Sick and tired.
Just finished my second week at the new job… and I’m sick as a dog. I started getting a sore throat yesterday at work and now it’s turning into a full blown illness of some kind. I’m all hot and muddle-headed. I’m terrified that my wicked tonsilitis from last year will return and I’ll have to have them removed. Anybody have any good home remedies for warding off a throat infection? Bonus points if it doesn’t involve me gargling anything particularly nasty.

Just got back from seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 at a special preview. It was completely sold out. Never seen anything like it. Too late to write any more… and besides, I want to have this absentee ballot request form in the mail tomorrow.

What’s your ideal job? Mine is an “Animal Therapist”, and Snookums is a “Monkey Impressionist”. Seriously. Actually those two kind of go together… (Link courtesy of Max the Human Shield.)

I was just surfing my sister’s online wedding registry when I saw that she had requested this Tiki Head Tissue Box. *snort* That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. I want one!

I giggled way too much reading Helen’s explanation for her decision to officially barrack (Americans: substitute “root”) for the Essendon Aussie Rules team. My favorite reason she offers is: “[AFL] players hug each other in a caring and proud manner upon doing something good in a game.” I totally get that.

Pretty trippy. (Link courtesy of Matthew, who suggests ingestion of drugs for proper viewing experience.)

Ah, it’s good to feel the Roger Clemens hate. I was annoyed when I read that he was pitching to my boy Mike Piazza in the All-Star game, but afterwards I felt pretty darn cheerful that he’d completely blown it. Obviously my constant harping on the man has been the equivalent of a blogging voodoo doll and I have been the instrument of his downfall. Kickass. (Link courtesy of Kevin.)

Mortification.

Woman: “Wow, it’s really busy in here.”
Me: “Yeah, I’m still adjusting to running around on my feet all day!”
Her: “Sure, and especially since you have a bun in the oven…”
Me (after thinking about this for five seconds): “WHAT? I’m not pregnant!“
Her: “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. You just looked like you had a little belly there…”
Me: “It’s just this stupid denim apron! Everyone else’s is custom-made but I don’t have one yet so I have to wear this stupid one that pooches out in the front!”
Her bratty son: “Way to go, Mom.”

So yeah. I’m off the detox and back onto the Atkins induction, big time. I’m strangely ambivalent about the end result of the detox. It was rough avoiding meat, dairy, and caffeine for two weeks, but I didn’t feel fundamentally much different afterwards. I didn’t lose much weight at all. (Granted, I only went to the gym, like, once, but I was running my butt off at the new job.) It certainly “cleaned my intestines” if you know what I mean (and I think you do), but I didn’t pass any twenty year old marbles or anything. It was basically just two weeks of low-grade diarrhea. I think I’ve settled the question in my own mind about whether they’re effective or not. I have to admit that it was kinda fun being a fake vegetarian, though. I actually had to send back a dish at a Korean restaurant when it came with seafood on it. I was like, “I’m sorry; I can’t eat this. I’m vegetarian.” And they were like, “Ohhh! I’m so sorry!” People suddenly started thinking I had ideals and principles and stuff. I almost felt like I could have kept it up if I had any political or moral leanings that way, but… Nah. Hamburgers are still too good.

But anyway, yeah, back to the Atkins. I can’t believe that woman. That is the first time anyone has ever said that to me! Maybe I need to go all Mary-Kate and stop eating altogether.

Movie Reviews:
People tend to think of me as a bit of a sci-fi film nerd, but for years I harbored a deep and dirty secret: I’d never seen Blade Runner. Recently I decided to remedy that. The only problem is that the DVD has been discontinued or something, so my local Blockbuster only had one copy that seemed to be perpetually out. Finally last weekend I nabbed it. The Snook hadn’t seen the Director’s Cut (which was the version I had), so we settled down to watch it together. I was pretty excited. I read the Philip K. Dick book it’s based on (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) a few years ago and really liked it, so I figured it couldn’t be that bad. Boy was I wrong. Sorry, my fellow SF nerds, but Blade Runner sucks. It is without a doubt one of the worst book-to-film adaptations I’ve ever seen. It’s like they took one single plot point (“cop hunts androids that look like people”) and threw out nearly everything else that made the book interesting. Even the few cool things they left in – like the Voigt-Kampff test – were ruined because all sense of context was missing. (The test measures empathic response to taboo questions about dead animals and people, which are especially shocking to humans since nuclear war has killed off most living things. The movie curiously doesn’t mention this at all.) Where was the Mercerism? Why didn’t Pris and Racheal look like each other? Why did the plot keep messing up how many replicants there were? What happened to Deckard’s wife and his aspirations to own a sheep? The whole thing sucked. Yeah, yeah, so it looked cool. It had that whole “future-yet-film-noir” thing going on that critics love to rave about. I’ll grant you that. The scenic design was completely visionary. But in terms of plot… I stand by my review. It sucked ass. I’m going to go re-read the book and try to put the sight of Rutger Hauer hooting in his underpants out of my mind.

I had a much more entertaining cinematic experience this afternoon as Amy and I headed out to see Mean Girls. It was pretty good. I do like that Lindsay Lohan (and for the record, I think the boobs are real). My only complaint was that it just didn’t seem mean enough, especially with the cheesy feel-good ending. (I read some reviews this afternoon that mentioned how certain scenes and dialogue were tweaked to slide it in under an R rating. That explains the random “Butter your muffin” line, anyway. I wish they’d left it alone.) The high point of the whole movie was when the wheelchair chick said “I don’t hate you because you’re fat; you’re fat because I hate you” and then wheeled herself off the platform backwards. Amy nearly fell out of her seat laughing, and I lost it laughing at her. We’re easily entertained. So in the end I felt that Mean Girls was like Heathers-lite. The bus thing was shocking, but it was no “I heard she sucked down a cup of liquid drain opener and smashed through a coffee table”, now was it?