Do I really want to delve into politics here?
Yes.
But I won’t.
And that's because it pisses me off, it pisses everyone off on both sides, and besides that, everyone else is talking politics right now – so why should I be in the majority?
SNL pretty much covered everything I had to say about politics last weekend - so whatever is happening is happening and will continue to happen.
BUT EVERYONE’S VOTE COUNTS – SO VOTE. (*Obama ’08!*) Unless you plan on voting for McCain/Palin – then go ahead, walk out your door to vote – but make sure you get hit by a bus on the way there. A bus filled with people who cannot afford cars and are having to pay more and more for their ride to work because that bus is filled with extremely pricey gasoline; so please make sure not to let any of it spill while you’re being splatted on the pavement we’re having to pay higher and higher taxes to cover or roads with.
I KNOW I didn’t want to talk politics, however, if I had a voodoo doll with a large lump on the side of it’s jaw, and one with the I.Q. of, well, a voodoo doll and a bird’s nest on it’s head – I would be a’pokin’. Just sayin’… And that’s not a threat; I have no bayou blood in my family (that I know of) so it probably wouldn’t work anyhow. In Alaska, however, they do have a saying for that, I’m sure. But since Alaska is practically a friggin’ foreign county to the rest of the United States (with the exception of avid Northern Exposure fans) that “saying” would probably have no relevance to the rest of us – or make any sense for that matter - just like it makes no sense to go out at 3 a.m. to shoot moose. Really, seriously? Do you need the meat that badly, because your Piggly Wiggly isn’t open that early in the morning for frying up some grub before hockey practice, or do you just like to publicly finalize what a threat you are to our country’s wildlife? Maybe they should consider a 24-hour Wal-Mart in her town – oh wait, big business, I’m sure that’s ALL there is in her town. And everyone who lives there, works there. And hey, they get a discount! Man, what a great Mayor…
I’m sorry, I had to.
MOVING ON (*Obama ’08!*), it’s the middle of September already, can anyone believe that? It’s also 29 days until I get to go to the beach. I beach which, I’m praying, is still there/not in the midst of a hurricane a month from now. I think to myself how that might be really cool to experience, but let’s face it; I really don’t think it’d be that fun to be in a hurricane.
So
HOUSE’s season premiere was last Tuesday… and I don’t want to spoil anything, so just watch it.
For never having watched television before, well, I started working as a “big girl” (that goes for drinking as well…), I’m kind of ashamed of myself. I was never a “television watcher”. You know, those people (*cough, GATSBY, cough*) who are a little obsessed with certain television shows and have to either be in front of a television when that show is on/TiVo it/DVR it/record it. I’ve seen episodes/reruns of
Sex in the City on television on occasion, simply to do my duty as an eligible member of the female gender. However, I never really watched that show; I’m going to admit it. Sorry girls. I didn’t even know what day or time it was on, and that little pink tutu Carrie always wears during the opening credits makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Honestly, A) who wants to wear something like that in public –and- B) who really writes a dinky little “this is how my sex life went this week” column for a living and actually make enough money to eat out as much as she does, have as much clothing and shoes as she owns, and live in an upscale apartment in New York City. No one.
On the flip side, at least I can relate more easily to some fictional not-really-real-world character on a television show more than I can relate to some under-qualified, joke of a VP candidate from rural East Jesus cold-nowheresville with the nasally sound of something similar to the combination of my brother’s disgustingly dreadful second grade teacher and a really angry goose flowing from her head who might as well be fictional. She’s a really, really, really bad fictional nightmare.
I’m sorry, I had to.
Back to T.V.! So, now I’m watching not one, but three television shows (four stating January 1st) on a regular basis – and plugging away through one I’ve already seen, but just can’t get enough of ever, on DVD. It’s when show series began to come out on DVD that I became truly interested and, admitted with shame, avid about watching certain shows.
Sure, my freshman year of college I started watching
HOUSE for a little while, but that died off as both I and my “watching buddy”, Speakerbox, began to do other things – or just forget about it… :(
Since then, I have missed those glorious
HOUSE sessions and the “Oh my gosh, what could ever happen next!?” feeling I used to get at the end of every episode. But there was a problem. I never wanted to have to wait to “tune in next week, same time, same place”. Hence, I started ordering
HOUSE through the incredible genius that Netflix is, and watched them back-to-back-to-back. Again, I am ashamed to further emphasize on my ever-growing addiction to television shows, but I would panic when one disc would be suddenly viewed in its entirety and the next one was “on its way” in the mail, and I was
Houseless. Ha ha. But really, I would get depressed over it. It’s a terrible feeling, almost as bad as that “wait until next week to see…” feeling.
In addition, I began to watch
LOST on DVD, even though I had sworn off of that show entirely. Mainly because everyone was talking about it; it was a mainstream social connection and I don’t particularly like to be in that flow. I go in my own flow. If everyone started going crazy over Cat Stevens and wouldn’t stop shutting up about his songs and albums and
Harold and Maude, I think I’d veto that as well – which, if you know me, if ridiculous to even conceive of. Would I actually let those LPs sit on the shelf, never to be spun again? Would I really never Sing Out if I wanted to again? Hells no! So I think that may have been a bad allusion. Forget it.
I started watching
LOST, I finished watching
LOST, and I’m craving its season premier, on, well, next year’s premier. I do feel a little ashamed of this, going back on my own “Leah rules” about this show, however, I know all
LOST sessions will be held in my living room because we’ve got the HDTV and surround sound, and I don’t like being shunned away to the bedroom to be all by my lonesome self. Like a forgotten rag doll who’s been voted “off the island”. I figured, since they must go back to the Island, I needed to simply get to the island in the first place. So I did and look where I am now, a
LOST crazy like the rest of them. Oh well, I like it. And I’m still a liberal.
The two other shows I am now involved in,
Entourage and
True Blood are HBO-only, but it’s fine with me if we cancel it, so don’t even ask me to start paying part of that satellite bill just because I’m watching it right now, because they’ll both come out on DVD eventually and I’ll just watch them then, in order, so I don’t have to get that semi-panicky feeling whenever a show is over every week, I can just watch them all in a row.
Here’s yet another hypocritical screwball to send up your way,
True Blood is based on Charlaine Harris’s “Sookie Stackhouse” book series all about “those creepy vampires,” like Duck Face likes to say. That’s how I felt about it too, especially since my mother, aunt, sister, and grandmother were sucking up the book series like spaghetti from Tony’s. So of course, I boycotted it. It was too “mainstream,” and I know that makes me sound like a total snob, but really I’m just a chick who gets dressed up for work, goes home, rips off her loathed bra, showers and lounges around in sweatpants and some kind of old t-shirt and walks around her yard in Crocs. I avoid going out, I avoid parties, I avoid going shopping, and I simply just like to be left alone. And that is simply just avoiding mainstream - that’s not being snooty, that’s being introverted and almost like a hippy-hermit. But I like that lifestyle.
So I booed the books – but then after watching
Entourage with “the boys”,
True Blood just happened to come on right before it. So we watched it, and I liked it. In fact, I know I liked it more than “the boys” but I don’t really care, they don’t have to watch it if they don’t want to. However, I think they secretly do.
On the other hand, I was coming into watching
Entourage on the premier of its 5th season. So I’m going to be honest here, I knew nothing about it. It was kind of funny but I didn’t know the characters, I didn’t know the plot, I didn’t know who was who or where and why they were doing what they were doing. The second week I watched it, it had been explained to me more clearly, so I had a better idea of the plot and who everyone was and enjoyed it more. I enjoyed Lloyd from the get-go. And I liked Adrian Grenier…enough said on him.
I did look the show up on Netflix, I thought about getting the first four seasons, but decided, no.
Do you know why I decided that? It wasn’t that I don’t like the show, or that I’m not interested it.
It’s because I LIVE with one of the
Entourage boys, I hang out with the rest of them.
These boys I hang out with love this show because they relate so much to it. They see themselves, even if they don’t realize it, as the
Entourage cast.
I don’t need to watch them on my television more than 30 minutes once a week, because I see them in real life all the time. I’m not complaining, I love these guys, but hey, they’re not vampires – so I feel like I can’t help but like a television show about something totally different from my own life better than one about these boys I see everyday, just seven years from now. But it is a good show.
As I sit here right now, I realize just how hypocritical and conflicting my little life is – with the exception of my political views (*Obama ’08!*). I’ve got post cards from different places I’ve been, Disney World and Devil’s Tower, alongside a picture from the coast of an angel that was right on the shoreline. It was hit head-on by Katrina, all the houses around it were, well, non-existent – but this little angel survived with the loss of both her hands and broken wing. Ok – here’s where it gets hypocritical:
I’m totally against “big business” blah blah blah, however – I will tell anyone and everyone that Disney World is truly the happiest place on earth; I’ve been there 14 times so I should know.
The Devils Tower postcard is all about it’s use in
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which Native Americans don’t really like because 1) it was the country’s first national monument and 2) it’s sacred to the Native Americans – there’s a whole spiritual tale behind it’s existence. I know it, but it’s long, so I’m not going to go into it. Here:
Devils TowerSince my great grandmother was Lakota Indian, I should probably NOT be flaunting the Hollywood aspect of it. But I’m a film studies minor. What can I do?
The whole “angel surviving the hurricane, Christian relics staying intact while the rest of the world is destroyed” kind of goes against my rejection of Christianity right now. So, I’m categorizing that photograph under the “fallen angel” – not so much Lucifer, not Satan guys – but as a symbol of everything happening the way it’s supposed to in a very Buddhist though process and falling away from Christianity as a “fallen angel”. But everyone knows I’m no angel.
Then, I have old film memorabilia everywhere,
Casablanca, a book full of old movie couples, Audrey Hepburn buttons, etc. Juxtaposing that are my
Empire Records,
A Christmas Story,
Clockwork Orange, and
Lost in Translation buttons. THEN I’ve got the headless Statue of Liberty
Cloverfield and a
Sweeney Todd movie poster on either side of my monitor, with happy seashells, sand (then there’s Yellowstone and the mountains) and pink ribbons underneath. Oh, and dried lavender hanging next to the posters as well. Kind of gruesome, and then it’s sweet. So, again, point shown. I’m going to bring in my
Marie Antoinette poster and put it with them, just so we get the whole range of cut-throat beheadings around my screen. But, again,
Marie Antoinette is a pink, girly-punk poster. And for the love of whoever, I'm sitting in front on these gruesome movie posters wearing my - I kid you not - "cheery cherry" colored sweater. I bought it because of the happy name. OK then.
Then there’s the family pictures, the “I love my little baby sister so friggin’ much” pictures, all the art history stuff, the other random buttons such as old campaign and Beatles buttons, Coca-Cola crap and Emerson, Lennon, and Special Agent Dale Cooper quotes/pictures.
It’s almost as if I’ve just now figured out my METAL filing drawers are METAL and BLANK and I can put magnets and tape stuff to them.
Nothing looks like its making sense here. There’s nothing but total hypocrisy, right here, on display for Duck Face and all the office to see.
My cubicle basically looks like a dorm room.
And everybody knows… college kids are hypocrites. (Wtf?)
Anyhoo, the point of this strange explanation was NOT supposed to be political, it’s supposed to highlight hypocrisy in everyone’s lives, whether they mean for it to occur or not. I know that was a little weird, explaining it in the context of the television shows I now watch and every detail of my work cubicle… but sometimes it just works out that way. Strangely, I mean.
I am going to end it (as I began it even though I said I wasn’t going to) on a political note here.
Everyone’s a hypocrite, but some are much worse than others. Way your options here, if you have to pick the lesser of two evils, then do so - don’t waste your vote on someone who’s obviously not in the running or leave it unused.
But think about that “evil” part really well… I’m not saying who to vote for here, that’s your decision.
I’m a hypocrite, Democrats are hypocrites, Republicans are hypocrites, and you’re a hypocrite too. And that’s because we’re all human beings and really can’t really ever make up our minds.
But look at the stock market, the housing market, the banks, YOUR bank account, your bills, your car, the gas you put in your car, your home, your job, your family, THEIR future, and your grandchildren’s futures. Just think about that, because if you want NOTHING about your life to change, you’re not going to get that. It’s going to change, it’s currently changing, and it’s not the “good” type of change that’s occurring. And change doesn’t stop. Life is ever-changing and morphing and it can go either way.
I’m voting for Obama.
