Technically, It IS "Later"

Okay, when I said in my last post I would post something later I hadn’t meant this much later, but I kind of got caught up in doing a whole lot of nothing in particular and never got around to writing anything.
Oh well.
When I got up yesterday morning, I fired up the work laptop, connected to my wireless network, logged into the corporate VPN, and got to work. I set the laptop up at my desk, and with the dual monitors of my desktop, it looked like the set up of some movie hacker:


Oddly enough, I didn’t nearly initiate a nuclear war, discover that the world we know is just an advanced computer simulation, or do whatever the hell those idiots in that shitty Hackers movie did. Nor did I hook up with Ally Sheedy, Carrie-Ann Moss, or Angelina Jolie.

After closing up shop for the day I watched a Riff Trax version of the most inexplicable thing I’ve ever seen: 1978’s Star Wars Holiday Special.
If you’ve ever seen it – Riffed or otherwise – you know what I’m talking about when I say WTF?
Art Carney with a shirt open to his navel? Harvey Korman in drag? Bea Arthur singing? Chewbacca’s father (note: “Chewbacca’s” was a recognized word in Word’s dictionary) plugging into some virtual reality masturbation machine and watching Diahann Caroll sing?
It just…I can’t…huh?
I distinctly recall being upset as a kid because I missed the Star Wars Holiday Special. It bothered me for a long time. Now it appears that I dodged a bullet, though recognizing the fact that I would have had the critical faculties of a six year old, I probably would have liked it had I seen it thirty years ago. After all, it was Star Wars, and as a kid I was obsessed with all things Star Wars.
I was five when the movie came out, and I actually missed my chance to see it in 1977. I was supposed to spend a weekend at my grandmother’s house during which my brother Brad was going to take me to see it, but, being five, I had a hard time being parted from my parents and ended up going home.
I actually saw The Empire Strikes Back before I saw the first movie. Randomly, sometime after Empire, a local theater ran the first movie again for a limited time.
In any case, I find myself somewhat surprised that Lucas hasn’t decided to digitally touch up the special and release a new version of it that more closely adheres to his vision for it in a way that 1970’s technology just wouldn’t allow.

The Little Blog That Couldn't

When I launched this blog on August 29, 2004, I never dreamed that it would go on to become an Internet phenomenon with a daily readership in the millions, or that it would lead to all sorts of lucrative writing gigs and go on to become one of the most significant sites in the earliest part of the 21st Century.
And it’s a good thing that I didn’t, because none of that shit ever happened.
Even so, today marks Threshold’s 4th birthday, and while its total regular readership is a number not much higher than its age, it’s still a milestone that deserves some recognition.
So, um, consider it recognized.
More importantly, though, I need to recognize and thank the handful of people who have helped make Threshold the stunning success that it isn’t. Thanks everyone!
Of course, Threshold shares a birthday with the lovely and talented Carla Gugino, and so, as has become a tradition, and by way of sending out birthday greetings to her, I’ve included a picture I’ve done of Ms. Gugino:



It’s not the picture I wanted to do, but that picture – while cool and sexy – was a royal pain in the ass. Maybe next year.
Also, I freely admit that this picture kind of sucks. So, I guess in addition to wishing Ms. Gugino a happy birthday, I should probably also apologize. Oh well.
Anyway, I’ll be back later with a regular post, but I thought I should post something to acknowledge this special day.

Eight Years

I mentioned yesterday that there were two significant anniversaries coming up over the next two days.
The first one is today: I’ve been sober for eight years.
I was going to write a long entry on the subject, but really, what is there for me to say?
While the last eight years haven’t exactly been a constant struggle to resist temptation, I can’t honestly say that they’ve been easy either.
Still, I’ve made it, and I can’t foresee myself not continuing to do so, and while I don’t have a lot to say about it – or maybe I have too much to say about it – I couldn’t let the day pass without noting it.
I mention it not because of pride, but because of humility.
Eight years is a long time, but it’s only because of those eight years behind me that I have even more time ahead of me.
In any case, that’s all I’m going to say about it other than to thank the people – especially my parents – who have supported me along the way. Maybe I could have done it on my own, but I’m glad that I didn’t have to.
Okay, getting a little teary here, so I guess we’ll get back to your regularly scheduled Threshold, already in progress…
“…and then I said, ‘I’m Thor!’ And she said, ‘You’re thore? I’m tho thore I can hardly pith!’”
Much of my day at work yesterday was spent on a conference call. When attempting to rejoin after a break, I misdialed the number, and instead of hearing a recording of a cold, impersonal voice telling me to enter my conference code number and press pound, I heard a really, really friendly voice saying, “Hi honey, it’s Kylie! I’m so glad you called to talk to me and all of my hot, slutty friends!”
I can only hope that there have been other people who have similarly misdialed and called a phone sex line.
And for their sakes I hope they hung up as quickly as I did.
I told my boss about it today because a. it was funny and b. I want her to be aware of the fact that it was an accident should anyone monitoring the phone logs point it out to her.
The funny part was that when I rejoined the actual call, there was some guy whose phone wasn’t muted occasionally moaning and making “mmm” sounds, as if he’d dialed that other number. I’m thinking that maybe he was trying to call the phone sex line and misdialed and got the conference bridge instead, but, deciding that since life had given him lemons he would make lemons and make the best of it. After all, there was a woman talking at the time.
Sure, talking about telephone billing and provisioning systems isn’t exactly sexy to most people, but there’s a kink for just about everything, so maybe that’s what gets him hot. “Ooh, yeah, that’s it baby, work that provisioning system! Yeah, address that question about billing. Oh yeah, oh yeah, the FOC date is gonna come early!”
When I was talking to the boss today she mentioned that tomorrow, being the Friday before a long weekend, was going to be a short, light day and that if I wanted to I could just work from home.
Being the dedicated employee that I am, I of course refused the offer and will be up at 7 AM sharp, and will soon be fighting traffic and – are you nuts? Of course I’m going to work from home!
In any case, I suppose I should bring this entry to a close so that I can prepare for tomorrow’s exciting anniversary post.

Not Dead, Just Dead Tired

So, yeah, I haven't posted anything in a couple of days, but I'm not dead.
Monday night I was so tired that I was in bed before 9.
Last night Scott came over for a movie night kind of thing.
Tonight I have a bunch of recorded TV to catch up on, so I'm not likely to post anything of substance.
Tomorrow and Friday both mark important anniversaries, though, so I'll be sure to post then.

Rounding Out The Weekend

So I saw this Twix ad earlier today…



…and my immediate reaction was, “No, fuck him. Why should I help someone else score? Nobody ever helps me.”
It was a pretty good indication of what kind of day it was going to be; you always know that the day won’t be great when you start it out with a bitterly-angry reaction to a harmless ad for a candy bar that you somehow manage to view as a personal insult.
I needed to head out into the world at some point to gas up and buy the Zyrtec that I forgot to buy yesterday, but I put it off as long as I could, and spent most of the day sitting around not doing much of anything.
After I finally got around to taking a shower, I’d gotten out and was drying off with this nagging feeling that I’d forgotten something. It wasn’t until I noticed that dragging the brush across my scalp was taking a lot more effort than it really should have that I realized that I’d forgotten to wash my hair, as when it’s just wet and hasn’t actually been washed my hair tends to be rather coarse and resistant to brushing.
I decided that it didn’t matter, though, and just got on with my post-shower activities, which were a lot like my pre-shower activities.
Last night I was bored and and didn’t feel like doing any of the things that I could have done with my time, so in desperation I hit up the Mystery Science Theater 3000 newsgroup to see if there was anything I wanted to watch. I found that the group has been taken over by some sort of racist/misogynist spammer, and that there’s only been one day in the last forty-eight on which someone has actually posted something relevant.
That turned out to not be any episodes of MST3k, but rather some DVD rips that had Riff Trax added to them.
Riff Trax are DVD audio commentaries created by MST3K alum Mike Nelson, in which he and other MST3K alums – and sometimes special guest commentators – provide MST3K-like riffing about the movie.
You can download the commentaries in MP3 format from the site and either put them playing at the same time as the DVD they’re intended for, or use their special player, which takes care of the synchronization for you, or in some cases you can get the DVD with the Riff Trax commentary included.
In any case, several Riff Trax movies were posted. Last night I watched Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, featuring guest commentator Neil Patrick Harris – who was a riot – and this afternoon I watched Spider-Man.
(By the way, MST3K creator and original host Joel Hodgson, along with several other MST3K people, has a movie-riffing project of his own called Cinematic Titanic.)
After that I finally ventured out into the world and did what I needed to do.
And as always I did the laundry today.
So that’s how I rounded out my weekend of excitement. I didn’t really do anything productive on the creative front. The old “Why bother?” question kept coming up, and I found that I couldn’t come up with a response more convincing than “What the hell else are you going to do with your time?”