Rear Window
The thing about growing up is that eventually you have to move out of your house and start living on your own. It's not that big of a deal really, except that, unless you have millions of dollars and are able to live in seclusion, you're going to end up as someone's neighbour. I have a pretty weird impression of neighbours because when I work in my company's call centre, I deal with a lot of calls about people ratting out their neighbours trying to get their cars towed or ticketed. They can give me detailed information about how long that car has parked there for, how often the person does it, as well as how fast my people should get there by in order to catch the driver. Thing is, I don't dispatch those calls since that's the police's job to ticket cars, but the amount of calls I get that deal with those situations is pretty ludicrous. Neighbours are some sneaky bitches.
And it's not often the neighbour that lives beside you too. These people you can trust and I've been fortunate enough to get some pretty cool people living beside me ever since I moved in. It's usually the people who live across the street or on the other end of your street that tend to be the pesky ones. The ones who live close enough for you to see on a daily basis, but far enough so that you can't talk to them regularly, so you end up filling the spaces in between what you see, and what you think you know about them. My neighbour, in a conversation with my mom, told us that he doesn't like the neighbours down the street because the kid wore dreadlocks and "back home in Jamaica, those guys always smoke the marijuana." That kid is 10 years old! And from what I've seen is much too hyper to be high. No one that's high would ride their bikes like a demon down the street while trying to dribble a basketball. Hell, I don't think high people get on bicycles.
Then there's this other neighbour that lives at the end of my street. My dad's been telling me for years that these people own a grow-op because:
1) There's always new, expensive cars visiting their house.
2) They always have the most lights on during Christmas.
3) They have cameras in their garden.
4) No one ever sees them, yet cars are always visiting.
It does look awfully suspicious now doesn't it? I mean, every day there's a new expensive car parked outside the house, but I remember hearing a long time ago that these people were hair stylists. I guess if they're attracting a specific clientele it could explain why there's so many nice cars out there on a regular basis. Grow-Ops apparently use lots of electricity for their hydroponic farms as well, so they try to disguise this during the Christmas season by decking their house with shitloads of lights. This house is usually the first one up with Christmas lights, and I mean early too. By mid-late November they've got it all decked out, but then, how do they hide their electricity use the other days of the year?
I can't explain the cameras for the life of me, but then I guess if you're attracting customers that drive Mercedes SLK model cars and BMW 7 Series, then I suppose you should have some cameras for protection. No one ever sees them too, in my 10 years on this street I've maybe run into them once or twice and that was back when their daughter went to school, yet their grass is always cut and their driveway is always shoveled. One day I hope to run into them and strike up a conversation (preferably with the daughter), but until then it'll be the neighbours speaking for them, filling in the gaps.
It's why I love the Simpsons episode so much, because it parodies Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. As much as I can appreciate Hitchcock's body of work, I like the parody more because your worst suspicions about your neighbours are often unfounded and there is usually a logical explanation for everything. I don't know what prompts us to think the worst of our neighbours, or to come up with the most exciting explanation for everything, but I guess living in the boring suburbs takes its toll on people so they invent these fantastical stories to liven it up. Even if it's probably crazy.
A Brief Look at my Summer
Now that I got my computer back up and running, I decided to make a list of reading goals per month. They are as follows:
June: Shakespeare and Non Fiction month
- The Tempest
- Othello
- Julius Caesar
- The Beatles
- The Gangs of New York
- Public Enemies
July: Classics
- Brave New World
- Midnight's Children
- Catch-22
- Turn of the Screw
- All The King's Men
August: Fantasy/Sci-Fi
- LOTR Trilogy
- Dune: Heretics of Dune
Can't stop reading! I know I've got my computer back but I gotta get back into this routine. Every month I'm getting closer to finishing my stack of books. I'm also going to buy Punch-Out for the Wii as soon as I can, maybe today so that I can play it with my sister on Friday.
Clearing the Backlog
And no, that's not an allusion to flushing twice *rimshot*
I've been slacking when it comes to the posts and right now so I'm just gonna fire off another one of my "random points" lists, since I'm pressed for time:
- Proximity Entrance 15 is called PEN15 on my work computer.
- You think that's bad? One time I went somewhere that sold Assorted Candy. They put it on the sign as Ass. Candy.
- Softball has been destroying my knees. We did a diving drill and now the whole side of my right leg is bruised and cut up.
- I've had two dreams about The Wire since my computer went down. One involved me actually on the show. The other involved me having McNulty as my professor. It was bizarre when I woke up.
- I think it's official: I'm going through The Wire withdrawal. I may actually start liking LOST again.
- My coworker at work decided to squirt hand sanitizer over the keyboard to swine-flu proof it.
- I wear my Decepticon watch more than my Autobot watch. Probably because after watching so much of G1 Transformers, I've realized that the Autobots are utterly unlikeable and a bunch of pussies.
- The 2nd G.I. Joe Trailer looks really, really bad. Of course I'm going to watch it.
- Some people think that Ken Griffey Jr. is on steroids. That I think is horse shit. His swing is a thing of beauty. Unfortunately, it's put to music sung by a bunch of dickfaces.
- Wal Mart won't stock NIN cds because the music has questionable content. But they will stock stuff like Scarface and The Sopranos no problem.
- Trent Reznor is also a genius.
- Twitter is surprisingly addictive. Except when Jerry Remy (the president of Red Sox Nation) followed me and proceeded to spam Twitter at a rate of 4 - 5 tweets per AT BAT. Fuck him.
- The words epic and douchebag need to be replaced pronto. They are being relentless abused. I suggest biblical, instead of epic, and perhaps smelly ballsack instead of douchebag. The addition of an adjective really drives the point home.
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Reading
Being without a computer means I've spent the better half of my week trying to go through the backlog of books that have piled up over the years. I keep buying more books despite the fact that I have about 20 that are unread sitting on my bookshelf. I used to plow through books as a kid, at least one a week, but have since slowed down. Anyway, without a computer I've picked up the pace a little and am now on my third book in a week.
The first up was finishing Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which is a retelling of the myth of Orpheus. I'm glad I saved this book for now because when I started reading it in 2nd year I didn't have a clue what they were alluding to half the time. It's got references to popular culture, music, American history, Greek mythology, and great literary novels, that I wouldn't get two years ago, but since I've taken many of those courses since, the book has become much more enjoyable. I still miss many of the allusions that it makes, but this book is so dense that I could probably spend a year annotating it and still not get anywhere close to the end. Half the fun is in unraveling what he has written and the other half is in seeing how he weaves it into the text and into the story. It's a pretty good read, but is very heavy handed in the way it handles some of its themes. If you took a shot every time the novel said the "ground beneath her feet" you'd be drunk by the second chapter. I guess that's his way of giving us a break after we've racked our brains trying to wade through the density of his novel.
After that I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which was freakin' awesome. It's on a very short list of books that have wowed me from beginning to end (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and A Clockwork Orange are the other two), and I only pray that the movie that is coming out will do it justice. Apparently it's starring Viggo Mortensen (as the main guy), Michael Williams (Omar from The Wire), Guy Pearce (!!!!!), Robert Duvall (It's Tom Hagen bitches!), and Charlize "Hubba Hubba" Theron. It's not written like a conventional narrative, where you're basically following the action every step of the way, but instead it's pretty sporadic, written episodically in short paragraph spurts. This takes away focus from the journey itself and directs it towards The Man and The Boy (the unnamed father and son in the novel), and their relationship with each other in a post-apocalyptic world. I found it interesting that they were unnamed, maybe McCarthy is suggesting that their experience in this world isn't unique, but rather reflective of what would happen if society was to break down like that. It was very interesting and to be honest, a big reason why I liked this book was that it mirrored many of my experiences in Fallout (which is the greatest game I've ever played).
The book that I'm reading now is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff by Christopher Moore. It chronicles the life of Jesus from when he was a child to when he becomes the messiah (since those years are noticeably absent in the bible), as told by his best friend at the time: Biff. My coworker recommended this book to me saying it was one of the funniest books he's ever read, and judging from what it said on the back of the book (Jesus learning Kung Fu?!), it really seemed to be headed towards complete absurdity. Surprisingly, it's a very touching novel. It's got some pretty funny moments in there, and pretty stupid ones at that, but it doesn't necessarily make it stupid. It's nicely written and so far I seem to be enjoying it so I'll keep everyone posted on that.
I should be getting my computer back tomorrow and if that's the case I'll be hooking it up to the Internet ASAP so I can download all my codecs again and go back to watching movies in the middle of the night. I really want to keep up with all my reading though, so hopefully I'll be able to make time for both the reading and the movies. Until then!
*turns around and whips cape over my face and flies off into the horizon*
Yet Another Computer Problem
Well! My computer is yet again out of commission. It should be back up and running soon, I just need to reformat everything which is OH so painful because I lose the following:
1) The Wire. All of it. I'm so cheesed I may end up shelling out $200 for the whole series instead of downloading this again.
2) Neo Genesis Evangelion. The series and the movies are always fun to watch, but man it's gone now.
3) Samurai 7. I've actually had this series sit on my computer for a few years because I mistakenly bought the DVD thinking it was an anime movie adaptation of the original. I don't know how good this series will end up being, but the beginning was pretty damn boring (then again Kurosawa's work was a tad lengthy too).
4) Pictures/Videos: Yes, that includes the video of Kevin. Not that I'd ever send that out to people, but, I can't watch it anymore.
5) A crapload of music! All my live songs, random covers, and my prized collection of instrumental music and movie soundtracks.
All in all, nothing was really irreplaceable. It's just going to be a pain in the ass to get it all back.