SPOILERS all I do here is spoil One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Spoilers.

Blasted through the last hundred pages of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest today.

I may have mentioned this already, but the use of the silent Chief as a first person narrator of the book is amazing. It's like a regular narrator that grows into a character interacting with everyone else in the book. A more rational meta narrative effort... by which I mean something more palatable to a regular audience, but still allows for that particular reading.

The protagonist, McMurphy, has a great character arc through the book. He starts off commited in the hospital, big and full of life, surrounded by all of the cowed men on the ward, and he can't get what the problem is with them.

In fact the patients problems are two fold, and neither of which McMurphy immediately appreciates. There's the effect of Nurse Ratched's domineering power (she's just a woman guys!) and the very real mental problems the patients are dealing with.

Before I started reading this book I read SOMEWHERE that the mental illnesses contained here were treated as a non-issue. I don't know what that person was reading. Though the effects of mental illness were described as more subtle than you may expect, they were also more pervasive, when it's suggested that McMurphy really is a sort of crazy.

I wrote down this idea from page 140- I didn't quote it down exactly, but it amounts to 'McMurphy didn't let how he looked- the role he was "assigned" in life- order him around. He's his own man.'

This is a huge part of the novel, revealing the truth that people are more than what they appear, and often contradictory at that. McMurphy, despite his brash, brawling, big persona, can paint and wrote letters in "a lovely flowing hand". He didn't allow the fact that those things didn't fit in with the immediate narrative that is MCMURPHY deter him. But it was that confidence that fed back in on itself, and all of a sudden those odd other parts WERE McMurphy, and it makes total sense.

The first bit of action comes when McMurphy realizes that Ratched is behind the lack of spirit on the ward, an idea that the men get behind after some needling. So McMurphy leads the charge, getting increased room for playing cards and getting under the Nurse's skin- making sure never to go so far as to warrant electro shock treatment, and thus avoiding the power of Ratched's full retribution.

Or so he thinks.

It isn't until a trip to the pool, where an old football player who thinks he's just a couple of weeks from getting back on the field (as he's thought for a long time now) moonlights as the lifeguard (I still don't know how that works) and informs McMurphy that Ratched has the power to extend a stay at the hospital.

At least in jail you knew when you were getting out. And forget the electroshock, this was Ratched's true power, at least over McMurphy.

So McMurphy quiets down, plays by the rules, and "get's sly". He eventually calls out the other patients for letting him be the fall guy, asking for other stuff, being the voice for the revolution, and the brunt of ultimate retribution. There's never any hard feelings about it, McMurphy even finds it funny, the con man getting conned, and by a ward of hospital patients. But then he's told something that really surprises him.

He's not on equal footing with the other patients around him- he's worse off! Most of them are voluntary patients, and could leave at any time. Not him, he's stuck.

McMurphy begins to realize these patients are more different from him than he'd previously thought.

He begins to act up again, only much worse than before, seemingly no longer worried about the electro shock OR release. He arranges a boat trip for a few inmates (asking sweet as you please to the nurse), driving down with this girl Candy and one of the Doctors, who was pretty easy to convince to come along, what with Candy around.

The trip is notable for how much laughter and life brought out of all of the parties, everyone has a great time, even the germaphobe 'rub a dub' George. On the trip back everything still seems great, McMurphy is soothing the crowd with his stories of a life fully lived, but a quick glimmer of light (from either the moon or a streetlight or something) flashes on him, and the narrator sees how tired and strained he looks.

I think it was still on the trip home that McMurphy arranges a date between Candy and Billy Bibbit for 2am in two weeks on the saturday night. So that's something to look foreward to.

For cruelty's sake more than anything, the members of the boat trip are subjected to a sanitizing shower with some strange delousing agent hosed onto each man. Mostly a fair enough proposition, but when they come up to George, he's terrified of whatever is being put on them. As George is freaking out McMurphy steps up to get the guys with the hose to back off- which they don't, they're having a great time.

So McMurphy takes his sweet time beating the guy- taking his time to enjoy it, because he knows after this he's getting moved up to the disturbed ward, and a step away from the electro shock. When one of the other attendants steps forward to help his coworker, the narrator/Chief lends a hand. So both McMurphy and the narrator get sent up to disturbed.

I've gotta say, how the relationship between McMurphy and the narrator progressed so that the Chief would help out, instead of being "lost in the fog" was awesome. From the point at the beginning where McMurphy is the only one to figure the Chief CAN hear and speak, despite what people think, to his growing admiration of McMurphy, to them actually speaking to each other, and McMurphy promising to make the Chief 'big' again... and he was certainly a mountain of a man by the time that fight in the shower took place.

It's not long before the two of them do get sent for electro shock. McMurphy was offered the chance to apologize to Nurse Ratched and avoid the whole thing, but that wasn't happening. He martyrs himself to give a larger than life figure for the boys on the ward dowstairs, but wouldn't you know it- he made it through the elctro shock alright!

In fact, he gets sent back again and again, keeping up his bravado the whole time, and by the time he does return "home" to the regular ward, he's a legend!

And good news- it's almost been two weeks, time for Candy to come back!

Now, I didn't expect that two week date to still be something they'd get to in story, but apparently you can fit in a lot of electro shock and recovery and electro shock and recovery in the span of two weeks. In fact, the whole timeline of the book surprises me this way. It feels like in most books this story would take place over the course of a year at least, but it may have only been a few months. It's an odd bit of pacing.

So they convince the night guy to open the window, and in comes Candy and Sandy for a night of partying. They make a huge mess, everyone gets drunk, Billy Bibbit and Candy get a room, and McMurphy says his good byes, because after an hour of sleep he's outta there.

Which felt weird, as far as endings go... incomplete... and then what about all those extra pages after... oh I see they slept in and didn't escape and now they're in tru-uble.

All of the inmates are having a great time, laughing at all of the evidence of their crimes, especially once Ratched opens the door to find Billy and Candy in a secluded room, but Ratched turns the 'for shame, so disappointed in you, I'm telling your mother' weapon on Billy, whose stutter immediately turns up to 11, and starts saying it was Candy's fault, it was McMurphy's fault, it was everyone else's fault.

It felt like such a huge betrayal! How could Billy do that?

But this is when it's clear, he truly wasn't ready, his illness was still enough to leave him susceptible to Ratched, so much so that when he's left alone in the Doctors office (and it's only RIGHT NOW that this is so clearly about to happen) that he kills himself.

McMurphy could have still snuck out, as was mentioned a few pages before (and I wouldn've this mentioned here, but I didn't find a good place to mention it) but when McMurphy was saying his good byes he discussed with Harding the source of mental illness. Harding's theory was that, for him anyways, it was not his being gay (not that they ever out and out say that exactly, but they as much as said it), but the level of shame and ostracization from society that was bred from his being gay.

But that wasn't what made McMurphy crazy (he wasn't crazy before he was committed, and he was never crazy in any stereotypical way): McMurphy, Harding says, is crazy because of "us". The other patients at the hospital. McMurphy has a desire to help out his inmates that isn't rational, because it isn't self serving... no matter what McMurphy's gambling winnings and other screens would have you think, he isn't really gaining anything by staying.

ANYway, after Billy kills himself, McMurphy does the only thing left to him, breaking through the glass and attacking Ratched, and making her lose any power over the other inmates. After she's back, unable to communicate but through a notepad for now, she's an object of derision on the ward, everybody laughs at her now.

She plays her last card, returning the post lobotomy McMurphy back on the ward- but even then she's subverted. The Chief has taken on McMurphy's spirit- the once apparently mute guy is now the one brashly asserting that that ain't McMurphy! Before the swelling can go down, and the legend of McMurhpy can be tarnished, the Chief suffocates him with a pillow.

The Chief tries on McMurphy's hat, which of course would have been to pat had it fit perfectly when he made his escape. McMurphy is McMurphy, 'Chief' Bromden is himself, and so the hat was too small for him.

So most of the inmates decided their time was up and left, the ones who were ready, and Chief Bromden, the narrator, made a Herculean move, lifting up this one control case (that had previously been made out to be impossible for anyone to lift... anyone beside the mountainous narrator) and busting out of the mesh encased window.

I liked this book a lot, I wish I'd written it up better here, put things in a better order, told you about when McMurphy tried to lift that control case himself ("At least I tried!") and I probably should have called the narrator Bromden instead of Chief. It's a book that sticks closely to the action, as though it were a script with stage directions. It somehow completely avoids extraneous prose while also not feeling as spartan as old Hemingway (I should really take a look at that guys oeuvre for comparison, not just relying on my old prejudices. Even though they are really fun prejudices.), it feels like it ends a few times before it actually does, but when it does, it all comes together in the way that a story has to.

And I'm thinking I'm going to go ahead and post this now, I kinda wrote a lot, so I'll catch my typos later.

Where I talk about the usage based billing stuff and sound crazy while doing it. There's a Star Trek reference! (only one though)

I know a bunch of people (and likely if you're Canadian and/or living in the Greater Toronto area, so do you)who are going downtown today for the rally against usage based billing on their internet access.

I haven't brought this up anywhere else yet- because I don't need to go looking for a fight- but I can't really take this cause seriously.

The people I hear the most about this from are also the most frivolous users of the internet. The news report I saw on the situation had a couple of young gamers describing the fact that when they aren't on their X-Box online, then they were streaming movies to watch- that they couldn't imagine their lives without their unlimited access. Then there was a gentleman who ran a business at home, whose needs are actually legitimate, but simply didn't sell his position. It didn't sound like he'd be hurt all that bad, in spite of what he actually said.

Could be it was a report designed to make the protesters look ridiculous, or more likely a case of slapdash "anyone know ANYONE that'll go on camera about this?" reporting.

I hear from environmentalists about how the cost for the electricity and water we enjoy in this country is, what, roughly double what we actually pay (man, I'm just guessing, I totally forget... it's more than what we pay, okay?)- but they can't raise the prices because the people feel entitled, and to even mention it to any serious extent would be political suicide.

I do enjoy the current cost of things, and yes, I take advantage of it, but if someone were to say to me "okay, now you have to pay the ACTUAL cost" I would ultimately be okay with that. If for no other reason than it would help teach me (and others) conservation and appreciation.

All that said, it sure does sound like I'm against the Usage Based Billing protestors, doesn't it? Well, that isn't the case.

Even I, with my limited computer knowledge, can appreciate the scale difference of going from uhhh my mind just blanked on the numbers AND units... like 250 sprazillion to only 25 brazillian fiber optics-

I'm probably hurting my credibility using such goofy words for the units, but it made me smile, and really, units are just words, placeholder ideas for other ideas/realities.

Anyway, it's a huge difference. And while there's a case for more electricity controls- say the blackouts that happen during the summer due to over taxing of the system, with less frivolous electricity use we can keep the power we need (for the elderly and sick for example) with less chance of losing it at the worst possible time. A market based series of restrictions (higher cost) is one way too achieve that. I'd rather we just turned things off on our own accord, but seeing as I doubt that'll happen, higher pricing is one solution.

But go back to the internet problem... well, there really isn't any. At least none that the major service providers will admit to. I seem to recall back in the earliest days of the last decade people talking about systems not being able to handle the number of people surfing the web, but I haven't heard anything like this (outside of cyber-rebellion) for a long time- whch makes sense, given the leaps in technology we've achieved (we... as if I did anything. I'll make a computer engineer a sandwich. "Okay, you're a sandwich!").

Considering that, here's one scenario where the proposed usage based billing increase is (moderately) okay: the various internet providers have reached their limit, none can offer more 'internetz' because as it stands "she can nay take anymore" and if ANY provider admited to this problem their users would jump ship to another group. The potential loss of subscribers to one provider versus the potential gain in subscribers to another is too great a financial incentive for these bottom line businesses to admit to anything, when they're ALL feeling the strain.

So they ALL go to a governing body- the CRTC- to be the bad guy. "Sorry folks, gotta take more money from ya." This solves the entire problem, giving some slack on the number of users and getting money to improve infrastructure. Of course it LOOKS like a simple cash grab.

Still, that's a shady bit of price fixing, a slippery slope at the hills bottom to monopoly.

But yes, THAT was the good scenario- where the parties involved feel they can't be honest without being taken advantage of and therefore attempt to take advantage of others preemptively.

The simplest and most likely scenario is that it is just a cash grab. And that's no good in my books.

If I have to choose between corrupt cash counters or LOLing layabouts- I'll choose the latter.

Now get off my lawn or I'll bean you with alliteration!
Lousy kids with their pet rocks and tamagucci's...

Cuckoo's Nest first look

First of February, better get a jump on these posts here, it's a short month after all (but HOW short is it? Who knows... now I do, looked over at the calender.)

Yesterday was a bit of an adventure, I went and signed on for security guard training, a course that cost me a pretty penny. That plus a metropass has wiped me out at the bank again, and I start the training this coming monday.

It'll be good to improve my skills (CPR/first aid again- I did it in 2006 but pretty much immediately forgot everything), and the guarantee of work is nice (assuming I pass the licensing process- a relatively small gamble, but it's still got me on edge), but I keep thinking about that one character at the begining of The Grapes of Wrath who came and took over everyones land because the bank forclosed on the property, and he took the traitorous position of mechanically farming everything himself. Because it may as well be him.

Well, speaking of books, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a pretty great read. First it has the benefit of being a print from I'm guessing the late 80's early 90's which gives the paper that necessary time to ferment into a full on tome, with that requisite mustiness that always takes me back to my days of sitting alone on the paved so-called playground over in New Westminster British Columbia with one of my inherited Star Wars novels, back when I was always itching to get back to the Luke parts-

(definitely not true for, what was it... the Crystal Star? Luke was a total jerk in that one. Some force thing was getting his goat. Han was all "chill out buddy", and Leia had this great part were she met this being who refused to reveal her name because "names have power" which I have always found to be amazingly true, and why I do my best to remember peoples names.)

- but beyond my sensory enjoyment of Ken Kesey's novel itself- there's a story too! It has this cartoony sensibility of the world it describes, which takes a step away from the purely allegorical when you remember that this is a first person narration- it doesn't come up much, but it's true, and there's a reason this man is in a mental institution- he is crazy.

Helping the effect is the fact that I've just been reading it chapter by chapter before going to bed each night- I have to drowsily re-read a lot of paragraphs to make sense of what's going on. It's actually an effective way to get in the same mind set as the narrator, though that wasn't my intention starting out.

And it was a nice change of pace, getting out yesterday, and doing some wide awake transit reading. I got through a bunch more pages that way.

I ran into a friend who I see only on special occasions, she showed me her cubicled work space, and it was pretty amazing to me. She had a cabinet full of, I don't know, five little apple sauce containers. As we parted she said, "I guess I'll see you this summer and/or winter (at one of our mutual friends annual parties)."

Kind of a cynical thing to say. Also, very true.

I like her for that- not many people can say that kind of thing completely devoid of mean spiritedness or bitterness in their voice.

While hanging out I made jokes about Rick Astley and Jersey Shore, neither of which hit home... so I pretty much looked like a pop culture idiot as usual. Maybe I should have clarified that I have never actually watched Jersey Shore? Eh, that'd come across as defensive then elitist. So fine, I'm stuck.

I went to the Eaton Centre Chapters and read comics for hours. I even took a seat for a comic or two! I thought about giving some downtown people a call to hang out for a bit, go on a rare visit, but decided I'd had enough for the day.

Came home to a rearranged kitchen and messed up bedroom. Usually dad restricts his feng shui to the living room and his bedroom. The kitchen was a surprise. So now I've got a new counter thing in my room, by an outlet, that lets me plug in my tv for the first time in... well, months at least.

While fixing my room I got to watch Hawaii 5-O. Good show, if it wasn't on at the same time as Castle I'd watch it all the time.

It's funny- you see Chicago, New York, Miami, Las Vegas (you know, the CSI's) and I have no interest in them, not really. But Hawaii- I like Hawaii. I can actually long for that place. Which is kind of ridiculous of me, but it's cool too. I know loads of people that dream of New York, the city that never sleeps.

I like sleep! I try to do it on a daily basis!

Good news delivered in the worst, most awkward way possible.

Either last Thursday or Friday I got some good news that I didn't want to share.

Eventually.

See, I did, then I didn't. It was such a quick flip that that moment of wanting to share, you almost couldn't tell that it existed. I did notice it though, and I've been thinking about it for the past few days.

When you reveal something about yourself, anything about yourself, you will have invariably given away more than you planned.

Illustrating this good news gives a barometer for how good or bad things usually go. Say my good news is "I found a dollar!!!!!!", then you may sit back and think "uh, dude, it's a dollar, chill out."

Or, maybe you'll see it the other way: "Lucky!!!!"

The night I was thinking about all this I was lying in bed failing to sleep. I was excited, and then kind of down on myself because I realized I wasn't going to go out with a buddy the next day and talk about what was going on with me.

Sharing the good and the bad? That's crazy!

I talked about this phenomenon with a stranger last year, opening up more than normal because she was a stranger. Now that we're friends I treat her the same as my other friends.

Along these lines, a few posts back I got a comment about the honesty of my post. It was a lovely hello from a friend I respect a lot (I know it's silly to not name names when you can just look it up for yourself- but that's me) but I couldn't help but infer the idea that most of my other posts are by default not very honest.

I sincerely doubt that was in her mind, she liked my post, simple as that- but obviously I'm self conscious about my degree of honesty here and in my general dealings with people, otherwise I wouldn't have thought of that. I believe I've made similar observations along these lines here before. ("Boy, I sure do hate how charming I have the ability to be in various social settings" being my classic example. Though really- making a pretty girl smile is one of the best things in the world.)

Is it surprising that I have a public and a private persona? I should think not. Everyone does, with varying degrees of differences between their separate masks.

Uh, heh, I guess that's just a long way of saying, things are going well right now. I'm starting to move in the direction I want to move in. Kind of a month behind schedule(at the least)- but I'll take it!

***

The other reason I was thinking about personas and motivations and everything is because of "Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane"- the comic I mentioned I put a hold on at the library a little bit ago? Turns out, this was a hard cover collection of the entire series! Pretty sweet.

Mary Jane is the star of this little romance book, and there's a lot of drama, but not especially from her. She spends the bulk of the title depressed- unless she's with her friends, then she puts on a great show of being a silly happy party girl.

There's this great storyline where Mary Jane got the lead in the school play, a position that another actress works to sabotage out of jealousy. Once Peter Parker finds out (aka spectacular ol Spidey) he gets help from Liz Allen (Mary Janes most of the time best friend in this story) to set things right without alerting Mary Jane to the fact that anyone was trying to sabotage her in the first place.

Liz wanted to tell Mary Jane what was up, because at the moment Liz was kinda in the dog house, and wanted this to get back to best friend status. Peter's reasoning behind the subterfuge was that if Mary Jane knew about the other actress' strong feelings about the part in the play, Mary Jane was liable to drop out entirely, giving up the part.

Ultimately, Liz kept the information to herself, and it was pretty awesome. It's one thing for someone who's totally, automatically selfless to "do the right thing"- but Liz has a strong selfish streak, so this was not only a great movement forward for her character, but it also served as a testimonial to how much she really cared for her friend.

I liked it, is, again, what I'm trying to say.

Well, it's just past eight, so I think I'll turn back on the ol' tv. Or something, I don't know- I'm a loose cannon, I can't plan these things so far in advance!

Izzygonnarock is my band name. The trick to getting high scores is to only share with people that play poorly.

Found a copy of Guitar Hero 2 (not my copy, but the games the same) so I plugged in my old controller and had some fun. I forgot how much of a workout it actually was for my left arm, veins bulging along my forearm as my fingers cramp up. It's all pretty awesome. And even though it's been a LONG time since I've played, I don't seem to be too much worse at it. I still can't beat Free Bird though. Which is, of course, the dream.

A while back I was complaining about writing 'just' a lot, lately its been 'of course'. I wonder what next bit of phrasing I'll fall into using too much.

I just checked out some comic reviews over at Newsarama.com and I wasn't impressed with the grammar. Not that I'm a grammar nazi (is, is that still okay to say? even in potential reference to myself?)- I think I've made that clear with my over abundance of parentheses and dash marks- but you've gotta make the prose clear and understandable.

I know I've made a mistake or two in my own work, but is Newsarama not the big time? Have I been misinformed?

You know what? I think I'm going to call it a day here. Good night.

That book that is now done. I'm going to skip out on my usual editing process tonight.

So around 1am last night I set out to do some reading. After fifty pages I thought I'd go for a hundred. And after a hundred, I thought I may as well keep going- two hundred and thirty pages later and at 6am and I finished the book.

Again, this is the book Rebel Sell, which I believe I've talked about twice already here. Now that I'm done, this'll be my, you know, final thoughts.

The principal* idea is that counter culturalism is a myth. If you are against the "mainstream", then instead of buying cheerios you go find joy-os. But all you've done by your disavowal of what was popular (and, very often, popular for a reason) is allow for a new market to grow. Not only that, but once enough people decide that joy-os is cool, it becomes the new mainstream, and the cycle goes on. So mainstream versus counter-culturalism is a false distinction.

*MAN it took forever for me to decide on principal instead of principle. I think arguments could be made for either one. Or, another possibility, I'm an idiot. Or tired, let's go with that.

The problem I have is how little effort is taken to explain what the authors mean by counter-culturalism. What they describe as counter-cultural is to me just another side of the mainstream, so with every point they try to make there's a huge degree of dissonance. If they'd come up with a new term for the phenomenon they're describing, say the "trend-stream", I'd very often be agreeing with the authors comments.
Of course that degree of niche discussion, belaboring what is to many an obvious point, wouldn't sell as well.

Similar to that difficulty with describing their terms, the authors would introduce a number of philosophers before pronouncing them short sighted and wrong "for obvious reasons".

Er, actually, what are the reasons? These renowned dudes you're citing actually sound pretty good.

By not taking the time to address those philosophies you only end up sounding arrogant.

Special notice goes to the "Voluntary Simplicity" movement mentioned towards the end of the book, apparently the origin point for the phrase "Think Globally, Act Locally". Everything mentioned about them sounded great- but the authors dressed them down because of their idealism (a lack of tangible movement towards their impossible goals) and also because (for whatever reason this was emphasized) of the lack of traditional western religious values amongst their members ranks.

In fact when it came to any "counter-cultural" political movement, if they resisted ANY type of helpful legislation because as a counter-culture group they are against all rules and government- then the authors summarily disregarded them as useless.

Thinking the group is altogether useless and unworkable, despite some (at the very least) good ideas that could really just use the tempering of compromise- the authors are treating the counter-cultural groups in exactly the same way they accuse the counter-cultural groups of treating the government. That's pretty lame.

At the beginning of chapter 7 "From Status-Seeking to Cool Hunting" they tell a story about going to school one day with what they thought was a cool pair of shoes, only to realize they were "so yesterday".

"Everyone has a story of this type." they say. They're really barking up the wrong tree with that one, I can't remember ever getting made fun of for a purchase of mine, or clothing. Not everyone is interested in status games, and that, I think, is where the real counter culture lies.

...

Okay, moving on- from the library today I've got "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Story" by Robert McKee. Should be good stuff.

My head hurts, I'm bouncing on out.

My throat hurts from talking all that time.

Before my lunch break I was busy convincing myself that the previous hour and a half of reality was actually happening. It wasn't- I dreamt I'd gotten up, but that's as far as that went. The only clear indicator I had that it wasn't real was that I was thoroughly confused, but not alltogether worried much about it.

I was kept pretty busy yesterday, tired today.

Ah, right, but I also didn't get that much sleep in preparation for yesterday. I thought I saw a blinding flash of light, and I don't for sure know that I was asleep. Well, I was definitely awake after that, too freaked out to get back to sleep.

Fortunately, Drake and Josh was on the tv, and I do love that show. (It's sweet, get off my back!)

I ran out of my cereal so I made pasta for breakfast.

Then instead of getting ready to leave by 1pm I got distracted by ANOTHER episode of Drake and Josh (kids seriously don't have much variety of Saturday morning show these days). So instead of waiting for me for ten minutes my bros got a ride and I ended up going for a run.

It's been a while since I've done any real exercising lately, which I'm none too happy about. I still ran for a good 11-12 minutes (which I'd estimate at being a mile, maybe about a mile and a half) which is better than most people, but I'm not happy with it. It left my legs pretty gelatinous for the remainder of the day. At least they get to be gloriously sore today. (to be clear, I'm not being sarcastic with that statement, as long as I'm not in a great deal of pain and my movements aren't restricted, I like being sore after a workout. Feels like, you know, a workout.)

Got to hang out with a lot of people yesterday that I haven't seen in years. No one I talked to seemed to be really drunk, I heard about a buddy's ex throwing up at some point, but she must have been part of another crowd entirely. There were a lot of groups in attendance.

I noticed a friend of mine smiling in conversation with someone else, and it was an altogether genuine, sweet smile. It made me happy, so I scanned the room for others, and found some.

On the bus ride home I got to tell a guy about why I dislike Olivia Munn (not neccesarily personally, just in everything she does professionally. Modelling work is fine.
I did that a lot last night, forgetting a name of something, only to have it come to me around two conversations in the future.

This feels less like a blog post, and more like something I should have e-mailed to someone. Ah well, add one more to the tally.