You know what always cheers me up? Aside from a hot piss of pee from Fjeurg Van Der Ploeg's Swedish Bockery, beautiful surrealist paintings from Jacek Yerka always do the trick. I don't know what it is about his art, but everytime I look at it, it takes me away to another world where everything is strange & alien, but somehow you still feel completely at home. Kind of like whenever I listen to Owl City. You cannot look at a Yerka painting without being forever changed.
One of my favorites of his is this one, 'Back to Nature'. I dont know what it is about this painting, its downright wierd, but I love it. Most of his works have water as a prominent theme, and since I'm terrified of water, maybe its a morbid fascination or something. Behold~
Another one I like is this one(I dont know the name). I love trains, and it also evokes a sense of home, but with a faint sense of urgency. You've got your furniture, your cozy little home set up, but you're inside a train station, so you never know when you won't have a home anymore. The trains don't come very often, but when they do, they give little notice and you always have to scramble to move your stuff in time. It makes you feel a sense of constant vigilance, and having to sleep with one eye open. I know this feeling well.
However, I think my absolute favorite of his is 'Base'. This painting makes my heart physically hurt. It hearkens back to a time in my life when I didn't have a stationary 'base', AKA a home. Well, I did, but I was always on the run. It was back in 2000, when I met the guy I would fall insanely in love with for the next 10 years. We spent 3 months on the road, just driving around, doing whatever we wanted, and sleeping in the car. It was the best and worst time of my life. During this time we fell completely in love with each other, and its a love that's persisted to this day, despite the fact that we can't be together. Anywhere I was with him was home, even if we were sleeping on the grass in a city park. I could have slept comfortably on cold, wet rocks as long as he was holding my hand as my eyes closed. The 2 beds huddled together on the vast expanse of the tire-scarred ground perfectly signifies this, and the raindrops are perfect too since this time took place during a rainy spring. It's like Yerka was in the backseat the whole time, and captured everything between us into one single painting. I can't look at this picture without feeling overwhelmingly emotional. Its almost too much to bear, but its also strangely comforting.
A similar one that also evokes a lot of emotion in me is 'Susan'. You could say that this one represents me now- a single bed out in the twilight... *cries*
Another one I love is "Illegal Light Making". Dunno why, but this painting just makes me feel happy & homey when I see it.
The first painting of his that I obsessed over was this one, 'The Oligocene Gardens'. Like I said earlier, a lot of his work features water, and spigots & spouts everywhere, and a lot of algae. I used to stare at this painting, imagining the vast world of creatures that must be lurking under the yellow algae cover, alternately horrified & fascinated at the same time.
New details- no copy & paste, no SD card support(only internal storage, a la iPhone), super-tight controls on developers, predefined hardware requirements(1ghz cpu, WVGA screen min. res., 3 button setup; home, back, and search), and no user customization.
Honestly- who the HELL is still excited for WP7 after hearing all this?!? I'm to the point where I will go back to my old Treo 700p before I would ever use this horrible, godawful, retard-friendly monstrosity that is known as Windows Phone 7.
I truly have no clue WTF Microsoft is thinking by anally raping WinMo like this. This is the WORST possible direction to take their OS in. Its like they hired Opie from the Pawtucket Brewery to spearhead this project. I repeat- this is Palm OS all over again. Did a complete redesign work for them? Hell no, Palm is going BANKRUPT & is contemplating selling to another company.
This reinforces my big philosophy- Sometimes the old ways really are best.
Companies, please hear my words: STOP FUCKING FIXING SHIT THAT ISN'T BROKEN.
Corey Haim was found dead today of an apparent drug overdose. He was only 38. How sad.
I loved you, Corey. I wanted you to be my boyfriend all through my tween years, and I watched the Lost Boys over & over again just to ogle you. You will be missed.
I'm all paranoid now. Who's next, Eddie Furlong? Please Odin, no!!! I'd have to end it all if my Eddie was taken from me.
Something hilarious happened to me last week at work. I do chat-based tech support for a huge hard drive company- I only deal with the internal employees so it's far less painful than regular tech support, and I really love my job. Last friday though, I secured my place in the company's hall of fame.
I had an employee on chat that needed his laptop reimaged due to a virus infestation. I typed this to him- "Just so I'm clear, you're needing to reinstall the OS/reimage the hard disk, right?"
Only I didn't type DISK. I typed something much worse, something that will go down in the company's history as one of the most epic typos ever. Yes, I typed DICK. I hurriedly added "DISK, sorry!" and fortunately, the user was quite professional about it. He was silent for a few minutes, no doubt laughing hysterically on his end, then replied "yes". I know why I typed that, its quite an innocent mistake. I write in Russian a lot, and the Russian S is C in english, and I'm always typing stuff like 'ctart' & whatnot on accident. But this is by far the worst typo I've ever made.
Of course, by the end of the day it was all over the company, and I was getting congratulated by all my coworkers. Even one of the IT guys found me on Gchat & said "Thanks for the laugh!". I learned that the chat logs are automatically saved into each respective service ticket, and are viewable by all! I honestly thought I was gonna get disciplined or even fired, but then I heard that the big boss laughed the hardest. This is why I love my job :D
I now am the butt of nympho jokes at work, and one of my coworkers has saved me in his phone as 'hard disk'. This incident has vastly increased my popularity at work, lol...
I honestly don't know whether to be horrified or proud of myself.
The more I read about MS's new & "improved" version of Windows Mobile, the more I want to drink poison. I'm seeing the impending death of my favorite OS with the announcement of WM7. I hate you, Microsoft. WM7 looks like something you'd find on a Firefly, or a Nickelodeon phone aimed at pre-teens. It's completely different- no more Start menu, its all huge, brightly colored icons & 72 point fonts. No more support for legacy programs- it's not backwards compatible! No more multitasking either(but have no fear- your Twitter feeds will still update in the background, so you'll always know what Tila Tequila is up to!). Storage will be cloud based, which means you can store all your shit on remote servers & just stream whatever you want. Uh-oh, no data connection? Well then you're just fucked, buddy!
The new UI looks like something you'd see on a dumbphone thats trying to imitate a smartphone, like a Samsung Instinct. Now, the Instinct is a good phone, but if I wanted my phone to look like an Instinct, I'd have gotten an Instinct to begin with. I know they wanna win over the drooling masses with eye candy, but what about us geeks? The people who use their phones for things other than listening to top 40 & stalking their exes on Myspace? This is a HUGE step back for WM. I do not know what MS is thinking with this monstrosity & it truly hurts my heart to see them ass-raping WinMo like this. Did they not see what happened with Palm? "Wow, look how WebOS has taken over the market, and look how happy long-time Palm users are that they can't run their old apps anymore! We SO need to get in on that!" /sarcasm. Nobody even THINKS about WebOS or Palm anymore, they committed SUICIDE by killing Garnet. Microsoft is pounding the nail into the coffin of their mobile relevancy with this move, mark my words.
Windows Mobile has a HUGE geek following, and MS is just going to ensure that even more people migrate to Android & iPhone by abandoning us to cater to scenester douchebags. They'll be alienating a shit-ton of long time users, and I for one don't appreciate it. I NEVER thought I'd say this- but if MS is really gonna give the big F-U to its legacy users, or if they don't offer options to those of us who care more about functionality than cute icons & social networking, well... then Android or even the iPhone(shudder) might just be an option for me. Never thought I'd seek comfort in the arms of the enemy, but if the rumors turn out to be true, then that might just happen. And anyone who knows me knows I am a HARDCORE WinMo geek, so that is really saying something.
The real nail in the coffin is the lack of backwards compatibility. This is what's going to kill this new OS. That is why the Treo 755p was my last Palm device, cause they killed BC with the Pre. Yeah, a guy developed an emulator for old palm apps for the Pre, but how long did that take, a year? I've spent a lot of money of WM apps over the years, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna give them all up for cloud storage & animated icons.
To put it in perspective for those of you who think I'm overreacting- How would you feel if Windows(or Mac OS whatever, or Linux) was totally rewritten & came out looking like something off a Leapster? And what if you could only do one thing at a time, had far less options, and none of your favorite programs worked with it anymore? What if you had to find alternatives to every program you used to use every day? What is you were forced to learn a whole new OS & had to learn new ways to do everything? And what if they did it just to cater to all the DUMB SHITS who were too stupid to figure out how to use the old version? You'd be PISSED. You'd feel betrayed by the company. You would feel INSULTED that they think you are so stupid that you need such a simple OS. This is exactly how I feel about WM7.
I hate it when companies fix things that aren't broken. It happens every time I find something I really like- it either gets discontinued or it gets changed into something completely different. Dodge discontinued Neons in 2005. The Body Shop changed their heavenly vanilla perfume oil into some nauseating flowery crap. MAC discontinued my favorite lipstick. MIA no longer makes those cute strappy black sandals I used to love. Grandy's went out of business. Nivea discontinued my favorite toner. Et cetera, et cetera. I'm afraid to like anything anymore! Yes, WM needed UPDATING, but it didn't need to be completely redone into a whole new OS. Yeah they might eliminate some crashes, but they've also gotten rid of everything that makes WinMo great. WTF. But I guess appealing to teenagers, soccer moms, and tech-tards is more important than keeping existing customers happy & making REAL progress. I truly never thought I'd see a day when social networking would take precedence over multitasking capabilities, but apparently that day has come. I'm honestly in shock. I don't know how to feel, I'm kinda numb here. I admit I'm pretty big on social networking- I have a Myspace, a Facebook, a blog, about 10 email addresses, and various profiles in all sorts of forums. But social networking is not the MAIN THING I use my phone for! What about customization, tailored today screens, total program freedom, hacks, tweaks, and the like? Is changeable wallpaper supposed to satisfy our appetites for individuality? No. No no no no no.
This new OS is aimed at all the morons who bitched & whined that using classic WinMo is 'too hard!', but the complexity is what I love MOST about it. You can hack it till the cows come home & make it do whatever you want it to do! What's not to like about that? WHY does every company always dumb everything down?! Why not force people to LEARN rather than contribute to their ignorance by making things easier? A man will eat for a day if you give him a fish, but he will starve tomorrow unless he LEARNS to fish.
I swear- I've said it before & I'll say it again- we are hurtling toward Idiocracy at an alarming rate. When Microsoft has to reduce Windows Mobile, a powerful business-oriented, versatile mobile OS thats been around for 14 years, to a mishmash of bright colors & flashy animations just to stay on the market, then it's time to start worrying. I can't believe anyone would be okay with a 'new & improved' version of anything being DUMBED DOWN to appeal to morons. Its an insult to our collective intelligence. Even on the video(scroll down) the guy is saying this new version is not aimed at business users, but at everyone else. Translation: "Since you're all too stupid to operate regular Windows Mobile, here's a much more idiot-friendly version for ya!"
Pardon my french, but this is fucking bullshit. Windows Phone 7 makes me want to die. Seriously. If I can't have my comfortable old WinMo, then I don't see the point of going on any more. They BETTER keep 6.5 around, or I just might lose it. They need to release 7 as a separate 'consumer edition' & keep the classic version around for smart people. If they make 7 backwards compatible & give us multitasking, then I MIGHT try it, but as of now its looking like nothing more than a glorified Instinct.
Take a look at this digital abortion~
WOW!!! You can find movie listings & update your Facebook & search the web! Odd... vexing... but I can do that on my LG Lotus dumbphone too, what the hell?! And if I didn't know better I'd think they were trying to imitate the iPhone with all that pinch to zoom bullshit. Way to go, Microsoft. You really screwed the pooch this time.
So once again, I have been lied to by a male. Big shock huh? I don't know why I even bat an eyelash anymore, I'm so used to it. Maybe I'm still naive enough to think it'll be different every time. Stupid me! This time, it's a guy I've known for 5 years.
I've dated this guy, Justin, off & on since 05. He's a really nice guy. Army sargeant, very disciplined, self-sufficient, decently well-off, good looking, cute dog, nice car, etc. We've always had a lot of fun together, we get along great & have a lot in common. He always took me on nice dates, and we even went to Hot Import Nights one year. We've never been TOO serious since he lives all the way down in Lawton(about 70-80 miles away) and neither of us want a long-distance relationship, but I really liked him & I honestly cared about him. So I NEVER expected to find out what I found out last night. I found out, from MYSPACE of all sources, that he's MARRIED! And upon doing a bit more digging, I found out that he's BEEN married since 2006 and just never bothered to tell me!!!
This is some horse shit. This is a guy who told me that he isn't ready to settle down, that he'd never get married, blah blah blah. Is this kind of crap common or does it only happen to ME? Why is it that every guy I THINK I know turns out to either be an asshole or a lying sack of shit?! Are there any guys out there that are JUST FUCKING NORMAL?!?! Pardon my french but I'm really pissed. And hurt too, I know this guy wasn't the love of my life or anything, but I DID think he was at least a DECENT GUY. Hell, I drove all the way down there to see him just YESTERDAY! I found out a little while ago that he was seeing another girl down there, but he led me to believe they were swingers & that she knew about me. I didn't LIKE it, but like I said we weren't serious(and yes, condoms were used). But a WIFE??? Come on. And this is a guy who got upset after I started dating someone else during one of our "off" periods! I guess it's okay for ME to have to share but not for him!
What the hell happened to gentlemen, and chivalry? Why can't I find someone who has enough respect to just be HONEST with me? Honesty is the BARE MINIMUM that I expect from people, it's the simplest thing in the world to give so why is it so hard to just tell the damn truth? I'm the most easygoing person in the world, you can tell me ANYTHING and it'll be cool. The only time I really get mad is when I have to FIND OUT about it! What is it about my face that just screams "LIE TO MEEE!"??? This happens every damn time I date someone. I always end up finding out about a girlfriend, or a wife, or a kid, or a drug problem, or a criminal record, or a mental illness, or a checkered past... et cetera, the list could go on ad nauseam.
The old saying, 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' is VERY true:) I have saved all our texts & emails, and I might just tell his wife. Turns out they're NOT swingers, and if she finds out he's dead meat. She's a rather "husky" gal too, and I think he's afraid of her. If he gets away with this he'll never learn anything.
Goddamnit. I know it's just yet another incidence of a guy lying to me, but it still hurts every time.
