i don't miss my altar boys.

Now I miss my altar boys.

2005-09-12T19:38:20Z

Hum. Bored. This has served its purpose. Miss my old journal. Most people still list it. Going back to using that now. Re-add, or not, at your own discretion.

Consider this one closed for business.

jusheureux

PSA

2005-09-09T23:40:05Z

Hello. I am online in my bedroom on my own computer, yay!

But right now, I must be fed. Later.

Hello.

2005-09-05T00:48:17Z

I would first like to note that I have been reading recent entries and comments in this journal, generally those posted since the death of our DSL several months ago, and almost all of them illuminate the reasons why I love Ahli so much. Ahli is my favorite thing about Canadia.

Now, then. I'm about to go surfing in the same vein that I have been in for the past year or so, but I've decided to add some useful information to the usual bitchery in order to make these entries more informative to my future, forgetful self. But first, the news:

After several weeks of "maybe"s and "god fucking damn it"s, authorities have finally announced concrete plans to bring high-speed internet back into our house. This is due in large part to my recent entrance into an entirely internet-based design course (hooray electives), at the approval and encouragement of my father. My parents, having learned many lessons in the course of my Journey to the Center of the Blue Collar, GED-Holding Workforce, are very eager to see me succeed in anything at all, and are now more than happy to get off their asses and see the house reWired. Yay for the interweb! That will be soon enough, because I have an online test and project due on Friday.

The whole family is classified as "out of town" right now, but only because you have to leave the city limits and drive an hour to get here. We're staying at the chaplain's apartment out at the ranch this weekend, so Gina and I can use the computers and sleep on uncomfortable fold-out sofa beds while my parents attend the Annual Festival of Kids and Cattle. (The rodeo itself isn't called that, but I'm avoiding key words in public entries to keep my LJ from showing up in web searches for the organization and its, uh, various festivities.) For quite some time, there have been print and television ads everywhere to announce that teenagers and little children alike will be interacting violently with livestock this weekend. It's somehow quite a draw for the locals, but barbecue and its source material aren't terribly tempting to Gina or myself, so we've spent most of the time here screwing around with heavily-firewalled computers.

Driving around out here, especially on our emergency grocery run, I realized: I don't dislike this country at all. The sky is a little big for my taste, but otherwise, I find the landscape attractive. I don't mind small towns, and I'm always fondly amused by tiny places you can drive through in less than five minutes.

But still, I'm very unhappy here and I. want. to leave. The problem isn't the brushy, prickly desert-ness, or the landlockism, or the number of cows. The problem isn't the disastrous state all of our lives has been in since we moved here, either, because things have actually begun to improve. I just really, genuinely dislike Amarillo.

I had thought that I just hated North Texas, or the Panhandle, or whatever. But no. I. hate. Amarillo. A lot.

I would honestly prefer to live in a small town in Southeast Texas right now, like the one I grew up in, because those have the decency to acknowledge that they're just small towns, rather than being a pseudometropolitan area with delusions of the cosmopolitan. Every place has its own pretensions, but some places' are just so transparent and baseless that it's depressing. Such is Amarillo. I can't help but cringe every time I see the sign for "Center City"-- which, for those of you who don't know, is also plastered over several signs in downtown Philadelphia-- because it brings to mind all of the lines I've heard like, "located in beautiful downtown Amarillo," and those horrible Performing Arts Center ads. It's all just sad when compared to the reality.

There is no such thing as downtown Amarillo. Sometimes I try to hallucinate a Panhandle-esque Center City while I'm at a stop light between two of the maybe three large-ish buildings that make up the town's "skyline," but all I can see is the tattoo parlor and stretch of nondescript one-story buildings only a block away. Their first Performing Arts Center is near completion, and it's horrifying. A red brick monstrosity with nauseating panels of blue and green glass curving out in a mucousy bubble entrance, dropped next to the central library and several dusty, weedy vacant lots. A visiting friend of my father's almost gagged at seeing it. New businesses are opening constantly in Amarillo, but every time a new building goes up anywhere, it quickly morphs into a Taco Bell, Taco Bueno, Wendy's, whatever. There are at least five branches of every chain imaginable in this ridiculous little pocket of civilization. Apart from the impressive medical colony and the miracle of a surviving drive-in cinema, there's nothing here but a community college, ugly subdivisions and low-end retail and restaurant chains as far as the eye can see. It is fucking depressing.

Going to school here just makes me more uncomfortable with the town in general. People ask to bring in Scripture to class. Every female creature under size 30 wears identical clothes and makeup, the white ones bleach their hair to identical shades of blonde. There are human glaciers moving about with cowlike expressions, staring blankly, with no response to any passing, casual polite or friendly gestures. Almost everyone walks around looking suspicious and hostile. Every place seems vacant even when it's overcrowded. It's the most Twilight Zone-ish environment I've been in since we first moved here.

Stereotypes about Northeners invented by fearful hicks are all true here. Yes, traffic sucks in places like New York, but I've never seen worse drivers than the ones in Amarillo. Yes, people are sometimes more abrupt and disinterested in the cities of the North, but interacting with people here can actually be painful. In the cases of the Bad, they're either zombielike and blank, vaguely hostile, or just mindlessly rude. There is no such fucking thing as inborn Southern charm. Northern urbanites mind their own goddamned business. These people stare. It's as if the nightly breezes carrying wafts of cow shit from the stockyards has made a portion of the population into scared cattle themselves.

I hate this place. Hate it. None of its values are redeeming enough to make up for everything I so passionately dislike about it. But I can't leave yet.

Yet.

We're staying here for two semesters. This one, and the next. Think of it as paying dues, readjustment to re-entry to the human race, or just time to get our shit together, now that it's actually possible... it's all the same goddamned thing. But we have to do it. Amarillo, for all its putrescence, is almost like a training ground, a safe if uncomfortable pocket away from the rest of the world, for us to piece together lives without the pressures of... everyone else who functions properly. And we can't leave here until we've pieced together enough to have something to present to any part of the world we'd prefer to be.

Conclusion: Whatthefuckever. Sigh. Ok.

crashthesamecar @ 2005-08-02T19:23:00

2005-08-03T00:41:32Z

Hello. Nothing of note has changed. I am freshly in hate with my current home, courtesy of what I think is PMS and a residual resentment from thinking about too many different things at once a couple of days ago. There's an obnoxious little boy across from me who keeps tittering and saying retarded things. It isn't helping.

I wrote other things, but decided against posting them, because I was boring myself.

[edit] This child is increasingly irritating. And, I swear to god, he looks like the bastard child of Peter Pan and Captain Hook.

Also, email me.

crashthesamecar @ 2005-06-17T15:10:00

2005-06-17T20:15:30Z

I was going to write a thingie for my birthday twin (she's two days younger than I am, but we're both Geminis so it counts, shut up) and send her the link, since I'm pretty sure she's given up reading this, but I am not feeling well so I would like to go home instead.

I'll do it later.

This will suffice for now.

YAY FOR ASHLEY! WE ARE OLD. Now let's go get drunk with our fucking passports. Hope you got bronze this time. ♥

'k. Ace can let her know this is here whenever he sees her on AIM next.

P.S. Ashley - Fucker, I tried to leave an obnoxious "Happy Birthday" song on your answering machine at home the day of, BUT YOU TURNED IT OFF. WHAT THE HELL. XO *bitterness*

OK!!!

2005-06-14T00:20:10Z

I don't want to sit here long, so I'll make this all short and sweet for those who see my icon and go, what the fuck. I thought we'd had her killed.

Never mind, fuck short and sweet, I type fast.

We have no internet at the house. None whatsoever. Try dialup, you say? Fucking can't. No phone line, either. That's right. You heard me. Details aren't worth going into now, but it's been... wait, wait, I have to check my last entry date... JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. APRIL??!!! Well, whatever, yes, that long. We haven't had them. And for a while, we (Gina and I) had no car during the day to take us to places like the library where they have computers available to the destitute. Some people call that unenforced house arrest; others, slow death. But whatever, if you haven't heard from me lately, that's why.

Unless you're one of the two people whose phone numbers I have memorized and occasionally try to contact after 9pm [central] with a cell phone. I have a bad memory and an out-of-date contact list. This means any wounded bitchery about my not responding to emails and such will be met from this point on with a fork sent FedEx to be stuck in your eye upon delivery, because I have suffered.

Anyway, we love Sam because he sent Gina the link to the info about D'espairs Ray being in the States, which she unexpectedly received during a brief encounter with a wired PC during a testing break, and through the magic of fairy dust and fiscal irresponsibility, we went to Dallas to see pretty boys thrashing for my 21st birthday. ♥ Yay for Sam. No, seriously. Also, we ended up in the wrong state on the way home. I FUCKING ROCK. I also discovered that you can get from here to Dallas and back for less than $100, even if you find yourself accidentally in Oklahoma.

I'm going home now. So is Gina, though she doesn't know it yet.

I have no idea when two-way communication that doesn't rely on cellular technology will be reintroduced to our house, so. If you've been trying to get in touch with me, you can stop asking Ace if I'm dead, and email me your phone number. Also tell me what times you'd want me to call, but if it's before 9cdt/10est pm on a weekday, it's very, very unlikely that I'll be able to. I'll be checking my email about every other day, now that I have a new PIN for the library system.

A couple of you will want it, so I'll post my father's cell phone number in a locked entry in a second. Again, only available to me after 9:00 my time and on weekends. If you call, I'll just call back to save long distance charges.

I don't want any of the kind of comments or emails that you cocksuckers are so fond of sending ala, "Gosh, life is so busy that I don't know when I'll be free next, but I'll try my darndest to get in touch X3," followed by no dates, times, or phone numbers that would make the communique worthwhile. I've been under house arrest for months and have a fucking tunnel to dig, I don't want to hear it.

Yes, I'm in a bad mood. You would be, too.

kbye.

Still holding out for Ultimate Fucking Pussy Mode

2005-04-09T22:34:13Z

HEY, KIDS!

Are your video games not making you feel retarded enough? Then Capcom and your own memory card have the motherfucking game for you.

That's right, it's The Devil May Cry saved game you haven't touched in over a year!!! Designed specifically to make you feel like a brain-damaged quadraplegic trying to operate a DualShock with their tongue, you'll have brain-decimating hours of fun fighting the same goddamned monsters over and over to gather obscene amounts of red orbs to pay for all the upgrades, life-restoring yellow orbs, Vital Stars, and Untouchables you'll need just to keep your head above water. Except it's not water, it's a vast ocean of your own fucking blood! Hardcore!

And since Devil May Cry saves on a mission-by-mission basis, you'll be lulled to sleep at night by the soothing buzz of a PS2, finally fucking paused, but impossible to turn off, after you've exhausted both yourself and your hand-eye coordination blasting the fuck out of 1,000,000,000 stupid fucking-- but profitable!-- Sin Scythes.

Best of all, it's FREE! Because you bought the game five million fucking years ago.

Waste two fucking days playing out of pigheaded, misplaced determination until you finally kill that knight fucker, save your game, and start playing Soul Reaver 2 again instead, just to not suck at something for a while.

Your ancient Devil May Cry saved game: your PS2's gentle way of saying, "Stick to Final Fantasy, cocksucker."

This post brought to you by: crashthesamecar-- You don't care, but now you know.

......................

2005-04-01T05:41:14Z

This is my old gym instructor.

crashthesamecar @ 2005-03-30T04:21:00

2005-03-30T11:02:18Z

Ooh, look at me, I'm on the interweb. I'm fancy.

Five Signs That God Hates My LiveJournal:
1. The random, cruel death of my seemingly immortal computer.
2. Five-day business trips that deprive me of Dad's laptop.
3. My skin inexplicably behaving when I began to be deprived of internet access.
4. Disappearing entries.
5. My mother's near-constant use of the downstairs computer until way past her bedtime, and long past my motivation to get online's expiration date.

Yes, He hates it, but once or twice every 2-6 weeks, I defy Heaven. Go me.

My coronation as Queen of the Grocery List is this Friday, and I'm very much looking forward to it. Gina, obviously, will be King, because she does the hard stuff like remembering the cheese. I'm more of a detail-oriented person: I drive us to the store. My father has finally recognized that when my parents go grocery shopping, we are left in two weeks with nothing but cans of "mexicorn" in the cabinet and very little me-friendly food in the larder, seeing as I am presently the only person in the house unable to simply "eat a sandwich," whereas Gina and I can buy $100 worth of groceries and make it last a month. This is probably due in part to the fact that we don't consider chips and guacamole a meal. Also, we're more aware of the fact that people eat lunch.

I watched Beijing Bicycle last night, because I have a strange compulsion to rent every Asian movie in the foreign section, regardless of subject or content. Gina mocks me for this and calls me a rice queen. Well, yes, I do like me some foreigners, but it's worth noting that not only am I not gay in the homosexual and male sense, I don't find 90% of the actors even remotely attractive. So there. Watching movies in Chinese confuses my brain, because I don't understand any Chinese (and don't plan to, because the very romanization frightens and intimidates me), and I'm still not used to watching movies in languages I have no familiarity with. Part of me is always listening for phrases and sentences I understand, comparing them with the subtitles to pick up more of the language. That part always pops a few pills and then slips into a coma when faced with these films. I was able to completely ignore it this time, however, because I was preoccupied with thinking about what a little shit that Jian thing was. La.

We cleaned out our temporary storage rooms recently, and lo, my art supplies finally resurfaced. I was messing around with some acrylics when I got impatient and realized, I'm not really interested in developing technical skills in painting. So I started fingerpainting around the edges; a deeply liberating experience. Developing your technical skills as an artist when you have no interest in professional work is really only good for getting people to give you handjobs on the internet. Which is all well and good for some, but is too much effort for me. Most people I see described as an "amazing artist" on the internet are usually producing incredibly redundant fantasy crap, anyway. Ooh, another nymph/faerie/mermaid/furry, ooh.

Alas, I am not an artist. I'm simply an enthusiast for fucking around with art supplies. And pretty colors. And expensive hobbies. At least this one makes for interesting 18x24 birthday cards. Oh, well.

I gave Gina a copy of The Urbz for her birthday, because two-player, slightly pointless video games are what we do. We've been playing it... quite a bit. How much, you ask? Mind your own goddamned business. I will be hearing gibberish BGM in my head until I die. Holy Christ.

crashthesamecar @ 2005-03-13T04:04:00

2005-03-13T10:04:53Z

Gwen Stefani makes me wish I were a monolingual South Korean.

P.S. If you were sandpaper in my garage, where would you hide?

crashthesamecar @ 2005-03-12T23:38:00

2005-03-13T05:46:09Z

Now you have digital herpes.

Just thought it was time for a change.

I first learned about that stupid meme through a couple of truly obnoxious object lessons by people who wanted to punish me for blearily skimming entries in simultaneously open Firefox tabs at 5 am, clicking on whatever I see is a different color. Two at once. Oh god, the pain. I once grabbed an electric fence when I was falling forward when I was little. My computer probably felt like that.

Somebody buy me The Incredibles on DVD.

crashthesamecar @ 2005-03-11T20:42:00

2005-03-12T03:10:27Z

I am officially sick of the accents. Someone, please, god, make them all shut up. I was able to drown them out with the CD player in the car, but now that the Mitsubishi's title is missing and the player in the truck isn't working, I'm forced to choose between the only 5 things Amarillo radio offers:

- country
- rap/R&B
- classic rock
- boys trying to gravel up their voices, whining about not being loved, over repetitive guitars
- Jesus music

The combined effect of dull DJs with obnoxious voices, a barrage of local color radio ads with retarded voice effects, that one car dealership ad on TV (some guy in a hardhat inexplicably faking a bad Jersey accent), and that horrifying Performing Arts Center lady* finally topped my tolerance level for twang. It needs to stop. Now. MAKE THE ENTIRE TOWN STOP TALKING. It's hurting me. Even the forced neutral accents with twists of twang are starting to get to me. I'm going to flee to Mexico.

I was going to write something else, but godmotherfuckingdamnit, I ate something bad and pain is telling me not to type anymore.

*The first-ever Performing Arts Center thing, fucking awwwwww, isn't cute anymore. Because of that lady. With the hat.

Oatmeal will kill you.

2005-02-24T09:54:52Z

Yes. Oatmeal. The kind Mom used to make.

More specifically, my mom. Except that she never made oatmeal, because I don't like hot cereals. I don't like anything hot with a single consistency that you eat from a bowl. Like tomato soup. I hate that shit. Did you know they put flour in canned tomato soup? Now you do.

But yes, Mom's oatmeal will kill you. Or just me. And Alexis, whose name I forgot to add to this friends list, so she's not reading it. But if she were, she would know. It is lethal.

You humans and your food. Your ridiculous bread, your laughable beer. I retch to see you partake of either, or anything else involving wheat, barley, or oats. Horrid creatures. You think you're somehow superior because you can drink malt liquor. Let me tell you, fiends, that margarita-flavoured beer is shit. SHIT. Out of contempt for your species, and a bit of inherited intolerance, I have had nothing of these poisons for two months. I am cleansed.

An unfortunate side effect of cleansing, however, is sensitivity. Your system, when contaminated, purges itself of the offending matter- and anything else you might have eaten, drunk, or breathed in the past two days- violently.

One would assume that "oatmeal" fits under the OATS category of Human Poison, given the name and what. But some clown who pasted the words "Columbia" and "PhD" onto their degree from DeVry announced that "research" shows that most people with gluten intolerance "should" be able to eat oatmeal. Well, fuck me with a stick, how counter-intuitive. On the strength of these "findings," my mother suggested I "try" some oatmeal to "see what happens." OH, AND WE SAW. All over the foyer tiles we saw.

Twelve hours later, I vomited pink. I have never had so much ejected from my innards with such force and frequency in my life. When there was nothing left, my body busied itself bruising my stomach by constantly thrusting it up against my ribcage, just in case the water I drank to rinse some acid off the back of my throat had a thread of Shredded Wheat in it.

Yeah, people who worry about whether or not their shampoo has wheat in it is funny until you eat an oatmeal-based (but wheat-free!) dessert of evil. WHAT IS JOJOBA? SOMEONE TELL ME OR ALL THE CREAM RINSE GOES INTO THE TOILET.

Oatmeal will kill you.

Note: I know that jojoba isn't wheat, and I'm not concerned with the non-existent gluten content of my shampoo, conditioner, or cream rinse. I use Fructis, thx.

crashthesamecar @ 2005-01-31T13:48:00

2005-01-31T19:56:39Z

Why do family members send me shit like this? I don't want to read that. I'm politically neurotic and alarmist by nature, I don't need any help. I was never even able to make it all the way through The Handmaid's Tale. It's that bad. What whores.

A minor point in the article, but still one of my favorites:

[And when a consortium of news organizations recounted the Florida 2000 vote and it was found that Al Gore actually won the entire state - and thus the presidency - no matter what standard was used to count the ballots, the corporate news organizations of America buried the story (although the New York Times and Washington Post at least did report it on 09/12/01).]

Home and banging foreign politicians

2005-01-25T22:12:17Z

Well. That sucked.

I'm home from a week of alternating between experiencing pure, unadulterated Home for the Holidays [But Not] Hell and indiscriminately spending my parents' money, and I don't. want. to talk about it. Or think about it. I spent two days getting it out of my system, which involved a lot of driving around and ranting and occasionally making really odd noises at the top of my lungs at the base of the stairs. And listening to really loud music that probably did very little for my shredded nerves but worked for vicarious screaming or whatever when I was in heavier traffic.

What's really important today is that I've just discovered that VH1 made a follow up to I Love the '90s, called I Love the '90s: Part Deux. I can't help but be impressed by the utter shamelessness of that. Granted, one should expect nothing less from a network that puts Erik Estrada and Tammy Faye Bakker in the same house and calls it reality TV. [FYI, you can purchase a personally autographed photograph of Tammy for $16.00 + $1.50 s&h at TammyFaye.com. Only 332 shopping days till Christmas. Hint, hint.] But damn. So I watched about 3 hours of it while I made lunch and did things online. I feel so pleasantly retarded now.

What I learned today, thanks to VH1, is that Japanese prime ministers have gotten a lot hotter since 1991, as far as Japanese prime ministers go. Kiichi Miyazawa, the little mushroom that George Bush v.1 projectile vomited upon in the early '90s, was cute in his own retirement home way, but c'mon. You know you'd do Junichiro Koizumi. Any red-blooded American female with an old-man-with-hmm-hair complex would. And his favorite song is Forever Love by X-Japan; clearly, the man deserves love. I would Photoshop some hearts onto a picture to illustrate, but the only Koizumi pictures I can find online are either weirdly faceted or highly unflattering. I need me some CNN news clips to screencap.

Ok, two highlights of my trip:

GRANDMOTHER: [talking about some person in their church or something] *unintentionally ironic* "It's incredible what kind of concepts you can get about somebody when you don't know <tight-lipped mutter of annoyance> shit </tight-lipped mutter of annoyance> about them."
ME: *hysterical laughter* "Isn't it?!"

GRANDFATHER: "<drawl> Andrea. </drawl>"
ME: "Yes?"
GRANDFATHER: "<drawl> Tell me, is Ace... *struggles to remember Chinese/Japanese difference, despite having travelled to both countries* Japanese? </drawl>"
ME: "HAHAHAHAHAHA No."
GRANDMOTHER: *meaningfully, amused in a twinkly way* "Bu~t."
ME: "'But'? .... Ah. But. He's Filipino. Haha. Different islands. More of them."
GRANDFATHER: *chuckle* "<drawl> Ah, I figured he'd be ... some kind of... </drawl>"
ME: "... slanty-eyed yellow man? :DDDDDDDDDDDD XDDDDDDDDDDD :-* Bye." *plunges into the security checkpoint labyrinth and goes home*
GRANDPARENTS: *looks of mild consternation, and distaste at the un-PCness of it all*

It's one way I entertain myself when I'm visiting these relatives. Berate them for sitting on the fence between being prejudiced Southern retards and high-minded tolerant moderates, then drop a water balloon filled with a moderately offensive and/or racist comment about someone dear to me on their heads (Asians, Hispanics, Jews, Catholics; friends and the rest of my family never fail to provide material), making my escape while they're still trying to figure out exactly who I'm insulting.

e Giulietta

2005-01-10T17:52:12Z

Daily Show at 9 AM -> Don Cheadle promoting Hotel Rwanda -> sudden, powerful urge to go out and buy a copy of Pagan Babies for rereading. Technically, I never read it in the first place - I listened to it on the CD player in my dad's truck, complaining during pauses about how much I dislike the Midwest (driving through Ohio). Results in fucked up associations, Tutsis vs. Hutus to the unnerving strip mall that is Columbus.

...... and a Puffy Amiyumi (gaaaaaaahahahaha) ad comes on, and poof, Africa out of mind. Hum the anthem with me now. Theoretically, there's work to be done today, but I'm busy watching Charlotte's Web on Cartoon Network while some premium cable package confetti shows interminable trailers instead of getting on with the Zeffirelli Romeo & Juliet and the warm fuzzies that come with it. .... Capulets dressed as the McDonald's Codpiece Dancers and Michael York with plastered brown eyebrows. I <3 this movie forever. Leonard Whiting died for me in 1968. His present-day self is alarming even in grainy JPEG form. His final credit being an obscure 1974 Bible story from Israel attributed to his disintegration, I'm sure, but that makes it no less wrong for perfect 18-year-old boys to grow up to be marsh creatures. At least Olivia Hussey stayed intact.

White Noise = crap. Actual EVP recordings are 100x more disturbing. Attack of the CGI monsters makes everything gay at the end,
The Life Aquatic = Wes Anderson on Wes Anderson crack. Excellent use of David Bowie. Love from first Ziggy Stardust in Portuguese on an acoustic guitar. A lot of people claim not to get it, or to have lost the thread of the story completely, which I attribute to oversized sodas in some cases and stupidity in others.
Darkness = I despise Anna Paquin. Crap. So much crap. Still, an edited American version is an edited American version. We do horrible things to movies&film.

Anyone who didn't like King Arthur, kindly tell me why. And explain why the critics preferred that sparkling nightmare vision of Troy. And why Clive Owen was cursed in 2004 to be in critically dismissed movies that were actually among the best to come out that year.

It's just insulting.

Ok.

Romeo died.

crashthesamecar @ 2005-01-01T03:59:00

2005-01-01T10:00:03Z

Happy New Year, mozafaakas. Things have managed to change drastically since I did the 2004 retrospective survey, which I filled out only 21 days ago. That's the fastest things have changed since... ever.

I rarely do anything for New Year's. I used to try to make it to the waterfront for the fireworks, etc., but there isn't non-horizontal water around for miles now. And by "miles," I mean that my options are the Gulf of Mexico (ew) and the Pacific Ocean, both of which require plane tickets to reach. I am being slowly crushed to death by landlockism. Point being, I planned nothing for this year, because there is simply nothing to do that I'm at all interested in. I've been too sick & tired to harass anyone at home to make plans for a house thing, either. (See question #8, hah.)

So instead of any proper New Year's celebration, Gina and I decided to drink milkshakes and watch Tour of Vulgar[ism]. My father had a minor fit over the idea of me driving at 10 pm on New Year's Eve, but the car keys were in hand, I'm a Big Girl Now and what, so he resigned himself to it on the proviso that we didn't go driving about aimlessly to kill time. The woman at the McDonald's window was quite cheerful in the manner of one who is still mildly hungover from her early New Year's celebration. Upon our return home, we spent a lovely hour yelling at my iMac, telling Kyo to take off the fucking blazer. At 11:52, the first disc ended and we went downstairs for the obligatory viewing of Dick Clark wankery and a big Christmas ornament sliding anticlimactically down a pole (with a Times Square newsticker reading TSUNAMI DEVASTATION in bright New York lights behind the exuberant crowds, no less; now let's all say a prayer for Dick Clark's speedy recovery). Dad popped the champagne ("sparkling wine"). Gina narrowly avoided brain damage when the cork flew at the ceiling and ricocheted violently; she gets to keep the cork. No one wanted much champagne but me, so I graciously took the bottle with me upstairs to finish it off. Naturally, the second half of the concert froze during the shirtlessness, to taunt us.

Gina and I both went on AIM and fucked around, her with her little GAIA avatar and me with my bottle of champagne. I called Ace to hear about his geek!New Year's and to generally harass him for longer than is necessary, pacing around in the back yard doing dumb stuff like snapping off twigs and investigating suspicious-looking dead leaves.

And that was New Year's Eve.

It's an exciting life I lead, people. Pay attention.

Anyway, since that little survey, I have quit smoking, started again, quit again; forced my parents to listen to the The Final single on a very loud Bose on Christmas day (Santa Gina made it a Dir en grey holiday 8D <3<3 [see also: WARE and the Osakajo Hall DVD); made a total ass out of myself to get back together with my then-ex-boyfriend; got horribly sick, blown off by some asshole cowboy doctor, then better again, then sick again, lather, rinse, repeat; was forced to give up gluten once and fucking for all, as it seems to be the source of my illness; and finished off a rather large bottle of champagne without the slightest fucking buzz.

Now I'm talking to Gina about jrockers she would screw and her favorite obscene expressions creating human manifestations of themselves for marriage.

2004. Wasn't 2003, thank Christ. And it knew how to go out with a bang.

Or at least a very loud pop.

Fucking "from" memes.

2004-12-20T09:28:22Z

Amarillo actually had one of its own, which was special in an uninteresting sort of way. Waco (birthplace) doesn't, although I would never get any of them because I was 4 months old when we left, and Brenham doesn't have one, either, but I was too busy dressing up the neighbor boys in my clothes when I lived there to care. So I just did it for Texas, Philadelphia, and Amarillo, in chronological order.

As usual, the ones in bold apply.

I added a few to the Amarillo list.

The things in bold on this one were true when I was a kid.

You Know You're From Texas When...
You see more Texan flags than American flags.
You know someone who ate the 72 oz steak and got it for free. [note: I know people who have tried.]
You attend a formal event in your best clothes, your finest jewelry, and your Cowboy Boots. [Not really, but I've seen a lot of other people do it.]
You can write a check at Dairy Queen for 2 Hungr-Busters and fries.
You prefer Whataburger to McDonalds.
You dress up to go shopping at the mall. [HAHAHAHAHAHAHA]
You've hung ornaments and tinsel on a tumbleweed and used it as a Christmas tree.
You're disappointed when a food doesn't come in spicy flavor.
You know from experience that rattlesnake meat tastes like chicken. [No, but I had close relatives from down the 'street' (read: dirt road) who could attest to that.]
You can tell a rock from an armadillo at 300 yards.
You know what a 'Cowboy Cadillac' is.
You have both a dog and a brother-in-law named Bud
Your local grocery store sells cactus in the Fresh Produce department
You watch the movie Urban Cowboy and laugh at the phony Texan accents
You choose a brand of Mexican salsa with the same care that another might use to select a bottle of fine wine
You think that the 4 basic food groups are nachos, bar-b-que, fajitas, and Copenhagen.
You refer to the Dallas Cowboys as "God's favorite football team"
You know whether another Texan is from South, West, East, North, or Central Texas as soon as they open their mouth.
You don't consider people from Austin to be real Texans. [My father applies this to people from Dallas, actually.]
Your Pastor wears boots.
There is no such thing as a "secret" sin.
The Blue Book value on your truck goes up and down depending on how much gas it has in it.
You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Texas.

You Know You're From Philadelphia When...
You punctuate every sentence with, "You know" at least twice.
You want olive oil, not mayonnaise on your "hoagie". [I just fucking hate mayonnaise. Why is 'hoagie' in quotation marks?]
You hate the Redskins.
You hate Dallas.
You realize that your favorite dessert is "wooder ice". [I could always say 'water,' though, thank you.]
You find yourself using "yo" and "youse guys" when talking long-distance to family members.
You know how to spell Schuylkill.
You pronounce ACME "ACK-A-ME". [Only as a joke.]
You think that $2,500 a year for insurance on a 1977 Toyota Corolla is a bargain.
You find youself at a nice restaurant thinking "I wonder if they have cheese steaks?" [This is bullshit.]
You sleep soundly through gunfire and ambulance sirens.
You visit New York and are impressed by how clean it is. [HA. UNFAIR. THIS IS OBVIOUSLY DATED. FUCKERS.]
You can't eat french fries without Cheese Whiz.
You call sprinkles on top of your ice cream cone "jimmies".
You don't think Wawa sounds funny.
You snub a cheese steak that isn't on an Amoroso roll. [Pssh, like Amoroso's so fucking great.]
Your parents, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles all live on the same block.
You know who Jim O'Brien is and how he died.
You can't imagine lunch without a Tastycake. [This was actually only true in middle school, and it wasn't lunch, it was play rehearsal.]
You're still not sure about Jerry Penacolli.
A vacation at the Jersey shore (pronounced "Down the shoore") is better than going to an island (there's more stuff to do, plus you know everybody.)
You know where to find the Rocky statue. [I know that it's not where it was in the movie, at least.]
You know that only tourists go to Geno's, Pat's and Jim's for authentic cheese steaks.
You only go if you're drunk and it's 3:00 a.m.
You can make a cheese steak and you've never been taught.
You've never been to the Liberty Bell, or the only time you were there was on a class trip in third grade.
You know what and where "Boathouse Row" is.
You will buy a pretzel from anyone, anywhere without even thinking of where it was - or where his hands have been. [It's called 'self-immunization.']
You can't imagine a breakfast without scrapple.
You don't know what a sub is, but you think they are trying to describe an imitation HOAGIE.
You aren't a bandwagon Sixers fan...you loved them when they sucked, and before they had A.I.
You go to The Gallery or South Street in the summer time just to chill. [Or I did.]
You have the pizza place on speed dial.
You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Philadelphia.

You Know You're From Amarillo When...
Rainfall is measured in hundredths of inches. [There's been a drought break lately.]
An inch of rain causes streets to flood but it takes a foot of snow to close schools.
People are happy if a picnic gets rained out.
You've seen rain, sleet, snow and thunder all in the same storm.
You consider plutonium to be good thing.
You prefer to haul drinking water rather than drink tap water.
You tell people you live in the tan brick house with a tan roof and attached two-car garage, and then realize that describes every house within a 2-mile radius.
You can see a million stars at night from your patio. [This is crap. There are so many industrial plants around here that there's light pollution even in the country.]
You've never seen smog.
You know the soil temperature on any given day but can't recall what you had for breakfast.
You've had to pull over and remove tumbleweeds from the grill of your car.
You've canceled many golf games because of rain
Vacation means a weekend trip to Santa Fe.
You can lose your purse and a total stranger will returns it. [Crap. Crap, crap, crap.]
You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Amarillo.

THINGS THE LIST IS MISSING, which I have taken the liberty of adding:

Your graduation party doubles as a baby shower. For you and five of your friends.
You get really excited over getting a job at Pantex.
You know the exact amount of the current legal minimum wage.
Your immediate reaction to seeing the words "Toot & Totum" on a lit sign isn't HAHAHAHAHA WHAT THE FUCK?!
Your wedding pictures were taken against a backdrop of wood panelling.
You think you've truly arrived in society when you dine on the top floor of the bank building downtown.
You haven't been on an escalator in 6 years.
You want to move to either Austin or Dallas, and probably never will.
You don't think it's weird that your hometown only has 2 Starbucks..es.
You consider alcohol one of the main food groups, and regularly purchase it through drive-thru window.
You're constantly rambling about Jesus and buying all his merchandise, but you still managed to get knocked up twice before you went to WT*. *Panhandlese for "college" or "university."
You regularly find yourself at Wal*Mart or IHOP with your husband and your two/three kids past 10:00 PM.
You have, at some point in recent years, had your car windows covered with white letters shouting celebratory inanities at all passersby.
Your primary emphatic adjective is the word 'real,' ie: "I saw a real pretty one at that one store."

Daddy found my stuffed duck that sings when you squeeze it.

2004-12-19T23:01:00Z

I am sick.

It's early-stages sick, though, so theoretically I should be trying to get as much done as I can today, before I wake up tomorrow feeling like a puddle of peppered vomit. I'm a slow learner, but I've finally picked up on the fact that what feels like just a tickle in my throat will always turn into something truly miserable like a sinus infection or AIDS. I'm going to update now. Please shut that baby up, I need absolute silence.

I'm watching Lawrence of Arabia on TCM, despite what I believe is an unwritten law of not watching this movie more than once a year. Peter O'Toole is the best flouncy gay classic film hero ever. The way he twirls about on top of the locomotive with that gauzy little wrap floating around his sunset silhouette makes me all happy inside. Looking at all this sand is making my throat itch more, though. Jingle bells, jingle bells, T.H. get-ting whiiiiipped... la la la la la la la la la la la la la...

I told Gina that I'd be off of the computer in all of five seconds, but that has turned out to be a horrible lie. For here I am, at 16:01:31 in the afternoon, with an entry still dated 15:32 on the update page. I was looking through older entries on friends' journals and found a link to a personal website that hypnotized me with a sort of awed horror. I found photos from a Christmas party that made my heart physically ache with the presentiment of all the future cardiac arrests those people will experience in the next decade or two. Sweet fucking Jesus, there's a difference between buying into the whole Big is Beautiful schtick and condemning yourself to an early death. Even in the rare cases that all that... weight doesn't affect your health (my mother is one of them- morbidly obese but in otherwise perfect health, and 100000000x better than my father's bitchy yet simply dumpy female relatives, anyway, so whatever), it's got to be damned uncomfortable in the heat. Self-confidence is all well and good, but Christ. Your poor little organs and arteries and such.

Ok, tour of terror over. That was just leading one thing into another. Goddamn. As if my present state of food horror isn't enough. It's going to be damned hard to lecture Gina about the problems of quick fixes like liquid dieting when just looking at a banana turns my stomach.

What's really going to make this a rolicking fucking funhouse is that I decided to quit smoking for no fucking reason I can think of. I'm not a big fan of my lungs, for all that shit about condemning yourself to an early death-- I say that only because I know other people are interested in doing things like living past 50, while I myself am not. I'm half-convinced that cancer is just something that happens to everyone sooner or later, no matter what you do, so fuck that. I find people who whine about other people smoking just annoying, and always have, so none of that can be considered inspiration. But I was on my way to buy cigarettes yesterday when I randomly turned around and bought gum instead. I'm not talking about a little whirl around in a convenience store, either. I was driving to the second of only two places I've found in Amarillo that sells American Spirits, so by "turning around," I mean taking a left onto the I-27 access road and driving five extra miles. Gum is cheaper, anyway, right? Right. Ok. So. I don't know, it just happened. I'm very concerned. Yesterday, I quit smoking; today, I'm sick. Theory: Cold virus brain damage.

Holy shit, the movie is over. What the hell have I been doing for the past hour? ..... Mebbe I will now buy gum and go see a matinee of Lemony Snicket and try to forget all of this shit [edit: except for the bit where I think, "aww, Fatima is sweet" or something], because it really does make me hate her a little. As any failed prototype would.

I have never read Doctor Zhivago.

Greek column brushes

2004-12-03T06:27:47Z

[ columns brush set ]

I had to make these to get around copyright laws for one of my I-hate-myself-for-doing-this (but-I'll-get-over-it-when-I'm-paid) jobs, so I decided to upload them for the people who compulsively collect Photoshop brushes, no matter what [or how rushed & crappy] they are. The image is significantly shrunk down, the brushes range between 350-475px. There's also some random leaves in there that I forgot to delete before I re-saved the set, haha whoops. (I needed them for a base.) Pretend they're scattered laurels or something. Um. Made in PS6.

for love of the five-pointed star

2004-12-02T02:52:34Z

Ahli already posted this, but oh, it is hot.

--

Once, when I was travelling through Virginia with a couple of high school friends, I posed the sincere yet sleep-addled question, "What's that pentagon-shaped building over there?"

No one ever let me forget it.

Mos Def meets Douglas Adams's corpse. Oh my fucking god.

2004-11-13T04:03:36Z

WHAT?

I've heard nothing of this. LiveJournal has failed me.

I don't know if I'm really, really happy or really, really nauseous and frightened. I think it's both. Except without the "really, really"s, because I'm too distracted by the weird smell in my parents' kitchen to feel anything too intensely.

This reminds me that I've only read the first three books of the trilogy and half of the fourth. I must go home and find the lovely Biblesque omnibus that Gina gave me for my birthday. <3 It does lack the charm of reading thin, battered paperbacks stolen from forgotten corners of my father's schizophrenic library, but it's lovely all the same. Gilded pages.

crashthesamecar @ 2004-11-11T21:57:00

2004-11-12T03:57:55Z

Moan, groan, whiny little shits, you're tired of hearing people complain about the election. Tough fucking shit. You'd be amazed how few people live in a world that revolves around overpriced Asian paraphernalia and Soulseek. This is more than a minor inconvenience, fucking deal with it.

On that note.

This afternoon, I found myself behind a car decorated with that white window paint/soap lettering that Amarilloans are so fond of. It made me physically ill for about 5 seconds.

PRAISE GOD
FOR ANSWERED OUR PRAYERS [sic]
PRES. BUSH 4 MORE YEARS!!!

On the back windshield. Followed by a magnetic yellow ribbon on the bumper turned on its side to resemble the constantly raped fishy symbol from the well-intentioned grassroots days of a now brutally raped, sprawling monster of a religion. I doubt the woman in the car even knows an enlisted. But yellow is so in these days.

***NOTE*** The following has nothing to do with the election, but does refer to another thing that makes bile rise in my throat.
-

My mother is watching Bridget Jones' Diary on TV and the ads for the reality TV version of Gilligan's Island are filling me with a deep hatred for the medium as a whole. Why is movie-incarnation Bridget Jones so much more retarded than the book's? Yes, I have read Bridget Jones' Diary. ~~It wasn't my copy.~~ Judge me.

Mom is giggling with excitement about seeing Edge of Reason tomorrow.

Ads featuring women who can't get their husband's/family's/whatever's attention without dangling food in front of them are depressing.

~

I found this before I got far enough back in my friends page to see her entry about it, and uploaded it immediately:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA awww. I said 51%, you know.

crashthesamecar @ 2004-11-04T14:00:00

2004-11-04T20:01:03Z

Add it to the list.

2004-11-04T08:16:31Z

First: Fuck you, Ohio. I have never liked you, but now I fucking despise you. May 51% of your sons be drafted.

Second: A quasi-bright spot. Today's events have made the world seem like an ugly, depressing, horrible place, full of bigots and morons and "values" voters. But on the same hand, one finger off the middle, the armies of frothing ugly Americans defending marriage, and that horrible ocean of red, deeply ironic and suspiciously reminiscent of the blush of McCarthy's asscheeks, make it abundantly clear that the United States is not actually part of the world at all, and doesn't want to be. Unless it's a part of America within reasonable driving distance of Canada. But everyone knows that ~~we're~~ they're not real Americans, anyway.

Take comfort in this. After all, isn't shame and corrosive hatred of your own nation better than a total disintegration of your faith in Earthbound humanity as a whole?

I live in a red state. Christ. Had I stayed where I was, I could have gone to the Clinton appearance in Philadelphia. But no. I had to move to a fucking red state. Jesus tapdancing Christ. I hate everything.