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Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Bathrobes kick ass.


Fuck clothes.

If you are my boyfriend or one of my college friends, you know that I am not a huge fan of getting dressed when it is not absolutely necessary. And the only time that it is absolutely necessary is when I leave the house.

I mean, they’re fun to put on when I have to put them on. But unless I need it for warmth (note: I do not presently need it for warmth), I see no reason to cover up. I living in the fucking mountains. No one is peeping on me. I frequently water my plants in my underwear, and I’ve gotten approximately zero pushback on this thus far.

If I haven’t returned from work? If I’m not “entertaining”? Fuck it, I’m naked. Bodies are awesome. My body is awesome. There is nothing more comfortable than fucking skin.
And the perfect accessory to nudity on a weekday morning is a bathrobe. I haven’t had mine for a few months because I’m a lazy jackass who couldn’t be bothered to dig it out of a pile. But this weekend I cleaned it, and oh what a good decision that was. I’ve been in it (or nothing) pretty much about 75% of the time since.

Bathrobes kick ass. Remind me never to lose mine again.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Really, I don’t get the big deal about sandwiches

All Star Sandwich Bar: Falafel Burger, Tomatoes, Onions, Sprouts, Cucumbers and Tahini on Whole Wheat. Scanned by Weekly Dig for Roflcon at Cambridge, Mass
Man, fuck sandwiches.

For whatever reason, people on the internet love them some sandwiches. Jessica from Go Fug Yourself talks of them frequently. I remember the first time I heard about Twitter, it was framed as “hey there’s this service where people make short updates about sandwiches mainly!”

Yes, different varieties and combinations of vegetables, meat, condiments, and frequent though not necessary cheese between two slie of bread is quite a thing on the Internet. Mayo, turkey, lettuce, tomatoes, beef, provalone, pickles, mozzerella, mustard, onions, between rye, wheat, sourdough. Et cetera. Okay, I’m getting the point. Lots of good stuff, lots of different stuff.

Perhaps I’m unfairly prejudiced against sandwichs. But they’re just not that tasty to me. They get soggy, and spill out the sides, and just don’t come out right in my mouth.

Homemade: Fresh Turkey, Sprouts, Swiss Cheese, Purple Onions On a Baguette.

See? The fuck am I going to take all those damn sprouts in my mouth at once? No mustard or anything, shit.

I just don't get it. All the component parts are there. Love meat. Love veggies. Love love love bread. Love condiments (particularly mayo). But together, it's just not that tasty to me.

I’m not saying I can’t get down with a grilled cheese every so often. But most of the time? No, thanks, stuff-in-bread. Whatever, sandwiches.

All photos from scanwiches

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Internalized sexism and cleaning.

Image: Soap on a tub. Useless, guilt-inducing soap.

Y'all know that I am not averse to attributing things to THE SEXISM/PATRIARCHY/KYRIARCHY IF I'M FEELING ALL INTERSECTIONAL. And normally, if I'm feeling guilty about something that LADIES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, I attribute it to good old internalization.

But right now I am feeling guilty about my messy-ass home as my boyfriend tidies, and that has nothing to do with internalized anything, except maybe laziness. It's nothing to do with "why can't the MAN clean up once in a while?" It's more of a "why can't RMJ pick up after herself like a competent adult once in a while?"

My boyfriend is presently bustling around like a busy fucking bee, picking shit up and asking me where the shit I've left around the house goes (to which I shrug and say "I don't know, I'm writing."). He's doing his damn part. He wants to end this mess. He wants to walk on clean floors and he wants it now, and for some mysterious reason, he expects that I'm going to eventually help.

This pattern, of me being a lazy jackass while some lovely Virgo cleans shit up around me, is long-standing. It dates back to childhood, when my mother would ask me to do some simple task like sort the recycling while she cooked dinner and mopped and set the table and loaded the dishwasher. Being lazy and entitled, I would sigh and moan and do whatever it was I did to procrastinate before I dicked about on the Internet, pretty much until the milk bottles and Kix boxes and multitudes of Diet Pepsi, known in our home as "DP" (haaaaaaaaaaaa) fell out the container.

I mean, I have a legitimate reason (note: I don't feel like it is basically my reason) to not help my partner out. I'm not just being a lazy partner (note: I am actually kind of lazy, no lie). See, he put on Metallica, and cleaning to Metallica gives me a goddamn headache. I want to clean to Lady Gaga.

I know I bitch a lot about cleaning. Clearly I hate it. Clearly nothing is going to make me like that shit. Cleaning sucks. I rarely get satisfaction from it (because, well, I rarely do a good job at it). But Lady Gaga helps! It's nice to be able to shake one's booty to distract one's self from the fucking pile of dishes in front of one.

Ugh, and there is Pokerface. Time to go do some fucking dishes.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Eloise fucking Hawking: fucking time travel, she knows how it works. (Fuck).

Of all the things that the Lost finale did not wrap up, I am most fucking pissed about Eloise Hawking. I love Eloise Hawking.

Image description: A completely badass older white woman, Eloise Hawking, with fierce white hair tells some likely-time-traveling douchebag what the fuck is up

That lady knew what the fuck was going on at all times, and on a show that basically can't write women well and where mothers in particular are evil and crazy, that was pretty fucking refreshing. She embodied mysterious sci-fi Lost at its best. Eloise is symbolic of the lost (HAHA I AM SO GOOD AT PUNS) promise of the sci-fi-free sixth season. She was the only one who understood fucking everything. Whatever happened, she basically reacted with "CALLED IT!"

I mean, the lady fucked shit up, don’t get me wrong. She’s not exactly my role model (note: she kind of is my role model, as far as women on Lost go). Like, she did some Jedi mind-trick on Desmond where she made him not propose to Penny, which is sad and all but also fucking cool. She cold shot her own son, which sucks and all. (but it was awesome when Widmore whined and she was like "fuck you I shot my son").

You want to talk sacrifice, Jack "It's Raining On My Face" Shephard? Or John "Destiny, fucking DESTINY" Locke? Eloise Hawking killed her son, raised him to be a doomed fucking genius, then sent him back just to make sure she would shoot him again.

Christ, Eloise was so fucking awesome. She told people where to go and what to do and how long they had to do it, and when they (read: Ben and Fucking Jack) whined about it, she was like "well, shit, I did my fucking part of the work, chop chop." She swam through caves with nuclear bombs. That is not a fucking exaggeration.

Eloise Fucking Hawking was a bullshit-detecting machine - a quality most characters on this show (like Jack "This Is A Totally Normal Island, Yay Science" and later "Sure, Let's Blow Up This Atomic Bomb" Shephard or John "Yeah, Let's Trust The Con-Man Who Stole My Liver" Locke) lacked in pretty much every situation. But that lady? She knew when people were from the future when even Richard fucking Alpert was like “Oh, US Army? Right this way!” She was the only fucking person who seemed like she knew what the fuck was going on in season five. Fucking time travel, how does it work? Eloise fucking knows.

That's the thing about fucking Eloise Hawking. She knows what the fuck is happening with this Lost bullshit. She fucking knows. Better than fucking Jack, or fucking Hurley, or even fucking Jacob's stupid ass. Eloise Hawking? Has got a handle on this time-travel situation.

Eloise fucking Hawking is so fucking awesome that she could have save the sixth fucking season. As I've said before, with less foul language, I liked the finale but shit where was the fucking science this season. In one fucking scene - one fucking scene - I bet Eloise could have explained the whole goddamn mess. She could have been like "look, Jack" or "look, Hurley" or "look, Desmond" or even fucking "look, Charles" and just laid shit out. Yeah, maybe it would have been a little exposition heavy, but Finoula fucking Finnigen could pull it the fuck off, no matter how fucking shitty and clunky the dialogue was (and it would have been hella shitty and clunky).

Or you know, if Darlton wanted to be awesome (note: they don't), they could give her her own fucking episode. God. Think about how awesome it would be to have an episode about that badass fucking women with all the badass fucking women who played her. She could have faced off with Jacob and been like “look, asshole, I need some answers right fucking now.” And Jacob could have explained things to a point where they made sense beyond “hey guys, God is cool, but we’re all going to die, so, here’s heaven”. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be at least as good as Ab Aeterno and it would at least go beyond the magic fucking light cave in explaining what the fucking show was about.

Okay, I've realized that from the amount of time I've written "cold somehow fucked up poor sweet Daniel Faraday" that she's not a great mother. Yeah. You know what, fine, yeah, she was a kind of shitty mom. And she kept Des and Penny apart. Yeah, that sucks. Every character on Lost does shitty things.

But you know what else? Most every woman on the show to be a shitty fucking abandoning-ass mother in one way or another (even if it’s not really their fault, WHATEVER WHATEVER that’s for another post). Why would Eloise be any fucking different? And you know what else? Some women have more fucking important things to worry about than being a good mother. Being a good mother is fucking awesome. I had an awesome mom, and I one day hope to be an awesome mom.

But Eloise fucking Hawking had more than Daniel Fucking Faraday to fucking worry about. Bitch had to prioritize. You know what's more important than Daniel fucking Faraday? Two of her other little responsibilities - namely space and fucking time.

Vincent: the best thing about Lost

So my next post is pretty critical of Lost and how it treats Eloise. And I’ve written a lot recently about ways in which Lost sucks and does a disservice to its characters.

And it does. But there’s one character that I think they handled beautifully from start to finish in Lost. And not coincidentally, it’s the character that I have never heard a complaint about from the fanbase.


That’s right. Vincent.

It’s hard to go wrong with a dog this sweet. But Darlton did more than just give us a cute puppy to coo over. They used Vincent as a character and as a plot device pitch-perfectly throughout the entire run of the show.

Vincent the character was someone we, the fans, deeply cared about throughout the show. We cared about his relationship with Walt – Cara cited Walt’s farewell to him in the season one finale as one of the most moving moments of the show. He helped Shannon before she was killed (for loving Sayid). I cared about what happened to them as the human characters skipped through time and space. He made episodes that featured him better because I was always happy to see Vincent when he showed up. One common refrain I heard throughout the often discouraging sixth season was “More Vincent!” And as the show waned, it turned into a beg – a wish for a bright spot in the disappointing winding down of the show.

Vincent was also used brilliantly as a literary device. He was used to lead people into the Jungle of Mystery for believable reasons. Because, everybody loved him, who wouldn’t save Vincent? He was an emotional or comic relief for many scenes, a way to easily but effectively punctuate scenes without overdoing it.

And Vincent’s placement in the opening and closing shots of the show was just unbelieveably beautiful and perfect, and multifaceted. First off, dogs are cute and make everything +1. Furthermore, at the beginning of the show, it created just the right amount of mystery and suspense. At the end of the show, Vincent, the developed character we cared about, gave the show its last strong punch of emotional resonance. Furthermore, it reflected the parallelism of the beginning and ending shots of the show.

The sixth season made a lot of mistakes, but its closing on-island shot was an excellent choice that emotionally redeemed many of my qualms as I watched the show end in tears. And Vincent was the reason that shot, and to some extension the show, worked as well as it did.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Quit whining, Netflix.

Oh, whatever, Netflix. Your whining has grow tiring and predictable:

The Internet is perfectly fine. The internet is fantastic. I have like two dozen tabs with like gif files open and the internet is fast as shit:


The Internet, basically, is much more competent than your inconsistent ass, Netflix, so enough with the fucking theatrics.

(I'm sorry, Netflix, please come back. I love you and your affordability and huge library. I didn't mean it, I was just having a moment, you know how I get when I don't have my X Files or King of the Hill. You're such a good video delivery service, I've never had a video delivery service like you. You let me write about all my favorite stupid shows. When I make it to the big time, I'm going to take you shopping and buy you lots of stuff.)