(no subject)

i didn't realise until today that yesterday was april 4th.

that means it's been two years.

really, how did i get so lucky?

bad tv, grills, and the divide between awesome and aw-something.

some people are awesome, and some people are stupid.

1. the awesome

sadly, i don't know who the awesome person of the day is, but wherever he is...he should know that he's awesome.

so, of course, a ton of people filed complaints to the FCC about the super bowl and the commercials...ever since everyone saw janet jackson's boobie, that's become the national pastime or something like it. today, there was a selection of letters posted. of course, there were the garden variety letters from concerned families about their kids seeing hot women with nice boobies insinuating anything the least bit sexual. they are not the Awesome People Of The Day. but, one of the people wrote the following letter:

"I would like to file a complaint on how the Super Bowl's halftime performance and commercials were absolutely mundane and boring. I feel that since the Janet Jackson mishap and the FCC fine, the halftime shows and the commercials during the super bowl have lacked an edge and a true representation of today's times…"

that, i love. complaining to the government about how much the super bowl halftime performance and the ad sucked? it's genius! i need to follow this noble american's example and pepper the FCC with blunt letters about how awful TV sucks, and how they should sack all the current programming executives in favour of normal people who enjoy watching interesting, amusing television.

i will say this right now. if i ever find out who wrote this letter, the author is getting drunk one night, on me. they deserve as much cold beer as they can drink, just for being awesome and calling a spade a spade.

2. the stupid

and then, some people are really stupid. i'm not talking about the people who wrote the FCC complaining about boobies, although they're also pretty dumb. i'm talking about anyone and everyone who has ever worn a "grill." apparently these "grill" things are so popular that the ap wire sees fit to disseminate an article about how popular they are.

i didn't know these things even existed until the last episode of flavor of love, when flavor flav gave hoopz that gold thing to put over her teeth, to make it look like she had a mouthful of gold teeth. i didn't know they were called "grills."

we had stuff like this in my day. they were either made of run-of-the-mill wire, or the really intrepid or vain people who wanted to conceal them would get them made from clear plastic. they weren't called "grills", they were called retainers.

pseudo-gangsters from university city (that's right...i said it...Nelly's not from St. Louis at all, he's from the SUBURBS!) weren't writing songs about retainers, or how awesome they were. middle and high school students were wearing them, glad they didn't have to wear braces anymore, but wishing they only had to wear them at night, because they looked dorky! they made it hard to talk! having a wire, or even a layer of plastic, encasing your teeth...is just not cool!

so...grills are stupid. people who wear them need to get a life. spending hundreds of dollars on a retainer and trying to pass it off as bling-bling is the most ridiculous thing i've seen since, well, the outcry after janet jackson's boob popping out during the super bowl.

we're not living in a fantasyland

i'm at kayak's trying to work on my paper. i've gotten some of it done today...i won't have it all done by the time i leave for des moines, but i ought to have a workable argument section, leaving me only to have to write the extraneous crap (statement of facts, summary of argument, etc...) and make sure that my bluebooking doesn't suck while i'm on the bus or in des moines. that's not so bad, right?

anyway...there is a chalkboard in the bathroom...the top half of the walls in there are all chalkboard. i love places with chalkboards to write on. it's not as cool as the med, where you can leave permanent graffiti, but it's still pretty awesome.

i wrote a quote on the chalkboard in there when i was here on monday. it was a stabbing westward quote:

"do you think i'll be less lonely when i'm dead
you can't silence all the voices in my head
i close my eyes but i can't make it go away
do you think i'll be less lonely
god i pray that i'm less lonely
when i'm dead"

and i responded negatively to someone else who said something about how optimism is so darn helpful, reminded them that optimism only leads to letdown. i returned today, two days later, and both scribblings were surrounded by all sorts of musings about how pessimism makes your life miserable.

i take issue with that. pessimism does not make your life miserable. pessimism is simply a response to miserable stuff that happens. it makes the miserable less miserable, in the sense that you brace yourself for it, you expect it. you don't move on from one thing that sucks only to be completely torn down again by the next bad thing that happens...you see it coming a mile away, and it can't hurt you any worse. it's realism. it's practical defense for a world that sucks.

not one person backed me up. maybe it's because the rest of the pessimists whose eyes passed over the scribblings were too apathetic to voice their support. maybe it means that the cross-section of society that came through there (mostly wash u students, most definitely...) has been fleeced into thinking that optimism leads to happiness or improvement, or is still so naive to think so.

sigh. back to my regularly scheduled paper writing.