Will Call You Names And Punch You In The Face For Food

Yesterday was a bit of an odd day.
After getting up and having talked to my mother, both of which are normal Monday morning activities, I sat around for a while and debated about whether or not I wanted to go out into the world.
This is a also standard fare for a Monday.
Eventually I decided that I should go out and get a few things, and so I was off to Shoppers where the multitudes provided non-stop demonstrations of just how difficult it is to get the hell out of my way.
Again, pretty standard stuff.
Once I got home I made myself some lunch, and then decided that I didn’t feel like doing anything at all.
Wait, what was so odd about the day?
Oh, right, the cable outage.
This actually occurred while I was attempting to take a nap, as my earlier attempts at chillaxing out on the hammock had proved insufficient to my relaxation needs (also, the humidity was causing my skin and the canvas of the hammock to not get along so well).
As I was dozing I became increasing aware of the strong wind blowing in through the window and knocking the blinds around, the sound of thunder, and a an odd beeping sound.
The beeping had been my computer’s UPS informing me that the power had gone out and that my computer was running off of the battery.
The power outage had been brief (just long enough to require me to reset the clock on my microwave), and power had been restored by the time I rolled out of bed.
It was then that I noticed that the cable light was out on my cable modem.
I shrugged, assuming that it wouldn’t take long for the issue to be resolved.
Somewhere along the line I noted that the TV was also out.
Still, I decided, it wouldn’t take long for the issue to be resolved.
I tried telling myself that as the cable light remained out and the TV only gave me static whenever I turned it on, but after about four hours I stopped believing it (if I ever really had in the first place).
Without having a proper connection to the Internet, and not having TV to resort to (though I could have watched DVDs, and normally I wouldn’t have been watching much TV at that time of day anyway), and not feeling like writing or drawing, I opted to pass the time reading, deciding to just power my way through The Da Vinci Code.
I’d been listening to an audiobook of it last year, but somewhere along the line I lost my place and never got around to finding it again, as the person reading it was getting on my nerves anyway.
The biggest problem was that as he read it he would actually do accents – badly.
Most irritating of all was when he read the dialogue of Sophie Neveu, a French woman.  Not only would he assume a French accent, he also spoke at a higher pitch, trying to sound like a woman.  The end result of this pathetic attempt at bringing her to life was that I pictured Sophie as looking like the French-Canadian prostitute character that David Foley used to play on The Kids in the Hall.
So I gave up on the audiobook thing and had an e-book copy of it on my PDA, which is what I spent most of the afternoon and early evening reading.
The outage was fixed sometime around 8, so I was able to watch The Closer at 9, and later The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (though it wasn’t restored in time for me to watch The Simpsons).
I also read it during commercials, and after my TV watching was through I spent another hour and a half reading it so that I could finish it.
It’s not that I was so caught up in the story, it’s just that I wanted to get it over with.
I’m not saying that it was bad, or that I didn’t enjoy it – if I thought it sucked I wouldn’t have bothered with it – just that I didn’t devote my time and energy to finishing it because I found it so compelling.
Overall it was a decent read, thought it’s pretty far outside the realm of the stuff I normally read (on those increasingly rare occasions on which I do actually sit down and read).
The various criticisms of the “accuracy” of the book didn’t really bother me too much, given that it’s a work of fiction and so “accuracy” isn’t really all that significant.
Sure, Brown has made a lot of claims about the truth of what he’s written, but so what?
Whether or not he really believes in the validity of his claims, or is simply trying to hype the book by trying to lend it greater verisimilitude, it really doesn’t matter what he says about the truth of the book, as it doesn’t really add to or detract from the story itself.
Actually, scratch that.  I’d say that it actually does add to the story to an extent.
Given that many of his claims are true, knowing that many of them may not be adds another dimension to the story and increases your participation in it, as you try to sift through it all and figure out what is fact, what is fiction, what is a misrepresentation of the facts, what is an outright lie.
That he may have made some claims about fields such as cryptography that are inaccurate is hardly surprising given how many of them he makes, and honestly, there is such a thing as artistic license, and the fact remains that it’s obvious that a lot of research went into the work, so I think some errors can be forgiven.
After all, I can think of another international best-seller that’s full of factual errors and dubious claims that are stated as incontrovertible facts, and at least nobody’s ever gone to war or engaged in a campaign of torture and executions using The Da Vinci Code as a justification.
And quite frankly, anyone who picks up a piece of fiction and views it as an authoritative text on…well, anything, is pretty much an idiot anyway.
As for the claims that it’s anti-Catholic/Christian, I would say those claims are exaggerated and are made by people who either didn’t read it or else read it with his mind already made up on the subject.
I think the book actually makes a strong case for faith, and the fact is that if your beliefs can’t stand up to any kind of scrutiny I think those beliefs definitely require some examination.
That being said, this is America (last time I checked), so even if it is a Catholic-bashing book, so what?  I think the Catholic church has proven that it’s perfectly capable of withstanding criticism – both deserved and undeserved – and given that the book does not engage in the defamation of any one particular person, there is this pesky little thing we have in this country called freedom of…ummm…I know it’s a freedom of something.
Darn, it’s on the tip of my tongue…
In any case, it was an okay book that raised some interesting points (dubious though they may be) and did manage to expose people to some concepts that they might otherwise never encounter.  Did it do anything to raise the level of discourse in this country?  Probably not, as there are more important things to talk about than whether or not the world’s leading religion is built on a lie and a millennia-old cover up, like Angelina considering adopting yet another child, or Britney crying about the paparazzi, or…
Well, you get the idea.
Speaking of Angelina and Britney, though, that leads me to a point I’ve been wanting to make for a while.
Namely that there are certain conventions within the field of celebrity reporting that have to stop.
I don’t ever want to hear a couple referred to by some nickname that consists of combining the couple’s names ever again.
Bennifer (both 1 and 2) was bad enough, but Brangelina?  That is just fucking retarded.
TomKat is marginally clever, except that she goes by Katie, not Kat, but overall the practice is even more annoying that the need to add “gate” as a suffix to every political scandal (Iran-Contragate, BlowJobgate, Totally and completely incompetentgate, etc.).
Even coming up with irritating phrases like “coosome twosome” is less moronic than the combining of names.  What would it be like if we did that crap in real life?  If you found me talking about couples like Brathleen (Brian and Kathleen) or Scacy (Scott and Stacy), you would say, “Jon, you are a fucking idiot.  Stop talking like that.”
So why isn’t there anyone in the world of celebrity reporting who will say things like that?
The other phrase that needs to be removed from the gossip lexicon is anything that makes use of the word “bump.”  I don’t want to hear anyone say something like “bumpwatch” ever again, and anyone who does say it should be punched in the face by a disinterested third party.
In fact, you know what?  I volunteer for the job.
I think I should get paid to be a “consultant” to the various celebrity news outlets around the world, letting them know when they’re being a bunch of total retards and punching them in their faces (in an addition to various other creative punishments) as necessary.
I can see it now.  There I am, sitting in on a Star Magazine brainstorming session.
One editor says, “I know what we should for next week’s issue:  a retrospective on the Brangelina bumpwatch!”
In my role as consultant, I speak up and say.  “Hmm…interesting.  But here’s a better idea:  how about you shut the fuck up and I follow you around all day pelting you with Pez and calling you a moron?”
I could even branch out to other areas, like advertising.
Advertising Executive:  “I know! We’ll start up a new campaign called ‘Subymonal Advertising’ and shove a bunch of random creepy and disturbing images in people’s faces!”
Me:  “Wow, great idea.  I’m going to go piss in your gas tank now.”
Hell, I’d be a natural to break into the world of comic book publishing.
“Look Claremont, I know  nobody wants to say this to your face, but someone needs to tell you that we got the idea the last 15,000 times you had Wolverine in a combat training session with Storm telling her that she ‘can’t always rely on her mutant powers in a fight,’ so there’s really no need to keep doing it over and over and over again, okay?  Besides, when Storm lost her fucking mutant powers and couldn’t rely on them for years and she still managed to lead the X-Men, I think the message kind of sank in.”
Anyway, just throwing the idea out there.  You know where to reach me if you’re interested in my services, and my fee will be extremely reasonable.
Heading into DC tonight with Scott to see Spamalot.
Over the weekend we totally forgot that was today and nearly left work on Sunday without making any plans for getting together.  Good thing Stacy remembered and called to remind him.
That being said, I should probably do some stuff, as I need to run a few errands before I head down to Manassas to have dinner with them before heading off to the theatre.