Q: What does Mitch do for school, exactly?

A: He does things like write programs for those banner screensavers (you know, the ones where you type in something like “Ninja Power,” and it scrolls across the screen in bright teal text), write programs for a bunch of networking stuff that I simply do not understand, and create websites for imaginary businesses. For example, he’s currently working day and night on a mock site for “Dragoninja Design,” a company dedicated to the fight for the rights of dragons and ninjas. It includes petitions, photos of dragons, ninjas and Chuck Norris, a detailed paragraph on exactly what rights Dragoninja fights for (freedom to kill and eat people without being oppressed by the current government), and so on. But best of all? It includes this.

Snakes on a Plane (cont.)

Actually, shortly after writing that last post, I gave up Snakes completely. I’m not sure I made it much past the introduction of the snakes themselves, not because I have anything against snakes (no, had the premise of the movie been Spiders on a Plane I would not have made it past the root menu–or worse, as Mitch suggested, Spiders on a Boat) but because the movie was just. plain. awful. There’s funny bad, and then there’s sick-and-wrong bad, and Snakes on a Plane definately falls in the latter category.

I’ll openly admit that I have no sense of humor whatsoever about horror movies in general, and that movies where the entire plot consists of gratuituously killing off characters in the grossest, most disturbing ways possible are enough to make me leave the room (or, if possible, the building)–in this case, I ended up in the bedroom with padded headphones on, listening to music and reading Isak Dinesen, while everyone else finished the film.

See, I can handle gross, disturbing scenes in books or well done movies, where they serve the plot and happen maybe once throughout the course of the story (though for some genres, like war movies, I’ll allow that death in large numbers is crucial to the plot, and therefore unavoidable)–I can handle those, just barely, but here is what baffles me: how the hell is watching people die entertainment? Snakes on a Plane is a movie with no plot (oh, that’s right. There are snakes. On a plane), no decent characters, no real emotional attachment on the part of the viewer (in fact, the movie almost encourages you not to connect with the characters, because they’re all going to die anyway), no redeeming value (aside from Samuel L. Jackson–of course the film would’ve flopped completely without him). The film’s sole purpose seems to be simple, unadorned entertainment, as far as I can tell.

Of course the movie is ridiculous, and of course it’s over-the-top–it’s supposed to be charmingly bad, I’m sure–but I get all feisty when a movie’s only idea of plot development is to kill off people left and right in semi-creative ways.

Grumble, grumble. The whole concept of death-as-entertainment just makes me so mad. And sad, too, because it says a lot about our values that we buy this shit.

On a different note, I just stumbled across this bit of trivia, and it made me feel a whole lot better about things in general.

Snakes on a Plane

I can’t believe we’re watching this.

What has happened lately

Mitch is right in the thick of things with school, so I see him often at home, but mostly from the back, as he’s generally toiling away on the computer. This has driven me into the kitchen, where I stay busy baking bread, granola, cupcakes and vast quantities of cookies (snickerdoodles, gingersnaps, macaroons, earl grey tea cookies, chocolate chip, chocolate chocolate chip, triple chocolate chip and these amazing “chocolate wonder” cookies that are almost to rich to even eat), as well as soups, enormous pots of spaghetti sauce, curry and pilaf, most of which are now frozen–for the first time since we’ve been married I seem to have actually figured out the the freezer is for.

Also, I’ve been playing shows pretty regularly, the most memorable of which was the show at Tweek’s: I was late, having spent the afternoon in the ER after a weird allergic reaction caused me to puff up and turn bright pink (we still don’t know what caused the reaction), and when I finally arrived I was jittery from the epinephrine injection–though no longer puffy or pink. All things considered, the show was great fun, and Boris Budd was great–very charming and angry, if you can picture that.

Mitch just found out Thursday that the software company he interviewed with last week does, in fact, want to give him a summer internship. This comes as an enormous relief to both of us–though mostly to Mitch, because he’s the one getting to start the super-cool job.

The cats are still crazy, but entertaining.

I spent a few hours yesterday recording in the Murder Mountain studio, which was amazingly (aMAZingly!) fun. We just worked on one song, but Bug Jerome has an ear for the unusual, which makes me very, very excited to hear how the rest of the album turns out: yesterday’s session saw me drumming on my guitar, Bug stomping up and down the stairs and drumming on the floor with forks and brooms and drumsticks, coming up with all kinds of strange but perfect sounds. A whole week of this in April? Heck yeah.

(I posted what we did yesterday on Myspace, so you can listen if you’re intrigued: the song is called “Knock on Your Door.” It’s not finished by any means–there’s still much to be done–but at least you can hear what we have so far.)

Am I forgetting anything?

In the last few weeks there have been some lovely dinner parties, hosted by friends and ourselves–including one we called “Temple Bar Night,” because all of us secretly wanted to go to the Temple Bar but all secretly cannot afford to right now, so we pooled our funds and had a lovely evening of cheap wine, cheese, bread, olives and chocolate tart. I lit candles and put Feist on the iPod and it was pretty much just like being at the Temple Bar (but not quite the same, somehow), except that we had fresh pineapple and the Temple Bar does not.

There. Now I don’t feel so guilty about not posting in a long time.