"maybe I'm dumb"

TWO CDs!  That's ALL I can think of that doesn't have traces of ingenuity or dullness.

They are:

American Football - self titled (1999, Polyvinyl)
Hidden In Plain View - Resolution (2007, Drive-Thru)

As for movies, I so wish I had my own theater - then I could watch A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE the way it ought to be seen - that film has such an expansive sense of imagery, it's visuals are BREATH-TAKING(!!!).  I've only seen it once (in theaters) and was blown away.  I don't get anywhere near as much out of a 2nd+ viewing of most movies, A.I. included.  No offense, Mr. Speilberg - well, not that he'd care since he didn't get all the money one could dream of from that film...what the heck was he expecting anyway?  The general public doesn't want art!  Didn't we learn anything from FANTASIA (1942)??!!  If Walt Disney hadn't become such a powerhouse name in the minds of the '70's beatnick generation, that film would still be stuck in the vault ... and yes, I know it's currently OOP, but it would NEVER have been unleashed on DVD OR VHS if it weren't for that chaotic period in time - 1963-1975.  

the depths of my soul, for all to see...

Today I thought I'd share with you my primary concern as of the last few days and probably the next...

MONEY

First, I should say: I'm paying A LOT more in rent/utilities than I would given I ONLY MAKE:::$637/mo! Yes, I'm poor, and proud of it! well, not really, but as I was saying; after rent and bills etc. are paid I only have $71 to spend on junk like a Wi-Fi Internet Radio or a Blu-Ray player. The upside of this is the landlord I rent from, my sister as it is - she bought the house and had to move to Georgia, and couldn't afford to live in both places & she didn't wanna sell her house in this day in time... - , will grant me free rent as soon as the mortgage is paid down. Me, I'm taking care of her AC/heating loan, with help from the other tenant, my mother, as part of the deal...
And in April, I will need to repay my bank $33. And I owe my mother at least $15, but will probably just pay her $18, and the remainder will have to go to me in cash since my debit card has been jammed...that leaves me with $20

SO THIS IS HOW IT'S GONNA BE:

APRIL
$06.35 Aerosmith-CLASSICS LIVE! II & Toto-IV (new&sealed) (Hastings)
$03.85 GENESIS - LIVE/THE WAY WE WALK VOLUME ONE: THE SHORTS (used) (Hastings)
$04.10 lattes from Schncuks - 2 ea week for 2 weeks + 1 latte on week 3 & none on wk4
$05.60 gift for Apr15 in celebration of my sister's birth
----
$19.90 total out of $20 = $0.10 left

I might get a dollar or two more from my local CD store in exchange for this 5-movie DVD set, but that'll probably be spent on more lattes...and if you're wondering who the heck Hasting is, look up: gohastings.com. If you shop for music and/or movies on Amazon, you've probably seem an item or two of theirs listed on the Amazon Marketplace...they're a nationwide chain, but they don't pull into every town like WalMart and other dept stores do...

two videocassettes, one fate...

This tale beings about 2 or 3 years ago after I sold a once beloved copy of GHOSTBUSTERS & GHOSTBUSTERS II COLLECTOR'S EDITION on VHS that I had bought on eBay STILL IN THE SHRINK WRAP (!!!!) when the buyer contacted my sister (the official seller of the product as I did not have a bank account in my name, which was a necessity for selling products on Amazon - and still is, FYI) claiming the tapes were defective. There were many levels of grief over this, the main one being "what the hell kind of joke is this? HE OPENED THE PACKAGE????", completely destroying the value they had when I shipped them. He could have very well bought a used set of tapes and they would have served him just as well. But nooooooo...and then he selects "expedited" shipping and I end up choosing FedEx for some reason that I don't clearly remember, and they charge me somewhere at about 9/10 of what Amazon quoted was to be in my sister's bank account. I fail to come to terms with the reasoning I had behind NOT walking out of there and saying "YOU CHARGE TOO F*****ING MUCH FOR SHIPPING A SMALL PACKAGE!!!!!!!!". I mean, it wasn't tiny, but it wasn't like BIG or anywhere near either...



If it were not for my own similiar experience with a BRAND NEW AND FACTORY SEALED copy of Stanley Kubrick's 1971 masterpiece A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (VHS), which I could tell was broken in some way or another before I even took the cellophane off (I heard something rattling around inside the box, but I didn't know if it would effect playback...).

To make a longer story shorter, I will simply give you a paraphrase of my advice - don't think NEW = MINT. Shrinkwrap does NOT equal a perfect item. Aside from the "unimportant" attributes, such as scars, stains, and other things that could arise from abuse and/or neglect, accumulating on the outer box of anything that HAS an outer box, the tape itself can wear down just from small holes in the shrinkwrap that let dust settle overabundantly over a series of years, 10, 20 or whatever. I don't think that's what caused the GB bust though; I think, for some reason that I can't quite pin down scientifically, that VHS tapes fare better used. Perhaps it's the old mentality of "use it or lose it" that predates viagra and the God of Film making (aka Satan?) wanted the world to know: USE IT - OR - LOSE - IT ! (!!!)!. Superstitious and rediculous I know, but that's the only guess I can come up with...

Will provide any updates on this theory as I obtain them, unless some paranoid schizo in the peanut gallery (you mean me?) wants to post a comment with some scientific explanation to end all scientific explanations...hehe
~Jo!

How?...Or: Do you know why you don't care?

You expect me to be happy without anything
Without food, without medicine, without chemicals incoming
You expect me to stop my arm from grabbing for the gun
Without any motive to stop me, without any force to restrain me

You don't know why, you don't know how
You are what you are, the way you are
You don't care to find out
So leave me alone and quit asking questions with your angry fists

You expect me to prove you right
When your ideology is a fantasy, an assumption you made and didn't care to validate
You expect me to act just so
As if I should care what you think

When you don't know why, you don't know how
You and I are what we are, and the way we are
You don't care either, you just complain
So please somebody, won't you lock this guy up in a rubber cell
All alone with the exception of whatever other delusions he may have

"have lunch w/ my machine"

I'm supposed to call my bank back in about 5 or 10 minutes to see what, if anything, they can/will do to salvage what little funds I will have for the rest of this month. I ordered three CDs from Amazon late Feb and got a overdraft fee b/c of it, and the crazy thing is I decided they weren't worth keeping...so I returned those a few days ago, and am awaiting a refund...'sok 'cause I was expecting that. What I was NOT expecting was to have to set aside $30+ for a Disney DVD club introductory order that I placed and did not receive any email order confirmation suggesting that the order was successful and/or that they were going to charge my debit card. So after just about all of my money is spent on this and that THEN they charge my card, which should not even be possible b/c I don't have overdraft "protection"...so anyway...
My sister wired some money to me to cover it, but A) it was presented as a check and B) the check has yet to post and the aljljljs charge HAS posted! I should be able to pay the OD charge thingy(s) w/ my Amazon refund but I don't know how I'm going to pay back the wire transfer fee that my sister paid to the Western Union people. Guess that'll have to wait 'til April...
On the upside, I got my first poster since I moved here after months of deciding on one to get, and it's A) VERY cheap and B) FRAMEABLE!!!! I bought this THE DARK KNIGHT poster from Hastings (gohastings on the web) and it was in some crazy size that was hard if not impossible to find a frame for. This one is unlike that. I'll probably keep the poster sealed until I can afford to buy a frame for it. Also, my Mom loaned me $3.30 to buy David Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY from Big Lots. I couldn't believe it was even THERE and it was THREE FORKIN' DOLLARS!!!!?? It's a MINIMUM of three times that much for a used copy on Amazon.