slumping and slumming

this is probably the longest i've gone since i started this blog in november (or thereabouts) without posting. in all honesty (and as i've explained before) i generally blog:
1) about interesting facts/music/things
2) when there's something i need to reflect on
3) when i'm by myself a lot

i've been away from the internet and immersed in the people-world a lot lately, so none of these things have really come up. this last weekend was another great few days of tooling around akron and kent, keeping things a little more low-key than last weekend (aka no alcohol). most of the week has been pretty slow. i'm leaving on the 23rd (for sure this time) and so i'm spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to get all my stuff back to pullman and what i'm going to do when i get back there (to catch up on work). i am planning on heading back up to kent tomorrow to stay for a few days for the final time, so we'll see how that goes. i'm a little bummed to not be driving back this summer; that's always one of the highlights of the year for me. but on the other hand, my parents are coming back with me for a few days to help me move. so that's cool.

i'm definitely losing my ability to express complex thoughts since may. i can tell. everything is either "cool" or it "sucks". i hope my vocabulary/emotions come(s) back before fall.

i got to wash the bunting motor pool yesterday. it felt good to actually do some kind of physical work. lately, the only form of physical exertion i ever experience is 30 or so minutes of frisbee here and there with my friends, after which i feel a hundred thousand times better and less apathetic than i feel any other time (which of course doesn't inspire me to exercise on my own, but...).

my two great time-wasting discoveries of the summer have been the game boy advance and on demand television. over this summer, i have played three castlevania games, three zelda games (almost finished with the fourth), two metroid games, and a few final fantasy games on my game boy advance emulator. good games on the GBA are immensely satisfying: it's a combination of 2008-era video game design savvy and the fact that the GBA still only has a few action buttons. so in effect, the designers are forced to try to make a good game without relying on flashy graphics and complicated control schemes...which, incidentally, is what nintendo is best at. i've had as much fun playing games like "aria of sorrow" as i've had playing the latest FPS and RTS games my computer can run. it's also fun to know there are still games being made out there that have some depth to them that don't cost 700 dollars for a system and the DVD to play. speaking of which, i got all three of the playstation/playstation 2 metal gear solid games for my birthday. i've never really played any of them except the original metal gear solid (and that was the PC port), so i'm looking forward to digging into that when i get back home (you know, in all the spare time i'll have).

my other addiction, as i mentioned, is on demand movies. this is a horrible, HORRIBLE invention for me, in the sense that i will watch ANY movie (though not enjoy every movie necessarily) to its conclusion. this is partially because i'm willing to give almost any film endless chances to redeem itself, right up until the final minute, and partially because once i see the first 10 minutes of a story, i really want to see how it plays out, no matter how cliche it is. so i end up frittering away nights that i should be sleeping watching shitty movies. and there are LOTS of shitty movies on showtime on demand. jesus christ. my genre-du-jour (does that need hyphenated?) is the movie wherein the forty year old guy who has resigned himself to living alone for the rest of his life suddenly meets this completely improbably attractive, interesting, and youthishly dressed woman who is also forty and in the same situation (because that happens a lot in real life) and who also happens (of course) to be perfect for him personality-wise. there are complications along the way, but of course by the end the two live happily ever after.

i think the frequency with which i'm drawn in by these films probably says a lot about me.

last night's movie was "the heartbreak kid". i like ben stiller in films when he's not acting like an insane, screaming ape. jim carrey did it better ten years ago when that approach to comedy was still funny (i.e. when i was 15). but stiller is good in vanilla-type romantic comedies that require just a little bit of sarcasm and malady. he can muster up just the right amount of earnestness that's necessary to sell the afore-explained genre device (which would otherwise be completely unbelievable). oh, and i'm an easy sell on michelle monaghan (sp?) because she's a versatile actress who's not really great at anything but who is good at everything (sort of like leonardo in TMNT video games, or mario in mario kart). plus, though my brain is generally turned off in a very foundational way by people who dress like or who actually are movie stars, she's insanely hot.

i have some thoughts and/or comments about the ohio/pullman switch in my head, but i'll put them down later.

i've given up on the idea of going to see any of those seattle concerts i mentioned. i really want to, and i have the money, but i've got enough important things that are going to cost money coming up later in the year that it seems sort of irresponsible to drop 200 bucks (or whatever) on a road trip (especially when "other things" primarily means "something like 1000 bucks of repairs on my shitty car"). on the other hand, wilco is in spokane on august 21st, and i think i'm going to hit that show instead. 29 bucks, and i can get there and back to pullman in the same night, thus negating most of the fuel cost, and all of the rental car and hotel and dinner/food costs.

i would go to those other shows if it was with someone, but you can only go on so many road trips alone before they start to get lame, and i think i'm hitting that wall lately.

that said, if the cards schedule a fall tour, i'm totally there. even if i have to skip class. i'm a role model (in a ralph wiggum voice)!

I HAVE TICKETS FOR BATMAN TONIGHT! FUCK YOU!

EDIT: "the heartbreak kid" was fucking terrible. it started out alright, and the first thirty minutes or so convinced me that it was going to be a passable romantic comedy. however, by the time the end rolled around, there had been way too many character-development moments explained by a video montage or a simple "x amount of time later" black screen (ben stiller's character goes from unhappily single to happily married to unhappily married to in love with someone else to single to back in love with the second person in the course of about an hour and twenty minutes). also, pretty much everything that happened in the second half of the movie was completely unbelievable. and there were no explosions, or planet-cracking superweapons.