Archive for February, 2009

watch this:

very useful 11 minutes.

i’m trying to subdue the amount of stress in my life right now. my rage directed toward stupidity (or as one woman euphemistically called it, my “extreme energy”) has begun to consume my well-being. ACK.

for instance, today, there were only two things that brought me joy. 1) reading about the economic crisis and 2) seeing a picture of a dog-sized rat in china.

i started reading the zen habits blog (one of time.com’s top 25. i’m so mainstream) to cope, but if anything, i feel more confused. i feel more rage.

it’s the calm voice in the writing, and the lack of irony, and those damn emoticons. it’s the assured tone when writing totally unsubstantiated or conversely common sense advice. it’s the idea that not everything’s a big deal, and what you should really care about is yourself.

sounds reasonable enough, but at what point does that go too far and you just become a selfish, lazy, apathetic hypocrite? and why are there 94k people subscribed to some dude’s blog? and why do dozens/hundreds of people leave irritatingly optimistic comments after the similarly peppy posts? thinking about this is hard and saddens me.

and i’m back at square one.

save me.

i do a lot of traveling and have been to a lot of crappy airports, but my newark experience this morning was probably the most traumatic.

why newark sucks.

1. you cannot get to terminal C to terminal A at 4:30am without exiting and entering a security checkpoint. that suckssss.

2. in fact, you can’t get from one section of terminal A to another section of terminal A without exiting and entering security. that’s just stupid.

3. the “newsstand” i went to find food at looked as if it had been looted. there was one sad-looking bag of pretzels and a torn open box of triscuits, and that’s about it. empty shelves, empty newspaper racks, torn magazines.

4. when i went to a deli stand to buy a juice, i handed him a $5. he asked if i had smaller bills b/c he had no change. … um, right. then i asked for ice water. apparently they don’t do ice at 5am, but i did get a nice cup full of lukewarm tap water.

in conclusion, the redeye is killing my soul.

both abraham lincoln and charles darwin would have turned 200 tomorrow.

this is what i would write on their facebook walls if they were around.

lincoln
two words: black president. whoa.

darwin
you’re 200. only people in the bible are that old. does not compute.

i realize that obama has important things to say, but here’s same advice for 44:

do not let your presser go longer than its allotted time. in an age of tivo, that extra two minutes you spent telling us the world sucks is two minutes that pushes 24 and heroes out of its normal tivo’d spot. that’s two minutes i haven’t seen and two minutes that have disgruntled me, even more than usual.

as jimmy says:
jimmy: the last thing you want is to piss off the tv-watching public
jimmy: everyone watches tv
jimmy: i bet his approval rating goes down b/c of it
jimmy: like 3 points

as it should.

nyt has a new puzzle. i’m more of a crossword girl myself and sudoku has always been really boring to me, but the new “ken ken” puzzle is fun. yay for arithmetic.

KenKen shares some properties with sudoku. Each is a pure logic challenge in which numbers are filled in the squares of a grid. Unlike sudoku, though, in which the numbers act solely as symbols (letters or pictures would work as well), KenKen requires arithmetic.

The rules are simple: Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit within any row or column, and so the digits within each heavily outlined box (called a cage) go together using the arithmetic operation shown to make the target number indicated.

working A LOT and watching tv. some tv highlights (work highlights? no such thing):

1. i’ve deleted “the closer” from tivo. boring. and chuck. i just don’t care about anything in that show.
2. burn notice, law and order franchises, criminal minds, life, and life on mars are all fine. like comfort food. gossip girl is a step up from these shows, and dan, you dirty dog, you.
3. “lie to me” is sort of ok. once i learn how to identify all liars, i will stop watching the show.
4. heroes: is it just me or was that last episode pretty good? looks like the writer who left to run “eli stone” (dearly departed, those bastards at ABC) is now back at heroes, and it’s good again. peter and mohinder still suck, but i was digging the xmen persecution stuff. derivative, but compelling.
5. 24 didn’t record this week b/c it was boxed out by “the closer.” this is why i deleted that show off tivo.
6. bones was excellent. deirdre lovejoy: you are not that attractive, but i will watch anything you’re in.
7. 90210 and privileged: two shows i have no business watching, but find enough snippets of joy to fastforward through the bad parts just to get to the gems. adriana, i love you.
8. and what’s with my fridays being totally blown up? i’m not making any weekend plans until the end of march.
literally my favorite 3 shows right now are friday night lights (i test the strength of an episode by counting how many times it makes me cry. last ep: 4 times!), battlestar galactica (6 eps left. GAH), and the sarah connor chronicles, which returns next week on this new night. then joss whedon’s highly anticipated (by me) “dollhouse” is set to launch next week, and suddenly fridays officially became the “kick the roommate out so i can watch tv in peace” night.

unfortunately fridays are where shows usually go to die. why can’t my tastes be more mainstream? better yet, why does everyone else in the world watch total crap? bah.

damn you simon/paula/randy/new girl.

can “obama” be a real word now? racist spellcheck.