I want money!

You know what: Everything can be solved with money.
Money itself won't make you happy, but money can pay for a trainer, who can get you healthy, which will make you happy.
Money can pay for you to travel, which will make you happy.
Money can pay for movies to go to, amusement parks to visit, books to read, all of which will make you happy.

It made sound merely like a complaint of the poor, but money would make me happy!
I'd visit my family in the Midwest more often.
I'd see more movies.
I'd buy more books.

And I think these are noble desires!

VW love?

What is it about the love VW Bug owners have for their little cars?
The feeling that they're part of an exclusive club?
My friend Lille has a new silver VW Bug. Any time she spots another Bug, she and the other driver spot each other, then wave and smile.
And the feeling seems intensified when the Bug is the same color.
Lille loves her little car so much she wrote an entry about it on Hickypox: A Hex on Your Neck, her blog. (hickypox.blogspot.com/2005/01/my-new-car.html)
I don't understand it.
When I see other owners of white Ford Contours, and there are a lot of white Ford Contours in the world, maybe I look and them and think, "Hey, look there goes another lower-middle-class income person who lacks imagination."
But I don't wave at them, or smile.
If they're too much like me, it will make them paranoid.

Weird dream

Last night, my dream was that I was living with Lille and Mer in this cabin in the Midwest, specifically in this lot where the Dairy Queen is in my hometown of Bonner Springs, Kan., meaning that it's right near this huge grocery store parking lot that's at about a 30 degree angle.
Well, anyway, I dreamed that Paul, our new music reporter, came over with a random dark-haired friend of his (this guy resembled a young George Clooney, but his eyebrows were tamed and his voice was different) and Lille and I were going to go somewhere with them.
I start looking for my bag, but can't find it, so I start looking outside.
When I find it, I immediately take out my camera and try to take pictures of Paul, Lille and Paul's friend. So Paul's friend takes out HIS camera and starts taking pictures of me. We're dueling photographically when my camera stops working.
This, of course, causes me a tremendous amount of pain. I spend TONS of time trying to figure out what was wrong with it, finally just giving up.
Of course, just as I give up, a troupe of snowboarders descends on the grocery store parking lot (which was covered with a smooth sheet of ice) and starts "iceboarding" on half of it. Then giggling groups of Japanese schoolgirls start playing on the other half, slipping and sliding around like giraffes on new legs.
I try to take pictures, but it's frustrating because my camera doesn't work.
Then, Mer, Kyle and Mel are out there looking at a tricked-out rental car Mer has. It's a completely hooptied Mercedes, lowered with spinner hubcaps.
I try to find Paul, Lille and Paul's friend, but they've left without me.
Then, I'm in a huge park, where Dave's folks live, and when I get to the three-story house they're renovating, they take me up to this third floor bedroom that is set to be mine, but it's completely in ruin.

Why I'm excited!

I've suddenly become obsessed with my old photos.
I have decades of my life on fragile, unstable negatives, negatives that will eventually degrade into uselessness.
My memories won't fade, I hope, but the photos eventually will.
So I became obsessed, trying to track down anything that could help me save these pictures digitally.
Surely there were companies that would scan in my film using high-quality scanners and give me high-quality digital images. But they would probably be prohibitively expensive.
The next best option was to find a scanner for negatives. But the flatbed scanners with a film adapter seemed flimsy ... and the big, impressive negative scanners were, well, prohibitively expensive.
I decided to ask my photographer friend Kyle what he thought was the best option.
Turns out that Kyle HAS A NEGATIVE SCANNER.
And HE LET ME BORROW IT!
So I'm scanning in pics from a 1992 trip to the Virgin Islands, a 1991 trip to England, college, high school ... I have yet to find negatives from junior high, but I have yet to go through every box I have!

La-la-la. Life is good!

"Bridge Over Troubled Water"

For 45 minutes, the Simon and Garfunkel classic played.
It was playing when we got to the Chinese restaurant.
It played as we ordered.
It played as we ate.
It played as we paid.
It was playing when we left.
No one else seemed to notice.
Had the owner just gone through a breakup and that was the only thing that made it better? That would explain why no one was saying anything.
Maybe the person in control of the music was, I don't know, washing dishes or doing something loud that prevented them from hearing that instead of hitting disc repeat, they'd hit song repeat.
Or maybe, just maybe, we were stuck in a "Groundhog Day"-"Matrix"-type time warp? It was a little deja vu: A song played, then another that sounded just like it. But it wasn't one that sounded just like it, it was the same song. But there are worse days to have to live over and over, a day that I spent playing with photos, watching a movie and eating lunch with my BF.
Dave wondered if American oldies are to the Chinese staff at the restaurant like the Mexican salsa music on the radio is to us: Since we're not used to listening to it and haven't listened to it a lot, one song is rendered pretty much indistinguishable from the next. So hearing one song over and over again doesn't register.
As we were leaving, I heard another couple talking about it.

No more chickens!

I guess the Poultry Police rounded up the chickens, 'cause they weren't there this morning.
Maybe the fixed fence behind them has something to do with it ...

Again with the poultry

On my way to work today, there were TWO chickens hanging out on the street corner with the rooster.
I wonder if they're the fowl equivalent of the "rough" chickens, the hardened chickens who don't have to mind their parent or be in by midnight. After all, their feathers weren't figuratively ruffled by all the passing traffic (sidenote: I'm sure they were literally ruffled. Cars were going by pretty quickly.). That seems to indicate that they had seen hard times in their little fowl lives, and they weren't going to let tens of cars upset them.
And what exactly do they do that they can just be hanging out on the street in the middle of the morning?
Why aren't they in someone's yard, clucking and strutting their ways into laying eggs and being baked?
I don't want to get dragged into some feathered freak's initiation stunt.
If they start recruiting, will there be groups of chickens out there?
Will they scare the "straights," wear leather jackets with "City Cocks" and "Beautiful Breasts" emblazoned on the back and comb their hair into DAs?
Will a rival gang of barnyard beasties (maybe "Steers of Satan" and "Uptown Udders" or "Pork for Play") challenge them to rumble?
What would the chickens fight with, and more importantly, how would they hold it?

I can't wait to see if they're there tomorrow.

That's amore!

It seems our relationship works because we both have dirty minds.
Last night, a commercial for some ice cream treat, something like the Super Chunky Chocolate Blender, came on.
I turn to Dave and say, "I love YOUR Super Chunky Chocolate Blender. Even though it's not chunky ... or chocolate ... or a blender."
Dave: "It's a Super Nutty Vanilla Penis."

We decided it's the perfect name for a Japanese pop band.

On my way to work today

On my way to work today, I saw a chicken and a rooster walking on the sidewalk.
What scares me now is how at the time, I didn't even think twice about how weird that is.
I just accepted it as a part of life in Riverside.

Seeing "House of Wax"

Mer and I went to see "House of Wax" on Friday and it actually was not as bad as I'd thought it was going to be.
Here's the evening:
1) We were walking to the theater to buy our tickets when a group of 12-year-old skater boys and 12-year-old Paris Hiltons were wandering around in the parking lot with the friendly flirting, the way kids do at that age. One of the girls kicked one of the boys, who started yelling about getting his clothes dirty. He ran to Meredith, butt first: "Look! Are there footmarks on my butt?"
2) After we got our tickets, we went to Romano's a pizza place that also has a bar in it, to get properly socially lubricated to see the movie. It was nice to sit and talk to each other and not worry about impressing strangers. The big bummer: Our waitress had three guys dine and dash on her. The interesting thing: Instead of a Jager bomb, she served us Crown Royal bombs (they didn't have Jager). It was OK, not great, but not the worst POS drink I've ever had.
3) Theater employees were checking IDs at the door, and holding some boys who couldn't produce ID back from the theater entrance ... and fighting with the theater dude about getting into the theater. I just looked at the guy and said, "Can I just go in?" and he waved me by. Meredith said she did the same thing, and the kids started complaining.
4) The movie was OK, better acting than necessary (except for Paris Hilton, whose acting was about at the level for a crappy horror film). Chad Michael Murray actually has discernable acting skill (I'd never seen him in anything before, so, nice surprise!), and I liked (dork that I am) that he and Elisha Cuthbert (cast as twins) actually resemble each other (similar noses, eyes and lips - though her lips are much fuller). What I didn't like: The unnecessary addition of a subplot where Paris' character thinks she's pregnant and hasn't told the boyfriend. What exactly is the point of that? It doesn't exactly add depth to the character.
5) FUNNY!: After Elisha Cuthbert's character falls into a pit of blood and roadkill while she and Paris Hilton are walking through the forest, the men come to the rescue. They pull Elisha out of the pit, trying to help clean her up. Then, for no real reason, the camera cuts to Paris and her boyfriend, who asks her, "Are you alright?" to which she so cleverly responds, "Uh-huh." And then during Paris Hilton's strip tease (which looks more like swaying and disrobing to music), a boy in front of us opened his camera phone to take pics of it.

On a Thursday night in May

The man who lives above us is having loud sex as Dave and I lie on our bed and giggle.
I feel like I'm in junior high, to be giggling at such a thing as sex, or in college, when a girl who lived down the hall had such loud sex that it filled the empty hallways of the dorm with cacophonous noise on golden Saturdays.
It ebbs and flows.
When it's loud, Dave and I are helpless, looking at each other and laughing at the absurdity.
"He probably got tired," he says, "of us making so much noise" - the bedroom is where we cuddle and do our post-work debriefing of the successes and failures of the day, and more often than not, we end up talking and laughing loudly (I know we shouldn't) for an hour or more - "so he called some skank to come over."
When it starts to fade, I wait for the big finish, and when it doesn't appear, but rather leads into another upswing, I shush Dave, asking him to hold his breath so I can hear when the thump-thump-thumping from upstairs starts again.

It's the first time we've heard him having sex.
I give it an 8.

My new favorite phrase

"unnecessary giggling"

Wired!

I've never been so excited.
Ideas rocket around my brain like the silver spheres in a pinball machine.
Phrases from my future stories bubble to the surface, sending scenes from films I'll direct sinking slowly until their next turn at the top.
Images I've shot with my mental camera I ache to make permanent.
I want to explore the surreal minutiae of everyday life, hunting down humor and serving it spiced and cooked.
There are only 24 hours in the day!
Too few to do everything!

Eww!

What is it with those gross mouth-widening and grip-enlargening commercials by Burger King? They're repulsive!
And they seem to be achieving exactly the opposite of what a restaurant would want to achieve through advertising, which is making people hungry.
At least the Hootie commercial made Burger King seem like a hip, if slightly surreal place to eat.
These new commercials, while also sassy, are disgusting.
I'd much rather eat in Dave LaChapelle's candy-colored Oz than the blood-spattered institution imagined here.

I love sushi!

I love sushi!

How to tell spring has hit Southern California

1) The snow is disappearing from the mountaintops.

2) It doesn't matter anyway, because your view of the mountaintops is obscured by the smog.

3) The birds are back in force.

4) You can't remember if your car was white, gray or splotched.

5) Beach season -- just around the corner!

6) Traffic season -- here to stay!

7) It's perfect weather to go sight-seeing.

8) Every other person in Southern California has the same idea.

9) You can stop and smell the roses.

10) You can't breathe because of allergies and smog.