Trade offs

Colds have a way of making you realize how you prioritize things. For instance, I first decided I'd rather be coughing than have the sore throat, persisted to think I'd rather have the cough over the stuffy/runny nose, but now I found myself ranking all three of them according to which is more tolerable. I decided that first comes cough, then stuffy/runny nose, then sore throat. Since the sore throat causes constant, horrible pain, it had to go after not being able to smell or taste. Even though those two make me pretty unhappy as it is. I happen to like food a lot, and now I just don't care what I eat because I can't tell what it is anyway. Coughing is usually so straightforward: you cough until you've expelled the gunk clogging your lungs, then you go on your way. Simple. So, can I trade in my stuffy/runny nose for just a cough, please? I've been tolerating this nonsense for a week now, give me a break here. And if I could get a medicine that actually alleviates my symptoms, that would be really nice too.

Smallville

I am a huge fan of Superman, he's my favorite superhero and quite frankly I've been in love with him since I was nine years old. So, of course, when Smallville started I was really excited about it. With someone like Tom Welling playing Clark Kent how could you not like it? So I happily and faithfully followed the show for years until I went to college and didn't have a tv anymore. When I did get a chance to watch it again I was very unhappy about what they had done with the story, bringing in characters that shouldn't be there, creating a storyline that was miles from feasible, things like that. So, I gave up on it. When I heard they had done the series finale I thought that it was worth a shot. Maybe they had done something really good to make up for the fact that the Justice League wasn't supposed to exist yet and yet they put it in there anyway. I found the episode online, settled down, and started to watch Tom Welling for about an hour and a half. I have to admit, they outdid themselves this time. I knew the previous seasons were terrible, but somehow I thought that the series finale would be something spectacular. Why wouldn't it be? Clark Kent is supposed to become Superman, that should be epic! And yet, instead I got something cheap, corny, and insultingly bad. The plotline was so ridiculous it put the others to shame. Clark and Lois married? What's that about? It was bad enough they introduced her into the story too early. The effects were so bad it looked like some cheap SyFy show. Worse, at times, especially Darkseid. And the music, oh, the music was so bad it almost hurt to listen to. They went through the effort to put Clark in the Superman suit by the end, of course, but never bothered showing him completely while he was wearing it. Just some vague shots of his torso here and there. The whole episode was an embarrassment to Superman and all the people who made the Smallville series. How do they expect to generate interest in Superman when they shovel crap like this at us? This is why I stopped watching Smallville in the first place: if you have any notion of what the storyline is supposed to be, the whole thing is a travesty and quickly becomes unbearable. My favorite thing to say while watching the finale was "someone got paid to write this?" So, we can add horrible dialogue to the rest of their shortcomings and blatant mistakes. The sad things is, they put effort into this, and I must say, it does take some serious effort to screw up my favorite superhero this badly. Wake up, people, and give us something decent. So, here's to having your hopes and expectations trampled on. Well done.

Negligence

I have somehow fallen out of the habit of checking Deviantart every single day as I used to. I used to be in the habit of checking it several times a day, in fact, more than I bothered to check my email. But lately, since I'm using a shared computer, or whatever the issue is, I haven't been checking it as often. When I do remember to check it, however many days it's been, I find my inbox stuffed full of messages and notifications. Somehow I still haven't learned my lesson and started checking my Deviantart every. single. day. Why is this a problem? Quite simply because when I logged in today I had over 1,600 messages and notifications demanding my attention. The last time I left it alone for a week it had over 2,000. This is why I need to check it more often, so I don't have to sift through a single set of notifications numbering roughly 400 all stacked together. And that's just for Bleach. Nevermind Naruto, the people I watch, etc. This requires copious amounts of clicking that is bound to be irritating and distracting to those around me. They really need to make some checkboxes for those things so I don't spend all morning clicking over and over and over again. 400 messages takes a lot of clicking! And then I have to do it seven times over, or however many it is today, to get through all the other stacks. Come on, this BEGS for checkboxes! Of course this just boils down to me checking my messages more often. I'll get on that.

Irony

I write quite a bit, usually nothing terribly serious or anything, but I like writing. I don't much care for writing papers for school, but I do it anyway, and I do get some satisfaction out of it when I'm finished. Approaching these things, papers, short stories, much longer stories, I don't feel very apprehensive. With the papers it's more of a feeling of "another one? uggghhh" more than anything. With stories, it's not relevant what feeling that is beyond "yay, it's actually fun to write this!" However, for my assignment this week for my oh-so-exciting rhetoric class is to create functional and chronological resumes as well as two cover letters. Faced with writing a cover letter leaves me with a sense of "graggpoiahsn;fwneio;ah*^OUIHfa@#&#!!" Basically, complete gibberish going through my head. Complete and utter gibberish mixed with panic. A cover letter? I can't write a cover letter, prospective employers read those, they scrutinize them, I have to *shudder* convince them to hire me! This, ladies and gentlemen, is scary. Give me a twelve page paper on psychological resilience in literature, I can do that, a ten page paper on heroic archetypes and human society's need for them, piece of cake. But a cover letter, oh no, that's just... gyuhhh. Sound it out, it's a very descriptive word.
Somehow the challenge of actually talking about myself rather than cut and dry literature is far more challenging. Nevermind the daunting task of trying to convince someone I've never met how marketable I and my job skills are. Last time I checked working random jobs to pay for my textbooks and spending the rest of my time in school doesn't portray much skill in the real world. Real world, what's that, have I been there? Hire me and I promise I can do the job, it's not my fault I haven't actually done the job before. Blame the employers who demand experience for the job but don't hire you so that you can actually get said experience. It's quite the circular and pointless little dance. All in all, I hate cover letters. But, I doubt I will ever be able to escape them.

Spring Cleaning

I decided it was time to clean out my closet, since I haven't done that. Ever. Mostly I just shove more stuff in there. But on Tuesday I decided it was time to clean it out and start boxing up things. This seemed like a simple endeavor, but I've spent three days on it and I'm still not completely done. It turns out I still had most of my old high school notes and I think the combined paper probably murdered an entire forest. I did decide to keep about two pages of my government notes, but only because one had funny pictures and the other had an old doodle of mine that I find fascinating. Why is it fascinating? Because it was the very first doodle of its kind, of course. I like to consider it a historical document. The rest of it all, I recycled, saved another forest. Cleaning off my dresser was easier as it involved more simple throwing stuff away and now I can actually see the top of my dresser again. Some day I might actually clean out the drawers and see what they look like too.
In the course of all the cleaning though, I came across old notes from people and birthday cards and whatnot. Trouble is, I have no idea who the people are who gave them to me. Clearly it was important once, since I kept them all, but now I have no clue. I suppose the logical thing to do would be to label things, but who thinks of labeling birthday cards from a decade ago? Even the ones I do remember who they're from end up in a box anyway and it'll be another ten years before I look at them again. And who knows, maybe the next time I'll end up throwing them away too. In the mean time it's nice to read them again. Also, it's very dusty up there in my closet, makes my hands very dirty. I'd clean that too, but let's be honest, it really doesn't matter. Besides me, I don't think anyone's going to go poking around up there. If they did they're be very unhappy with how their hands would be afterwards, and not just because of the dust. I'm sure there's a spilled soda up there too and it's nasty. For the record, it's not my fault either. The thing managed to do it by itself and I didn't even know the can had soda in it. I might break down and clean it up eventually, but not any time soon. I'm not in the mood for that kind of thing. And there is still the lingering matter of my bed. Who knows what's under there? I refuse to cross that bridge for a long time. It's dusty under there too and I hate dust, it makes me sneeze. Obviously.
So, there it is. The great crusade against my cluttered closet that is still in progress. I probably have all sorts of odd things hidden in there just dying to be dumped in the garbage. On to the next!

Thought for the day

"Good things never last, Mr. Denham."

Pandora

I pulled up Pandora a little while ago, because I have yet to get iTunes on here or my music, and if you don't understand that, read my last blog. We're not going there. Anyway, Pandora. Occasionally, I admit it does get on my nerves, but I was willing to forgive it when I found one of the greatest stations ever created, the Film Scores station. But then it kept trying to slip in some sort of new-age nonsense in there as if I wanted it. But overall we get along.

I felt a need to go looking for old-time 1920's style music today, and in the process I found an entire station just for opera! I had already been going through the trouble of trying to build one the hard way, working my way from Luciano Pavarotti, because the man was amazing. Well, that was a lengthy process, and now I have a handy ready-made station for it. But, since I wasn't looking for opera in the first place, I continued my search for nice 1920's ragtime, having already found a nice Early Jazz station. This time, I got distracted by one called Choral Music. I admit it, I love choral music almost as much as I like good opera, better, sometimes. So, naturally, I added that station too. Having satisfied my curiosity in that field, I resumed my search for what I actually intended to find, only to be waylaid by a station entitled Showtunes. Generally speaking, I'm not obsessed with showtunes or anything. I'm probably classified as a passing fan, only truly interested in Wicked and Phantom of the Opera. But, I added the thing anyway, and it pulled up Chicago and we became friends. This made me quite happy, and I went back to finding that ragtime again. Finally, I found that there is no ragtime station and this was disappointing. Not to be deterred, I asked it to make a station centered around Scott Joplin. I think Pandora must be trying to increase its good karma, because it instantly gave me a string of perfect ragtime songs, just like I wanted. So, as of now, Pandora and I are very good friends. This will last until I go back to my Train station (funny, isn't it?) and it decides to pull up a live version of a song. I hate live versions, but does Pandora let you tell it that? Of course not. But until that or a new resurgence of new-age I-wish-I-was-music pops up, we shall remain on good terms.

That'll do, Pandora, that'll do.