Moot Point

• I have been seeing commercials for the new Minipops CD. It starts with all these fresh-faced kids singing “Get It Started,” which I always think of in the non-radio-edited “get retarded” way, because that’s how I first heard it. (I just realized it’s because it was featured in that episode of The OC where Ryan and Seth go to the party with that guy who works at the crab shack with Ryan).
  Anyway, I had flashbacks to the old school Minipops, which I must admit I owned two volumes of when I was young. Both the “Rocket to the Stars” and the Magic Jukebox, the oldies one. The oldies one is the reason I know all the words to the first verse “Please Mr. Postman” and may be associated with my current love of Motown. Also, The Monkees.
  I confessed this to Alex yesterday, noting that if he wanted out, I would be cool with that. I decided I should give you, my readers, that same option.
  
  - The other day at dinner, my mom and I were talking about when she should come visit me next semester. She said something about how it would be nice to meet Alex when she comes up. I said something along the lines of “Yeah, sure.” Dad said (jokingly) “Well maybe you’ll have broken up by then.” I said “Thanks, Dad.”
  Mom said “Well, I just want to meet him, so you know, I’ll know him in case you get engaged.”
  My parents think they’re sooo funny.
  
  - I’m drinking 20-year-old port. Tawny!
  
  - The curse was broken; I saw The Life Aquatic and it was awesome.
  
  - Showgirls is on TBS and in this one scene they had totally ADDED A BRA WITH COMPUTERS. And, wow. She handpaints her tacky nails. In a bra for no reason. It is like a pinnacle of badness.
  

Christmas was good this year. I cooked a lot, and people liked the food, so that was good.

Also, presents? Spoiled. My parents bought me an iPod (!) and The OC Season 1 and some other stuff, as if the iPod wasn’t enough.

I think my favourite part was when my brother, overhearing some OC banter, said, “Hey, this is kind of funny.” And then started asking questions about who everyone is. And watched, like, 6 episodes with me. (I’m an OC evangelist!)

Now, I’m mostly bored. I had a whole post about how boring Calgary is, but then I didn’t write it.

Whenever I have more than about 3 days off in a row, I always realize how much I’m bad at doing nothing.
I need downtime. I’m totally capable of being fantastically lazy. But I can only do it in limited quantities. I get irritable fast if I really have nothing to do.
Once I assigned myself the project of actually starting to look for Alex’s present, I cheered up almost immediately. It was bizarre.

The balance, it’s so fragile.

P.S. Everyone will see The Life Aquatic without me. And I will be sad. Because all I’ve heard about is how great it is. (I’m lame, so I told Tim I wasn’t sure I could go because I was supposed to go with Alex when I get home, but then Alex went without me, because of his family or something. I can’t be mad at him about it, so I am forced to be mad at myself, but I feel I’m doomed.)

The family just finished our annual Christmas Eve tacos and are on our way to the zoo.

Merry Christmas, kids.

Project Baking-mania 2004 is proceeding apace.
So far I’ve made the whipped shortbread (total sucess) and the chocolate rum cookies (which were touch and go for awhile, but I added some more melted butter and everything turned out all right).
Melted butter solves everything.

Up tomorrow: Nanaimo bars.
I never want to stop baking.

I used to make muffins and stuff all the time in jr. high when I used to babysit my brother on Friday nights.
I’m rekindling my love.

Oh, by the way? I’m in Calgary. (Toronto people: don’t call me. Calgary people: call me.)

It’s so good to be home and not have anything to do. Reading, watching movies, lounging. I do like to lounge.
And baking. Oh, the baking! I just called my brother to ask him to bring home the double boiler. And I’m going shopping with my mom to buy supplies: I’m all about homemade this year. I’m going to make whipped shortbread (super-easy, fluffy, mouth-melty goodness), chocolate rum cookies, Nanaimo bars, and eggnog. For my family. Of four.
Everyone who darkens our door is going to have plates of cookies thrust in their faces.

OMG Chrismukkah! Best holiday episode of any show ever? Between Lindsay’s paternity revealed! and Kirsten’s speedy turnaround and Julie’s puzzling rage at Caleb for having committed adultery 16 years ago when she is in fact engaging in it right at that second with JIMMY, and Marissa doing something, that was totally not motivated by selfishness in any way at all, it’s already mind-boggling.

But then you add the yamaclaus! And it’s on this whole other plane of adorable. Lindsay is officially a-OK in my books, especially because her utter pointlessness was revoked in this episode. You’ll note that all the other new flames (including, lamently, Paul Rudd Jr. aka Zach, who suddenly showed flaws last week) were absent for Christmas. But Lindsay was front and centre, what with the obvious belonging to the core family. (Also, if the yamaclaus doesn’t show that she’s related to Seth, nothing does.)

Seth, on the other hand, is back in my good books. His love of Chrismukkah and niceness to his newly revealed aunt Lindsay and his being a decent guy who’s kind of hapless as opposed to the total self-absorbed idiot jackass man of previous weeks and holiday songs that are if I’m not mistaken sung to the tune of Death Cab songs?

Summer: obviously, saves Chrismukkah. I really like Summer now. She’s so bubbly. I really hated her during that whole Anna-Summer rivalry, because she was obviously the Veronica figure. Also, saved Chrismukkah.
(Because it was so important to Seth. Clearly, still in love with him.)

Can we talk about Jimmy for a minute? I mean, I guess up til now I liked him, in a sort of lovable loser/cute older man capable of cracking wise kind of way, but then all of a sudden something has occurred to me: I think Jimmy is a total idiot. The whole losing-everyone’s-money debacle of Season One wasn’t an isolated incident. There was the asking-Hailey-to-marry-him. Now, the whole reconciling with Julie Cooper-Nichol thing starts to make some sense. He’s a spoiled rich man who keeps screwing up and lets it roll off his back because he lives on a boat. He’s like a slightly smarter grown-up Luke. It all makes sense.

Plus I liked that “Maybe this Christmas will be…” song that was playing at some point.

I didn’t really even need to pull an all-nighter, I would have had time if I’d gone to bed and finished it during the day, but I felt like if I stopped, it would be really hard to start again.

The similarities between “Twins” and “Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil”—both feature famous siblings or ostensible siblings, both feature the unwelcome conversation of a waiter, and characters with an uncanny ability to rattle off facts—compounded by the appearance in both of Cinqué Lee—or between “Somewhere in California” and “Cousins?” both of which show games of one-upmanship being played by performers who refer to their real-life personae and careers, are not essentially different from the ways the Miller’s Tale and the Reeve’s Tale reflect upon each other in Chaucer, both of which feature students, adultery, and humiliation of the cuckolded husband.

Now I basically have to figure out how to stay awake until the building opens.

I have been complaining and pretty stressed out about this essay, but I guess I shouldn’t complain when my worst dilemma is how to refer to Iggy Pop when you mention him consecutive times in an essay. I usually just do the standard last-name thing, but then I realized that the sentence “When Pop introduces himself…” sounds really dumb so I’ve decided to consistently refer to him as “Iggy Pop,” since it’s basically a made-up name anyway.

I missed The O.C. this week; I was “out of my house” at some kind of “live theatre” with people acting “live.”
So no post this week. Seems like I missed a lot. I read the synopsis on the official website.

Instead, a Brenda-doesn’t-think-about-what’s-coming-out-of-her-mouth-story:
I am just getting out of the shower, to get ready for this “outing” of mine, when my room phone rang. My room phone isn’t attached to any kind of actual phone line, just to the (very loud) buzzer thing downstairs. (This meant, of course, Alex was there.)

B: “Hello?”
A: “Hey.”
B: “Hey, I’ll be right down. I’m kinda naked, so it’ll be second.”
A: ….
(sound of the large crowd of people standing around out front LAUGHING)
B: “Uuh…I’ll be right down.”

I don’t think being naked in my own room is actually that embarrassing or anything. But the laughing… I get flustered.

Of course we saw a kid from my house on our way out, who greeted me with a huge smirk.

Anyway.

Saddest story in the world: You can tell because the headline starts with Dead baby elephant. :(

It’s like all my muscles are all knitted together and pulling against each other.
I have so much highlighter on my hands when I washed them the water turned green.