Watch This!

I was going to write something substantial today, possibly about Sucker Punch (not so good), but... well it hasn't happened. I've gotten a ton of work done instead, sorry. So instead, I'm gonna share with you some of the things that have occupied my time in the background in between listening to and learning about the different subgenres of electronica, which was my major occupation on the job today.

WARNING: These get more asinine as you go.

"Chernokids", a sad little animated short (via Ze Frank):

Chernokids (english subtitles) from Les Chernokids on Vimeo.

Totally lame Invisalign rap (via Tosh.0 Blog):

And lastly, in honor of this month being the 20th birthday of Street Fighter II, a scene from the Jackie Chan classic City Hunter. This is a ridiculous yet surprisingly faithful homage.

Yeah, on more than one occasion, I've considered a similar Chun-Li outfit, but it never came to be. I totally have the thighs for it, though.

k bye

Fine, Leave!

One of my coworkers is leaving today. This is upsetting news (that I've known about for 3 weeks) because a) she's really awesome and b) I'm the one who's going to be absorbing most of her work until she is replaced in approximately 1,000 years. We just had her little farewell party in which I was dragged into a ton of pictures. Thanks to technology, I was instantly made aware of how fleshy my face is starting to look in close-range flash photos. So that was... neat.

Anyway, I didn't come here to talk about my fat face for a change. I came here to express my guilt at sneaking out of the party a few minutes early and my further guilt that I am planning to also sneak out of work a few minutes early, all in the name of avoiding saying goodbye.

I hate saying goodbye. That's not uncommon, I guess, but the reason I hate it is not because it's hard, but because it's so easy.

Crap, she's coming.

Ok, that wasn't so bad. Anyway, goodbyes are one of those social conventions I've never been able to wrap my head around and have therefore always awkwardly stumbled my way through. No matter how close (or not close) I am to someone, saying goodbye never feels real to me. Somebody's staying and somebody's going, and you'll both have lives for better or for worse or possibly for exactly the same quality. Either you will stay in contact or you won't, you'll think of each other a lot or you won't... so what's it all about?

Actually, I can answer that. It's about acknowledging the role you've played in each other's lives and expressing mutual sadness that things are ending. But nothing's ending, really. At least not the important part, right?

I guess I feel that if something is coming to an end, the separation happens in the goodbye itself. All the "I'm gonna miss you!" and "Stay in touch!" and "Take care of things while I'm away!" and "I'm gonna miss you most of all!" -- to me -- create this sense of finality that doesn't need to exist. It makes me feel more separate from a person than a simple "Alright. *hugs* See ya!" would. The emotional send-off is a tactic to help your brain make a clean (and therefore easier to handle) break and prepare for oncoming changes, but since I don't feel that somebody leaving is equivalent to something ending, it seems more the cause of a separation than a necessary coping mechanism for same. The strength of stoicism to me indicates an honest belief in the permanence of a relationship despite changes in proximity and circumstance. (And that's not to say I won't miss someone after they're gone.)

But I know that everybody handles and interprets things differently, and that's where my sense of guilt comes from. I don't do the tearful goodbye, though many people genuinely need it. I'd rather say "Good luck to you, talk soon, tweet me!" and be done with it. I know that comes off as cold, but I also refuse to affect emotion for the sake of fulfilling some sort of social code because that never helps anything. Hence: avoidance, which... also never helps anything. Whatever, I'm not perfect.

Ok I'm leaving bye.

Watch This Movie

You guys, Sucker Punch. Am I the only person that cares more about this movie than pretty much everything else Hollywood is doing these days?

I read all about it in this poster. It is about girls with weapons. That's all I know. I'm sure they'll try to fit some sort of theme in there like revolution or empowerment or escaping the bonds of the boy-run media, but I'm ok not knowing about that until the event itself... which is tomorrow, wow, I just realized March is ending.

From left to right: Young Charlize Theron, Young Angelina Jolie, Young Lucy Liu, Young Cameron Diaz, Young Nicole Kidman.

I don't know what it is, but after almost 3 decades of film consumption, fine arts education, and taste refinement, there's still something about hot chicks kicking ass that fills me with boyish glee. I can't even begin to imagine the explosion of involuntary bodily functions that will accompany the release of the first Hunger Games movie.

Alright, I've also been meaning to show you that. That's a tattoo Cor de Leon revealed to me on Valentine's Day. That design is a doodle I put on something I gave to him the first month we were dating. He had it reproduced exactly, including all my little mess-ups (like along the top where the red line extends a little too far.) Anyway, it's the cutest, sweetest, most heart-warming thing anyone has ever done for me. Couldn't you just shit?

Here They Are My Pokémon!

Ok I know it's a very long time coming, but I have some wonderful news. First of all, I have started watching Xena: Warrior Princess once again. I started over from the beginning to revisit all the classic episodes, but this time I plan to proceed through Season 4 to the end. Holy crap, I just hiccuped while drinking cold coffee and it went up my nose. I feel like I'm drowning, it's disgusting, Christ you guys!

My second piece of good news is that it is finally time for you to start hearing all about my Pokémon. So obviously I am playing the new Pokémon (I got the black version), and it turns out that texting my boyfriend every time I catch a new Pokémon and telling him its type and what I named it is not satisfying enough. I need to tell the world.

I'm only a few hours into the game, and I've got maybe 25 little animals. They are all awesome. If you are playing Pokémon yourself, I would like you to not be sad that my animals are way better than yours.

Anyway, at the very beginning of the journey, you have to choose your starting Pokémon from a selection of a grass-type, a water-type, and a fire-type. In the franchise's history, fire-type Pokémon tend to be hardest to come by -- a statistic I have much shame in knowing -- so I chose the fire pig Tepig. See? Here he is:

I named my Tepig Pigglesby because "Mr. Pigglesworth" was too long for the game's 10-character limit. (n.b. 'Tepig' is the thing's breed, not its name -- I don't know why the species are capitalized.) Anyway, Pigglesby looks adorable, but he's actually an A-1 ass-kicker. I love him. Here's a comment about Tepig I left on a blog post before the game came out (yes fine I commented about Pokémon on a blog ok it was ONE TIME!):

I like Tepig for his apparent rejection of the fire-type tropes. The vague orange coloring, piddly yellow flame, and a name that's a pun on 'lukewarm' belie his evolutionary future as a fire-collared, ass-kicking luchador.

Nobody said anything about my comment probably because it encompasses their feelings so perfectly. It's true, too! Pigglesby already became a JV wrestler when he evolved into a Pignite!

That's what he looks like now. Try to restrain yourselves, ladies. Pigglesby's only interested in his career right now.

Ok now you get to meet two Pokémon that haven't left my party (i.e. the ones I use to beat up other Pokémon) because they manage to kick the ass of anything. First is the Timburr, a muscular Pokémon I named T. Dalton after the immortal star of License to Kill and the 1983 television serial Jane Eyre:

You can see the resemblance, I'm sure. The species Timburr is the only Pokémon I can think of that smacks things around with a giant plank of wood. T. Dalton has almost never lost a fight since I caught him in the bushes. The one thing I don't like about T. is that he will eventually evolve into a roided out nightmare ogre, but until that happens, he is my super sexiest team member. This is another one to stay away from, though, ladies. T. Dalton is a notorious racist, and I'm pretty sure he hates women too.

And last, my other favorite Pokémon is my Tympole, a tadpole Pokémon. I named her Topanga because she is adorable and also because in every Pokémon game I have ever played, I've had a Topanga. Here she is:

Whoops! That's not her! Sorry, I have so many files marked "topanga.jpg" on my computer that I got confused.

There we go. Topanga is a water-type Pokémon, so the best thing about her is that even though she's tiny and needs some eyebrow work, she can kick the ass of Pigglesby whenever he starts with his macho backtalk bullshit. She's an easy one to underestimate. For some reason -- even against Pokémon better than her -- Topanga will step up and tear a bitch down.

Despite her oceans of raw power, however, Topanga never forgets her favorite things about being a girl. She loves going to the beach and hanging out with her friends like at the beach and stuff and doing beach karaoke, but her favorite thing ever is wearing bikinis at the beach. Topanga has 10 bikinis. I haven't told her that one day she is going to turn into a creepy frog that no man will ever look at no matter what Disney tells her.

Ok that's enough for today I think. I'm really excited to have lost half my readership by talking nonstop about fucking Pokémon, and I can't wait to alienate even more of you tomorrow!

Gettin' Down on Friday

Alright, I feel obligated to comment on this. If you've been on YouTube this week for any reason other than looking for Japanese disaster footage (you ghouls), you've probably come across this gem of a music video.

That's Rebecca Black, one of the many teenage girls the record label Ark Music Factory (a fitting moniker) is throwing at the Internet in a desperate attempt to create yet another disposable pop star. Black answered the casting call, though I doubt this is the stardom she had in mind. The video went instantly viral and is being criticized, mocked and parodied like nothing else. I actually feel bad for the girl. She just wanted to be famous (judge the value of that goal how you will), and she just happened to fall in with a supremely untalented group of people.

I've listened to some of these Ark songs. They're all terrible, but this is the only one that's downright funny. I'd hope the ridicule they're getting would cause them to disappear and leave these girls to find their own musical voice (if indeed a single one of them cares about music at all), but you know how the Internet is. Visibility is credibility. So who knows?

The bottom line is I have been listening to this song on repeat since Monday morning. I dedicated my cereal to Rebecca Black this morning. And I really hope she comes out of this unscathed. Being a teenage girl already sucks beyond the telling of it. Rebecca, I wish you lots of good humor as well as luck in your future career. Keep up that pretty smile, and uh... stay away from the blue eyeshadow. You are definitely an autumn, not a summer.

What Big Eyes You Have

Has anyone seen that Red Riding Hood movie yet? Yeah.... it's pretty bad, but it's got some sex in the form of Max Irons and Shiloh Fernandez:

So you should probably check it out.

As teen movies about girls and werewolves go, its way better than Twilight (i.e. it's not unwatchable), but it's overacted and atrociously written with the exception of keeping a mystery who the Big Bad Wolf is (though if I knew the theme of the film was going to be "yucko teen girl sex fantasy" it would've been much more obvious). Luckily, Amanda Seyfried can still carry a film; she's definitely one of my favorite newcomer leading ladies. Ever since that pile Mamma Mia was dumped into theaters, I've trusted her to make bad movies tolerable again... though I still won't approach Dear John armed with anything less than a mute button and a fiery Channing Tatum fetish.

To conclude, people like Amanda and I look really good in blood red cloaks, and Easter's coming up so... consider getting me a gift and go see this movie for inspiration and so she keeps getting work.

Up next, I tell you all about my favorite Pokémon from the ones I've collected so far. Also, don't miss my special feature, "What in Your Bathroom Might Kill You?: The Truth About My Boyfriend's Netty Pot".

Lotus Nooooooo!

So, of course the IT department decides they need to upgrade our fully-functional e-mail system. And of course it gets remotely updated on everyone's machine except mine so I am locked out of my e-mail for two days.

And of course when they finally do update my machine, it slows to a crawl and the first thing I see in the morning is this:

Yes, computer. Thank you for being eerily clairvoyant. But tell me, O Wise Computer -- where do the problems begin?

/the old version of Lotus Notes was a fossil
//this version of Lotus Notes is a fossil from a slightly more recent geological period... let's just Google already