BLAAGH

I Bet It Was Fish Oil

Overheard at work.

"Well, it's like the guy at GNC told me: you're only born with so many enzymes.  This supplement replenishes them."

Dear Movie Industry:

I think remakes are shit. 

There are exceptions to this rule.  There are exceptions to almost every rule. But generally speaking remakes are shit.  This is especially true of the current crop of horror movie "re-imaginings" (a phrase so sickeningly condescending and sweet my eyes roll into the back of my head automatically every time I hear it).  They are dumbed down versions of the originals with a much louder soundtrack and awkwardly inserted CGI and they are terrible.

A great movie has a perfect confluence of events.  The right director, the right actors, the right script, the right amount of money (seems like most of the time with great movies the right amount is "not enough".  Take note.), the right tone, the right timing.  To remake a movie is to stoop to such a ridiculous, pretentious level that you believe you can duplicate what is essentially a shitload of chance and luck.  You cannot do this.  You will fail and your movie will be shit.  This is like the same person being struck by lightning more than once.  Has it happened? Yes.  Can you MAKE it happen? No. 

BUT IT COULD.  Everyone keeps soldiering on with remakes with the same tenacity that people employ when they play the same lottery numbers every week.  They keep flushing their money down the toilet and fantasizing about greatness they are never going to achieve because they aren't really doing any work or putting forth any effort.

If you want to be a great director, a great actor, a great movie studio, you have to do more than give someone a dollar to buy the rights to violate their art.  You have to GIVE ME SOMETHING.  You have to give me part of yourself.  Don't tell me you are doing this when what you are really giving me is a pale shadow of that original intimacy.  Stop hesitating to make that leap of faith.  Stop assuming American audiences are too stupid to read subtitles and attempting to rewrite Japanese scripts CHRIST ALMIGHTY please stop.  Everything good will be lost in translation and your movie will be shit. Stop casting kids from the WB because they look good in tank tops, they are terrible.  Stop trying to fool me into thinking you've updated this movie when all you've done is write out all of the characterization and inserted some cell phones and laptops, you are not fooling me.  Stop slathering everything in a blue wash because you think that makes it look "dark" or "atmospheric".  Stop trying to give the monsters and killers contrived motivations, it makes you look like an apologist for criminals and psychopaths.  

Or maybe if the best idea you've had recently is "we should remake this movie" you should just stop making movies entirely.

Dear Internets,

How are you? I am fine.  Except for the fact that I have a big zit next to my mouth.  This happens whenever I have PMS.  It is terrible.  You'd think I'd be used to it after more than ten years.  Apparently not.  Instead I just act surprised when my face decides to grow an extra head. 

I have been super busy with roller derby.  Trying to bust my ass a little bit more and try a bit harder and all of that jazz.  It is rough.  I am debating buying new skates but I am going to have to drop about four hundred clams to do it.  D'oh.

Also! I think I have allergies? I mean, I know I have allergies (I have never been tested), I just don't know to what.  And I've been having a lot of sinus stuff going on lately.  The other day I woke up and I felt like my eyeballs were swollen, like they were going to pop out of my head.  It was odd.

I am trying to get myself motivated to go back to school and that is hard.  I just don't know when I am going to find the time! I have been putting it off for a while now and I really just need to put up or shut up at this point unless I want to be a wage slave for the rest of my life.  I am almost thirty, dudes! I need to figure out what I am doing with myself.  I also need to stop using the word "dude", I think.  It is a hard habit to break.

I am tired as hell, internets.  I feel like an old woman.  Instead of going on lunch I take naps in my car.  My sleeping habits are so terrible! I have no one but myself to blame.  I was actually all excited when it started to get warm because that means I can take naps on the lawn in front of our office building.  I went and got screened for celiac disease (my mum has it) because I have had longstanding stomach problems and my doctor actually thinks it might be my gallbladder - makes sense since all of the women on my mum's side have had their gallbladders removed (with the exception of my mum?!).  I actually think that is sort of hilarious even though it really isn't.  You guys if I have gallstones I am totally going to make a necklace out of them. 

So I Suck At Blogging

I pay money for this thing and then don't update it.  THAT IS NOT A SOUND BUSINESS MODEL. 

Things have been going just fine for me, not much new to report.  My roller derby team won our opening bout in October.  I have to confess that this was the first bout I came away from feeling like I had actually contributed and being overall pleased with how I did.  It was a pretty great feeling. 

The day before the November bout a horror convention called Crypticon came to the Twin Cities.  My roller derby league had a table there and we got to meet some pretty cool people.  John Kassir, who many of you will recognize as the voice of the Crypt Keeper, had a table and actually came to our bout and served as a Guest Announcer for a bit which was pretty badass of him.  He was a really good sport.  I even got to chat with him a bit!

 
That is Stalker Channing - one of my teammates - on the right.  I was half in the bag when this photo was taken which is why I was ballsy enough to put my arm around him.  I babbled a bunch of stuff about feeling like truly talented voice actors are really taken for granted but I must have sounded coherent enough because he seemed touched.  That sweater he is wearing in the photo? SUPER. SOFT.

I also met Doug Jones at Crypticon and although I don't have a photo to share with you, a few were taken - I will post them once I get them.  He said my fuzzy head was adorable and couldn't stop rubbing it.  He gave me a huge hug and told me he wanted to put me in his pocket because I am so tiny and wee.  I am embarassed to admit that I almost cried when I was talking to him but I was really excited; I am always impressed by actors that can be expressive even under a thousand pounds of prosthetics and makeup.  I totally gushed about his performance in Pan's Labryinth and I think I even used the word "captivating" which sounds like movie review talk and was probably not what I would have normally said BUT I'm sure he met people over the course of the weekend who said much odder stuff.

My mother is flying the husband and I to Florida for X-Mas for a visit, I am pretty excited about that.  I miss my little brothers a lot.  I am not looking forward to flying, however.  I have only flown once before (coincidentally, to Florida from Wisconsin and back, so the flight will be pretty similar) and I was in such a horrible, panicked state that I was sick the entire time.  Basically from the time the engines started until the time I was permitted to exit the plane.  It is pretty much impossible to avoid being sick when you are thinking OH MY GOD THIS TIN CAN IS GOING TO FALL OUT OF THE SKY AT ANY MOMENT WE ARE ALL ABOUT TO DIE the entire time.  Terrible! But that was some time ago so I am hoping I will be more collected this time around.  I think I am going to see if I can wheedle some Valium out of my doctor just in case.  She is pretty cool, she may prescribe me a couple. 

ALSO because I was bored at work and because I wanted to see what all of the fuss was about, I read Twilight last week.  OH! If you are like me and delight in terrible books and movies you should at least hit up your local library and check this puppy out for a day.  It is easily one of the worst books I have ever read.  I wrote a review for Amazon.  Here is an excerpt:

"The plot is nonexistent, consisting almost entirely of the development of the "romance" between Bella and Edward. These characters are husks, unable even to hold up this unwieldy story arc in an interesting manner - like trying to prop up a house with dried corn cobs."

For those of you out there bitching "BUT AT LEAST GIRLS ARE READING" you can shut the fuck up now.  I would much rather they weren't reading at all if this is the kind of horseshit they are going to call "the greatest book evar!!1".  ATTENTION TEENAGE GIRLS: PLEASE HAVE SOME STANDARDS.

The day after I read Twilight I read Flowers In The Attic which is also brainless and awful AND full of craziness that requires total suspension of disbelief.  It is so unbelievable the main character could have said at the end "Oh also we are all elves" and I would have thought "well THAT explains some of this mess".  It is fantastic.  I picked up a hardcover at Half Price Books for two bucks. 

In the "good books" category I also found old paperback copies of Rosemary's Baby (!) and War of The Worlds (!!!) which I am really excited to read. 

That is about all I have right now.  Except I did want to say before I publish this that my heart goes out to the family of the man who was trampled while working at Wal-Mart on Black Friday.  That is horrible.  I imagine anyone who has worked in retail found the story disquieting - when I read it all of the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.  I think people really underestimate how insane people are when they start their X-Mas shopping.  It is very, very disturbing.

DUDES.

Dudes it is only a few weeks into the season and I ALREADY sprained my ankle at roller derby practice. FUCKING. WEAK. This is the third time I've sprained it (only this time and the second were derby-related, the first time was when I was 17 and working at a greenhouse unloading a truck of these things called BioLogs. They were made of coconut husks and prevented erosion. Some hillside still exists somewhere in Wisconsin and the price was essentially my ankle.  YOU'RE WELCOME HILLSIDE.)

We were working on some blocking drills with new recruits on Monday. It is actually not too bad, the doctor says 2-3 weeks and I'll be back on skates.  It doesn't even hurt much.  Hopefully this means I will still be able to get all of my practices in before the October bout. On top of all that, the doctor says this is now officially a "chronic injury" (JOY) so I have physical therapy to do once it gets better (on TOP of the physical therapy for my knees son of a bitch).

I went to the doctor about that but ALSO because of my asthma.  I had been prescribed an albuterol inhaler but it seemed to actually be making things worse (I would get really shaky and a wheezing cough for about 10 minutes after using it).  The doctor agreed that it wasn't working for me but after she assessed how often I've been using the inhaler (5 times a week on average, 3 times for derby, twice just randomly during the week otherwise) and decided I would benefit more from a daily maintenance inhaler.  Which is a steroid inhaler.  Sort of scary! It has a fancy-pants counter built into the dispenser so that you can see how many doses are left (possibly part of the reason this inhaler cost me FORTY FIVE GODDAMN DOLLARS).  Plus she gave me a different variety of rescue inhaler which seems to work quite nicely, no gnarly side effects with the new one.

On a related note there was a mold problem in our apartment.  The ceiling in our bedroom bathroom has been replaced three times now.  The first time it was caving in and there was water dripping from the ceiling fan whenever the people above us showered.  The second time it was caving in and water was POURING from the ceiling fan whenever the people above us showered.  This last time there was no water dripping but rather a few odd water stains which morphed into horrific black mold creeping across the ceiling.  This was in our bedroom bathroom.  Our BEDROOM.  Where we sleep.  Did I mention how disturbing I found this whole thing? So we complained and they scheduled someone to fix it but the night before they did I woke up because I could SMELL MOLD even though the bathroom door had been closed with a towel stuffed under it for more than a week.  So we knew it was bad.  Like "in the walls" bad.  And they only replaced the ceiling.  I guess this was better than nothing but any contractor worth their salt would have looked at this ceiling and said "There is mold all up in this mofo" and likely would have insisted on tearing out every bit of drywall they could reach.

So my wonderful husband complained and I think probably brought up that his wife is tiny and has asthma and told them he wasn't comfortable with the lipstick job that had been done in there.  The property manager agreed (!), said they knew were going to have to rip out the walls and rebuild the bathroom and that we basically have two choices:

Move to another apartment in this building

OR

Live in here while they tear the walls out of the bedroom bathroom.

So tomorrow my wonderful husband is calling to find out what units are available so that we can move.  Move! Our address will be the same except for the unit number which is sort of a pain in the ass.  That means we will have to get new driver's licenses to replace three little numbers! Oh, well. 

I don't have any new products in my shop to hock you guys right now, mostly because I am going to have one of the Professional Photographers who works with my roller derby league take photos of everything for me this time around.  He has agreed to do it as a favor to me because he is a big ole' sweetheart but also because he is going to shoot this stuff so that he can recommend what sort of camera I should buy to replace my FujiFilm FinePix 2.5 MegaPixel camera.  2.5! That is nonsense.  I can't believe it.  I bought that camera as a 19th birthday gift to myself and it was THREE. HUNDRED. DOLLARS.  Because 2.5 MP was a LOT back then! Holy shit consumer electronics upgrade quickly.  I mean, I know this because I used to sell them for a living and I'm still amazed.  I tell people I have a 2.5 MP camera and they laugh at me.  One of the new recruits had her daughter at one of our promo events recently and I'm pretty sure the point-and-shoot camera her six-year-old was running around with was better than mine.  How embarassing.  Anyway, hopefully I'll have a bunch more stuff up for sale soon. 

Also, I always wonder if people actually read my Twitter stuff.  The other day I was going to Twitter that I passed a boat on the highway called "Wet Dreams" and how it grossed me out but I couldn't because texting while driving is DUMB and DANGEROUS and also now a primary offense in Minnesota that you can be fined three hundred dollars for! Wow! So I didn't.  I was still pretty grossed out, though.

PROVEN AT THE HOTTEST TEMPERATURES ON EARTH

Current Project!

FELT ZOMBIES
They are cute and soft and also they will totally eat your face.  They will likely be in the shop very soon.

Among the ridiculous claims made on the back of my new deodorant is the bold statement that it contains "1.4 million ARMOR-TECH fragrance molecules in every use". 

(I should probably pause here for a moment to explain that I use men's deodorant.  Because beneath my fully-developed breasts there beats the heart of a stinky 13-year-old boy.  The fragrances in women's deodorant totally repulse me and the fragrance-free stuff DOESN'T WORK.  BECAUSE I STINK.  I finally just said screw it and came to the decision that I would rather smell like my husband than a 2-bit whore so I threw away my women's deodorant and bought the same stuff he uses.  I had to buy a new stick recently and decided to try a new variety of the same brand and DAMN does it smell strong when I first put it on.  I'm assuming this is the ARMOR-TECH fragrance molecules at work.)

I have a feeling that this statement was put on the back of this deodorant not because the marketing team thought it would appeal to men (because seriously? Fragrance molecules?) but because it would appeal to the women trying to find something that would de-stink their significant others.  They wanted to covertly put something on the packaging that would say "HEY LAYDEEZ.  YOUR MAN WILL SMELL NICE IF HE WEARS THIS." but still make it sound manly enough that it wouldn't scare the dudes away.

My roller derby league is holding our championship bout this weekend.  HOORAY! If you are in the Twin Cities area you should come and check us out.  It should be a good show.

I have a giant, red, painful zit right under the corner of my mouth and I am hoping it goes away before the bout but I am not holding my breath.  There haven't been very many pictures of me this season and knowing my luck there will be more pictures of me at this bout than ever before.  HEY U GUYS LOOK AT MY ZIT IT IS MAJESTIC.  When I woke up this morning I actually found myself wondering if I could buy syringes at Walgreens because I thought, this thing is big enough that I could probably drain it like an abscess.  I can't even make the excuse that, well, I was really tired so of course I would come up with stupid crazy schemes because I am STILL SORT OF THINKING OF DOING IT.