It's Very Quiet

I know I shouldn't be staying up until one in the morning. Or later. I know I want to stay up later because I'm only 150 pages away from the end of Dune: Machine Crusade and I want to finish that book. Besides I figured out a way to get over my semi-writer's block. I just grab old stories - real old stories - the kind of shit I wrote in college before I learned the importance of grammar, style or actual plots. I rewrite them but since they are so fucking awful I spend most of my time writing new material. THis is good because this story about Santa Claus as a Serbian death squad commando is stalling. I actually rewrote all the material that I had taken to coffeehouses and edited there. So I have to go to the coffeehouse tomorrow and red pen everything.

Been just writing and going from livejournal to livejournal. Joy Division tends to be the soundtrack of most journals. Actually I have "Love Will Tear us Apart" and "It's Quiet" (sic - well I think that's the name of the song - you know that Bjork one that's on the Spike Jonze Collection - with the dancing mailbox) fighting for supremacy of the song in my head. I had Cowboy Bebop on television but I put it on pause in order to do a little more writing.

Speaking of which - new http://www.twoheadedcat.com column tomorrow - I wrote about being broke. I almost included that anecdote Seinfeld tells in Comedian - the one with the Glen Miller orchestra musicians being stranded out in the middle of nowhere, walking miles to their gig on Xmas Eve and seeing a home with a nuclear family and big turkey dinner and everything Norman Rockwell. One musician turns to the other and says "How do people live like that?"

It's a great story. Mostly because I was feeling a lot like Orny Adams was feeling in the movie too - as in working for this great dream while all the friends are getting married, having kids and all that establishment stuff that I feel like i'm missing out on (hell, I spent an entire evening getting all angsty when my EX-girlfriend told me that she never for a moment thought of marrying me - I finally whined enough that she lied and said that she did but didn't want to admit it - well hell, I dated her for 4 years, you would think that she would at least CONSIDER that possibility once in the four years we dated. I know she hates the thought of commitment but that's just fucking cold - at least to admit to) but now I feel free.

Besides all my friends that were married and established got divorced - except for the real homey types that belonged together in the entirety of belonging together. Stupid Avi - breaks away from every aspect of Chasidic Jewry but then decides to keep that one about getting engaged a month after you meet - schmuck. Ok I shouldn't be so harsh. I got to visit New York because of that. It crystallized my suspicion that I belonged there instead of in Minnesota (not the least reason being public transportation - you know you can just go to any corner and find some means of getting you across town without waiting in the cold for a half hour there? It's amazing. Unfortunately they still haven't figured out the concept of the Skyway. They expect their residents to WALK OUTSIDE when they want to get from one building to another. In Minneapolis you can walk from one part of downtown to the other and never leave the inside.)

Feeling random. I think I'll miss Minnesota. But I found http://www.kosherroomates.com - and discovered in those entries places that I could afford. Now if only I find people that want to live with three (additional?) cats. But old cats - the youngest one is five and he's already in his grumpy stage - Toby taught him well.

Update on that

Ok the song in my head is now "Money Makes the World Go Around" from the musical Cabaret - because a musical isn't a musical if it doesn't involve Nazis. Because honestly - I know I'm supposed to love Rent even though the music is saccharine Bryan Adams imitations - but wouldn't that musical be much cooler if instead of Mimi suddenly getting better for no apparent reason (it is Mimi right- same character as in La Boheme where she really dies and it's tragic, instead of living so it's stupid?) the SS comes knocking and carts off all the characters including that one that has composed HIS GREAT SONG - which is the weakest song in the show (I don't think he's supposed to be like the protagonist in Swingers - the one that keeps talking about how he came to Los Angeles to be a standup comedian but is not funny - one of the best running jokes in that movie - I hated that movie when I first saw it but LOVED it upon later viewings - very few movies do that to me. Swingers and Dead Ringers are my two main - hated on first view, loved on second and third viewing movies)

And I would pay money to see Cats if there were some Nazi Cats - as if that's any stretch for felines. Every cat is a little Hitler in practice - so small, so temperamental, so eager to play with your tzitzits and mutilate them.

At Camp Moshava they have musicals translated into Hebrew. One year they did Cabaret - I would love to see that. Ok Mordechai you'll be Nazi #1. Shmueley, you'll play the gay Nazi lover of the protagonist.

Of course I could just watch The Producers for the 134th time.

Oh yeah

One of the cool things about Cowboy Bebop: The Movie is how much it rips off American genre movies (detective, westerns - hell there's even a scene where High Noon is playing in the movie theatre) and treats them with more respect than American filmmakers would. It's like a negative image of The Last Samurai where anyone familiar with Akira Kurosawa movies must be think "ok this is cool, but where's that one drunk samurai. What the fuck is a Samurai movie doing without that token comic relief drunk? And how the hell is Sergio Leone going to steal the plot and make it into a cowboy movie?"

Oh last thing about Asian movies then I stop this

Let's hear it for the big white honky with a ponytail! If The Last Samurai had used a Japanese production company that evil Civil War commander would have had a ponytail. Tom Cruise almost got a ponytail. But really I also thought of this when watching Cowboy Bebop in the opening segment - the big honky with the ponytail was going down in the convenience store. If you see white actors in Hong Kong movies they have the ponytail. There are about three of them - they all have muscles and ponytails - making you suspect that they work in porn movies when they aren't practicing martial arts. But let's all raise a pint to the big white honkies and their long-ass ponytails - may you always work in Hong Kong, as Jet Li kicks your ass.

Oh darn

Damn it. http://www.ljdrama.org is evil. I stayed away for so long but then I came back and my mean streak was laughing heartily at most of them. Mostly I was wondering if the great dog-kicking saga was on it. It was - in case you don't want to look at the nasty side of blogging the scenario went like this. Guy gets bit by his mother's dog. Throws dog away from him and proceeds to kick it many times. Feels bad about it. All of guy's friends try telling him that it's ok to kick a dog repeatedly. Others see journal and comment that maybe he needs therapy. Guy's friend proceeds to call all these people "asshats."

I found it because of sinangel and since I can't seem to get to sleep I went and added my unwelcome opinion to the proceedings. Actually I didn't see the other two posts the guy made which came down to "it wsa a very mean dog" and "you people don't know me."

But then I found This Site through that page - basically a tour of the worst of the worst of LJ. Damnit. Is this funny because it's late or because I'm essentially a bad person? Oh who cares. I'm laughing.

Four thirty in the morning

Very happy that I'm not working tomorrow because I just stayed up until 430 - doing nothing but reading through livejournals and ljdrama. At the risk of sounding self-referential and internet obsessed I note that ljdrama had at least two dramas from twin_cities - I see no similar output from any other city community in the world. This is what happens when very repressed people get on the internet and discover that they can say anything without getting pounded - because even if the nastiest couple of fighters on that thing were to meet in real life they'd act as if it was the funniest thing, talk about the weather and walk away from each other very fast. Actually they might not commit to such a deep topic as the weather. This is also why the local BBS Ed's Room still goes strong - all that angst in one place just can't be allowed to die.

And the burn on my arm is looking bad. Hope they still let me sell Plasma tomorrow. My cat ate a bone. It sounded like he crunched it enough and that it had become brittle enough not to get lodged in his stomach or anything like that. I probably should have stopped him. He seems fine. Well as fine as he ever is - I mean he's 10 years old, he does tend to be slow - grumpy and needy (yeah Toby is the cat with my personality most of all)

Sleep now. So I can sell Plasma tomorrow afternoon - so I can buy kitty litter.

Somehow I still think that that 80s commercial about the yuppie that does cocaine so he can work harder so he can make more money so he can buy more cocaine so he can work harder... provides a better alternative. I sell plasma so I can keep my cats from shitting on the floor - less cool.