riddle me this...

Frank Groshin

April 5, 1934 to May 18, 2005

...what is a world with out riddles?

suicide is painless

austin city smoking ban

for those of you, and I doubt there are really any out there, who live in austin get out and vote this one down.

I don't smoke, but at the same time I don't think it's my place to stop someone else from making that choice. if you want to smoke go ahead. if not, fuck off and leave the adults to make their own bad choices.

if you don't want to be around smokers stay home or go to a different bar. if smoking hurts business the bars will ban it themselves.

prohibition is the worst idea in history. it didn't work for alcohol, drugs, or abortions. why do they think it will work for smoking. people are still going to smoke, but in a recession we should shy away from anything that could hurt local businesses.

so if you live in austin, vote!

((mornings suck...))

men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as the natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other

nine days in april

so of course I’ve been the same lazy bustard this last week and a half and it starting to catch up with me. this was an especially hard week, overload at work and missing some movies I really wanted to see, but here’s the low down.

do the hustle

a week ago friday, and it started very well. I had seen Kung Fu Hustle during SxSW in march and had really enjoyed the experience. it was screened in the Paramount, a beautiful if slightly uncomfortable theater to watch a movie. if I had the money I’d buy the Paramount and rewire the place for better sound and a digital screen. I heard that the theater has been doing poor business lately and that sucks because it is still a great theater, it just needs bigger seat and decent speakers.

for my second viewing I went to the opening at the googleplex, better seats and sound, but some twit brought her kids to the movie. now this is a violent movie, funny, but very violent. also rated ‘r’ as in restricted.

as in maybe you should leave you kids at home with a baby sitter.

about a quarter to half way through the hustle the mother and her kids got up and the shortest of the group said this a lot louder than I was ever aloud to speak during a movie, ‘it’s too violent’

I have to say that I agree, but at the same time I’m 24 years old and a guy, so I’m okay with violence. I’m also educated, to a point, and realize that an ‘r’ rated movie is no place for kids. a week earlier I say Sin City, really good movie for a 24 year old guy.

here’s why: NUDITY!

I once heard the definition for gratuitous: anything down just to satisfy the audience. I think the new definition should be Sin City. there was more tits and ass than Orgazmo, and that was about porn. very tasteful, no bush. still some jackhole brought his kids, little kids. like sticky and gnut aged kids.

can’t these people read? if more parents listened to the ratings we wouldn’t need an fcc. I read an article on msnbc today about how ‘pg’ movies are become more violent than ‘pg-13’ and ‘r’ movies. maybe it’s because people have stopped caring about the rating. and that can only mean one of two things: people are becoming more open to new ideas and teaching their children to make better choices; or, and this is probably the truth, people are expecting the government to censor all the adult and otherwise harmful material out of movies.

I don’t want to start a backlash against violent movies, but how about we try a useful rating system, how about this:

v – violence
n – nudity
s – sex
d – drugs
r – religion
s – stupidity
h – horror
i – intellectual
k – kids to age 10
k-13 – kids age 10 to age 13
k-18 – kids age 13 to age 18
a – adults age 18 to age 35
a-35 – adults age 35 to 65
a-65 – adults over 65
x – soft porn, no one under 18 or over 65
xx – hard porn, no one under 18 or over 45
xxx – european porn, use at your own risk
xxxx – asian porn, use at your own risk

very clear and easy to use, people can go to any movie that they fall into fall into by rating. and the studios have to be really fucking honest on the ratings, any violent gets a v and no ‘k’ or ‘k-13’ rating, nudity bumps to an ‘a’ rating, sex and we’re slap an ‘x,’ religion gets an ‘a-35’ at least. stupidity gets a ‘k’ so you can’t have stupidity and violence in the same movie. and children can be spared that old time religion. it needs some fine tuning but I think we can make it work.

suggestions are always appreciated.

good night life, good morning hell

so I drove up on Saturday afternoon to see the play my elder sister designed the set for. now as I know nowbody connected with that theater company or the people they select to direct will ever read this I can be honest.

it was CRAP, pure follow the dog around crap. the play was poorly written the acting lame, and the set that my sister put a lot of effort into was under-used.

it was so bad I couldn’t sleep, and then they had a costume contest and Holbrook and my sister wouldn’t let me leave at intermission.

and to top it off the usher from the main stage went out of his way to make me feel unwelcome. it was a bad time for the Boy&Horse

raw fish, mango jelly bellies, and Dib

on sunday my sister and I were going to see Sin City, as I mentioned before I had already been and was looking forward to seeing it again, but first we had to drive out to arlington to eat uncooked fish. I will say that I was sure what to expect, but I can say that it was really good even though it was mostly rice.

the movie was at a mall, and as a habit I scoped out a candy shop and picked up jelly bellies. on my last trip to the mall of America I had picked up six pounds of jelly bellies, an adventure to get past airport baggage screeners intact, and a month ago I bought eight little glass jars to hold the beans and found out that I only had seven flavors. this was an issue because accept for christmas I never go to malls so this little trip allowed me to pick up an eighth flavor. I also got to scope out a Walden books and picked up a sweet Dib figure.



faeriegirl hated Sin City, she’s also a movie-theater snob. the slightest noise and she gets the heavy sigh started and you can tell from there that you might as well leave right then and try again another day. and at this particular showing we got a five year old in a 6-foot body punctuating everything and a pair of idiots that grabbed two seats in a half empty theater right next to her. I on the other hand don’t really mind too much, because I have on occasion spoken during a movie.

and I don’t really mind being ignored, but I will say that a human being that you know, that you entered the theater with, should always be more important than a shitty ass-raping of shakespeare.

PULGASARI!

after a long, but ultimately good, weekend I settled back into my movie schedule with the only north Korean movie I have ever heard of Pulgasari.

the description is amazing: an iron eating monster molded from the last bit of rice that a dying blacksmith had helps the poor and down-trodden works of Korean over throw their abusive and elitist king.

the story at times works against the north korean leader that forced the filming. the army of the king more resembles the modern north korean legion more than the peasants.

for a buck it was worth it, the only thing that I was disappointed about was that kim jung-il was scheduled to be there. I’m pissed he stood us up, that axis of evil bastard.

tuesday

well… not much really happened… sun came up and went down…

three days of the inferno part one: training begins

I work in a call center, not much more to say than that. when I started there were forty of us on the line. like every job attrition is the name of the game and up ‘til this wednesday they had managed to boot ten people off the line. on this day they chose eighteen people to start training on a secondary line, that I had gotten trained on seven months ago.

take a moment to do the math, I’ll wait…

twelve, twelve of us were doing the work of forty

fuckers.

three days of the inferno part two: breaks no more

so I stupidly didn’t call in on Thursday and the training continued.

and an hour later the suspended breaks.

fuckers

three days of the inferno part three: the royal horse

good news: the week was over and I got an hour lunch to eat Mexican food with my parents

bad news: I still took over a hundred calls on a FRIDAY!!

also the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy premiered, and not matter what anybody else believe I thought it did the books a lot of justice, the movie also held the momentum together better. a full review is forthcoming I swear.

wimberly

no one in my family knows dick about computers, not even my father’s brother, who is probably the nicest guy you will ever meat on the planet.

so on saturday morning we loaded up the focus and headed out to wimberly, the long way. wimberly is in hays county southwest of austin about as far from where I live as my parents house only up hill. we arrived at my uncle’s house and started setting up his new computer about 10, at 12:30 we headed out. everything, we thought, worked. we then went to lunch with my uncle in san marcos which is slightly closer to wimberly and oh so slightly farther away from home.

san marcos also has a huge outlet mall, other that Texas state the outlet mall might be the only reason to stop in san marcos. and my sister dragged the wayward flock even farther south for another 45 minutes.

after that we had to drive through the hippy fest that is downtown Austin to get home. we made three other stops and arrived home about 7pm to a message from my uncle about the computer not working

one day in may

wimberly ii and the ceiling fan of doom

so Sunday morning my brother-in-law got up really early and headed back out to wimberly, and this time we made sure it worked before we left.

after wimberly he came straight home and I headed out to my parents house to put up a ceiling fan and to pick up gnut. the bass ackwards wiring in my parent house contributed to me not getting the fan wired properly.

the stupidity of brass screws and steel drill bits contributed to me striping the screws and not being able to fixed the cock-up. so I will venture out again this week end to pull the fan down and rewire the damn thing. and I haven’t gotten a new dvd in over a week and it’s starting to effect me.