So, hailpoetry and I saw 'Failure to Launch' tonight (not our choice of film).

We both agree it's a terrible movie, and it got us off on the subject of romantic comedies in general, which, uh, I'm not a fan of, as a genre. Ultimately, I dislike them because the conflict necessary for a cohesive story generally involves people behaving in absolutely appalling ways but, at the end of the movie, they're forgiven and love triumphs over all. We spent a while trying to think of a romantic comedy in which this isn't the case-- that is, where people don't behave like utter jackasses. The closest we came to one was 'The American President' in which the bad behavior, as it were, isn't directed towards anyone, nor is it malicious. 'Notting Hill' also scored points for the lack of maliciousness. Oh, and maybe 'Pretty Woman', aside from the whole paying-for-sex thing (Jason Alexander doesn't count-- the villian's supposed to be a jackass).

I'm at a loss to find more, so I ask you, dear neglected flist, to help me come up with romantic comedies where the characters behave like decent human beings.

Am I the only one in the online world who didn't love Institutional Memory?

( In Case of Spoilers )

The internet's been down for a few days here in Teh 'Ville. Or at least in this particular house in Teh Knobs. Anyway.

It's working again today, sort of. The modem works. An ethernet cable attached to the cable modem delivers internet. The router? Not so much. My battery just died on the phone with Belkin trying to fix it. I have one idea as to what the problem may be, which requires waiting for onthestairs to get home, as it means using her computer and I have no idea what her Window's password is.

I want to bang my head against large and heavy objects. That, or consume large quantities of chocolate and nicotine to comfort me. Somehow, I see a run across the street for ice cream in the very near future.

In an hour, my cable box and cable modem are returning to Comcast, which means that until I hit a hotel tomorrow night, I will be without internets.

I have eMails that I know I need to return, but I just don't have time to do it today. I have comments to reply to but again, no time today.

If anything fun, urgent, or otherwise requiring attention comes up and you know the number, call.

Wheeeee, moving!

So, I went to Good Will to drop off a bunch of old clothing that I don't want to move with me. I parked at about 4:55 or so, got out of the car, etc. ,etc., etc. And the woman started SCREAMING at me that their donations center closes at 5 and I can't leave things there so I should come back tomorrow.

Um, excuse me? A) It's not even 5 yet, B) I'm trying to GIVE YOU STUFF FOR FREE. Don't yell at me for that. Also, don't expect me back tomorrow, you're not the only Good Will/Thrift Store in the area. Tomorrow I will be dumping a truckload (well, small SUV load thanks to my dad being out of town and me having his car keys) at Out of the Closet, a thrift store that donates its proceeds to AIDS research. Honestly, I prefer to give to them, but they're a LOT less convenient (twice as far away, rough parking situation).

Am I the only one who thinks that when you try to give something to charity you shouldn't be greeted by a screaming woman telling you to get out?

Yeah, Good Will Industries can suck my cock.

It's rare that something happens and I stay angry about it for more than a brief moment. I've gotten really good at working through anger and getting down to the emotion behind it. This isn't one of those times. Maybe it's because I managed to stay so very much in control through everything, but the fact is, I'm more angry now than I was yesterday, and the more I think about it, the more angry I get.

I didn't fucking do anything. I held my tongue to tried and keep the peace and for what? To be thrown out of the home of a supposed friend at two in the morning because they were angry with someone else? To spend what was supposed to be my fucking vacation being lied to in an attempt to justify insane and inappropriate behavior?

I did nothing wrong, except maybe show up at all. Forgive me for that. Forgive me for fucking believing it when someone told me they wanted me there. Forgive me for thinking that spending time with my friends would be fucking fun.

I am not the person you want me to be. I am not the person you think I am. I've just gotten really fucking good at faking it. I'm tired of faking it. I'm tired of falling into traps in an attempt to keep the peace. I'm tired of safe places turning into nightmarish scenarios that require escape.

I can't decide if I want to hit things or just curl up into a ball and cry, but the more I think about it, the more angry I become.

Things that suck:

Waking up at 7 in the morning to go to a meeting at work which lasts all of an hour. Seems the Bay Area market of the restaurant chain I work for is being bought out from the Giant Corporation that owns us by a (relatively) smaller franchise company. The best part of this? The buyout isn't final until after I leave. So I got up at 7 in the morning for No Reason Whatsoever.

The general consensus after the meeting was that everyone was pissed about having to get up and go to a meeting about it, rather than simply getting a letter attached to our paychecks. Also cause for pissyness was the idea of needing to wait for not one but two W-2s next year before filing taxes.

On the upside, I don't have to worry about oversleeping and missing my grandfather's funeral.

My grandfather died at 5:18 this evening. He was home, surrounded by family. He's survived by four children, twelve grandchildren, and four great grandchildren. He was eighty years old.

I'm surprisingly fine with it. I held his hand, said my goodbyes, and held my mother while she cried. I'm glad it's over and that he didn't suffer. He went the way he wanted to.

Big hugs to sternel, onthestairs and swedishfrogs for listening to me talk, cry, laugh, and providing adequate distraction over the last few days. You guys are a most excellent lifeline.

So, I went over to my aunt's house to borrow her digital camera to take pictures of furniture, etc. to put on Craigslist. I mentioned that I wanted to buy one before I move, but that for now I needed to sell stuff to get money to buy one. She was quiet for a minute and said "You know, I have a proposition for you. I want you to have mine as a going away present. I use only use the one on my Treo anyway."

It's not the Soshi Suntac RTS-3, but rather a Pentax Optio s40. But hey. It's a 4 megapixel digital camera. It does video.

Squeeeee!

So, I'm horribly indecisive (as most of you know), but have decided to take advantage of the $1,500 dollars of credit I still have with Dell and buy a digital camera. Mind you, I have no interest in spending $1,500 on a camera. Hell, I didn't spend that much on my computer and 60 gig iPod combined. Anyway.

The problem I have with this grand plan?

I know next to nothing about digital cameras. The only digital cameras I've ever used were a my aunt's, (set it up for her but never actually took a picture), my ex's 35-bucks-off-eBay-piece-of-shit, and my mom's, which she bought from a photographer friend. It was an SLR and retailed for about $900, I believe. She paid like, uh, $300.

I know more megapixels=better. I know I want a point-and-shoot camera based on price. And that's about it.

So my question, dear friendslist, is for those of you who own digital cameras, what the hell am I looking for? I want to spend no more than $200. Bonus points for a quality camera that costs less. Mostly, I just want to take shots of knitting stuff, family, whatever fun random things occur in my life, plus I'll probably want to take pictures of my roadtrip/moving adventure. I want something that uses either USB or firewire 400 to connect to the computer, and whatever I get must be Mac OSX compatible. Suggestions?

I'm so highly amused by all the wank over 'Crash' beating out 'Brokeback' for best picture. As someone who was rooting for 'Brokeback', I don't feel its loss has the slightest thing to do with homophobia or academy voters wanting to feel good about themselves for still voting for a social-themes!movie. I don't know how much merit to give to the idea that it won because of the huge marketing campaign that was apparently put out for it. I don't work in the industry and I have exactly no idea how much impact, if any, that kind of thing has. I do know that when I think of 'Crash' as a movie, I still think of the Holly Hunter movie that came out 10 years ago or so with the same name, about people getting off on car crashes. Remember that one, with the NC17 rating? Anyway.

I haven't seen this 'Crash'. I will, eventually, but I haven't. I did, however, absolutely love 'Brokeback'. Was it the best picture I saw this year? Hands down. Did I prefer it to 'Good Night, and Good Luck' which I like but had serious issues with? Yes. Did I prefer it to 'Capote'? Yes, but only barely. I loved 'Capote', although I loved it more the day after I saw it than I did after I walked out of the theater. Do I think 'Brokeback' is a movie for everyone? Hell fucking no.

The problem with 'Brokeback', and my theory as to why it didn't win (I'm working on the assumption that both were good movies, hell, I may hate 'Crash'), is that it's a hard movie. It doesn't have a lot of plot. It's slow and achingly good, but I know not everyone likes that kind of thing. For the record, I also loved 'Winter Solstice', another hugely character-driven movie with very little plot. I'm a character-driven kind of gal, and it would seem that I'm in the minority in that.

My dad and I have a great time seeing movies together, but at the end of every movie I love and suggest we watch, he turns to me and says "It was good, but I kept waiting for something to happen." The movies that are plot-driven often leave me feeling flat and rather empty, wishing that they were more than they actually were.

That's not to say there isn't crossover out there. 'Love Actually' is a great example. Not much happens in it. You have a lot of strongly character-motivated storylines that intersect here and there. But it was hugely popular and loved by the character people and the plot people alike. 'Playing by Heart', a movie I saw and loved many years ago but haven't seen in probably 5 or 6 years, is a similar thing to 'Love Actually', but it never got the popular following. I love that kind of movie, and I'm told that for this reason, I'll love 'Crash'. Then again, I've also been told that 'Crash' is so anviltastic that I'll hate it because I hate when movies or television shows talk down to their audience or assume that the audience is stupid.

At any rate, 'Brokeback' is a fantastic movie, but it's not a movie for everyone. Neither of my parents will like it, I don't think. Not because they're homophobic (they're not), not because they're stupid (they're not), but because my father likes plot-driven movies and my mom likes movies that move at a pace that's about twice that of 'Brokeback'.

Do I think 'Brokeback' deserved to win because it dealt with a gay relationship? No. By that logic, 'Jeffery' should have won best picture a decade ago and, uh, while 'Jeffery' was a fun movie, it's not a best picture. Do I think 'Crash' should have won solely for addressing racism in LA. No. Liking or disliking a movie is so much more multifaceted than that. I loved everything about 'Good Night, and Good Luck' except the script. Had the screenplay itself been better, it would have been my favorite movie of the year. I'm a picky bitch, when it comes to movies, and incredibly emotionally driven. At the end of the day, 'Brokeback' left me utterly destroyed in very subtle ways. 'House of Mirth' was the last movie to do that, and to be fair, I have no idea if 'House of Mirth' was actually a good movie. I was a good deal younger when I saw it.

So all you idiots who think it lost because people are ignorant and homophobic? Shut up. All you idiots who talked about how great it was when you thought it was going to win then, when it lost, suddenly have turned to 'Man, Brokeback is stupid'? You're not only idiots, you're sheep.

It's a fucking MOVIE. Get over it.

This is the pattern I've been looking for since I learned how to knit. I'm going to lengthen it a bit, but, uh, yeah.

And? It's designed for knitpicks yarns. You can't beat that.

...There was ice on my windshield when I left work tonight.

I realize the majority of you will laugh at me for this, but, uh, I LIVE IN CALIFORNIA.

There shouldn't be ice in California. Especially not on a night when I kept telling people it wasn't 'that cold'.

Stolen from zessa

If there is someone on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

In other news, I saw 'Brokeback Mountain' on Tuesday. I have no words, really. I don't remember the last time I saw a movie I loved as much as this one. I don't remember the last time I left a theater and checked the sign to see when the next showing was, looked at my watch, looked at my wallet and was about thirty seconds from going to buy another ticket. I don't remember the last time that feeling lasted after I had time to think and talk about the movie.

I need to see it again.

Wednesday I got sucked into bartending, despite having spent the last year resisting the promotion. Today I was suckered into bartending every Wednesday until I leave.

Within the next hour or so I shall likely finish my first hat, a gift for my mother who's going to New York next week and is worried about being cold. (We were discussing this on Sunday. She said "God, I'll bet it's cold in New York, I need a hat. Hey, will you make me one?" It's sad when your family no longer considers going to Target and shelling out 5 bucks on a hat but rather looks to you for this. Also kind of cool.) It's Knitty's Coronet. I also need to do a quick headband for a friend at work who's paying me for it.

And I absolutely loathe all the army recruiting ads. They make me quite nauseous. As, for that matter, does the celebrity baby blog I stumbled on the other night.

I need to clean. Desperately.

I have reached a brand new stage of the growing-my-hair-out-again adventure. I'm no longer in the Stockard-Channig-In-The-Fifth-Season-Of-The-West-Wing phase (a truly terrifying place to be and the reason I hadn't attempted to grow my hair out until now: Looking in the mirror scared me.) A friend of mine at work commissioned me to knit her ( a purple headband in this shape )

In other news, ( I saw 'Walk the Line' tonight )

I also saw ( Lamplighter's production of 'Pirates of Penzance on Sunday' )

So, there's some shit going down at work that's managed to kill my desire to live. I intended to come home and write an entry about this, however, when I got home there was eMail in my box about Ron Corning, the anchor of ABC's World News Now.

For anyone who doesn't understand the thing that myself and onthestairs have for World News Now, click here and watch the demo video.

It cheered me out of my work-related funk enough that I don't feel the need to bitch about how truly horrible it's been over the last two days.

Instead, I can't stop laughing.

Am on swedishfrogs' computer, at some point I'm actually going to get up for real, but for now...

I'm having a fanfuckingtastic time visiting. Phenomenal. I don't want to think about how much I spent on yarn yesterday, because dude the yarn shops in LA are fantastic. swedishfrogs is fantastic and gracious and funny. offscreen is fantastic (and OMG so freakin' happy for you, yough!). I hesitate to type anything about this trip, actually, because I'm having a great time and don't want to in anyway jinx it, but there you have it.

See, I hate L.A. I really, really hate it. I've been down here many, many times, and I've never enjoyed myself. Until now. I'm firmly coming to believe my hatred of L.A. is more a lack of compatibility with travel companions and chosen activities. Or maybe I'm having so much fun with the parts of this trip that involve Being in L.A. instead of just Hanging Out With Friends because my tour guide is so terribly enthusiastic, and her enthusiasm and joy are contagious. Frankly, I don't care why I hated L.A. before, because I kind of really, really like it this trip.

I actually need to get moving and into the shower, then off to Target and hopefully Unwind before I meet Amy, and at some point I should probably call and, you know, remember where this meeting is occuring because last night I was so not awake enough to have any idea what was being said.

Seriously though? I needed this.

ETA: Okay, so, La Knitterie Parisian is seriously the best yarn shop I've ever stepped foot in. It's about 2 or 3 times the size of any I've been to with walls and rooms and walls and baskets of yarn everywhere. I met and talked to both owners, and I'd seriously drive the 5 and a half hours down from the Bay Area just to go there. And their prices are fantastic, the guy told me he had the best prices of anyone and asked the last thing I bought. I told him, and, uh, they beat the price by 2 bucks a skein. I'm in love. I want to move into the shop. And just as a bonus? They run their store on iMacs.

So, I spent New Year's Eve working. I made a good deal of money, I didn't wait on anyone I wanted to kill, and then I went to a party at my dad's that I didn't really want to go to.

Dad wanted me there, however, as there were apparently radical lesbians he wanted me to talk down. Not from lesbianism, mind you, just the radicalism. I ended up in a conversation with a drunk woman about stiletto heels and lipstick, and whether or not one could be a card carrying dyke while also owning and using both of the above. In the end we agreed she should give my dad the dyke card but could keep the toaster. I'm not a fan of radical anything, but I enjoyed the conversation, at least.

Truth be told? I had a great time. I walked in as everyone was sitting around a couple of guitars (and guitarists), singing "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore" by Phil Ochs-- onthestairs, I thought of you. Also, the new layout is freakin' gorgeous. Anyway. I immediately scored points with a crowd of my aunt's friends for knowing who Phil Ochs is and being able to sing along.

We sat around and sang for an hour and a half, I helped my father and aunt clean up, I was ordered to take home dolmas and salmon and baklava, along with a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke which the aunt bought for me, only to have me drink water all night long.

Not a bad way to ring in a new year.

I don't make new year's resolutions, as I never keep them.

That being said, I was talking to my last table of the evening, and I made the comment that, in my experience, every year is better than the one before it, in some way. He said he's 62 years old and has found that to be incredibly true. So next year will be better than the last. Not that 2005 was all that bad, really. I learned a hell of a lot. So, although I don't do the resolution things, next year I'm applying that knowledge.

Things that are good:

-Working long shifts and making decent money.
-Jack in the Box's cheddar bacon potato wedges.
-'As Good As it Gets' on TNT.
-Advil

Things that are not so good:

-Agreeing to go out for drinks after work when you don't drink and are the only driver.
-Getting home at 2 in the morning after spending all night watching men flirt with the friend you're driving.
-Headaches
-Being the only sober person in a room.

I need to go to bed.

I've spent the last 2 days cleaning the apartment. Cleaned Tori's old room (Vacuumed, did the windows, cleaned the desk, threw away the broken desk chair), finished cleaning the kitchen (the sink, the microwave, the detail work), cleaned the bathroom (which was disgusting. I ended up throwing away the old bathroom garbage can and buying a new one because it had someone else's tampons stuck to it and it was worth 3 bucks to me not to have to deal with it), rearranged the living room and my room (Moved the TV into my room, rearranged the lighting in the living room, moved my bed and dressers, piled laundry into baskets, washed laundry, organized yarn). Today mom's coming over with a steam cleaner and we're doing the carpets. This has me oddly excited. Yes, I have become a middle aged lady. I just need the cats.

Aunt and uncle are in from Philly, which meant salmon and crab for dinner last night at my dad's. Tonight it means waiting on 8 members of my family and being pretty much guaranteed a good tip.

onthestairs posted a thing saying pretty much everything I've been holding back for the past few weeks, and while I know it must have been cleansing for her to write it, it somehow manages to be cleansing for me to simply read it. I couldn't have said it better, although that doesn't preclude my trying at some point. Because this shit needs to get said.

My health is quite improved, my nicotine use has dropped dramatically, and I can't resist icon memes, so I give you this:

( Gakked from xyellowroset and others )

OMG.

sternel is love.

Knit Picks gift certificate.

Too many choices.

OMG.

SQUEE!!!

aka: Thank you so much, Abs

It's sick that I'm excited that I've been given the okay to sit and roll silverware for 3 hours tonight and tomorrow night.

It's sick that I'm looking forward to going back to work tonight for my 3 hours of silverware rolling.

Next week, assuming I get the okay on Monday from Chiropractor of Love, I get to work my actual, you know, job for three hour shifts. The week after that? I get to work. It's disgusting how excited this makes me.

( In which I ramble about my back, chiropractors, and my fear of doctors. It's long, and I'm nice, so consider your friends pages spared. )

It seems that I have been tagged. Damn you, swedishfrogs (Or should I say fjuck you?)

Ground Rules: The first player of this "game" starts with the topic "5 of your own weird habits" and people who get tagged need to write a lj entry about their 5 quirky habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names.

1. When I'm online and need to get up to do something, I often forget to throw up a BRB and just close my computer, thus putting it to sleep and signing me off of AIM. Come to think of it, even if I do throw up a BRB, I still close the computer most of the time.

2. At work, when I see a pen lying around, I can't help but pick it up. This often results in me starting a night with 4 pens and ending it with 10. When I took everything out of my work apron to do laundry recently I had no fewer than 34 pens in the pockets. Despite having so many pens on me at all times, I'll dig through the pockets to find one of about 3 that I'm willing to hand out with a credit card receipt. These are never the same type of pens I'm willing to take an order with.

3. I sleep with about 4 pillows, including one of those big body pillow things which I've lately started wedging between me and the wall and leaning back against it, effectively making my twin bed even smaller. I've been known to fall out as a result of this, yet I Can't Not Do It.

4. When I get in the car, I have to roll the window down before I close the door. This is also true of getting out of the car, but in reverse-- the door must be opened before I can roll the window up.

5. I can only drink milk out of a paper cup. I have about 30 or so glasses at home, but when I drink milk, I pour it into a paper cup and can't drink it out of anything else. We don't have paper cups at work, so I avoid all things that I would drink milk with (cake, cookies, chocolate things) because I can't drink milk.

And I'm tagging... sternel, zessa, athena4lynn, khohen1, and skywaterblue. (onthestairs you already got hit by swedishfrogs, so you'd better pay up too.)

Current Music: Love Affair - Regina Spektor

Back=Out and Spasming.

Boss=Pissed at me because of this. Wouldn't let me go home until she realized I was sitting in the back sobbing because of how much pain I was in. Or possibly let me go home because I told her I was leaving, and if she wanted to call it job abandonment and fire me, that was fine. I could not walk.

Sat in the car for almost half an hour after I got home because I couldn't get out of it.

Iced at work before they let me go home, currently lying on a heating pad waiting for Flexoril and Viccodin to kick in. It's worth mentioning I'm somewhat allergic to Viccodin, but possibly not. When I was a kid it would make me throw up. Took half a pill by accident recently and was fine. (Dad thought he was handing me Tylenol with Codeine). In retrospect, I probably was just overdosed everytime I took it as a kid. At any rate, I'm waiting for that to kick in.

Dad's bringing more drugs later.

Mom sent me a couple of chiropractor's phone numbers, so I'll call in the morning and make an appointment. I'm not entirely sure how the hell I'm going to pay for it, but if I can't walk, I can't work, so better to rack up a doctor's bill I can't afford and go back to work to pay it off than to simply not work and spend my days in extreme pain.

I'm so fucking sick of this. I'm a terrible patient when I'm sick, and even worse when I'm in pain.

If anyone has magical pain remedies beyond heat, ice, hot bath, massage, take it easy, take meds, get a brace (a friend's giving me one), I'm all ears.