Christmas wrap up

That about says it all.

Christmas was good. I scored some pretty sweet swag. Including but not limited to Battle for Middle Earth 2, Boston Legal: Season 1, Anchorman, Little Miss Sunshine... I can't remember what else. I found out that there is a new fables trade that I don't have yet so I gots to pick that up sometime before whenever we go to St. Louis.

Anyway I gots to go to bed cause I gots to get up early tomorrow cause I gots to do a morning route. Word.

Neighborhood 4!!!!!

I've been listening to Arcade Fire a lot lately. I'm sort of tired of Christmas songs, plus I refuse to believe Christmas is next week.

THIS HAS BEEN THE LONGEST WEEK EVER!!!!

One of the two meters at work have been broken since monday, which means we are fifty percent less efficient than we could be. Plus we're getting a shitload of mail. A SHITLOAD!!! It's very frustrating sitting around waiting for Pat and Renee to finish all the mail on one machine, almost as frustrating as being the one that has to run all the mail on one machine, which I did last night since Pat was gone, she'll also be gone tomorrow so that's nice. It's like driving to St. Louis going 35 miles per hour.

After work, Work Jimmy, Terrence and I went to go see Rocky Balboa. One of the previews was for a werewolf movie so I was immediately engaged, the movie looked pretty bad though and it appears that the people just turn into actual wolves which is always a dissapointment, the highlight though was when the announcer said the title of the film which was "Blood and Chocolate" the audience, including myself burst into laughter.

Rocky Balboa wasn't as good as I thought it would be. The ending seemed sort of anti-climactic and there was some sort of pep talk or inspirational heart to heart about every 2 minutes. The fight scene (singular) was sort of rushed, I felt that they could have strecthed it out about since it was the climax of the film. The best part of the movie was the part where Rocky totally made out with this chick while holding a picture of his dead wife. It was totally hot in a PG kind of way.

Children of Men is supposed to be amazing. I heard a story about it on NPR today, and it was on everyone's list of best movies of the year over at The Onion Av Club. I don't really know what to think about that though since almost everyone had Prarie Home Companion on there as well which seemed fairly unwatchable to me.


Post Script.

Oh, the minarets of Constantinople are plated gold, ivory and opal.

Just another post about sleeping

Well I'm done with about one eighth of my Christmas shopping. Hurray!!!!

I've gone out to eat entirely too many times this week. Seven times since Friday, and we're supposed to be going out tonight for the Christmas party thing. I've started running again in hopes of countering this ridiculous intake of food, I've also started limiting my soda intake. I've more or less been abstaining from soda between meals fairly consistantly for a while, but I've also been not drinking soda when I got out to eat recently. I really don't notice a difference when I don't drink soad, apart from being hungrier, but the evidence that soda is bad for me (and when I say "me" I mean people who drink it) is really too well documented for me to ignore.

NOTE: We're still working on the kitchen. We are still dog sitting Dutch. I asked Ben to take Dutch and Buster outside while I start painting. The dogs are still in their kennels and have been since about 10 pm last night. So what does Ben do, first thing, when he goes down stairs? Take a shower. Sure the dogs have been couped up for the past 13 hours, what's another 45 to 50 minutes going to hurt them! That's right 45 to 50 minutes is how long it takes Ben to get ready in the morning. EVERY MORNING.

I have to go paint now.

Post number 1,467,982

Jimmy and I went to go see Apocalypto tonight. It was better than I thought it would be. I had no desire to see it in the first place, and I probably won't ever see it again, but it was still a decent flick. A solid 6, with aspirations for a 7.

It's really hard for me to get in the Christmas mood when It's almost 70 degrees outside. I can't listen to Christmas music anymore, it mocks me so with its depiction of wintery scenes; snowy hillsides, warm winter coats and scarves, frosty windows... this blows.

THOUGHT!!!

You know what guitar hero needs desperately songwise? The Overture from Jesus Christ Superstar. That is a rocking guitar jam.

I've been listening to the Fruitbats this weekend, particularly "The Wind the Blew My Heart Away". I find that track particularly inspirational as it helped me come up with an ending to a story that's in my head that I will never write down because I suck at writing.

Night!

Is it really Saturday?

Josh is back in town. Joshwa, Matt B and I played some guitar Hero 2 tonight. I still would rather just play a guitar than that game.

We're working on painting our kitchen this weekend. I'd like for it to be completely done this weekend so I can help Jimmy with his film next week.

All the cookies are baked, at least the ones I help with. It seems like we got a lot of cookies made this year, which is nice. I still might make a batch of oatmeal cookies or something before Christmas... if I have time. This week is going to be super busy. Monday I need to get my oil changed and I'm going into work early, Tuesday is the Christmas party, Wednesday and Thursday are probably going to be big cleaning days because Dutch will be back with Terrence so Mac will be able to move downstairs and we can actually get stuff cleaned without him messing it up. Friday Joe comes into town. Saturday will be more cleaning and cooking. Sunday will be cooking cleaning and Christmas eve. I think I'm going to go to midnight mass or early morning Christmas day. Also I haven't done any Christmas shopping.

Anyway, I'm going to bed.

Sunday's blow.

My online final goes up at midnight. I'll probably take it tomorrow morning.

I did some cleaning on Saturday. Today I did nothing. I sat around all day. It was pretty ridiculous. I did go for a run before I went over to Matthew, out of protest.

We picked names for our annual Christmas gathering. I got Spants. I think I know what to get him.

While we were waiting for Droib to show up we were playing some Mario Tennis and since I'm not a big fan of video game music, I turned on Pandora. Since I tend to use Pandora more than Matthew, my account was the one that loaded up when I opened the page, we listened to a couple of my stations. I have my stations sorted by similar music, for example my Rufus station has Rufus and Andrew Bird, who I think are sort of similar musically. I have a station of the Bens (Folds, Kweller, Lee). Music I think that will overlap I put in the same station so there is not a lot of crossover. Anyway we were listening to my Sing Me Spanish Techno station and Cacth My Disease came on. I made a comment about how it was sort of weird that Ben Lee would be on a New Pornographer's station and Bucket said something to the effect of "that's because you don't like different types of music." I took offense to that for one thing it's patently untrue, but also I pride myself on my openness to different styles of music and it seems that too often do I have to defend my musical tastes to Matt Buchheit. There are certain types of music that I don't have a lot of patience for; Opera, Rap, Hip-hop, Nu Metal but other than that, I'm fairly open minded. There are some bands I like that have fairly similar sounds: Rogue Wave is sort of like a less talented the Shins, Mike Doughty, God bless him, is sort of generic accoustic pop rock, Andrew Bird is like a better version of Rufus, and the Bens all sort of cover the same ground sonically. A lot of the bands I like are pretty much in a league of their own. Wilco does noise rock like no other, Sufjan Stevens is better than anyone has any right to be, The White Stripes are pretty much the best thing that's happened to popular music in my lifetime, The Beatles are the greatest band of all time, Neko Case made me like country music, Nickel Creek introduced me to bluegrass, The Giants made me pay attention to music, The Decemberists are best people making music right now. This list isn't particularly diverse racially and probably not socio-economically either. You could probably count the number of tatoos possessed by the people on this list with 2 hands (if you don't include Chris Funk) But the musical landscape of these bands is quite varied.

Holy day of Obligation Batman!

Happy Birthday Droib!!!!!!!

As far as I can remember I have always gotten Droib terrible presents. I can't remember ever getting him something that he wanted or enjoyed. Here's some presents I seem to remember getting him.

1. Some sort of Illustrated Encyclopedia or history book or something... Yikes.
2. Shaft (Sam L. version) Not bad in and of itself, but still.
3. Soundtrack to American Gladiators. Wow, I'm a jackass.

So this year I'm going to try to find something that he'll actually like or use. I'm thinking maybe a crossbow.

Christ. http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1529799&sdm=web&qtw=480&qth=300

Next year there are some pretty awesome-looking movies coming out.

January brings us Pathfinder (and Smoking Aces, for what it's worth)

February:
Reno 911:Miami (February? Seriously? Ouch)
Ghost Rider (It IS a comic book movie...)
Black Snake Moan (Jimmy is really excited about this movie... I trust his judgment)

March:
300 and Hot Fuzz open the same day. I doubt I'll have time to see any other movies that month

Grindhouse in April, Spiderman and Pirates in May. Next year will be a good one for movies.

Lord of the Rings the Third Age is fun. I like console RPG's. Ok I'm going to bed.

No one is asleep at my house

It's almost 2 in the morning and no my dad is the only person in the house that is sleeping. I'm waiting for my family to go to sleep so I can put their St. Nick's day presents out.

I went to Popeyes with work Jimmy tonight after work. We waited for like half an hour for our food. To be fair the first fifteen minutes of the half-hour was spent waiting to order. My advice to you is to not eat at Popeyes. At least not yet. I'm not a huge fried chicken fan to begin with, but the food was ok, just not worth the wait.

JimmyK is mostly over his sickness and almost done editing his movie, which means we'll probably start work on our project pretty soon. I'm fairly stoked, though simultaneously worried. I'm not really good at being creative on demand, especially the kind of creative that's also supposed to be funny. We'll see.

The Proposition is a decent flick. I think I liked it more than I should've. It's not particularly good, it's just not bad. It doesn't do anything wrong but it isn't overflowing with rightness. The cast is really strong though. It was written by Nick Cave, if that means anything to you. Yes, that Nick Cave, I checked.

HOTT FUZZ!!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7J_vYN5ZkY