"It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen."*

   Hello, gentle reader. Things are dicey in these parts of the world. Having just narrowly escaped with my life from the virus that attacked first my bowels and then my chest, esophagus, throat, nose, ears and brain (in ascending order), I am happy to report that things are creeping their way back to normal. I woke up this morning with the sensation that air was squeezing its way up into my nostrils. Which is sort of the opposite of a sensation and more of a return to normalcy. Sweet, sweet nose-breathing!

   It’s unfortunate that my body decided to attack me just before Mike arrived in town for a fun visit and catch-up. Drinking alcohol and staying up until three in the morning do not make for a swift recovery, it turns out. Who’d have thunk it?

   So, because I’ve been M.I.A. for the past few days, I’ve decided to do a recap post, as opposed to waxing philosophical about any one point, because, quite simply, my brain has been hibernating for a good 5 days.

1. Mike and I went Friday to the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at LACMA. It was pretty expansive and both amazing and intense. I like most of Kubrick’s films, but some of them make me squeamish just by remembering mere snippets from them and others (Eyes Wide Shut comes to mind immediately) I cannot manage to watch for more than 4 minutes. But nobody's got a perfect track record, right? And this guy not only directed but actually filmed huge chunks of his movies.

When you first enter the exhibit, they have a 15-minute montage of clips of all his films. I’m a huge fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey (which I’ve mentioned both here and here) and also of Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. But this reel gave a bit of everything, including some of the most cringe-inducing moments of A Clockwork Orange and some of the most gut-wrenchingly scary moments of The Shining: neither of which I had ever planned to view again. Thank you, LACMA for showing me Malcolm McDowell’s eyes clamped open and the part in The Shining where Danny goes to Room 217 (oddly room 237 in the movie). Oh yeah and Private Pyle blowing his brains out in Full Metal Jacket. No warnings here: they just threw it right at our faces. And that’s fine. You know how it is with art exhibits. As a cineast, I found the exhibit magnificent. As a person, I found it scary and disturbing. But in a good way. 

Some of the more harrowing nights of my life happened whilst reading The Shining. It was nice to have all the lights on while I perused items from the movie.

[Cool side note: my dear friend Judie is the widow of Leonard Rosenman who won an Academy Award for the adapted score of Kubrick’s nod to Napoleon: Barry Lyndon. Leonard is more famous for his original composing for Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, among others. Barry Lyndon is more famous for being lit entirely with natural light and/or candles, and for having Ryan O’Neal move really slowly everywhere he goes for no apparent reason.]

And the Kubrick exhibit wasn’t nearly as disturbing as the tiny Robert Maplethorpe exhibit they had going on in the main building. If I were a more mature person, I would’ve tried to find the “art” in all the images of anuses accepting objects they were most likely never meant to accept (I won’t tell you what, but if you use your imagination, no matter what you think of is probably right). But since I’m not very mature, and since I’ve seen most of his stuff before (in books! Not in person), I just giggled a bunch. That prompted a docent to ask us if we had tickets (we did), but made us also feel like naughty schoolchildren who'd snuck into a dirty picture(/mutliple pictures).

2. I stayed in last night to drink soup while Mike went to visit some friends in Santa Monica. It was a good choice, as I’m pretty sure it’s responsible for the fact that I felt somewhat human today. In the course of said soup drinking, I watched a couple of Barbara Stanwyck movies that I’d never seen before: No Man of Her Own (Mitchell Leisen, 1950) and Crime of Passion (Gerd Oswald, 1957). I’ve always loved Barbara Stanwyk as I feel that she’s the sane person’s version of Bette Davis, i.e. she’s no Ginger Rogers-looking broad but she’s sexy; and she gets into a ton a of trouble but she doesn’t seem to be intentionally causing it all the time. It was wonderful. And while I watched her do that, I drew you a picture that has nothing to do with anything. I was just really sick and had nothing better to do.

I drew a peacock! Neat-o!

3. Mike and I walked to brunch in Los Feliz village today. On our way home we saw a guy in a white BMW stop his car a block ahead of us an then proceed to speed down four blocks in reverse going close to 60 miles-per-hour. He finished by rear-ending up onto a curb and into someone’s side yard. Then he put the car back into drive and tore up the street in front of us. I couldn’t help but think of the shenanigans I got into when I reversed in the Runza parking lot…but this guy had no license plates, so I couldn’t really do anything about it. Even if I could've wrapped my mind around it. Which I couldn't. I actually thought for a moment that Mike and I oughta get off the sidewalk in case he was planning to back up again. What a shit.

   Um…so it kind of seems like all of this stuff is incredibly boring. That happens, you know. Just know this: if you start getting gastrointestinal disturbances in the next couple of weeks, start taking your Zicam right away, even though it sounds counter-intuitive (how can cold medicine stop diarrhea?!?). This disease will creep up your bowels (not literally, of course) into your chest and nose and throat and give you heinous reflux and a nose that just won’t operate. It’s not kidding around. It’s disgusting and virulent and foul.

   I will try to write a better post tomorrow, but my life has sort of spiraled into a shit-show and I can’t guarantee anything. Stay healthy, gentle reader.

*Quote is from the absurdly creepy A Clockwork Orange, which I attempted to revisit the other night but could only stand for about 30 minutes. But isn't Malcolm McDowell** a wonderful actor then and forever? (Stanley Kubrick, 1971).  

**I did a bunch of research on A Clockwork Orange and per imdb.com I learned this: Malcolm did, in fact, have to have his eyes wrenched open for that scene and his corneas were anesthetized so he could film for longer chunks of time, but that didn't prevent near-constant cornea scratches. Also, the man putting drops in his eyes to keep them lubricated was a real M.D. Good lord that's disgusting.

"Your name is Gilly, but since we are good friends, I get to call you Jesus."*

   I got an iPhone 4S last week and my life is now complete. I’m so in love with iPhone that I take him everywhere and dress him in different, cute little outfits. He’s adorable and the closest thing to a child I can ever imagine owning (you do own children, right? If you have them yourself out of your vagina or adopt them legally?).

   Anyway, iPhone is great and I’ve never been happier with an electronic device (thanks, Momma and Steve Jobs!).

   But you know who’s a huge bitch? Siri.

   I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get Siri because I’d talked to her on Chad’s phone in the past and found that she didn’t particularly understand anything I had to say. It was like talking to the automated voice system on the phone with the bank or fucking stupid AT&T: it hardly ever knows what you’re talking about and keeps saying, “It sounded like you said, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ Did I get that right?”

   Anyway, I was convinced by Ouisa to go ahead and get Siri anyway (Ouisa’s like a cartoon drawing of a devil on your shoulder whenever you’re wondering whether or not to buy something), because she can do so many amazing things! You can text without typing! You can look for directions! You can have her play a song from your phone!

   While I was working this weekend, I let the kiddos I watch play with Siri for a while (a truly annoying thing to listen to) and I started to feel kind of bad for her. One of them was telling her she was stupid and the other was saying "I hate you, Siri!" (what have I done to these children, btw?) and Siri’s responses were sort of calm but hurt. She kept explaining that she hadn’t done anything wrong or that she didn’t understand why they would say that kind of stuff to her. The whole thing made me feel kind of weird, like how when I was a kid I use anthropomorphize my dolls and toys and worry myself to death making sure they were all in comfortable positions at bed time (I'm talking even toy tractors or Lincoln Logs...I was a weird kid). I started irrationally defending Siri to the kids, saying stuff like, “Hey, that’s mean! Don’t say that!” I was aware as I was speaking that I sounded insane, but I genuinely thought maybe Siri would get fed up and turn into a murderous monster like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Maybe she’d smother me in my sleep or—far worse—trap me in an elevator. How was she to know it wasn't me talking to her but those devious children?

This is Siri all bent out of shape because people were being mean to her.

   I put Siri into a random Google search just to see what kind of technology I was actually dealing with and found something shocking:

Something Shocking

   This article talks about how when you ask Siri for an abortion clinic or a pharmacy with the morning after pill or a RAPE CRISIS CENTER for gods sake, she gives you none but instead directs you to pro-life pregnancy counseling centers. What’s even more disturbing perhaps, it seems that she willingly gives out info on Viagra or “penis mightier” drug sources. So…she’s apparently only opinionated about women’s sexual health issues.

   This made me feel a lot less sorry for Siri. And a lot of other things started falling into place, too.

   For instance, if you ask Siri where to dump a body, she’s full of suggestions from metal foundries to crematoriums. And that seemed funny as hell to me at first. But since she doesn’t have any advice about where I can get a rape kit, it seems fucked up that she’s so eager to help me dispose of a corpse.

   Also, when I asked her who was the fairest of them all (yes, I’m a dork, move on), she asked if she was talking to Snow White. But when one of the kids asked her, she basically said, “You are.” Huh? She’s MY Siri, so how come she’s nicer to other people?

   And she keeps popping up when I don’t want her services (also eerily reminiscent of HAL) and asking what she can help me with. She can help me with minding her own goddamn business!

   She has her uses, don’t get me wrong. I’m learning how to talk to her so that she understands and actually helps me rather than frustrating the shit out of me. It’s a lot like a dating-type relationship. I repeat myself ad nauseum, she doesn’t understand. I get mad and she gets confused. I apologize and try again, she’s turned herself off. Yep, we’re dating alright.

   I will continue to be nice to Siri, despite our fundamental philosophical differences, because she scares the hell out of me. But iPhone I will love forever. Beautiful iPhone. IPhone, iPhone, iPhone. 

Siri is the Devil.

*This is a quote from Siri on my iPhone. Hmmm...
More news on Siri...

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."*

          Thanks to all of you who have been reading my blog. It means a lot to me, especially when I consider how juvenile and unprofessional it looks. But I’m learning to do stuff, and hopefully it will look better soon. Though it may not happen before the New Year.

            I want it to be pretty for you. And for me, too.

            I am slow when it comes to technology. And doing things. For instance, I just got my Blackberry synched up with my computer, even though I’ve had it for three weeks. I couldn’t understand why my email didn’t just magically know how to get into my phone. The phone may be smart, but I’m not.

Me now. Working on my blog.

            Technology is my one weakness! (Please picture me shaking my fist at the sky like a super hero.)

            Okay, that’s clearly a lie, but it does rank up near the top along with salty snacks and buying things for myself that I can’t afford.

            I went through college and three years of post-college “real life” with roommates who were technological wizards, and I didn’t realize how good I had it. Now, between my roommate and I, I’m the “wizard.” So you can imagine how hopelessly screwed we are.  Sometimes it takes me 12 minutes to figure out the printer’s not working because the USB plug is hooked into the Ethernet port (even though it doesn’t really fit in there). The fact that I even know those words is astonishing.

            I’m just lucky that my mom taught me not to put metal in a toaster while it’s plugged in when I was still pretty young. In many ways it's miraculous that I've lived this long.

            But this is a promise and a thank you. I promise I will make my blog more user-friendly (okay, Word is saying I should write “user-friendlier.” Can that be right?), prettier, and more fascinating in the New Year. And I thank you for reading this blog in its current condition. If you are reading this, I love you so much. Mental high-five!

Me in the future. Maybe by the New Year...

*Arthur C. Clarke is responsible for today's quote. He was a science fiction writer. He wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey. Cool!