The Rise Of Emo

It's a great big duh to me, but reporters, doctors and parents are baffled as the rise of emo and MCR coincides perfectly with a sudden CDC study on the rise in suicides among teenage girls.

Who would think that listening to depressing ass, whiney, self-serving music all of the time and buying into the associated one-up drama culture would do that?

Fucking morons.

New Favorite Show

So it's been a month since i posted and I really have no desire to tell anyone why because its exhasuting.

I do, however, want to tell everyone about my new favorite tv show - Charmed.

Oh. My. God.

So this is the third epsiode i've ever watched and they've already been suckedinto an EVIL ice cream truck while the third sister is off dealing with her daddy issues.

I'm psyched. This is better than Alias.

We Now Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled, Work Induced Lull To Bring You A Rant The Size Of Stupidity

One of the groovy things about the news is that, while a lot of you might not have a clue if I were to mention an obscure congressman, I bet, in this instance, you're all going to know what I mean when I mention the guy who shot the fuck out of Virginia Tech a few days ago.

No longer an avid or active news reader, myself - because reading it makes me do things like this - I try to stick to the kinderNews, new legs for panda bears and the like but, even with an extremely adequate filtration system as I have set up, when something like this goes wrong, everybody fucking says something. I suspect that more Coallition troops and Iraqi civilians died on April 16th than were killed in that school and I will gaurentee you that more people were savagely raped and murdered in Darfur on April 16th. Naturally, that's not to say that what happened on that campus was not a tragedy and doesn't deserve the be remembered - that the survivors and their families will not need to support, but it is to say that the American Ego might do well to spend a little less time complacently waiting for another thing to distract us from the many other complex, far-reaching, international indiscretions taking place each and every single day.

I was watching Bill Maher this morning. Now, I know, he's a controversial political comedian and what I normally have to say to people on the subject of him is "People, it was called Politically Incorrect!" but, today...today Mr. Bill Maher crossed a line with me. The man is certianly not a bastion of reason or sage advice - he's amusing and he knows that's his function. On occasion, however, I'm inclined to hold political comedians responsible, at least in the small view, for reaching their audience in some way and not just taking the easy joke. It's John Stewart on Crossfire, taking the moment to make a genuine appeal to American journalists to fully understand their role, their responsibilities and their impact. Whats worse, unlike The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, Real Time, on occasion, branches into actual political discourse as was done today with one Bill Moyers. Now, it's certianly not anything like the chicken chasing antics of Tucker Carlson, but he's about as much a real journalist as you or me. Hell, I probably researched the things I'm about to say more heavily than he researched his last piece on Karl Rove.

Anyway, all of that was to get me to this point - and some of it was just some self-serving rambling but it's my blog and there's nothing more self-serving than having one so fuck it. Bill Maher dedicated the majority of his program today (or Friday/Saturday, I guess...i'm downloading and viewing at a later date, you understand) to a discussion of the insane, gun control and how self-serving and unlucky this kid was but that he really just needed to get the fuck over it.

Do not get me wrong. This kid was self-serving, egotistical, probably clinically insane and really lacked any shred of reasonable coping skills. At some point you do have to grow up and move beyond a lot of the shit that happens in middle school and highschool and realize that that chapter of your life will eventually end, or take responsiblity for the fact that, on some level, if people don't like you it's because of something you're doing or something that you are and eventually you just have to find the people that do like you because they do exist out there and you will eventually get to them. Unless, of course, there's a clinical disorder at play and, at some point, a lisenced therapist and some high quality prescription medication are in order. The fact of the matter, however, is that in addition to whatever he was doing to further complicate his situation, the kid probably did not have it easy. From a likely tie to autism or asperger's syndrome to a cultural sterotype surrounding mental illness that his family appears to have been deeply involved in and into a school environment where no one - no one - is more cruel than children....It's no wonder by the time he made it to college he was stalking women and a lot more fucked up than even that suggests.

The news is confused. Bill Maher is confused. The entire journalistic camp of our mainstream media, comedians or otherwise, looks around and wonders "why?" - Why did he shoot up a school? Why did he kill a bunch of people who were never really that mean to him?

Because, you stupid ass mother fuckers, you were that mean to him.

Children are nothing if not cruel and I suspect if the mainstream media came out and asked where his teachers were when he was a child - why his parents didn't do more to help him deal with the issues he was having at home and at school - why an administrator didn't intervene to teach these other children to be kinder to other people...Well, there would probably be a lot fewer copy cats over the coming weeks.

You don't treat other people like that. You just don't.

ABC Soundtrack

Does it bother anyone else that every single ABC show shares the same fifteen song soundtrack.

Jason Pohl's Workstation of Love

System Specs:

Workstation: Hewlett-Packard xw8400 Workstation
Monitor - Hewlett-Packard 22" LCD
Tablet Monitor - Wacom Cintiq 21UX
Peripherals - Logitech Keyboard, Mouse, and Speakers
Software -

• Adobe Production Suite
• Solidworks 2007
• Alias Sketch Book Pro
• Alias StudioTools

Oh, and if you have no idea what i'm talking about - imdb.

Aoooooooooooh!

Does it scare anyone else when Oprah beds down with the devil himself?

I know he's anti pedophile but come on.

Fish Eye Winery: Thinking Inside of the Box

Now we all know how I feel about boxed wine. I also feel negatively about the ginat bottles of wine that are practically kegs in and of themselves. I also have a problem with people who don't store their wine on a decline and let the cork dryout then get confused as to why their wine goes rancid.

I have a lot of problems with people and with wine but today...today I got a laugh. Fish Eye is advertising boxed wine as an equivolent to the casks used to store the raw...well, grape juice.

[url=http://www.fisheyewines.com/]Fish Eye Wines[/url]

We Interupt Your Regularly Scheduled Broadcast

...to bring you a rant.

[IMDB: Atlas Shrugged Cast & Crew]

That sound you hear? That is the sound of my soul dying.

I actually want to cry a little.

State of the Union

It should be said that I watched the State of the Union last night, a practice in which I don't usually engage.

Yes, that's right - I, who watch C-SPAN like it's a Saturday morning religious broadcast and I'm a slightly sullied soul, trying to wiggle out from under last nights companions arm, do not customarily watch one fo the largest political broadcasts of any given year. I don't like the State of the Union. It's politically irrelevant. Other than getting a pulse on how desperate the President is, there's little other reason to watch it. The Congressmen and women who appear - the dignitaries and, on occasion, the pop-culture heroes - are all carefully greased for the event and the speech is prepared word for word.

True, there's not a lot of honesty in a House or Senate session, but there are facial expressions, twitchy movements and intonations that even the most accomplished of liars can't hide. At least it's a little closer to the truth.

Anyway, last night I watched and, for those of you who didn't - the highlight reel.

John McCain, as it appeared at several points in the broadcast - eyes shut, head drooped, hands folded limply at is lap - was having a happy nap. He's had a run in with melanoma, it's true, but you'd think even if he were a current chemo patient, he could take some iron suppliments and kick that anemia for a few hours. The best part? He took part in the "on the steps response" covered by ABC's Charlie Gibson. Can you respond to something you slept through?

Charlie may be a more decent human being than I am, because he didn't point it out.

Ted Kennedy spent most of the evening looking like he was suffering from an even worse case of tongue biting syndrome than Hilary Clinton if the migraine-head-clutch was any indication. The notes were a little creepy too. Though, maybe he was losing at tic-tac-toe. Presidential hang-man? No, that was last month...

Because the most common camera angle was that of the Vice President and Speaker of the House sitting (or standing, or drinking, as it were) behind the President, I have to say that I think one of my favorite aspects of the evening (other than Redemption By Association Hour) was watching Cheney's tie...or maybe it was watching Pelosi purse her lips and look awkwardly in any direction but straight ahead or at our Commander in Chief.

If you didn't get a chance to watch, this installment of the SOU Address was far more amusing than most and you can watch it, straight from the U.S. Government here.

Here's A Rant For You

Since when should the weather be a source of suspense? No wonder we're a paranoid fucking society. I turned on the TV tonight to hear, not only a teaser for the WEATHER REPORT, but - worse - one attempting to create an air of suspense.

"More unseasonably cold October weather out there, but will the weather take a turn for the better and send us a warm up? Find out on the 5 o'clock news."

I've never wanted to throttle Mark Baden more than I did at that moment.

This One's For Courtney

Now I remember why I seperated the blogs!

[Cathouse: The Series]

How is it that, until about an hour ago, I didn't know this series existed? It is sublime entertainment. A brothel in Vegas. I know that I don't need to say more, but I will because holy shit is this show hilarious.

Anyway, Courtney, you must find a way to procure this. I'd have told you this personally but you weren't online so you'll just have to find out this way.

Six AM

Getting up at five sounded like a really good idea - particularly after staring at the ceiling for two hours but damn, six am is not great for TV. I've watched two episodes of Roseanne :P

Tucker Can Dance

Hey, can anyone confirm this? I was just watching TV or - rather, reading the captions on the tv - and I saw a commercial advertising Tucker Carlson as a future contestant on Dancing With The Stars.

I wonder if he'll wear the bowtie.

Phrase of hte Day:

Brought to you, curtosy of a TV documentary about the Amish, no less, the phrase "carrying up to several" was used to refer to traders, circa 1700, in the midwest and their heavy packs of pelts and beads.

"A small, peaceful community, occupied only by fisherman, farmers and the occasional band of pirates" is the phrase of the day, again, curtosy of a TV documentary, this one, about Hong Kong.

Poor Sad C-SPAN

This morning, I am mourning the loss of a friend. The first time I typed this, a URL I love so dearly, and got an unfriendly "Server Not Found" prompt from Firefox, I assumed I must have made a typo. I - calmly, patiently, almost lovingly - retyped and refreshed, waiting happily for the C-SPAN 2 "Watch" link to load, with it's friendly little Windows Media Player logo, but none came.

No, ladies and gent's, C-SPAN is down.

C-SPAN is down, the Senate is in session and I am not watching. It must be a very cold day in hell.

Bad TV

Here I sit - or lay, or kind of both - switching between the position in which my spine doesn't hurt and the position where the pressure in my head is temporarily relieved and the position where i'm throwing up from the inability to find a position where my head and my spine and my head don't hurt.

As i'm doing this, i'm watching the season finale of Grey's Anatomy. As a general rule, this show is insanely melodramtic and medically inaccurate, and yet i continue to watch. One, because i'm alone every Monday night and it's infinately better than watching the 9 o'clock news and two becasue the narrative at the beginning and end of the episodes is invariably good. Humerous and bitter but decidedly profound - it's what my blog wishes it could be if i were less verbose and more clear :) Other than trying to summon myself to not vomit again, I made this post for a reason - this show has had one of those dramatic endings...every 15 minutes since the beginning of the epiosde and I - I am annoyed.

I'm really starting to wish that there was someone around to hold my hair and bring me 7UP and soda crackers and advil.

Papa Bear

Portions of this post are brought to you by extreme sleep deprivation and copious amounts of coffee that would stop a 400lb, tattooed, cocaine addicted, trucker in his tracks.

If Stephen hates the Bear Agenda so much, why does he call his LAS (Lord and Savior), Bill O'Reilly, Papa Bear? A slight anachronism I dare say.

I'm sorry, there is nothing on television on Saturday mornings but Gardening with Joe, Gardening with Jerry and Gardening with Jerry and Joe. I'm not the same without my C-SPAN.

Season Finale

I will not blog before coffee. I will not blog before coffee. I will not blog before coffee.

Technically, is it blogging before coffee if you haven't slept since the last time you had coffee even if you have passed go - sans $200?

It's not much of a rule, it's not much of a routine but I can't help it. Last night was the season finale of my favorite show. I love the Gilmore Girls. I really really do.

6.22 started off so well - it really did. As i'm watching it again now, I'm remembering the promise I felt when the Alfred Stieglitz reference appeared quickly followed by the words "at least i'm clothed in these" because the implication of unclothed behavior from my beloved Logan is always something that inspires hope but, alas, disappointment. They did manage to hold off on Alexis Bledel attempting tears until the end of the episode - she didn't start crying until the last few seconds of the show and she was doing it in a very "sleepy" way because he'd just woken her up but it was nevertheless bad and I was totally unprepared for it. There wasn't enough popcorn.

As it were, the alleged nudity was the highpoint of an episode that threw more girly lines Logan's way than Lorelai's and by the end of the episode had her and Luke on very shakey ground - something that I find sad in an odd way. On the one hand, Luke and Lorelai is the ship that this series has been pumping since literally episode one of the first season so i'm inclined to think that it's a total bummer it's not going so well right now but, on the other hand, I couldn't be happier that we're hopefully able to move beyond pompus Luke and sad, lonely, depressed, wounded Lorelai. It's gloomy and I don't need anymore gloom in my life as I provide my own quite well.

To boot, as we fade to black until August on the story that is Luke and Lorelai - the eternal ship - we see GG - Christopher's daughter - running into what one can only assume is Christopher's bedroom to find Lorelai, eyes open - top clearly off - laying in Christopher's bed. This will be, not the first, but the second time Christopher has screwed things up for Luke and Lorelai and I suspect the third or fourth throughout the series that he has swooped in and destroyed Lorelai's lovelife and whatever it is that we were all rooting for at the time. Max, Jason - oh yes, we even rooted for Jason - and now Luke.

Why do I care? Why is that I would rather the series followed Logan to London - because Alexis Bledel can't act and Lorelai won't stop skulking. The only characters worth watching are Scott and Matt (Luke and Logan respectively) and, while they have signed for season seven, I am nevertheless concerned that the series will take it's final dunk into the toilet bowl if the new writers (yay!) don't find a way to get Logan out of London. He's too pretty to end up with British teeth - seriously. I suspect it would never be the same if anything were allowed to impact that gravely voice of his. Oi with the poodles!

For those of you who didn't watch or don't download, here are a few of the cute quote highlights because TVTwiz will be a while with the transcripts I suspect and my quotes document is pushing 50 pages with a vengence.

No, you talked and I disagreed and then you laid down your ruling. [paraphrased]

RORY: Oh, I can avoid people with the best of them. LOGAN: I didn't say people, I said Huntzberger’s.

LUKE [To Taylor]: How interested do I look in talking to you?

Bohemian people - can I have your attention please?

Can you say 'BTK?'

Ooh, staying out all night? Anything fun and illegal?

Half the time people talk to me I’m thinking of Baryshnikov

Stop imagining me in tights

I can hear my soul dying.

I know how mad you get when I bring ICP with me.

Starving. Would love a drink.

OH my god! It's the WMD's! Call the President!

Remember when you wanted a personalized license plate - this building is so much better!

Enjoy her while her legs are still short enough that she can be overtaken

What the hell kind of spy school did you go to?

This is how all great divorces start!

I don't think there is a technical term for that yet

Voices in your head, totally normal - right? There are only two that speak English

You're going to break into a chorus of chim-chiminey any minute aren't you?

Gerta, did I fire you?

There is no one worse at communication than my mother - except my father and my extended family.

I love that I’ve found one more thing to blame my mother for!

I don’t like Mondays but unfortunately they come around eventually.

Mental Illness

From time to time, I get accidentally introspective. The last thing I try to do during my time alone is get introspective. Sure, that might seem odd but, for the most part, I prefer to avoid thinking about all of those things that are wrong with me and my life. If I were to indulge that need, I’d probably end up in a place many a proud self-loather has landed…and the clean-up is just so damn messy. Still, occasionally, it seems to happen without my knowledge or consent. Sitting quietly reading a news clipping or watching Ted Kennedy make a fool of himself and WHAM, a fact of life has stricken you out cold. Today, I hit quite a few.

I am hesitant to admit this. I’ve made it through four or five almost-posts and deleted them before they made their way to “Preview” because I realized that posting them would only open a can of worms I don’t want opened – too many misunderstandings and a window into information and assumptions I don’t want. I’m still not sure it’s a wise idea, but at least given my current, semi-nauseous state, I’m inclined to think that the lenses you’re all wearing might take on a tint that fairs favorably for me not losing my mind with any of you in the next few weeks. I accidentally landed face first in a conversation about Colin and Sean and, as is want to happen when I’m discussing Colin – the event, not the individual – with a female, the darts started flying almost immediately and the sick need to defend him surfaced. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not new – even in the immediate days following I defended him with what energy I had after defending myself and that is sign of a psychosis I wouldn’t even ask Aaron Beck to explain. Everyone knows by now that I’ve reached a peace with him I didn’t necessarily anticipate would come – I promised not to run him over with my car as long as he promised not to cross any lines…like the ones that would involve him talking to me. Gracious, no :P That’s not the point – it might be a new admittance to some of you but how much I care is really limited. Alas, I am not as cold-hearted and cruel as I wish I was (or as any of you think) and, yes, it’s quite a bit disappointing. The point is that, midway through having this discussion with her, painting the pretty picture and trying to issue a defense which I suspect is less faulty than I sometimes need to believe, I was faced with the lonliness that is very familiar now. I miss him. Why tonight was so difficult I don’t know, but there I sat, clicking around because I knew if I clicked long enough, I’d find a post on someone’s blog that I could get inside of enough – that could take me back to a moment that could make me loathe him again. I got there, no problem – the difficult details aren’t hard to drag out, no matter how deeply I bury them – but I find it’s somewhat sick to realize how fully we all rely on our loathing.

When you can’t deal with something – you hate it – simple human nature. We rebel against the things we know are right for a hundred reasons. Sometimes, like now, we do it to restore strength in a conviction. Others, we do it to avoid a reality. Whatever the case may be, each and every single one of us needs hate. You hate your boss to avoid dealing with the fact that you made a mistake last Friday afternoon. You hate your employees to prevent yourself from admitting that you trained them poorly. As children, we hate our parents because, as much as we believe we know better, we know there are situations we really can’t deal with – and we hate them as adults for not preparing us for those circumstances. We hate the government for getting too big and meddling in our lives, and we hate it in others for not regulating more heavily to avoid taking responsibility for our own lives – research, discipline… In the end, it seems that hate is always a way to avoid responsibility.

Just when that subject was getting dangerously close to ending in the core of everything – the “P” word – I double-clicked my digital pacifier and queued up a few episodes of Firefly. Tonight felt like a firefly kind of night. Besides, Nathan Fillion as Malcom Renolyds is always yummy and River is just fun. It never made sense until just now, why I watch this show when I miss King, but 13 episodes of it are the first things I watched when I got the news that he died. 13 episodes, straight through, without interruption. Anywhoo, I made it all the way to 88 before the anesthetization started to really take effect, but by what would have been 72 , another interesting fact surfaced. This one isn’t particularly new either, it’s something that I’ve known about myself for ages – I attach to actors in the role of their characters and, even more strongly than that, I attach to my concept of a character.

Another sickness, and another one without proper medication (though I bet if I took enough Xanex, I wouldn’t connect quite so fully.) The DVD extras on Firefly destroyed my love of the series for nearly three months all from one comment Nathon Fillion had the audacity to make – first, because words were put to why I was attracted to that and every other character I’ve ever fallen for and then, too quick to follow, because those reason were dashed by the statement that actor had no grasp of character. The quote was something to the end of “I’m not that hopeless, tortured man Malcolm Renolyds is.” A few hours soul searching and, well look at that, what a pervasive set of personality traits? Sad. Predictable and overwhelmingly ill.

What’s sadder is I realized, it’s just me. I have no favored actors – no one who could convince me to see a movie. Mike will give pretty much any Tom Hanks movie a chance, unless it’s You’ve Got Mail!, but my mother is the only person in the entire world who liked that movie and she only watches it for Meg Ryan. I can’t watch a Robin Williams movie unless he plays a generally well disposed character with a core of sadness somewhere within. The saving grace of Keanu Reeves is that so much time passed between Bill & Ted and Siddartha and A Walk in the Clouds and The Matrix I can scarcely consider it the same actor – but tell me he’s in a horrid band and I’m disgusted. I had a similar relationship with one Shane West. Bring the movie he did with Mandy Moore within 50 feet of me and I swear, I’ll scream harassment, because I won’t watch it and as long as I don’t watch it he can remain the irresponsible rocker he played a few years ago in Once and Again and he’s playing all over in ER and everything will be a-OK. The mental blocks are good, of course. Show me Matt Czuchry in Eight Legged Freaks, and my impression of Logan Huntzburger won’t be tarnished, because I built myself a wall around Logan that even the atrociously written episodes Amy has been putting out lately can’t hurt him..

What to do!

And finally, we end up at the last, somewhat amusing and sadly, completely true. It has long been said that I have a skewed and somewhat insane impression of the way that friendships were meant to be. I only know one way to have a friendship and it’s a apparently fantastically inappropriate, but it’s what I know and, ultimately, it’s what I love. I leanred to cope and I thought I was over iand yet today, in a binge to clear out some of my unanswered reviews, I thumbed through a story only to find that I’d convinced almost half the people who reviered were convinced that the married woman was having an affair with one of her husbands friends. Have I lost all grip on reality – or, more appropriately, did I never have it at all and I still don’t have as good a grasp on it as I thought.

My inclination isk, of course, to remind you that these are the same people who can’t figure out whay “Please remove the banner in your chapter summary” means, and that the vast majority couldn’t’ navigate themselves out of a sentence, let alone the complex concept of an intimate friendship, but I’m reminded that, from what I can tell, these kinds of relationships exist only on television and in the bubble which I have built for myself. Unlike the television versions, mine always seem to end badly.

Two and a half pages of rambling is enough for me at nearly 6 am. I’m going to stare at the ceiling for a little while before I decide to tackle “potential.”