Oh Lord, I've Been Bad

Movies
If I've been anything this past week its a lazy old pirate. I know that it's "bad" to download stuff off the intranet, but I'm broke and the temptation is just too much. Anyhoo, I've spent a lot of time catching up on movies. So here's my small movie review section.
Wanted-Overrated, not much plot and what little of interest there is has to be held up by a gimmick of "bending" bullets. Jolie carries the movie and McAvoy is the most annoying protagonist ever. I was rooting for him to die.
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian-Much better than the first one. It was a pleasure to watch. The closing Regina Spektor song was great.
Meet the Robinsons-Cheesy but enjoyable. Might be more acceptable to watch if your under 13. I liked it. Sigh.
Golden Compass-Not true to the book, disappointing special effects, but the little girl was fun.
Willow-I just had to watch it after I found it on youtube. I love Willow. He's adorable.
I tried to watch the new Indiana Jones and Steven Gould's Jumper (I loved the books), but I couldn't make myself watch them. The Indiana Jones movie I turned off in disgust after the first 15 minutes when Indy found a Roswell alien, hobbled around like a cripple before performing superhuman stunts, and survived a ground zero atom bomb blast by shutting himself in a fridge. Ridiculous. If I wasn't already watching the damn thing for free on the int. I would have demanded my money back. Steven Gould's delightful young adult novel became dark and twisted. Hayden Christensen ruins everything I've ever loved. Thanks George Lucas for validating this no talent hack and ruining the defining movies of the space opera genre and opening the door for him to ruin other loved franchises. Whew.
Hancock-It was stupid but fun. A mindless summer movie with only a small percentage of the laughs that the trailer implies. It did have an enjoyable score.
Them-I remember watching this movie in a hotel room when I was a kid. At the time it scared the crap out of me. Watching it with Emily the other night made me realize how cheesy it is. But the movie is still fun so I recommend it.
Finally two movies that were amazing. First, The Prestige. I never saw it when it was in theaters, but I sure wish I had. It was completely enjoyable and made me want to do some magic. And of course Wall-E. Beyond being the best movie I've seen in years, it totally lived up to all the hype that I had put on it. We went with our new neighbors Ryan and Stacy and they seemed to like it too. I only cried a little at the end. Promise.


Just a thought, but how amazing is Wikipedia. I find that I use it as an extension of my own brain. I know that sometimes information is wrong, but hell I'm wrong about things an awful lot of the time. The sheer amount of information available to us vie technology really blows my mind. I had a conversation with Ryan at work the other day bout how technology seems to blend and merge and create these amorphous lines of overlapping applications. Things seem really amazing even though sometimes they really aren't. Like the apple air computer. Why would you even need that as an internet device if you had a new iphone? The fact that my gameboy can get me online and my computer can edit movies and my phone can send text to other phones (so I conveniently don't have to have a conversation), sometimes this stuff makes me a little awed. Sort of how I have to remind myself that this is the 21st century. How crazy is that?

So my favorite band right now is the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Emily and I had a chance to see them at the fun 4th celebration held in June (I know, its weird). They totally rocked. I managed to get some vids of them rockin'. Here's my fav. It's the end of "Viper Mad."


Here's the Carolina Chocolate Drops rockin' some more. The dancin' is my fav.


There's lots of big news that I keep waiting to post anything about but that increasingly seems rather silly so here goes.
-I have a new manager at Starbucks. She seems really cool and all the partners like her. I'm really happy we got someone who "fits" in the store. Hopefully it stays that way.
-My friend Ryan and his chica Stacy are getting married this weekend. Congrats guys.
-Emily is leaving her job and going to work at UNCG. She starts grad school in the fall and they offered her a GA position so she took it! I'm mighty proud of her.
-The newest addition to the family is Cornbread (named in honor of his color and my fav CCD song). Cornbread is a holland lop and is the cutest little rabbit that ever lived.
I just finished reading John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. It's really good, but Steinbeck left off before the end. Does anyone who reads this (aka Ian) know if I should check out a translation of Mallory (if so, which one?), or should I just read The Once and Future King and be happy with that?

Also, I'm currently reading Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. What an absolutely fantastic book. I know that I'm jumping on the bandwagon with this a little late, but I can't get enough of it. I've already ordered her other book even though I haven't finished this one!

I think I want to be a writer again. I've read so many short stories in the past few months that I feel like I should be a pro. Unfortunately reading a lot does not make you a great writer. It helps, but not that much. Here's a short story I wrote for my Eng. class last semester. Give me a B will you? Ha! Look who's published a story (on the internet, but whatever). Take that professor!

If Thine Eye Doth Offend

by J. Paddock

I never really minded Toby's second eye, even though some of the other kids made fun of him. I think he minded it more than anyone. I know his mother used to tell him how great it were to have two eyes, and see twice as much. No one else seemed to think that way, including Toby. His remarkably shaped ocular bone seemed to just melt over the bridge of his nose, parting like water and leaving two pools of sight on either side of his nose. When the other kids would condescendingly peer down their noses with their perfectly centered eye, laughing, I would reach over and pat Toby's hand. They was always around, always talking about Toby's eyes; but for the most part I never even noticed it.

Toby and I'd grown up together in the same neighborhood. While the other parents warned their children away from Toby, mine never seemed to care. They were always too busy with themselves. It seemed like we spent hours underneath the oak tree in his backyard swinging on the tire swing in the hot wetness of summer. If it weren't for me I don't think Toby'd ever have a girl bat an eye at him. His mother was always crying in the bedroom; that is, when she weren't too gratifyingly trying to pamper me. I suppose it were 'cause I'd come play with her boy.

Thinkin' bout it now, I was the only kid Toby did see outside of school, and even there they only spoke to hurt, out of spite or cruelty. My parents were always yelling; at each other, me, the world. I came to Toby's just to get some damn silence now and then. Toby was always good for that. He never spoke a word out of turn. When the other kids in the hallway would walk past, lashing out with an elbow or a harsh word, stepping on Toby's heel to make him trip, I would pick him up. So I guess we kind of comforted each other.

One time one kid painted an eye on each cheek and covered his real eye with a hat. He said he were a freak like Toby and the other children laughed and laughed. They laughed even harder when they saw Toby crying from both his eyes, leaking tears down both cheeks in symmetrical lines, until tears of their own began to fall in the normal, even, manner; rolling gently down to hang like a diamond on the end of their nose before plummeting to the floor. I told Toby not to let it bother him, but I might have laughed a little myself, so he didn't talk to me for three four days. It weren't my fault it was so funny.

I'm not sure how long it was that we didn't talk to each other because that's when it started to get real bad at my house. My mother was always yelling and my dad was always slamming doors. I don't think there were this much racket when the dinosaurs got wiped out by the comet. After a day or two of WW3 amongst themselves my parents began to take it out on me. It was awful. It seemed I couldn't do nothing right. The way I breathed seemed to offend. In the end I just sat and stared straight ahead while they yelled at me from both sides. I wondered if that's what the world was like for Toby. People coming at you from both sides, relentless in their noise and fury and insistence, wanting from you what can't be found in themselves. Flooding you with themselves till it seemed there couldn't be anything at all left of you. For a second there I think I understood why Toby was always so withdrawn. He knew that one were MUCH better than two.

After that it seemed that my parents were always at me or at each other. I managed to slip through the cracks at home and at school, barely noticing what lay ahead of me or my surroundings. It seems forgivable to have been that wrapped up in myself. Even though I didn't talk to Toby much no more I felt I was maybe mentally closer to him than ever. Maybe I should have known that he was as desperate for change as I was. Change. Any change at all was what I needed. I suppose I should have guessed that he would find the answer first. He had been dealing with two and the problems it raised for much longer than I had.

I walked in at the end of it. The other children said later that nothing new had happened, just the same old teasing. Then Toby picked up his knife and rammed it into his right eye. How odd it seems to write that. His right eye. When I walked in it was already over, Toby keening at the table, blood and viscera all over his gray plastic cafeteria tray. Children watched in rapt attention, standing or kneeling on their plastic chairs looking for all the world like predatory birds, hawks ready to swoop. They were silent for once as Toby entered their monocular club in the most violent way he could think of. Teachers were already rushing in and gathering him up, but not before he raised his head from his hands and the keening turned into a fierce cry of something primal and awful, whether it were victory or pain I certainly coudn't say. A tiny drop of crimson hung from the end of Toby's nose showing that he finally had gotten something right, even if the color were a little off. The nice thing about tears and blood though is that on the tip of your tongue they taste almost exactly the same.

As they escorted him out, with gore splattering his sweater, the sweetest Hallelujah of the soul entered my body and exploded like light from a bulb. Toby had told me what to do. Standing over his deserted table where his forsaken eyeball lay trailing blood like some sick swollen slug, I knew. I picked the knife up off the floor, and wiped the blood and goop off on my skirt before I slipped it into my pocket. If there was one thing that Toby had taught me it was that one was always better than two.

And if that weren't true, then at least it got one some silence.