Late In Memoriam of George Carlin

penguin: How come wrong numbers are never busy?

Do people in Australia call the rest of the world “up over”?

Can a stupid person be a smart-ass?

Does killing time damage eternity?

Why is it that night falls but day breaks?

Why is the third hand on the watch called a second hand?

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?

Are part-time band leaders semi-conductors?

Can you buy an entire chess set in a pawn-shop?

Daylight savings time.  Why are they saving it and where do they keep it?

Did Noah keep his bees in ArcHives?

Do pilots take crash-courses?

Do stars clean themselves with meteor showers?

Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just whipped out a quarter?

Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?

Have you ever seen a toad on a toadstool?

How can there be self-help “groups”?

How do you get off a non-stop flight?

How do you write zero in Roman numerals?

How many weeks are there in a light year?

If Barbie’s so popular, why do you have to buy all her friends?

If blind people wear dark glasses, why don’t deaf people wear earmuffs?

If space is a vacuum, who changes the bags?

If tin whistles are made out of tin, what do they make fog horns out of?

If you shouldn’t drink and drive, why do bars have parking lots?

If you jog backwards, will you gain weight?

Why do the signs that say “Slow Children” have a picture of a running child?

Why do they call it “chili” if it’s hot?

Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

Could it be that all those trick-or-treaters wearing sheets aren’t going as ghosts but as mattresses?

If a mute swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?

If a man is standing in the middle of the forest speaking and there is no woman around to hear him…is he still wrong?

If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?

Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do “practice?”

Where do forest rangers go to “get away from it all?”

Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?

If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?

Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?

How do blind people know when they are done wiping?

How do they get the deer to cross at that yellow road sign?

Is it true that cannibals don’t eat clowns because they taste funny?

One nice thing about egotists: they don’t talk about other people.

Does the Little Mermaid wear an algebra?

Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

Why is it called tourist season if we can’t shoot at them?

If the “black box” flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn’t the whole damn airplane made out of that stuff?

If you spin an oriental man in a circle three times, does he become disoriented?

The Dark Knight/The Wackness Review

Before you can grasp a fictional character’s nuances, idiosyncrasies, and convictions like you can with a person in real life, it takes a while on the silver screen. In TDK, most viewers have a notion of the backstory, but may not understand the grit and dark aura that makes up Frank Miller’s reinvention of Batman.

The first scenes of the movie removes any doubt about the brutality of the film – as well as all the scenes of implied gore. You get everything from a realistic hero and his followers to the crazed maniac who feeds off of the hero to make his own “living.” The living media, the city’s vitriolic emotions, and the naive ambition of the DA, Harvey Dent (an underrated role played by Aaron Eckhart in light of Heath Ledger’s The Joker).

The movie is long, roughly two and a half hours, and has chewy themes – dialogue that characterize and establish points of reason, descent into madness etc. It’s pretty good, but not mindless, and not necessarily escapist cinema that we all wearily trudge to the movies for.

The Joker’s performance was creepy, well – acted, and understandably sensational. Bale played Batman well, but could have been better…I don’t know…But Eckhart played his character very well, and undeniably reasonable at the end.

I give it an 8 out of 10.

————

The Wackness takes place in the 90’s and its about this semi-shy, laid-back, high school drug dealer named Luke who tries to find some way to cure the depression from his parents’ fights, and slow descent into poverty. He has a psychologist, played very well by Ben Kingsley, who gives treatment in exchange for marijuana.

They really transform in this movie…Kingsley’s flawed character comes through magnificently throughout the end, and Luke transforms as he falles in love with his psychologist’s daughter. The friendship, the relationships really do work on screen – is realistic, hypocritical, and everything you want it to be when it gets to the end. Ben Kingsley does a really good job, and so does Josh Peck.

I give this movie a 7 out of 10.

It’s All English To Me

Keep up.

Forsaken by the hysterical trivialities of sovereignty, the aberrant behavior – rather the orthodox insubordination was the nexus of the nascent tryst. Maybe that was the crux of outreach, an upheaval of behavior. The “significant” assimilation of agents of change, the conglomeration of identities that encircle the microcosm of an unorthodox relationship – that was the purport of love’s unidentifiable idiosyncrasies.

He thought about the ties that bound him to an incontrovertible institution of isolation, the vapid indecency of another being’s platitudinal falsehoods and superficiality. That institution wasn’t just a girl, but all the circumlocution of a self-designated authority – a society, a facade of austerity, a denigration of virtue.

She thought about his eccentric uneasiness, instigated by a devolution of intra-cognitive changes about inter-social interactions. Oblivious to the bromides that pervaded the banality of her existence, she unwillingly ascertained her satisfaction – the negation of dissent  – as one not made esoteric by a society willing to engender conformity if only for pleasantry. Oh, but if you view conformity as the paramount thesis of their unwritten communication, do not spurn this message as one of a proponent of revolution. This is more a convoluted lesson in conventionality than a pedantic investigation of abnormality.

You made it! Just foolin around.

Premonitions

These days really are panning out well, except for a few hindrances (read: problems)

Before I continue, you probably noticed I haven’t posted in a while…sorry. I’ve been having these late night conversations, I’ve been working later (meaning I’m tired earlier), and I haven’t been at home when I do come back…because I am having fun, probably some sort of divine compensation for school.

“steven: I have to go now, I’m going to go write something in my blog.

xxxxani: you hv a blog? man, you hv no life!”

Anyway, so Harvard has these preorientation programs – one for rock climbing, one for artistic expression, one for international students, and one called Dorm Crew.  Thinking this would be a good opportunity to have some fun before college starts (read: maybe a week before college?), I signed up for Dorm Crew.

Bad idea.

The first image I’m greeted with when I open open the Dorm Crew packet is a picture of a toilet and then various pictures of kids smiling and having fun with brooms and making mustaches with brushes…OH NO, so it’s some sort of campus beautification process that bonds people together and in teamster optimism claims to be the “Dorm Crew.” Great!

I took my first drive by myself a couple of days ago (usually my mom or a friend is riding with me). The only place I knew how to get to was Meyerland, so I ended up going to Starbucks and ordered a shaken Passion Lemonade and Iced Tea. By myself. The drink was too sour, but the weather was perfect, my windows were down, and I had some music blaring…it felt good, kind of like the strokes of liberation you take when you shave your stubble (oh wait, sorry, I’m a little ahead of some of you guys-and girls- haha).

There’s also a lot of drama going on, you know the same drama that makes you grimace and groan at the same time – guys who are obsessed, girls who are clueless, and me smack dab in the middle who can’t resist to say that’s what she said. Maybe it’s a preface to college. I don’t know. I really don’t know what to expect.

And really, I need input on stuff to talk about, so leave comments with your own suggestions – anything at all.

A Conversation (warning: a poem)

For Jessie.

If you  guys like, I can put up more poems.

A Conversation

Two black holes,

enveloping light, reason, personality -

and destruction is eclipsed

by a vapid rip across her face.

My hands crawl away from a bohemian epidemic.

And no point of discussion could equal

her sense of tragedy, her abyss of expectant dialogue.

Attraction has its faults,

the epiphany of averting your gaze,

the feeling of ugly disquietude.