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2:15 a.m. - 2008-07-18
I CONSUMED A REALLY ASTONISHING VARIETY OF MEDIA TODAY

Three entries in four days! This level of sustained productivity is making me nervous. On the other hand, writing here is serving as an obvious substitute for another things that I definitely should be doing, ie. applying for jobs. I haven't sent out one damn resume since I got that interview, which is an excellent example t of idiotic neglect. Being invited in for an interview and actually having a job are two very different things. But I don't want to think about this anymore tonight, as I can't really do much at the moment. I feel like a job application timestamped at 2:30 in the morning has a bit to much cokehead flair to be effective.

Today was a full day.

I took a midterm It went fine, and I was forcefully reminded how boring it is to sit and write for two hours, pointlessly and without original content, regurgitating desperately, with no greater goal in mind than proving that you did the homework. Then I met Velma in the park and we attempted to do the crossword, but she's quitting smoking and a little on edge and it was Thursday and Will Shortz is kind of a fucker even on Mondays, when it's hypothetically 'easy', and so after not-that-long we left and I ate a delicious and deeply unhealthy salad with fried calamari in it and a some sort of creamy chipotle dressing. Good job, Westville. Velma had gazpacho, and it had apples in it (also a good thing).

Next up, Iron Man. Dude, I love Robert Downey, Jr. Yes, I recognize that he has a very specific schtick and the emotional range of a bee, but I do not care. The man makes me giggle. Also, I enjoy superhero movies a lot - especially ones in which I get to watch their transformation from regular fella to awesomeness incarnate.* Though I have to say that this particular generation story was a bit, umm, problematic. Not on a believability front or anything. No, I totally accept that Robert Downey, Jr. is capable of making massive breakthroughs in clean energy production while trapped in a cave and hooked up to a car battery, using only a pair of tongs, a blowtorch, and component missile parts. The bit that made me uncomfortable was actually the was in which the Afghanis were portrayed as either mindless villains or mindless martyrs. There is more to be said on the subject, but, frankly, I'm not in the mood to do so. Lets just say that boiling people down to cultural stereotypes is a bad thing and leave it there, shall we? In the film's defense, I did think that the emphasis placed on the way a poorly regulated military-industrial complex leads to unintended weapons use or regular old war profiteering was well-handled and I was frankly freaked out by the similarities between the Jericho missile and cluster bombs. You know, those ones that 46 countries have decided are horrific and sworn to stop manufacturing, selling or using, but not the US, of course, because we're fighting terror, you see, and the bad guys don't play by the rules so why should we?

Anyway. After this was a reading at a bookstore in Soho for writers who were originally published by independent web publishers and are now appearing in a paper anthology. Some were good, some were bad, some were middling, and I'm pretty sure that one of them was in a class I took freshman year. The last guy, however, was nothing short of hilarious. Unfortunately, this was accidental. His book was narrated by an eight year old boy with an aversion to pronouns, and repeatedly featured the phrase "Frosty the Blowman". This was a derogatory term directed at his father, overheard from the neighbors, but that's all I know. It is possible that he explained this later, but I never found out, because Velma was laughing so hard (silently) that she almost exploded and then we had to go. And I can't fault her. I almost lost it myself when the boy was trying to escape from Devil Dog and the author read, without a hint of humor, "I'm afraid he's going to bite my butt. I'm afraid he's going to bite my butt and my balls." Soon after, we politely excused ourselves and got the hell out of there.

After that we walked home across the Williamsburg, I ate leftovers, and then finished Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders, a collection of short stories that highly recommend, particularly if you have a fascination with theme parks as a cultural phenomenon or are simply intrigued by the idea of a cow with a plexiglass window installed in its side, so that people can observe its internal processes. Be warned, however, that these stories are fucked up. Funny, in their way, I suppose, but definitely not a LOLer.

It's three in the morning. Time for bed.

-Britt

*Yet another spellcheck mystery. Awesomeness is a recognized word, but superhero is not. I can't imagine that 'awesomeness' is in the TextEdit default dictionary, which means I must have taught my computer this word at some point. Did I use it in a paper? I can only hope so.

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