Why do we love movies and television so much?

There are many different answers to that question, and all of them are correct. The special effects. The comedy. The action. The sex. The impossible situations the writers place the characters into in order to play with our emotions. All of the above. All for our entertainment.

At least, these are all reasons we'll admit out loud.

I believe there's a deeper reason, and one that not many people may think about very much, if at all. As human beings, I think we suck at communication. That's my observation, at least. We never say what we mean. We hide our true feelings. We act like everything is fine when it isn't. We pretend to like someone because we don't have the balls to let them know otherwise, or we're too scared to hurt them.

Movies and television aren't like that. There's a conflict, typically a big one combined with a smaller more personal one that is somehow ironically parallel to the big one, and at the end both are resolved at the same time. People are nice to each other. They talk. They share their feelings. They communicate and let each other know how they feel.

And I believe we like movies and television because we wish we were like that.

I got an iPhone. Now, before you call me trendy, first analyze the meaning of the word. At it's core, it means "adhering to the latest fad", but the deeper meaning is doing something simply because everyone else is doing it, so that you can "fit in" or "impress your friends". Given the fact that most of my friends don't even have my cell phone number, nor even know what I look like, I would consider that option to be completely in appropriate here.

Instead, I'm opting more for the "boys with toys" explanation. The thing is a pretty cool gadget.

More to the point, however, I seriously dislike talking on the phone. Oh, I'll do it when I have to, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I find it odd, then, that while I dislike that particular thing that I must do every day, I conversely do not have any issues speaking to people over a VOIP push-to-talk computer program. How bizarre. But I digress...

That leads me to my point (yes, I do have one, dammit). I was drawn to get this iPhone because of how many other options it will provide me to communicate with people that doesn't involve actually talking on the phone. Naturally, the actual "phone" part of my phone has thus far been the most underused of all the features it possesses.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

On a completely unrelated topic (though I'm sure I could somehow link them together if I tried really hard), I was noticing today as I was emptying out my inbox that so many emails I get seem to try to play into a certain weakness: loneliness. I get emails from this "classmates" website. "Steve, people are searching for you!" "Steve, you've been noticed!" Let's forget for a moment that I haven't even signed up for this website. But, how pathetic do they really think I am? It's actually insulting, in a way, to get an email like that suggesting that I'm so devoid of human interaction that I'm longing to hear from people I never liked in the first place and haven't seen in over ten years. Give me a break. I hate that kind of spam. What happened to the simple spam-mails regarding my penis? I miss those.

I take comfort in the fact that when this turd of an ecomony finally fucks me in the ass and I'm forced to start living on the streets, I'll probably be able to make enough money for a bottle of whiskey by cleaning people's windshields. I stopped for gas this morning, and used the squeegee to clean the windshield on my car because it was rather funky. After getting back into my car, I was quite impressed with the job I had done.

Always gotta have a backup career plan.

This shouldn't surprise anyone:

The ambiguous season finale of “Grey’s Anatomy,” in which Dr. George O’Malley (played by T. R. Knight) and Dr. Isobel Stevens (Katherine Heigl) were left for dead — he, after being hit by a bus; she, after surgery for a brain tumor — earned Thursday’s largest television audience. According to Nielsen’s estimates, the episode, on ABC, was watched by 16.4 million viewers, the best showing for “Grey’s Anatomy” since its September premiere. ABC also averaged the most viewers for the night, and CBS came in second with “Survivor” (12 million), “CSI” (14.4 million) and “CSI: NY” (12.8 million). Fox was third with “Bones” (8.7 million) and “Hell’s Kitchen” (7.4 million). No one was killed on the finales of NBC’s shows “The Office” (6.8 million) and “30 Rock” (5.7 million), as the network placed fourth.

Suffering sells.

It's funny how sometimes, the smallest things that shouldn't really bother you end up bothering you a lot. Case in point: This morning as I drove to work, I ended up behind this car that I thought was braking because his brake lights were on. I realized after a few seconds, however, that he was actually accelerating. So his brake lights were stuck.

I had to pass him. And I had to do 90 to do so, but I didn't give a crap because being behind a car with their brake lights on all the time was pissing me off.

doodie.com

Wait a minute. The song "The Power" by Snap has more words than just "I've got the power"?

WTF.

I have made a visual representation of what it's like working with the new release of our software.

My TV is too big. The room is too damned bright when I'm watching a movie in bed because of it. BAH.

The new All American Rejects album is good. You should try it.

It would be very easy for me to find reasons to not be fine. Swine flu everywhere. Santa Barbara is on fire. The Taliban are taking over Pakistan. Everyone's broke and wants a bailout. But hey, I'm fine. I'm not coughing, nor am I burning to a crisper crisp than Denny's bacon (mmmm, bacon), nor under attack from extremist militias blowing themselves up for no good reasons, and I still have enough money to go grocery shopping after work this evening and buy my Mom a new TV for Mother's Day, because she needs it and she deserves it.

I'm also fine despite the fact that tomorrow night I have to attend a birthday party (funeral?!) for my brother, who is turning 40. Having your brother turn 40 tends to make you think about how you yourself are also getting old. Fortunately, I'm 12 years younger than my brother, and I'm still at that age where I think I'm going to live forever. And I plan on keeping that mentality for a few more decades, thank you very much. Cypher was right. Ignorance is bliss.

And let's face it -- Everyone knows I'm more upset over 3D Realms shutting down than I am about some silly flu that's going to kill half the planet.

Now I can blog from my phone. Yay?

What a positively bizarre day yesterday was. And by bizarre I mean fucking annoying.

It started out fairly normal. I had actually decided to do this little thing called sleep over the weekend, so I was actually awake when I got into the office yesterday morning. As such, I was pretty motivated and was actually getting a lot done. The day was made all the better when I found out in my morning manager's meeting that the 10-hour days were over unless the workload mandated it. Yay.

Then things just went to shit. It started with the power going out in half the building (but not in my half). So, half the office couldn't work. As a result, that half was bothering the half that could work, since they had nothing to do. It wasn't long before the entire building went out, and this was around 11:45 AM or so. There's a good reason to go to lunch if I've ever seen one.

After returning from lunch, the power was still out and we learned a transformer blew up somewhere close to the building. I was sitting at my desk, in the dark, just about ready to take a nap, when my boss came over and said we could go home since the power probably wasn't going to be restored until 7:00 PM that evening.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "You got to go home at 1:00 PM. How is this a bad day?" Oh, just wait and see.

Not long after I got home (and was relishing having 4 hours of utterly free time to myself), I got a phone call from my boss needing help with a demo that he was supposed to have this morning. My boss contacting me for help doesn't bother me, because I like my boss. Unfortunately, with the power being out in the office, I was very limited as to what I could do from home. I could dial in and get access to the network, but I couldn't access my PC since it didn't have power.

In addition to that, one of the platforms for our product wasn't working right, and it still wasn't working when I finally logged off at 9:00 PM to raid. (And still wasn't working when I checked my work email again at 1:00 AM after I finished raiding.)

So ironically, I ended up spending more hours "working" yesterday than I would have had I actually been in the office.

In addition to that, my brother stopped by last night. Now normally I wouldn't place this in the "bad day" category, but the reasons for his visit justify it being so. My mother bought a new VCR/DVD player over the weekend, and naturally asked me to hook it up for her. Which I attempted to do, but her television is very old and this new player will not connect to her old TV. (The player does not have any coaxial ports. It contains only the red/white/yellow audio/video in/out ports.)

So, I told her that I couldn't hook it up. But, I told her that her TV was very old anyway, and that I would buy her a new TV for Mother's Day (which is only a few weeks away anyway.)

But naturally, since my brother possesses infinite wisdom about all things in the universe, according to him I'm simply an idiot and don't know how to connect a VCR to a TV. Or at least that's the impression that I get, since he took it upon himself to come over and attempt to connect it himself.

Funny. He couldn't hook it up either.

With one simple phone call, my day went from neverending to enjoyable. The call was from my boss, letting me know, "No, you do not have to work tomorrow." Queue the victory music.

It's the little things that make me happy.