September 26, 2006
Hello.
I will not have internet until Friday. My landlord forgot to pay his bill, but I really think it's the souls of the dead ants I've killed clogging up the atmosphere that is the reason I can't get a WiFi connection.
Right now, I am at the library with all the other lowlifes who don't have internet. One guy looks like he's homeless except for the fact that he's working on a Mac laptop. I also think he's looking at porn, but I don't have my glasses on. It could just be sexy pink clouds with nipples.
I am going to finish checking my email and exit the library, holding my laptop tightly.
September 20, 2006
So I guess California is on fire or something.
Actually, the sky looked like it was on fire a few hours ago. It was dark purple and orange, and the sun was red. It was sort of neat and sort of pretty, in a Superman kind of way.
My coworker Tony said he could see smoke pillowing upwards yesterday and it looked like a volcano. Being new transplants, you see, this sort of thing is still interesting and unusual to Tony and me. The rest of the populace seems to regard these thousand-acre forest fires as other states regard mosquitoes. Until those mosquitoes set themselves on fire and destroy their summer homes.
I apologize for the lack of updates, but my job has been sucking the life out of me exponentially with every passing day. All I want to do when I get home is sit in front of the television with my mouth slacked open so that I can almost feel my neural transmitters shutting down. It's getting to the point where I'm seriously considering laying out in traffic just so I can get some peace and quiet in a hospital bed. Do doctors give our drug-induced comas to people with nothing medically wrong? Just a thought.
I went to a wedding also last weekend that was tremendous fun. However, with all the running around, I didn't get on the internet for 3 days, except to show the bridesmaids M for Meowdetta to ease the nerves. I think they were impressed. I'll no doubt be invited to each of their weddings in the hopes that I have photoshopped my cat into other hilarious movie titles.
But I'll save that for another day. It's time to drool in front of the television.
September 12, 2006
This just in!
Saddam Hussein is a fan of "Kids in the Hall"!!!
And now for a horribly done photoshop.
It's about that time of year again where all the little robins fly out and lay eggs and a young boy's fancy turns to love. Wait, no, that's spring.
Well, since California has one season, Heat Exhaustion, it's hard to tell what's what. But somehow the ants and spiders know, because they decide to spend the season freeloading in my guest house!
I guess it's better than Pennsylvania's one season, Overcast, but do you see the ants and spiders taking refuge in people's homes in the winter? No. Ruled by the whimsy of evolution, the wintertime instinct kicks in, and they roll over and die like every insect should.
I am ruthless with ants. I squish them into a paper towel and wish I knew some way to inflict more pain in their last dying wiggle. Spiders...not so ruthless. I kind of do the squealing girl thing and close my eyes and point until Justin rolls his eyes, and we sort of stand there squealing and rolling until the spider trots off, giggling, to safety.
We had a fly problem for about a week, but I trained Scamp to eat flies. By "trained," I of course mean I discovered him eating a fly once and was both disgusted and amazed at his hunter abilities which, until that point, I thought consisted solely of sneaking up on my pajama pants' string and wrestling it into submission. I wish I could train the spiders to eat the ants, but they insist on spinning elaborate webs to catch the flies that Scamp has already eaten and giggling at my squeals. Damn spiders.
September 08, 2006
I've lived in the state of California for a year in a week or so from now. Just don't tell the DMV.
I don't know the exact date, because the only thing that gives me a sense of time is my blog, and I tried making an entry as I sped across the United States, but my keyboard was plugged into a sweater I had jammed under the brake because that was the last inch of space I had left in my car.
I could probably think of some poetic and meaningful way to put it, but I don't think anything can top the thought I just had.
One of our first nights here, we heard helicopters circling around the Valley, seemingly back and forth over our neighborhood, for a couple hours. I frantically switched on the TV and tried to figure out what the local stations were. I was sure there was going to be coverage of a high-speed car chase or a fugitive on the loose, but the only news stations I could track down were covering the breaking news of a Human Interest Piece on tofu farmers or some crap.
Over the last year, helicopters circling overhead have become like the sweet lull of an ocean breeze on an exotic island, the soft chirping of crickets on a warm summer night in the south, or the blaring of sirens and "EY, I'M WALKIN' HERE" during the late nights in New York.
I felt like a true local when I heard a helicopter a few minutes ago and, instead of fearing for my safety, I thought, "If that damn thing gets the neighbor dog barking and I can't sleep, I'm opening up their gate, and he can chase the damn thing until he falls off the Hollywood sign."
Home Sweet Home.
September 06, 2006
I saw "Super Size Me" this weekend.
As with the show "30 Days," I had to have Justin pause it every 5 minutes or so so we could have a debate.
See, unlike wackos like my parents and my soon-to-be-married best friend and fiance, Justin and I don't necessarily have the same viewpoints on a lot of things.
It was a fun movie to watch, I guess, even though most of my debates consisted of "Look at that smug face. I'd sure like to punch him" or "Well, of course he's getting sick. Look at that stupid moustache! I'm sick just looking at him!"
I get a little defensive of my Big Macs. Well, as I had predicted when the movie came out, it served to me only as a tasty-looking, hour-and-a-half-long McDonald's commercial. So despite my diet, which has actually been working, I cheated and got myself a Big Mac.
Beneath all my cynicism, however, I guess it's pretty cool that this guy's trying to share his (*cough*bleeding heart*cough*) viewpoints with the world as a whole, and I guess he's just trying to do his part to fight the good fight. I don't think he's shocking any audiences that eating nothing but fried food thrice a day might just be bad or, in his show "30 Days'" case, that an abortion clinic worker might not really enjoy living with some Pro-Life holy crusaders. But the fact that I pause the show every few minutes to voice my opinion and hear an opposing viewpoint (I think the guy's IMing Justin and telling him what to say to me) says that he's out for the greater good and attempting to bring about more social change than, say, "X" to the "Z" is on "Pimp My Ride."
So, Morgan Spurlock, I salute you, even though it sounds like you were named after the sound someone with a head cold made while sneezing.
September 03, 2006
So I got this shirt from thinkgeek.com, even though it's made by one of my webcomic mortal enemies. How can you be enemies with someone who doesn't know you exist? I'm not entirely sure. But Penny Arcade told me to hate him, so I do. But the shirt was on sale for $10. I can only hate people at $17 or more.
So I wore it in public for the first time tonight. I have a lot of t-shirts with wacky slogans on them. I'm not ashamed, especially of the nerdy stuff. Until tonight. I was walking out of Ralph's, which is a supermarket in California, and since I've moved out here, I've been a little wary of shopping at night. In Pittsburgh, I didn't have a problem skateboarding in a dark scary parking lot by myself. And, in fact, I did, and they put up a sign saying "No Skateboarding" all because of me! How cool is that?!
Anyway, we were shopping so late that they closed the side door by where we parked, meaning after our shopping, we had to walk a long way sort of into a side street where, say, there wouldn't be a lot of members of the public to see you if you got shanked by a vagabond.
There was just such a vagabond sitting randomly by my lone parked car, looking just the type to shank me and steal my freshly purchased celery.
I tried to keep my cool, since I don't want Justin to think I'm a pussy or something, but I tried to pack up the car as fast as I could. The guy then got up and started to cross the parking lot, which involved him rounding the back of my car where I was. Just as I was inconspicuously looking for one of the sharper stalks of celery, he exclaimed,
"Joss Whedon? Who's that?"
I suddenly was thrown back into high school when something like a PlayStation controller or deck of Pokemon cards spilled out of my backpack in front of the entire lacrosse team. I just kind of gaped there for a moment, searching frantically for a descriptive phrase that didn't involve the words "Buffy" or "Firefly," both of which would take much longer to explain than a quick stab wound would shut me up.
"Uh, he writes science fiction shows."
"Oh," he said, not breaking his stride, but breaking a smile. "Is he good?"
"...Yeah. I like him a lot."
And thus ended our brief exchange.
In the car, I began to question myself as to why I would be so embarrassed for wearing a shirt that I was so proud to get. It struck me that I wore it so that I could exchange high fives with my nerdy brethren, or whatever nerdy brethren do. Slap graphing calculators perhaps. But until now, I guess I forgot that other people read my shirts, too.
Maybe next midnight shopping spree I go on, I'll wear my Shoplifter shirt, so the only people who look at me funny are the workers who are calling the cops on me.
September 01, 2006
I have a dilemma, interfriends.
Apparently, an image I made has become quite popular as an internet meme. For those of you who don't know what a meme is, wikipedia defines it as, "Lauren doesn't really feel like looking it up right now, but it's like an amusing picture or quiz that keeps getting passed around and posted everywhere, but most of the idiots don't own webspace of their own, so they just paste the original url, which steals bandwidth from the original user, which in this case is Lauren."
If you don't recognize the image, or didn't read my original post when I made it, it's the kid from "Billy Madison" who stuttered while he was reading, and Adam Sandler screamed that historical phrase at him.
I guess I'm a little flattered that it's being passed around. But when I think about it, I didn't have the kid myself, nor am I the only person who realized that he grew up. I didn't even write the phrase. I just wrote it in all caps, which everyone knows is the key to comedy. That's not what I'm upset about.
I do own the webspace, but I don't know how much it actually affects me. Maybe a lot. Maybe not at all. So do I have a right to be upset that it is being posted everywhere? I guess I'm not really "upset" in the strictest sense.
I do, however, have the power to change it to whatever I want. A smart person would simply steal my image and host it themselves, like I have in my funny section, which is mostly just images from somethingawful.com or random weirdness I happened to stumble across and saved to My Documents I thought were too funny not to share. I don't think anyone thinks I actually made those, though.
So I'm torn. Because they hotlinked it, I have the power to, say, save an image of a kitten driving a firetruck with the url ending in stutteringkid.jpg, and immediately, myspace pages everywhere will proclaim their love for kittens. And that's if I'm nice. I've seen a lot of stolen images changed into...stuff you'd rather see less than a kitten driving a firetruck. Unless you're, like, a pedestrian or something. Then you'd wouldn't want to see either thing equally.
Should I change the picture? Which would potentially just make them steal the image themselves and keep it anyway? Do I care if they steal it? Do I care if they don't steal it, and I allow them to use my bandwidth, even though I'm not necessarily doing anything with that particular width of band?
Do I play World of Warcraft instead of answering all the questions but this? Yes.