DAY 18

Milwaukee, Wisconsin
April 30, 2009
Thu 11:38 PM

dvd in the player... hamlet two. hamlet dos. hilarious movie. i recommend it if you haven't seen it. here i am, lying in bed... blogging. wearing a beater, red shorts, and black socks. i look hot. if i threw on some sandals i'd have a standard whitetrash uniform on. right now there are previews showing, preview for milk. a movie i very much want to see, i think its a very relevant movie nowadays. i gotta say, of all the social issues in america today that one strikes at my heart the most, that some people want to put others down and treat them different for being who they are. i don't like that. gay, straight, we should have the right to live our lives. indifferent, like me. ok, not completely true, if i had to pick a side i'm definitely straight, but i just don't desire a romantic relationship. i love being single. but that's my right, and if two adults in love want to get married, i say let them. it shouldn't matter if they're the same sex. two consenting adults are not harming anyone by being gay. it's completely beyond me how some people are so against what others do. people should be judged on how they treat others, not who they're attracted to and who they love. if you think its immoral, then don't marry someone that's the same gender as you. but why stop others? i don't know, this issue just pisses me off, i can't at all see the validity of the other side. most issues i can, i can see why some people are for or against things, but not this issue. people like to say that america is home of the free... but not if you're a homosexual. in that regard south africa is freer than america... south africa! a country that allowed apartheid into my lifetime (and i'm not old by any means) is a step-ahead on civil/humans rights, whatever category you want to put this under, than america.

enough of this, i don't want to spend the rest of the night angry. all because i saw a preview for milk. the movie is starting, man, such a good movie. right now they're in the mexican restaurant... seriously this movie is great. it has an original story, but it does make fun of all those inspirational teacher movies- mr hollands opus, dangerous minds, stand and deliver... you know what i'm talking about. such a funny movie, hamlet 2... Go see it! there have been so few comedies that i find funny recently. if it stars will ferrell... pass. all his movies suck, the one exception being elf. other than that his movies are crap. same can be said about almost all movies starring owen wilson, vince vaughn, ben stiller, and anything done by judd apatow. its just not funny. its all sex based, raunchy, filled with loser characters, ackward, filled with random lines that have nothing to do with the story- if there even is one. these movies have no good story, a comedy needs a good story. i'm not saying that any of the above can't contribute to a comedy, i mean, i'm not a prude. but if sex jokes are all you got, its not going to be good. there must be a good story too. i guess i'm a traitor to my generation... i should be devouring these movies like the masses. good thing i'm not really, frankly my dvd shelf is already full... full of not-so-recent comedies. the birdcage, wayne's world, tommy boy, beverly hills cop, beverly hills ninja, clueless, major league, blast from the past, so i married an ax murder... and many more. i miss chris farley and mike myers (when he made good movies). none of these films were made later than the mid-90s. its a good thing my parents never kept me from watching pg-13 and r movies when i was younger, otherwise i might've grown up not seeing these classics. and if that happened, i might think that those 'comedies' made today are actually funny. a travesty! now, i do own a few recent ones, but those are few and far between. i miss the tv, movies, and music of the 90s. so much better. but i'll take the hdtv, blu-ray, and mp3 players of the 2000's. 2000's... there's gotta be a better name than that. is there an official name for this decade? the nils? the naughts? i don't know, but i don't wanna have to say "the two-thousands," that's too long. i can't believe this decade is almost over, next year will be the fourth decade i've lived in... that makes me feel older than i am.

i think i was born too late for my personality. i accept the fact that officially i'm in generation y, or the millenials... or whatever. i just like the media and culture more of the gen x's. i accredit this to the fact that i looked up to my cousins on my mom's side when i was younger. i worshipped them, and they're all gen xers. i listen to grunge and hip-hop, i enjoy the movies of the 90's, and i'm independent and self-sufficient (at least i try to be). unlike everyone else in my generation. but, i will say, cut gen y some slack on this front because its not our fault we were scheduled every minute of every day from the age of 5 to 18. and its not our fault that the cost of everything is skyrocketing and we're all in massive debt, and as such, our parents have more stake in our financial lives because they have to help fund it longer than in the past. generation debt, that's another name of my generation, and its fitting. this reminds me of something i read in the break room one day a few years ago working in the bindery. it was a printout of one of those stupid forwarded emails, and at the top it said, for all the kids who were born in (and survived) the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. ok, i get, its not for me. but i read it, and here are some of the things it said (i just found it doing a Yahoo! search, something i'm better at than all those kids born in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s)

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were backwhen the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn'thad to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

after reading this i instantly had the urge to grab a pen and write at the end, "no, but you grew up to become the parents, doctors, lawyers, cops, and politicians who ruined it for us." what, you think my generation was born weaker and less-resilient? you think we couldn't have handled all that you did? in some of these instances, we never had the chance. and i especially loved the one about parent's bailing out... is that my generations fault? are you not those bailing out parents? of course you didn't need parents to bail you out, you could get away with more than we can now. and for the record i did my fair share of bone breaking and head splitting... and there were no lawsuits. i rode my bike (without a helmet, i might add) to friends houses and we played made up games with sticks and tennis balls. kids are kids, the difference is the adults in charge, and what they let them do and not do.

back to the generation thing... according to wikipedia i (as a member of gen y) should be tech-savviness, family-centric, achievement-oriented, team-oriented and attention-craving. the first three i'd say yeah, but the team-oriented and attention-craving could not be less accurate. introvert. that's me. i like to consider myself a member of the mtv generation versus generation y. the mtv generation overlaps the end of x and the beginning of y. and, again according to wikipedia...

The MTV Generation (known as the Much Music Generation in Canada) is a term sometimes used to refer to (middle and upper class) people born between roughly 1975-1986, a generation whose adolescence and coming of age is perceived to have been heavily influenced by 1990s era popular culture in general and mass media in particular. Their early psychosocial exposure to these factors is thought to have been unprecedented and resulted in a peculiar, homogenous youth culture defined by a deep appreciation of the fashion trends, perspective, attitude and music popularized by MTV and similar media (Viva, Triple J etc.) that rose to prominence in the late 1980s. Also note that "[w]ith the proliferation of technology, the internet, beepers and cell phones have become social lifelines for this generation. They are technology savvy, independent and resourceful."[1]
In the Generations theory of William Strauss and Neil Howe, it can either be seen as a cusp between Generation X (1961-1982) and the Millennial Generation (1983-2001)[2], or as a separate generation or wave similar to Generation Jones.[3] Biologically they were born during the upsweep in birth numbers of the baby bust between the babybooms of 1946-64 (the Census Bureau classification of the baby boomers) and 1987-94

tech savvy, independent and resourceful... i'd say that's me. screw that teamwork and attention. so i was born in 87... close enough, and i was born in the beginning of 87... not to mention the fact that i am the youngest in my moms family and near the youngest on my dads side. so, everyone i looked up to and emulated was very much mtv generation or gen x.

it's kinda a cool time to grow up, i think. but i'm biased. i got to experience life before everyone had a computer, fortunately i didn't have to live in that stone age too long. everything now is wireless, digital... i remember analog formats such as vhs, tapes. technology has really changed since i was young. and i know, right now i'm gonna break my rule regarding talking about work... but, a week or two ago i had a couple come in and ask if we sold vhs rewinders. remember those? because the vhs player wasn't fast enough. we never owned one, but i knew people who did. what a foreign concept now with dvds. i politely told the customers no, and they got really upset. "Well, you used to carry them." And in my head i'm saying, 'yeah, and i'm sure we also used to carry laserdiscs, get with the times.' but of course, you can never say what you're really thinking to a customer. go buy a dvd player dude. we actually still carry vhs/dvd combos, and people buy them. c'mon, we already carry dvd's successor... get over the vhs tapes already people.

i'm really glad i grew up when i did because i've experienced every video game console... from atari to playstation 3. i feel bad for younger kids, they think they know games and they don't. forget call of duty, pitfall was my first adventure game. swing across the crocodiles...

ahhh, my damn ear is ringing now. tinnitus, i think its called. this is driving me insane. i'm going to the clinic tomorrow, swine flu be damned... they better treat me. this must be my head telling me i should get some sleep. damn, i wanted to put songs on my walkman tonight. who am i kidding, i'm completely lethargic by the time i get home from work. i love how ambitious i am earlier in the day, but then i actually get back to my apartment and i cease caring and do nothing. nothing except blog. so i got that going for me, which is nice.

salbrent