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grrgoylMore people-bitching, so look away.
Tabby has always had a maddeningly anti-recycling outlook, which makes no sense when you consider she's about 18 years younger than me and the future of the planet will be a much more relevant problem in her lifetime than mine. But she simply refuses to recycle, and worse treats with disdain anyone who does, i.e. Tery.
I couldn't be prouder of Tery. She went from begrudgingly occasionally rinsing beer cans to carrying canvas tote bags to parties for ease of carting recyclables home, hers and everyone else's. She even set up a recycling box in the breakroom at work, which Tabby of course sneers at. She can't even be bothered to use it, despite sitting a foot away from the garbage can.
"I just bought a Honda Civic!" she cries, which, to her credit, she chose based partly on its superior gas mileage. "I've done my good deed for the world!" As if changing one aspect of your lifestyle to green forgives you shitting all over Mother Earth in every other.
So in this respect she completely deserves Kay, who continues to be an ignorant, selfish cow. Thank GOD I don't work with her anymore.
At a recent party at their house to celebrate them finishing their basement, somehow guests started filtering out until it was down to me and a couple of vet techs from Kay's new hospital.
Kay posed the question, "So, what do you guys think about me buying a bigger Jeep now that prices are so low?" Yes. Most American SUV owners are realizing they're driving a dinosaur and the meteors are falling, but Kay wants a BIGGER dinosaur. Why? Because her current Jeep Wrangler just isn't big enough to transport their dogs.
I bowed out of the discussion right away, saying how much I hated SUVs. The guy part of the tech couple shared my views, and presented all the rationales against SUVs. The first of these was the fact that it's time to think about the rest of the world when making such decisions, not just our own personal desires -- to which Kay let out her guffawing horse laugh, and said, "Think about someone else? Keep in mind who you're talking about here!" I could've socked her in the face.
Other arguments against the global village: Tabby thought it was okay to buy SUVs as long as you weren't doing it just to be "trendy" -- because everyone knows it's only the "trendy" ones that guzzle gas.
Mrs. Tech's point was "Hel-LO. We live in Colorado where it SNOWS. We NEED SUVs!" Okay, A.) Don't begin your logical debate with "Hel-LO," a catch phrase that should have been retired about 10 minutes after Friends finished its first run. B.) Yes, we live in Colorado, and it snows. We also don't live in the mountains, which means the roads are plowed fairly regularly and when they aren't, snow melts all on its own within 24 hours. C.) Thousands of Denverites manage just fine driving cars in the winter. How do you explain THAT anomaly, Chandler?
I had to get out of there, especially after I asked Tabby if she were going to Pride the next day and Kay again guffawed, saying, "I have no idea what that is!" I know, because you aren't gay (Kay is an Anne Heche lesbian, namely only for Tabby).
Update: Yesterday Kay drove her brand new Jeep to the hospital to show it off. Tery says it looks bigger, but the interior seems the same size. She wanted to spit. I wonder if she's shown it to her one sensible co-worker yet?
I guess I'm done.
~*~
I'm slowly working my way through 2007's "Horrorfest: 8 Films to Die For" but have been keeping it to myself because, for the most part, they've been more silly than scary. Another year, a little bit more jaded and bored. A couple have had promise, namely "Mulberry Street" (New York sewer rats bite humans and transform them into bloodthirstyzombies man-rodents), and "The Deaths of Ian Stone" (a man is killed repeatedly by shadowy, nightmarish creatures. Every time he resurrects he gets closer to piecing together the truth about his nature. Might actually bear repeat viewing on something larger than a laptop).
Then there's "Nightmare Man."
Ellen seems like a normal enough woman. When we first see her, she's exclaiming over her newest internet acquisition, a fertility mask from Africa. "Because I thought we could use all the help we could get," she tells her husband, who steps out of the shower and is a perfectly virile-appearing Spaniard. She rips open the box, however, and tosses the mask across the room in horror. It's a devil face with horns and inhuman, savage little eyes. "They must have sent the wrong one," she explains, adding that she would return it the next day.
The fact that she doesn't only sets up the pattern of inconsistency and illogic that she'll stick to for the rest of the film. The mask gives her such horrific visions of being pursued by "the Nightmare Man" that her husband is forced to drive her to a remote mountain mental hospital. Except naturally they don't make it; the car runs out of gas and he leaves her alone on the roadside while he hikes back to a station they passed 10 miles ago -- but not before "accidentally" letting it slip that he had packed the mask she's so terrified of in the trunk, in an especially bad bit of acting. They argue, she tosses the mask into the woods, and he heads out. "Lock the doors," he cautions her. I began having flashbacks to "Penny Dreadful," the selection I disliked so much from last year that featured a girl sitting in a car doing nothing but screaming and weeping for almost the entire film.
The moon is high in the sky when she finally decides she ought to maybe lock the doors. She goes to play the radio and only then realizes the keys are still in the trunk. Well, what on earth has she been so preoccupied with up until now that she forgot this important fact? But, as my horror friend Frank pointed out, scary movies would be over pretty quickly if people did the sensible thing. Long story short, the Nightmare Man appears, chases her a bit around and inside the car, and then chases her out into the woods.
Their struggle goes on and on. For some reason when Ellen manages to get his knife, he easily fends her off, but then when he gets it back he can't quite muster the strength to break through her noodle-armed defenses. And so it went, on and on.
Halfway through this very prolonged ordeal, we suddenly cut to a house in (presumably) the same woods, where two young couples are having some sort of sleepover. There's Trinity and her varsity champion boyfriend, and Mia and her barely legal boytoyfriend. There's a not-so-subtle hint of a past collegiate lesbian relationship between Trinity and Mia. All of their combined acting is just two pizza deliverymen short of a porno.
As the camera flits back and forth between Ellen's harrowing attack and the couples' game of erotic truth or dare, I was hard pressed to decide where the true "nightmare" lay. Mia in particular acts like a cat in heat, managing to turn a phrase like "Pass the salt" into sexual innuendo. Her 16-year-old paramour eats it up with a lascivious grin. It's all quite stomach-turning.
Ellen finally manages to break through their hormone-filled haze with her screams for help and they get her into the house -- pronounced "completely secure" by jock boy, despite the presence of glass French doors on every entrance. I never understand how people are lulled so easily into the illusion of safety when surrounded by glass.
They get in touch with Ellen's husband, who doesn't hesitate to tell them she's crazy -- thanks for the support, honey. Convinced the madman is in her head, Mia and her jailbait go outside for a smoke. She fetches her sniper rifle from her trunk (I forgot to mention the crossbow she dropped outside when retrieving Ellen. Inexplicably she's armed to the teeth) and tells her infant lover to shoot her if she ever lost her mind that way. "Why not shoot yourself?" he asks smarmily. "Suicide's a sin, baby." This from the girl who a few short hours ago was bumping and grinding three-quarters naked for her dinner guests and trying to get her girlfriend back into the sack (without her boyfriend noticing). What are you trying to tell us, director?
Fortunately just then the Nightmare Man puts a crossbow bolt through her sweetheart's eyeball. Finally! I was really glad he died first. He just looked ridiculous trying to smoke. Mia runs back inside, and soon after they hear a loud crash from downstairs, followed by the stupidest line in the movie (believe me, it was hard to choose): Mia: I'm willing to bet that wasn't the cat. Jock Boy: Do you have a cat ? Mia: No.
After that people start dying pretty quickly as, predictably, the glass doors and windows don't prove to be much of an obstacle to the killer. All the while Ellen is ranting that he's inside her, and they need to kill her to severe the connection. Then Ellen's husband shows up. He goes back outside to look for her medication that she dropped, first stopping for a puff in his car. Oh no! The Nightmare Man is in the backseat! But wait...he takes the mask off and is revealed to be a new, unfrightening and frankly pretty whiny character. It becomes obvious he's working for the husband, who reprimands him for succeeding in killing almost everyone except his wife. He orders him to go back and finish the job and clean up the mess alone. "Oh, MANNNN!" the Nightmare Man gripes. Shut up.
He resumes the attack, but now there's a new twist: suddenly Ellen, tired of waiting for her pills, transforms into a demon with the mask's face. WHUT. Full blown, floating in mid air, ridiculous gutteral monologues that are supposed to be threatening, and disembowelling people with her bare hands. Well. I certainly didn't see THAT coming. Which doesn't mean it's a good ending.
Well, it's not the ending. Ellen and Mia fight, Ellen is killed and the demon spirit enters Mia -- who is committed to the institution babbling about it being inside her and demanding medication. When the doctor walks away, distractedly mentioning trying her off the meds, she raises her head to reveal she's now wearing the snaggle-tooth prosthetic last seen in Trilogy of Terror!! *yawn* Really? Nothing more original came to mind?
Why do I bother? Why?
Tabby has always had a maddeningly anti-recycling outlook, which makes no sense when you consider she's about 18 years younger than me and the future of the planet will be a much more relevant problem in her lifetime than mine. But she simply refuses to recycle, and worse treats with disdain anyone who does, i.e. Tery.
I couldn't be prouder of Tery. She went from begrudgingly occasionally rinsing beer cans to carrying canvas tote bags to parties for ease of carting recyclables home, hers and everyone else's. She even set up a recycling box in the breakroom at work, which Tabby of course sneers at. She can't even be bothered to use it, despite sitting a foot away from the garbage can.
"I just bought a Honda Civic!" she cries, which, to her credit, she chose based partly on its superior gas mileage. "I've done my good deed for the world!" As if changing one aspect of your lifestyle to green forgives you shitting all over Mother Earth in every other.
So in this respect she completely deserves Kay, who continues to be an ignorant, selfish cow. Thank GOD I don't work with her anymore.
At a recent party at their house to celebrate them finishing their basement, somehow guests started filtering out until it was down to me and a couple of vet techs from Kay's new hospital.
Kay posed the question, "So, what do you guys think about me buying a bigger Jeep now that prices are so low?" Yes. Most American SUV owners are realizing they're driving a dinosaur and the meteors are falling, but Kay wants a BIGGER dinosaur. Why? Because her current Jeep Wrangler just isn't big enough to transport their dogs.
I bowed out of the discussion right away, saying how much I hated SUVs. The guy part of the tech couple shared my views, and presented all the rationales against SUVs. The first of these was the fact that it's time to think about the rest of the world when making such decisions, not just our own personal desires -- to which Kay let out her guffawing horse laugh, and said, "Think about someone else? Keep in mind who you're talking about here!" I could've socked her in the face.
Other arguments against the global village: Tabby thought it was okay to buy SUVs as long as you weren't doing it just to be "trendy" -- because everyone knows it's only the "trendy" ones that guzzle gas.
Mrs. Tech's point was "Hel-LO. We live in Colorado where it SNOWS. We NEED SUVs!" Okay, A.) Don't begin your logical debate with "Hel-LO," a catch phrase that should have been retired about 10 minutes after Friends finished its first run. B.) Yes, we live in Colorado, and it snows. We also don't live in the mountains, which means the roads are plowed fairly regularly and when they aren't, snow melts all on its own within 24 hours. C.) Thousands of Denverites manage just fine driving cars in the winter. How do you explain THAT anomaly, Chandler?
I had to get out of there, especially after I asked Tabby if she were going to Pride the next day and Kay again guffawed, saying, "I have no idea what that is!" I know, because you aren't gay (Kay is an Anne Heche lesbian, namely only for Tabby).
Update: Yesterday Kay drove her brand new Jeep to the hospital to show it off. Tery says it looks bigger, but the interior seems the same size. She wanted to spit. I wonder if she's shown it to her one sensible co-worker yet?
I guess I'm done.
~*~
I'm slowly working my way through 2007's "Horrorfest: 8 Films to Die For" but have been keeping it to myself because, for the most part, they've been more silly than scary. Another year, a little bit more jaded and bored. A couple have had promise, namely "Mulberry Street" (New York sewer rats bite humans and transform them into bloodthirsty
Then there's "Nightmare Man."
Ellen seems like a normal enough woman. When we first see her, she's exclaiming over her newest internet acquisition, a fertility mask from Africa. "Because I thought we could use all the help we could get," she tells her husband, who steps out of the shower and is a perfectly virile-appearing Spaniard. She rips open the box, however, and tosses the mask across the room in horror. It's a devil face with horns and inhuman, savage little eyes. "They must have sent the wrong one," she explains, adding that she would return it the next day.
The fact that she doesn't only sets up the pattern of inconsistency and illogic that she'll stick to for the rest of the film. The mask gives her such horrific visions of being pursued by "the Nightmare Man" that her husband is forced to drive her to a remote mountain mental hospital. Except naturally they don't make it; the car runs out of gas and he leaves her alone on the roadside while he hikes back to a station they passed 10 miles ago -- but not before "accidentally" letting it slip that he had packed the mask she's so terrified of in the trunk, in an especially bad bit of acting. They argue, she tosses the mask into the woods, and he heads out. "Lock the doors," he cautions her. I began having flashbacks to "Penny Dreadful," the selection I disliked so much from last year that featured a girl sitting in a car doing nothing but screaming and weeping for almost the entire film.
The moon is high in the sky when she finally decides she ought to maybe lock the doors. She goes to play the radio and only then realizes the keys are still in the trunk. Well, what on earth has she been so preoccupied with up until now that she forgot this important fact? But, as my horror friend Frank pointed out, scary movies would be over pretty quickly if people did the sensible thing. Long story short, the Nightmare Man appears, chases her a bit around and inside the car, and then chases her out into the woods.
Their struggle goes on and on. For some reason when Ellen manages to get his knife, he easily fends her off, but then when he gets it back he can't quite muster the strength to break through her noodle-armed defenses. And so it went, on and on.
Halfway through this very prolonged ordeal, we suddenly cut to a house in (presumably) the same woods, where two young couples are having some sort of sleepover. There's Trinity and her varsity champion boyfriend, and Mia and her barely legal boy
As the camera flits back and forth between Ellen's harrowing attack and the couples' game of erotic truth or dare, I was hard pressed to decide where the true "nightmare" lay. Mia in particular acts like a cat in heat, managing to turn a phrase like "Pass the salt" into sexual innuendo. Her 16-year-old paramour eats it up with a lascivious grin. It's all quite stomach-turning.
Ellen finally manages to break through their hormone-filled haze with her screams for help and they get her into the house -- pronounced "completely secure" by jock boy, despite the presence of glass French doors on every entrance. I never understand how people are lulled so easily into the illusion of safety when surrounded by glass.
They get in touch with Ellen's husband, who doesn't hesitate to tell them she's crazy -- thanks for the support, honey. Convinced the madman is in her head, Mia and her jailbait go outside for a smoke. She fetches her sniper rifle from her trunk (I forgot to mention the crossbow she dropped outside when retrieving Ellen. Inexplicably she's armed to the teeth) and tells her infant lover to shoot her if she ever lost her mind that way. "Why not shoot yourself?" he asks smarmily. "Suicide's a sin, baby." This from the girl who a few short hours ago was bumping and grinding three-quarters naked for her dinner guests and trying to get her girlfriend back into the sack (without her boyfriend noticing). What are you trying to tell us, director?
Fortunately just then the Nightmare Man puts a crossbow bolt through her sweetheart's eyeball. Finally! I was really glad he died first. He just looked ridiculous trying to smoke. Mia runs back inside, and soon after they hear a loud crash from downstairs, followed by the stupidest line in the movie (believe me, it was hard to choose): Mia: I'm willing to bet that wasn't the cat. Jock Boy: Do you have a cat ? Mia: No.
After that people start dying pretty quickly as, predictably, the glass doors and windows don't prove to be much of an obstacle to the killer. All the while Ellen is ranting that he's inside her, and they need to kill her to severe the connection. Then Ellen's husband shows up. He goes back outside to look for her medication that she dropped, first stopping for a puff in his car. Oh no! The Nightmare Man is in the backseat! But wait...he takes the mask off and is revealed to be a new, unfrightening and frankly pretty whiny character. It becomes obvious he's working for the husband, who reprimands him for succeeding in killing almost everyone except his wife. He orders him to go back and finish the job and clean up the mess alone. "Oh, MANNNN!" the Nightmare Man gripes. Shut up.
He resumes the attack, but now there's a new twist: suddenly Ellen, tired of waiting for her pills, transforms into a demon with the mask's face. WHUT. Full blown, floating in mid air, ridiculous gutteral monologues that are supposed to be threatening, and disembowelling people with her bare hands. Well. I certainly didn't see THAT coming. Which doesn't mean it's a good ending.
Well, it's not the ending. Ellen and Mia fight, Ellen is killed and the demon spirit enters Mia -- who is committed to the institution babbling about it being inside her and demanding medication. When the doctor walks away, distractedly mentioning trying her off the meds, she raises her head to reveal she's now wearing the snaggle-tooth prosthetic last seen in Trilogy of Terror!! *yawn* Really? Nothing more original came to mind?
Why do I bother? Why?