Wednesday Hodge Podge Post

I woke up this morning convinced that it must still be around, say, 6 AM, only to discover that it was actually 9.
This annoyed me because I really didn’t want to get up, but given how short my Wednesdays are already thanks to my insanely early bedtime (an insanely early bedtime that allows me to get up before 5 AM and still manage to get a lot of sleep and manage to stay awake while sitting in one spot in a dark, cold, boring room for 12+ hours), so, cursing Father Time, I got up.
I then proceeded to turn on the oven to preheat it in order to cook the breakfast casserole I’d prepared last night.
While that was cooking I talked to my mother – who is moving into a different apartment within the same complex she’s in this weekend, as it’s on a lower floor and has a southern exposure so she’ll actually get some sunlight – and then got around to eating the aforementioned casserole.
Well, part of it, anyway, because even though I’d halved the recipe I’d based it on, it was still a lot more food than I’m inclined eat in one sitting.
(The recipe as found, but not as prepared, follows:
2 lbs. pork sausage (1 hot, 1 mild)
3 c. milk
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
9 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 tsp. dry mustard
1 sm. bag Ore Ida hash browns

Cook sausage over medium heat until done, stirring to crumble. Drain well on paper towels, set aside. In same skillet, brown hash browns, over medium heat. Combine sausage, hash browns and remaining ingredients, mixing well. Pour into a well greased 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking pan. Refrigerate covered, overnight. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
Makes 8 to 10 servings.)
After eating I got around to showering and pinged Brian to see if he was up for seeing the movie today. He had to bring one of the cats to the vet not long before the movie’s start time, so that was pretty much a negative, and so I was left to decide whether or not I wanted to go see it alone.
While deciding, I worked on a tutorial for creating a postage mark.
The result of said tutorial work is shown below:



I made it a postage mark from Perdition, because that’s ever-so slightly more esoteric than Hell. Besides, there’s a Hell in Michigan, which people like to mail things from just so that it can be postmarked “Hell.” Similarly, around the holidays people like to mail presents from Christmas, Michigan.
While working on that, I thought, “What else do I have to do?” and so opted to head to the theater.
For a while I thought I was going to be the only person there, but then someone else came in, and after her a small group of teenagers came in, and, though there was no good reason for them to do so in the near-empty theater, they sat near me. Since it wasn’t as though those were “prime” seats, I assumed this meant that the Universe was just preparing to fuck with me by having these little shits behind me so that they could interfere with my enjoyment of the movie as much, and as loudly, as possible.
Fortunately they were reasonably quiet, so they didn’t annoy me too much beyond simply existing.
One of them did annoy me slightly after the trailer for the movie Lucky You – a movie that I saw a trailer for months and months ago, in the summer, I think, and which still doesn’t have an actual release date – starring Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore.
The kid said, “That looked pretty good until Drew Barrymore started crying. Then it, like, lost all credibility.”
I wanted to turn around and say, “What the fuck are you talking about? Do you even know what words mean?”
Instead I simply sighed and shook my head.
Then the movie started.
…
It was interesting, and, oddly enough it had some moments of real humor, though I think that they just stood out so prominently because they were set against such a bleak and humorless backdrop.
The basic premise of the movie is this: 20 years in the future, women have become infertile, with the last new child having been born 18 years earlier. The species is doomed, and that’s just one of the many problems in the world. In its dying throes, the ugliest aspects of humanity have come to the surface and we find ourselves visiting an England in which, much like the England of V for Vendetta, one of the worst crimes you can commit is to be from somewhere else.
Illegal immigrants – foogies as they’re called – are rounded up and placed in internment camps before being shipped away.
There is, of course, violent resistance to this state of affairs, and very early in the movie we’re hit with an act of stunning terrorist violence – the first of many.
The plot of the movie is centered around the quest to get a young foogie girl safely out of the country. This particular foogie is the most important person in the world. Why? Because she’s eight months pregnant.
The rest is all backstory and personal histories – such as the connection between the protagonist, Theo, played by Clive Owen, and the leader of the resistance group, Julian, played by Julianne Moore.
I have to say that I liked the pacing and the manner in which important information was provided to the audience (a sort of slow unfolding that inspires a growing awareness), and there are a lot of nice little stylistic touches, like the music, most notably the subtly not-quite right (thanks to the singer’s accent) cover of Ruby Tuesday.
I also appreciate the attention to subtle details. For example, in the movie Julianne Moore is in her 40s, which means she would have been in her 20s during the early 2000s, and as a mature woman she still bears the trappings that would have been de rigueur for an activist of that earlier time, such as a distinctive tattoo and a nose piercing.
So yeah, I’d say it was worth seeing. I can’t say for certain whether or not Brian would have liked it, but I’m kind of leaning towards him not liking it.
Once I got home I checked the mail and found that I’d gotten my belated Christmas present from Kevin.
I was surprised to find that it was two CDs. One I’d expected because he’d mentioned it when I last talked to him. It’s a CD called Where’s Neil When You Need Him? which consists of songs inspired by the works of Neil Gaiman, written and performed mostly by people I’ve only heard of because Neil has mentioned them in reference to the CD on his blog, and Tori Amos, who is a friend of Neil’s and who, by asking the question in one of her songs – she frequently makes references to Neil in her lyrics – provided the title for the CD.
The second CD, though, was a bit of a head-scratcher that falls into the “Uhhh…?” category, as I’m not quite sure what inspired him purchase it for me.
The CD is titled What is Hip?
It consists of remixes of songs that were popular when I was a kid. Songs by people like The Doobie Brothers and Seals and Croft (A remix of Summer Breeze that was, apparently, used in a Gap commercial, which explains why it sounded vaguely familiar).
So, yeah. I gave it a quick listen (listening to the Neil CD now), and it’s…interesting.
Still, I can see the motivation for getting me a CD with material based on Neil Gaiman’s work, but not really sure about the other one.
(In my thank you e-mail I quipped to Kevin that the only time that I think that “Jon” and “hip” will be likely to appear in a sentence together is in a form like “Jon slipped in the shower and broke his hip.”)
After I’d left the theater and turned my phone on I discovered that I had a voice mail from Kathleen, who was expressing anger and dismay at the fact that she’d gotten voice mail when calling me. I called her back and got her voice mail, even though it was already too late and I wouldn’t have been able to help her anyway (she needed someone to look up a phone number online, apparently).
Inside the box that Amazon shipped the CDs in was a little piece of paper that said, “Why worry about Valentine’s Day?”
I responded, “Exactly.”
I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but that pretty much sums up my feelings about it.
Anyway, that was my day in a – wordy and boring – nutshell.
Three long days of work lie ahead of me, and I’m sure that tomorrow night I’ll continue what has become my Thursday night tradition of only getting about 3-4 hours of sleep for no apparent reason other than that I simply will not fall asleep.
I just don’t get that. What is the mechanism that keeps you awake like that, despite the fact that you’re tired? I mean, I’m tired, I want to sleep, and I’m in bed. What more is needed to make sleep happen?
But whatever, I guess I’ll swear at that bridge when I come to it.
In the meantime, I hope you all have more interesting and exciting weekends than I’m likely to have.