This is one in a series of custom blogs I’m doing for my facebook friends. I asked if there was anything they wanted me to blog about, and I’m writing a post for each person that answered.

Melanie said: I miss your movie reviews.

Melanie and I used to work at Blockbuster together, so I’m not actually sure if she means the movie reviews I used to give in the store or the movie reviews I have written here. They are very different. I think because I’m not surrounded by movies all the time anymore, I can’t give the kind of review I used to be able to. Back then, I could say something like “If you liked ‘Do the Right Thing,’ and ‘Waiting to Exhale’ but you thought it needed more ‘Big Momma’s House,’ The Madea movies are for you.” Customers loved them. I had fun too. I honestly wish I had more time to be on top of movies anymore. I talked about going to see more movies in my post about things to do when Ben is working. He’s not on the crazy schedule yet, but I have a feeling I know which activity will come to the top of the list.

As for movie reviews, I do not disappoint:

THE AVENGERS

This is the best superhero movie I’ve ever seen. “But Marina, I thought you loved Batman, and I don’t see Batman anywhere in this film, I mean it’s not even the same publish–” THE FUCKING BEST. I know what I said, and I know what it means to my one true love, Batman.

It means he has to lose the gravely voiced scarecrow and bring back Michael Keaton. “Dark Knight, what can I say, you’re not the same man I fell in love with.”

Actually, I first fell in love with Adam West Batman, but his time is passed and I think we all know we can never bring back that level of magic. Not with all the shark repellent spray in the universe.

One thing Avengers was missing: man ass. Man anything, really. For all the clothes changing that superheroes are required to do, all I got was one brief shot of Mark Ruffalo thigh and chest. Not nearly enough to satisfy my porno fueled brain. Come on, guys, we live in the age of broadband. You’re gonna have to be a lot more naked if you want my 10 out of 10.

Will I see it again? Hell yeah. Let’s just say that you’re not an American if you don’t see this film. It’s everything we stand for: Hot dudes, marketing, and begrudging alliances based on mutually assured destruction.

THE RUM DIARIES

I rented this thinking that it would be Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with more hair and better costumes in front of cuter extras. I was sort of right.

The film, for those who don’t know is an autobiographical fiction about Hunter S. Thompson’s early career, his journey to find his voice as a writer, and his purpose as a man. In the sense that everything is fucking beautiful in this movie, my anticipations were correct. In the sense that this would be like Fear and Loathing in any way except that they are two stories ostensibly about the same man, I was wrong.

Where Fear and Loathing is madcap, funny at parts, and infinitely tense, Rum Diaries is slow and meditative, bordering on navel gazing. If I didn’t like Hunter S. Thompson so much I would have been bored. Fortunately, I love Thompson, I think his writing style, his diction, and his vision are amazing. I appreciated seeing this earlier, more relatable version of him, trying to find purpose in a purposeless world.

Watch this if you’re a Hunter S. Thompson fan, or if you appreciate casual period films about drunks in tropical climes.

If you would like to get in on this kind of awesomeness, be my friend on facebook and post a response next time I ask for blog ideas!

This is one in a series of custom blogs I’m doing for my facebook friends. I asked if there was anything they wanted me to blog about, and I’m writing a post for each person that answered.

AmHam, who happens to be the prettiest princess I’ve ever met said: The world is not ending after-all: Found: The Oldest Maya Calendar

First of all, I don’t know how much I want to trust Time Magazine after the eye raping horror that was this weeks cover. Getting past the creepy things pretty women do because someone forgot to tell them that attention from men doesn’t equal intelligence, let’s consider that this is actually a legitimate news source and not just a clown college gazette at this point. Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh on Time, it’s just that I’ve always wanted to call something a Clown College Gazette. Well, not ALWAYS always, but at least since I first wrote that phrase roughly 15 seconds ago and I’m not deleting it now, were too damn far away.

As a fully actualized, educated Mexican American woman, how much do I care about the achievements of the ancient Maya? This much:

But believe me, the weight of how much I should care is hanging onto my shoulders like an overfed zoo gorilla. So, in the spirit if lessening my stress levels: Oh, they did math? That’s cool.

Alright, look: I’ve never cared about present day math. What makes anyone think I’ll care about elderly math?!

Math has never done anything for me except make me feel really, really stupid for at least an hour a day for every living moment of my scholastic career. Oh, and when I was a math tutor, I guess it did earn me about $20 an hour. So, at least I got a little payback for my misery. Still don’t care, though. I tried, but I couldn’t.

That ‘end of the world’ crap is the best thing that’s happened to the Mayan calendar, because if it weren’t for that (clearly unfounded) intrigue, no one else would care about it either.

If you would like to get in on this kind of awesomeness, be my friend on facebook and post a response next time I ask for blog ideas!

This is one in a series of custom blogs I’m doing for my facebook friends. I asked if there was anything they wanted me to blog about, and I’m writing a post for each person that answered.

Emily asked for: The rise and fall of nyan cat.

To get into character for this blog, I drew a little nyancat of my own.

Why are the Nyancat’s back legs longer than it’s front legs? I guess shit gets weird when you live on a rainbow shooting through space.

Then I watched this, because… you know… space.

I guess since you’re all from the Internet, I don’t have to say that Nyancat started life as Pop Tart Cat when the 8-bit animation was first created by Chris Torres aka prguitarman, on April 2, 2011. Pop Tart Cat was Tumblr famous (Tumblamous) but didn’t become Nyancat until three days later when youtuber saraj00n posted Nyancat, which was Pop Tart Cat with a Japanese vocaloid song looping in the background, which, of course, looked like this:

According to Know Your Meme, the video got over a million views in it’s first two weeks. Because, damn it’s catchy. And adorable.

There was a short little period in June 2011 where everybody thought PRGuitarman had made a copyright claim against the video and had it taken down. So, of course he got death threats, which is uncool you guys, especially since he didn’t have anything to do with it and youtube put the video back up the next day.

I don’t know who I’m talking to in that last paragraph, I don’t really think my readers are the death threat type. But you never know. It’s always good to say that death threats are totally a bummer and nice people don’t make them (unless they really mean it-in that case it’s just honesty.)

Anyway, Nyancat hasn’t so much fallen as faded from our collective obsession like the crazy go-go social media high-jumper it was. On that note, I leave you with this.

You’re welcome.

If you would like to get in on this kind of awesomeness, be my friend on facebook and post a response next time I ask for blog ideas!

Click here to check out my latest article on GearedforGamers.com!

In 9th grade, I moved to a new town and started at a new school where nobody knew me. I only had one friend, a redheaded senior from San Francisco. We intentionally spread a rumor that we were lesbians who had run away to Glendora, where our relationship would be more accepted. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Glendora, Ca, but it’s major exports are Meth and cops. The first time I heard a beaner joke was in the Ralph’s in Glendora, and the person who told it to me was the checker. Tolerance is not their strong suit. But that doesn’t matter because my fake girlfriend totally dumped me after she got some other new friends who were not interested in hanging out with me at all. Turns out, I’m a little weird. Who knew?!

Anyway, I started hanging out with more people myself, and ended up attached to this small group of band geeks, one of whom, I thought should come out of his shell. He was probably 90 lbs soaking wet and had crazy Christian parents who did things like disprove of mixed-gender group projects. Or something like that. I felt it was my duty to rescue this poor soul from his obviously oppressive household. My inexperience with search and rescue operations betrays me at this point because my game plan was mostly to talk about sex and drugs and to pick him up a lot. Why I thought a 15 year old boy would want to be picked up bodily by a strangely dressed (let’s face it, probably weird smelling) cursing girl, I don’t know. Maybe I thought I could shake the Jesus outta him, set him free with flight.

Well, he started to avoid me. Probably, I thought, because I made too much sense. That’s cool, I’ll just continue to yell his name and pick him up when I see him between classes. He’ll see how much fun it is to be free from the oppression of overbearing uprightness. Like me. I’m free, and I’m picking you up! Isn’t this fun? Let’s talk about boobs and sex!

Around about junior year, I hadn’t seen my little buddy in awhile, so when I did, I enthusiastically launched into my traditional greeting… and he punched me in the chest and yelled “STAY AWAY FROM ME!” That was the day I realized that he probably didn’t appreciate being picked up by a girl. Also the day I realized that I might have some boundary issues. Don’t worry, I’ve worked on that.

Turns out, not everyone wants to be free of whatever I want to be free of. Some people like to be quiet, and us loud, physically engaging people are kind of ruining that for them. After the hitting/yelling incident, I tried to be nice to that kid, I worried I had made high school less fun for him by trying to ‘help’ him. He didn’t seem interested in being my friend, so I dropped it.

Whatever his memory of our strange and physically domineering relationship, I don’t know. I sometimes wonder what he thinks, if he even recalls. He might not. Especially with bullying in the news, I do think back on my strange adolescent perception of friendship and wonder how I had any friends at all in high school. Thankfully, I’ve managed to keep around a few people who knew me from that time despite the fact that I was kind of a stinker. Then again, in our own way, weren’t we all? That kid did punch me in the tit, he’s not completely innocent.

So my amazing boyfriend is going to be stuck at work pretty much every waking for the next month, and I’m pretty bummed about that. He’s already been working a lot of overtime and coming home really late for the last month, but it’s about to get worse. At least I’ll get conjugal visits on the weekends.

So, to cheer myself up, I decided to make a list of things I could do while he’s a work to keep myself occupied and my mind out of the sad sack.

• Go to the movies
  Being a former film student, Ben hates the movies. He’ll tell you he doesn’t, but he never wants to go, unless it’s a super hero movie. As a former English student, I reserve all my hatred for novels and totally love the movies. So while he’s working, I can go to the movies by myself, which is something I’ve always really liked to do.
• Clean the house
  He’s slaving away at work, I might as well be a little bit productive over here on my end, right?
• Practice my ukulele
  My hipstrument has been sorely neglected. I like playing simple chords and singing familiar songs, especially when there’s no one around to be disturbed by the terrible racket of me trying to play and sing at the same time.
• Get back on top of the blog
  I like to have at least 5 blog posts in the can and ready to auto-publish on any given day. Currently, I have one (this one.) I’d like to rectify that
• Get back into regular exercise
  It seems like this year has just been a string of reasons to not go for my jogs, or do any regular exercise beyond a simple walk around the block at work. Foremost of which are sickness and stress. Lately when I get home from work I’m just too tired to imagine doing anything. I finally went back to the gym Friday and Monday, only to get an epic sore throat that lasted all day Tuesday and Wednesday, and is only starting to feel less unendingly terrible as I type this on Wednesday night.
• Get back on a regular sleep schedule
  Since Ben’s been getting home late, I’ve been waiting up for him to get home at around 10 p.m., having dinner with him at around 11 p.m. and getting to bed at around midnight, after which I tend to have insomnia the entire night while he snores away peacefully at my side. If he won’t be getting home till even later than that, I won’t be able to wait up for him and I can set a more reasonable bed time and hopefully sleep through the night. Although getting to sleep without him and also not waking up when he does come home are both pretty tall orders.
• Eat boatloads of raw fruits and veggies
  Ben cooks all our food because I am a culinary disaster zone. One of the things I can do is cut up fruit, veggies, and cheese. So when he’s not making the food, that’ll be my diet, which I quite like. Although I’ll have to go buy something if I want meat, since that requires heat.
• Play Hip Hop and Hardcore Over the Speakers
  What can I say, my boyfriend’s a Weezer fan.
• Finish playing Mass Effect 3 with my two other Shepards
  The only Shep I’ve played through all the way is my first Shep, who I call Black Shep because she’s black. White Shep and Gay Shep (also obvious reasons) are still at various stages in ME2 and 3. At first, I was going SPOILER: use each one of the Sheps for each one of the three endings, but now that I have subscribed to Indoctrination Theory, I’ll be destroying all synthetics and winning the game right. I can see that the spoiler highlight didn’t really do anything to hide what I just wrote. Sorry, I don’t know how to fix that.
• Take a class (this is a link, click on it)
  Actually, the classes going on right now are not interesting to me at all, and the classes I did sign up for both start after he’s back on a regular schedule, but I thought this was really cool, so I wanted to include it in case you guys were interested in free ivy league classes.

What other by-myself stuff can I do? What do you do when your SO is gone for a period of time?

“I love being a grown-up.” “Me fucking too!”

I’m only 27, and a lot of people would still consider me very much a young one. But I’ve picked up some tricks in the last 9 years of legal adulthood that I think might benefit the average reader. Feel free to add your own tips and tricks in the comments, as I am sure I missed quite a few.

• Speak English (or whatever language you speak):
  The ability to articulate ourselves is one of the most amazing and underused human talents. Chances are you speak the same language as whomever you’re dealing with. Take advantage of that! Want something done or not done, say so! Like somebody? Tell them! It’s not that hard, just open your mouth and talk in a respectful manner at a reasonable volume. Other people have a right to speak in plain English as well, so don’t be freaked out when they have things they want or don’t want or have to say.
• Dress the Part:
  It took me a long time to realize that people couldn’t tell who I was just by looking at me and talking to me for a few minutes. I had to give them some hints. If you want people to think you’re competent, dress like a competent person would dress. Showing up at an office job in a shitty outfit broadcasts to people that you don’t care, and that is the opposite of what you want to do if you actually care about your job. If you actually don’t care, stay as you are.
• Be Polite, Even to Assholes:
  When talking to someone I dislike, I try to imagine someone who’s opinion I value walking into the room mid-conversation. If the newcomer wouldn’t be able to tell who the jerk is, than I need to tone it down. It doesn’t always work, I have a legendary number of foot to mouth situations in my lifetime, but the image of someone else viewing my conversation from the outside often keeps me on the straight and narrow. Where I still get into trouble today is trying to be polite but also speak in plain English. It’s very hard for me to tell someone I’m upset in a calm manner and draw boundaries when I’m upset. Which makes it fortunate that English is a 24 hour language. So I can tell them later, when I’m better.
• Sleep, Food, Exercise and Fun are Essential:
  Without these things in quality (not necessarily quantity, although that’s usually a good bet as well) life ceases to have meaning.

What are your Adulthood Tips and Tricks?

A Picture of me at the Culver City Farmers Market last year.

Our friends have a condo in Culver City, and since they were going on vacation last weekend, they offered their house for Ben and I to use for a little staycation. We showed up on Friday night, but it was so late we did little more than feed their cat and go to sleep.

Saturday morning we woke up and decided to walk downtown for breakfast and The Avengers. We ate breakfast at Rush Street. They were setting up for Cinco de Mayo so there was a lot of activity around, but the service was OK, and the food was good. The again, what can you really do wrong to an omelet and pancakes. Well, they did forget one of the three ingredients in mine, but the ingredients they did include were very high quality and delicious. I would go again if I was in the mood for some straight up American fare served at a trendy bar for a decent price.

After that, we went to see The Avengers, which, let me tell you is amazing! The fights are well choreographed and wonderfully shot. The dialogue is totally summer action movie perfect, everybody’s hot and everything works out amazingly, especially the comedic timing. After we walked out of the theater, Ben asked me “what do you want to do now?” In real life, I absolutely said “turn around and see it again.” Sadly, he thought that was a bit too much, so we wandered around and then headed back to the house.

For dinner we watched reality TV and ate pizza we ordered from Abbot’s. It was delicious, and since we don’t have TV at home the reality TV was particularly fun. We watched a show called Oddities that features the staff of an antique shop in New York that sells human body parts and antique medical gizmos. Every single customer interaction is completely staged, to a painful degree, but it was cool seeing all the weird and freaky shit they sell. Also, the terrible acting was amusing to me.

On Sunday morning, we cleaned up and went back home totally relaxed, feeling great about life. The Culver City staycation was a complete success.

Another article is up at GearedforGamers.com, go check it out.

BioWare: Please Pretend Indoctrination Theory Was Your Idea

When I was 14 I went on a trip to Europe with my crazy over-privileged private school (here’s another, terribly forced story I wrote about that). While we were in Italy we of course visited the Spanish Steps, which everybody wanted to run up. Well, everybody but me. Let’s just say that I am in much better shape at 27 than I was at 14.

So there I was at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, with every person I knew in the whole entire country 138 long steps away. It was about 2 in the afternoon, tourists were milling around everywhere, so I wasn’t really worried about being by myself. While I was waiting for my friends to come back, a street vendor started toward me. The tourist areas in Italy are covered with these guys, they sell key chains and lighters mostly. None of it is branded, it’s just random junk, but people buy it so they can say the bought something in Rome (or wherever.) So one of these guys was walking towards me with something outstretched in his hand. As he got closer, I saw that it was a little rubber monkey. Fascinated with this performance, I didn’t really notice that he’d walked straight up, holding the monkey in front of my face. Suddenly, he squeezed it and a little rubber penis shot out at me from under the monkey’s loincloth. At first, I jumped, but then I laughed until I noticed that from monkey penis squeeze to ‘oh!’ to “haha” he had been rhythmically squishing my right tit in his hand. The entire time I was focusing on the monkey, I didn’t even notice his hand on my breast. MY OWN BREAST! The worst part is, I had no idea what to do about it so I stared at him until he decided he was finished and then he gave me the monkey and waked away.

It’s almost worse that he gave me the monkey.

Although, if you think about it. Tourists were probably paying about $10 a pop for those things, at a time when the minimum wage in America was $3.75. $10 for 15 seconds of boob squishing isn’t that bad. That’s almost 250,000 a year.

Yeah, it’s still not worth it. That guy was pretty gross. Also, his boob handling techniques were crap. You’d think someone as old as he was would have picked up a thing or two. I suppose the type of guy who magic trick sexually harasses young girls on the street in broad daylight in exchange for a monkey key chain isn’t the type of man who thinks about the woman’s pleasure a whole lot.