Reflections

Holy wow!  This is my 20th blog entry, meaning I've been at this for ten weeks.  It seems a lot longer than that, yet it also seems a lot shorter because time is something that still confuses me.  Much like a weird girlfriend who makes you celebrate things like a ten week anniversary, I've decided to mark this special occasion with a special post.  And by "special post" I mean a post in which I somewhat cheaply just comment on all of my previous posts and reflect upon what I've done so far because it's late and I'm tired.  Did I really just type that?  What I meant to type was... um... a post in which I comment on my previous posts and reflect upon what I've done, because I used a super-blog-computer to determine what would be the perfect entry for this momentous time in my life.

Yeah, that's it.  Erase that original sentence from your memory, and enjoy my updated thoughts on the topics I've already written about...

1. Foreign Cars Are Tampons

This was the post that started it all.  I had been thinking about writing a blog for a while, and for some reason seeing an idiotic decal in Carbondale is what finally prompted me to get it started.  I really don't have much to say that I haven't said about that particular decal, but here's a bumper sticker story that may tickle your fancy, if your fancy is tickled the same way mine is.

I live in an area that you couldn't exactly call cultured.  Well, you could, if you considered 'cultured' to mean Budweiser, baseball caps with brims that are bent way too much, and good ol' racism.  A popular favorite adornment for vehicles in this area is the Confederate flag.  Quite a few people around these parts love to show their support for an unsuccessful country.  One day I pulled up behind a truck at a stop light.  There were numerous stickers on the truck, including two that were so close to each other that they were practically touching.  One was an American flag with "United We Stand" proudly stamped on it.  The neighboring sticker was the Confederate flag.  If I have to explain why this is absolutely moronic, then you need to crack open a history book. (Do you crack open books on those newfangled electronic book reading devices?  Is that how they work?)

2. Why Welfare Drug Testing Won't Happen

This still hasn't happened.  This still won't happen.  Take this with a grain of salt, because I haven't seen a link to a story that proves it, but I heard a rumor that when drug testing for congressmen was introduced as part of the bill, the bill was immediately withdrawn.  I'd love to believe that story because heavy drug use would at least explain why our representatives are unable to get anything done.

3. Things I Wish Would Disappear From Facebook

The grumpy cat meme seems to be dying.  I still see it from time to time, but not every three posts as I scroll through my feed.  The "like if you love your mom / keep scrolling if you want her to die in a gas explosion" crap seems to have disappeared for the most part.  And fortunately there hasn't been a major public tragedy for people to use as a launching pad to type in all caps about why their political views are supreme.  I say 'fortunately' because I'm glad that there hasn't been a mass murder or catastrophe in the past few weeks, and because I don't have to see people's bullshit ideology angrily staring me in the face every time I log onto the social network.  I'm going to slap a "Mission Accomplished" banner on this one.

4. Why Being an Adult Sucks

You know what, I feel like all of the stuff I put into this one holds up, but every now and then I look at a group of teenagers awkwardly trying to out-cool each other, and it makes me happy to be pushing thirty.

5. Poetry? Is He Kidding?

This was my first cop-out blog post from when I found myself pressed for time.  When I put the link to this on facebook it got quite a few likes from people that I don't normally see pulling the 'like lever' for my blog links.  Perhaps I should start a separate poetry blog?  Do I need to own a turtleneck to do that? I feel like that would be mandatory.  Actually, I've written quite a lot of poetry, and I've considered publishing it in a book called "Short Poems for People with Bad Habits".  I'm not sure if I really want to put a whole lot of my compulsively written poetry out there, so don't sit on the edge of your seat waiting for it.  Actually, you can sit on the edge of your seat and wait for a poetry book that may or may not be published if you want, but I find that weird.

6. Is King Koopa Hiring?

I did apply for a job with King Koopa, but I never heard back from him or any of his kids.  Oh, well.  I've got a better Nintendo-job to apply for: Karnov.  That's right, I want to be Karnov.  Why?  Because I'm reasonably sure that anybody in the frickin' universe would be better at being Karnov than Karnov.

7. Batman Returns... To Camp

I posted the link to this on the IMDb message board for Batman Returns, and quite a ridiculous shit-storm was the result.  I had people strongly disagreeing with my opinions on the film, people who didn't seem to understand that the purpose of my blog was humor (insisting that using words like "turd" made my thoughts hard to take seriously), and even a few people who complimented my article.  Then there were squabblers squabbling with each other, insults were flung, and... well this is all typical IMDb message board behavior.  One person had the gall to say that I was a redneck who was only capable of enjoying Michael Bay movies because I don't appreciate Tim Burton's vision for the film.

I knew the reactions to this post would most likely get messy, but I did it anyway because I knew the more people commented, whether they loved my piece or hated it, the more people would see it and click on the link to find out what all the hoopla was about.  And it worked!  This is still the entry that gets the most hits every week.

8. We Want Weed!

I've been very busy the past few weeks so I haven't had much time for reading, but as far as I know the general population of our state is still in favor of legalizing marijuana, and the general population of politicians in our state are still dragging their feet.  Wait a minute... Slowed reaction time in dealing with issues... Aversion to drug testing for Congress... Most of them have potbellies... Hmmm...

9. B's For Me

Haven't had as much time to watch my beloved b-movies (due to aforementioned busyness), but of course I still love them.  Anybody who knows me personally but not super-well might be surprised to learn that I make electronic, hip hop, and experimental music.  It's true!  Stop punching your leg really hard in disbelief!  I love using audio clips from these films in my music (shocker, right?), and I've recently taken up a free-time-consuming experiment in which I'm trying to compose a hip hop song by crafting all of the lyrics out of dialog from b-movies.  With my extremely limited free time as a factor, I'm hoping to get this one out by around 2024.  I also might run for president that year.  Not sure yet.

10. More Things I Wish Would Disappear From Facebook

Pictures of food are still being posted every five seconds.  STOP!  People are still correcting comments with more comments instead of using the edit button.  STOP!  I still see status updates way too often that are just proclamations of boredom.  STOP!

11. Why Pro Wrestling is Better Than Real Life

You either agree or disagree.

BUT IF YOU DISAGREE I'M GONNA SUPERPLEX YOU THROUGH A TABLE AND KIDNAP SOMEBODY YOU LOVE!!!

12. Mac vs. PC

I'm still, and most likely always will be, a firm supporter of Apple's computers.  The only solid argument in favor of PCs I've heard from anybody was from a gamer who explained to me that the popular games come out for PCs months before they do for Macs, and that the ports for the Macs are often inferior.  Since the newest games I tend to play are for the Nintendo 64, I have to take the dude's word for it.

Also, I now have my home internet hooked up on my Mac, and I couldn't be happier about that.

13. Baxter Pancake, Dream Master

Okay, here's a weird thing that's been happening to me lately.  I've been getting trapped in layers of dreams.  I'll often be having a dream, perhaps realize I'm dreaming, and "wake up" at some point.  Once I'm "awake" for a while I realize that I'm still dreaming.  Sometimes at this point I can use my lucid dreaming skills to make cool stuff happen, but other times I'm uncertain if it really is a dream or not.  It's so confusing, and sometimes it happens multiple times within the same dream.  I've even had at least two dreams recently where I explain the entire previous dream to another person while I'm in the next layer of dream.  I can't imagine what any of this means.

Could there be some sinister force at work?  Is somebody infiltrating my dreams, trying to usurp my dream master status, and/or trying to trap me in my own mind?  Is it aliens?  What would they gain from this?  I'm assuming it's aliens because I don't think humans are capable of this level of mind-infiltration (unless they exist in a Christopher Nolan movie).

Don't worry, readers.  I pledge to fend off these alien mind-attacks so that you can safely dream.

14. Sexy Secret Agent Sex

This is another highly popular entry, not coincidentally because I also put the link to this on IMDb (on the Skyfall page).  I have nothing to add to it, so I'll use this space to do a little ranting.  What's with all the hate I still see for Quantum of Solace?  I just watched it again a few days ago, and it's a good movie!  Despite the "Bond isn't Bond enough" complaints that I see so often, it features a lot of great moments in which Bond acts exactly as Bond should.  Another common complaint is that the action scenes contain too many quick cuts.  I can't say I completely disagree with this, but I never found any of it to be confusing or unclear.  And one of the laments that drives me nuts is that there's no humor in the movie.  That's not true.  It's there.  Pay attention and you'll see it.

If you're a Bond fan and a QoS hater, I beg you to at least give the movie another shot.  I'll bet it's better than you remember.

15. Wastes of Space

I've been doing quite a lot of commuting, and I see tons and tons of graveyards and massive parking lots.  Also more golf courses than seem necessary for this snow-and-rain-cursed area.  I confessed at the end of this entry that I wasn't expecting humanity to suddenly wise up and start using all of this space for something more productive, and I certainly wasn't expecting any of this to change in the two-and-a-half weeks since I wrote the article.

Luckily, the ninjas haven't gotten me yet.  I did have a close call involving a helicopter chase, but I managed to escape with my cunning helicopter skills.

16. Terminal Doctor

I've toyed around a bit more with the bizarre psychoanalysis program since posting this one, but more recently I've become addicted to making my computer say whatever I want it to in a Stephen Hawking-esque robot voice.  (Using the Terminal application, simply type "say", then type anything you want, hit enter, and hear the soothing sounds of robo-speech.)  Actually, I could more accurately say that my daughters are addicted to this program, spending huge chunks of time typing nonsense, listening to robo-nonsense, and not letting me use my own damn computer.

17. Hollywood's Old Bag of Tricks

I haven't reflected much on this one, mostly because it's such a recent post.  I did link to this one on the IMDb page for Dracula, but it hasn't been nearly as popular as the Batman and James Bond articles.  I guess the King of Kings of Vampires isn't as popular as he once was.  Man, if I could post this on IMDb in the 1930s it would be the talk of the town.  The talk of all the towns.  But I'd have to invent the internet first in that time period, and I'm not good at inventing internets.

18. Don'ts and Be Carefuls

This was the sequel to entry #17.  I haven't thought about this one too much either, but I do believe that both of them are pretty good bloggin'.  Also, I beseech you to heed my warning once more: Do not see Transformers 2.  And Transformer 3 is probably just as awful.

19. Old Soul, Old Brain

I don't even remember writing this one, dudes!

Well, there you have it.  So far I feel like I've put out a pretty good body of work.  Yeah, check out my blogger body!  Wooo!  I hope you've enjoyed what I've offered thus far, and I hope you'll keep coming back for more!

Oh, one quick update.  I'm considering moving my first blog post of the week to Mondays and posting video content on Wednesdays.  I haven't decided for sure yet, but this would make a lot of sense, seeing as I am involved with production of a lot of short films and web shows.  Sometimes I like to do things that make sense.

Cripes!  This was supposed to be a short and simple post to save myself a little time and effort tonight.  It turned out quite the opposite, so I hope you enjoyed it extra because of that!  If you like enjoying things extra, come back Friday for my next thrilling entry!