ABC: Not as easy as 1-2-3

I had the ABC show Malcolm in The Middle on in the background while I was cleaning the house this evening, and good lord. As if the world needs another television show about a shrill mother (thanks crazy Patricia Heaton!), ambivalent father and bratty teenage/pre-teen kids. Mmmm… stereotypes!

Modern Family. Entertaining, funny, clever, and a much more interesting (and realistic) family dynamic. I started watching this one online earlier in the season, but stopped after a few weeks because, eh… I have other things to do.

Cougar Town. I can’t even watch this shit. The commercials alone make me want puke up my adolescent years spent watching Friends. There’s a reason why I don’t watch much TV. At least none of these have laugh tracks. I’m looking at you, wretched, wretched Two and a Half Men.

But Lost! Oh, sweet sweet Lost. It’s rare for me to dedicate myself to watching a show each week, but I love me some Lost. The day after an episode ends I’m pouring over Lostpedia.org, Entertainment Weekly articles, and even the occasional theorizing message board. I love that they weave so many levels and analogies into the storyline, pulling subtle references from Dante’s Inferno to the Wizard of Oz to Kierkegaard. That’s the kind of multi-dimensional storytelling that I can get behind.

Plus there’s no screaming Patricia Heaton.

I’M WITH COCO.

And here’s a link to Conan’s very well phrased announcement regarding NBC’s completely spineless shafting.

My 2009…

It started out with drinks, strippers, Portland Trail Blazers, and smooching my boyfriend at midnight. In other words, pretty badass. I was fairly confident at the beginning of the new year, and was assured 2009 would be just as awesome as ‘08 had been.

Then there was this whole economy-having-Mexican-food-diarrhea thing, where it crapped out a hot, steamy bowl (bowel?) full of unemployed Americans. Myself being one of them, as of mid-January. Whoa. That was a screeching halt to what I had considered a steady and reliable job that I enjoyed.

After 5 weeks of depressing and stress-ridden unemployment (but so much sleep! my cats LOVED my jobless ass!), I found a temp job as an administrative assistant for a farming company way up in the boonies of southern Washington, a whole 40 minute drive from my house. If anyone knows me, they know that I am not cut out to be an administrative assistant, and the soul-crushing lack of creativity spurred my 61 days of daily photos on this here blog, forcing me to get well acquainted with all my camera’s functions and be creative on a daily basis.

I left the temp job early (after 7 weeks of paper pushing and being hit on by a drug-dealing murderer) for what has definitely been a highlight of 2009: becoming an employee-owner of an absolutely rad craft brewery (one I’ve emulated and imbibed for years), working in the marketing department. As my dad phrased it, “Steph, you’ve finally arrived.” Hella, dad. HELLA.

Summer was a dizzying array of fun things. Camping. Digging for fossils in the desert (childhood dream!). Hiking. My brother getting hitched. My car breaking down multiple times. Paddle boarding the Columbia. Sean’s and my first big roadtrip down to Sonoma for my college roommate’s wedding, which was where I also spent my 27th birthday. That was a divinely wine-filled week. Leading the Oregon Brewers’ Festival parade with my coworkers and the mayor of Portland through the city’s downtown streets. Southern family reunion. Raccoon wars on my side patio.  Cherry harvest with my sister and Sean. Baking in the 100+ degree heat on the new riverside beach near my office. Cowboy boot roller skate photo shoot for Lea’s 30th. Touring and drinking beer in hop fields for work. Dance parties around a campfire. Meeting Mike Belotti and Kenny “The Pick” Wheaton. 300 foot slip and slide. Hating myself for reading the Twilight series. Playing a beer-serving extra in a party scene from an indie movie. Smooching on a windswept cliff overlooking the Columbia River Gorge on the last day of summer.

Fall was as lovely as ever.  Sean’s and my first anniversary of dating. A girls’ weekend with the ladies of my family out in the high desert of central Oregon. One shitty corn maze paired with an overpriced yet adorable pumpkin patch.  Dressing as “Major Trouble” with my Saudi oil baron for Halloween. Mad Men and Dexter DVD marathons. Screaming like mad at a soccer game. Screaming like mad at college football games. Ending up on ESPN screaming like mad over the Ducks’ Rose Bowl clincher when they won Civil War.

This chilly season has been pretty great thus far. No skiing yet, unfortunately, but the holidays treated me well and I stuffed my face proper-like. This New Year’s Eve will be without the strippers and professional basketball players of last year, but still has the boyfriend to smooch at midnight and the drinks in hand. Only this time the drinks are from my place of employment, which I have to say, is pretty damn rad.

2009, despite your initial setbacks, you were oh-so fine. PEACE!

Avatar and Papyrus

Yes, I’m going to go on a Papyrus rant again. This time because one of the biggest, mostly widely anticipated blockbusters to hit the big screen is frought with my most-loathed font.

James Cameron’s Avatar is a stunning piece of visual art to an almost overstimulated degree. The lengths they went to in creating the world of Pandora and simulating every tiny detail and movement of musculature on the characters is mind boggling. Sure, the story is a little predictable, but the overall (relative) mastery of computer animation and creativity is absolutely phenomenal.

So the cherry on top? The logo is a modified Papyrus, and all the movie’s subtitles are a hideously yellow, drop-shadowed Papyrus, served straight up. We’re talking Microsoft default, plain ol’ 1982 muhfuggin’ Papyrus. The font best served at a convention about the healing powers of crystals or a bible study just shat all over this beautiful foray into movie making.

I will still wholeheartedly recommend the movie to anyone. But I will always add the Papyrus caveat. “It’s amazing, buuuuut…”

Morning I-84 Commute Report

I passed an SUV adorned with an abundance of pro-life stickers.

“Something something CHOOSE LIFE!” (with a smiley face)
“Keep your laws off of my body!” (with a picture of Jesus)
“Powered by Jesus!”
And the obligatory Jesus fish sticker.

The best however was a big bold sticker on the back window. It said “ABORTION: infant genocide” and within the first ‘O’ in Abortion, there was a Nazi swastika.

In retrospect, when passing I really should have flipped the guy off.

Because they're absolutely comparable.

Remember Anxiety Cat?

She’s the one for whom I built a cardboard cat shanty a while back.

Well, anxiety-ridden Buffy strikes again. This time she was so frightened of the world she kept herself underneath the house for 5 days, the latter couple of which the temperature dropped to single digits. She kept herself down there willingly, with ample opportunity to come out, get food and water and possibly come indoors where it was cozy and warm, but instead she remained beneath the house. In the dirt. In the cold. Crying.

Crying all the time. Whenever I made a sound.

She’d even follow me from under the house as I moved around within it, crying for my help. Would the damn thing accept it when I’d come outside and oh-so sweetly call her name? OF COURSE NOT. Too easy. Cats don’t accept the world of logic, and Buffy is absolutely outstanding at rejecting any sort of sensible action.

Last night she finally emerged from the dingy depths and I was able to snag and bring her inside. Problem solved, right? Nope, the indoors are mighty scary too. That’s where the other two cats are most of the time, especially Merlot, who despite his cuddliness, is the resident asshole of the house.  So she began howling. And hiding underneath the couch. I could coax her out every now and then and enjoy her peacefully sitting and purring on my lap in a seemingly content little fuzz ball (might I add, filthy from being under the house), but the second there was movement or a noise, she was back under that couch. Or crying at the door to be let out back into the frigid, awful cold. Remember the whole cats-don’t-acknowledge-logic thing.

When I came home from work this evening, she had been inside in the warmth all day long, and she was itching to get out. Sorry lady, it’s no warmer out there and I don’t want to have to haul your frozen, adorable carcass out from my foundation. The howling begins again. I brought her to the litter box in case she was too scared to scamper the 20 feet to it during the day, but she ran out the second those paws touched the patented Super Scoop granules, and she was back under the couch. Whatever, I have shit to do upstairs. Peace.

You know,  funny I should mention the word shit.

Yes, that’s exactly what she did, underneath and up INSIDE MY COUCH. Poop. My beautiful, giant red couch that I bought several years ago for a pretty penny with my own hard-earned cash. Over time she had torn up the fabric underneath so she could crawl in and laze about, hammock-style. Once there was even a dead lizard in there for a couple days. But never poop.

Might I add, I can’t even comprehend how mentally unstable you have to be to literally shit where you sleep, in your personal sanctuary, but again with the cat/logic, oil/water equation.

I called my dear friend Crispin, a fellow cat lady, for her advice, and she had the genius idea of locking Buffy in her own room with her own food, water and litter box. Done and done. Anxiety-Ridden Buffy now resides in the guest room, at least during the colder periods, and enjoys her own queen-sized bed, down comforter, chic dinnerware, and a view of the Columbia River and Mt. Adams. With no other cats to bully her around. That cat damn well better not complain.

As for the poop? Maneuvering with a flashlight and a pair of scissors, I had to reach under and cut out the piece of fabric that held the offending offal and dispose of it properly. I would also like to thank Febreeze for getting all up in that couch and making it smell less like cat shit and terror.

Can I get an AMEN?

Passionate and soundly worded from beginning to end. Brava.

Holidaze

Ugh. Urban Outfitters. Really?

It’s not so much the hat.

In fact, I really wish I had found this sooner to Portland’s drunken pub crawl Santacon, happening this weekend.

But… the model. The barely washed, starving, hipster beige blah vacantly wearing that hat like she has no idea where her next line is coming from. It would have actually been more effective to place the hat on a styrofoam head. Or a galvanized bucket. But… her. Ugh.

That reminds me, I need to clean the hair plug out of my shower drain.

 

In honor of Thanksgiving

I give you an honest Thanksgiving bingo. I think I could check off a few of these this year.

Too many green bean casseroles is a guarantee.

(Credit goes to holytaco.com for the bingo card)

These guys…

… I continuously get mixed up in my head.

Actor Simon Pegg (Sean of the Dead, Run Fatboy Run), Singer/Songwriter/Actor Glen Hansard (lead singer of The Frames, movie & album Once w/ Marketa Irglova), and Actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family)

Not the names and who’s known for what, but their faces. They’re just a ruddy, ginge-tinted mush in my head.