summer" season ends.
The grammar in that last sentence looks suspect, but I will leave that to pvlgize to discover.
I'm working in the e-commerce dept taking phone orders and answering emails and chatting with morons live on the PacSun "live help" doohicky. So if you need help shopping for jeans and stuff, make sure you look for me!

Christ this is boring.

I am feeling kinda crappy tonight (and yesterday), kind of a tickle in my throat and semi-fevery, and instead of taking cough medicine, which usually makes me gag and possibly barf, I spent the past couple of hours sipping Sambuca while watching a movie over at mom's. Now I think I am slightly drunk and have the answer to "why am I sweating so fucking much?" that I was asking myself during the movie.

I hope I feel better tomorrow. Being sick on my first earned three-day weekend in four years blows goats.

I have also started taking Prozac. I haven't noticed anything yet, but it's been only three weeks since I started it and I was told it takes about a month.
We'll see...

I have now stared at the screen for a full five minutes trying to think of anything else to write, which is the requisite time I believe for ascertaining that you have nothing else meaningful to say.

Today's words to use are defenestrate and Rubicon. Try using them in the same sentence for bonus points!

Current Mood: drunk

10:59 pm - Voice Post:

VoicePost 89K 0:25

“It seems to be a rambling collection of profanity and inanity. (Transcribed by Richard while using <lj user="reviresco">'s computer)” Transcribed by: reviresco

12:54 am - Gigantic meme of doom!

(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

Current Mood: sleepy

02:23 pm - Lovely, lovely Ludwig Van

Greetings!

Well, yesterday was packed full of activity (at least if you measure "packed full of activity" in Richards)

First I got up at 9am!!!!! And headed down to reviresco's to utilize the swimming pool at her apartment complex. We had the pool all to our selves and she got many laps in while I did some water-aerobic-y sorts of stuff, and then treaded water for about an hour... which seems to have caused my legs to go into rebellion. I also got sunburned... wheee!

I then napped in preparation for the concert that evening.

no_brakes23 showed up around 4:15 and was shanghai'd into driving even though he had just driven 100 miles just to get to my house, but, he had air-conditioning and a CD player so we could listen to the Bolt Thrower compilation I had just burned for him. He decided that was too rugged and would sully his delicate musical palate before Beethoven, so we just slipped into our usual misanthropic castigation of our fellow drivers and mankind in general.

We arrived at the Bowl at like 5:30 and realized that we hadn't eaten, so we drove down into Hollywood in search of food. Traffic sucked homeless ass and we didn't know where the hell anything was so we spent at least half and hour before we finally spotted a Jack in the Box. Being Hollywood, even Jack in the Box had valet parking, though it seems he was sleeping on the job...
( Sleepy valet )
After that we headed back up to the Bowl, swerving around a bum-like being who was wandering across the exit while no_brakes23 shouted "Out of my way, Oxygen Thief!!!!" This line had me giggling all the way back to the Bowl.

We parked and then I did a shameful thing. I used the little shuttle cart system they have set up for handicapped people so I didn't have to kill myself climbing Mount Doom the hill. I have never arrived at my seat without being drenched in sweat and exhausted, so I was actually rather pleased with my shameful act.

So we settled down to await the performance. We had good seats off to the right hand side as you face the stage and we had plenty of room since it wasn't sold out. So this uptight looking dude with his wife/girlfriend and her little daughter comes up the row ahead of us and looked concerned. "I am supposed to be in seat 26, you're in my seat!" The guy in front of us (we were in seats 28 & 26 of the next row) slides over a bit. "I have the ticket for seat 26, I'm not paying for half a seat!" Now, the guy who squeezed away from him is realizing that there isn't any more space to move and states such. Now the guy says "Someone on this row must not have tickets, they must be taking up someone elses spot!" I'd like to point out at this time that there was nobody, at all, on the other side of seats 26, 24 and 22, leaving at least 15' of bench space for this guy and his family to sit in. That would not do, and he stomps off to "tell" on his row. The security Neanderthal wandered over several minutes later and got into an argument with the guy's wife since she didn't have tickets (the security guy was holding them in his hand) and he couldn't figure out why he would have her tickets. The whiny guy at this point had wandered off down the hill and out of sight.

At this time we discover that they are also going to be playing Beethoven's 8th symphony, which is cool, since I hadn't known that. During the intermission between the symphonies, Seat-Sissy returns and motioned to his wife and daughter, they dutifully pick up their picnic goodies and go see what he wants. With a big smile he points down at the box seats more to the center of the auditorium and they head off there to their new seats.
The woman in front of us decides "I'm not going to let him get away with that!" and heads off to get him busted (mainly because none of us could imagine what his sob story was that got him an upgrade). Sadly, it turns out that he simply bought the new seats, which means that he wasted $90-100 on the seats he abandoned just because he couldn't bear being in the wrong. An utter sissy...
(I had no_brakes23 go try and take a pic of Seat-Sissy but he kept moving his head when no_brakes23's snapped a pic)

The 9th symphony was absolutely beautiful, and my eyes teared up during the second and fourth movements... just bliss...
( Bowl pics )

After we left the Bowl no_brakes23 wanted to show me some windy-ass canyon he found while out on some paper signing, called Tuna Canyon (sounds rather lewd...). It is a little side-street of Topanga Canyon Rd which exits on PCH in Malibu. It was insane.
Here is a link to Yahoo maps. If you zoom out it disappears, so you have to actually scroll to follow it (I started at the end). Note that some of the streets are labeled "Unnamed street"
http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?addr=Tuna+Canyon&csz=Malibu%2C+CA&country=us&new=1&name=&qty=
( A 'street sign' on Tuna Canyon )

I wish I had been able to use my new camera better, because there were some awe inspiring shots of the Pacific from up in the hills. My newbiedom and a surprising bout of car-sickness (from all the fucking bends) conspired to keep me from getting any usable pics.

That's about it...
A fun night was had by all.
Thanks again for driving no_brakes23!

Current Mood: cheerful

07:35 pm - A small quandry Pt II

Hey everyone!

I know this is semi-late notice, but I have a ticket for the performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl this coming Tuesday, July 11th.

If anyone wants to go, let me know, ask around, see if anyone you know wants to go. I don't mind going by myself, but it isn't as fun and it seems a shame to waste a ticket.

The person who was going to go found out that she couldn't go, so the ticket is up for grabs again!

Current Mood: relaxed

02:53 pm - A small quandry

Hey everyone!

I know this is semi-late notice, but I have a ticket (which would have been Ila's) for the performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl this coming Tuesday, July 11th.

If anyone wants to go, let me know, ask around, see if anyone you know wants to go. I don't mind going by myself, but it isn't as fun and it seems a shame to waste a ticket.

Current Mood: hopeful

08:44 pm - Ouch...

Well, those of my friends that didn't meet Ila are now out of luck, since she told me today that she doesn't want to see me any more. There was pracically no leadup to this, just some slightly off behavior yesterday when I saw her last.
So... I guess I'll reopen my Yahoo personals ad, but that hurt pretty bad, and I have no clue what caused it, she says it wasn't anything I did, but couldn't give any better reason than "I just don't think this is going to work out". Last week she was ecstatic to see me, and we were going to go to the San Diego Wild Animal park again in mid-July, now she is offering to buy the tickets off me.

I'm just confused...

{sigh}

Current Mood: depressed

01:06 am - A trip to the ER

Hey all

I spent almost all of today feeling like I couldn't quite catch my breath... like that feeling you get just before you yawn, except picture that staying with you all the time. Anyways, it was sorta managable as long as I didn't get freaked out, but unfortunately, I started to get really anxious and freaked myself out, "OMG I'm going to drown as my lungs fill with some vile fluid!" sorta stuff.

So I finally decide that I am not going to be able to sleep and I was already really drowsy from lack of sleep and it was like 8pm, so I decided to drive up to the ER.
Strangely my anxiety subsided immensely just getting checked in, I think I would have relaxed fully if my dear mom hadn't been there, being mom-like (I needed someone to drive me home if they drugged me, plus she would have exploded if she had to wait by the phone wondering how I was... being an only kid has many drawbacks and that is one of 'em).
Where was I?
Oh yes, my mom asking all the nurses where they trained at and other embarrassing things.
They did some chest x-rays, they jabbed some Atavan into my ass, they drew out 4 vials of blood and then I waited for an hour (I believe that the wonderful pvlgize had arrived at this point (she was originally going to be tapped as a spare driver since my mom doesn't have a current license and hasn't driven in about 4 years.))
My lungs are good, my heart is good, my blood pressure is good, basically there is nothing wrong with me at all (except of course, my weight).

I felt very stupid at this point, since I basically stressed myself into an ER visit. Of course I still can feel that slight inability to fully breath in, but it isn't as bad now that I know I am not gonna die from it.

The doc was very straightforward, letting me know as each test came in that it was free of problems.

Very unlike the doctor for the guy in the adjoining bed, I hear his doctor come in and say "Well, you've got the flu, that explains your vomiting and diarrhea. You also have an aneurysm in your aorta." Kinda like it was an afterthought. Very scary...

Anyways, I'm home now, with the door to my room closed up so dad's cigarette smoke doesn't drift in and smother me in my sleep.

Oh, and for those who are interested, I have some new pics up on my deviantArt page. One is a pic of the poo-flinging gorilla down at the San Diego Wild Animal Park (though she isn't launching in the pic I have)

http://canology.deviantart.com/gallery/

Current Mood: sleepy