The Move; Why do I have cuts on all of my fingers and other stories...

It has been a few days. One might ask oneself, what have I been doing since the last entry? Well to all 2 of you who asked... I have moved!

That's right. Dom came into town, we looked at a place, signed the lease and have, now OFFICIALLY, moved in fully. It was hard. It was sweaty. It left alot of confusing brusies and cuts all over my hands. And it is now over. The goal now is to unpack all of the boxes and make this into a livable space. We both have said that we do not want to do this whole thing again, so I think we are going to be living here for at least a few years... hopefully. When returning the truck today, I saw a questionairre that asked, "How often have you moved in the last 10 years?". This got me thinking. How many different places have I lived in 10 years? That would be 97... so that would be... Woodinville, Redmond, U-District, Capital Hill, Woodinville, Mill Creek, Culver City and now Glendale... 8! 8 times I had to do this pack/move/un-pack thing. I am over it now I think. But it's done and we live in a nice two bedroom one bath with a nice sized living room and kitchen. What's really nice is that I am not nearly as allergic to Marilyn as I thought I would be. (Marilyn is Dom's cat.) I do have to take a Clariton a day, but that's not bad at all. We had the cable guy come out yesterday to set us up with tv and internet... but I think that we got the lazy, on the way out guy as he said he couldn't find to cable... he could find it outside, but couldn't see where it entered the house. So now we have to wait until he supervisors come out and check to see if he is right, and THEN they will send a crew to install it. So probably will be down until Tuesday at the earliest. Sucks. Don't mind the no TV, but I am kind of addicted to the interwebs. Right now I am pirating someone in the complex that didn't secure their line.

Other news. I had a talk with my boss on Monday about my job and my need to get more money. He and I had a nice conversation that ended with me picking up a few projects and then getting a review in two weeks. Hopefully I will get a raise ome January. If not, it's no big deal, I will just go with a temp agency. Speaking of jobs. Jon is employing Dom today for his first job in LA. See. Come to LA, Ben will get you work that he can't get himself.

Had my performance review yesterday at Improv Class. It was a little nerve wracking as I hadn't done any improv in about two weeks. The way he ran it this time was to give us things that he felt we needed to work on and then have us go and do a scene. Most people got notes like, "You need to be a little less joky, you need to try to be less/more of a character, you need to be alittle less dominate..." so on. They mostly got one or two notes. Me? Well I got a ton. Which just makes me believe even more firmly that this teacher thinks I am really no good. And after my scene, I feel I agree with him. He said that I needed to work on not being "high status", or too high energy, that I shouldn't force the scene or create problems that need to be worked around, that I need to be less of a character... so I take all of those notes and go into the scene... and I don't do anything. Now, granted, my partner was given pretty much the opposite set of notes from me so she came out high energy and high status and led the scene, so I really didn't need to do much talking. Still. I need more practice. After class Ashley and I, along with a classmate Mike, talked once again about getting more people together on off days to just do it. Mike said that instead of asking about the best days, we should just tell people that we are meeting on a certian day and they can show up if they can. All I know is that I need to do it. I wish that I had more money so that I could take more then one class per week.

System Failure. Fatal Crash Detected.

Ladies and Gentlemen.

We have entered day 3 of 1-2 hours of sleep followed by a full day and 10 hour shift.

I am starting to feel it hit very hard. Weary eyes, tenuous grasp on sanity, hot flashes and clod sweats and the shakes are starting in my hands.

In order to make it through the night I have purchased a can of Rockstar, which I have been trying not to drink lately... but this is becoming needed.

It is not all for naught though. We seem to have found the place that we are looking for. It's in Glendale, so it's closer to Hollywood and school then I am now. Also near to the studios. It's a bit more pricey then I expected... but I am willing to scrimp to live in a safe place. It does mean that I will either be needing a raise at work or ditching it to get a second job.

I can't really concentrate right now though as my brain has started a match of Badminton...

Beowulf... Or: Why The MPAA Fails

It's interesting.

I saw the new movie Beowulf last week. It's was alright. If nothing else it was really pretty and did things with the new digital 3-D process that I have never seen before.

What I find really interesting though is not the movie itself but what I discovered after the film. Let me describe. During this film, there is epic battles that include men getting impaled by stakes, ripped in half, monsters getting brutally eviscerated, naked women and naked men. While I was sitting there, I thought to myself, this is amazing, you never see R rated animations. Well. After the movie I look at my ticket and was genuinely surprised to find that it was in fact rated PG-13.

Let's flash forward to a few days ago. I go and see a movie with my sister. This time it is Hitman. During this film there are brutal battles that include men getting impaled with swords, shot in the face, face stomped and naked women. This movie was rated R.

Both movies have pretty much the same content. Blood, gore, glorified villains and female nudity, but for some reason the MPAA decided that one should be rated tamer then the other. Why is that? Is it because one is a "cartoon" while the other one is live action? Is it because one is "fantasy" while the other one is realistic? Is it simply because one had curse words in it while the other one did not? Let us dispel two of those theories. One: Beowulf, while animated, is not a "cartoon". It was acted live with the actors and then animated with CGI overlays. Plus, Hitman was pretty "cartoon-y" with it's fight scenes. (And acting, but I am not reviewing this here... look for that in the next Geekscape episode.) Two: Sure, Beowulf takes place in the past and has monsters and dragons in it, but to think that Hitman is realistic is farcical. So in the end, does it really just come down to curses? The fact that, since Beowulf was in historical times, before the words FUCK and SHIT were invented, it gets a pass from the MPAA?

This just confuses me. These ratings are meant to keep kiddies from viewing things that could warp their confused and growing minds... but as long as it's animated it's fine? Please don't get me wrong. I am in NO way siding with conservatives that think that any form of violence or sex, really or animated, should be crushed. I personally think that there shouldn't be a rating system at all, and that if the parents are worried about what their little knee-bitters are watching, they should make the decisions themselves and take some responsibility in their parenting. I just don't like seeing hypocrisy. If one movie gets an R, another movie with the same content should get the same rating.

In the end the MPAA is a stupid organization... and if you don't believe me go rent This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

Mike Doughty Is Brilliant

Sometimes you listen to a song and hear a word you don't know the meaning to. So, if you are like me, you look it up.

A line from "Looking At The World From The Bottom Of A Well":

Aimless days, uncool ways of decathecting
Painless phase, blacked out thoughts you be rejecting

Decathecting:
to withdraw one's feelings of attachment from (a person, idea, or object)

Exactly what I need to do.

Thanks Mike!

Post-Holiday Musings

Nothing like a new, fresh, clean blog!

Let's bust this cherry seal shall we?

I had a great couple of days in Seattle this last week, which was surprising. Not surprising that I had a good time, but surprising that I got enough time off of work to make a full trip. But I did, and I did. I got to see alot of the people that I had been missing desperately and spend some quality time with a few of them. Got my hair cut by the ex. (This was probably not the smartest of ideas, but more on that later.) Saw some movies and watched the full last season of Buffy and just generally chilled. It was relaxing. A nice change of pace. Now, something that I didn't get a chance to catch up on was sleep. One would think that this wouldn't be a problem, but I found myself getting an average of 4 hours a night. This detriment has not been solved yet, as I have only gotten about 2-3 hours over the past few nights. This is due to working the late shift, but also because my mind isn't turning off when I am trying to sleep. It goes back to the whole seeing the ex thing. Don't get me wrong, it was great seeing her. We had some laughs, she did an awesome job on my hair and such. I just can't get her out of my head now. I am trying very hard to, because it took my a really long time reach this point, and I feel like I have completely lapsed. Now it could be that I am over-exaggerating since I am currently sleep deprived, in fact, I hope that's the case. It's just that seeing her made all of the good memories that I have been blocking for the past year come flooding back. And with that a just overall sense of depression since I know she is now in a great relationship with someone else and I will never have those experiences again, with her anyway. I know that I will eventually find someone else to have a close relationship with once life, god, my subconscious, whoever decides that I am ready to handle a new one. This process is just lonely right now. Going up to Seattle made me realize how little my support system is down here in LA. I have Brian and Jon, but really I don't feel close enough to them to share this stuff with them at all. So that means I have... no one. In Seattle, since I had been living there for about 12 years, my group of friends was insanely large... the contrast is amazing. So in the end I pour all of this crap that builds up in my head into a blog or two during the slow parts of my night shift. Hence this new blog account.

Hopefully the next few posts will be a little less emo and a little more pop-punk.