Rambling

ZomBev

~ lobablanca

So I’m not seeing a big increase in hits based on my previous zombie references. Maybe I’m not being specific enough. Maybe I should have said something like Zombie Barbie. Or Rob Zombie.

Or maybe I should combine zombies with the one topic that has proven, much to my geeky delight, to bring in the most hits to the lair: Gates McFadden.

I kid you not, denizens: Teh Interwebz is full of love for the Dancing Doctor. Thanks to a couple of incoming links, my Flood Gates posting is by far more popular than anything else I have written here since the lair’s relaunch. My own love for the lovely doctor is such that I am perfectly okay with this fact.

However, this leaves me in a bit of a quandary. I’d hate for my ImagiFriendsTM to be incorrect in their supposition about the popularity of zombies. So, after a bit of thought (and apparently too much spare time), I’ve come up with a satisfactory solution: I simply have to combine the two.

Therefore, I present to you…Zombie Dr. Crusher. Or, more in line with my affinity for portmanteaux, ZomBeverly.

ZomBev

I’m sorry if this distresses anyone, especially considering how this is supposed to be the festive holiday season…not the festering one. But I’ve been a bit absent in my blogging lately, and I noted a distinct drop in numbers because of this. So please forgive me for what I acknowledge is a pathetic attempt to increase the number of hits I log each day.

Of course, you do realize that if this works, I might end up making this a regular feature in which I turn various other Trek characters into zombies. Ooh, or maybe I’ll start turning Dr. Crusher into characters from various other movies, shows, and books! I like that idea much more.

Not that I’ve given it any sort of serious thought or anything…

Sometimes Bad Is Better…

~ lobablanca

…but sometimes it’s simply bad.

What am I babbling on about this time? Well, have you ever set out to watch a movie because you know it’s going to be 100-percent undeniably awful? Sometimes these are the best movies in the world. They’re so horrifying that they somehow transcend their awfulness and become something wonderful, something to be treasured far above rubies. Or rubes. Whichever is your pleasure.

I sought out such a movie last night. I remembered all the hype and bashing of it when it hit the theaters. I knew there was no way in Sto-Vo-Kor that I was going to pay to see it then, but I logged it in my mental vault of things to watch out for on cable.

And then…there it was in the OnDemand Free Movies section: I Know Who Killed Me.

Oh. My. God.

I’m beginning to think that I have deeply ingrained sadomasochistic tendencies that choose to surface in my entertainment choices, because this movie should be listed as a viable torture option for Gitmo detainees.

Yes, before you ask, this is that “big girl” movie that Lindsay Lohan made 2 years ago, as a means of defining herself as being more than the little girl who used to star in all those Disney movies. Seems that somewhere along the line, someone in Lindsay’s confidence convinced her that undulating around a stripper pole somehow equaled gravitas and maturity on screen. From what I’ve read about Miley Cyrus’s latest performance at the Teen Choice Awards, this same person is now in Miley’s confidence. Billy Ray, you have been warned.

This movie is atrocious, and most definitely not in any sort of transcendent way. I’m amazed that any recognizable name would sign on to what should have been a direct-to-DVD flick starring the actress who played “Goth Girl in Crowd” in one of a slew of teen parody flicks that recently clogged Hollywood…or something like that.

What made it impossible for me to laugh at it is the fact that, beyond having severe torture porn moments, this seemed to be the line of delineation for when Lindsay Lohan wandered into the woods of her own very public personal meltdown. Actually, though, I think the meltdown had already begun, because the release of this movie seemed to be almost secondary to all the craziness that was going on IRL.

I can’t help but draw a comparison between Lindsay Lohan and another actress who started out as a Disney girl: Jodie Foster. The comparison is made even stronger by the fact that both played the precocious teenager in their respective versions of Disney’s Freaky Friday.

The same year that Jodie Foster made Freaky Friday, she also did a little movie called Taxi Driver. One could argue that this was the equivalent at the time of Lindsay’s role in I Know Who Killed Me. Only with a much better…everything. Jodie Foster was 12 years old when she played Iris, the runaway prostitute. I’ve heard Foster discuss how she had to meet with a psychiatrist to make sure that she was well-adjusted enough to play the role of Iris.

That might sound silly to us now, but think about the significance of that: Here were people involved in filmmaking who were concerned with how such a role would affect Foster’s well-being. And from what I’ve read of the role Foster’s mother played early in her career, Foster had no dearth of people around her, protecting her and making sure that she made right choices while still retaining as much of her privacy (and, subsequently, dignity) as she could. Looking at Foster now, you kind of have to agree that she grew up pretty well for someone who has spent practically her entire life in front of a camera.

Do you think there were any such people on the set of I Know Who Killed Me, looking out for Lohan’s well-being? No, Lohan wasn’t 12 when she was sliding down a pole in her stripper garb…but I kind of get the feeling that even when she was 12, there were more people in her life trying to figure out how to make a buck off her than there were people trying to help her realize that while there might not be such a thing as “bad” publicity in this celebreality we live in, there are such things as bad decisions that can have as damaging an effect on you as all those horrible chemicals in your Oompa Loompa spray-on tan.

I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say with this post. All I do know is that I’m so tired of watching celebrities self-destruct in the media. And I can’t help but notice that it’s mostly young women doing the destructing. I’m also tired of how we’ve become a culture addicted to lapping up the viscera of these meltdowns like kittens bogarting the milk bowl. I don’t understand how people can make a living highlighting (exacerbating?) other people’s flaws and stumbles. With all this instant global connectivity, shouldn’t we be striving to build each other up, to support each other, to find common grounds and ways to work and live together? Or is that simply too namby-pamby for what seems like a large swathe of the population who finds comfort in the celebration of famous people schadenfreude?

Wow. I’ve gone way down the rabbit hole on a post about I Know Who Killed Me. Let’s reel it back in, shall we?

One final thing. Lindsay, sweetie, I say this with all sincerity: I would love to see you succeed. I remember seeing your cute little Disney movies and thinking that you had something special that could be turned into something great. I wish that you had more people in your confidence who felt the same and said similar things to you. I wish there were more people in this world rooting for you to succeed as opposed to angling for how to make a buck off you when you stumble and fall.

Fall, not fail. I don’t think you’ve failed. You’ve just strayed away from the path that’s going to lead you out of your woods, that’s all. I hope you find your way back on track soon.

Comfort Clothing

~ lobablanca

Haven’t really been in a talkative type-ative mood as of late…although I did remember to set my Flashback Friday to publish. I was very proud of myself for that (not for knowing how to set it to publish, but for remembering to set it…I think all my time with the Captain is wrecking my memory, denizens).

[Okay, here’s a tangent for you: Why do all the alcohol Web sites make you plug in your birthdate before you can surf their site? I’m sure it’s for some ridiculous legal reason (doesn’t that sum up most legal reasons though?), but all it is is ridiculous.]

The weather has turned a bit maudlin this week, which leaves Loba feeling pensive and introspective. You know, unlike how I am most of the time. It also has left me craving comfort clothes. No, not “com-for-ta-ble” clothes. Comfort clothes. Like comfort food, only not edible. Although possible tasty.

[Tangent 2: The slow pronunciation of the word “comfortable” is the unspoken punchline of perhaps my favorite blonde joke ever. I’d be happy to tell it to you all next time we meet up at Central Perk for coffee.]

Right now, I’m wearing a comfort sweater. It’s chocolate brown and made of a material that feels like I skinned a Gund plush toy. Guess that’s why I call this my “teddy bear” sweater. I was so pleased with it when I first bought it that I went around to some coworkers and encouraged them to “pet my sweater.” Subsequently, I believe that I was the inspiration for a new “pet me” scenario in my company’s sexual harassment training.

In the evenings, I’ve been snuggling up in a gray and black Tasmanian Devil hooded shirt that I bought when I was a high school senior. It’s not a sweatshirt per se…just a long-sleeved cotton shirt to which the manufacturer added a hood. Thanks to my anal-retentive laundry skillz, it still looks pretty decent. The black has faded only minimally and the Taz logo is still intact, although it does look like it’s had the “craquelure” filter applied to it (w00t to my PhotoShop geeks on this one).

I love this shirt. It’s baggy, warm, and floppy…exactly what I want to change into after I work out and want “down time” clothes. Same with my red fleece pajama pants with the polar bears all over them. Warm, snuggly-soft, and cute to boot!

Comfort clothes, people. Comfort clothes.

Everyone’s got them. I know someone who has a pair of comfort sweatpants that are worn so thin you could watch television through the fabric (although why bother when you can just pick one of the myriad monster-truck-sized holes for your viewing pleasure?). Doesn’t matter, though. They’re comfort sweats. Anything to make the increasingly cold and dreary autumnal fade into winter a bit more tolerable.

So I’m snuggly-warm in my teddy bear sweater, counting down the hours until it’s Taz hoodie time. And, no, I don’t invite coworkers to pet me anymore. Denizens, however, are a different story…

The Most…Premature Time of the Year?

~ lobablanca
Courtesy of Dan Piraro's Bizarro
Courtesy of Dan Piraro's Bizarro

Christmas decorations are already being hung here in the city where I work. Yeah, I said Christmas. I know, I know…we’re supposed to say “holiday” instead of “Christmas” to be more inclusive. Sometimes I do that. But last time I checked, Jewish people didn’t hang green and red wreaths for Hanukkah. Red and green are the Christmas gang colors, thank you.

Remember the days when the barrier for Christmas cheer was Thanksgiving? No wreaths. No tannenbaums. No fat men in crushed red velvet (well, except for Uncle Mert, who still hasn’t left the 70s leisure suit era behind him). None of this stuff ever appeared on the scene until, at the very earliest, the day after Turkey Day. The day that is now celebrated here as “Black Friday,” when we’re all supposed to stumble out of our homes at half past way-too-friggin’-early o’clock, the stink of tryptophan and pie still clogging our brains, to shuffle with the other holiday-rage zombies and beat each other senseless for the last awesome deal on the hottest piece of breakable insipidness to hit the market this season.

Obviously, I don’t do this zombie walk. But I like writing the word zombie. Some of my ImagiFriendsTM have pointed out that zombie is a very popular keyword search. ZOMBIE. ZOMBIE. ZOMBIE. BRAINS!!!

Heh.

Wait. What was I talking about? Oh yeah. Premature holiday cheer. Is it wrong to want November to be free of Christmas decorations? I don’t think so. I enjoy the oranges and browns of Thanksgiving. They’re reminiscent of the orange and black of my beloved Halloween. I like a little extra time with Halloween, mmkay?

Ah well. When have I ever tried to fight against the accepted norm? Oh yeah. Always 😉

Anyway, I ran across this Christmas ornament during a recent search for something somewhat tangentially associated. This is the most horrible UM Testudo ornament EVAR. First off, it’s the new mascot (and by “new,” I mean the mascot that they started introducing the year I graduated…an undisclosed number of years ago). I hate this mascot. I’m so glad my aunt found an ornament for me with my Testudo. That ornament rocks.

This ornament, however, in addition to bearing the ugly mascot, also looks either like Testudo has a disturbing basketball-shaped hemorrhoid or the worst case of elephantiasis of the scrotum in modern medical history. Who on earth would want this dangling off their tree?

testudo_holiday

Time Enough At Last

~ lobablanca

teal

Talk about the perfect weekend: First it’s my favorite holiday, then it’s the weekend in which our clocks “fall back” an hour, pretty much giving us a free hour to use as we see fit. Me? I’m using my spare time to catch up on some commentary tracks on some tasty terror flicks. I’ve listened to the commentaries for Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, and now I’m at the beginning of the track for The Exorcist. If there’s time, I might pop in the commentary for Blair Witch, which is one of the most amusing commentaries I’ve ever heard.

In between all this horror movie indulgence, I also finished my latest 50BC09 choice. I’m probably not going to write the review just yet, as I’m still trying to process it and figure out what I want to say about it. But now I’m one book away from being finished with library books. W00t, indeed.

I also wanted to tack on two honorable mentions to yesterday’s list of my favorite horror flicks (oh, and in case you were wondering, Halloween and The Haunting were both viewed yesterday). The reason these weren’t on my list is because I don’t own one of them, and I own the other but I’ve never had the courage to watch the DVD.

First is Tobe Hooper’s 1974 mind rip, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This is the one that I don’t own, and I don’t think I ever will. If you’re looking for a movie that cuts way too close to the bone (ha ha) and leaves you feeling completely freaked out by the shear possibility of the entire plot, then you need to see this movie. Taking place along the back roads and secret pathways of Nowhere, Texas, Hooper drops you right into the steamy, sweaty, claustrophobic terror of his story and doesn’t relent until the very last frame. There’s slight exposition at the beginning, but the horrifying action is quick to begin and doesn’t let up for an instant. There is no reason for the terror…simply the fluke of being on the wrong property and encountering the WRONG person at the very wrong time. If you’re easily disturbed, this is probably a movie you’ll want to avoid. There are several squirm-inducing scenes, including the introduction of Leatherface, one that involves a meat hook, and a dinner scene in which Hooper brings us right into our protagonist’s face, filling the screen with an unflinching and unforgiving shot of the terror in her eyes. This is definitely a genre must-see, but it’s one that I think I can go without ever seeing again. That’s a kind of fear that you don’t need to repeat to remember.

Speaking of which, my second honorable mention is Gore Verbinski’s 2002 film The Ring, a remake of the Japanese horror movie, Ringu. I own this one, but I’ve never watched it. Why? The visuals messed with my head so badly that I couldn’t shake them for weeks after seeing this movie in the theater. I really can’t explain the rationale behind this. After all, I’ve seen dozens upon dozens of horror movies. Some stick with me longer than others…but I daresay none has messed with my mind quite as dramatically as The Ring. This fact actually irritates me, because beyond being a wonderful horror movie, this is gorgeously filmed. Again, if you are a film aficionado, you need to see this movie. Verbinski does wonders setting the perfect atmosphere through colors, shadow, and light. And all the actors were amazing, including Daveigh Chase as Samara, the freakiest little girl to hit the big screen since Linda Blair as Regan MacNeil. I so desperately want to watch this one again. I just need to figure out how I can do it without seeing those scenes that freaked me out so badly the first time. Is it wrong to watch an entire horror movie through the spaces in between one’s fingers? 😉

Why Did We Ever Break Up?

~ lobablanca

Dear Amazon.com,
Hi. How have you been? I’ve been watching you on the Internet…no, wait! Not like that. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay since I left you. And it seems that you’re doing fine without me…great, even.

Me? I’m not so good. See, it’s taken me a while to realize how stupid it was for me to break up with you. We worked well together, Amazon…and I was too stupid to see that before I went and made the decision to end the best thing I had going for me. I’m slow like that. Guess that’s why people who do business with just me find that they’re stuck waiting WAY THE HELL TOO LONG for their stuff to reach them. Kind of like that whiny hater LobaBlanca, who is still waiting for an order she placed more than a week ago. I’m afraid she might do something drastic, like try to make me look bad on her blog.

Remember how quickly my orders would get out when I was with you? Because, baby, you were on top of it all back then, and I didn’t have a worry in the world. Your trusted name was getting me more play than Paris Hilton’s sex tape at a frat party. But those days are obviously over. I’m trying to do it on my own, and, baby, it’s hard! On top of my shitty shipping service, you know how overpriced my inventory is, especially in comparison with yours…

I need you, Amazon! Baby, I never should have left you two years ago. It’s taken me all this time to realize this (see? I really am slow!). I wish I could change that decision, that we could go back to the way things used to be. But it is what it is, right? I just wanted you to know that I realize now how good I had it once, when I was sailing along down the Amazon.

Take care of yourself, Babe.
Love always,
Borders Books, Music and Movies

Perfectly Profitable Purell Pandemic

~ lobablanca
Because nothing is sexier than Eau de Purell
Because nothing is sexier than Eau de Purell

Damn but I wish I’d bought some Johnson & Johnson stock recently.

So you know those plastic containers that you find in convenience stores, usually filled with fun stuff like atomic fireballs or Jolly Ranchers? These containers are all over my work. Every floor. At the reception desk. In the kitchen. Everywhere. Only instead of being filled with groovy candy, they’re filled with tiny bottles of Purell. My company has also installed automatic Purell dispensers near the elevators and the restrooms.

We are ready, mo’ fo’!

For what, exactly? Apparently, for the inevitable swine flu pandemic. This is Phase I. I’m not really sure what Phase II is going to be. Actually, I’m not completely sure about Phase I. What are we supposed to do with all these little bottles of Purell? If my office mate starts to sneeze too much, am I supposed to squirt Purell all over her? Will that kill the H1N1 virus? Will it ruin her clothes? Will male coworkers stop and watch?

Hmm.

I don’t know why we go to such extremes over the silliest things. It’s the flu, people. We go through flu season every year. This is simply another strain of the flu of which we need to be aware. Caution is required. But not panic. Or “pandemic.” Although I’m sure that the hand sanitizer folks couldn’t be happier right now. It’s like the perfect marketing storm for them. Same for the cleaning supply folks. Bet those Clorox wipes haven’t flown off the shelves this fast in years.

Not that I would ever imply that companies would rejoice over profits made from undue bouts of mass hysteria…

Drone On

~ lobablanca
Your vacation as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will work with us.
Your vacation as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will work with us.

It’s rough coming back to the office after a week off. My Borg implants have been offline so long that they didn’t really want to reconnect to the work Collective this morning. But the nearly 200 e-mails sitting in my work inbox forced my hand in that regard. Stupid inbox. Thankfully, many of the e-mails were stray spam messages about hot Russian love slaves and discounts on herbal supplements to increase my virility and girth…you know, for the Russian love slaves I’m being sent. It’s all those non-spam messages that are now causing me to suffer from a “case of the Mondays.”

I suppose I could have lessened the stress by checking my work e-mail when I got home on Saturday…but I just couldn’t do it. No. I wouldn’t do it. I know that some with whom I went to the beach did this. And some actually checked their work e-mail while at the beach (ahem…you know who you are). Here’s the thing, though. I’m paid to do my job at the office. I do this very thing 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. When I’m on vacation, I’m using my hard-earned leave to enjoy time away from work. Why, then, would I check my work e-mail while I am on vacation?

We’re just work-stupid in this country. Do you know that other countries make fun of our paltry vacation policies? They make fun of us for other things as well, but that’s par for the course anymore, right? They also make fun of us for our “working vacation” mentalities. That’s well-deserved mockery, if you ask me. What do any of us do for a living that would require this kind of on-call 24/7 mentality (beyond doctors, that is; doctors and maybe magicians)? True, I’d like to think that I’m an integral gear in the machinery of my office, but every gear’s got to take a breather now and again before all their cogs snap off and they’re just spinning uselessly.

I still feel a bit like I’m spinning uselessly, but that’s okay. It takes at least one full business day to slip back into the swing of things, right? It’ll all work out. And hopefully I’ll be able to eke out a bit more time to work on all those book challenge posts I accumulated last week. They’re coming, denizens. I swear. Trust LobaBlancus of Borg. We will come through for you.

Please Close All Programs and Reboot

~ lobablanca

So I may have forgotten to mention that I was taking a vacation. I think I may have mentioned it to a few of my ImagiFriendsTM, but other than that, it completely slipped my mind to hang a “Be Back Soon” sign on the lair’s door. Sorry about that. But I was in desperate need of a reboot. Actually, to be more precise, I was in need of a complete system shutdown and a cold boot several days later. I was tired, denizens. No. I was weary. It’s been a hectic, frenetic end of the summer, and while my birthday journey to Toronto was teh awesome, it also served to tempt me with the taste of nuts and honey in regard to a proper, long vacation.

So Sammy was packed to capacity and away we went for a week at the beach. I learned several very important lessons while on this magical mystery tour of an undisclosed beach destination, and I would now like to share these lessons with you!

  1. Not even weather like this almost every day can ruin a beach vacation.

    2. cloudybeach

  2. Why? Because of my own personal mantra: A bad day at the beach is better than a good day at the office.
  3. Also, when you come properly equipped, weather is incidental:

    4. boxobooks

  4. This box of books combined with oodles of free time also allowed me to get back on track in regard to my 50BC09 journey. How so? I read nearly six books while at the beach. I’ll be posting reviews over the next few days. True, none of them were Proust or Balzac, but they were all enjoyable and more than appropriate reading fodder for the location.
  5. As long as you keep moving, the calories consumed at the beach don’t count. That’s why it’s possible to have frozen custard for lunch…just keep walking along the boardwalk and you’ll be fine (I say this now, but you know come Monday afternoon, it’s back to my workout routine with Captain Janeway and her crew).
  6. There are 3,873 T-shirt and tchotchke shops at the beach. It won’t be until you go into the 3,872nd shop that you will finally find that perfect hoodie in just the right shade of blue that you’d almost given up trying to find (the last shop just smells of dead hermit crabs and incense sticks, so everyone avoids this shop).
  7. Rum tastes better at the beach. I guess this is why pirates prefer it. Actually, everything tastes better at the beach. Must be the sea salt.
  8. BlackBerry screens are too effing small. But maybe that’s the point. After futzing around for about 10 minutes, scrolling back and forth to read things on that impossibly small screen, I would just give up and go back to my reading…or napping…or eating. Those were the important tasks anyway. Life’s too short and the beach is too tempting to be sat, squinting at a BlackBerry. Although…
  9. …I was inspired to come up with a new device that I think would be awesome: It’s a combination of a Kindle and a BlackBerry. Think about it for a moment. You’d have a portable device with a screen the size of the current Kindle, with Internet capability. The current Kindle is almost there anyway. It’s got 3G wireless so that you can download books. Just bump its capabilities to be more surf-worthy. That way you can switch from your current beach read over to your e-mail and back, lickety-split, and not kill your eyes or your scrolly finger. Tell me that doesn’t sound groovy? It’d be the realization of the Personal Access Display Device that I have always wanted to have!
  10. When I am released on Funland, I tap into the memory of all the warrior princesses to have come before me and I discover that, indeed, I have many skills. And most of them involve tapping into my anger management issues through a padded mallet wielded at unsuspecting fiberglass moles:

    whackamole

    Behold my spoils:

    11. winnings

Okay, I think 10 lessons is more than enough, right? Anyway, I hope that’s enough to make up for the fact that I did sort of disappear on you without much warning. I promise I won’t do that again any time soon. Okay? Now let me start working on these book reviews. I’ll probably get at least one finished today. I hope. I might need a nap after that though. Because going to the beach is so very strenuous… 😉

beachreading

And I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For…

~ lobablanca

Ah, I wish I had more time for the lair than I do right now. However, as it is, I’m stealing time whenever I can just to keep an eye on my tracking statistics. This afternoon’s check is what has brought me here, to share with you how someone found their way to the lair twice now. Seems someone out there has an even more…interesting obsession with Dr. Crusher than I do. I was sorting through my keyword report and found the following: “nc 17 fanfic dr crusher vampire slayer.”

Holy Horny Crossovers, Batman! This is undoubtedly one of my absolute favorite keyword hits ever. Lately, the bulk of the keywords have been about sexting and Chuck E. Cheese (yeah, I’m equally disturbed by that combination, too). Plus, several of my Flashback Friday entries have popped up on the search radar; guess I’m not alone in my Gen-X nostalgia kick. But this little gem just cracked me up to no end. Could this be the next big thing in crossover fanfic? How in the world would Dr. Crusher end up in Sunnydale in the first place? That’d have to be one hell of a temporal distortion.

Okay, I’ve really got to go now…but I hope this little interlude amused you even half as much as it amused me 🙂