Just as a heads up, you are entering rant territory. Turn back now.
Yesterday, I strongly contemplated slapping my professor in the face. I came up with slapping over punching because that seems less assault-ish. I decided against it, which is probably for the best. This is a class, that I might add is costing me (or more appropriately, my parents) a significant amount of money. I haven’t loved every single class I’ve taken here, but I haven yet to experience anything like this. It is shocking how bad this teacher is. If he were a movie, he would be Norbit, he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He’s not even so bad that he is unintentionally good, like any Fast and the Furious movie. We can’t even upgrade him in the pantheon of awful Eddie Murphy movies, the next step up would be Haunted Mansion, and at least that is rooted in Disneyland lore. This professor has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, at least as far as professing goes.
(And no, I won’t say who the teacher is, or what he teaches, lest my faithful readers get involved in any arson or other illegal activities.)
I would like to say that I despise this man because I got in an argument with him. There’s another professor I had a few times that I don’t really like because we didn’t see eye to eye on many things and I called him out on it. THe thing is, he was a decent teacher and undeniably knew what he was doing. This teacher (and I use the term in the loosest sense possible, he hasn’t caused a single chemical reaction in my brain) seems like a decent human being.
It’s beyond me how he got hired at my University, or how he has stayed hired. Just to name a few of his better qualities:
1. He purposely obfuscates directions, like he gets some sinister pleasure out of confusing us. He won’t answer specific questions about directions on assignments, choosing instead to make us guess or use Ouija boards. He talks about his assignments like he is on the other end of a 24 hour psychic hotline, giving the most vague answers possible. And charging obscene amounts of money for it.
2. He acts like a child any time somebody questions the validity of anything. First of all, he takes it like a personal attack, and I’m not making this up, tosses insults back at you, even though you weren’t necessarily insulting him in the first place. I’m not shy about questioning whatever inane detail he has in every single assignment and I never get anywhere or get any of my questions answered. I’m more than happy to have a discussion about something but he doesn’t seem capable of it, or at least won’t let one commence. Calling him an overly self conscious Idi Amen would be fair.*
3. He is incompetent concerning his subject. I’ve kept it to myself, but there have been at least three times where he has said things that are completely and utterly false. And they weren’t throwaway details, they were rather important concepts.
4. I may be getting petty and mean here, but he has poor grammar. This man is paying what I’m sure is a decent salary to do what basically amounts to highway robbery, so I feel that I (my parents) have payed for the right to fling some shit at him. It will undeniably stick. Also, I guess I can take solace in the fact that, due to his poor grammar, this guy would bother my grandmother just as much as he bothers me.
Oddly enough, having this teacher makes me somewhat hopeful. Yes, on a class by class basis he makes me irrationally frustrated and angry, like a pre-2004 Red Sox fan but without all the hats and East Coast violence. But it gives me hope to know that, armed with this college degree I will earn next month, I can fake my way through most anything.I don’t plan on living my life like that. I’m still hoping I do something halfway cool, but it’s comforting to know that, if nothing else, I too can play tutorial videos to a class. And you know I would at least be more convincing in the stuff I make up.
Bad policy: Writing shit that doesn’t really make sense. (See Chupacabra-Ryan Atwood essay, as well as about 20 things I’ve written in the past month that were so utterly painful I just never posted them here. This is not a soapbox for trash!) I’m not sure if my new moniker has gotten to me or what, but I’ve been having a serious identity crisis/lack of motivation/quarter life crisis on here. Naturally, I feel that my writing has suffered, even though I have been able to bang out something half decent here and there. I need to stop trying to make this something that it isn’t. ATW needs to become comfortable with itself again. Naturally, I’m overflowing with confidence as usual. Good Policy: Get back to writing about my irreverent theories and musings on life. Start linking to cool stuff again. Write more news stories about things that never really happened. I do like the adventure of finding the most obscure possible references for post titles though, and weirdly relating images. Figure out a better way to categorize things.
I’m not promising a turnaround in a matter of days, but know I’m working on it. I’m like the Prince of Persia, I never die, I just have a time limit. I need some of those potions for more time. I think they were green.
Your loyalty will be rewarded when I crank the awesome meter back up to high soon.
Addicted to Words has found salvation for the time being. Not religion, but a means to an end. Turns out a little consoling was all your Prime Leader needed. The solution was staring me right in the eye, albeit, it was my glass eye and my field of vision was limited. I was focusing on the peripherals, even though they say the straight and narrow is the place to be.
While the means is now there and I can assure you ATW will be around for the near future with some certainty, it doesn’t mean I’m any less busy or more creative. Graduation looms, and it promises to keep me overly busy, which means my mind might be elsewhere. I’ll try and regale you with as many essays as I can, but expect them to be precious gems for the time being.
So as to add a point to this post, here’s one of the better music videos I’ve ever seen. The artist ain’t bad either.
I got an email today from my web host telling me that their prices are going the way of gas prices. Due to my current status of joblessness these new prices are prohibitive. Which means, if ATW is to survive, it has to move, to evolve. It needs to take advice from Kanye West via Daft Punk. And in less than two weeks, natch.
I’ve already attempted to move it to a free wordpress.com account, and that works ok, but it occurred to me that all of my images that I have hosted on my site would be gone too. Due to this coinciding with my graduation, I have neither the time nor the energy to do this. So the archives would be become ruins, a sad torn down reminder of the past.
As well, the ATW aesthetic is absolutely killed, as I can only choose between the generic design themes on wordpress.com. I can’t use the one I designed, which as petty as it seems, I like to think is important to the whole ATW experience. I’m not sure if this is because I don’t feel like my writing can stand on it’s own, or if it’s some sort of home court advantage situation.
Bottom line, ATW didn’t look right on somebody else’s design. I plan on experimenting with Blogger and seeing what I can procure from that, but for whatever reason I have a feeling of dread in my head.
I’ve been toying with the idea of becoming more focused in my writing. As in, picking a single topic and using my writing style to pontificate about that. As of now, I have a few saplings of ideas, but nothing has become a multi-celled organism yet. I realize it’s not wise to just up and disappear for awhile while I search my soul and find my topic, but I’m wondering if I should take this as a sign that I should do that.
Basically, I’m very frustrated and don’t know where to go from here. Input would be appreciated.
And I haven’t even begun to wrap my head around my photo site.
UPDATE: Just to clarify, I still own the domain Addictedtowords.com for some time, so that’s not the issue, I can point that anywhere. I’m talking about where the actual files and thoughts reside.
UPDATE 2: As far as I can tell, Blogger doesn’t let you import stuff from another blog, so that’s out the window.
My nostalgia for the OC seems to be becoming Biblical, and Hollywood isn’t helping by churning up fond memories and parading beloved actors.
It may be my mind playing cruel tricks on me, but I could have sworn I had a Benjamin McKenzie sighting during an 88 Minutes trailer. I realize a quick trip to IMDB would answer my questions, but I choose not to go there. Benjamin McKenzie has become such an enigma in my mind that it seems like it couldn’t possibly be him exchanging glances with Al Pacino. What if this is true? I won’t pretend to care about 88 Minutes at all, I only care about the return of Kid Chino and his Fists of Fury.
Ryan Atwood has emerged, and in full health, done biding his time in the poolhouse. I can’t handle that kind of disappointment, were it to be false. I discovered the Chupacabra, and I’m just waiting for people to tell me that I’m wrong and it turns out that it was simply a rare, but regular, reptile-kangaroo-coyote-dog-dinosaur animal that was drinking my goat blood stores. I’m living on stolen time. I’m a festival, a parade, a fugitive in plain sight.
If all this is true, the real question at hand here becomes: can McKenzie make up for the terribleness that Al Pacino lugs around with him? The Ocean crew fell from grace and a higher plane due solely to the fact that Al Pacino stood up to them and managed to work in something about a gold phone. I fear I’ll never find out the deeper meaning of the gold phone, but a part of me wants to believe McKenzie could. He’ll puncture Pacino’s chest and drain his blood completely.
Ryan Atwood brought out the raw emotion in people. He was both a fighter and a lover. His powers could solve the mystery of Al Pacino. The Bigfoot of Latino Culture has all the answers we need.
I’m paying my credit card bill tonight because paying it on April Fool’s day seems ill advised.
Sister is gone, but my absence here may extend a few more days. Graduating college can be hectic, I’m learning. Another stepping stone on this perpetual life pond I seem to be crossing. I feel like Donkey Kong bouncing off vultures to cross a ridiculously huge abyss that no gorilla should be attempting to cross anyway. And he has the roll bounce, I don’t.
First, I just want to plead forgiveness for my absence in the last few days as well as this upcoming week. My sister is coming to visit and although she is a scratch writer, I highly doubt her list of preferred activities during her fleeting visit to warm temperatures will be to enjoy the finer points of me writing on my blog.
As well, excuse and ignore the rant quality of what is about to come, if that sort of thing bothers you.
The lock to my front door broke again (and I was locked out again), for the second time in as many weeks. Needless to say, it has interrupted my perpetual state of zen I try so hard to maintain. Last time the lock broke, the locksmith told my landlord that said lock is far beyond it’s glory years and while they did some tinkering and adjusting, it all added up to nothing more than a veritable cortisone shot, masking the symptoms but fixing nothing. I need a new lock! Yes, my rent is (relatively) affordable so I turn my perpetual blind eye to things such as the PVC piping in my house, but please, to paraphrase Bruce Willis, “cowboy the fuck up” and replace this ancient lock. The lock and handleset may be a treasure from Victorian era (more likely it just appears so), but any perceived elegance it may have is rendered completely irrelevant by the fact that it does not serve it’s purpose. I fear no bandits or holdups because I can use a chain and padlock with the best of them (or at least my own personal version of it), but it is beyond cumbersome.
In my enlightened state of more recent days, I try and complain as little as possible but as I said this has jolted me out of my state of zen. I’m up on my high horse and I demand changes. The corrupt dictator in me has become unleashed. My kingdom has fallen into an unacceptable state of disrepair. No longer will I languish as a leader. The peasants no longer fear me, and thus have become lazy. Changes are afoot.
I keep hearing murmurs and hearsay about the Twilight books and the movie. It sounds like it has got the requisite fantasy elements I so desire in my stories, so I may delve deeper one of these days.
Point being, Cam Gigandet plays a vampire named James in Twilight. Cam Gigandet, being, of course Volchok, the Krang to Ryan’s Leonardo* of my beloved OC tv show. I know nothing about James the vampire, although I would guess he is an evil vampire because, well, Vampires are generally evil, and Volchok is a less than wholesome guy.
As stated, I know nothing about anything involving Twilight, save for the presence of vampires and a few tidbits Rita has tossed in my general direction, but something I do know is that Volchok is one of the most reactive elements on the planet. He’s all the way on the left side of the periodic table, an Alkali metal with one Valance electron, violently reactive.
And in case you can’t tell thus far, I’m delighted to see him showing up all over in this post-mortem OC era. Adam Brody has floundered around, lost somewhere in the Land of Women. That guy in Chuck, Zachary Levi, stole Brody’s Seth Cohen identity anyway. Benjamin McKenzie seems to have hung up the wrist cuff and clogs, as we haven’t heard a single thing from him. And I think Mischa Barton died.
Rachel Bilson has been lurking in our collective consciousness a little bit, but as I discussed before, it just seems misguided and contrite seeing her in anything other than the OC. Seeing Volchok run free in the wild though has had the opposite effect on me. He gallops beautifully like a gazelle.
I haven’t seen it (and admittedly, the trailers probably tell the whole story) but Volchok’s other current movie Never Back Down seems like it takes on some sort of weird 2 Fast 2 Furious car porn characteristic that means at the very least it will be entertaining to watch on TNT in 18 months, solely for the presence of Volchok.** He might bring down the Twilight movies as swiftly as he killed Marissa, and to a less talked about extent, Ryan’s new car***, but he also might, for lack of a better term, take Twilight and never back down.
Don’t ever underestimate Volchok, save Oliver, Ryan Atwood has never met a more formidable foe.
*Marissa Cooper would have been Raphael, Seth Cohen would be Donatello, and in a hotly contested decision, Summer Roberts would be Michaelangelo. Also, how Splinter was Sandy Cohen?
**That Blood Diamond guy Djimon Hounsou is pretty excellent too. So is the presence of a character called “Beatdown DJ Swagga”. I digress.
***Incidentally, that was the second Ryan helmed car Volchok ruined. He keyed “Lil’ Bitch” into the Range Rover.
Today begs the question of how do you celebrate a holiday in which there is seemingly no proper way to do it? Today honors Pi, but doing math problems is a terrible way to celebrate anything. Writing out the actual number would be exhausting, if not probably impossible. (Sometimes I like to think infinite is attainable.) Baking a pie is just an obvious play on words, and is fairly irrelevant anyway to Pi, homonyms aside. Letting it spiral into the college “drink to celebrate everything and anything” mentality is just lazy, especially with St. Patrick’s day on Monday. How does one lay out and bask in the rays of Pi Day? I don’t know what to do.
This rarely happens, holidays almost always have an obvious way to celebrate them. Even the lesser celebrated ones tend to easier decisions. Boxing Day is self explanatory. I give all my friends of the fairer sex high fives on Women’s Day. Even the variously flavored presidential celebrations give us a chance to bust out the powdered wigs and use feathers for pens to write down our revolutionary ideas.
It’s not for lack of caring either. I want to celebrate Pi Day, I promise you I am trying. I’m passionate about holidays, Christmas and Thanksgiving help me temporarily become one with the world. Pi Day though, has failed to captivate my attention, which should never happen on a holiday.
Pi Day options exhausted, I suppose it’s time to go play the Donkey Kong Country drinking game where we drink every time an alligator is killed by a monkey. Yes, we invented it. Yes, it’s juvenile, violent, and irresponsible. No, it’s not in celebration of Pi Day. Complex holidays lead to simple diversions I suppose. I blame this day, based on the most complicated number of all time. An ill-advised holiday indeed. Lament.
I tend to bristle at the trend of labeling everything as “extreme”, but this is the rare case of something actually earning it’s, admittedly watered-down at this point, title of extreme. If not simply for the prowess on the slide, then absolutely the wetsuits that almost certainly have been procured from 1989. A war was waged against the visible spectrum, the hues are dangerously close to tip-toeing into infrared range. Behold the brightest colors that our eyes are capable of registering, extreme by the letter of the law. How about trying out some helmets as well?
Baking a pie is just an obvious play on words, and is fairly irrelevant anyway to Pi, homonyms aside. Letting it spiral into the college “drink to celebrate everything and anything” mentality is just lazy, especially with St. Patrick’s day on Monday. How does one lay out and bask in the rays of Pi Day? I don’t know what to do.