Okay, so, I've heard that Mr. Bungle's only music video was banned from MTV back in the day due to "disturbing imagery."
Yeah, I guess I can see how that might be kind of creepy. You've got clown masks, doll abuse, guys who I guess are supposed to look like they've been lynched even though they're clearly not hanging by their necks. Spooky, I guess.
On the other hand, I remember a summer when MTV played the video for I Stay Away by Alice In Chains roughly sixty two quatrillion times.
I had to run out of the room every time this damn video came on. Creepy claymation, an actual storyline (as opposed to the unconnected images of the Bungle video) about violent deaths and the entire ruin of a circus caused by something as small and random as a fly, not to mention the fact that all the "accidents" were caused with malice aforethought by the dude who brought the flies into the circus. This video still scares me.
The video for Travolta / Quote Unquote is too random and blurry to be disturbing. I Stay Away, however, makes me want to hide under the bed and cry.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
Friday, August 24, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Oh, Fen Sieve
I'm fairly laid back about a lot of stuff. Not everything, clearly; go to any number of the entries I've written on this blog about commercials that piss me off. But overall, I manage to take a lot in stride. In fact, there are only three things that offend me so solidly and consistently that the very idea of them make my blood begin to figuratively boil and my hands literally turn into very tense fists:
1) Katy Perry - It baffles me that Katy Perry has a career of any kind, but it especially baffles me that she has a musical career. She can't sing on key, she can't sing in syncopation and her music is Just Terrible. Sitting here trying to put my thoughts on this woman into words is making me so angry that my hands are actually shaking. I can't even count how many typos I've had to go back and correct in this paragraph.
I managed to ignore Katy Perry for a very, very long time until Firework became a painfully inescapable song. The first time I heard it I figured it was the innocuous kind of bad and I could learn to tune it out. I held onto that belief for as long as it took the song to reach the chorus, when she sings "Baby you're a FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIREWORRRRRK!" and (I goddamn nearly had a seizure of hatred typing that, by the way) the entire listening audience with half a brain wants to burst its own eardrums with the most painful implement it can find. Nobody ever taught Katy Perry that singing really loudly is not the same thing as singing on key and the fact that a lot of people can't hear how flat she is really bothers me. Has the whole world gone tone deaf? It physically hurts me that this woman has fans.
I would have a paragraph here about how much her lyrics suck but that would involve me going and finding her lyrics online and verifying that the lyrics I thought I heard are the actual ones in the songs, and I just cannot bring myself to do that.
Her music is so awful it makes me mad when I can't even hear it. I was at lunch with a couple of friends about a year ago and in the middle of the meal, for no good reason, I started snapping at everything either of them said and pretty abruptly ended a conversation. To fill the sudden silence one of my friends asked "Is this a Katy Perry song?" It was at that moment I realized that there was any music on in the restaurant at all. Couldn't hear it before then, I was too busy enjoying lunch and chatting with friends to notice it. And that wretched woman's disgusting voice still burrowed into my brain and pissed me off.
My friend Kristin hates Katy Perry, too, but she always says something that I fundamentally disagree with; while complaining that she can't sing and should go away, Kristin always says "Sure, she's beautiful, but..." That's not true. Katy Perry is not beautiful. When you can actually see the arrogance in a person's eyes, that negates any physical beauty they may possess. I have never, ever seen a picture or a video of Katy Perry where not only her eyes but her entire face wasn't shrieking "I am wonderful. Everything I do is amazing and you are shit by comparison." The worst is that one video where she's made up to look "awkward" or whatever; they've given her frizzy hair and braces as though that somehow can hide the fact that she's completely full of herself. That video looks to me like "Look at me, I'm making myself ugly so you peons will think you can relate to the goddess that I am."
I don't ever support assholes on the internet saying famous people should die or kill themselves; that's just mean. I will say, however, with great sincerity, that someday when I'm, like, ninety two and I hear the news that Katy Perry has died of old age, I will not feel anything remotely resembling remorse. In fact, I will probably laugh. Because she's awful. And I hate her. And absolutely everything about her offends every cell in my body.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the preview for that fucking self serving documentary she made about herself. In 3-D, probably just to make sure everyone is absolutely certain how big her boobs are. The entire preview makes me want to vomit, but one moment moreso than all the rest of it: the moment where they show her standing on a stage and telling her audience "Thank you for believing in my weirdness." What are you, twelve? Because going around and telling people "I'm weird" is something twelve year olds do. If you haven't grown out of that by the end of high school, I'm just not going to respect you (unless you're Weird Al Yankovic; he is my personal hypocracy in regards to that rule). You're stupid, shallow, childish and desperate for attention, Katy Perry, and referring to yourself as "weird" is just proof of that.
2) when people tell me I won't know something because it's "before your time" - That's no reason for me to not know something! I know about plenty of things that are considered "before my time." I'm a fan of Peter Lorre, The Beatles and MGM musicals from the 1940s and '50s. I like the Marx Brothers, The Addams Family, Cab Calloway and vintage advertising. I could tell you more about 1930s horror movies than I should know, considering I haven't seen half the movies I know great swaths of information about. How dare you use my age to assume what I know and what I don't!
Generally if I don't know about something, it's for one of two reasons: I'm either uninterested or it's never come up before. That's it. I don't know where Tanzania is because I'm not terribly interested in geography and I don't know who directed Gone With The Wind because I don't care. I fuckin' hate that movie.
3) people who are easily offended - For the past several summers I've volunteered as a counselor for the teen program at a summer camp in the midwest. Every year the teens have a night that for a long time was called Slut Night (a name that originated from an act of solidarity with a girl who was being picked on for wearing club clothes to a dance). This year some "concerns" were raised about the name of the event and the coordinator of the teen program had to sit through meetings with parents and an interested third party about the changing of the night's name.
My immediate reaction to that was "Tell them to go to hell." Do these people really not know how teenagers talk? The kids all know the night as Slut Night; it doesn't matter what the "official" name is, they're going to keep calling it Slut Night.
Various politically correct (which is code for "fucking stupid") names were kicked around. The absolute worst was Respect Night because "we're teaching the kids to be respectful of everybody regardless of how they dress," which makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Someone suggested Come As You're Not Night, to which the interested third party said "Why does it have to be Come As You're Not? Why not Come As You Are?" Because they do that every night, you fucking idiot! That's boring! The point is to get dressed up.
They settled on Costume Night, everybody kept calling it Slut Night in the real world and I nearly gouged my eyes out with how retarded I thought the whole situation was.
"Retarded," by the way, is a word I never used to use for fear of offending someone. Then I realized my immediate reaction to hearing people get offended by words was always something along the lines of "Suck my dick, you uptight cunt" and decided I may as well just use the words that I feel best express what I think or feel at any given time.
And I do censor myself. I don't use racial slurs, for instance, because I'm not fond of them. I honestly think they're kind of horrible; I'm not in favor of the idea of racial superiority. I do, however, have a friend who throws around racial slurs like they're confetti and the most severe my reaction to that ever gets is "Huh. That's not the word I would have chosen." They don't offend me. It's really difficult to offend me with words all on their own.
The attitude of people who do get offended by words, however, offends me deeply. There always seems to be a smugness to it that makes me want to physically hurt something.
A month or so ago I read a story about some comedian (I forget who; it wasn't one I'm a fan of) making a rape joke and, when an audience member got offended, made her the star of her own rape joke. It turned into a whole big thing, people on the internet got all uppity and the guy was forced to make a public apology. Because I was curious I looked up what the guy said and, honestly, I thought it sounded rather tame. I'm fans of a lot of comedians who have told rape jokes. George Carlin, for instance. I don't recall there ever being a backlash against him for it, either. I think the only thing wrong with what this other guy said is that his rape joke wasn't funny. Maybe that's why people got offended.
I hope so.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
1) Katy Perry - It baffles me that Katy Perry has a career of any kind, but it especially baffles me that she has a musical career. She can't sing on key, she can't sing in syncopation and her music is Just Terrible. Sitting here trying to put my thoughts on this woman into words is making me so angry that my hands are actually shaking. I can't even count how many typos I've had to go back and correct in this paragraph.
I managed to ignore Katy Perry for a very, very long time until Firework became a painfully inescapable song. The first time I heard it I figured it was the innocuous kind of bad and I could learn to tune it out. I held onto that belief for as long as it took the song to reach the chorus, when she sings "Baby you're a FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIREWORRRRRK!" and (I goddamn nearly had a seizure of hatred typing that, by the way) the entire listening audience with half a brain wants to burst its own eardrums with the most painful implement it can find. Nobody ever taught Katy Perry that singing really loudly is not the same thing as singing on key and the fact that a lot of people can't hear how flat she is really bothers me. Has the whole world gone tone deaf? It physically hurts me that this woman has fans.
I would have a paragraph here about how much her lyrics suck but that would involve me going and finding her lyrics online and verifying that the lyrics I thought I heard are the actual ones in the songs, and I just cannot bring myself to do that.
Her music is so awful it makes me mad when I can't even hear it. I was at lunch with a couple of friends about a year ago and in the middle of the meal, for no good reason, I started snapping at everything either of them said and pretty abruptly ended a conversation. To fill the sudden silence one of my friends asked "Is this a Katy Perry song?" It was at that moment I realized that there was any music on in the restaurant at all. Couldn't hear it before then, I was too busy enjoying lunch and chatting with friends to notice it. And that wretched woman's disgusting voice still burrowed into my brain and pissed me off.
My friend Kristin hates Katy Perry, too, but she always says something that I fundamentally disagree with; while complaining that she can't sing and should go away, Kristin always says "Sure, she's beautiful, but..." That's not true. Katy Perry is not beautiful. When you can actually see the arrogance in a person's eyes, that negates any physical beauty they may possess. I have never, ever seen a picture or a video of Katy Perry where not only her eyes but her entire face wasn't shrieking "I am wonderful. Everything I do is amazing and you are shit by comparison." The worst is that one video where she's made up to look "awkward" or whatever; they've given her frizzy hair and braces as though that somehow can hide the fact that she's completely full of herself. That video looks to me like "Look at me, I'm making myself ugly so you peons will think you can relate to the goddess that I am."
I don't ever support assholes on the internet saying famous people should die or kill themselves; that's just mean. I will say, however, with great sincerity, that someday when I'm, like, ninety two and I hear the news that Katy Perry has died of old age, I will not feel anything remotely resembling remorse. In fact, I will probably laugh. Because she's awful. And I hate her. And absolutely everything about her offends every cell in my body.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the preview for that fucking self serving documentary she made about herself. In 3-D, probably just to make sure everyone is absolutely certain how big her boobs are. The entire preview makes me want to vomit, but one moment moreso than all the rest of it: the moment where they show her standing on a stage and telling her audience "Thank you for believing in my weirdness." What are you, twelve? Because going around and telling people "I'm weird" is something twelve year olds do. If you haven't grown out of that by the end of high school, I'm just not going to respect you (unless you're Weird Al Yankovic; he is my personal hypocracy in regards to that rule). You're stupid, shallow, childish and desperate for attention, Katy Perry, and referring to yourself as "weird" is just proof of that.
2) when people tell me I won't know something because it's "before your time" - That's no reason for me to not know something! I know about plenty of things that are considered "before my time." I'm a fan of Peter Lorre, The Beatles and MGM musicals from the 1940s and '50s. I like the Marx Brothers, The Addams Family, Cab Calloway and vintage advertising. I could tell you more about 1930s horror movies than I should know, considering I haven't seen half the movies I know great swaths of information about. How dare you use my age to assume what I know and what I don't!
Generally if I don't know about something, it's for one of two reasons: I'm either uninterested or it's never come up before. That's it. I don't know where Tanzania is because I'm not terribly interested in geography and I don't know who directed Gone With The Wind because I don't care. I fuckin' hate that movie.
3) people who are easily offended - For the past several summers I've volunteered as a counselor for the teen program at a summer camp in the midwest. Every year the teens have a night that for a long time was called Slut Night (a name that originated from an act of solidarity with a girl who was being picked on for wearing club clothes to a dance). This year some "concerns" were raised about the name of the event and the coordinator of the teen program had to sit through meetings with parents and an interested third party about the changing of the night's name.
My immediate reaction to that was "Tell them to go to hell." Do these people really not know how teenagers talk? The kids all know the night as Slut Night; it doesn't matter what the "official" name is, they're going to keep calling it Slut Night.
Various politically correct (which is code for "fucking stupid") names were kicked around. The absolute worst was Respect Night because "we're teaching the kids to be respectful of everybody regardless of how they dress," which makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Someone suggested Come As You're Not Night, to which the interested third party said "Why does it have to be Come As You're Not? Why not Come As You Are?" Because they do that every night, you fucking idiot! That's boring! The point is to get dressed up.
They settled on Costume Night, everybody kept calling it Slut Night in the real world and I nearly gouged my eyes out with how retarded I thought the whole situation was.
"Retarded," by the way, is a word I never used to use for fear of offending someone. Then I realized my immediate reaction to hearing people get offended by words was always something along the lines of "Suck my dick, you uptight cunt" and decided I may as well just use the words that I feel best express what I think or feel at any given time.
And I do censor myself. I don't use racial slurs, for instance, because I'm not fond of them. I honestly think they're kind of horrible; I'm not in favor of the idea of racial superiority. I do, however, have a friend who throws around racial slurs like they're confetti and the most severe my reaction to that ever gets is "Huh. That's not the word I would have chosen." They don't offend me. It's really difficult to offend me with words all on their own.
The attitude of people who do get offended by words, however, offends me deeply. There always seems to be a smugness to it that makes me want to physically hurt something.
A month or so ago I read a story about some comedian (I forget who; it wasn't one I'm a fan of) making a rape joke and, when an audience member got offended, made her the star of her own rape joke. It turned into a whole big thing, people on the internet got all uppity and the guy was forced to make a public apology. Because I was curious I looked up what the guy said and, honestly, I thought it sounded rather tame. I'm fans of a lot of comedians who have told rape jokes. George Carlin, for instance. I don't recall there ever being a backlash against him for it, either. I think the only thing wrong with what this other guy said is that his rape joke wasn't funny. Maybe that's why people got offended.
I hope so.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
An Amendment To Lovely Ladies In Entertainment
I was going to just avoid the whole subject until I remembered one of the parties involved was on my Lovely Ladies list and ... well, okay, it goes like this:
From what I've pieced together from the internet news and debates I could actually stand to read before giving up, Spoony got fired from ThatGuyWithTheGlasses because Lupa started a fight with him over something he posted on Twitter. The post was apparently a rape joke (the only thing about it I found offensive was the fact that it was pretty much entire incomprehensible) that he almost immediately apologized for. Months later, Obscurus Lupa saw it, got mad, Some Stuff Happened (this is the part where stories get muddled and Sally gets fed up) and Spoony got fired.
I like Spoony. I think he's funny. I also think Lupa is funny but, to be honest, I'd kind of lost interest in her reviews anyway. Remembering to watch them was like a chore. I still think her Radu Reviews are good and I'll probably watch them if she posts more. But on the whole I had pretty much stopped watching both Lupa and Spoony by the time all that shit went down.
And, in the spirit of nonpartisanship, not knowing the whole situation and really not knowing the whole situation, I hereby eject Obscurus Lupa from my Lovely Ladies In Entertainment list.
Her replacement is Macedonian singer-songwriter Kaliopi Bukle.
She's beautiful, her singing is amazing and she isn't in the center of any controversies I am aware of.
Tune in next time when I go off about people getting offended by stuff.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
From what I've pieced together from the internet news and debates I could actually stand to read before giving up, Spoony got fired from ThatGuyWithTheGlasses because Lupa started a fight with him over something he posted on Twitter. The post was apparently a rape joke (the only thing about it I found offensive was the fact that it was pretty much entire incomprehensible) that he almost immediately apologized for. Months later, Obscurus Lupa saw it, got mad, Some Stuff Happened (this is the part where stories get muddled and Sally gets fed up) and Spoony got fired.
I like Spoony. I think he's funny. I also think Lupa is funny but, to be honest, I'd kind of lost interest in her reviews anyway. Remembering to watch them was like a chore. I still think her Radu Reviews are good and I'll probably watch them if she posts more. But on the whole I had pretty much stopped watching both Lupa and Spoony by the time all that shit went down.
And, in the spirit of nonpartisanship, not knowing the whole situation and really not knowing the whole situation, I hereby eject Obscurus Lupa from my Lovely Ladies In Entertainment list.
Her replacement is Macedonian singer-songwriter Kaliopi Bukle.
She's beautiful, her singing is amazing and she isn't in the center of any controversies I am aware of.
Tune in next time when I go off about people getting offended by stuff.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
I'm Pretty Sure This Is The Coolest Man Alive
I'm certainly not as cool as him and I bet you aren't either.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Sally Still Hates Commercials
This entry will have to be done without the aide of a video because I can't remember what company (or whatever) released the ad and searching Youtube came up with nothing. So I shall just have to describe to you what I saw and why I am irrationally pissed (like I do).
It was a public service announcement this time, rather than an ad for a product and it went something like this:
A girls' soccer game is happening and, therefore, girls are playing soccer. Suddenly loudspeakers around the field start shouting stuff like "Is your body ready for bikini weather?" and "Wearing too much makeup prevents face rot!" and "Probably some stuff about impressing guys!" Then half the soccer players turn into fourteen year old prostitutes and wobble off the field in leopard print platform shoes while the other girls look confused because the game isn't over yet. Then an announcer says something about "When they're being barraged by messages like this, is it a surprise that more girls drop out of sports by some young age than boys do?" and then something about girls not reaching their full potential because of that.
Okay, look. Playing sports is not what makes a girl reach her full potential. How dare you imply that I will never be successful as a human being because I'm a chick who never played sports? I hate sports. I'm not a competitive person. That doesn't mean that by age fourteen I was prancing around in leopard print platform shoes and enough makeup to poison a small animal.
I wore makeup to school exactly once; I was in seventh grade and some girls were making fun of me because I didn't wear makeup. So the next day I came to school with some smeared on hideous green eyeshadow, because I thought that somehow that proved my theory that wearing makeup every day is stupid (I don't quite follow that logic now, but it made sense to me at the time). Then the girls made fun of me for wearing makeup wrong. Whatever.
The point is, the ad implies that if you don't play sports you'll turn into a mini whore and that's bullshit. People are who they are; I knew plenty of girls in high school who played sports and then, off the field, looked and acted a lot like the little hookers from the commercial. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
I've never been one for dressing skanky and wearing too much makeup (and somewhere out in the world there is televised proof that I can't walk in high heels). I've also never been into sports. That doesn't mean that I'm a failure as a woman, or that I can't reach my full potential because I was never involved in wearing a uniform and trying to prove I'm better than people who wear a different uniform by throwing and kicking stuff. I'm not good at competitve sports. I'm not good at competitive anything. I'm good at writing, I'm decent at singing and I'm a fine baker. My hope is that someday I can make a living as a writer, and I'm slowly working toward that goal.
On the flipside, girls who play sports may become failures in life just as much as anyone else. Sports don't make you a better or more successful person; they make you a sports player.
Anyone, I repeat, anyone, can be a success and anyone can be a failure, regardless of what they do, how they act and what they look like. The commercial makes sense on the surface (I guess; my gut reaction was to find it offensive but I can see why people would find it convincing) but if you really start to think about it, it means nothing. Every circumstace is personal and cannot be generalized the way the ad generalizes them. Sure, maybe some chicks who used to play sports and quit to go be mini whores would have had better (or whatever) lives if they'd stuck with the sports. But I firmly stand by my belief that people are who they are and they're going to continue being themselves regardless of what choices they make. If they're failures, maybe they would have made the choices that led to them becoming failures regardless of whether they stuck with soccer or not.
Reaching one's full potential has nothing to do with sports. It has to do with work and effort and planning and knowing what steps to take to get to where you want to go. A person can do that without having ever stepped foot on a soccer field. A person can also do that while wearing platform shoes and a pound of lipstick.
Hell, a person can do that while playing soccer in platform shoes and a pound of lipstick. I might actually watch that game.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
It was a public service announcement this time, rather than an ad for a product and it went something like this:
A girls' soccer game is happening and, therefore, girls are playing soccer. Suddenly loudspeakers around the field start shouting stuff like "Is your body ready for bikini weather?" and "Wearing too much makeup prevents face rot!" and "Probably some stuff about impressing guys!" Then half the soccer players turn into fourteen year old prostitutes and wobble off the field in leopard print platform shoes while the other girls look confused because the game isn't over yet. Then an announcer says something about "When they're being barraged by messages like this, is it a surprise that more girls drop out of sports by some young age than boys do?" and then something about girls not reaching their full potential because of that.
Okay, look. Playing sports is not what makes a girl reach her full potential. How dare you imply that I will never be successful as a human being because I'm a chick who never played sports? I hate sports. I'm not a competitive person. That doesn't mean that by age fourteen I was prancing around in leopard print platform shoes and enough makeup to poison a small animal.
I wore makeup to school exactly once; I was in seventh grade and some girls were making fun of me because I didn't wear makeup. So the next day I came to school with some smeared on hideous green eyeshadow, because I thought that somehow that proved my theory that wearing makeup every day is stupid (I don't quite follow that logic now, but it made sense to me at the time). Then the girls made fun of me for wearing makeup wrong. Whatever.
The point is, the ad implies that if you don't play sports you'll turn into a mini whore and that's bullshit. People are who they are; I knew plenty of girls in high school who played sports and then, off the field, looked and acted a lot like the little hookers from the commercial. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
I've never been one for dressing skanky and wearing too much makeup (and somewhere out in the world there is televised proof that I can't walk in high heels). I've also never been into sports. That doesn't mean that I'm a failure as a woman, or that I can't reach my full potential because I was never involved in wearing a uniform and trying to prove I'm better than people who wear a different uniform by throwing and kicking stuff. I'm not good at competitve sports. I'm not good at competitive anything. I'm good at writing, I'm decent at singing and I'm a fine baker. My hope is that someday I can make a living as a writer, and I'm slowly working toward that goal.
On the flipside, girls who play sports may become failures in life just as much as anyone else. Sports don't make you a better or more successful person; they make you a sports player.
Anyone, I repeat, anyone, can be a success and anyone can be a failure, regardless of what they do, how they act and what they look like. The commercial makes sense on the surface (I guess; my gut reaction was to find it offensive but I can see why people would find it convincing) but if you really start to think about it, it means nothing. Every circumstace is personal and cannot be generalized the way the ad generalizes them. Sure, maybe some chicks who used to play sports and quit to go be mini whores would have had better (or whatever) lives if they'd stuck with the sports. But I firmly stand by my belief that people are who they are and they're going to continue being themselves regardless of what choices they make. If they're failures, maybe they would have made the choices that led to them becoming failures regardless of whether they stuck with soccer or not.
Reaching one's full potential has nothing to do with sports. It has to do with work and effort and planning and knowing what steps to take to get to where you want to go. A person can do that without having ever stepped foot on a soccer field. A person can also do that while wearing platform shoes and a pound of lipstick.
Hell, a person can do that while playing soccer in platform shoes and a pound of lipstick. I might actually watch that game.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Weeked
On Saturday my mom and I went to the Treasures From The Disney Vault exhibit at the Reagan Library. The docents seemed pretty offended that we wanted to go straight to the Disney exhibit and skip all the Reagan crap, but I don't like the Reagan crap and I doubt my mom would either. Also, Disney! Come on, man!
The exhibit was awesome, to say the least. I'm looking forward to going back; there's all kinds of stuff I'd like to take pictures of. Tron costumes, for instance. (Real Tron, not that Tron 2 bullshit.) And all the Pirates Of The Caribbean stuff (most of which my mom already took pictures of).
My mom did take one picture for / of me on her phone:
Oh man.
Okay, so, I'm pretty sure I went on the Haunted Mansion once or twice when I was little; I vaguely remember thinking the Hitchhiking Ghosts were cool. But at some point in my childhood, cowardice won out and I avoided the Haunted Mansion at all costs, on account of it being scary and full of ghosts.
However, when I was about thirteen I went to Disneyland with friends, to whom I tried to seem brave and, therefore, went on Haunted Mansion with them. And I loved it. Because it was scary and full of ghosts and I've been a horror fan to my core since the very beginning, even when I was too afraid to realize it because scary things are scary.
Anyway, there was one part of the ride that creeped me out more than any other and, of course, I became simultaneously obsessed with and terrified of it.
That freaking ghost bride.
I don't know what it is about her that gives me the heebie jeebies so. I don't know why those heebie jeebies translate to obsession. All I know is she was my favorite thing in the ride, back when the attic was creepy and not stupid. (I'm scared of the new attic bride in the Haunted Mansion, but mostly because the projection makes her look fucking wrong, like warped animation or something. And I hate the stupid black widow bride bullshit story they gave her. That's not scary, that's cliche.)
Anyway, the point is, this is possibly the best picture ever taken. Because it didn't matter that she was in a glass cage, I was still afraid to get too close to her. Because she's going to get me. I'm not kidding, I sincerely feel that way. I hid behind my mom when I noticed they had her in the exhibit and there was no way I wasn't going to get a picture with her because she's my favorite thing there.
It feels weird to be obsessed with the things that scare you. I like to believe I'm not the only person to whom that happens.
Anyway, that afternoon I drove up to Sunnyvale to visit Ivan and Amanda.
The power was out when I got there because Amanda had accidentally turned it off. We ate at Red Robin, Ivan told me about the stupid new Batman reboot DC is doing (all the villains have new, stupid backstories and the first story arc in the comics fell apart when they killed off the really interesting-sounding secret society in favor of having the villain be Bruce Wayne's secret, evil brother who nobody has ever heard of before). Ivan played Portal 2 for me (It. Was. Awesome.), Amanda and I went to a used book store, we watched a couple episodes of Father Ted. A grand time was had by all.
I was going to head up to San Francisco for a day or two and hang out with my friend Jenny, but my budget wouldn't allow it and I started heading home yesterday. But I got sick of driving and suddenly remembered "Hey, I'm an adult and can do whatever I want!" and stopped in Pismo Beach for the night.
I ate at a restaurant called Brad's because it has the same name as my brother, got an ice cream cone and walked back to my little, cheapy motel room where I took a shower, watched television, had a long phone conversation with Jenny and got a little bit of writing done.
That was my favorite part because I felt so classic: unemployed, on a road trip, in a divey motel room, writing with a notebook and pen (rather than a laptop). I felt like I should have been drinking scotch and smoking, wearing a wifebeater and a fedora.
I drove the rest of the way home today and am now too tired and lazy to unpack. My brother and cousin are playing music in the other room and the less I say about what I can hear, the better. "If you can't say something nice..." and all that. (Admittedly, I can't hear them very well. Maybe it'd sound better if I could. As it stands now, though, I mostly just wish they'd stop.)
Apparently I'm a crankybritches today.
I blame the heat.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
The exhibit was awesome, to say the least. I'm looking forward to going back; there's all kinds of stuff I'd like to take pictures of. Tron costumes, for instance. (Real Tron, not that Tron 2 bullshit.) And all the Pirates Of The Caribbean stuff (most of which my mom already took pictures of).
My mom did take one picture for / of me on her phone:
Oh man.
Okay, so, I'm pretty sure I went on the Haunted Mansion once or twice when I was little; I vaguely remember thinking the Hitchhiking Ghosts were cool. But at some point in my childhood, cowardice won out and I avoided the Haunted Mansion at all costs, on account of it being scary and full of ghosts.
However, when I was about thirteen I went to Disneyland with friends, to whom I tried to seem brave and, therefore, went on Haunted Mansion with them. And I loved it. Because it was scary and full of ghosts and I've been a horror fan to my core since the very beginning, even when I was too afraid to realize it because scary things are scary.
Anyway, there was one part of the ride that creeped me out more than any other and, of course, I became simultaneously obsessed with and terrified of it.
That freaking ghost bride.
I don't know what it is about her that gives me the heebie jeebies so. I don't know why those heebie jeebies translate to obsession. All I know is she was my favorite thing in the ride, back when the attic was creepy and not stupid. (I'm scared of the new attic bride in the Haunted Mansion, but mostly because the projection makes her look fucking wrong, like warped animation or something. And I hate the stupid black widow bride bullshit story they gave her. That's not scary, that's cliche.)
Anyway, the point is, this is possibly the best picture ever taken. Because it didn't matter that she was in a glass cage, I was still afraid to get too close to her. Because she's going to get me. I'm not kidding, I sincerely feel that way. I hid behind my mom when I noticed they had her in the exhibit and there was no way I wasn't going to get a picture with her because she's my favorite thing there.
It feels weird to be obsessed with the things that scare you. I like to believe I'm not the only person to whom that happens.
Anyway, that afternoon I drove up to Sunnyvale to visit Ivan and Amanda.
The power was out when I got there because Amanda had accidentally turned it off. We ate at Red Robin, Ivan told me about the stupid new Batman reboot DC is doing (all the villains have new, stupid backstories and the first story arc in the comics fell apart when they killed off the really interesting-sounding secret society in favor of having the villain be Bruce Wayne's secret, evil brother who nobody has ever heard of before). Ivan played Portal 2 for me (It. Was. Awesome.), Amanda and I went to a used book store, we watched a couple episodes of Father Ted. A grand time was had by all.
I was going to head up to San Francisco for a day or two and hang out with my friend Jenny, but my budget wouldn't allow it and I started heading home yesterday. But I got sick of driving and suddenly remembered "Hey, I'm an adult and can do whatever I want!" and stopped in Pismo Beach for the night.
I ate at a restaurant called Brad's because it has the same name as my brother, got an ice cream cone and walked back to my little, cheapy motel room where I took a shower, watched television, had a long phone conversation with Jenny and got a little bit of writing done.
That was my favorite part because I felt so classic: unemployed, on a road trip, in a divey motel room, writing with a notebook and pen (rather than a laptop). I felt like I should have been drinking scotch and smoking, wearing a wifebeater and a fedora.
I drove the rest of the way home today and am now too tired and lazy to unpack. My brother and cousin are playing music in the other room and the less I say about what I can hear, the better. "If you can't say something nice..." and all that. (Admittedly, I can't hear them very well. Maybe it'd sound better if I could. As it stands now, though, I mostly just wish they'd stop.)
Apparently I'm a crankybritches today.
I blame the heat.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
Friday, August 10, 2012
Favorite Things To Find On The Ground
This list took me a long time for the opposite of why some other lists take me a long time: I couldn't think of many things to put on it. Oh well. Here are my top five favorite things to find on the ground:
5) receipts - especially really long ones; I like seeing what strangers buy.
4) cards - playing cards, Magic The Gathering cards, Pokemon cards, Tarot cards, whatever. They're fun.
3) money - paper money is more fun to find than change, but both are good.
2) letters - this rarely happens but a few times I've found personal notes and those are the freaking jackpot of groundfinds. The only thing that tops them are
1) shopping lists - sort of the same mentality of what receipts are fun, but shopping lists are more personal and fascinating.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
5) receipts - especially really long ones; I like seeing what strangers buy.
4) cards - playing cards, Magic The Gathering cards, Pokemon cards, Tarot cards, whatever. They're fun.
3) money - paper money is more fun to find than change, but both are good.
2) letters - this rarely happens but a few times I've found personal notes and those are the freaking jackpot of groundfinds. The only thing that tops them are
1) shopping lists - sort of the same mentality of what receipts are fun, but shopping lists are more personal and fascinating.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
Saturday, August 4, 2012
... I ... Whaaaat?
I have no words. Scott showed me this and ... Okay, if you're easily disturbed, I'd recommend avoiding it. If you like weirdass shit, I recommend watching it.
I didn't really hear the song when I first watched the video because the video is so distracting that it overwhelms the music but I've listened to it twice in a row now while doing other stuff and (if I ignore the horrified screams) I think I really like the song.
Be seeing you.
Sally
Friday, August 3, 2012
Why I Don't Watch The Olympics
(Author's Note: This blog post was written in the heat of the moment. Sally stands by what she has to say but is well aware she could have expressed herself more eloquently, probably uses too much profanity and possibly doesn't always know what she's talking about. She doesn't want anybody trying to convince her the Olympics are a good thing because it doesn't matter if they are or not; she is very severly emotionally allergic to the Olympics and should have known better than to watch even a little bit of them.)
When I was a kid I was certain the Olympics were rigged because the United States always won so goddamn fucking many gold medals. How come I never hear about athletes from, like, Ukraine or Chad or Bolivia winning any medals?
I'm not really certain of that anymore but I do still hate the motherfucking Olympics. I'm not competitive enough for it. Or maybe I'm competitive in the wrong way. I'm not entirely sure. All I know is all the emphasis on winning makes me angry and tense and a little bit hyperventilatey.
I watched some swimming and gymnastics with my friend's family tonight and we were barely thirty seconds into the broadcast before I noticed I was almost involuntarily making snarky comments and that I kept tensing my fingers and toes.
I silently rooted for Brazil, Israel, Japan and Poland during the swimming events and was slightly more vocal about my hopes that the Russians would win the gold in gymnastics.
Actually, I was first rooting for the Chinese girl who the announcers barely talked about; they didn't even show her balance beam routine. When it became clear she didn't have enough points to get any medal, I focused all my energy on rooting for the Russians.
And why exactly do the broadcasters still only focus on the United States and Russia? Is it 1986 in here? Are we still in the fucking Cold War? 'Cause I'm pretty sure its 2012 and we're not. So maybe we should focus on everybody who's competing.
Anyway, the gymnastics competition came down to a very close contention for the gold medal between an American chick whose name I forget and and Russian chick whose name I forget. The Russian girl went very last and was only behind by fractions of a point. But she didn't get enough point fractions and ended up winning a silver medal instead. She started crying and the fucking sadists at NBC kept cutting between American Chick's stupid victory face and Russian Chick sitting curled up on a chair by herself, crying into her hands.
Gee, who am I going to feel more for? The dumbass girl who was celebrating her fucking win before all the other competitors had even gone yet (seriously, go back and watch the footage; she and her coach were clearly celebrating the second she finished her routine. I don't think they'd even announced her score yet) or the girl who wanted something more than anything, got insanely close to getting it and then had it ripped away from her at the last second?
And then they keep going back and showing her alone and crying? Fuck those fucking sadistic fuckwads!
My friend's sister kept mocking the Russian girl; "Oh, she's crying because she won silver?" Like the girl is ungrateful or something. I'm sure in retrospect she'll be thrilled to have a silver medal but for a moment she thought she had the gold (and, honestly, so did I (her routine was better than the other girl's) until I remembered they never would have televised it here if the US hadn't won the stupid fucking gold) until the last second, when she didn't. That has to hurt. And I damn near started crying when they kept showing us how sad she was.
Why would they show that? Are we supposed to be happy about that? A girl is miserable and we, the home viewers, are supposed to be fucking cheering that? Because some kid we'll never meet won some fucking hunk of metal that she can wear around her neck and use to make people think she's better than other people and probably use to endorse cereal or a sandwich chain? Big fucking deal! I don't give a shit.
Fuck gold medals! Why do we have to go handing out fucking awards? Why can't we just watch and appreciate the gifts these people have? All of those gymnasts can do amazing things that I will never be able to do, and that would be absolutely fascinating, impressive and beautiful to watch if it weren't for the fact that the whole experience is ruined by people trying to be fucking better than other people and trying to fucking win fucking stupid bullshit prizes.
I hate the Olympics. I fucking hate them. I hate how much emphasis is placed on winning. I hate how much emphasis is placed on the United States winning. I hate sports. I hate contests. I hate how stressed and angry and hate filled the Olympics make me feel. I genuinely have a hard time breathing when I watch them. I get all tense and can't inhale and I keep hoping that someone, anyone, from somewhere that isn't America will swoop in and win everything and leave the US with nothing.
No, fuck that. I want them to do away with the medals all together. As soon as the Olympics stop being a fucking goddamn stupid fucking competition and actually becomes a celebration of the world's greatest athletes being great athletes, I might actually watch it. Maybe.
God I fucking hate the motherfucking goddamn assfuck Olympics! Fuck!
And how come nobody but me seems to notice that Michael Phelps is living proof of evolution? He's clearly a few steps back in the chain. I have never seen a person who looks more like a caveman than Micahel Phelps. I don't care how fucking fast he can swim; he's unattractive and I'm sick of his face.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
When I was a kid I was certain the Olympics were rigged because the United States always won so goddamn fucking many gold medals. How come I never hear about athletes from, like, Ukraine or Chad or Bolivia winning any medals?
I'm not really certain of that anymore but I do still hate the motherfucking Olympics. I'm not competitive enough for it. Or maybe I'm competitive in the wrong way. I'm not entirely sure. All I know is all the emphasis on winning makes me angry and tense and a little bit hyperventilatey.
I watched some swimming and gymnastics with my friend's family tonight and we were barely thirty seconds into the broadcast before I noticed I was almost involuntarily making snarky comments and that I kept tensing my fingers and toes.
I silently rooted for Brazil, Israel, Japan and Poland during the swimming events and was slightly more vocal about my hopes that the Russians would win the gold in gymnastics.
Actually, I was first rooting for the Chinese girl who the announcers barely talked about; they didn't even show her balance beam routine. When it became clear she didn't have enough points to get any medal, I focused all my energy on rooting for the Russians.
And why exactly do the broadcasters still only focus on the United States and Russia? Is it 1986 in here? Are we still in the fucking Cold War? 'Cause I'm pretty sure its 2012 and we're not. So maybe we should focus on everybody who's competing.
Anyway, the gymnastics competition came down to a very close contention for the gold medal between an American chick whose name I forget and and Russian chick whose name I forget. The Russian girl went very last and was only behind by fractions of a point. But she didn't get enough point fractions and ended up winning a silver medal instead. She started crying and the fucking sadists at NBC kept cutting between American Chick's stupid victory face and Russian Chick sitting curled up on a chair by herself, crying into her hands.
Gee, who am I going to feel more for? The dumbass girl who was celebrating her fucking win before all the other competitors had even gone yet (seriously, go back and watch the footage; she and her coach were clearly celebrating the second she finished her routine. I don't think they'd even announced her score yet) or the girl who wanted something more than anything, got insanely close to getting it and then had it ripped away from her at the last second?
And then they keep going back and showing her alone and crying? Fuck those fucking sadistic fuckwads!
My friend's sister kept mocking the Russian girl; "Oh, she's crying because she won silver?" Like the girl is ungrateful or something. I'm sure in retrospect she'll be thrilled to have a silver medal but for a moment she thought she had the gold (and, honestly, so did I (her routine was better than the other girl's) until I remembered they never would have televised it here if the US hadn't won the stupid fucking gold) until the last second, when she didn't. That has to hurt. And I damn near started crying when they kept showing us how sad she was.
Why would they show that? Are we supposed to be happy about that? A girl is miserable and we, the home viewers, are supposed to be fucking cheering that? Because some kid we'll never meet won some fucking hunk of metal that she can wear around her neck and use to make people think she's better than other people and probably use to endorse cereal or a sandwich chain? Big fucking deal! I don't give a shit.
Fuck gold medals! Why do we have to go handing out fucking awards? Why can't we just watch and appreciate the gifts these people have? All of those gymnasts can do amazing things that I will never be able to do, and that would be absolutely fascinating, impressive and beautiful to watch if it weren't for the fact that the whole experience is ruined by people trying to be fucking better than other people and trying to fucking win fucking stupid bullshit prizes.
I hate the Olympics. I fucking hate them. I hate how much emphasis is placed on winning. I hate how much emphasis is placed on the United States winning. I hate sports. I hate contests. I hate how stressed and angry and hate filled the Olympics make me feel. I genuinely have a hard time breathing when I watch them. I get all tense and can't inhale and I keep hoping that someone, anyone, from somewhere that isn't America will swoop in and win everything and leave the US with nothing.
No, fuck that. I want them to do away with the medals all together. As soon as the Olympics stop being a fucking goddamn stupid fucking competition and actually becomes a celebration of the world's greatest athletes being great athletes, I might actually watch it. Maybe.
God I fucking hate the motherfucking goddamn assfuck Olympics! Fuck!
And how come nobody but me seems to notice that Michael Phelps is living proof of evolution? He's clearly a few steps back in the chain. I have never seen a person who looks more like a caveman than Micahel Phelps. I don't care how fucking fast he can swim; he's unattractive and I'm sick of his face.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
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