Netflix Hates Snotty People

I woke up today with a brilliant idea: I'll write short, sarcastic move reviews on Netflix, preferably for movies I haven't seen but I'm pretty sure suck.

Errnt. Reviews must be at least 80 characters. Errnt. Words must be less than 25 characters. I have a decent vocabulary, but not 25-letter decent. I figured out the problem: errnt, Netflix does not like paragraph breaks. A stumbling block, because to get over the 80 character minimum, I wrote a haiku.

I removed the paragraph breaks, creating a jumble of barely readably text. Finally, errnt: "Review submission error."

I give up. Movie reviewer career over. Snideness diverted to web page. Here is the review on "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days":

Day 1: Show him this movie. Done. ***

Since Netflix requires a minimum of 80 characters in review, and hates paragraph breaks, I present for you all, a poorly-formatted haiku:

Film predictable *** Are they going to fall in love? *** Yes, Pope is Catholic

From the scraps

I'm cleaning my room and finding many scraps of paper with ideas or notes scratched on them. One of them has something my Mom said to my sisters and I when we were teasing her, worded for maximum guilt: "I'm used to the verbal abuse. It doesn't hurt anymore."

Ouch!

Another was when our Mom was encouraging Tina and I to be more social.
MOM: "You need to get out more. Meet new friends."
TINA: "Mom, we have social anxiety disorder. We don't need to meet more people. We need there to be less people in the world."

Hurricane Season

Tropical depression is an appropriate name. Hurricanes are always getting downgraded to tropical depressions. That is depressing. You're at the height of your destructive career. You're going places. People are paying attention. Then you get the call from Channel 7s' Doug Hill: "Sorry, kid. You just don't have it anymore. Next up: sports!"

If a storm got upgraded to a tropical depression, forecasters wouldn't even be able to call it a tropical depression. It would be a Tropical Going Somewhere.

Magicial Wish Box

If someone didn't have a short-term memory, a microwave would be like a magical wish box. “Man, I could really go for some macaroni and cheese.” [BEEP BEEP BEEP] “That's odd. I didn't put anything in the ...WOAH! My favorite brand too!”

The Movie of My Life...

...will be going straight to DVD.

SCENE: KITCHEN. JASON, a 30-year-old partially employed blogger who no longer lives with his Mom, thank you very much, takes a pinch of white tea leaves and puts them in a tea strainer. CUT TO:

DAYDREAM. Jason is in STASH, a tea seller, standing in line with his friend, KATE. There is a customer ahead of them.

CUSTOMER: “Any special instructions on how to brew it?”

STASH EMPLOYEE: “I guess. Make the water between 185-215 degrees. Don't brew it for more than 2 minutes.”

JASON: “Actually, what matters most is the water temperature. White tea is like a vegetable, and you don't want to overcook it. You can brew it longer than two minutes, whatever tastes good.”

EMPLOYEE: [snotty]: “What are you, some kind of International Tea expert?"

JASON: “Actually, I am an International Tea expert. Gustav von Glanvotten, at your service.” [bows, rolling hand forward] “Although I have a funny name...[face becomes stern] there is nothing funny about tea!”

SFX: Beep. Beep. CUT TO:

KITCHEN. The toaster oven beeps. Jason takes pita bread out, pours hot water into cup, and carries food to table.

At this point, I left my snack and went upstairs to scribble down my silly daydream before I forgot it. When I finished 10 minutes later, my tea was cool and bitter. Brewed it for too long. If only I were Gustav van Glanvotten.

Cock-a-da-roach

There was a cockroach in my room last week. Hairus cockroachus, a foul critter with hundreds of feelers protruding from its body, making it look more like a prehistoric troglodyte than a modern bug.

It was of a size that, for someone with a phobia of all life that walk the walls in the dark of night, was big enough to paralyze me with fear yet just small enough to make me feel ashamed of it.

Some bugs I fear without embarrassment. A few months ago, I came upon a huge cockroach as I walked into the downstairs bathroom. Over 8 inches long, including the hair. I saw it sprawled on the wall, like it was tanning at the beach. I quietly backed out of the room, saying in as calm of a voice as I could muster: “All yours, buddy. No, seriously. Enjoy.”

Haven't used that bathroom since. I doubt it's still there though. Probably left to eat a cat.

Anyway, when I saw Hairus cockroachus, it was 2:00 in the morning. I was in my boxers. The cockroach was on the wall right by me bed. As I surveyed my options (shoe? phone book? 911?) I was overcome with an innate, perhaps primal desire that superseded my anxious weapon inventory. This desire was not a bloodthirsty rage, nor desire to run. It was an unquenchable need to, as quickly as possible, put on a pair of pants.

I forget my exact thoughts, but it was something akin to: “I'm about to enter battle. I need pants.”

Is this what the Spartan warrior tradition has diluted to? “Eek, a big! Cover ye crotches!” It's not a flight response, but it's not a fight response either. It's fright.

Most people and animals freeze for a moment when confronted by danger, then move on to fight or flight. I'm stuck at fright. Cockroaches might be too. That night, the cockroach and I stared at each other for a good 10 minutes. I spent 5 of those minutes inching over to the closet for a shoe, and another 5 minutes hovered a few feet away from the cockroach, shoe raised in the air, as I tried to muster my courage to kill it. I know that sounds silly, but that's part of the reason it's called a phobia.

The rest of the night was a tragicomedy. When I finally moved to whack it, I missed. It fell to the floor, hidden from sight. I waited ½ an hour, and just as I felt relaxed enough to go to bed, it crawled back up in an uneasy zig zag, part of its body missing. Whack, miss, fall, wait ½ an hour, crawled back up, in worse shape than before.

The third time, I didn't try to kill it. I felt an odd admiration for its preserverence. Its doggedness. The Little Cockroach That Could. I just hoped it would crawl away from my bed and out of sight, preferably behind a window blind.

It was too wounded though, and fell back down on its own accord. I never saw it again. The next day, I was groggy from a lack of sleep and depressed from whatever chemicals my body excreted the night before. It made me think I needed one of two things. Anti-anxiety drugs. Or a clown for a roommate with an extra pair of shoes.

Doctor Who

I love sci-fi, and I really want to like the BBC remake of Doctor Who. Here's the problem.

The first episode is about an evil alien that possesses mannequins and other plastics on Earth. The second is different: alien ransom plot. The third: evil spirits from another dimension possess the dead on Earth.

The only other bit of the show I've seen is a few minutes of a future episode, where a virus breaks from the hackneyed stereotype of infecting people with a deadly disease. Not this time. This virus has its own agenda: infecting people with a deadly disease that turns them into zombies. Kind of like being possessed. On Earth!

The characters are interesting and the show has promise, but so far the plots have been uninventive and hackneyed. If I were a mean executive producer, I would tell the writers to get infected with some talent.

I'm probably just feeling grumpy right now and being overly harsh. I'm going to watch another episode or two, at least. Do you watch the show? Does it get better?

Update: The writers are getting the "alien possesses human" idea down pat. Episodes 4+5 is a two-part "aliens impersonate humans" special. It's well-done though. Doctor Who's sense of humor (both the show and the main character) is starting to grow on me.

Alaska Photos

I finally finished uploading my Alaska photos. I'm happy with how they came out. I still have a few dozen photos from Vancouver to get through.

Sorry for the lack of entries recently. I started a few posts that ended up becoming long and unwieldy. I'm giving up on them and going to start with some short posts to get back into the habit of posting daily.

Too Lazy To Do Much Else (Headlines)

Armed men steal four priceless paintings from French museum
They are going to be pissed when they try to sell them. “Are you kidding me? No price?”

Author Says It's Easy, Healthy Building Green
Author: Kermit the Frog.

Oldest Profession Flourishes in China
Someone in the News Control department is getting fired.

LOLCATZ

I love a good LOLCATZ. The purity of the term has been corrupted though by its too liberal application to almost any funny cat photo posted on the Internet. Internet authorities like Wikipedia offer mushy, open-armed definitions that allow cute, yarn-whacking kittens to dive into and pollute the LOLCATZ pool willy-nilly. It's time to set the record straight.

First, there is a difference between LOLCATS and their purer form, LOLCATZ.

An LOLCAT is any photo of a cute cat along with an irony-free caption. Example (photo credit):




Awwww. Cute. LOL. But not LOLCATZ.

An LOLCATZ is a photo similar in content, but one that captures the aggressive stupidity found in some parts of the Internet, such as 12-year-old boys who grew with the Internet their entire lives. (photo credit: LOLcatz)



The best LOLCATZ photos have an in-your-face attitude. All of them employ crudely written captions and are obviously ironic. Finally, they are science-fiction, a dire vision of the Internet extrapolated from the online habits of a few people who haven't been fully socialized.

Here is a short quiz. LOLCAT or LOCATZ?

1. Vet Cat

2. Bullets Cat

3. Idea Cat

4. Chips Cat

5. Sharpie Cat

6. British Cat

Sum2007Mix

The J-Wal 2007 Summer Mix CD playlist.

Song	Artist \ Album
Charlotte Gainsbourg	The Songs That We Sing
Apache	Michael Viner \ Bongo Rock
Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, and Wives	Voxtrot \ Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, and Wives
For The Widowers In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypisilan	Sufjan Stevens \ Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State
The Night Stars Here	Stars \ In Our Bedroom After the War
Sticks and Stones	The Pierces \ Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge
You Are Never Alone	Socalled \ Ghettoblaster
Robert Onion	Frank Black \ Dog in the Sand
Fingerbib	Alarm Will Sound \ Acoustica
The Way We Get By	Spoon \ Kill the Moonlight
People In Love	Art Brut \ It's A Bit Complicated
Heart It Races (DJ Rupture remix)	Architecture In Helsinki \ Heart It Races
Your Ex-Lover Is Dead (Final Fantasy remix)	Stars (Original) \ Do You Trust Your Friends?
Danger! High Voltage	Electric Six \ Fire
To Build a Home	Cinematic Orchestra
Wipe That Sound	Mouse on Mars \ Radical Connector
Satchelaise	Mice Parade \ Mice Parade
En Casa Del Trompo No Bailes	Orquesta Riverside
Shame	Avett Brothers \ Emotionalism
Fly	Nick Drake