CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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POLARITY 359

Monday, August 29, 2011

this entry brought to you by bastion soundtrack, "brusher patrol"

LOOK! a POLARITY!! for the first time in THREE WHOLE MONTHS!


THE GOOD

The baby handing you diapers You know what's great? When your toddler makes a step up from simply laying there and allowing herself to be changed, to being an active participant. The other day she handed me a diaper, the wipes, and then rolled out the changing towel and happily laid down on it. Obviously this means she's ready to start being potty trained. We're not going to go straight to sticking her on the toilet, but we will be buying a potty trainer and let her get used to it. If you've never had a kid before, trust me, this part is awesome. Well, maybe it isn't when you have a boy. I've never had a boy. But with my two girls, this step is awesome.

Franz Ferdinand When Franz Ferdinand first arrived on the scene and blew the fuck up almost immediately, I liked them a lot-- but I thought that first record was overrated. Sure, it was good, but its popularity was way out of proportion to the quality of the record. And as soon as they released their second record I almost never heard from them again. I don't understand how this happened at all, however-- the second album is not only a solid record, but it's far superior to the first one. They even released a third record and I literally do not know a single who has heard it. What the hell happened? A backlash was inevitable, but the only other bands that I've seen with this kind of precipitous drop-offs are like, Disney bands like The Jonas Brothers. They came up randomly on my Ipod last week and I thought, you know, I honestly wish Ferdinand would make a come back-- it would be better than most of what's on the radio right now.

GLaDOS I wasn't updating at all when I was playing through the game, so it should be said: I fucking love Portal! I played the original just this past January, and while I was aware of the memes-- I knew that the cake was a lie, I knew that there was a Companion Cube and that you would become fond of it-- somehow I'd gone all these years without finding out that GLaDOS, the series' antagonist, is trying to kill you. In fact, I initially didn't even know the voice that was talking to me was anything other than a prerecorded message. After a while I figured out that it was an AI and it was watching me, and I noticed that there was no signs of human activity, and yes, she warned me of some pretty dark stuff, but I always thought it was cold, computer callousness-- also, I thought it was just dark humor. And then comes the moment where she tries to kill you and it honestly surprised the crap out of me. The sequel, which is blissfully good, sets up the first half hour without GLaDOS, and I spent the entire time excited to see her again, wondering when the heck they she was going to make her entrance. And yet, despite how much I was looking forward to the moment, when it finally happens, it's in such a perfectly directed way that my stomach filled with dread as she reassembled. GLaDOS is the best villain of the past decade in any fictional medium, period.

Salma Hayek on the cover of the September issue of Allure I'm not trying to say that 45 is old, or even that most women that are 45 start to looked aged. But look at, say, Angelina Jolie, who isn't even 40 yet, but still looks weirdly older than she really is, and look at Salma Hayek. I walked by the cash register and saw the new Allure-- I don't even know what that is, actually-- and I was absolutely taken aback. Salma Hayek is one of the most beautiful women of all time, and I would still want to stare at her over most girls half her age.

We Got That B-Roll Do you need B-Roll of ordinary people doing ordinary things for your commercial? Of course they have your B-Roll. Somebody's got you covered.


THE BAD

Amy Winehouse's death Obviously when I heard that Amy Winehouse had died, I wasn't surprised, even in the least bit. The most recent news that I had heard, around two weeks prior to it, was that she was back! And performing! And sounded fantastic! And then literally two days later she was a wreck, couldn't get through two songs. And the next thing I heard was that she was dead. Still, I want to say that while I wasn't shocked, I wasn't annoyed with the media coverage of it like some cynics and naysayers. Yes, she did absolutely everything she could to sabotage herself, but it was also beyond simply "stupid" and seemed to be a textbook definition of the word "sickness". I wasn't a huge fan of her music-- I listened to Back to Black a few times and found it so-so, but there's no denying that feeling that I had the first time I heard that voice. Yes, it was an inevitable tragedy, but that doesn't mean it wasn't tragic.

The Debt Ceiling Crisis It's been a very long time since I've written a Polarity, and although I've been able to update every day for a few weeks now-- the past year has been touch-and-go with this page and I've been trying lately to keep up-- I have to admit that I haven't exactly been putting much energy in the page even while keeping up with it. And on the one hand, I wish I had been putting as much energy into it as I used to, because The Debt Ceiling Crisis would have been a great topic to put a lot of energy into. On the other hand, I wonder if I would've written about it at all, it was so frustrating and outrageous, as was the subsequent downgrade of America's credit rating. Worse, while I don't blame The President for it and the ridiculous compromise he gave them, I do think that it proves something a lot of us have been afraid of for a while now: Barack Obama is a mediocre at best President who refuses to stand up for the values his base elected him on.

Dress Code For the entirety of my five years working the night shift at the place I currently work, we've been allowed to wear whatever we want-- we work at night, and we're not around customers for long. But we got a new manager, and for some reason, he's got a stick up his but about dress code. I know I sound like a whiney ass-- most people in the work force have to wear dress code. Do you know why I hate it? Now I never get to wear my own clothes. When I'm not at work I'm at home. I don't have many casual go-outside-the-house adventures because I have to be home with the baby. And it sucks having an entire closet full of clothes that never get worn.

Losing one ear bud People nowadays don't listen to radios or expensive stereos, they listen to music out of little wallet-sized things in their pockets, and connected to them are earbuds. And of course, you've lost one earbud before. The ones you bought might have come with "replacements", but they're not replacements at all, they're different sizes. They only come with one set of the standard size. Have you ever tried to buy the little plastic buds by themselves? You cannot. They're not sold anywhere. If you lose one ear bud, you are fucked, and have to buy a whole other set, or else replace them with an old set that you had lying around because you lost one ear bud from that set. It's complete bullshit.

Target closing I don't own a car. I used to, but we got rid of it, because we were sinking too much money into it replacing things that were going wrong every few months. There was a Target within a half mile of here, which is an easy 10 minute walking distance from here. And, for some fucking reason, they moved. They're still in the area-- except now they're two fucking miles away, which is way too far to walk to pick up a new pair of jeans, and there's no easy way to get there by bus. Going from having a retail store like Target or Wal-mart within walking distance and then just not having one is more of a pain in the ass than you could imagine.
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with love from CRS @ 4:05 PM 

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