fine whine

For the first time in a while I'm gonna be ahead for a day. I just finished watching American splendor, which means it's a quarter after midnight and I don't know what to do next. Most people would of course go to bed now, but I'm not most people. Despite my sleeplessness last night, I'm not particularly tired.

Of course by now I realize that tomorrow will be the day I pay for yesterday, not today. Today was a walk in the park as far as uselessness during the day is concerned. This day laying before me I will likely be a zombie.

So, business as usual for a workday Wednesday.

Business as usual for the pseudo-insomniac. I'm watching the supplemental materials, and I'll likely soon watch the movie again with the commentary track. It's definitely possible that I can use my portable DVD player as an excuse for my sleeplessness--except that I can't really. I was staying up far too late before I had it and probably will even after it breaks.

I know it's going to break because everything electronic I own breaks eventually. My Palm's getting finicky, and I often need to twist it to get the screen to use all the pixels. The superglued battery-door tab on my three-dollar digital camera already fell back off. When I was in Cuyahoga Falls Saturday I could've grabbed two of my no-longer-functioning radio controlled cars. As it was I rounded up a good deal of my old HO-scale model railroading equipment, with which to begin the lifelong cluttering of our basement. I opted not to bring my sizable CB radio base station which has had one of its cabinet sides fall off, though I suspect it still functions normally.

These things just break. It's part of the circle of life, or whatever it's called for objects. Entropy gets us all in the end. This is starting to sound very depressing, isn't it. I blame the movie. After all, it's about a guy marginally trying to come to grips with his contribution to immortality, even if it is for his attention to the very ordinariness of his own life. But he's got a movie, and I've just got a page on a low-traffic site that I'm unwilling to call a blog. Maybe someday I'll explain that all the way through, and turn it into an 'about' page. But right now I don't feel like doing it. I don't really feel like doing anything that I should be doing.

You know, like going to bed. Good night, I guess.

Incidentally, American splendor has some of the longest-running menus I've yet seen on a DVD. They repeat well, also. I'm pretty sure I liked the movie, but I know I'm impressed with the minutiae of the DVD. Make of that what you will.

And oh yeah, in another of those "whoa" moments, American splendor was right above American friend on my Palm "films to watch" list. I had reserved that disc and picked it up today, grabbing American splendor off the shelf while I waited for the library's electricity to come back on so that I could check out. And here it is, less than a week after the Fourth of July. Doo-dee-doo-dooo.

Um, yeah. So America's great and all. It was fun hanging out with The Merrills, (and) Scott's parents and some assorted schoolchildren. There may be some interesting photos of us playing with sparklers and stuff.

This entry was late because I couldn't figure out how to write it. I meant to talk about how nothing compares, fireworks-watching-wise, to laying on the Lake Michigan beach directly under the explosions, flanked by college friends and overwhelmed by what could only be described as the 'works in widescreen.

I meant to mention my fragmented memories of fireworks from Sea-World visits, with their intricate frameworks and whatnot. You know, the sort of fireworks that apparently don't seem to exist anymore, if they ever did. Nobody ever knows what I'm talking about and I'm loath to search for them.

I meant to try out some jokes about fireworks and other nations. You know, "In Soviet Russia the fireworks watch you" and things of its ilk. But I faltered.

I thought back on my twenty-four-odd years of this so-called freedom. Am I using it? Exploiting it to its fullest? Have I done my part at all? I don't think I've gotten my voter registration card back in the mail yet.

In the end, I've got this freedom to say what I want, and nothing to say. Which gives you very little to read.

I think I'll go back to doodling.

(Yankee doodling? Dandy.)

So as I toiled today on my web-work for hire, I was jotting notes in an old notebook. I flipped through many a page of calculus figures and other artifacts of my "ersatz" education (pay attention to the fourth one, I suppose). They're not really funny, informative or even interesting, but if I type them up I can recycle that piece of paper. One down, several thousand to go, I suppose.

• You know the problem with Democrats is these days? There aren't enough Republicans making fun of them.
• Idea for a new TV show: Laugh at the everyday foibles of a group of five 20-something Canadian lumberjacks! It's a show about friendship, life, flannel and cutting down trees. Call it Chops.
• Idea for a new TV show: Persistence. A young teenage woman lies about her age and sex and gets into military academy to follow a hunky guy who enlosted before they could get to know each other. Plenty of soul-searching, drill-instructing drama!
• I think we need placebo schools -- that way we can really gauge how well we're doing. The placebo students would be the same as the real students except that they'd be learning complete nonsense. I'd like to be a teacher at one of those schools.
• Soon, every sport will have a corresponding computer game. They're pretty close--I'm still waiting for Virtual Yo-yo.

I will admit to liking that penultimate one about placebo schools, so much that I threw it onto my thots page. The rest are pretty bad, and I can only guess from the third one that the list was compiled sometime around the fall of 1998. Either I wasn't really funny then or I was trying too hard. Looking at the last one there, I think it was almost all the latter (but still a little of the former). Make of that what you will.

I'm tired of this whole 24 hour schedule. I don't think it works for me. Last night, or rather this morning, I was awake until 7:30am. Subsequent to that I "overslept" until 9:22, at which time I called my boss to lament my "running late" and ETA of "9:30 to 10ish". After my shower I checked my own voicemail and discovered that she too was out for the morning with a doctor's appointment (I hesitate to put it in quotes, but the idea does tempt me).

So with a maximum of two hours under my belt I'm still not so exhausted as to be dropping off to sleep. Hell, we walked over to the library tonight (about a three mile round trip) and lugged around a battered cedar chest (well, I walked back quickly and got the car. It took me seventeen minutes to walk the mile and a half and then four to drive it) and yet I am not sleepy.

So I play around with the web and am watching American splendor. Last night I ended up finishing out the translation of Koji Suzuki's Ring--it took me a whole day to read. I'm sure Suzuki would be tickled to think that his horrific material was that which snatched the sleep from me; I however blame the heat.

The book's quite good, really. I was awake enough to not be skimming too much of it and by the end was so impressed as to have reserved the next in the trilogy from the library (that said, I think I'll reserve something if the cover has nice colors). Reading it has given me more insight into my thoughts of both film adaptations. I maintain my opinion that the English one is better, though it is less faithful to the source material than Ringu. The stuff that Ringu keeps isn't done so well and takes what the book takes pains to root in (admittedly fringe) science and reality and turns it into a beating about the head with a blunt object. Or maybe just one of the translations was not as good as the other.
For a horror book, though, it was pretty decent. Not scary, per se, but defintely eerie. Well-written, too.

November's less than four months away, I should point out.

So as I was driving back from my parents' place in Cuyahoga Falls, and keeping an eye on the young woman driving the Volvo in front of me at eighty miles per hour with her left foot out the window, and listening to some Dave Barry on tape and glancing sidelong to the teeming fog beside the road and the occasional firework above, whereupon my mind began to drift, to the movie we watched last night.

It was Welcome to Collinwood, starring a whole bunch of recognizable people including William H. Macy, Luis Guzman, Sam Rockwell and George Clooney in a cameo role. It took me much longer than it should've to register that this was a somewhat remake (i.e. they took the plot but not the title) of I soliti ignoti, or as the Criterion DVD calls it Big deal on Madonna street. I should've recognized it from the beginning's car theft but it took me a while to realize that this was an updating of the classic Italian heist farce. It's pretty good on its own merits, and shows the brothers Russo to be potential decent filmmakers.

It's not by far a perfect movie, and goes a little overboard here and there, but it was definitely enjoyable.

Whereas the car ride home today was pretty lame, save for the occasional firework or errant foot sticking out a window.

Oh yeah, happy birthday, freedom.

Well, it seems I have slipped from my #1 spot on google for the word "whine". I am now number 2.

(but I try harder)