So I get that everyone has pleasant and unpleasant experiences, and that staying positive (at least according to general wisdom) means appreciating the good ones while mostly ignoring the bad ones... but I think it's kind of interesting that my negative experiences are frequently bizarre or memorable -- or costly -- enough that I'm inclined to comment on them to the exclusion of the more uplifting ones. (more...)

"And in the case of the Caped Crusader, Snyder's Batman is easily the most realistic depiction of a maniac who spends his nights beating the snot out of criminal scumbags. Unike those other Batmen who wouldn't touch guns -- which is both out of step with the character's original disposition and decidedly un-American -- this Batman, like a small number of brave policemen protecting our streets from unarmed black teenagers and those proud white people protecting their families from the swarthy degenerates that would swipe their sneakers, isn't afraid to soak a few shirts in order to ensure the safety of his fellow Gothamites."
Too politically charged? I think too politically charged. I wanted a record of this sentence somewhere, though. xD
EDIT: Apparently not too politically charged, 'cause I was like, "Man, screw it, POST." Also, since I'm posting about it everywhere -- I'm super stoked about it, you see -- I posted a new article on Scary-Crayon! It's the first article I've posted since June of last year (yikes), and the last feature before that was May of the previous year (yikes squared). I really do miss posting to SC. I should do it more often -- I always feel so proud of myself after an article goes live. At least this one was over 3K words, so I feel a bit like I've made up for some of those idle months.
So I didn't watch the Oscars last night because I could care less about rich people patting themselves on the back (if you get paid gobs of money for a job you profess to love, I feel like that's your award and you should neither expect nor require further recognition), but during the few bits I saw in passing I was surprised that many/most of the men who appeared were wearing pre-tied bow ties. What gives? I can understand someone who doesn't often attend flashy galas not knowing how to tie a bow tie, but it seems like a skill A-list actors should possess.
Actually, I'm a little miffed that when I bought my tuxedo -- which wasn't cheap, especially for me -- the salesman sold me a pre-tied bow tie with it. I'm certain he asked me whether I knew how to tie a bow tie and gave me the pre-tied version when I answered in the negative, but here's how that exchange should have gone.
Salesman: Do you know how to tie a bow tie?
Me: I don't.
Salesman: Do you know how to tie shoelaces?
Me: Of course!
Salesman: Same principle! Here's your self-tie bow tie.
Done. Granted, tying a bow tie is *slightly* more difficult than tying shoelaces, but only because most of us have been tying our shoes since we were toddlers and don't tackle bow ties until much later. (Also, the diagrams that detail the steps aren't entirely helpful in that the most important step is actually hidden from the front view.) With a little practice, tying a bow tie is no trouble at all. It's even kinda fun.
...but long enough to have accumulated 1900 spam comments?! JC on a pogo stick.
Anyway, I wanted to post briefly about writing and common phrases/expressions. I was reading a story by a member of a writing group I recently joined, and she wrote that the character's knuckles had turned white from performing a particular repetitive action. And of course I knew what she meant, and the phrasing wouldn't at all have given me pause if I hadn't been in a mood to ponder such things (which I generally am when I'm reading a piece in order to critique it) -- and I got to wondering about "clichés" and how we can (sometimes) end up confusing the reader when we make an effort to avoid them. For instance, I knew what the author of this story was talking about because the expression is common enough. But I could step up to bat thirty thousand times and endure sixteen million close calls on the freeway and strangle a billion fat-necked babies and my knuckles wouldn't even remotely whiten unless my skin were really dry and I needed to put on some lotion. So if the author had tried to describe the character's knuckles becoming white in some novel, creative way -- without using the well worn phrase -- I might not have had any idea what she meant. (more...)
So today at work, during a lunch break of sorts, I was chatting with this woman from corporate. The conversation was pretty one-sided, but I got her talking about her life and professional history and whatnot -- she went on for several minutes about how she'd lived in Korea and Brazil before coming to the United States. Then she stopped ... and, after a meaningful pause, she smiled and said, "I like you, Wes." (more...)