Cool Story Bro.

Sunday night revelation

In the original Legend of Zelda game, when you killed all the enemies in a level’s room and a door key would appear, I’d sing in my head along with the tune that would play, “Call a key a key.”

I think my brain goes out of its way to make me feel like a jerk

Case in point—I was driving recently on a highway and I noticed that the opposing direction was jammed, bumper to bumper. Immediately after thinking that it could have just as easily been a jam in my direction, I thought:

“I guess this is what holocaust survivor guilt feels like.”

Forget it, the buzz wore off, I no longer feel sexy.

Sort of buzzed on a Wednesday. It’s been a while! I feel sexy!

Punctuation

Can there be a middle punctuation connoting a voice between those preceding a period or an exclamation point?

I was thinking about the way I write texts, and usually I default to exclamation points when I want to make sure I don’t sound the least bit unfriendly.

Because: suppose that I called you the previous night and asked you a random fact, which you told me. Today, I thank you.

But typing “Hey. Thanks for the help last night.” sounds sarcastic.

So I’d automatically write “Hey! Thanks for the help last night!”

I can tell you that 99% of the time, I’m not that excited. 

It bothers me because it sort of lacks precision. Exclamation points can also be misinterpreted in notes and texts and instant messages.

So is there anything that’s, like, “bright voice”? “Chipper”?

Two Movies Yo

This weekend I saw two movies, The Five-Year Engagement and Cabin in the Woods.

Both were very good. (I won’t spoil either movie).

The reviews for The Five-Year Engagement say that it’s too long, but I found myself totally interested throughout the whole thing. Cabin in the Woods was clever, but since I went into it having heard that it was SO FREAKING CLEVER, I ended up thinking really hard while watching it, figuring the plot out before it was revealed, and then adding an extra layer of twist which didn’t end up manifesting (but to be fair, it’s sort of implied).

But it’s also really fun to dissect, so I’d enjoy talking about the movie with people. It’s basically the Beatles’ A Day in the Life of movies.

And for some reason, The Five-Year Engagement made me feel better about long-term relationships even though it’s about a long-term relationship with a bunch of really serious problems.

Also, this poster for Cabin in the Woods is really great. I wish this was used more than the Rubik’s cube version.

Lunch

Today at lunch the subject of World of Warcraft came up. One of my fellow grad students said he used to play. How long, I asked. Five years, he said.

Then he said “I actually used to be one of the best in the world. I was in the top 200.”

Now. Before he dropped that fact he said that he “didn’t really play that much each day” when I asked how many hours. Having lived with at least three WoW fiends, who played at least 14 hours a day, weren’t ranked even regionally, at least as far as they could boast.

I rarely am happy with the way I respond in conversation, and what I said to him then wasn’t even witty or anything, but I was happy with the way it came out, since it expressed my dubiousness level appropriately.

I said “I am not saying that I think you’re lying. But you did just say the type of thing that a pathological liar would.”

After that, he didn’t try to defend what he claimed. I can’t draw a conclusion from that, though; I don’t know what I would have done if I said that and was then called on it. Would I just let it lie, knowing that I was telling the truth, or would I feel offended enough to start giving proof? Or even, for that matter, suggest that proof existed for review?

Or, if I were a former WoW player (most of whom treat their time playing like an interval of substance addiction), would I just drop the subject because I didn’t want old thought tendencies to start cropping up again?

Anyway, concerning my flash fiction from the other night: upon review, I don’t think I’ll be doing that writing exercise again. I thought that the story idea was not a bad one, but the speed at which I wrote it drove it to contrivance and randomness of motif. I mean, I haven’t even read anything by Dante. I knew what Cocytus was because of a book I read when I was 12 based on a video game called “The Dig.”

Also, I spent most of my time writing, trying to set the plot up clearly enough that a conclusion would occur to me, and then maybe the last 4 minutes revising. And rape is such an easy thing to mention in writing to get attention. Anything that I write, and eventually like, is usually won after many, many revisions, so I should work on that—it’s more rewarding for me, anyway.

Going back to the lunch time conversation: I wonder if maybe I did say the wrong thing. My usual tactic would have been to just take him at face value and move on. Taking people at face value is undervalued sometimes; it can be a gift that you willfully give. And maybe the guy just needed some kind of validation. He might have been telling the truth. And even if he was lying, it’s not like it’s an insidious lie.

Full disclosure, the below entry actually took an hour and five minutes.