The Year of Living Sequelly

Saw The Matrix: Reloaded on Friday night and I'm still trying to digest it. They shouldn't make such a smart movie with such a beautiful man in the way. So, I was pretty much distracted through most of the movie by Keanu. I've had KeanuMania for years. Parenthood sealed my fate. *sigh*

Anyway, I wuv'd the movie. I know there are some who didn't. The love story actually kicked my ass. Neo and Trinity are the bomb. They're beautiful and they're the epitome of what a kick-ass girl and a destiny-besodden boy are all about. They've got their Buffy-Angel swerve on, okay?

I'm tired. It's 10:14PM and I have to be up by 5:15. I'll sleep poorly, probably; in fear of another bad hair day.

But I'm back on high speed -- CABLE! this time. Pray for my connectivity.

:) Bought some music:
1) Matrix: Reloaded Soundtrack [because it was on sale for 9.99 and used costs just as much.] The rave song and the Oakenfold Remix of Dave Matthew's "When the World Ends" are worth the price of the spin and they have actual soundtrack music! I haven't listened to all of it. Frankly, the 15 mile drive between Best Buys and my house wasn't long enough.

2) Eminem -- "The Eminem Show". I own a burned copy of it but you know what? I like it alot. So, it was on sale also for that enticing 9.99. Now it's mine.

Sidebar: Yes, I do download off the internet and I do get a few burned copies of music every-so-often. But I really am a consumer and, when I'm inspired to purchase I do. Case in point:

3) Ms. Dynamite -- "A Little Deeper". She wasn't so great live on Saturday Night Live, but there's buzz about her so I downloaded a song and then I listened to the CD at the Border's listening bar. It's a goody. Of course, I don't pay $18.99 for NOBODY's CD. I got it for $13.99 instead. Granted I was looking for $11.99 and I may have been able to get a recycled version at Rhino Records on Westwood Blvd for even less. But now it's mine, mine, mine and the disc is pristine.

4) Me'shell Ndege'Ocello -- "Plantation Lullabies". Not her latest one [which I have a burned copy of and will not be replacing with the real deal because, frankly, the first play wasn't thrilling], but an oldie that Nix brought along for the drive up to San Francisco last month. There's some good music on this one.

OK. I'm done. Maybe I'll be more faithful now that I'm back on the highspeed.
Gonna watch the final Buffy tomorrow night. I'm preparing to weep mightily. It's Xander. Any scene with Xander is gonna tear me up.

spoiler
I thought Angel was in love with Cordy. So whaddup with that B/A smooch? OY!
/spoiler

Gotta Make the Bread to Pay the Man

Sunrise hadn't happened yet. The cats, Pepper & Claudia didn't mind that I was up; food earlier is always better than food later. Showered, dressed, *fed the girls*, and got out of the house to pick up a co-worker who's just as insane as I am to live two counties away from my job.

Sunrise still hadn't happened yet.

It's not right to be at work before 7AM.

I was up late last night trying to tweak the web site and get my new story uploaded. Suddenly formatting was a strange and mysterious thing. The words are all garbled. Punctuation doesn't exist. I got frustrated and angry. I have no time for things that don't work.

And I missed Platinum. I have no connection to rap. I'm barely in touch with Urban music but I love that show. John Ridley is a good writer. The actors are engaging. And where else are you gonna hear: "She won't come unless she rolls up in a white Escalade." [rhymes with lemonade]

Anyway, back to work. Maybe I"ll start sneaking in a few blog entries here and there during slave breaks.

Wow. Another entry in the same month? Can it be?

Spoilers Ahoy!

I’ll be the first one to admit that I didn’t see the Angelus biting of Faith coming. And it might have been a dramatic climax to this week’s episode if the beginning part of it hadn't been so friggin’ boring. The entire episode felt like one long piece of exposition – or maybe it was a giant commercial to sell the Angel S1 box set – for Faith’s original episodes from the first season. I did enjoy the Wesley dialogue to Faith about never forgetting what she did to him. Wesley’s been a piece of work all season so the reason why he said what he said was OK, but I really would have rather known that he said it because it's been needing saying for years.

Hopefully, with all this candor, we’ll get an Angel/Giles conversation before Buffy goes bye-bye at the end of the season.

Digression aside, back to this week’s episode…

That Angelus bit Faith [to turn her?] was kinda neat. Looks like we’re finally going to see how Joss’ vampires do their thing and get to be who they are. Unfortunately I don’t see where this is going to have much impact on Angel when his soul is restored. This would have been the most devastating, self-loathing act that S1 Angel could have ever done, even worse than nearly draining Buffy. The show has come a long way from a study of 3 people who can’t forgive themselves for their pasts; mainly because when the Creative Team yanked the ‘demon of the week’ formula that propelled S1, they also dispensed with Angel’s purpose. After saving Kate from suicide, his talk with her let the vampire off the hook remorsewise.

I won’t go into the Cordy arc or how Connor is being wasted. [Just how many times did she cup his face?] I know, I know; it’s all about the Faith arc for right now evn though I actually think the high point of this episode was the moment between Fred pining for her relationship with Gunn and Gunn knowing that he will never be the dreamer that Fred allowed him to be. Fred & Gunn have always been magic.

Next week? We get Willow, everyone’s favorite Save-the-Dayer. Oh, boy. Watching this season has been giving me the same feeling as reading bad fanfic except that I can’t close my browser on canon.

Idling Into March
Southern California, USA


While I’m preoccupied for 2 hours and 45 minutes driving the 50 miles into work on a rainy day, the world rotates, time marches on, and events occur.

"There are children starving in India," my Mom used to say when my sister and I refused to eat our squash or Brussels sprouts. Who knew from kids in India? We didn’t. Sis would usually come up with a clever reply that would get us off the ick-veggie hook never realizing that when she was older and a Mom, herself, that she would tell her own kids that "There are children starving in Africa," because there truly are.

Starving Africans [which would make a great morbid name for a band if there isn’t one already] are nothing new. When Apartheid was abolished in South Africa, the continent dropped out of media view. After all, famine is nothing newsy; since the early 80’s there’s been one drought-backed one after another. Or maybe those crazy dictators, robbing their already pitifully poor countries’ treasuries, could be blamed.

These are the thoughts drifting through my head as I’ve just finished eating my breakfast en route.

I care because sitting in 2 hours and 45 minutes worth of traffic skews you. The next time I fill up my tank I’m going to have to pay over $2.00/gal. That pisses me off while I listen to a President that I didn’t vote for – hell, that the MAJORITY didn’t vote for – try to convince me that economy will get better with war when I know that the second gasoline drops back to $1.30/gal, people will breathe easier. I’m driving to work with forced optimism, hoping that war will not completely collapse retail which will put me out of a job … AGAIN … and make it damn near impossible to continue to work in an industry that’s already at bare bones, which will make it moot to fill up my tank to begin with because I certainly won’t be driving anywhere. Especially not to my local mall to spend a tax cut that won’t do me any good because I’ll be getting taxed on the unemployment that I’ll be collecting until it runs out.

In Zimbabwe, President Mugabe stripped the White farmers of their land [more than likely executing the ones who didn’t flee the country] and gave it to his Black populace which would have been all well and fine if the people he’d given the land to were qualified farmers with the knowledge of high-capacity farming. What was once the feeder of the continent is now holding its breadbasket a-begging for scraps. The land lies fallow; there’s no work; there’s no food to feed a populace that’s already HIV-positive. As the people starve, their immune systems decline further, making it impossible for them to work even if there was work.

In June 2002, President George Bush proposed spending $500 million dollars in Africa and the Caribbean to fight AIDS. By January 2003 that amount dwindled to $15 million for Africa. Strengthening Homeland Security is more important; waging war on Iraq is more important. And, in the meantime, AIDS tromps through India, China. I’m no statistician and certainly no psychic, but I’ll claim right now that AIDS will kill more Americans this month than the Al Qaida will this year.

I’m also no conspiracy theorist but I’ve often wondered if Bin Laden actually exists.

President Karzai of Afghanistan has to stand in line to be received at the White House and when he speaks he’s been advised to yell. The din of warmongering begets deafness; his country bores Bush now. Driving out the Taliban didn’t spur the U.S. economy. Neither will throwing billions of dollars at Turkey, but that’s OK. I’m sure Bush sits behind his desk in the Oval Office quipping, "Just have Greenspan print more money."

[At the time of this writing, Turkey has declined to let us use their borders so Bush will probably have Colin Powell draw up a plan that includes usurping Turkey so that we’ll get to use their borders anyway. And – glory be! – we’ll be able to join the E.U. after it’s all over.]

Don’t laugh. As I type this to paste into my BLOG I have to be aware that I run the risk of defying the Patriot Act. Land of the free? I waggle my finger. Don’t take that to the bank. In a Democracy, the minority still has the right to be heard, to be seen. As long as that minority opinion isn’t being voiced on a T-shirt. I considered myself part of the majority in November 2000 only to discover that my vote didn’t count. I’m still peeved about that because I don’t want war. I think that war, in general, is stupid and this war that’s looming is wrong. Really, really, really wrong.

At my local eatery last weekend, the cashier looked past me and commented on my fellow patron’s T-shirt. "Awakening the Giant" it read in bold black under an emerging, fiercely-drawn bald eagle. "Yeah! We need to get him for what he did to us," she cheered as she handed me change. I cringed. Sadaam Hussein didn’t destroy the Twin Towers, at least that’s what I’ve been led to believe; Bin Laden was behind that act of terrorism and that’s why we invaded Afghanistan.

Maybe we’ve all got our facts wrong. Hell, President Bush seems to think that by deposing Hussein and taking over Iraq until they get the hang of democracy, we’ll be making friends with the neighboring Arab countries. Ahem. Like there won’t be an economic revival in the U.S. until fuel prices decline, the Middle East won’t even consider us friend material until we begin reprimanding Israel on their unique brand of apartheid. Or is the subject of starvation and ethnic cleansing relegated only to Africa?

I’m not a news hound. Actually, since the first war with Iraq I’ve become decidedly less attuned to world events because the media irks me. Just because I’m not a voracious follower of what’s happening around me doesn’t mean I don’t care. Not once but twice last week it rained and I was both captive and captivated by the news streaming from my favorite NPR outlet and that didn’t consist of selected sound bites. These past couple days I’ve been sick and I’ve been using my recuperative time surfing the web for in-depth info. Later today I’ll read about the Patriot Act more fully.

What I’ve been realizing over the course of the past year is that time isn’t my friend. I have to start forcing the openings for things that I want to do – like writing again – and that I need to do – like getting my income taxes done, spending time with my Mom, and paying attention to where my civil liberties are headed.

"Awakening the Giant" shouldn’t be a metaphor for war; it should be the metaphor for this country to start setting its priorities straight. While I don’t believe that "going to git" Saddam Hussein is the recipe for improving the quality of my life, marching against mindless American aggression just might be. I won’t be packing up and joining the Peace Corps to rid Africa of AIDS and hunger, but I can pick up my check book after making an intelligent decision about which Non Profit Organization is doing the best work in that area. I can properly dispose of a piece of trash in the street. I dunno what I’ll do but I’ve got to start doing something.

As it stands right now, our government is hell-bent on a manifest destiny Rome would applaud. If Caesar were alive today, he would cheer Bush on with "If you can’t recreate your own Eden, bogart the O.G." Aesop would parable it with a dog with a bone and a reflection. Joni Mitchell would sing, "You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone."

Paradise has been paved and I crawl over it for 2 hours and 45 minutes when it rains.

NEW YEAR’S EVE!

The remainder of 2002 was a sirocco, blowing past me without mercy. Thanksgiving? I went to Disneyland, had to barter for the day after off. Christmas? Not so lucky. After a day of food with my sis & family it was back to the salaried grind.

2003 Resolution #1: Win the lottery so I can afford to sleep in.

Christmas this year was very nice, though. There were moments leading up to the big Day and I wish I’d written them all down. Here are a few that really stuck in my memory:

1) A man and his young daughter, walking to their car shortly after I pulled into the parking lot of an overcrowded mall. He pointed ‘over here’ and then proceeded to pull out of his space, blocking another car prepared to swoop into it.
2) Fresh orchids in the restroom @ Nordstrom’s. They didn’t smell like anything, but they sure were pretty.
3) Caroling with my pal’s Girl Scout Troup. I hadn’t been caroling since I was her age.
4) One of the Mom’s compliments about my ‘fine, strong, voice’ before I proceeded to lose it completely, thanks to a rousing refrain of Glo-o-o-o-ria’s during "Angel’s We Have Heard on High".
5) The relieved expressions on my cat’s faces after I got them flea-bathed. Whose cats get fleas right before winter? Mine do, obviously. For the first time ever and they’re 6 years old! I put a Rubbermaid laundry basket at the top of the stairs, filled it with a couple grocery store plastic bags and a colorful one from Old Navy and rocked Pepper’s world. Claudia remains content just to be a dollop on my sleeping torso.
6) Riding in my sister’s mini-van with her and 3 of her kids – 18, 15, and 3 -- to take a tour of the Christmas Lights in Rancho Cucamonga. Kudos to the house with the violet, almost neon, lights, offering hot chocolate to the tourists.

I haven’t done my cookie extravaganza for a few years now and I especially missed it this year. Too many hours at work, coupled with abating fleas meant no time for baking. Plus, every time I think about pulling out the mixing bowls and ingredients I think of my Mom’s words: "No offense. But I wouldn’t eat anything from your house. You’ve got cats."

Not ouch. Just something to remember. That even though I clean my kitchen thoroughly before I give into baking mania and I don’t allow my critters anywhere nearby... I guess it’s no different than my refusing any food offers from a woman at work who didn’t wash her hands after using the bathroom. You just don’t know and you can’t be too careful.

I’m to see "Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers" tomorrow, New Year’s Day. Willingly. I have to admit that I’m eating all my hatred for "Fellowship of the Rings" after seeing it again courtesy of cable. I will say that I enjoyed it a lot more on the smaller screen, probably because I couldn’t detect the blue screen work like I did in the theatre. "Drumline" is also on the schedule for sometime soon; everyone I know who’s seen it has given it a big thumb’s up.

Tonight is New Year’s Eve. The plans are to just chill out – uncork a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, pop in a couple of DVD’s, and probably be asleep before 1AM. I’m getting over the flu and I don’t need to run myself down, especially not if I plan on sitting through a 3 hour and 10 minute movie in less than 24 hours. It sounds like my co-workers aren’t going to do too much more than that, themselves. Cautious or conservative, either way, war impends and that’s nothing worth celebrating.

Unbelievable!!! I look at the date of the last entry and I cringe. I've been sooooooo busy, working sooooooo much. Saturdays, too!

So, anyway, this is just a note -- for anyone who even bothers to check in on this Blog anymore -- to have a fantabulous Thanksgiving!!! I've formatted Wiseblood's latest story and I really do mean to post it up tomorrow night.

[rant] By the way... When did Cordelia become Mrs. Robinson? Could the writers please retreive her character continuity from wherever they've seemed to have misplaced it? [/rant]

Most of this week’s been gloomy, very non-SoCal. Mid 6o’s in the temperature department, so very not ordinary for this time of the year. I usually recall October being moderately warm, always bright. The region didn’t get the moniker ‘Sunny’ for nothing.

I’ve begun layering. Overreacting, maybe, but at least I haven’t been freezing. I work in a very old building and I’ve been surprised at how warm it’s been in our office. Last year, I worked one floor below and it was always frigid. At that company, only the first two ribs of the radiator would get warm before the building turned off the system at noon. I guess it’s the difference between a major tenant and a start-up company. To the leasor my previous employer was just a gnat – in hearing range, but a gnat none-the-less.

I have a fabulous photograph that I took at last year’s company from the window that used to afford me the most wondrous view of Bunker Hill. It was taken after a rainy day and the sky was traffic’d with clouds. Most days there isn’t much hanging around in the sky, maybe there’ll be an oily band sweeping across the horizon at sunset. I would sit at my desk and look up occasionally, watch the Wells Fargo tower transform into an enchanted obelisk while the sun boldly apprehended its face for a half-hour in the late afternoon.

Now when I look up I have to peer across several desks and through another department to check out what’s going on outside. There’s nothing more to see than if the sun’s out or not; there’s no glorious view being mirrored in the windows of the building across the street. Still, after my more recent stints of employment closeted inside industrial buildings, there’s nothing better than being able to tell that there’s sun.

Or weather.

So the days are getting shorter and they’re getting nippy. And for when I really need it, the polar fleece is on deck along with the fake logs for the fireplace.

~0~

GO ANGELS!!!