Saturday,Mar 29 2008, 04:08:24 PMThe island won't let you

All right, I know this post is way later than usual but since Lost is on hold for a month, I didn't see much point in going into much more musing detail. The sixth episode explained plenty and confirmed a couple of theories. Micheal is the man on the boat, fine. We all pretty much were handed that spoiler on a paper plate. Then a man named Widmore staged the whole wreckage footage, paid all the money to unearth bodies and buy an airplane just to sink it in a trench too far and too expensive to ever recover. Two points for me for.
What I don't understand is how Desmond got to the island years ago, with a boat given to him by Libby way before this whole Oceanic crash happened. How the hell long has Widmore been keeping tabs on this island?
For the next few episodes, when the "war" starts and they show how everyone gets off the island, I'm still saying that Claire's getting the axe from the show too. In the new promo for the rest of season four, it shows Hurley holding Aaron and saying something about Claire. ("Did you check Claire's house?" Is that what he says?) Anyway, it indicates that she's going to die, hence why Aaron is taken off the island by Kate.
I am sort of confused why they killed Rousseau off. I mean, can't they use her in a lot of the past and present explanations? Someone said maybe they'll just use her story in a flashback through Alex's perspective or something. I didn't love her character or anything, I'm just surprised that they took away someone who has been on the island for eons and could really help them out with explanations. Whatever.
I watched the first episode again too and I still want to know why it wasn't only Hurley who could see Charlie. The patient, Lewis, comes up and says, "I'd be careful if I were you, there's a guy over there staring at you." What's that about anyway? You have to be crazy to be able to see dead people? Hhmm...
I wanted to mention that I'm annoyed with the whole time change on the episodes now. Didn't they figure out last time that everyone wants it on at 9 instead of 10. Why can't they ever learn? Now we'll just have to tape it and watch it over the weekend or something. So freaking annoying. Good job, ABC, way to piss a million viewers off. Again!

Now, for not Lost stuff...
I finished up three stories this week that I wanted to use for my final manuscript. However, I haven't sat here and typed everything up yet. I had the longer piece I haven't gone back to yet and, as usual, I keep putting it off for as long as I can. The thing is, with these online classes we're all working on our own and occasionally talking to the professor or one another. So far I've talked to one girl in my class who said that she's taking an incomplete for the course because she hasn't been able to work on her manuscript right now. I emailed the professor earlier this week and made sure he knew that I planned on getting some more "editable" stuff to him as soon as possible. He just said "okay" and that was that. I don't even know if we have an extra week in here for Spring Break or when the class is officially over and when I'll have to talk to my professor again on the phone. {Shrug} But I plan on sending him what new things I type up this weekend and send it to him. I'm just not sure that all in all, everything will be at the right page length. Sigh...

Plus, tonight I'm going out to see my long lost friends who chose a family over all night clubbing. Go figure. But the thing is, Fran is with her husband in Tampa and won't be back until later tonight (I'm on dog sitting duty, by the way, and have already been over there last night and this morning) so she won't be going with me. So later on I'm going to have to call my friends up and see when they're getting downtown and where they plan on parking because I really don't feel like taking on the scary parking garage on my own.

What else did I have to mention? Oh yes. The Raconteurs put out a new video featuring the cutest guy on the planet. (I swear, I'd love to take that boy home and make him a sandwich.) I'd like to buy the new album but I have to be thrifty and keep my petty cash for silly things like bills and food. I just can't do it right now. I wonder when they'll finally schedule an Orlando show date. Last time it was sometime around my birthday so by early fall they should come around.
The Tudors: Season Two has started but I have to wait until Fran can sit and watch it with me. Maybe we'll exchange this as our regular Thursday night ritual. Hhmm...
Billy Corgan sued Virgin.
And She Wants Revenge plays in Orlando on May 22nd.

Other than that, I think I'm out of things to really talk about right now. Nothing really interesting has happened except for writing, watching TV and listening to music. Same 'ol same 'ol. At least now I can end the weekend with a blog update and a night out. Gold star!

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Saturday,Mar 22 2008, 05:29:33 PMI remembered, hey, I forgot to get her picture

UPDATE: While I'm posting this today, the entry was written last Thursday. I just got hung up in my holiday social events so I didn't get to post it untli now. I'll write another one to really update my blog...

Saturday, as a special treat by my second family, I went to the Tampa Bay Lightning game. While sports are not my thing, going to a game proved to be quite fun. When asked who I wanted to win, I replied, "I don't know. I am going because I was promised cute hockey players and hot chocolate." That was reason enough for me.
It ended up being a really nice day; it was warm and breezy. We got downtown early, had dinner, walked around the pavilion before going into the game. I agreed with Fran that number four was defiantly the hot one. The pictures I took were from the nose bleed section with the digital zoom on 16x, so while they are good color wise, they aren't that clear. But still I gave it a shot to see what my precious little Canon SD850 IS can do in such conditions.

From my Firestats, I found it interesting that these are the things that people end up at my site due to the following search terms:
Justin Timberlake: (402)
icicles: (387)
Evangeline Lily: (302)
Dominic Monaghan: (266)
Dave Chapelle (spelled wrong): (115)
Courtney Love: (85)
Owen Wilson (even though I only wrote one past about him): (79)
Orlando Bloom: (51)
She Wants Revenge "This is Forever": (43)


I also have been spending the past couple of days messing with my post at BAYB about how Sphinn cancelled the two accounts I tried to set up, without reason. It was frustrating to read all the comments that kept pointing fingers at me claiming that I was some evil, bad spammer who was trying to use the system for profit. But after getting some user comments, apparently there are rules that I should know about already (that don't pertain to any other similar link networking site other than Sphinn) and they didn't feel it necessary to contact me or respond to my numerous email queries about my account. Whatever. Now I have socializing bookmark capabilities to every service but Sphinn.

So tomorrow is Good Friday and tonight is Lost. Then there's Easter Sunday and whatever all that may entail for the day. I still have to figure out where I'm going and what I'm doing the next four days. That's why I decided to post this entry now while I had time to sit here and type away about random stuff.

I went to another interview on Monday and seeing as it was a library clerk job at the university, I wore my most capable looking outfit, hair in a bun, sensible (Sketchers) shoes and a pretty, spring colored blouse (that still had green for St. Patrick's Day and black to go with everything within the pattern.) So I get there and try to talk myself up about how I can totally do this minimum wage job because I've been involved with the university, education and books for years now. But maybe I didn't give the magic words. All I know is, the two guys who interviewed me looked like they went to the club and I could have impressed their tattooed, nose ringed, black clad affiliations better had I worn my hair in Princess Leia buns and put on my White Stripes shirt. I even took off the gunmetal gray nailpolish that morning so I wouldn't look "gothic" as any profession, mainly education, sorely frowns upon. Sheesh...so much for going with my instincts. Plus I won't hear back from them for up to three more weeks anyway so I think I'm going to have to go to a place in town and sign up as a telemarketer (yes, I know, I've become part of the system I've worked my whole life to denounce) but my school loans for my "next pay period" won't come in until August (when I only have one class left, mind you) so I can't fight the system anymore. I have no money for rent or utilities, let alone the tuition that will get me out of the system's cycle. Utterly ridiculous. I swear, this country does not give a damn about poor people, even if they are trying to better themselves. I mean, what happened to all that hoopla we were always told when we were first going into college about how we don't have to worry about the cost of tuition if we're trying to get a higher education. Obviously the education doesn't make a lick of difference as I sit here with a Bachelor's degree from a state university, more than 20 graduate credit hours, a retirement plan, a decent employment history and a huge chunk of my initial loan debts paid off. What the hell else can I do? I never expected my educational and career field to give me anything than the basic comforts of life, but this is ridiculous.

Anyway, enough of my tangents for the day. If I don't get back tomorrow about Lost then I will as soon as possible. Happy Easter, ya'll!

Photo credit: deloresdefacto

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Friday,Mar 14 2008, 08:54:04 PMDo not trust the captain

After watching Ji Yeon and distinctly hearing Yunjin Kim on The View saying that after her episode this week we would know who the Oceanic Six are, here are my theories:

The Six are: Jack, Kate, Sayid, Hurley, Sun and Aaron.
Claire dies, standing to reason why she would allow Kate to take the baby off the island. Also, by making Aaron have Kate's last name and portraying him to be her son, he cannot be adopted by the couple who was to meet Claire in California after the crash. Jack is Aaron's uncle and can't have any connection to him to protect his identity in correlation with Claire.
Lock and Sawyer are alive and stay behind with whoever else is alive when the Six get off the island.
The funeral that Jack goes to is for Matthew Abaddon. Jack starts freaking out and acting crazy because now that Ben and Sayid have finally killed off The Economist who has made some deal for them to keep the secret that there are still survivors on the island, Jack feels that he should now go back.
Charles Widmore is out to protect the validity of his new found money making project and wants to "exploit this island". He can't do that with trouble makers in the way, so he's sent people to clear out and cover up whatever they know about the history and events of the place. Desmond is there because Penny's dad knew he would wreck there. Putting him on an island where he could keep an eye on him, and away from his daughter, didn't work out as well as it should have once he found out about a plane wreck that would have survivors on it. Hence a big budget fake plane wreck to flash all over a corrupt media report. Once Penny got the message from Charlie, her Dad knew the jig was up, so he sent the little freighter unit to explore the place. The main objective is, as Ben claims, to kill everyone on this island, just as he did before. Ben's out for revenge, that's why he wanted Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke and Sayid to be on his side to begin with, so they can help him get rid of Widmore and everyone who's doing his dirty work.
And I was right, Jin is the one who's doing to die. But whether he's really dead or not is confusing. And Hurley coming to see Sun after the baby is born, is right before his crazy rampage that leads him back to the psyche ward.
Michael got to the freighter and gave them a fake name. He's the man on the boat and has been communicating with Ben this whole time. Where's Walt? Maybe he's on the second island and Ben's using the idea that Walt is back home to use Michael as a spy. I guess we'll see next week, right?


Photo credit: brentdanley

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Thursday,Mar 13 2008, 05:15:34 AMWhen I hear my name, I wanna disappear

For my school, I had taken on the volunteer job as an editor for the literary magazine. When the issue came to me in the mail this week, I noticed one small flaw in the editors' list: my name was on two lines.
Firstname Middlename
Middlename Lastname
So much for making an impression on even the smallest of literary circles. I can't very well own up to the idea of having two of me around.
But I wondered about how it is funny that all this time I wanted to be put in print somewhere other than the dinky, independent newsletters I've been published in years ago. (They took anything so, trust me, I couldn't really feel proud of any of my poetry I submitted.) I decided to email the Editor in Chief and told her to write my ex-name as I had always intended on using for my pen name.
She apologized and assured me it would be written correctly in the next issue. I then proceeded to submit a couple stories for the next issue under the "right" name.
I called my mother and emailed Laura with the same message, "When they ask you, in fifty years, about me for my biography; make sure to mention that story."

Then, that very night, after I "entered" my name as I had conceived it, I was watching Dominic Monaghan on Jay Leno and during his interview about his photo exhibit, he said my last name. I wonder if that's a sign.
I know he's a 5'7", fidgety, geeky guy but, damn, I still say, as I've been saying for years now; I'd propose to him if I ever saw him on the street. Not that he'd accept the offer but still, I may get lucky and he may be drunk when I ask him. {shrug} I go on and on about other celebrity guys that I like, and since Jack White is married already (even though I'm still keeping an eye out for the opening bid as his third wife) I'm going to have to go with the nerdy, British guy as my number one pick. I don't know why. I just think he's cute and he reminds me of the guys I use to hang out with at all hours of the night. I always loved the relationships that were based on friendships. Unfortunately, I would probably end up in divorce court over his skirt chasing, but, hey, that's the risk I can take with any guy. At least with him I could talk to him when he was around. Sigh...

Anyway, it made me laugh to myself that after all my agonizing over who I am in the literary world and where I will end up, my name seemed to be as much of an art form as my writing. Plus, I was thinking about how this whole financial crisis I've ended up in and all of the debits that have accrued over a short period of time makes sense. Of course I'm going to have crappy things happen to me, otherwise, what the hell am I going to write about? If I were happy I wouldn't feel compelled to get all of my aggression out every day. Maybe if I were too busy with some corporate, dead end job, I wouldn't have the clear brain capacity to write anything and this is my big chance to utilize the time God's given me. I think all of this happened for special reasons. There has to be a reason for everything and, Lord knows everything that seemed to be the most traumatic has pushed me in the right direction.

And speaking of direction, I talked to my professor again on the phone tonight to catch up on the two stories I sent to him a while ago. I have a couple of weeks to finish working on the longer piece (it may end up being a small book length) and the other short stories I want to add in for my final manuscript. I'm still not sure which one I'm better at; condensed, get in and get out, short stories or the longer, more moment-to-moment detailed prose. Maybe I can get away with both at some level. Wouldn't that be nice?

Photo credit: tantrum_dan

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Monday,Mar 10 2008, 01:29:38 AMAnd round her house she set such a barricade

Since my life is so full of pizazz lately, I've again sat to write, yet another, blog entry. That makes, what, one a day for three days. Wow.
During the weekends I'm no longer going out and drinking and doing whatever it was that I remember being fun at one point in my life and now I watch movies and do chores. I'm not complaining, mind you, I just want to make clear that my dry subject matter is evident only because I don't have much else going on around here. Hence, I write blog entries that are about regular, day to day, menial things. I comment on my entertainment tastes and my simple life's events. But I guess that's what makes a blog, a blog, right?

Friday night I decided to save the envelopes that I received from Blockbuster available for the weekend days. If you get to sit around like I do on Saturdays and Sundays then you know all too well, as I do, that there is absolutely nothing interesting on television at all. Upon discovering my lack of interest in anything the some 100+ channels that cable can offer me, I fixed up my rental requests that you can see on my Facebook Movie Clique.

Saturday I watched Silk and I'm with the critiques on this one. It was beautiful and I'm sure the book was good but, man, when it was over I thought, "What a waste of my time."
I love Michael Pitt and he's the main reason I wanted to watch this to begin with, despite the low ratings it received. And I thought he did a fine job as an actor in this (not "sleepy" or "boring" as some critiques said.) But Keira Knightley's character wasn't even in the movie for more than about ten lines for most of it, so how am I suppose to feel any empathy for her or any feelings of a man discussing his regret over the sub-affair he had with his wife? There was just too much unexplained and disconnected.
Both characters were French, yet, they both had American accents (yes, Keira faked an American accent and appeared topless, which still didn't save the movie, by the way.) The husband gives his wife a new garden which she plants full of lilies when they become rich from his silk egg trading but, then, when the whole town is poor, everyone pitches in to "restore" the garden and plant trees, but somehow "there was enough food for everyone." Um...how? If they planted crops in their backyard, fine, but that was never explained. The metaphor for her garden and the richness of their love and prosperity didn't work.
And who the heck is Beatrice and her husband who died? That's fine that she serves at the house for the wife to have company, a child to watch after and some help with the chores but, why are we suppose to care about this? If Beatrice's husband was the guy who use to work for the silk trader, who stopped speaking and then left, then I can see the connection with her husband and the main character but, again, without some explaining, I'm not gasping the significance.
Then there is the lust the husband has for a Japanese woman, or, as the Dutch gun trader who ends up (presumably) dead, she isn't Japanese. He never has an affair with her and only sees during two visits, plus she can't speak to him, but he wants to risk his life to save hers? I was thinking that in the book this is all probably a symbol for Western imperialism, wanting everything in the East that he can get his hands on and capturing it for his own but since this is never clearly fleshed out, again, I didn't feel anything for the situation.
And the whole thing with the letter that supposedly his wife sent instead of the Japanese girl. The lady in Paris said that she translated it from English to Japanese for her but how did it end up with a postmark from Japan as he said it did when it first arrived? That made zero sense to me, unless she sent it through some other trader who was in Japan. I don't get it.

Sunday, today, I watched Sylvia again. This was only the second, maybe third, time I've seen it since it came out in 2003. I liked it but I'm just not able to let Gwenyth Paltrow be Sylvia Plath. Since we know Paltrow as this high self-esteem movie star and Plath as a brilliant, mad, artist, the two paths just can't cross. I think if they picked an actress with a lesser known persona, I could buy her as a darkly depressive poetess. But since I, as every other female on the planet my age, knows Plath inside and out, there are very high standards for how she would be played. I loved the way the movie looked and Daniel Craig did a great job as Ted Hughes and the chemistry the two had together was great. However I think someone else should have played the Plath. Maybe once someone gets the idea to make a movie about Assia Wevill now that Lover of Unreason has been published, (a book I still can't get through, by the way) the three biographies can be shown a little better with different actresses and a different viewpoint to the whole love triangle.
I will say, thought, that Gwenyth Paltrow's voice was suitable for the role. She has that clear, precise diction that Plath always had in her voice recordings.

And that's it for updates. I have to send the movies back in the mail and buy cigarettes. It's cold out again and I'm sitting here with my flannel penguin pajamas on. You can always tell a native Floridian from the tourists by the way they bundle up when the temperature drops below 70 degrees. Venturing outside is a sort of sport for us to experience the bit of seasonal change. I can't imagine living again in 20" of snow like it has been in Columbus. I think this is about as much cold as I can take so I stay indoors and do my household chores. The laundry is done now and the week is ahead. Not that I had anything special planned but you never know what things I may write.
That's why I keep trying to hook in to some sort of inspirational media, be it books (right how I'm still reading Who Do You Love?) or movies about writing. It makes me think in a more literary sense, not to sound silly about it. It's just that exposing myself to words being put together so nicely by one, gives me the openness of believing I can do it just as well, if not better. So many times I've heard people say that blog writing or journal writing is a waste of time, but I tend to disagree. Updating a blog is writing to an audience; a readership that all writers want to have in some way. I always find a sense of satisfaction in writing an entry. It's not the same satisfaction of finishing a story, that's true, but it's still completing something and delivering something to the masses, even if it is in some tiny speck.
I don't expect my premium blogging skills will make any mark on the world. (But I'm sure I'm not the only one who admits that they hope for just that; otherwise why would we be so interested in blog stats and ads and link sharing and networking to being with?) The same idea goes with writing published, paper material. There are millions of books out there and I can work and pray and hope that at least one of mine will be recognized as "good" among them. That's why I don't think having a blog is anything to snort at and neither is journal writing. I've heard so many people say that putting a lot of time and effort into a journal isn't really work but I tend to disagree. Without my handwritten, private journal I wouldn't be able to plot out every unabashed idea in my head and get the flow of forming the sentences for my stories or my essays. That's just a piece of the whole puzzle. Not that I'm saying that solid, published, finely edited piece of work isn't the trophy I'm running toward. It's just that blogging about movies and books and music and stupid events in my life into one entry helps me form something literary that fits into the box of "short stories." I take pride in all of it and I enjoy doing all of it, as do a lot of people who like the art of keeping a blog. If its purpose, above anything, is for personal satisfaction then it's nothing to be scoffed at, in my opinion.

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