https://www.reddit.com/comments/axv3go/only_this_unlikely_duo_can_stop_doomsday_good/
Here is a link to a trailer for a Good Omens. It’s one of my all time favorite books by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. If you haven’t read it, YOU REALLY SHOULD. I can’t wait for this series to come out! It’s on Amazon Prime, so thankfully I can watch it on a borrowed Prime account.
David Tennant as Crowley. I love it!
I was browsing through my Feedly app this morning looking at all the feeds I am tracking with the site and I ran across a site which displayed what it would look like if a woman applied 365 days worth of makeup in one day. It was gruesome. She looked, at the end, as if her face was melting. It was downright ghastly.
Which got me thinking about cosmetics. All the things that women do to make themselves “look beautiful” and that of course started me thinking about a chain of thoughts all linked one to another and the further I went the more silly it got. Now, none of this is actually honestly an argument, but it is a inside look as to one way I carry on with coming up with these ideas.
There is a constellation of things that some women do to themselves in order to make themselves look beautiful. Now I would posit that this is a fallacy right from the get go, why can’t a person who is hygenic and unadorned not be considered honestly beautiful? Eh. So let’s carry on with all the playing blocks to this chain of thought. Women adorn themselves with various bits and pieces. High heels, shoulder pads, brightly (sometimes colored) skin applications to the face, lipstick, eye shadow, eyebrow shadow, lip gloss, mascara, and of course, all the shaving. Shave the arms, the legs, the face. Pluck pluck pluck, wax wax wax.
What have women done? They have changed their shape and their form, at least when it comes to high heels and shoulder pads they have elected to become taller and more masculine, especially with the shoulder pads. The accidental overloading of shoulder pads is where the real comedy gold lies, women can sometimes accidentally have too much shoulder and look foolish because they stop looking like women and more like… linebackers.
Oh god, is this where it’s going? Bright colors, ruddy cheeks, colorful lips, tall, pronounced shoulders, it really argubly starts to feel like a relatively unfocused gender warp. Women are attempting to become beautiful by emulating men? Does the application of cosmetics and all the other bullshit that men expect women to go through masculinize them? When you get dressed up, are you on your way to becoming a drag king?
But then there is all that shaving. Denial of body hair. Which creates a very specific condition of masculinized pre-pubescent adrogyny. Male-boy-male. That’s really troubling to think about. At the end, could it be that the entire cosmetic industry, the entire cultural structure that women have been sold, about how they should look, be thin, be hairless, be tall, have pronounced shoulders, look aggressive, look excited… where do you go when you play all this out? Where do you end up?
Do you end up with straight men fetishizing women through the lens of unfocused pedophilic homosexuality? You turn your women into lithe young men who just ran 5 miles. The sheen of sweat (shiny), the red lips, the shoulders, the hairlessness, the ruddy cheeks, the tallness…
Boys who do Girls like their Boys… Ahem.
Not that it actually is this way, but what if it was?
Ever since I arrived in Kalamazoo all those years ago I’ve always noticed this blight on East Kalamazoo Ave as you approach the downtown region. Oh God No, what the hell is that?!? Turns out it’s Bell’s Brewery. It looks like an abandoned industrial ruin, fences, the hint of brewing tanks behind filthy windows, serviced by a incredibly tiny parking lot which is marked for company use only. It’s strange because there is a big yellow sign advertising things that sound like musical acts. So there has to be an inside, obviously. It’s the dead last place I ever wanted to go mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to approach it. The outside looks awful, it’s filthy, barbed wire fences, no parking at all, and East Kalamazoo is a one way, so if you miss it, well, screw you, you’re shit out of luck.
Years went by, I assumed that there was something there, but seeing Bell’s from the outside I always figured it was a dive. A nasty wretched filthy dive. Then I started hearing about how Bell’s is supposed to be this incredible world-renowned microbrewery. Family members ask about it, where I am in relationship to Comstock, MI. It’s, uh, I suppose a town, it’s just down the street. I assume it’s a town at least. I’ve been there a few times, it strikes me as being sparser than Cortland, New York and that’s embarrassingly sparse. Oh look, they have an intersection, yay.
Then out of curiosity I bought a six pack of Two Hearted Ale thinking it was rated very highly, so why not give it a shot? Oh my god. It was the first time I hate-drank a six pack. I couldn’t endure the notion that I had wasted money on that swill (oh, and god, was it awful, unpleasant is a huge understatement) and so I put Bell’s, and all it’s delightful whatever in the list of “Maybe someday, if I find the Wardrobe to Narnia…” and it became just another blighted eyesore that contributes to the general dilapidation that is downtown Kalamazoo. It needs a good solid tornado to improve.
So, years go by and I don’t think of Bell’s at all. Every once in a while people mention meeting people at Bell’s and I always ask “Does it have an inside? I mean, something you can go into?” and they look at me funny and assume that I’m being intentionally odd. No people! I don’t think it HAS an inside! Not for people at least! And I let it lapse. Wondering whats beyond the Wardrobe to Narnia occurs to me every time I pass it heading to work on East Kalamazoo.
Anyways, between a lot of not-thinking-about-Bells and now I joined a cycling group that heads out all over the northeast part of Kalamazoo every Tuesday. A nice bunch of people, I don’t know any of them at all, but nice enough. I get my exercise in, I get a path to follow, and I get people to bike with, at least in general. After the biking they customarily go to Bell’s for beer. Cue the double-take. People who have… wait for it… **been inside**. It’s like spotting Mr. Tumnas for the first time and expecting to hear a bleat and the clickety-clack of little hooves. So today we were headed up to Gull Lake, sort of, and then back. I got home, fed my cats and then got my license and my bank card and headed out. I asked Google Maps to get me to Bell’s, thinking that it might lead me to the Wardrobe (baaah), no, not really. I ended up standing in a lot too tiny for my big SUV, festooned with industrial debris, you know, the “No way this is habitable for human beings” itty-bitty parking lot. Not for customers. I seriously doubted, even at this point, that there were customers at all. I mean, Narnia folks, Baaaah. So I turned down the next street and figured that the Wardrobe might be on the other side. But there is nothing on the other side but ugly train tracks, mostly a nasty railyard which serves the most annoying feature of Kalamazoo. A train runs through it. Annoyingly so, and poorly too. Amtrak. Yay for sitting in piss, but I digress. There is nothing back there but rotten out abandoned warehouses, potholes, the saddest field of brickwork that used to be the street, it pokes through sadly every once in a while, when the rotten out asphalt just can’t hack the punishment. That’s it! It’s just rail controls, street crossing barricades, brownfield, debris, urban decay… oh my fucking god, it’s the god damn Wardrobe to Narnia! There it is. It’s a parking lot, bigger than you think, but not marked, so maybe you’re going to be towed, maybe you aren’t. Is it for employees? Are there employees? This whole time I seriously doubted this was a real place. I honestly figured Bell’s had grown softheaded and thought that maybe the train-that-doesn’t-run-through-here-anymore may pick up kegs of their beer. Sort of like a really depressing alcoholic Polar Express. If you look very carefully, and you walk around the building you see the entrance and, well, there I stood. 15 years of living in this wretched place and I finally found the fucking entrance to a place I thought was a local urban legend. Bell’s Eccentric Cafe. Oh, hello Mr. Tumnas. Nice seeing you! Baaaah!
I wasn’t dressed for this place. I was hot and sweaty and I looked kind of disheveled. I had talked myself into going even though I don’t really have the money to spend and the gasoline I burned up getting there was a very tiny black cloud hanging over my head. The people pouring out were brightly dressed, tourists, hipster trash, and downtown people. Even walking up I felt awkward. Then I entered. There was a gentleman sitting by the entrance and he looked at me and I glanced at him. I thought it was strange that he was just sitting there, and since I didn’t think anything about it, I just walked right past him. Turns out, maybe, he was a door something or other checking patrons licenses, at least that’s the gist I got when I turned around on my way out. He didn’t seem to be important, just kind of “this guy by the door”. Honestly the thought was that maybe he was using his phone, or something else, but that I should have approached him wasn’t even anywhere in my head.
Then it hit me as I looked around. It was several things all at once, actually. There was this overwhelming social anxiety – I knew absolutely nobody at all. I didn’t know the shape of the interior, and I walked past what appeared to be a beer hall and then further down to a door that didn’t appear to be for customers, and on my way back, I happened to notice a beer garden patio on the other side. I peered through the window and saw elderly people and strangers. Giant swaths of strangers, strange faces… then I felt an overwhelming urge to escape. I had to go. I didn’t have the money, I didn’t know if the biking group that I was supposedly going to join were actually there, and even if I did, I only know the owner of the establishment and only just first names. I was weighing everything and I felt like I really didn’t belong there. I was woefully under-dressed, I was running a risk of drinking beer on a empty stomach which would have really complicated my trip back home, plus the notion that I wasn’t going to really get out of there without spending $30 to $50 for beer I don’t really care for and people I don’t know in a building that really might have been Narnia. Baaaah!
I’m not a bar person. I really don’t like big group things surrounded by strangers, and I only put up with those situations because I don’t want to be that guy that clogs up the works for everyone else when they want to have fun – but it’s never really fun for me. It’s expensive. It’s nasty. It’s dirty. It’s smelly. Oh god, I’d rather just flee. And so I did. I fled from Bell’s. I didn’t have the heart to even make eye contact with the guy at the front door. Maybe he was a bouncer, maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was just sitting there – who the hell knows? Exit was the only thing I wanted and I walked back to my car, cursing the burnt fuel to get me to this boondoggle of an experience and thankful that I decided against “making the best of it” and staying. It would have been really awkward. Throw alcohol on top of awkward and I might as well be an albatross. Squawk!
So, I’ve been to Bell’s, er, Narnia. Yes, it’s probably a nice place. I’m sure it’s wonderful and I’m sure I am missing out on something, but in the end, I’m okay with that. People who like beer seem to regard it highly, and also in that, good for them. I don’t think it’s for me. 15 years and finding it finally has scratched off an item on my “Whatevs” list, so for that, a tepid yeh.
I can’t really afford the place. I can’t afford their beer. I can’t afford the gasoline it takes to get there and back and I don’t know a soul in the place. So, we’ve learned where the Wardrobe is and at least now I know it’s not for me. At least I can go back to my comfortable notions of before, that it’s just a run-down industrial pit and there is nothing on the other side but filthy blighted railroad.
Baaah.
While sitting enjoying some nice tea, in this case Chocolate Chai Pu-erh tea at our local tea shop I had my iPad and my Bluetooth keyboard set up and I’ve been wandering through my Drafts-stored blog-prompts looking at things to write about. While writing about my Nook HD a pair of ladies approached me and asked me about the setup they saw me using. What it all was and how much was it and how did it work. So I gave them an impromptu sales pitch for Apple technology, the iPad, the Smartcover, and the Bluetooth Keyboard. They asked why I was using a physical keyboard and I confessed that I type a little too fast for the processor in the iPad to keep up. When I try to write The, the t and h are usually missed because my taps are too fast and I end up with E. Almost always. So I use a physical keyboard because that can keep up with my typing speed. They were impressed and wandered off to their table to enjoy their chocolate treats.
I was marveling at being an Apple Store employee without of course being one, yay for Apple evangelism (!) and I got back to work writing. Then another lady came up to me with her Kindle Fire in her hands and she asked me for help. Something about sitting here with a tablet and keyboard marks me as “Mr. Technical Support” and her problem was as she described to me “My Kindle says I have too many windows open. I went to Best Buy and the Geek Squad guy was no help, I was wondering if you knew how to fix this problem?” and I smiled at her and looked at her Kindle Fire. It’s worth noting that I’ve never really ever touched a Kindle Fire before, I don’t know what it’s system is like (I assume it’s a variant of the Android OS, maybe) and I invited her to sit down next to me while I looked at her Kindle Fire device. I suggested the best path would be to open up a browser on my iPad and bring up Google and search Google for “kindle fire too many windows open” and see if there was anyone else who had this problem and how they fixed it. As it turns out, there is no clear way (from what I could see) to actually close apps in a Kindle Fire. Now, it’s important to note that I’ve never actually touched a Kindle Fire and I’m not actually a part of Amazon’s Technical Support team, and all I really have is cleverness and Google. I found the solution for her and showed her how to hard reset her Kindle Fire. It’s like it is for any tablet device, hold down the power button and keep holding it until the device is forced off and then press the power button again to turn it on. Once her Kindle Fire came back on I asked her to try to bring the error on again and she opened an eBook on her Kindle Fire and said “It should show the error now… wait, it’s working! You’re my hero!”
And now she knows how to fix her own problem with her Kindle Fire.
Apparently I am “Mr. Technical Support Guy” after all. I should wear a shirt and have a Square reader and take credit cards for my services. $10 for Answers. LOL.
Turns out blogging with the iPhone has a hidden trap. Turn the phone to landscape orientation and you run the risk of accidentally sending your blog post and then you have to mop up in the WordPress app. Duuuur.
Then you remember you have Drafts app and smack your forehead with how dumb you were in not using it in the first place!
Fixed that… 😉
PAD 3/13/2013 – Silver Screen
Take a quote from your favorite movie — there’s the title of your post. Now, write!
“I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!”
Without a doubt my favorite movie of all time is Airplane. Anyone who knows me really should watch and learn because that movie is one of the best and funniest movies that has ever been made. There are so many kinds of comedy expressed in that movie that it makes me giggle uncontrollably even just recalling some of them. The quote from Lloyd Bridges, playing McCroskey is just one of many, but it’s one of the most useful especially for me at work. There are times when work tries me so much that the escalating substance abuse lines that McCroskey says during the movie accurately reflect much of my emotional state of disbelief that I endure while at work. Whenever I’m feeling down, or when happiness just seems a little out of reach I’ll play this movie for myself and I always feel so much better afterwards.
I wrote before about how blogging is kind of like therapy. So are the movies, especially this movie. The ability to laugh is essential and laughter is much like a hug from a loved one. To quote one of the best lines from one of my favorite TV series, which is Pushing Daisies, a hug is like an emotional heimlich maneuver. It grabs you and helps you eject awful feelings and makes life better. Laughing while hugging? Why, yes! Better than any drug!
What was your favorite book as a child? Did it influence the person you are now?
I can't really remember which book was my favorite when I was growing up, but when I first saw this PAD and started trying to remember, the book that came to mind was this one: Mr. Chatterbox
So, I'll just leave this PAD here, and let people who know me bask in the perfection of my choice from my past. As for whether or not it influenced me as an adult, again, just going to leave it here. LOL
You receive a call from someone an unexpected person. Who is it, and what is the conversation about? Go!
This happens to me more frequently than I care for. My work number is identical, if you transpose two numbers in the exchange part of the number with the city jail. I get at least two calls a week from random citizens of Kalamazoo asking about hours, or the status of someone in detention. I always take the high road and tell them that they have misdialed and reached Western.
I want to, I won't, but I want to pull a horrible prank on these wrong callers. “Yes, when is John Doe getting out of jail?” and my response should be “Oh, John Doe you say? We're going to hang him in Bronson Park at Noon today. Thanks!” and hang up.
Much like Johnny unplugging the landing strip lights in Airplane! or pulling the fire alarm paddle at work, it's something you secretly want to do but never will because you just aren't that bad 🙂
Lesson here? Be careful how you dial the damned telephone! 🙂
Louisiana, USA: GOP Rep Wants to Legalize Employment Discrimination Against Gays.
I’ve been to Louisiana. What value does it have? There is some economic concern there, as the Mississippi River empties there, it’s where a lot of gasoline is refined and shipped across the country. I doubt that would attract many people to that state, let alone gay people. What else does Louisiana have?
All in all, I can see why everyone is beating a path to Louisiana to bask in their delightful wonderfulness.
Does a messy home (or office) make you anxious and cranky, or is cleaning something you just do before company comes over?
There is a minimal amount of clutter that I can contend with. I don’t keep my house immaculate all the time, and there are certainly phases where I feel like the house has devolved into a mess and it has to be addressed. Quite often it’s when family comes to visit, but they are more of an excuse than anything else. I don’t want to be seen living like a slob, even though I don’t, not really. It’s impossible to say that I’m not at least a little bit slovenly but I will say that I’m at least functionally organized at home. The only bits that make me cranky are when there is too much obnoxiousness all in one spot – a giant heap of dirty clothes strewn about and dirty socks in random places, for example. It doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does that gets to me. The solution is snap easy, just gather everything up and throw it into the washing machine. Dirty is clean, at least in a bin, and it just takes a wee bit to put order to that chaos.
One thing that I will admit to is that a messy or disorganized kitchen does drive me to distraction. I’m fine with making do with what you have, but things should be with other things that are like them, the wooden spoons need to be together, the spatulas need to be together and the knives need to be together. I don’t think I’m too pushy about these things, but they do get to me.