Friday April 25, 2003

BUT LIQUOR IS QUICKER

Today was mildly weird. But before we get to that, let me take a moment to note that I haven’t had any sugar since Wednesday. And I have this severe craving for Little Debbie Chocolate Chip Snack Cakes, which are chocolate cake squares with vanilla frosting in the middle, vanilla frosting on the outside, and little chocolate chips studding the outside icing. I am sure they must be Sudden Death Via Lard Impregnated Sugar, but I love them, and I’ve craved them for the last week or so.

Fortunately, the local Wal-green’s is the closest thing to a grocery store in my neighborhood, and it doesn’t carry Little Debbie stuff, so I’d have to get on a bus and go somewhere to buy them, and I don’t want them badly enough to want to spend some of my very finite (and dwindling) funding on them if I have to take a bus ride to do it.

Tampa is weird. Rather, Tampa is designed for people with cars, like many cities, so despite the fact that I live in a heavily residential area, and there is a large shopping center nearby with empty retail space in it, and there used to be a grocery store there back when I first moved here, that grocery store closed and no other grocery store retailer wants to put anything into this neighborhood… because there are several supermarkets ‘nearby’ (as distance is defined by access to a petroleum powered vehicle) and it’s not considered economically viable to put a grocery store here, with so many competing stores ‘nearby’.

The ‘no sugar’ thing got started, BTW, when I ran out of drinkables on Wednesday and decided I HAD to have drinkables, so I was going to break one of the last $20 bills I keep in my cash drawer. But my drinkables are primarily sugar in water… soda or fruit juices… or fat in water… milk. And I like Nestle’s Quik in my milk, too. So I decided, since I don’t have a source of income, it was really stupid to spend very finite money on poison, and I’ve simply been drinking water since.

So, anyway, no sugar for two days. It’s good for me, I know. (White sugar is a toxin; it has no nutritive value and it’s actually quite bad for you. It’s also one of the substances our bodies crave the most, and because of that, at least trace amounts of it are in nearly every processed food known to man… and this is also why so many of our favorite junk food is simply fat heavily laced with sugar. Or slightly more complex carbos heavily laced with sugar – which is a simple carbohydrate -- or carbos soaked and cooked in fat – which is another simple carbohydrate.) And if I just tough it out and get through this, eventually the sugar craving will go away, I know, and I’ll be much more even tempered. But one of the things I go through whenever I go off sugar for a while is simply loopy dreams, and I expect that will start happening tonight.

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FREAKY FRIDAY

Now we’ll do my mildly weird day today. And by the way, I’m breaking this long yammer up into separate sections like this for you, Geoffrey, since you’re so upset that my blog is ‘nothing but a run on’. Not that I know what that means, but hey.

Despite my wise frugality on Wednesday, I’d planned, quite foolishly, I know, to spend money on myself today. I was going to see two movies… Identity, which, since it’s a John Cusack movie, I really want to see, and also since it’s a John Cusack movie, it will almost certainly suck. At least, the odds are prohibitively on the ‘suck’ side. John Cusack has made many, many movies, and I think three of them are among my favorite films of all time, and the rest resolutely blow toads no matter how much I wish they didn’t. (I’ll leave figuring out the three I really like as an exercise for the student. But that small roster does not include Better Off Dead or Grosse Point Blank, and I can’t hear you screaming at me about it, either, so just stop.)

I was also going to see Confidence, because despite a local film reviewer’s insane insistence on equating Edward Norton with Ben Affleck, I happen to like Edward Norton, and Dustin Hoffman is usually fun, and this looks like a good heist/caper movie.

So, I was going to spend money from a finite and dwindling store on stupid entertainment, which I would have nothing tangible to show for but a ticket stub after the expenditure… something my ex girlfriend Kristy used to get really upset with when we did it with her money, which is why, when we lived together, we used her money to pay bills (that seemed very necessary and sensible to her) and my money for entertainment (since I’ll throw money away like a drunken sailor at the slightest opportunity). It was just one of the many, many ways that dating Kristy made my life better, and one of the many reasons I miss her.

Anyway, while I had decided I was going to spend money, I didn’t have to be deranged about it. I’d already bought a bus pass good for 20 rides right before my job ended, and it still had like 15 rides on it. Now, Westshore Mall, up the street from me, has lovely, plush, modern, arena style theaters and is, well, just up the street from me… an easy walk. But they charge $6.50 for admission, and they’ve decided they really don’t care if people come to movies in the afternoon or not any more, so they’ve charmingly done away with their matinee prices, the pricks.

However, a short bus ride away is Britton Plaza, which has a rather older movie theater (one of those where the men’s room always smells like piss) that isn’t as nice or as comfortable, but they were showing Identity too, and they have an Early Bird Special… if you see the first show of the day, it’s $3.75. And then I could ride back over to Westshore and see a slightly later showing of Confidence.

That, anyway, was the plan. What I ended up embroiled in was this weird incident that I almost think must have been staged as a sort of sociological experiment. See, I got there at about quarter to one, for a 1:05 showing. I walked over. The ticket booth was empty, but the Britton Plaza multiplex has never been particularly well managed or run, so that usually just means the high school kid scheduled to sell tickets that day didn’t show, and you have to go inside and get a ticket at the popcorn counter. So I went inside, and the Hispanic woman working behind the popcorn counter told me, plaintively, that the manager hadn’t shown up yet, and he was the only one who could open the cashbox, and without money, no one could sell me a ticket.

The irony of this was not lost on me; I had money I wanted to give her, but without money… ahhhh, you follow.

This irony was only exacerbated as, over the next half hour, probably fifty people showed up, all of whom had money they wanted to give her in exchange for tickets to various different movies, and no one showed up who was the manager, or who knew anything about where the manager was, so she couldn’t take their money, because she didn’t have any money to make change with.

As it turned out, the manager was the only person who had a key to the projectionist booths, too, so the projectionists couldn’t project the films even if the management-free staff had finally decided to just let everyone in for nothing.

(Me, I suspect that last announcement was just quick thinking on the part of the latina behind the popcorn counter. She probably anticipated that the growing crowd was going to edge towards mob-ness as their particular showtimes approached and passed. She probably also knew that if she simply took it on herself to admit fifty people gratis, she’d be in deep shit when the manager finally did show up… especially since she could have, quite credibly, argued it was the manager’s fault, and making a credible argument that losing the business money is the manager’s fault is never exactly the fast track to promotion. Or continued employment.)

What I found interesting was, when I finally gave up at quarter after 1 and left, every one of those fifty people was still sitting around the lobby, half of them restless, half of them possessed of a nearly bovine patience… but all of them waiting for the manager to show up. And for all I know they’re still there.

Anyway, since the next showing of either film wasn’t for another hour and a half, I decided to go home and eat, and once I got home, the usual thing happened… having gone out once and done some running around involving bus travel and stress and frustration and like that, once I got back into my apartment, I had no desire whatsoever to leave again. So I haven’t. In fact, I saw Paul and Amber from across the hall leave to go to their respective second shift jobs (I believe Paul works as a bartender in Ybor City, and Amber works at a sunglasses stand in International Plaza), which obviously startled them, since I’m never home this time of day.

Maybe I’ll go see a movie tomorrow.

There’s a way of looking at this where the whole ‘let’s go to a movie at Britton Plaza’ thing was just a ruse on the part of God, to get me to go over to a place I don’t normally frequent (a newsstand next to the theater) and buy my semi-weekly Lotto ticket there. However, God didn’t want me to spend my money foolishly on something I wouldn’t get anything tangible out of, so he blew up the manager’s car on the way to the theater. (Hey, God don’t mess around with stuck doors or convenient engine failures. God makes a statement. God is emphatic. When God wants people to know he’s homophobic, he nukes a couple of cities. And when God wants me to buy my QuikPik Lotto ticket in an unusual location, but doesn’t want me to waste money on a damned movie, he lures me out of the house with a promise of a cheap matinee price, then fireballs some poor theater manager’s car from on high. He’s GOD. You go scold him about it.)

Now, I sincerely hope that God did indeed manipulate me into buying a winning QuikPik through these Byzantine subterfuges of his. For one thing, it will certainly make the fireballing of the theater manager, and the frustration of all those movie patrons who didn’t get in to see their shows, worthwhile. I’m not selfish or anything. I wouldn’t want all that to have been for nothing.

But, we’ll just have to wait until tomorrow night’s Lotto drawing to see.

And these are without a doubt two of the most utterly boring and banal blog entries I have ever made, and if they get a ton of comments I’m going to completely despair of the entire human condition.

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AIN’T TOO PROUD TO BEG

As I’ve mentioned, and as the quotes scattered around the page lately should amply attest, I’m re-watching my Sports Night DVD set lately. And I just got to the part in the first season (Episode 20, “Ordinance Tactics”) where Jeremy, admittedly for questionable and probably stupid reasons, tries to break up with Natalie… and Natalie refuses to acknowledge the break up.

Now, look, the dialogue is great, and Natalie does it out of honest love and concern for Jeremy. She knows he’s going through a horrible time and the only good thing in his life at the moment is her… and she recognizes, in that way women sometimes do, that because she’s the only good thing in his life, that’s exactly why, in a self destructive fury, he’s decided to get rid of her. And Dana, who is also wise in the way that women so frequently are on TV, understands this instinctively too, and later on, she encourages Natalie not to acknowledge the break up… she states explicitly that she believes Natalie is doing the right thing, and advises her “Do not accept it, it is not recognized, it is not valid”.

It’s cute, it’s heartwarming, it’s tender, it makes me long for someone half as hot as Sabrina Lloyd (which would still be pretty damn hot) to come along and absolutely refuse to let me break up with her no matter what (yeah, like that’s ever going to happen).

At the same time, it’s really disturbing, because we’ve seen this scene many many times in the past. Usually the gender roles are reversed… the woman is trying desperately to break up with the man in her life, he’s refusing to let her go, and often, he states that it’s because he knows what’s good for her far more than she does. She needs him. He’s the only good thing in her life. She’ll just die without him.

We know where this scene always goes, inevitably, too… another commercial break, and the make up department will have painted some horrific bruises on the poor woman’s face, and after yet another commercial break, we'll find her striving with all her might to make The Asshole in Denial accept the break up and let her go, and as he lifts the knife/wrench/hammer/gun to shut her up once and for all, Chuck Norris or Lee Majors or Dennis Franz suddenly breaks into the room and kicks/punches/shoots the abusive sonofabitch… and then the music comes up, and we fade to yet another commercial break as the poor, battered, but undescribably valiant woman collapses tearfully in her rescuer’s arms.

I don’t know. Maybe this only bothers me because I know that in the last half of the second season, when Sorkin went conceptually bankrupt, he turned Natalie into a whirling bitch on wheels and when she told Jeremy to take a hike over the most idiotic thing imaginable, Jeremy did not get to be all cutesy and lovable and endearing and sweet by ‘refusing to acknowledge the break up’. No, no. A man who refuses to acknowledge the break up is a psycho, and he gets fired, and then he gets restraining orders filed on him, and then he gets arrested… if not simply bitch-slapped around by Lee Majors or Chuck Norris in the climactic moment of the 44 minute melodrama.

So maybe it only bothers me because when a guy does this, he’s a dangerous whack job, but apparently, when a girl does this, it’s nurturing and supportive and laudable. Perhaps it’s simply that double standard that annoys me so much about the sequence.

But, no… I think it bothers me most because, well… it doesn’t really matter what your motivation is, or what your gender is. When someone says “I break up with you”, you accept it. Now, you may ask them to talk about it with you. You may, if you’re me, and someone you trusted was your friend does this to you through a lousy cowardly sneaking lying piece of shit worthless email, send her an angry email back. But still, you accept it, if you’re a remotely worthwhile or even rudimentarily sane and socialized person. If someone says “we’re done”, you do not take it on yourself, for any reason whatsoever, to say “no, I don’t think so, not this time”. You accept it. It’s a decision that any person in a relationship gets to make, at any time, for, regrettably, any reason at all, or none, for that matter.

And every time I watch this sequence… and I’ve watched it a few times, this ep used to be one of the few Sports Nights I had on videotape… it just disturbs me. Because it’s not cute, and it’s not sweet, and it’s not endearing, and it only comes off that way because Natalie has the writer on her side, and therefore, Is Correct And It Will All Work Out In The End.

But real life don’ play dat. Here in the world, when someone breaks up with someone else, and that other person refuses to accept it, does not recognize it, acts as if it is not valid… that’s some dangerous shit. And it bothers me that one of my favorite TV shows portrayed such a situation in an irresponsibly light hearted manner… and yes, a big part of how much it bothers me is that this sequence can only be seen as light hearted, or tender, or affectionate, because, you know, it depicts a girl refusing to deal with being rejected, not a guy.

Willfully denying reality is crazy, by definition. When the reality you’re willfully denying is someone else categorically rejecting a relationship with you that you find desirable, that’s dangerous craziness indeed. More than that, it’s simply inappropriate and unacceptable behavior. And our TV shows… and especially, our comedies… should not be trying to tell us otherwise.

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WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?

It's raining really hard here. We've got severe t-storm warnings, maybe with large hail, up until... well, up until whenever the local weather guy feels like revoking them, I guess. And for all I know, he might be really bored, so it might take a while.

I was going to go over to Wal-green's and pick up some groceries... the fridge is getting a little empty. But I'm not sure if that wasn't just an excuse to put myself in a place where I could sugar up. Anyway, God seems not to want me to.

The above paragraph was written shortly before midnight on Friday. It's now about 4 a.m., but what the hell, I'll keep this update on Friday's page, since I haven't slept yet, and that's pretty much how I divide my days.

It's still storming out, but we had a lull around an hour and a half ago, and I ran over to Walgreen's. Yes, the sugar fast is no more; 75% off leftover Easter candy is more than any self respecting chocoholic can take. In addition to about a pound of chocolate eggs, (2 9 oz bags, for 75 cents each), I also picked up three frozen pizzas, a little bag of sliced pepperoni (the only kind of pepperoni Walgreen's carries, but good for augmenting the miserly topping distribution on frozen pizzas), another jar of Claussen's pickles and some hamburger rolls (I have four hamburger patties left from the Omaha Steaks Yuppie Meat Box). That $20 bill I was talking about not breaking before? Now pretty much D.O.A.

You know, when I was a kid, and my mom was working at a local hospital, we used to shop for groceries about once every two weeks. We'd pack the back of her Volvo absolutely full with grocery sacks... probably 10 or 12 heavy brown paper bags just crammed full of every kind of food imaginable. Half gallons of milk in rectangular cardboard cartons with the A-roof tops that you folded open into a spout. And Quisp cereal. And there always used to be these six foot long register tapes that my little brothers and I would fight over; we'd run around the backyard holding onto one end of it and letting it flutter in the breeze behind us like a white paper streamer.

And I used to be so impressed by the huge totals at the bottom of those register tapes. You'd have hundreds of food items rung up, and then at the bottom there would be this monstrous, unimaginable sum of money... an amount that I, as a 9 or 10 year old kid, simply could not comprehend ever actually having.

I'm talking forty, forty five dollars now. Sometimes as high as FIFTY BUCKS.

These days, I could throw away $50 at a Publix on one backpack full of food, just for myself, not myself and one other adult and three kids, without even working hard at it. I mean, I could do it in the deli.

Anyway. I'm on a nostalgia kick tonight, I guess, because I'm not tired, so I tossed a DVD of Frequency that I bought a while back into my player. I bought it, but I hadn't watched it yet. So far there seem to be no defects in the disc.

Oh, I'd seen the movie before... I took my mom to it on Mother's Day of 2000, I believe. It's a good flick, if a completely scientifically ignorant one. It alternates between 1969 and 1999, as a father and son talk back and forth to each other on the same ham radio set, over a gulf of three decades, and cooperate across the years to alter the history that the adult son remembers from his vantage point in 1999. I don't know much about quantum physics, but I sincerely doubt time really works that way... but sometimes you just have to say what the fuck. The characters are interesting, they're doing interesting things, and as an added bonus, many of them are actually both likable and admirable, as well... not something you get a lot of in modern cinema. I enjoyed it, even if it really makes no sense, scientifically. It's a heartwarming film, and you can tell everybody involved in it really enjoyed making it... again, not something that's common in modern film making.

Although I have to say, the characters in it like baseball way too much. ;)

And that's about it. Other than to say that unless something really exciting happens to me over the next couple of days, I may not blog for a while. I'm in the mood to just go Amish... well, I won't eschew all modern technology (need the AC and couldn't live without my TV and VCR and DVD player), but I could probably stand a break from the computer for a day or two.

Or I may be back in ten hours or so. You just can't tell with me. I'm really just not very stable.

Like it? Hate it? Hit me with your best shot.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I’m not a likable guy. I’m not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It’s simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don’t like my opinions or my blog, don’t read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I’m not going to say that this time around, because I’ve realized that what this is basically saying is, ‘if you don’t like what I have to say, tough, I don’t want to hear it, don’t even bother to tell me, just go away’.

And that’s actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country… for a little while longer, anyway… and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I’m not sure that’s a right when you’re doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don’t feel like reading… and I’m really quick with the delete key… as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don’t like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance… these things are only worth my time and attention if they’re entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough with, style, and/or panache to amuse me… try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.

Like it? Hate it? Hit me with your best shot.