I'm bored. Source this quote.

"No, nothing I ever do is good enough. Not beautiful enough, it's not funny enough, it's not deep enough, it's not anything enough. Now, when I see a rose, that's perfect. I mean, that's perfect. I want to look up to God and say, "How the hell did you do that? And why the hell can't I do that?"

"Now that's probably one of your better con lines."

"Yeah, it is. But that doesn't mean I don't mean it."

It's me again, folks

Hello...it's August First.  You long-timers know what that means.  

It means it's exactly one month till my birthday, and that means it's time for me to point..."subtly" at the Amazon wish list to the right of your screen.  

Notes:  The X-Men book seems to exist in many different formats (by which I also mean prices), any of which would be "acceptable."  I just picked that one to represent since it's like the one I remember from my boyhood.

I'd hope this goes without saying, but most if not all of the MP3's on the list aren't available solely at Amazon.  You could, if you were that sort of person, find them on iTunes and probably other places as well.  But Hard Day's Night, I guess for reasons having to do with some sort of exclusive deal between Apple records and Apple computers, can only be found, as an MP3, on iTunes.

Thank you as always first of all for your consideration, also for your generosity in the past; you should have no fear at all that you must keep up that habit to stay in my good graces.

(Except, of course, for...you.  You know who you are.)

DVDs and desktops

Hello, vast reading audience.  I'm in the market for a couple of things in the next few months, so I thought I'd open up the "floor" to comments.

The first is a Blu-ray/DVD player.  My old DVD player has recently gone about as dumb as a cheerleader stereotype.  The very nice man at the shop tells me it makes much more sense to replace it and upgrade to Blu-ray than to spend the money on repair.

My desired features are fairly minimal, I don't have HD TV, so I just want a good picture quality, easy-to-use, fast loading player.  I'd also like to aim at keeping it under $150.  

The second thing I'm looking for is a new computer.  This device on which I'm typing has been very good to me; I wrote the best things I've written yet on it, but it's also really old and runs like a dog being kicked uphill.

Here again, my needs are fairly simple.  I don't game; I don't mess much with photos (hop) or digital photography.  I just need something on which I can browse these here interwebs, write, and download, store, and copy music files. 

Desktop or laptop doesn't really matter.  I've only ever had a desktop PC, and I don't think I've ever missed having something more portable.  But if I found one that met the above needs but was more reasonably priced than a desktop, well then I'd be a fool not to consider it, now wouldn't I? 

PS:  Oh, and here, I'd like to keep the price around $650.

Any thoughts, or am I in dreamland?

No problem, Courtney. I always think about your vagina.

Lana Del Rey made the decision to cover the song ‘Heart Shaped Box‘ by Nirvana for her first Sydney, Australia performance.

As expected, the late Kurt Cobain‘s wife, Courtney Love, has reacted.

Writing on Twitter, in posts which have now been deleted, the Hole frontwoman said:

“You do know the song is about my Vagina right? ‘Throw down your umbilical noose so i can climb right back,’ umm… On top of which some of the lyrics about my vagina I contributed. So umm next time you sing it, think about my vagina will you?”

If you're watching "The Newsroom"...

...then yes, what you saw at approximately 6:33 PM tonight Pacific time was Aaron Sorkin officially turning into a parody of himself.  My god.  Does he not know that there are people out here who know his work, and know when he's shamelessly copping from it?

It is a shame, really, because up until then, it was a pretty good episode.  As last week's was, to my fancy; in its entirety. But then, wow did it swerve into a ditch.  I mean, he was already using a trick he used on Sports Night, with a guy showing up at a therapist's office; insisting he's not there for a session; then staying for the whole episode and relating a story in flashback. 

But I was willing to write that off as a trusty storytelling device.  After all, he once used the "episode in the form of a letter or letters" trick on Sports Night and then used it again on West Wing, and the second example was the better episode.

But here...it's not just that he's reusing character traits from The West Wing--which was kind of a popular show, which makes it even more incredible if he thinks no one will catch him at it.  It's not even only that he's giving Will McAvoy a piece of the same back story he gave President Bartlett--a physically abusive parent.

(Seriously, does he not know there are those of us out here who speak Sorkin as fluently as the "Sloan Sabbath"--I don't even know what to say about that name, except maybe that it's deranged--character speaks Japanese?)

But anyway, he presented it (the character trait) in almost exactly the same way, with a shrink (or character essentially acting as one) just firing the character exposition out, in a confrontational way, before any ground's been laid for the audience.* 

It was cheap, and I expect better from Sorkin.


(And then there was the show's usual problem of integrating the lives of its characters with the global issues they cover)

*I don't think it worked terribly well on West Wing either, but at least then, he hadn't done it before.