Warning: this post contains content that non-nerds probably don't give a crap about November 17 marked the fortieth anniversary of the worst film of all time. "What?" you may be saying. "'The Emoji Movie' isn't that old!" No, I'm talking about "The Star Wars Holiday Special". What can I say about "The Star Wars Holiday Special" that I or someone else hasn't already said? Just that I arranged a viewing of it and had one person show up, who said that it fully lived down to his expectations and that he might make all his friends and family watch it. This was my fourth or fifth viewing, but my first time with the commercials included, which certainly spiced it up. I learned, for example, that Tobor is robodT spelled backwards and that pantihose with real panties in them are superior to pantihose without real panties in them. The version without commercials that I watched last year has been removed from YouTube for a copyright violation. Why anyone gives a crap about a copyright violation on a film that hasn't been broadcast or released in any format in forty years is beyond my comprehension, as is the fact that the version with commercials was allowed to stay up. But I downloaded the non-commercial one last year so I still have both. My favorite part is still Bea Arthur's big musical number in the cantina, but my favorite part to show someone else was of course the part where virtual reality Diahann Carroll makes it seem like the film is transitioning into a bizarre Wookiee porno. Neither of these scenes make much more sense in context than in the previous sentence. Also, he said that the Jefferson Starship scene gives him hope that the crappy music playing on the radio today won't be remembered in forty years. "Jefferson Starship has two good songs," he said, "and they went with this one instead." As I said to him and as I've probably said elsewhere before, it really is amazing that this film didn't kill the Star Wars franchise in its infancy. Make no mistake, the film is far worse than anything Disney has put out, yet "The Last Jedi" and "Solo" have somehow done more damage. It's the darndest thing. The Legend of Zelda franchise has its own version of the Holiday Special - three terrible third-party games for a forgotten piece of hardware called the CD-i that resulted from Nintendo backing out of a deal that led to Sony developing the Playstation and becoming its primary competitor. Nintendo doesn't have as healthy of an attitude about these games as Lucasfilm does about the Holiday Special. While the Holiday Special has informed several other Star Wars projects, especially those involving Wookiees, including "Revenge of the Sith" and even the upcoming TV series "The Mandalorian", Nintendo wants you to forget that the CD-i games exist. They are absent from official sources like The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia even though it includes a section on non-canon spinoff games, and "Spirit Tracks" was advertised as the first time you could play as Zelda even though she's the protagonist of two of these three. The first one came out the year I was born and had its twenty-fifth anniversary sometime this year that I can't be bothered to look up. But that's not what I came here to talk about. Ocarina of Time, widely regarded as the greatest video game of all time, turned twenty on November 21. Conveniently I was at my grandparents' house for Thanksgiving and they have a copy and I celebrated by playing it as much as possible. That's where I was introduced to it in the first place. Let me back up: I was introduced to the Legend of Zelda franchise via an ad in the back of a Super Mario Advance choose-your-own-adventure book that I got through the school book order in second or third grade for another choose-your-own-adventure book based on Oracle of Seasons. Of course, this being the first time, I viewed it through fresh eyes that I never could again. "Legend of Zelda"? Zelda was a person's name, so it was Legend of some person. Who the crap was Zelda? What was this about "Link's latest quest"? That made little or sense to me, since Link isn't a name. I didn't give it another thought until we went to visit my grandparents and on the way we stopped at my mom's friend's house and I watched my mom's friend's kid play Majora's Mask. So I still didn't know who Zelda was or that the little guy I saw running around mostly as a Deku Scrub was named Link, but I saw what the franchise was and so the mystery I didn't really care about was solved. And more to the point, I was entranced by the fascinating world, plot and characters. I had so much fun just watching my mom's friend's kid play, and that obviously indicated that it was a darn good game. So when we got to my grandparents' house, and my aunts (they're twins) who I guess technically own the Nintendo 64, or maybe it's one of their brothers' (my uncles'), I forget, asked if I wanted to use it, and I asked if they had any Legend of Zelda games and they said they did have one, and though I didn't know it at the time, it happened to be the best one. It also happened to be the rare original release with some glitches and details that were almost immediately changed (e.g. the atmospheric Muslim prayer chanting in the Fire Temple). Since I wasn't allowed to have a Nintendo 64 and could only use this one for two weeks every two years, I spent every second I could playing it. On Sundays when I couldn't, I pored impatiently over the Strategy Guide. The second thing that struck me about this franchise was how unapologetically weird it was. Why were chickens called "Cuccos"? What the crap did "Deku" mean? What was an ocarina? It's originally based on medieval Europe, but I didn't notice that. I saw it as just a pure one-of-a-kind fantasy land. It's interpreted through a Japanese lens and evolved beyond its roots and it's got words and creatures and mythical elements with little or no basis in medieval Europe. The weirdness was a huge part of the appeal for me. I was a weird kid who thought outside the proverbial box, and this world matched. I still have that attitude and it extends to Tingle, a character who in Japan is loved but in the U.S. is the Legend of Zelda franchise's version of Jar Jar Binks. I don't understand the hate at all. He's weird. So freaking what? I don't escape into fantasy worlds because I want to make small talk with boring people. Sure, I'd keep him away from my children if he existed in real life, but this isn't real life. That's the point. Tingle isn't in this game, but he made his debut in Majora's Mask, so that's kind of still relevant. Again, I don't want to recap stuff that's already been said about how groundbreaking and influential Ocarina of Time was on its own franchise and video games as a whole. That can hardly be overstated. Some people will say that the game is overrated. Those people are wrong. True, it's obviously a product of its time. The vast and expansive game world of 1998 is small and linear in 2018, some of the graphics now look like they were drawn by a seven year old, and the tinny MIDI arrangements of Koji Kondo's impossibly good music pale in comparison to almost any orchestration or cover version. None of these things, in my judgment, make it any less enjoyable (and the graphics were vastly improved in the 2011 3DS remake anyway). I'm sure the fact that I was able to play it within a few years of its release helped me see it the way it was intended. I rarely find Navi annoying and I think most people who claim to are just regurgitating what they read on the internet so people will like them. I do concede that the Water Temple is a massive pain in the butt (though it was vastly improved in the 2011 3DS remake anyway). Two polar opposites - the worst film and best video game ever. But I'm grateful that they both exist. In closing, here's the best song from "The Star Wars Holiday Special" (among not many options) and the best song from Ocarina of Time (among literally dozens of strong contenders). May they keep bewildering and entertaining us, respectively, for decades to come.
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I'm usually pretty chill about the prejudice against Aspies and autistic people. I figure countless millions of people have been discriminated against for stupid reasons, so who am I to think I'm better than them? Who am I to resent someone calling the cops on me for acting strange when better men than I have been murdered for their skin color? I sometimes see the phrase "screeching autistically" used as some kind of derisive and not particularly funny joke. While I'm at the high-functioning end of the spectrum and do not, to my knowledge, screech in this manner, still I have a kinship with those who do and therefore try to gently guilt-trip people out of mocking them. I saw a dumb teenager use the phrase a few weeks ago. It would have been silly for me to get upset, because when I was a dumb teenager my friends and I were quite unrestrained in throwing around words like "gay" and "retarded", mostly at each other. I cringe to think about that now. But I have less patience with adults, especially LDS adults, who should know better. The other day one used "miserable Aspie" as a slur against Jeremy Runnells who isn't even, to my knowledge, an Aspie. I told him to bite me. And I felt that I was symbolically saying it not just to him, but to the countless people throughout my life who have treated me like less than a person. So I'm still not perfect. Or sorry. The Logan institute recently did its closing social and made it Star Wars themed. Mormons love Star Wars for theological reasons in addition to the reasons that everyone else loves Star Wars. Each room was supposed to represent a different location from one of the movies, and while they were in the planning stages I took the liberty of contributing unsolicited and tasteless suggestions. These were better ideas than what they did for the opening social. They were calling one of the rooms "The Friend Zone" which was a clever joke because it was a place where you went to make friends. But not many people came in. I think they were afraid that if they came in, they would never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever leave. We made several Star Wars decorations. The most bizarre in my opinion was a cutout of Darth Vader saying "Great leaders inspire greatness in others." Sorry, what? Did we leave off the end of the quote? "...by punishing failure with death," or something? This is Darth Vader, not Jesus. I heard there were several activities at this social but since one of them was an actual Star Wars movie, none of the others mattered. I heard one of them was a dance. The only dance move that most Mormons know, at least in this country, is jumping. Most people would call it "jumping up and down" but that's stupid because you only jump up and then the down part just kind of happens by itself. It's a cool move, but it's not my favorite. What are my favorites? I'm glad you asked! Let me show you! The "George McFly"The "Salacious Crumb"The "Clone Troopers"The "Obscure Peanuts"The "Aman Mathur"The "Emo Philips"The "Wayne's World" (especially for Rammstein)The "The Cheat"The "Italian Schoolgirl"The "Russian Riverdancer"The "What is Love?"I had to make more than half of those GIFs myself, and it was a real pain in the neck. Please read this post twice to justify the amount of work I put into it. ThanksgivingI suppose now that I'm feeling less lazy I should record something for posterity about visiting my grandparents for Thanksgiving. They live in eastern Idaho. It's a beautiful place if you like seeing eight hundred cow fields in a row, which I don't particularly, but I love it anyway. Up until a few years ago my grandparents had cows too. Cows are one of the ubiquitous animals that everyone, at least in the western hemisphere, knows about from infancy, but if you've only seen them in pictures and/or from a distance you may be surprised to discover how massive they are. I was. And if you've never had your hand sucked on by a calf before, put it on your bucket list. It feels amazing until you pull your hand out. I went back to the now-empty barn to look around and, surprise, it still smells like cows. My sense of smell is virtually nonexistent but one of the few things I can smell, fortunately for my nostalgia, is cows. I found two kittens sleeping, got closer, and then found that they weren't sleeping but were in fact part of a cluster of ten dead kittens in varying stages of decay. How they all came to be in that spot is perhaps best left to the imagination. Next to the barn is a shed full of junk, including no fewer than nine bicycles and an old-timey radio. Whenever I see it I think it would be cool to fix it up and use it, but then I remember that it would still only play modern stations and that would totally kill the magic. And then, outside, there's like twenty enormous farm machines that are probably going to stay right where they are until the Second Coming. It's weird to think that one day Grandpa just turned each one off and never used it again. Kind of like how one day your parents put you down and never picked you up again. And they can't have been cheap. The main way we spend time together when I'm there is by watching TV. In all seriousness, I feel that it brings me closer to them. As soon as Thanksgiving was over we watched "The Muppet Christmas Carol", the Rockettes Radio City Music Hall Christmas show from 2007, a ghost movie called "The Spirit of Christmas" that was all right but should have been half an hour longer to flesh out the reasons for the romance, and the first few minutes of some movie called "Noel". They turned it off after someone said to the protagonist, "You need sex. Good sex." My sister thought that it should have been PG-13 but since it was made a long time ago, in 2004, it must have been before the PG-13 rating was created. She was only off by twenty years. But none of them had minded a few minutes earlier when the protagonist said something like, "I'm doing great! You know, single woman over forty during the Christmas season! Just keep me away from any kitchen knives or open windows for the next few days! Ha ha... heh..." So I'm not sure why the word "sex" is more offensive than a joke about suicide. Although I'd be lying if I said I didn't find said joke hilarious. But they turned that off and I requested "The Santa Clause" because I hadn't seen it in a very long time. Well, I don't know what else to say about this vacation now but I really just wanted to say something about how big cows are. Auralnauts - Jedi PartySo how do actual Jedi dance? Look no further to find out! This is from the redubbed Star Wars film "Attack of the Phantom Past" and makes sense in context. Kind of. I'm on vacation for Thanksgiving and don't feel like writing a real post, but here's one of my favorite cartoons. One month until Christmas! I sought a ride to Idaho Falls for Thanksgiving, hoping to leave on Wednesday but knowing that beggars can't be choosers. If I couldn't get one I would take the Salt Lake Express bus, but that's a lot more expensive. It costs a staggering amount to fuel them and I'm sure it doesn't help that they have to go south to Brigham City before going north to Idaho Falls for some reason I can't comprehend. I looked at a map and it looks to me like you could go directly from Logan to Idaho Falls, but I'm no expert. Anyway, I did get a ride, and it was on Thanksgiving itself but we would be leaving at 10:30 so we'd get there in plenty of time and it would be great. She'd only be staying for one day so I'd just stick around and take the bus back, but that would still be a lot cheaper than taking it both ways. Early Thanksgiving morning she got sick and canceled. She was very apologetic and I told myself not to be upset with her because it's not like she chose to be sick and not get to go at all. I chose instead to be upset at life itself for pulling this kind of crap on us. So I would have to take the Salt Lake Express bus after all, which was pretty annoying because if I'd known I would have to take the bus I would have left on Wednesday. I tried to get the soonest departure, which was just over an hour away. Usually you can just get tickets online with a few mouse clicks, but apparently since this one was so close, it said to call a number instead. I did, and got an automated voice blathering on about some promotion and concluding, "If you are fifty or older, press one." I waited. It repeated, "If you are fifty or older, press one." I swore at it. (I swear a lot when I get mad. I'm not proud of it, but I'm just being honest.) It said, "If you are fifty or older, press one. If you are not fifty or older, press zero." I pressed zero. It said "End of call" and disconnected. I swore at it again, redialed and this time got an automated menu with actual options. I pressed the number for customer service and was informed that I was the sixth caller in the queue. Okay, fine, it was a holiday so that was understandable albeit still really annoying. I waited for twenty minutes, with it repeating the standard forgettable music and "We appreciate your patience" stuff, and then I was in the first position. And then for a further ten minutes it continued to inform me that I was in the first position. I was getting pretty aggravated as time ran out, and thought about rude things to say to the person who would answer, but told myself not to because it wasn't their fault and I worked in a call center for almost four months so I know what it's like when people treat you like you're not a person because they can only hear your voice. But when it finally came to be my turn, the line went silent. "Hello?" I said. "Hello? HELLO??" No answer. I waited maybe thirty seconds and swore and hung up in disgust. I still had about twenty minutes, so I ran down to the bus station to see if I could just buy a ticket right there and get on. "Sorry, I don't sell the tickets," the driver said. "I don't have any tickets to sell." And I just stood there for a moment staring at him as I silently told myself not to yell at him because he was just a driver and he didn't decide the policies and none of this was his fault. I turned away and swore under my breath. "We still have a couple minutes," he said. "You could try calling them again." I did, and it immediately told me I was caller number one, but given my previous experience with being caller number one for ten minutes I wasn't about to go through that again. I hung up after two minutes and walked home fuming. Then I saw Jordin Sparks' Facebook status: "Before getting upset always ask yourself: will this even matter in six months, in a year, or in five years? If the answer is no, just let it go." Jordin Sparks, ladies and gentlemen. So I bought a later ticket arrived after my family had eaten dinner and I got to eat leftovers by myself and it was the crappiest Thanksgiving of my life, but the person who was going to give me a ride probably had a crappier one since she was sick and didn't end up going at all. I reminded myself of that to try and stop being all "me me me". Even without that perspective, there is the whole issue of first world problems versus all the people who were starving, being abused, and what have you on Thanksgiving day. And even without that perspective, it's already in the past and doesn't matter. It took some pride-swallowing but I followed Jordin Sparks' admonition to let it go. Except that Salt Lake Express.refused to even dignify me with a response when I asked for a refund even though their incompetence ruined everything. Regardless of whether you think I deserve a refund, they could have had the simple decency to acknowledge my existence. So I'm keeping my promise to tell everyone about my immense dissatisfaction with them. You guys, I'm immensely dissatisfied with them. That's all. I've let it go now. I would like to completely change the subject by sharing something that has already been shared over a couple hundred thousand times, and expressing an opinion about it that does not fall in line with the general consensus of most of those people. Some will undoubtedly hate me for daring to do so, but I've given up caring about that sort of thing. I'm quite tired of being held to a double standard just because white people who aren't me have done and said bad things to other races in the past, or even today. There is no such thing as "African culture" or "Asian culture". Africa and Asia are both vast and diverse continents with anywhere from dozens to thousands of different cultures, depending on how one measures such things. And if black = African as the post asserts, then white = European, right? And surely white people can have pride in their European culture and heritage, right? Especially since Europe is a far smaller and more cohesive continent than Africa or Asia so the phrase "European culture" is slightly less absurd, right? No, descendants of European stock can only take pride in their specific country, not their continent, or else the social justice warriors with their mind-reading powers have determined that they're just proud they don't have a different skin color. How do we know people with black pride aren't just proud they aren't white or brown? Why aren't they required to choose Ghanaian pride, Ethiopian pride, Rwandan pride, and so on*? For that matter, why doesn't this guy grant permission for Mexicans to have generic Latin American pride? What did they do? *Of course, even acting like a particular African country has a uniform culture and heritage doesn't really work, since most of their boundaries were drawn by Europeans who didn't know or care that they were breaking up tribes, ethnic groups, and languages with no rhyme or reason. And while we're on the subject, Africans have a wide spectrum of skin tones and are more genetically diverse than the natives of any other continent, so I think that lumping them all together as just "black" is kind of silly. The Mouse on the MayflowerThis cartoon first aired 48 years and three days ago. I watched it as a kid, maybe fifteen years or so ago, and then I watched it again on Wednesday evening for nostalgia purposes. Everything was familiar. I hadn't realized as a kid, however, that it features the versatile voice actress June Foray of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" fame. She did the voice of Rocky and virtually every female character. Like Kirk Douglas and Vera Lynn, she's still alive at the age of 99 years, and I very much hope that all three will survive the Celebrity Massacre of 2016. Kirk only needs to make it less than two weeks until his hundredth birthday, knock on wood. Anyway, the opening song of this cartoon is as awe-inspiring as I remembered it, so I include it here, followed by the entire thing for anybody who has the time and interest (which will probably be nobody, but just in case). Writing Dilemma #344 Scenario: Character A is in love with Character B because I wanted to have love in my story because love is lovely, but that isn’t a good enough reason. It needs to be real and natural. I realize this after watching "Romancing the Stone" and pondering how the romance between the protagonists seemed to spring out of nowhere just because it's what a heteronormative audience expects to happen. Solution: Character C notices that Character A is in love with Character B and asks him why. Character A discusses some of Character B's traits that he finds attractive. New Scenario: Character A praises Character B's sense of humor. However, since I am the author and write the dialogue for both characters, this is really me praising my own sense of humor, which is immodest and unbecoming. Solution: Character C responds, "She [Character B] isn't nearly as funny as she thinks she is." For good measure, Character D chimes in, "Neither is Character A, so it’s all good." Of course, Character B is oblivious to the whole situation, which is probably the most realistic part. They say to write what you know. It’s nothing spectacular, but I promise it's a better love story than "Attack of the Clones" (as also are many other things including but not limited to the "Twilight" saga, amoebic mitosis, and a broken carburetor). Addendum to last week's comments on serio-comic writing: do you know why I write serio-comic stuff instead of serio-serio stuff? Simply put, because I start from the premise that neither humanity nor life itself deserve to be taken seriously. Humanity is a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, yet with stupidity and depravity as boundless as the universe. And of course life itself deserves to be mocked for everything it's done to me. I will deny it the satisfaction of seeing me crumble, at least permanently. Case in point for the former proposition - I heard on the radio just a few days ago about a nine year old boy in Florida who wrote a love letter to a girl in his class, saying things like "I like your eyes because they sparkle like diamonds." That is so sweet! I was never that sweet when I was nine years old. A normal, non-sociopathic human being hearing this story should be like: But nope, instead he's facing sexual harassment charges. Sexual harassment charges. For a $%&# nine year old. For writing a $%&# love letter. You can't make this stuff up. I heard about this on a classic hits station rather than a news station per se, so the lady reporting it made no attempt to pretend to be unbiased or hide her incredulity. She was like, "Can you say STU-PID? Cause that's what this is!" Stupid is a compliment for something like this. But in fairness, the stupid school administrators were probably just trying to prepare him for the stupidity of the stupid, stupid, stupid real world, where people will expect him to take initiative in this sort of thing while simultaneously waiting with baited breath to jump on his throat for doing something "wrong", as they have done here. Would it be harassment if the girl had written the note? Would it be harassment if she had reciprocated his feelings? Was he supposed to psychically know what she would think of it beforehand? American society has its head so far up its whatchamacallit that it would be able to see the cavity where its heart used to be, if it wasn't blind. News from another country that also has its share of societal problems but is also quite dear to me. On August 21, Matthew Martinich of the LDS Church Growth blog reported, "I just received word that the Church has approved the organization of a second stake in India. The new stake will be organized from the Bangalore India District on November 15th. Missionaries report that the Rajahmundry India District has almost reached the minimum criteria to become a stake. With multiple stakes in the country, prospects appear more likely for the Church to announce a temple for India within the foreseeable future as the closest operating temple is located in Hong Kong." After this had circulated on Facebook for a bit (you're welcome), the India Bangalore mission president commented, "Today I read several posts announcing that a new stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be created in Bangalore on Nov 15. Unfortunately, as well meaning as these posts are, they are premature. The leadership of the Church has not approved a new stake. There is NO announcement that it will happen on 15 Nov. These posts are based on assumptions. Please wait until there is an official announcement from Church leaders before posting the information. President David Berrett" When this was brought to Martinich's attention in the blog comments, he said, "I obtained this information from two missionaries serving in the India Bangalore Mission. I will keep this post up for now. If it becomes clear that the stake has not been officially approved, then I will remove the post and explain the situation to our readers. I have had previous instances of mission presidents contacting me who have even denied that no [sic] new stake or district will be organized, yet one or two months later these units are in fact organized." On November 15th, the Bengaluru India Stake was indeed organized from the Bangalore India District. How does that work, I wonder? A lucky prediction by the missionaries, or what? I can hardly believe it’s been a year since my friend Cece invited me to go Black Friday shopping with her. That was my first time ever Black Friday shopping, and it lasted about eight hours, if I recall correctly, and I feel very nostalgic about it now that I realize it was so long ago - not in geological, let alone astronomical time, of course, but it seems like a long time to me and that’s all that matters. The first place we went was Hasting’s. Only in Utah can you walk into a secular book/movie/music/video game store and be treated to a dance remix of "Popcorn Popping" over the speaker system. I bought that CD ("Called to Dance!" by Reverence, if you’re curious) some time later and gifted it to my family when I went home recently. Somehow I persuaded my mother to let us listen to it on the way to church. "This seems just a little bit wrong," she mused, but she didn’t turn it off. Back to Cece and me - after Hasting's we went to the mall. There I had the privilege of holding her purse while she tried on clothes, and that was a first too. I’d heard about that sort of thing but never gotten to experience it myself. She looked fabulous in everything she tried on, and wanted me to help her decide what to get, as if I knew anything about that sort of thing. We also went into a perfume and shampoo and lotion store that smelled really nice, and I tried some free samples but didn’t feel that they matched my aura. We mostly did girly stuff like that but toward the end I went to "Fun Unlimited" - the mall’s more expensive and less organized version of Hasting's, I suppose - where I got my first Miami Sound Machine and Queensrÿche and Beyoncé CDs. As she was looking through the racks with me she commented on one pop star (I don't even remember who it was), "Wow, she looks so perfect," and then pantomimed shooting her in the face. Cece has apparently never seen a mirror. She says weird stuff sometimes, like "Sorry my makeup looks horrible," and I'm just like, "Shut up. You don't know what you're talking about." Unable to decide on Arby’s or Carl’s Jr. for lunch, we got curly fries at the former and burgers at the latter (or maybe the other way around, I don’t remember). I offered to cover it but she declined because "This isn’t a date or anything." It was good to have that clarified. But as we were eating, the conversation shifted very quickly from "So how have you been?" to "Life is really hard, isn’t it? But just think how good it will feel to stand before God someday and tell Him that you never killed yourself." Not even once? Later in the day she decided that I needed a new wardrobe, and bought me two T-shirts, a pair of jeans, a package of socks and a pair of sneakers. I told her she didn’t need to do that just because she was concerned about me killing myself, but she insisted because "What are friends for?" Obviously I need more friends like that. Nothing that exciting happened this year on Black Friday, though, because she was out of town, and for a time I was concerned that nothing would happen for Thanksgiving either. The initial plan was to catch a ride with a friend to my grandparents’ house, and from there to my great-grandfather’s house. This time last year he was able to get out of the house and do his own stuff, but no more. Alas, the day before I was going to leave, he was taken to the hospital, and my grandparents had to go see him right then and there. I don't know what's going on but he is in his nineties and has already been preceded in death by his wife and two of his children, so whether he recovers or not it will be for the best. Personally I hope I never live to be that frail. My friend offered to let me just come to her house, and I considered it because she’s one of the few people in the world I wouldn’t feel awkward with during a three hour car ride and I had been looking forward to it, but her family didn’t know me and they would have to find a place for me to sleep so I opted out. I would just go to the bishop’s home, as I had heard that it was open for this purpose. I knew the second counselor had made a similar offer but with the caveat that he was going to his mother-in-law’s home and her husband had died a few weeks ago, so I didn’t want to intrude on that. Alas, I had been misinformed and the bishop was going out of town, but he said that maybe the first counselor/my boss was having people over. And indeed he may have been planning on it, until his basement was flooded with eight inches of water by an idiot neighbor trying to make an ice rink. It was one of the nice basements, too, that actually has carpets and rooms full of stuff like any other part of the house. Goodbye books and magazines and records and VHS tapes and a bunch of other stuff. I remember opening a back issue of the Ensign at their house to an article called "A Note to the ‘Good Girls'" and realizing that I was friends with the author on Facebook. Anyway, the situation was crazy, but they went to his wife's brother/my co-worker's house and took me with them, and I ate a lot of delicious stuff and brought a book so I didn't have to make friends with a bunch of strangers, and it was great. My "Walking on Icy Sidewalks in Logan" song. Seriously, it comes into my head every time. Sesame Street - Walk Like a PenguinWhile watching "A New Hope" with the neighbors last week, I started spouting off trivia. I don’t even know why, but it was definitely not an attempt to impress my ex-crush. People were impressed, though. I always knew that not having any friends in middle school would pay off someday. But I was being a know-it-all and annoying myself, so I mostly shut myself up, but when someone asked me what the monster chess game was called and I said it was called dejarik he said "Let’s play a new game - 'Stump Chris'." No, I’ll be humble! I thought. You don’t have to humble me! We were watching the Blu-Ray version which I hadn’t seen before, yet the hokey blaster and lightsaber effects, and the garbage mattes around some of the ships, and various other teensy gaffes, still had not been fixed or improved. But the infamous Greedo scene had undergone its third butchering, I mean edit. Good thing George Lucas had his priorities straight. J. J. Abrams could make himself the most popular guy in the world just by changing it back. But the enhanced visual quality may account for the fact that, despite having seen this film scores of times, I noticed for the first time a couple of black guys in Mos Eisley. The first black people in Star Wars. Of course, I already knew, as some of you do, that Billy Dee Williams wasn’t the first one anyway, nor was he even the first one with a speaking role. Oh no. That honor went to the lovely Diahann Carroll, and if you knew that then you already know why she probably hasn’t been too eager to claim her bragging rights. She appears in a scene of the impossibly bad "The Star Wars Holiday Special" (which everyone should watch as a tradition this time of year) where she sings a song to Chewbacca’s father, Itchy [sic], after having a brief... conversation with him. There are so many things I could say about it but I’m going to just let it speak for itself. I actually kind of like the song. They must have written it while sober and then drank gasoline while writing the scene to go around it. The Mind Evaporator, including Diahann Carroll - This MinuteI'm slightly disappointed that the next one will be rated PG-13, because the Star Wars saga is supposed to have a broad appeal including families and almost all ages. I know Episode III was rated PG-13 but I don't think it should become a habit. Oh well. There's still plenty of hype left in me. This song would be perfect for it if "George Lucas" were changed to "J. J. Abrams" and "1998" [sic] to "2015". Then it wouldn’t rhyme, but rhyming isn’t everything. Ultimate Fakebook - Far Far Away |
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- Amelia Whitlock "I don't know how well you know Christopher Randall Nicholson, but... he's trolling. You should read his blog. It's delightful." - David Young About the AuthorC. Randall Nicholson is a white cisgender Christian male, so you can hate him without guilt, but he's also autistic and asexual, so you can't, unless you're an anti-vaxxer, in which case the feeling is mutual. This blog is where he periodically rants about life, the universe, and/or everything. Archives
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