Friends! Yay! =^.^=

First and foremost, saw Avatar with the roomies on Monday.  Instead of the usual five bucks, it was eight because it was in 3-D.  Worth every penny.  Avatar was fucking spectacular, eye candy I hadn't seen since Starship Troopers.  Cameron wove a rich tapestry of creative sci-fi that blew me away.  It takes a lot for a Hollyweird movie to impress this teddybear, and this flick hit the spot.  I MUST see it again!

The mood was killed afterward, though, when I confronted a teenager who wouldn't shut up during the flick.  I was nice, calm, cool, collected, and he accepted the admonishment with grace.  I got back in the truck with my buds and began the drive back.  Upon passing him and his crew, I tipped my hat and said "thanks for listening".  A girl in the group told me to "Fuck off, dude", at which point I lost control.  I stopped the truck, got out, and ran up to him (should have run up to the girl), screaming in his face.  Panger got between us, and another motorist said he'd called 911.  I got back into my truck and drove off.  It ruined the rest of the evening because I was ashamed for losing control like that.  Forty-nine times out of fifty, I can keep my cool; that just happened to be the fiftieth.

Last night I did some cleaning of the den, organizing and putting away some of our Craigslist booty.  I need to add a vaccuum to our list.  Watched G-force on DVD with Fire, fun cubby flick if you're in the mood for that kind of thing.  Special agent guinea pigs FTW! :p

I'm kind of ambivalent about the group therapy I am participating in.  I swear I feel like I'm in sixth grade again.  Most of the concepts being taught to us, I've already known for months, if not years.  I have already gone through most of the exercises and introspection outlined in the papers and charts.  In comparing myself to the others in the group, I find myself likely the higher functioning, though that could just be the narcissist in me.  There is still no question of my need to be there.  I just wish we weren't coddled and had more of a kickass drill-instructer atmosphere to it.

I went for labs (bloodwork) this afternoon, only to get to the lobby and realize I'd forgotten my paperwork >.<  Forgetful bear is forgetful.  I had to go home to get it and come back.  Fire Lupine joined me for the ride, and we had lunch afterward.  Had a good practice/recording session, I am approaching the time when I am ready to lay some real tracks.

This evening myself and Fire helped Fox and Teddy unload some firewood for the new shop.  They installed a high efficiency wood stove in the shop since the gas line had been disconnected at some unknown point in the past.  So we won't need for warmth.

Finally, I have re-started my artistic woodburning, getting in a little practice on Chirstmas presents. 

• 11:52 Believe I'm getting sick. Sore throat, body aches, headaches ... back to bed as soon as I ship the fam off to G-ma's house. Sorry Work :( #
• 16:12 A headache helper from Enchanted Dandelions ... Hot mug of theraflu ... These are my comforts today. Goodnight. #

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• 02:23 Making a bowl of spaghetti at 2:30 in the morning. First meal in 20+ hours. Not even sure what to call this meal. #
• 03:09 Christ, my hands are cold. Can barely even type. #
• 03:14 There is no way a movie with Greenday in the soundtrack could possibly be good. :| #
• 03:37 @rtamsessions Yes. Cause then I can just sit in my chair naked and play WoW all day. I'm freezing balls here. #
• 04:36 @lantanas Like you have room to talk. #
• 04:56 @inversation That is an acceptable long term plan. We can talk details whenever. #
• 13:30 @hey_friend My condolences. #
• 15:16 I'm screwing everything up. #
• 15:47 I can think about prom 08 without wanting to kill myself. Hooray, progress. #
• 16:00 @AkriDragyn Frankly, the cummerbund was a bad choice. I regret not going with the tie. #

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This just in from Yahoo! movies; "Since it opened last week, James Cameron's much-anticipated film 'Avatar' has won praise from movie critics and been a juggernaut at the box office. But some who have seen the film say that it contains hidden messages that are anti-war, pro-environment, and perhaps even racist." Mainstream dialogue moves at the speed of pudding on a slight slope.

Looking for something to listen to while inking and colouring, since Howard Stern's off for a couple weeks, I found first that this site, which I normally rely on to find huge, high quality images of classic movie stars, has a bunch of mp3s of old radio shows to download. Among other things, I downloaded a 1948 Lux production of Jane Eyre starring Ingrid Bergman I'm really eager to listen to.

Then, looking at links on the site, I found this site for Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. There're mp3s for direct download and a torrent if you scroll to the bottom of the page--lots of things I'm excited to listen to, including The Man Who was Thursday, Dracula, and The Magnificent Ambersons. That last one is exciting for the fact that it's sure to be another piece of Orson Welles' original vision, something to give one a better view on what he had made before his movie was degraded by the studio's reworking. The conversation between Orson Welles and H.G. Wells should also be a good listen.

Really sleepy to-day. Not much sleep, but I'm trying to ease myself into being up massively early to-morrow and the next day.

Last night's tweets;

Bright Tron bowels unwind for the holidays.
Apple juice can't digest cinnamon well.
Booze separates from the blood of Tuesdays.
Modern clay pots have no secrets to tell.

So there's this online climbing forum I read a lot (but don't post to often), where I'm not out as trans, and like lots of forums they have a sort of "general discussion" forum. One topic comes up, about women and numbers of sexual partners, and someone opens the thread with a nice post about the double standard behind regarding a man with lots of sexual partners as successful and someone to emulate, yet a woman in the same position is generally considered dirty, of lower morals, not someone to emulate, etc..

So I read on, and am pleased to see lots of posts expressing a similar sentiment - that this is a misogynist double standard, and then I see this:

Sex is all about the moment not the past ( health and STD's and sex change operations aside that is)

For fuck's sake! Apparently I can't get away from it. *sigh*

Originally posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/219268.html - you can comment here or there.

• 05:23 i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg57/Camerachan/July%2024%202009/0681_1.jpg #orlando IRL #
• 05:56 No rest for the wicked. Life is pretty terrible. #

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Before you make any decisions about anything in life, you need to listen to this song.

Unexpectedly short on time to-day. I'd hoped to have finished all my Christmas shopping by now, but there's one more thing I need. I've already pencilled and inked a page, though, so I'm feeling good.

A couple nights ago, I watched Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog again, which was a perfect antidote for Avatar, though maybe any film noir would be. Maybe this is key to why I'm missing the point--I need heroes who are flawed, people we don't necessarily hate if they're bad. I guess Avatar is, at the end of the day, for kids, and it's not one of those shrewd kid movies with things for adults as well, but maybe the kids, and the childlike adults, deserve movies just for them now and then.

I'm still not as incensed about the racial elements as a lot of people seem to be. Yes, it's a fantasy about escaping white guilt and proving that the natives need the white man to show them what to do. But only if you watch the movie with a certain functioning knowledge base. There are other perspectives. For example, the way I read it, the Na'vi aren't as smart as the humans because they don't need to be. Think about it--as Sully learned, many of their acrobatic skills are sort of encoded in their bodies, the planet provides everything they need to survive comfortably and receive feelings of validation. In fact, this is why the movie annoyed me so much.

So they're not dumb because they're secretly black people--they're dumb because they have all the intelligence they've evolved needing. Well, then I guess we'd get into issues of eugenics since the colonial/native dichotomy still rather asks one to think of foreign powers subjugating indigenous peoples.

Okay. So what if it's a racist movie? Are we non-racists really so great? There's a racist clown on The Howard Stern Show named Yucko and, you know what? He's pretty funny. Of course, integral to his humour is pointing out the absurdity and repulsiveness of racism.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't want to ruin the movie for you.

Wait, why am I apologising to racists? Unless you're not racists, and I'm still just missing something. Sumimasen!



Last night's tweets;

Plastic makes cups of water for bottles.
Lunch is a Subway sandwich with chow mein.
In the shade of Rupert Murdoch's wattles,
No robot blue bug light burns in vain.

When I was talking with my therapist today and mentioned I might want to become a herpetologist, she said it sounded like a "guy thing." That's... ominous.