I'm Sorry, I'm Afraid I've Run Over Your Blog

'Nother Blog

2006-06-19T21:28:00.000-07:00

Hello. As I'm sure you're all well aware, I rarely ever update this blog. That's why I've decided to start an additional blog! It's called "The Totally Depressing Shrine Of Teen Angst". It's a satirical blog, poking fun at the style and egotism of angsty teenage bloggers, whom you may recall I lampooned on an earlier post on this blog. Of course, I am not in any way implying that all teenagers are angsty and egotistical, neither do I believe that all teenage bloggers are angsty and egotistical. And I certainly don't mean to imply that all angsty, egotistical teenagers have blogs. But there is, in my opinion, a prevailant trend in blogs to be written by teenagers who posess some combination of angst and egotism. And that is what I am parodying. If you have any questions, please send me an e-mail, and I promise that all questions will be ignored in the order they are received. Anyway, "The Totally Depressing Shrine of Teen Angst" may be found at this address: http://daltysmilth2.blogspot.com/

This Is A Blog That Gets Updated Regularly... Seriously

2005-12-07T20:41:00.000-08:00

Well, once again, it's been a long time since I've posted on this blog. Blah blah blah. As if you were holding your breath waiting for my witty correspondence. I guess I should explain that the reason I haven't blogged in several decades is because I've been quite busy. I'm almost at the complete, total, real end of radio school, and for the past several months I was in what noted game developer Tim Schafer refers to as "Crunch Mode". It was do or die, and I did, and didn't die. So now it's getting close to Christmas time. It's a time for making lists. And, depending on what kind of list it is, you may want to check it twice. Or not. It's really up to you. Anyway, I thought that I would take this time to make a list. Not a Christmas list, really. But something that needs to be listed, nonetheless. This list, is my

List O' Things I Will Do If I Ever Get A Whole Flippin' Lot O' Money:

1. Firstly, and most importantly, I will completely pay off all of my student loans. (I'm assuming that I will have a regular source of "A Whole Flippin' Lot O' Money".)

2. For almost my entire life, my family and I have lived in a house that makes Tom Hanks and Shelley Long's House in The Money Pit look like Xanadu. It's a bad situation. I think if we tried to sell this house to someone else to live in, for money, that person could theoretically make a convincing case for criminal fraud. Our only hope is if the government decides that it could generate better tax revenue from our property by selling the land for development to a private contractor. In that way, I think we could possibly be the only people that could possibly benefit from the Supreme Court's Eminent domain ruling. Now if we could only convince several city council members that our property would be prime land for a strip mall or something. Anyway, I'm not sure exactly how I'll solve this issue, but the basic concept is to throw some money at my family's house problem.

3. I will buy myself a new computer. More than one computer, if possible. I'd probably upgrade my trusty old iMac to a G5, and I'd also get myself a Windows-based laptop, for games and stuff. One or both would be equipped with a DVD-ROM drive and a CD/DVDR drive.

4. I will buy myself at least one game system that I do not already have. At this point, that would include the PS2, the X-Box and X-Box 360, the Gamecube, the DS, and the PSP. I might also buy an old Sega Dreamcast, just for nostalgia's sake. I was always a Sega man during the big Nintendo/Sega Console Wars back in the 90's, and though I know that in-house games have always been one of Sega's strong suits, I'll alwas feel a twinge of sadness and regret that they abandoned making hardware. What wonders would we have experienced had Sega stayed in the console market long enough to churn out a 256 bit system, I wonder.

5. I will get presents for my family and friends. I don't need to spend all my money on myself. I don't even want to spend all my money on myself. There are lots of times I go to stores and I'll see something and think "Ooh, I bet my friend Jason would just love that!" or "Hey, a photo calendar featuring Neil Gaiman. My brother Matt likes photo calendars and he likes Neil Gaiman. " but at the time I won't have enough money to buy it. And of course, when I do have money, those things aren't there anymore. But it would be nice to be able to impulse-buy items for other people for a change.

6. Here, I'll just put all the rest, food, clothing, music, movies, games, miscellaneous, etc. Those things would be on an as-needed basis.

Well, what do you think? I think it's a pretty well-thought-out list. And it's nice to have it written out somewhere in case I do get A Whole Flippin' Lot O' Money.

So Much Violence...

2005-09-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

Hey peoples of earth! Whut iz ghappenin? You know what I love? Movie blurbs. You know what I mean? Those little quotes from critics that they ("they" being the movie's promotion department, or martians, I'm not really sure which and I don't care) use in the commercials for movies or on the DVD/VHS box to make you think the movie's really an impressive achievment in the history of not only the cinema, but of mankind itself. And I'm not saying that the movie is always a total piece of trash, it's just that, well, I can't think of a good way to end this sentence so I'll just say I hate you all and hope you can live with the shame. You rotten punks.

Anyway, some of the blurbs aren't too bad, as long as they don't get ridiculous. '"****" says the Chicago Tribune' is innocuous enough. It's not necessarily promising anything about the movie. It's just saying the reviewer for the Chicago Tribune liked the movie enough to give it a four star rating. You can agree or disagree at your leisure. '"A wonderful movie!" raves David Berkowitcz of Pet Store Monthly' is a little more aggressive. It seems to say "The movie we're advertising was good enough for this guy. What's your problem?" But still it's nothing too excessive.

The ones you really have to watch out for are the ones that start making promises. '"You will love this movie!" declares Mickey McHugh of Film Snob Weekly' is a bold bit of editorializing. The imagined follow-up to that statement would be 'and if you don't, you're an uncultured, backward, closed-minded, un-progressive tightwad, who probably hates women, thinks all minorities should be slaves, and wants the country to be populated only with white, aryan, heterosexual protestants.' Sorry, I was thinking about the Piano, which I may write about on this blog, if only to rip it to shreds as the man-hating, horrible movie it is.

My favorite blurbs, of course, are the ones that use superlatives to describe the movie. '"This may be the greatest movie of our generation!" exclaims Jimmy Swickhert of the Philidelphia Daily Globe-Democrat-Republican-Bugle-Post-Banner-Star-Dispatch Standard' should obviously be taken with a grain of salt. Frankly our generation, or at least my generation is still settling in to the film industry, and I don't want people selling my generation short. (Although we have our work cut out for us, since so many of the great movies of all time were made before a lot of us were born.) Anyway, I happen to know that Hollywood has yet to surpass the greatest film produced by my generation. (Well maybe "produced" isn't technically accurate. But members of my generation were at least heavily involved in the film, at least in front of the camera.) It was a movie about rebellion. It was a movie about freedom. It was a movie about not taking any crap from authority figures. It was a movie about standing up to your parents and making them accept you for who you are, not letting them change you into who they want you to be. The movie I am speaking of, of course, is noneother than the Christopher Lloyd classic Camp Nowhere. Man, it's been awhile since I've seen that.

You can always tell it's a classic (SARCASM) when the blurb describes a movie as "the best movie I've seen this year". I especially love it when they use that type of blurb in, like, January. You feel like saying "Well, that may be true, but don't you think it might have something to do with the fact that IT'S THE ONLY THING THAT JUST CAME OUT SO FAR THIS YEAR?!!"

But something you also have to keep in mind when reading a blurb is that it's not always the critic's fault that their review was quoted. You have to wonder sometimes how far out of context some of these quotes are taken from the original review. Sure, the quote "Sean Connery gives an electric performance..." makes it sound like the reviewer liked the movie, until you find out that the rest of the sentence read "...in an otherwise dismal and uninspired effort." Likewise "Catherine Zeta-Jones lights up the screen..." might go on to say "in a very dim, stupid movie."

Finally, there are the blurbs that sound extremely self-evident, the ones that just sound like descriptions of the movie. You know, they just tell you what genre the movie is in. 'Jep Tootleham of the Interior Decorator's Journal called this "A Psychological Thriller"'. Or '"This is a comedy for the whole family" says Suzie Wombat-Porpoise of Inside Mettalurgical Engineering Bi-Weekly.' Just once I'd like to see one of these descriptive blurbs describe a film in the wrong genre. You know, something like 'Rita Maladroit Stevens of the Kansas City Red Star praised the movie as a "dark and twisted fantasy, culled from the nightmare visions of the mind of a truly disturbed creator", although we don't know why, it's supposed to be an upbeat romantic comedy set entirely in New York.'

Anyway, inconclusion, you should take any and all blurbs you see with a grain of salt, unless you're allergic to salt, in which case you should take it with a shot of pure, untainted redrum heroin.

(*IMPORTANT NOTE* I am not, in any way, shape or form, actually advocating drug use. I do not now use, nor have I ever used, nor do I ever intend to use any illegal or potentially dangerous substance of any kind. Nor do I know anyone who uses such substances or plans to use such substances in the future, that I am aware of. I've always been taught that drugs are bad, and I've never had reason to question that assumption. That crack about the heroin was not to be taken seriously. It was totally meant to be an attempt at a completely non-serious, humorous joke statement intended to make people laugh. If it did not make you laugh, I can only offer my apologies and condolences for having to read something so unfunny. Please direct all your complaints to anyone other than myself and the fine people at Blogger who allow me to post this blog on their webspace despite having any number of reasons not to. Thank you. We now rejoin the conclusion of this post, already in progress.)

...made the goat scream at the vaccuum cleaner. So don't take any blurb too seriously, and don't take any blog too seriously, especially this one. Most of the time I have no clue what I'm talking about, and I just sort of taper off after the fifth word or so. And finally, I will give 37 billion points to the first person who can correctly identify which Kevin Costner movie the title of this post is quoting.

*Hint* One of the actors I mentioned earlier in the post co-starred in it.

DISCUSSION QUESTION:

Did Ben mean to write "inconclusion"? Cite specific examples.

For The Childrens

2005-09-04T22:28:00.000-07:00

As I figured when I started this blog, remembering to post in it is a futile effort. I spend more time forcing my unsolicited and probably mostly uninformed opinions on message boards. But I wanted to give a shout-out to a couple of people without whom this blog would totally still be possible, and who frankly play an unimportant and superflouous part of my life. First of all you should check out http://www.getmeoutofthis.net/ for all your http://www.getmeoutofthis.net/ related needs. Seckund, you should go to http://piman.blogspot.com/. It's my younger brother's blog. You'll never hear me say this out loud, but he's a pretty darn funny guy. Much funnier than I am, probably. But we can still make each other laugh if we try hard enough. Finally, I participated in a podcast the other evening. It's pretty interesting. Not really, but listen anyway. Johnathan was really on. It's at http://www.crappyasst.com/. That's all...

FOREVER!!!

Or until the next time I remember to post.

Harry Potter And The Unoriginal Crossover

2005-08-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

Allrighty! No one posts on this blog, and I hardly ever update it. Success! But I said earlier that I'd post some of my writings for all 0 of my fans to read, and that's what I'll do. Now as you all know, the sixth Harry Potter book came out not too long ago, but before that, there was much speculation over what would happen in Book Six, who would die, who would hook up with who, would Harry be as much of an intolerable jerk and bully as he had been in book five, etc. And while some contented themselves with merely discussing what they hoped would happen in the upcoming Harry Potter tome, others decided to do something about it. So they dove headfirst into the horrifying, nightmarish hell-realm of fanfiction. Otherwise known as the scourge of all literature. Fanfiction is usually awful, occasionally painful, and sometimes hilarious. Especially when the words "self-insertion" enter into the picture. Anyway, my brother and his friends happened upon a Harry Potter fanfiction site, and upon reading some of the stories, decided to hold a contest to see who among them could write the most hilarious (whether good or bad) Harry Potter fanfic. I did not participate in this contest, but I did write a Harry Potter fanfic. I was trying to specifically parody Harry's everyone-who-doesn't-agree-with-everything-I-say-point-blank-is-a-total-moron-and-they're-just-asking-to-be-the-first-against-the-wall attitude in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's total and complete ignorance and incompetence when it comes to dealing with Dudley. In Book Five, Dudley's in a gang, so I figured the next logical progression for his character in Boox Six would have to be drugs. I threw in Sirius because I figured Sirius's complete disregard for the rules would naturally include the laws of nature. The title comes from the fact that I originally intended to spoof all the fanfiction stereotypes, the self-insertion character, the main cast acting completely out of character, the nonsensical plot that meanders and goes nowhere, scenes of endless stilted dialogue interspersed with action sequences that last less than two seconds, and of course improbable, unnecessary, and completely idiotic crossovers from other series. And Legolas and Gandalf do end up in the final story, if only briefly. But that was probably too logical a crossover anyway. If I really wanted to write a bad Harry Potter crossover, I'd probably have to have Harry & Co. meet with the entire cast from Starsky & Hutch (the Ben Stiller/Owen Wilson version). Anyway, enjoy Harry Potter and the Unoriginal Crossover:

HARRY POTTER AND THE UNORIGINAL CROSSOVER

Harry Potter was gloomier than ever. He’d had to spend another two whole days with his hated only living relatives, the Dursleys, who would rather drink frog vomit than be anything approaching pleasant with him. Harry knew this for a fact, because they’d done it on his last birthday. They’d gotten a letter and a package from Harry’s headmaster at the Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry™, Albus Dumbledore, saying: “Either be nice to Harry on his birthday, or drink the frog vomit enclosed in this package.” Without stopping to think, Harry’s portly, pushbroom mustached uncle Vernon, Harry’s thin, pointy-faced aunt Petunia, and his fat, ugly, stupid, evil, pig-like cousin Dudley drank the frog vomit straight out of the package. Harry still thought it might have been a better idea for Dumbledore to at least put the frog vomit into some kind of jar or something, rather than just pouring the stuff directly into the cardboard box like he had.
Anyway, this summer was worse than any other Harry’d had to suffer with the Dursleys. Harry couldn’t think of any specific reason why. But he was Harry Potter, dammit, and if he said something was worse than it had been a year ago, then by gum, you could bet that it was. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t actually worse, but it was at least different. Dudley, for his part wasn’t actually any worse than he’d been before. In fact, in a lot of ways, he was treating Harry a lot better than he ever had.
When Harry’d first arrived home from Hogwarts, Dudley had opened up the front door, looked at Harry for a second as though trying to remember who Harry was, then, seeming to recognize him, exclaimed “Oh my god, this bloke looks just like Harry Potter!” then slammed the door in his face.
Dudley had exhibited other strange behaviour as well. He would stay in his room for hours at a time blaring Steppenwolf and Chicago records loud enough that every house in the neighborhood shook. Also Dudley would become oddly interested in things no normal human would be interested in. The other day, Harry had walked in on Dudley in the loo, only to discover that Dudley had become intensely fixated on the handle to the water faucet. Dudley had briefly looked up at Harry, then returned his concentration to the handle, saying in a dreamy voice: “This handle is holding back the most powerful force in nature!” He then turned the handle, and when the water came out of the faucet, Dudley laughed as though it were the funniest thing he’d seen since Harry got his head stuck in a cookie jar when he was seven.
That was another thing, Dudley seemed to be laughing and gigling a lot at things that no one else found in the least bit funny. Once, when Uncle Vernon had yelled at Harry to take out the rubbish and Harry had replied that if he did, he’d be all alone in the house, Dudley started giggling uncontrollably and told Uncle Vernon that Harry had gotten him good. Also, Harry kept finding rolled-up bits of paper on the ground outside Dudley’s window. Plus there was the fact that Dudley ate endless amounts of nachos and pizza, yet actually seemed to be getting progressively thinner. And any time Dudley was in his room with the door closed, strange smoke would billow out from it. Harry didn’t need an All-Seeing Eye to figure out what all of this meant.
But any time he tried to point out to his aunt Petunia or uncle Vernon that their son was hittin’ the wacky tobaccy, they went into denial. “He’s not on dope, he’s just at that age where everything is funny to him! I went through the same thing,” was Aunt Petunia’s response.
Uncle Vernon had said: “Strange smoke coming out of his room? He’s probably just… starting a campfire… in his room… to… roast… marshmallows. Yes, he’s roasting marshmallows. I did the same thing when I was young. As all right-thinking young people should! In fact, I want to see some campfire smoke coming out of both your doors tonight! Or there’ll be no more going back to that… that… school for your kind!” Uncle Vernon still couldn’t bring himself to talk about anything from Harry’s world.
Harry knew that was an idle threat, though. There was nothing the Dursleys would have liked more than to be able to get rid of Harry for good. Still, Harry didn’t want to test that theory, so that evening he got a roaring campfire going in his room. As he sat on the floor by the fire, roasting a marshmallow, he heard a familiar voice.
“Hello, Harry,” the voice said as Harry started. Harry turned to look in the direction from which the voice came. Sitting there was Sirius Black, looking just as he had when Harry had last seen him, except he was a little more translucent than usual.
“S-Sirius!” stammered Harry. “B-but you’re dead!”
“Noticed that, did you?” Sirius said sardonically.
“B-but you can’t come back!” Harry pointed out. “Not even as a ghost! You fell behind that door or that curtain or whatever-that-was. Dumbledore said so!”
“Dumbledore said so!” Sirius said in a nasally, mocking voice. “He’s not the boss of me. I can come back as whatever I want. Just let him try to stop me!”
“But it’s not Dumbledore’s rule. He just said it was impossible for anyone to come back!”
“Yes, well, he also said it would be impossible for me to stuff seven live turkeys down my throat while singing ‘Hail Brittanica’ backwards. But I sure showed him where the chafing dish lies.”
Harry wasn’t entirely certain what the part about the chafing dish had to do with anything, but he thought it best not to argue with a ghost.
“Yes, well… what are you doing here?” asked Harry.
“What? I can’t come to your house as a ghost and just, you know, hang?” Sirius asked incredulously. “Is that what the kids today say? ‘Hang’?”
“Sirius, you wouldn’t have come back from the dead if it wasn’t something important,” Harry pointed out matter-of-factly.
“And why in the world not? I’m dead, I can do whatever I want! Wait a tic, I can go and paint that deck I’ve been meaning to at the house. No wait! I can sneak into the movies without paying. I’ve been meaning to see that new-“
“Sirius, please!” said Harry, barely controlling his temper.
“Oh, all right. I came here to warn you.”
“Warn me?” Harry was suddenly concerned.
“Yes,” Sirius started. “The next year is going to be extremely difficult for you. As you know, Lord Voldemort is growing in power.” Here, Sirius paused, as though expecting Harry to react. He stared expectantly at Harry for fifteen whole minutes before continuing. “Anyway, Voldemort is planning a hostile takeover of Hogwarts sometime this year. And Harry, here’s the important part…” And here, Sirius leaned in close to Harry’s ear, put his hand up to his mouth, and said in a loud whisper. “He’s going to disguise himself as a potted plant!”
Harry stared disbelievingly at his godfather.
“That’s it?” Harry queried. “That’s your warning? Sirius, that already happened last year.”
“What?” Sirius reacted.
“Um, yeah. Voldemort staged a breakout of all the prisoners from Azkaban, hid them for seven months while he infiltrated Hogwarts disguised as a begonia, then he had them attack the school, resulting in a bloody battle royale that lasted three days. Seamus Finnegan, Lavender Brown, and Professor Sprout were all killed. But we won the day thanks to our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers Gandalf the White and Legolas Greenleaf. Sure, Voldemort got away at the last minute, but it was an important victory overall.”
“But-but,” Sirius stammered. “But… no! No, that can’t be! Last year you had that horrible Umbridge woman, and Ron and Hermione were prefects, and-“
“No, Sirius, that was my fifth year. Goodness, where have you been? I’m just going into my seventh year! Time must move differently when you’re dead. I mean, that’s not all that’s happened, either. I was just hitting the highlights. I’ve had a falling out with Ron, Hermione’s pregnant with Oliver Wood’s child, Malfoy joined the Order of the Phoenix at the beginning of our sixth year, and we’ve been friends ever since, and Snape and I reached an understanding, so he’s stopped picking on me in class. Oh, and Neville Longbottom has become Head Boy.”
Sirius pondered this for awhile. Then suddenly he exclaimed “Bleargh! I’m a ghost! Blah! Scary!” and floated around the room before disappearing in a pink flash of light. Harry shook his head and began eating his roasted marshmallow.

THE MOTHERF&*(ING END

Comin' Round The Big Rock Candy Mountain For To Carry Me Home, Home On The Range

2005-07-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

I'm going home to Cape Tonight. I'm living in St. Louis whilst I go to radio school. But Cape is, and always will be in my mind, my home. It seems like if you've lived in Cape all your life, you would give anything to get the heck out of Cape. But when you move away, you would give anything to go back. The old expression says "You can't go home again". I say you don't realize how much you want to go home until you've been away from it for a long time. Wait, this post is way too introspective. I need a punchline to save it from the forces of schmaltziness. Ummm... so the red-breasted robin says: "That's not my eggplant!" Haha! Get it? Egg plant? My? Haha-- aah, what do you know from funny?

This Is The Worst Soundtrack I've Ever Heard, And I've Heard At Least Five Soundtracks

2005-07-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I do this, but every so often I like to look at the user reviews of soundtracks/movies/books I already like on places like Amazon.com or Rottentomatoes. Specifically, I look at the negative reviews. But again, why I do this is kind of a mystery to me. I've already decided I like the thing that's being reviewed, so it's not like the negative review is suddenly going to change my opinion. And in many cases, I've already spent money on the purchase of that which is being reviewed, so my reading of the review seems to run counter to the purpose of having these reviews, which I presume is to try to aid in a person's decision of whether or not to buy the product being offered.

One of my favorite film composers is Mr. John T. Williams, the composer of such films as Star Wars, Jaws, Indiana Jones, and most of the films in the Spielberg/Lucas oeuvre. And I've noticed that most of the negative user reviews of Maestro Williams' work are pretty similar. Basically, they go like this:

They almost always start out with the brown-nosiest, most fawning, subservient attempts at qualification, so as not to offend the people who like the album being reviewed:
"I'm the biggest John Williams fan in the world. I have every single album he has ever released, and I will continue to collect every album he releases until one of us is dead. I think he's a genius and perhaps the greatest musical mind of our time. In every single one of his scores, his technical as well as musical brilliance is very strongly in evidence. However..." And then the negative stuff comes. And the most common criticism of John Williams's scores is that all of his scores sound like all of his other scores. Seriously. Go to Amazon.com right now and look up a John Williams soundtrack, go to the user reviews, and look at the negative user reviews and I would be willing to bet that over half of the negative reviews will be complaining that whatever score you're looking at is exactly like another John Williams score. Of course, there will probably be a small percentage of the reviews that claim that whatever score you're looking at is basically ripping of Gustav Holst, but that's neither here nor there.

But it's not just that people say his score for, say, E.T. sounds like his score for, for example, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. People will complain in the scores for each of the Star Wars films that John Williams is recycling music from other Star Wars films. Well, duh! That's kind of the whole point of leitmotif, isn't it? Using familiar themes and motifs to identify similar plot points, and place things into context with each other. It's quite simple. You use the bad guy's theme music when the bad guy is on screen, and you use the good guy's theme music when the good guy is on screen. Of course, if you want to get fancy, you can make it slightly more complicated. You can use the bad guy's theme music when the bad guy is mentioned, but not on screen, or you can use the good guy's theme music whenever anyone is doing something heroic. Or, you don't even have to apply that much logic to it. You might use the love interest's theme after one of the heroes has been killed, simply because you realize you haven't used the love interest's theme in awhile, and you won't otherwise get another chance until the end credits.

But back to John Williams. The worst thing about these reviews, is that even though they pretty much say the same thing, the reviewer always acts as though he/she was the first person to think of it. As though the reviewer thinks that no one else has noticed that John Williams music sounds similar to other John Williams music. But I like it. At least John Williams has his own style. With some other composers, and I'm thinking specifically of Hans Zimmer, you couldn't pick their soundtracks out of a crowd of 2. But you can always tell a John Williams score.

This Is The Line That The Title Goes In

2005-07-12T09:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I've decided to post in the blog again. Yep. This is my blog post. It sure is a post in my blog. You betcha. Other people might say "Oooh! That's not a post in his blog!" But they're wrong. Dead wrong. So... I was thinking about putting some of my stories, MSTings, and essays on here. It's not like they're doing much good just sitting on my hard drive or my flash drive or whatever disks they're stored on. What do you think? You think nothing, of course, because no one posts on this blog. Come on! Post something here! I'd post on your blog! Do it! Do it! I'm just going to keep saying "do it" until you post something on here! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!

Alone In My Angst

2005-06-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

So I saw this moron at the video store the other day. He was buying a Kiki's Delivery Service DVD for his 5 year old daughter. What a moron. Everyone knows that Princess Mononoke is the GOOD Miyazaki movie. Oh, how I long for the carefree innocence days when I could be distracted by such cheap entertainments. My tastes may not have been as developed then, but I was happy in my stupidity. Alas, I am a young adult filled with angst. That reminds me of the time I was buying grocieries from the store and the clerk asked me if I wanted my receipt. Of course I want my receipt, you idiot! When have I ever *not* wanted my receipt? God. Why are people such morons? The only person who understands me is my girlfriend who totally exists and lives in some foreign country somewhere. I pine for the day when I can move there from the totalitarian state that is the United States of America. Or should I say, the United States of Unfair-ica?!!

Speaking of unfair, my parents once again are barely concealing how much they utterly loathe me again. They caught me stealing $20 dollars from my dad's wallet so I could pay off my late fees at the library, because I never return my books on time, because I don't subscribe to the library's Nazi Fascist "return date" system. I'll return my books when *I* think I'm finished with them, not when some computer says I should be finished with them. But my parents totally chewed me out, and gave me the standard "if you wanted the money you should have come and asked us" speech. Morons. Like they'd have even given me the money if I'd asked them for it. I didn't even feel like explaining why I was taking the money. They would have just lectured me again like I was a two-year-old with his hand in the cookie jar. Thankfully, soon I will be free of their evil dictatorship. Gotta go now. I have some angsty poetry to write.
Depressingly Yours,
Dalty Smilth

There. Doesn't that sound just like a whiny, self-important teenager wrote that? I kinda like this character as much as I hate him. Maybe I could turn it into a book.

Attack of the Post

2005-06-29T09:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is my second blog post. And I still have nothing in particular to talk about. Except, did you ever notice how in blogs, the author tends to say they have nothing in particular to talk about alot? Seriously. Something needs to be done about this. Maybe instead of spending millions of dollars on worthless, frivolous ventures such as "finding a cure for all known diseases" we should be spending our tax dollars finding stuff for bloggers to do, so they'll have something to talk about on their posts.

Anyway, since this is a blog, I guess I'm supposed to be all depressed and dark and moody and introspective, and talk about how I hate almost everyone I meet except for my girlfriend who lives in a foreign country who nobody's ever met and who may not actually exist, and also how I'm such an oppressed genius and how no one understands me and how if everyone thought the way I did the world would be perfect, even though I hate conformity because conforming is for mindless losers who can't think for themselves, not oppressed geniuses like me. Oh and also, I'm supposed to hate my parents even though the worst they've ever done to me is to cause me slight inconvenience. Okay, I think I've got it down. I promise, my next post will be the most angsty post you've ever read, or your money back guaranteed.

Everything Right Is Wrong Again

2005-06-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

Hello. I'm Ben. I will be your host for this evening. Please, take off your coat and have a seat. And if you have any questions or problems, please don't hesitate to keep them to yourself. I didn't get where I am today by listening to people complain to me all the time. I have problems too, you know! Jerk. Anyway, this is my blog. As Marvin the Robot might say, "Loathe it or ignore it. You can't like it." Enjoy!