America

Or so I'm told by our dear Sarah Palin.

And since I hate America so much, I am not entitled to freedom of speech. Or so is implied by America-lovers.

Methinkst this is a bit of a paradox. Let's say I start as an America-lover, but then question a Republican leader- I have become an America-hater, which then strips me of free speech. So if I have no freedom of speech, I do not question the Republican leader, making me an America-lover again, which once more gives me freedom of speech .. to question the Republican leader. (Of course to question a democrat is patriotic!)

Gosh darn it, I love the Constitution so much, I hate America.
Will this idiocy never end? Will I ever be able to peacefully enjoy the pleasures of the Constitution again?

I do love America. But I hate the morons who tell me I don't.

This post does not actually contain hate.

Emily's informed me that I must have a post up here by the end of Sunday OR ELSE, so here I am. Now, the reason for my absence from this blog of late is still present - namely, I can't really focus my hatred onto any one particular thing that I can write about. So, instead, with the memory fresh in my mind, I'm going to explain how W. was a rather disappointing film.

If you, Dear Reader, are one George W. Bush (hello!), spoilers will most likely not follow - though I doubt that the film was anything close to one-hundred-percent accurate, so perhaps I'm wrong there. For that matter, if you aren't G.W.B., chances are spoilers won't follow for you either. I mean, really, you'd better know the plot.

Now, as a wise man once said, W. is "an interesting idea, an (unrelated) interesting storyline, and great performances, poorly executed."

- the interesting idea: that most of W.'s decisions as President come from a sense of failure instilled in him by his father, and by the desire to be like "hey, man, I can totally do what you couldn't."

- the unrelated interesting storyline: Colin Powell's reluctance to dive right into the invasion of Iraq (leading to his resignation IRL, but the movie never shows that).

Hang on, gotta turn my record over.

Okay, back.

- the great performances: this would encompass pretty much everyone. Standouts, though, are Josh Brolin as W., Jeffrey Wright as Powell, and Toby Jones as Karl Rove. That about covers that subject.

The poor execution mostly comes from a lack of a central focus, I guess. Stone does play up the almost Oedipal relationship between W. and his father, but only in the sense that it's more prominent than any of the other motivations that W. may have had for his decisions - most obviously the whole "born-again Christian" thing that I'm pretty sure he went through. That period is in the movie, but it's done with a couple of seemingly perfunctory scenes: W. collapses while running the morning after a drinking binge, then in the next scene is talking to his pastor after a small support-group-type meeting at his church. His pastor mentions something about "not having touched a drop in six months." Then that's the end of that 'til W. calls the pastor in to say he's "heard the call" and God wants him to run for President. Thus endeth the evangelical part of his development, apparently. So there were some interesting ideas there, but none were really given the proper attention.

There was also this really fucking weird thing where they were re-enacting W.'s landing on the cruiser (with the Mission Accomplished banner etc.) and they had a fake commentary by people on a show called "SPINBall" who were saying "This is why women like him, and why they like the war" and "You'd never see a Democrat doing something like this!" in a completely out-of-sync with the rest of the movie, heavy-handedly "satirical" way.

There were a couple of good things to it, though. There's a central scene where most of the cabinet is deliberating in the war room about invading Iraq and Powell has a rather nice speech about, like, what the fuck are they doing? W. always calls Cheney "Vice", too, which makes me laugh because I can imagine that actually being true.

But the best part was a scene during W.'s campaign for Texas governorship, where Rove tells him he's "just a magical fairy, sprinkling pixie dust at your feet" and then dancing a little jig as he walks off.

That pretty much made me look on the movie more sympathetically.


Oh, and also: I love James Cromwell as an actor, but the dude apparently cannot sound like anyone but himself, because he just sounded like James Cromwell, President of the United States. And, as my friend said, "I see James Cromwell as President and I just assume it's true, because it seems like a fit."

It's Electric!

I've had gas burners for all of my life. They're nice. You can even light them when the power is out. Hell yes? Hell yes.

In this new place of mine, though, there is electric. Sure, sure, gas leaks are a bitch, but damn it, landlords. Do you realize that my food suffers? Ok, it hasn't suffered until today, but today it did suffer.

I decided to fry myself up an egg. I am perhaps allergic to eggs (maybe grease), so my egg-intake is considerably lower than that of the average breakfaster. Hell, I barely even like eggs, but for that delicious little yolk... I love yolks.

Today was a day of braving the allergy. Sometimes I am not effected, if the egg is fried properly. You might guess that the egg was not fried properly, hence the writing of this post. Well, it turned out ok - because I am truly amazing - but it took me two eggs, and I have a bad taste in my mouth left by the white. (That acursed white!)

First egg, I thought the pan had been heated appropriately. However, when I cracked the damned thing in, there was no sign of heat. There was just a sad puddle of clear goo. And this wouldn't be so bad, if not for the slope in the spiral gratey thing that most electric burners seem to have. The slope, that is. I believe they all have the spiral gratey thing..

Let me tell you, it is not easy to flip an egg that slants into one side of a pan when you do not wish to break the yolk. So I moved the pan to an unslanted burner, which would work marvelously with a gaz burner since the heat appears magically, but takes forever with an electric burner since the heat doesn't want to have anything to do with you and your stupid egg. But you wait as you must.

The egg on my pan appeared to be water turning to ice. The clear goo had spread out wide and thin, and when the color began to turn, it mixed with the black of the pan underneath and made a blue-ish white. Quite nice and poetic, surely, but hell. This was supposed to be my breakfast.

I then did the stupid thing that too many eggmakers do: prod it. Prodding the edges is fine, but moving beyond the edges is daft. And I am a daft, dafter person (albeit amazing). The egg begins to break up, and more often than not, the yolk breaks.

The yolk broke.

The entire mess showed no sign of solidifying, so I dumped it, god damn it.

The new egg was luckier (new frying pan) and though I prodded the hell out of it, the yolk did not break. The rest of it broke up, which is annoying, but altogether... I hope I don't get sick.

Grilled cheese is also difficult (grilling the bread as well as melting the cheese - an art), but it is manageble.

Stupid electric.

Cougars.

Listen, bitch, nobody wants to see your saggy tits pushed up into a bra 2 sizes too small. Nobody wants to see your ass cleavage. Nobody wants you.

Is there anything more embarrassing than a cougar? I don't know whether to feel sorry for them or to throw rocks at them. The people that I really feel sorry for are the children of cougars. These poor, misguided children. How awful for them. I mean, they constantly have to divert friends from their home out of fear that mommy will pounce on the nubile flesh of a young gentleman.

Cougars think they're cool. They think they're "one of the girls". They wear their daughter's Juicy Couture sweatpants. They shop at 5-7-9. They even speak in the young, hip vernacular.... mostly, to lure the young menz.

It's disgusting. It's sick.

I want to personally murder every. single. goddamn. cougar. that walks into Gap.

"And modest, too!"

To which I reply with an equally unoriginal and overused piece of sarcasm, "Ohh, aren't you clever?"

Look, ladies and gents who aren't reading this blog, you fail in your attempt at humor. You say, "People laugh, though!" That's because they are equally humorless, or are just trying to be nice. I used to be one of those nice people. Now I will just stare, most uncomfortably, at you.

You do know what I'm talking about, don't you? You know, when a person is listing his achievements or totally awesomez characteristics, and at the end of the list, another person says, in an annoyingly chipper and self-satisfied voice, "And modest, too!" Sometimes both things are said by the same person. STFU, mofo.

This bit of hate goes under my larger category of of hate, titled, "People who tell unoriginal and unfunny jokes without any irony + People who laugh at these jokes as though it's the first time they have heard them (i.e. Death by Katunga, or however the hell it's spelled)". Then there is the, "People who continue to tell Monty Python jokes as though no one has ever heard the line, 'It's only a flesh wound'" category.