it's been so long since i've seen the ocean

I finished The World Without Us, and it ended on an oddly optimistic note, considering the annihilation of humanity and all. Then I got up and made a Denny's-style "scrambler" with eggs and sausage and peppers I found in my fridge. And that pretty much brings us up to now.

I am a lackluster blogger these days, for sure. So many things have ceased to interest me, lately, though. Maybe it would help if I went outside.

I listened to some This American Life this weekend while I tried to clean up my disgusting apartment. If The World Without Us had me believing that there is nothing worthwhile about humanity, the episode Human Resources changed my mind a little. If we've done nothing else, humans have built retirement homes for chimpanzees (after we performed tests on them, natch). You know? What kind of a species makes everything out of plastic, but builds retirement homes for chimpanzees? It's crazy. I am having a minor existential crisis.

The next book I read needs to be something upbeat, dudes. I'm thinking Inkheart.

Oh, also: I picked up a DVD of Good Night, and Good Luck at the video store in Stony Plain for $6, and watched it the same night. I'd forgotten how much I love this movie. It's so concise and articulate, it's poignant without being manipulative, and it's so talky. I love how the experience of watching it is more like having a movie happen around you, rather than actually watching. The actors talk over each other, and there are background noises that never become important. Its appearance manages to be both extremely stylish and also extremely realistic. On Friday night I watched Casablanca with friends (some of whom had never seen it), and I grew sad as I considered that a movie with as much dialogue as Casablanca would never become a mainstream hit these days. It's too subtle, requires too much attention. I was trying to think of a contemporary movie like it, and Good Night and Good Luck was the best I could come up with. They are both movies that believe the audience should pay attention, that we should not just allow the pertinent facts to be presented to us.

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Now playing: Counting Crows/Ben Folds Five - A Long December (Live)
via FoxyTunes

This song seems oddly prescient for today.
"Drove up to hillside manor sometime after two a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her

And its been a long december and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass..."

I have only one thing to say, really.

I CAN HAS?
[From deadlicious]

what Wittgenstein would call a family resemblance; the delicate question of monkeys, and what they can be trained to do;

and also, some Suppositions on the fairere Sexe and the Writing of Poemes and Blogges.

the gender genie: based on an algorithm that analyzes keywords, this little widget will tell you if you are male or female based on a sample of your writing.

I submitted four excerpts from this blog and it said two male, two female. On one essay excerpt it said male. Those statistics don't impress me much. I mean, a trained monkey with a pointing-stick could do equally as well. Or maybe I write like a man... I wouldn't put it past myself. That would explain my large feet. You know what they say about girls with large feet: they use typically "male" keywords in their blog writing. Or so the trained monkeys tell me. Um... urinal. Fighter jet. Boobies.

Bart: What's everyone's problem? I'm glad we're stranded! It'll be just like the Swiss Family Robinson, only with more cursing! We're gonna live like kings! Damn hell ass kings! And every night the monkey butlers will regale us with jungle stories.
Nelson: How many monkey butlers will there be?
Bart: One at first. But he'll train others.
-Simpsons

I talked to my parents on the phone tonight. My mom told me that my dad was sneakily trying to trick her into heating up pre-made pasta sauce, instead of cooking it from scratch, and then he broke down and confessed that he had bought seven jars of it, on sale. He had some hidden in his office so my mom wouldn't know.

So you see, Internet, I was doomed to eccentricity from an early age. Nature or nurture, either way I was screwed, weirdness-wise.