another boring day on R.I.T.

(don't ask what the R.I.T. is...this blog-post title is a spoof of a movie called JUST ANOTHER GIRL ON THE R.I.T., which I have not seen.....)

Hmm...I walked to the library.  I took a shower a couple hours beforehand.  Now I'm online, after a 3hr (woohoo!) break.  It's cloudy like all rain + maybe storms outside...ugh...

Started out pretty OK.  Woke up too friggin' early, but I ate breakfast at 5am, lunch at 11:30, with some imitation cheese slices around 9am.  Mom brought home some hot dogs and cake and cookies.  Yum.  Ain't feelin' very yum.  Surprise, surprise.  I'm not an addict!   ...Morning was nice.  Played ball with my mom's dogs, while she sat with her ciggys and conversed w/ me a bit.  We had coffee.  I listened to Genesis LIVE/THE WAY WE WALK VOL. II: THE LONGS on her stereo while she was at church and my computer was scanning for viruses (none detected despite two day lull - [yay])

I watched 25 mins of a movie called BEGINNERS with Ewen McGreggor and Christopher Plummer.  It was OK.  I laughed a bit a few times.  I could tell by the 26th minute into the film that it was just going on without any sense of purpose, starting to get bogged down in tedium, details rehashed just in case any portion(s) of the audience is too stupid to figure out what's going on......

I returned that.  I still need to watch LES MISERABLE (the new one).  It's due tomorrow.  I checked out ORANGES AND SUNSHINE w/ Emily Watson.  I was going to check out KING OF DEVIL'S ISLAND and THE JOY LUCK CLUB for the 3rd and 4th time respectively, but I figured I've have a hard enough time getting O&S watched not to mention L.M...
I also was going to check out Neil Gaiman's NEVERWHERE.  It would be the 3rd time at least that I tried reading that book.  It's not boring, it just feels kinda limp...idk...

Still hopeful to finish Elliot Perlaman's SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY despite, um, like, 2? weeks of not having touched it.  It's not insanely uncommon that I get 50-100 pages through a book, if it's even halfway decent.  But 300 out of 600?  That's something.
I probably should read The Holy Bible more though.  A church sign once stated SATAN NEVER FEARS A DUSTY BIBLE.  Well, my copy of The Holy Bible would probably be dusty regardless of how often I read it (I don't dust), but, still....

stuff and more...stuff...

Did 75 squats yesterday.  That beats my best by 20 at least, I think...eh...I think I might have done CLOSE to 60 at one point in time...don't feel like looking through my notebook...
my old-best-ist cat Napoleon laid on my notebook last night and now there's what appear to be blood stains.
them fleas are eating my cats alive aaaahh!
One of my cats is consistently warm in the face/head.  Me and my mom are trying to give him kid's benadrill, but between me not being upstairs 24hrs a day and my mom being almost immobile, it is rather difficult.  The cat doesn't take it without a fight.  And my lack of I/hand coordination is almost epic.

I'm getting a $20 Amazon gift card from Valued Opinions, once the pending "rewards" for two surveys I took a couple days ago finally POST.  I also have two Swagbucks rewards - $5 Amazon gift cards - coming within the next week, and MyPoints supposedly mailed me a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card a few days ago, and using ABC Gift Cards' service, I can sell the B&N GC and get an $8.19 Amazon gift card, so once I tally it all up, I'll have plenty of ability to do some serious small time shopping.  That's $38.19   !!!!  If I bought a bunch of old used CDs from the Amazon Marketplace, that could be 8 CDs - !!
  Or I could spend it all at once and have a blu ray player...which would be useless to me as I do not have an HDTV...I already got all stupid and jumped down a seller's throat for saying a used 2 CD set was "obviously" never played - I took that to mean that the seller assumed a perfect LOOKING CD was an obvious sign of un-use, which some people probably think is true...like people who throw their CDs into the CD player and then slam them into the jewel case and then play Frisbe with 'em during sunset.  The seller them replied - rather politely - that the CDs were accumulated from some crazy rich dude who bought CDs and never used them except to make pizza boxes or something...idk...I have a copy of their email as a reminder not to break my promise, which I know I shouldn't have made, but, even if I don't like The Doors, you gotta hand it to them for being so wildly popular; it's not easy to become a 60 year old cult hero with no signs of slowing down.  And Rhino supposedly outdid all previous attempts to make a "best of" collection of The Doors by the CD - it's titled LEGACY: THE ABSOLUTE BEST OF THE DOORS.  It's $11.94 from that seller once S&H is factored in.  I personally don't like The Doors well enough to say how much of an improvement LEGACY is over the other Best Of Doors, The CDs out there, I haven't even gotten past track 6, if I ever got that far even...
speaking of wildly famous, The Kinks are better than The Beatles.  The Beatles got all kinds of rabid wonder from people for sounding middle-eastern/exotic on "Norweigion Wood" (sp?), but "See My Friends" from KINDA KINKS (their second album from 1965) pre-dated "Norwegion Wood" (sp?) by at least a year.  And The Beach Boys' PET SOUNDS was a huge inspiration to The Beatles when recroding SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HARTS CLUB BAND, which IS NOT a concept album and does not have any TRAITS OF a concept album and to SAY that IT IS a concept album is to relish in evil.  If you don't know what you're talking about, SHUT UP!  If you do know what you're talking, then quit saying SGT. PEPPERS' is a concept album.  Either that or find some proof that it is.  I surely can't find any.  Unless you wanna create your own definition of concept album out of thin air...or maybe I should say "thick and smelly" air?

BTW, I acknowledge that some of the things I said in my last post were probably inspired by paranoia rather than the truth.  My feelings are what they are though.  They were what they were and the past is what it is.  (sorry)

demons...a lack of depth...

People can so easily slip into thinking "What's wrong with that?"
You can apply that question to every wrong thing a human being can do.  With God more prevelent in the world, it was more obvious what the answer was.  People didn't feel the need to ask.  People just knew.  I know that doing right feels good.  I can't explain to anyone why or how.  People know this sensation somewhere inside of them, like a woman who has a child and instinctively devotes her life to it, the instinct to feel glory upon the face of good is buried somewhere deep in mankind.

The more people rhetorically ask "What's wrong with that?", the more theft and murder will become commonplace.

We have a pretty bleak future ahead of us.  Social Security/welfare & Medicare/Medicaid is slated to be depleted by 2025, give or take a couple years, and Republicans are too spiteful of the poor and under-priveledged be trusted with making any changes to the programs, and Democrats are too self centered to risk losing an election by worrying the elderly and disabled with what might happen to them over any changes that might be made.
  Also, the federal deficit is way too freakin' high.  When it all crashes down, it'll be unlikely that public opinion would approve of a person such as myself living off of welfare, considering that I'm not bound to a wheelchair or blind or anything obvious like that.  And I am lazy, so in a court of law, it'd be hard to make the case that I need the tax payers to pay for me to live.
  Also, there's a disturbing trend in banking.  I was reading somewhere that hundres of thousands of people have been unable to open a new checking account because of occasional overdrafts and minor things like that.  The more burdend the gov't becomes with doing as little as possible with the least amount of money, the less oversight will be given to things like banks being "too" greedy.  So I'd be the perfect target for a burglar wanting to steal money from, since there's no encryption, no FDIC, no safeguards at all.  Anyone who can pick a lock can come inside, shoot me dead, and figure out where my money is, take it, and if somebody calls 911, the police will probably be unable to locate the thief, having had to deal with 3 other similar calls prior to stopping by my place.  And that's if the police even give a darn.  The gov't might beef up the police forces, or they might slim 'em down.

My sister is depressed as all get out and she refuses to do anything about it.  Pisses me off.  My uncle bought a Orchid and put it in front of his fan.  My mom told him he needs to move it if there's any chance of it surviving b/c drafts = dead orchids.  And then he just left it sitting there.  Granted, my uncle wasting money is nothing new, but my sister is practically bleeding and she knows there's solutions and she refuses.  I don't get it.  Perhaps she's against the entire medical profession?  She keeps referring to the word "pill" like it's some evil thing.  If she ever gets her foot sawed off while chopping vegitables or doing whatever around the house, and she can be convinced to have surgery to re-connect the foot... maybe she'll forgo anesthesia?
I tried talking to her about it and she just wrote it off as "preaching".  I told her I'm done trying to keep her from drowning in her own urine.  Hope she hasn't jumped off a bridge or some stupid thing.  She drifted away from her husband b/c her husband is an apathetic/self-centered POS and she feels guilty as all get out b/c she's doing what's best for her instead of keeping herself chained to him.  I guess she wouldn't 86 herself over something I said, since I'm not God.  There's no passage about medicine in The Bible, so she's not beating herself up over having excessively morose thoughts and feelings.  She uses plastic and poisons the air with her KIA Soul so she can have a comfy place to live and an assortment of food of her choosing, food and housing which was not entirely made by God, all of which she does without God's help, save for the nightly prayer maybe.  But PILLS, o no!  I guess she's afraid she'll fit in too well with me and Mom.  She and my mom both act like I'm some abomination of the species, trying very patiently to treat me with respect, which has become more like a habit, but sometimes still requires effort.  I'm constantly accused of asking too many questions and talking nonstop.  I suppose that's something I should work on.  I think my mom has pretty much outgrown her disdain of me, which is probably b/c I'm no longer a teenager or a hyper-active 5 year old, but she said one time she was proud that she medicated me in my younger years, which I don't quite get, since she did propose the idea that my lack of emotion is probably due to my many years of taking my medicine.  So I'm numb, but that's OK b/c I got through high school.  I'm not even sure the gov't would allow me to live on SSI if I weren't taking medication for my illness, so it works out, but I still think it's sort of a catch-22.  I spent much of my teen years with the feeling that my mom and my sister were orderlies at a mental institution ready to hire orderlies at a mental institution to take me in if I got out of step, which was sorta true; my sister always sided with her.  My sister says that's why my mom is angry with me all the time; b/c I don't agree with every little thing my mom says.  My sister was always either saying stuff that was outright stupid like she was competing for The Darwin Awards, or she would say something downright evil in response to something I said.  One time she told me "all you care about is yourself" - word for word quote from something my mom said more than a couple times - and I had no defense except to give her a list of my good deeds, which she would say proves her right anyway.  And since I was like 14 at the time, what was my list of good deeds?  I didn't spend 7 hours at school so I could come home and fill the ice trays, help mom put on her socks, and do random things like that.  I did what any teenager does - sit in my room and listen to music.  Another time my sister spewed off some long frustrated nonsense about how pairing 2 or 3 commonly accepted truths alongside some total b.s. should be enough to convince me that said total b.s. is True.  She said the fact that I wasn't convinced by that tactic was strong evidence of me being crazy or stupid or something absurd and insulting like that.  But if I had bashed her head in...well, that would be punishable by death, but a damhard suckerpunch would still have landed me in a mental institution for several years.  Never would my mom have conceded that the bitch had it coming.  And of course I still don't have eloquent speech prowess necessary to confront the whimsy of a snotnose brat like the one my sister used to be.  It's no wonder either.  The eloquent sound minds of this world wouldn't be caught dead around me and my fellow hillbillies.
I probably wasn't fair to my sister though.  She eventually did become an "actual" teenager, but she was only 12 when we were relieved of the living situation we were in back in California.  She wasn't a "real" teenager until 2.5 years later, and I guess I was ahead of myself even when I was 14.  I don't remember being 14 and being happily doped on stupid pills.  I remember I had an unrealistic view of sex.  I was under the impression I was capable and worthy of having an attractive girlfriend, primarily.  I was always thought the only thing standing in my way was the fact that I couldn't sneak out at night b/c my mom would hear me and send me away to a grouphome as a runaway.  I know now that for a crazy mumbling redneck like myself I am deceptively good looking, and that there's more to a strong relationship than how long a daydream about a particular girl lasts, a truth I spent most, if not all, of my teen years in absence of.
  idk.  I think my sister did smarten up quite a bit around the age of 15.  Of course, by then I was well into my teen years and wasn't considering how young either of us really were.  I still can't believe in 9th grade I parroted my mom on her statement regarding Bill Clinton's purged testimony; "He's a guy!  Guys lie about their sex lives!"  Maybe I was doped on stupid pills.  Nobody ever called me on it at the time...

THE 1980'S - IN PICTURES [selected]

Is it me or did the sky in 1987 look different?
Maybe it's because I no longer live in California, near the ocean...
Maybe it's just me...all grown up and feeling rather bitter about my current set of circumstances, much like I did back in 1998, 1996, 1994, and 1992......
In the immortal words of Cinderella, "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone"

I saw a preview for STARMAN (1985) at the very very end of a cable-TV recording of GHOSTBUSTERS (after the credits ended) that my Grampa Bill (R.I.P. circa 1996) gave to me as a Xmas/New Year's gift along with GHOSTBUSTERS II (also ripped from cable, although half the credits for that one were missing 'cause he cut the recording too soon!!).  For some reason, I didn't see this, or the other previews included on the tape, until I was living with my mom's boyfriend circa 1995-1996.  At this time, my nostalgia for all things '80's was in full bloom and I would always savor the chance to spend time looking at the video cover-art for movies, primarily at a local video store called Video To Go.  I didn't actually see STARMAN until around 1999 or 2000, and I was thoroughly entertained by it.  I was watching it on Netflix streaming a couple or so years ago on my mom's Wii and found myself breathless over the saturation of 80's-ness.  It's almost like the '80's was more than fashion and trend, like it was a momentary celebration of life through vibrant colors and sound.  I really never understood fashion or trends.  For all I know, the fashionable trend WAS to celebrate life and people generally understood that vibrancy was the way to go?  I guess I'd have to travel back in time and ask Gena Davis or maybe Michael J. Fox...I'm not sure if they or any other mall rat of days past so long ago could give me a straight answer in the present day...

I also remember drooling over the different cover-art designs of 'yore', while at the mall or The Wherehouse.

IDK why this cover fascinated me so much.  But I could spend hours looking at.

And this one here is probably the freakiest Aerosmith cover-art ever.  It's like it's trying to make a statement that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways...It reminds me a lot of the Peter Gabriel era Genesis cover-art designs, which I also looked upon with freaky wonder.

No need to pick a freakiest Genesis cover - art.  They all had this freaky Mad Hatter design on the vinyl editions.

The middle of nowhere is freaky enough as it is without magnifying it and putting dancing turtles in the midst of it.

spoke too soon...

Spent 4 days patting myself on the back over the 53 squats I did on July 31.  As of yesterday - I am back.  Did 20 squats.  Today I did 40.  Yee.  Ya.

Oh, Sony; let me count the ways...

All 698 of them...

I cannot believe people bought this thing and they can't even use it because it's not compatatible with any of Sony's TVs, 4K or otherwise.  But you MUST have a SONY TV, not just any 4K TV, in order to have even a shot at using this thing.  When I say "a shot", I mean if Sony gets their stuff together and follows through with delivering the service that inspired this gadget - 4K streaming?...not sure what exactly this thing does.....one reviewer on Amazon compared this to BETAMAX, a format Sony put out to compete with VHS that was actually better quality than DVD but because Sony put it out and let it fall randomly, i.e.: with very little advertising or promotion, VHS won the format war. 

Now THIS is an intriguing - to say the least - little gagdget.  It's $800.  Fug!  You can't even watch a full length movie without denting your forehead.  Standing up requires 10 minute breaks every half hour, and laying down you can cut that into two breaks equally disbursed over a two hour film.  What the frag?

Feel free to browse Amazon.com's extensive range of items made by Sony that cost a boatload of money and aren't even fully developed.