mushinnoshin

Not only did i get to see The Simpsons this weekend, I also saw Rear Window at the Belcourt, so I finally get the references in this:

I’m tempted to say “It’s all connected” but I’d hate that to be taken as a subliminal endorsement for Karl Dean. Not that it isn’t one. Eh. I don’t know. I’m leaning a bit towards Dean, but Briley, Dean, and Gentry all seem acceptable. My natural tendency to gravitate towards the outsiders actually has me somewhat sympathetic to Eaton. But I suspect he’s probably both a lunatic and a troglydyte. Nothing to base that on, just instinct. But given that I still can’t vote, I haven’t really dug into this race. Anybody but the tired political hack (Clement) or the raging homophobe* (Dozier) is fine with me.

Back to the movies, Netflix set me up with The Rock. I’m normally not into “action for the sake of action” movies (kung-fu excluded), and I’m really not into Bruckheimer tripe. But I was curious because of the Alcatraz setting, and it was cool to see a few glimpses of spots that I remembered. There wasn’t much of that though. But this all reminds me that I need to get my Alcatraz pictures up for the next post in the California trip recap. Soon, soon.

Maybe I’ll do that once I finish the living room/parlor work that I started at the beginning of the month. So far I’ve gotten two coats of one color in the parlor beneath the chair rail, two coats of another color above the chair rail, and two walls done in the living room. The living room is taking a while because the walls were in pretty rough shape so I’m doing some heavy sanding and spackling. Not to mention constant cleaning up from all that sanding and spackling. Anyway, next up is back to the parlor, where I’m going to try my hand at some rag-painting/glazing. Then back to the living room for the other two walls.

Finally, just – awesome:

* Seriously dude, you’re so homophobic you’ll vote against a person on unrelated issues just because you know they support equal rights??? Meaning you’re willing to subvert the basic mechanics of democracy just to satisfy your prejudices? And you think you have the character and integrity to lead this city?

In 2004, for instance, he voted against a nomination to the Metro Traffic and Parking Commission of a former Metro Council member who had co-sponsored a gay rights bill in the previous council term.

“There was a message that … we don’t want that to come back up this term, and she was the symbol of that,” Dozier, who didn’t serve in the previous term, said after the vote.

So the lovely miss Lesley took this little quiz, and of course I couldn’t resist:

You’re Les Miserables!

by Victor Hugo
One of the best known people in your community, you have become something of a phenomenon. People have sung about you, danced in your honor, created all manner of art in your name. And yet your story is one of failure and despair, with a few brief exceptions. A hopeless romantic, you’ll never stop hoping that more good will come from your failings than is ever possible. Beware detectives and prison guards bearing vendettas.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Ummm… yeah. No comment… but I will quote Fat Tony –

Bart: Uh, say, are you guys crooks?
Fat Tony: Bart, um, is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?
Bart: No.
Fat Tony: Well, suppose you got a large starving family. Is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread to feed them?
Bart: Uh uh.
Fat Tony: And, what if your family don’t like bread? They like…cigarettes?
Bart: I guess that’s okay.
Fat Tony: Now, what if instead of giving them away, you sold them at a price that was practically giving them away. Would that be a crime, Bart?
Bart: Hell, no!
Fat Tony: Enjoy your gift.

…posts giving the same one-word review, but still it has to be done –

Exxxxxcellent!

LMAO … I won’t spoil it … just click

Argh. So the transmission guy tells me that to really fix the car, he needs to completely rebuild the whatsamajig, and that’s going to run me about $1800. He then tells me that for $600 he could instead replace the whosimiwhatsit, but he really couldn’t know if that would do any good.

Well $1800 is out of the question, but I really don’t have room in the budget to take on a new car payment just yet. So I guess we’ll just have to hope we roll a seven.

But hey, at least I got to walk 4 miles on a humid day in my office clothes.

Miss Gilbert points us to an interesting recounting of a journalist’s converstaions with conservatives, a good post to make a trilogy on the psychology of conservatives.

” Of course, we need to execute some of these people,” I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. “A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country,” she says. “Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that’s what you’ll get.”

I guess that’s how conservatives support the rights of the individual over the collective? Or maybe it’s just that National Review readers “aren’t true conservatives”. Well, actually that’s true, if one narrowly defines conservatism to mean the libertarian-leaning paleoconservatism of the Old Right, and one recognizes the neocons as the descendents of the Imperial Left. But we’re talking about here and now, definitions change, deal with it. One only has to recognize how National Review founder William Buckley is regarded with derision by readers of his own magazine to see this is true.

Hard as it may be to believe, I actually do feel compassion for people like the woman quoted above; it must be hard going through life always in fear and always looking for someone to hate. When negativity practically oozes from one’s pores, the soul is clearly trapped in a toxic mind with which it must be hell to live.

Whilst I wait for a gargantuan file to complete its trek by ftp, lets catch up on a few tidbits from last week’s Vacation-Mini. (I took Thursday & Friday off after the holiday).

Well the main goal was to paint my living room & parlor area. It didn’t get done. But I sorta figured that was overly-ambitious, and the real goal was to get the cable, phone, and network jacks installed in the parlor wall, so that I will then be ready to paint. That part got done, plus I taped up the A/C duct, as you may have inferred from previous posts.

To call my basement ‘unfinished’ would grossly understate the point: my basement is one of those old-school creepy stone dungeons, with earth breaking up through the thin layer of floor cement and a nearly constant puddle of musty rainwater (itself a real problem that I probably need to solve sooner rather than later). While all this would make it an excellent locale to shoot an S&M video, the downside is that it’s a natural haven for spiders.

Which is OK in and of itself, normally if I go down there and see a few, I don’t let it bother me, I figure they’re eating other bugs and it’s all good. But in order to do what I had to do, I had to crawl up onto a ledge into a dank dark corner, roll beneath a main A/C duct, sit up in the darkened pocket on the other side, and then reach around blindly into the completely black crevice on the other side of the the fixture beneath the parlor floor.

Yeah.

So I swept out the area, fogged it, went to lunch, came back and swept again. With all that done, it still creeped me the hell out, but I forged ahead and got it all done without incident. In fact by the time I was running the all the data cables, my confidence was up and I was rolling in and out with reckless abandon.

So by the time the weekend was done I had the cables run, the jacks installed, and the wall patched back up and spot-painted back to the old color, and maybe next weekend I can start the new painting. I still haven’t really decided on my color scheme though.

Other than that, there were a few movies on the agenda: Netflix provided me with Little Miss Sunshine and the House of Flying Daggers, while the Belcourt showed me La Vie en Rose and Paris, Je t’aime.

Not a whole lot to say on Daggers — magnificently shot wushu film, with a terrible and beautifully tragic ending — but ultimately just an entertaining fairy tale like most such films.

On Little Miss Sunshine — I wasn’t sure what to expect. Ridley pretty much panned it, and I generally find his reviews pretty well on target. But then the movie became such a sleeper hit… Well, in the end I don’t think it was as bad as its detractors say, but it certainly didn’t live up to the positive hype. Mainly I just thought it was much funnier when it starred Chevy Chase and was called Vacation.

On La Vie en Rose — nice biopic, not a whole lot more to say than that. I didn’t know much about Edith Piaf, I do know a lot more now — certainly never had any idea she had so much tragedy and strife in her life. I will say that in some scenes she looks so incredibly much like (young pictures of) my Great-Grandmother Ramsey that I still find it hard to believe that the Ramsey part of my tree isn’t French. Oh! Duh, Ramsey is her married name. I should find out what her maiden name was.

The real winner though was Paris Je t’aime — a series of touching poetic vignettes with 18 directors each taking a turn telling a simple love story from the heart of Paris. So many of them were wonderful that it’s hard to pick the best examples. But the very last one was a clear standout — the story of a lonely, doughy, late-middle-aged mid-western woman whose dream was to see the city, a dream that finally came true (save that she couldn’t stay two weeks, having no one to watch her beloved dogs). It was the sort of slice-of-life that was simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting — made more amazing in that she saw it precisely the same way: simultaneous joy and sadness, loved for the glory of feeling alive. Just. Wow.

She told her story in a slow, broken, Americanized French, apparently doing something like a report to her French class, having studied the language for two years in preparation for the trip. When a number of my fellow moviegoers laughed at (no, not with) her, I momentarily wanted to be angry and indignant — how dare these assholes make fun and feel superior? I dare say her French was a lot better than theirs. But in the end I realized it was their loss — if they couldn’t see the beauty of the tragic-turned-to-strength in this simple character, I feel sorry for what they missed.

File also under: why I blog

Yup, still my favorite band.

Sure, it’s not The Musical Box or Dancing With the Moonlight Knight, still “Behind the Lines” is nothing to sneeze at. And truth be told, my favorite stuff is really the middle period, Duke and Abacab, so this medley with “Turn it on Again” was a welcome choice.

Still, go watch ‘em with Mr. Gabriel in the links above… two of my favorite songs ever, by anyone.