Animal Collective

There is a reason that Hillary has beat McCain by a wider margin than Obama: people are stupid. I spent my weekend at the Coachella Music & Arts Festival and had the privilege of seeing Roger Waters play on Sunday night. About midway through the set, a giant, inflated pig came out from behind the stage and began to float through the crowd. The pig had different bits of writing on it, things like "Don't be led to the slaughter", "Fear builds walls" and "Obama [check mark]". Then a plane flew overhead, several times, releasing something as it passed. Very few of the pieces of paper the plane dropped actually made it to the crowd, the wind having picked up during Waters' performance, but the ones that did fall on us read "Obama" over and over again. Awesome! I love Obama, as a presidential candidate as well as (so far as I know) a person. Unfortunately, the fliers that missed the Empire Polo Field were scattered over a 2-mile radius nearby and well...that just pissed off all the rich, implacable people. A woman from Indio actually said, "I am just appalled. All of our gardeners will now have to spend the whole day trying to clean this up." "All of our gardeners"? "All of our gardeners". Seriously? Yeah, it must be real tough on you lady, to have your underpaid gardener clean up some confetti. I can feel your pain. That must set back your gardeners work on your rose bushes by at least a day. How ghastly! How "derelict", according to this same woman. Apparently, despite the fact that Roger Waters released these fliers, without approval from the city, the festival coordinators OR Barack Obama, citizens have decided this is satisfactory enough to change their vote. "If I was going to vote for Obama, I wouldn't this morning if this is how he runs his campaign," said some shallow moron from an RV resort. But wait, maybe he has a point, maybe we shouldn't vote for people based off of things they had nothing to do with. Maybe we should take the opinions of those with whom candidates have associated with, and apply them to the candidates themselves. Maybe we should ignore certain candidates blatant lies about sniper fire in Bosnia but criticize others because their ex-pastor is a little nutty. Maybe its just me, but the privileged, snobby, elitist, arrogant, stubborn, greedy, whiney, spoiled upper class is really starting to chafe.

Imagine

Today has been one of the most frustrating days I've had in a long time. Granted, this entire month has more or less sucked. 2008 looked so bright from 2007...but I imagine that from now until January 2009, when Barack Obama takes his oath, things will continue to go downhill.

Personally, my life has been...a roller coaster of crap lately. I finally found out that I've been granted admission to University of California, Riverside only now to have it taken away from me because I can't pass my math class. I've always been really, really, really bad at math but it never bothered me much before, since I was really, ridiculously good at history and English.  Now, the only class I have left to pass with a C or better in order to transfer is this one College Algebra class, and I don't think I can do. I've made myself an appointment with Disabled Student Services to investigate the possibility of a learning disability like Dyscalculia but even a diagnosis with such a disease won't save my grades this semester. Bottom line: for the second time in the past two years, I've been admitted to the college of my choice, but probably won't be able to go.

Aside from my inability to comprehend numbers, there is my upcoming trip to Europe with my mother. Something that was supposed to be incredibly fabulous and awesome with a side of pure, unadulterated fun has turned into this giant monkey on my back. Airline prices are rising, and fast. "Oh, that's okay though, because we already have our tickets." Wrong! Airlines are now saying that hundreds of summer flights will most likely be canceled and travelers put on stand-by in order to maximize flight occupancy and minimize fuel costs. This, in conjunction with the constant reminder from my Grandma that the U.K. is full of terrorists (What about the terrorists in the U.S.? Chop liver?) and that they are on the happy end of our incredibly weak U.S. Dollar to British Pounds ratio, has turned me into this incredibly stressed, traveling MANIAC.

Speaking of fuel prices, what the hell? $3.79? Really? When I first got my Chevy Cobalt, back in April of 2006, it cost me about $26 bucks to fill up. Yesterday, it cost me $45. I can't afford that. I'm a full-time college student who works at Starbucks (don't even get me started on them)! Starbucks doesn't pay jack! And all of my family and friends, including my dentist and doctor, live 100+ miles away! Hope nothing happens to my health, or my teeth...cause I'd be stranded here.

And then there is the War on Terrorism. For that last time Bushy Jr., you CAN NOT declare war on an IDEA! That's like declaring war on Pow! Or Zap! Onomatopoeias can't be fought! I know that you probably didn't have a lot of time to study, when you were hiding from the draft in the National Guard, but even my 8-year-old brother who wants nothing more than to be a GI-Joe (which would result in some MORON like you sending him into some stupid campaign that had NOTHING TO DO WITH US in the first place), knows that certain goals cannot be achieved with violence or through force. In his case, it's getting a fourth Oreo or staying up past ten. In your case, it's the conflict in the Middle-East. I certainly don't know what the solution is, or even if there is one, but neither do you! And I think everyone would appreciate it if you would stop pretending like you do. GOD! What the HELL!? It really, really, really CAN NOT be that hard to be President. Especially not with your approach, you know, the one where you don't do anything and let your cabinet write your speeches, your generals plan your battles, and the American people fight your wars. I'm tempted to start in on the whole "stop-loss" issue, but I have hair dye in and I'd rather it didn't burn through my scalp. So skipping over that, I'd like to comment on the corn and rice shortage. I'm going to let someone else fight this one for me. Thank you Australia.

I'm going to go rinse out my hair. It should be red by now. I've dyed it red because I am upset. Upset at where the world is headed. The sooner people realize that we are all stuck on the same planet, together, the sooner we can start to make some actual, global, ecological, economical progress. But I don't see that happening anytime soon. And that really disturbs me. What would John Lennon say? Or Gandhi? Or Abraham Lincoln? Red is the color of 'mad'. And I am mad.

For Comparison

My mother and I are more or less weird sisters who are separated by two decades of awesomeness (1968 to 1988) and just happen to technically be mother-daughter. By that I mean that we love the same movies, the same music, we have the same sarcastic sense of humor, the same impatience and nervous habits, as well as the same colored hair and eyes. So today, when my mum created herself a blog and wrote a post about her favorite movies, even though I am pretty sure she is supposed to be doing laundry *shoots Mom a look*, I thought I would do the same, just to see how we compare. Apparently we get to pick our top 10 individual titles, along with 5 trilogies, quadrilogies, septilogies, etc. So in no particular order:

Top Individual Titles:

1. Saving Private Ryan
2. Robin Hood: Men in Tights
3. Love Actually
4. Tombstone
5. That Thing You Do!
6. Top Gun
7. The Philadelphia Story
8. Super Troopers
9. You've Got Mail
10. Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Top Series:

1. Star Wars (original trilogy)
2. Back to the Future
3. Indiana Jones
4. Harry Potter
5. Band of Brothers (Technically a mini-series but I don't care.)

If I could add a few more to my Top 10, our lists would look a lot more similar because I would choose Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Independence Day and French Kiss. But as much as I love those movies, having grown up watching them over, and over, and over, and over, there are more recent films, like Super Troopers, that I love just a hair more.

Don't You Evah

I'm reluctant to start a post off with the following sentence, but I am going to anyway...you know that episode of Friends where Ross makes a list of people he is allowed to sleep with without consequence? Well I watched that episode the other day and it made me wonder who would be on my list. So I thought long and hard to come up with 10 people: 5 current celebrities along with 5 celebrities who are on my "Involving Time-Travel" list. So here are the first 5:

1. Howlin' Pelle Almqvist (The Hives)
2. Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age)
3. Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: TNG, Just a Geek)
4. Seth Green (Robot Chicken, Rat Race, The Italian Job, etc.)
5. Justin Long (Galaxy Quest, Waiting..., Accepted, etc.)

And Those Involving Time-Travel:

1. Dave Grohl (circa 1997)
2. Mark Hamill (circa 1977)
3. George Harrison (circa 1966)
4. Dick Winters (circa 1944)
5. Cary Grant (circa 1938)

I know it seems like Dave Grohl belongs in the first 5...but Foo's new CD was just so crappy...I wanna go back to the time of 'The Colour and the Shape'.

It Just Seems Dangerous...

I've noticed that every time an American Airlines plane passes overhead, I feel compelled to cover my eyes and pray to God that there are no other airplanes in the vicinity. I'm sure we are all familiar with the outer design of an American Airlines aircraft...

Seems to me that covering an airplane in a material that resembles aluminum foil is a bit of a safety hazard. I think that if you wanted to run the risk of blinding both citizens on the ground and fellow commercial airline pilots it would be cheaper just to cover your airplane in Pop-Tart wrappers...