the best imitation of myself

at this particular moment in time it's probably a good thing i'm on dial-up (*bites tongue*) because i was seized by this strange urge to write in song titles, all song titles, with links—of course!—to the corresponding files. and am i wrong, or is that shit a whole lot cooler in theory than in practice?

and that got me thinking about hyperlinks in general, and how brilliantly efficient they are, and how that efficiency can double as significance—you can make a hyperlink say anything you want, you can direct it anywhere, and when the name of a thing and its location are together at one point (i.e. in the link itself) and separated at another (i.e. in actual cyberspace; by definition a link points somewhere else), that's juxtaposition in action, that's expectations and possible surprises and irony waiting to happen. what do you call a thing, and what is it exactly? what's the relationship between the two? what do you want it to be? What Would René Magritte Do?

anyway, this was all brought to you by the fact that i had a good weekend, though i unfortunately did not get myself a brand-new girlfriend:

friday night i took desmond bagley's the tightrope men (my dad: "here! read this!") to dunkin' donuts and drank coffee on their couch until one a.m. while i got caught up in formulaic cold-war espionage that read like a movie. i'd asked gjstruthseeker to text me, but she was actually working at work that night, whatever. we got it together eventually.

cousin m. and i ate chinese food while gorging on television saturday night. first we finished up the last disc of boomtown: man, i am so sorry to see that show end. though i think they must have been uncertain about whether they'd be coming back for another season (they did, but only for an episode or two, at weird times, and then the network killed them off), because the finale wasn't a cliffhanger in any way—it actually resolved major arcs and gave a bunch of characters closure. ( i'm still calling these spoilers, okay? okay. )

after we'd finished with boomtown we watched AMC's hustle, which was entertaining, and then the first episode of wonderfalls, which was FANTASTIC. it's dead like me without dead people. inanimate objects sing off-key until she does what they tell her, and she has chemistry with the cute bartender and hates the human race. i can't think of anyone less likely to major in philosophy, but whatever. she's awesome. and she looks like rory gilmore's misanthrophic older sister.

if i'd had my act even a little bit together, i might have been able to meet up with malelia_honu and various other assorted cool people at barnies at two p.m. on sunday, but i hadn't. they brought their sketchbooks and ordered beverages and were, i hear, generally very cool and laid-back, and they're going to push back the time to four p.m. in the future, which will be better for so many of us.

though actually i won't be able to go this sunday either, as i'll be in BOSTON. well, technically i'll be in cambridge, but i'm sure we'll make it out to boston proper at some point(s). that is: AM GOING TO VISIT silentfire, FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY. like, i bought plane tickets and everything. i'm flying up this friday and flying back not next tuesday but the tuesday after that, giving us a week and a half. my dad was like, "oh, boston? while you're there i want you to visit this obscure relative of yours whom you have never met," and i was all, "oh, good, that sounds like something i would love to do, wtf?" and yes, i still need to call my uncle. i hear it's chilly this time of year, but i have coats and scarves, etc., and know no fear. plus we intend, i'm pretty sure, to gorge ourselves on SGA footage, and lt. col. john sheppard, aka PILLAR OF HOTNESS, will no doubt keep us, um. warm.

so in lieu of the sketching circle i went to the gym, and then met up with malelia_honu and her friend j. at the improv sunday night, as she had passes and invited us along. the emcee was amusing, but the opener (philadelphia) and the headliner (jim david) were hilarious. you know, sometimes you've been laughing so hard for so long that you think, "i might just throw up now and that wouldn't be funny at all," except that it WOULD be, because these are professionals. the improv has a two-drink minimum, so i opted for margaritas and got awesomely drunk. AWESOMELY. the kind of drunk that means i shouldn't even be thinking about mentally operating heavy machinery, but that just makes me (as mal put it) a little loopier than usual, a buzzing, cheerful, careful-where-you-fling-your-limbs drunk. other members of the audience got obnoxiously drunk and wouldn't shut up, but whatever. the comedians are professionals, and they know how to shut them down.

after the show mal wanted to throw away five dollars in the slot machines, so we did (though i think in the end it shook out to more than that), and then we hit up ben & jerry's for ice cream and sat with it outside and talked for a while, until our ice cream was gone and i was sober enough to drive myself home. mal's friend j. is a great guy—as all her friends are, she only hangs out with stand-up people, which i always feel bodes well for me—who was originally from a very small town in ohio but wears all-black now, and he giggles when he laughs. all told, a fantastic evening.

monday saw me grocery shopping for my mother and then attending step-and-sculpt with bob, a class that still kicks my ass and takes my name, but i'm working on that.

last night i watched barkley's SG-1 vid never die young and cried my eyes out. i'd downloaded it a couple of weeks ago, and i'd watched it and thought it was good, but i opened it back up last night and REALLY watched it and it just slayed me. her summary of it is "jack, death, life," which, yes, but it's so impossibly sad in theme and beautiful in execution: it's about being left behind—again and again—and how that's infinitely harder than being the one who leaves. i watched it half a dozen times in a row and kept crying. the song is by lori mckenna and it's able to make me cry all on its own, bringing the grand total of Songs That Make Me Cry to three (3). in case it got lost in all the blubber, that was a hearty recommendation for the vid and the song and the respective artists. go check them out.

(note: you can get to barkley's vid index from her livejournal sidebar; the site is password-protected, but she gives the relevant information in her vid announcements.)

for a less heartbreaking link, check out this news from language log:

WORDPLAY'S BIG SPLASH AT SUNDANCE

A couple of months ago we were pleased to bring you the news that Patrick Creadon's documentary Wordplay had been accepted into competition at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Creadon's film focuses on New York Times crossword guru Will Shortz and his cultish followers, as well as providing a glimpse into the world of competitive cruciverbalism. Now it's Sundance time, and the buzz from Park City is quite promising.

monday made it six days in a row i'd been to the gym, so i get today off, HA. i'll probably—hopefully—finish my mother's scarf and maybe start on one for myself. wild and crazy times, wild and crazy.

a. the other day—one of those days when there was no power and i went wandering around the house pining for just one rumor on any internet—i had this horrible idea for a livejournal community: a character manifesto community, along the lines of ship_manifesto. it was inspired by the fact that i adore lt. col. john sheppard of the cheesy show stargate: atlantis beyond all reason and, likely, all rational thought; and yet there are many people who either 1) are perfectly ambivalent toward him, or 2) hate him, everything he does, and everything he stands for. and not only would i love to spread the gospel of john sheppard in a forum that forces me to use examples and reasoning and sentences that don't include the symbols "<" and "3" and "!" repeatedly in conjunction with each other; i would love to read through somebody else's evidence stack for all their grievances against him.

likewise for someone like elizabeth, whom i hate: the urge to smash her face in every time she opens her mouth grows stronger with every episode, and i suppose i could marshal my arguments and articulate all the things she does that are patronizing and ineffectual and STUPID—but i also know there are people out there who are elizabeth FANS, and i ask, "dear god, WHY?" in all seriousness. i would like to know what they see.

please now tell me all the reasons why we should never speak of this again.

b. dear gjstruthseeker and silentfire,

thanks to malelia_honu's faithful listening habits, she was able to tell me—and i am able to tell you—to listen to this week's broadcast of wait, wait . . . don't tell me!, specifically the listener limerick challenge segment beginning at 10:57. you will be rewarded! or possibly you will suffer post-traumatic flashbacks! but nobody likes to suffer alone.

c. on friday malelia_honu and i ventured out into the world to see ( prime )

on the way out of the theater we made frustrated motions at the starbucks next door that was just closing up for the night. i don't understand why cafés and coffee bars that are located very close to movie theaters don't make it a point to be open for at least an hour after the last movie is over. mal and i don't even like starbucks coffee, but they were right there, and we would have paid good money for their brewed or baked goods and then sat in their establishment for an hour or so, playing cards or talking about the movie or whatever. don't people do that? instead, nobody got our business, and we came back to my house and played a rousing game of scrabble!

d. yesterday my parents went driving up and down the turnpike all day to attend first the services and then the party for the bat mitzvah of a cousin on my dad's side. "have fun!" i said. i wasn't even invited, but i was more relieved than miffed—these aren't the nice cousins. i went over to cousin m.'s house to watch an episode of boomtown and play with the kittens; then we went downtown for thai food; and then we came back and watched the next three episodes and played with the kittens some more. cousin m. slept through the middle of episode three, but she thinks i didn't notice, so that's okay.

boomtown was a television show that premiered in 2002: nobody watched it; NBC beat it into the ground with sad scheduling and eventually cancelled it early in its second season. i can see why. not because it's a bad show—dozens of bad shows are renewed every year, i haven't figured out why—and not just because it was a really, really good show (which it was), because evidence has shown that really good shows can achieve critical acclaim and popular support, though not as often as one could hope.

its downfall was that it makes you WORK. my parents asked me what it was about, and i thought for a minute before telling them it was centered around crime, because it's not exactly a crime drama, or a legal drama, or a medical and emergency-rescue drama—but it's centered around a crime, and in the course of an episode we get the story of that crime from the points of view of all the regular characters, plus the relevant players that week, e.g. the perpetrators or victims or the relatives and accomplices thereof. the regular characters include two police officers, two detectives (one of whom is played by donnie wahlberg, and i wish i were more fluently versed in pop culture so i could fully appreciate just how funny i suspect that is), a deputy district attorney, a reporter, and a paramedic. their lives are all intertwined, and they all have their own problems, which are revealed slowly and not necessarily chronologically. it's not the kind of show you can put on while you're doing your homework or the dishes, and it's not the kind of show you can pick up mid-season; it's not even the kind of show you can miss an episode or two of without getting completely lost. i think if you missed the pilot, it was already too late. it was an intricately thought-out and beautifully put-together show, and i am completely unsurprised that it didn't make it on weekly network television. it did last a full season though, so at least we have that.

e. the library called on friday to tell me i had items ready for pick-up! which i then dutifully trotted over and picked up. one of the items was the complete first series of the office. we watched the first episode during dinner, and i don't know yet if i'm more amused than horrified or vice-versa. there are more items for the picking-up tomorrow, so i ought to at least get started on paul erdős's biography. cousin m. loaned me her complete chronicles of narnia, and i mean to re-read the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe before the movie comes out; and my mom just handed me the no. 1 ladies' detective agency, which the plain dealer called "one of the best, most charming, honest, hilarious and life-affirming books to appear in years," and my mother thought it was decent, so that's on the pile too.

f. my mom and i went grocery shopping today, and in the produce section by the orange juice we ran into an old family friend, a woman who worked with my mom and whose oldest daughter is my age, though we were never terribly good friends. her youngest daughter (a junior in high school) is apparently having trouble keeping her grades up; the mom asked, not exactly seriously, i don't think, if i tutored: "AP statistics," she asked? and i said i never took statistics, that was the one thing i couldn't help with; but pre-calc i could probably do, and when she asked about "AP english with a wacky teacher?" i said, "AHAHAHA, AP ENGLISH WITH A WACKY TEACHER IS MY SPECIALTY." the caps-lock was mostly in my head. mostly.

that, of course, spurred my mother to later broach the topic of grad school and whether i'd been doing any thinking about it, a conversation from which i had to run away and hide.

g. ( grey's anatomy )

h. be honest: how many of you filled out jason's nerd search?