Stratovania

I recently wrote a post on Tir na n'Og for my WordPress blog, and it struck me that the Internet is a lot like one of those fairylands where time flows differently. I can look at stuff online for what seems like a few minutes, and it turns out to be a few hours. I guess it isn't quite as bad as when I played The Sims, which was made even more confusing by the fact that the game had its own internal clock. Anyway, I've been checking out some new Tumblrs, as well as revisiting ones I already subscribed to, quite a bit in the past few days. I seem to look at a lot of pages with pin-up pictures nowadays, which kind of strikes me as a hobby it would have made more sense to have when I was single. Not that married guys never ogle other women, but shouldn't it be unnecessary at this point? Even though bethje has said she doesn't mind me looking at other girls, and she's pretty vocal about what guys she likes, but I still can't help feeling a little guilty. And I wasn't even raised Catholic! I must admit I'm a little envious of couples like my Tumblr-friends SamuraiFrog and Becca, who appear to share a love for pretty girls. In fairness, the only time I went to a burlesque show and a strip club were both with Beth.

Beth is actually away today, seeing Elton John in New York and having an actual social life with our friends therealtavie and Stephanie. I'm kind of jealous, but I didn't really have the desire to go running off to New York on my two-week break between classes. Besides, I like Elton John, but I'm not the fan Beth is. Seeing him live three times was enough for me. Honestly, I'm kind of gotten over concerts in general, which isn't to say I won't go to any more, but I'll almost certainly attend less. I still have fun while I'm there, but all the waiting and the crowds just get more and more overwhelming as I get older, and it's not like they were any picnic when I was younger either. While years of crippling social awkwardness have made me someone who's fine entertaining myself, I do sometimes wish I had more of a social life. But I don't know how to meet people, and everyone I meet online who seems cool lives far away. Honestly, I'm not really even sure how to socialize online. I used to use Instant Messenger a fair amount when I was in college (that's how Beth and I first became friends), but I don't seem to have the energy for it now. Don't let that discourage you from contacting me if you're interested, but keep in mind that I'll probably have about a hundred other tabs open (I'm only slightly exaggerating here), and might be a little slow to respond. I don't know that people use IM anymore anyway, and I haven't yet tried to figure out Skype.

No new Simpsons tonight, but Bob's Burgers was funny, and I liked the parody of Dumbo's pink elephant scene. That sequence really was creepy, wasn't it? As for Family Guy, it had some good moments, but I think it was one of those episodes that simply used an old cliché rather than doing anything to make fun of it. That's been disturbingly common on that show recently. And now, well, I should probably go to bed before too much longer, but I probably won't. Beth and I both stayed up really late last night, and while I went back to bed after dropping her off at the bus terminal, I didn't get a full night's sleep. Since I didn't get up until the evening, though, I'm not tired now. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we don't have a regular sleep schedule! Oh, well. At least I only work four hours tomorrow, and Beth has the day off, so I don't have to take her. So in the end, it doesn't really matter a whole lot, does it?

Okay, so, cartoons. I actually found the Simpsons episode to be pretty good, even though the ending was a bit abrupt. That's pretty much par for the course these days, though, isn't it? I do wish they'd done more to work the subplot in with the main plot, but they were both pretty funny. And is this the first time we've seen Gerald (the unibrowed baby)'s mother? I think there was some speculation that his father might have been Leopold, Superintendent Chalmers' assistant who was introduced around the same time and quickly forgotten about. The Family Guy episode wasn't that great, but the jokes based around Jerome being the stereotypical cool black guy were amusing, and I liked Quagmire's rant to Brian near the end. It does seem like they've made Brian more of a jerk in recent years than he was in the show's early days. Mind you, I've also seen it suggested that Brian has become a self-insertion character for Seth MacFarlane himself, so maybe there's a bit of self-mockery (or perhaps mockery of Seth by the others writers) in there. I did watch the Cleveland Show and American Dad as well, but I can't think of anything particularly constructive to say about them. I do wonder why they chose to use My Morning Jacket as the band that Stan became obsessed with, but for all I know they went through several others before finding a group that would agree to be on the show. I can't say I know much about the band; it seems like they were a hot item a few years ago, but they've since largely gone off the radar. But then, I don't exactly keep up with the latest in music news, so maybe that's just my impression.

Also, happy twenty-fifth birthday to Scarlett Johansson. Because she totally reads this, right? {g} Seriously, though, she's someone on whom I actually agree with the makers of the Hottest Celebrity lists. She seems to have particular appeal to nerdy guys; I remember one magazine calling her a "brainy bombshell," and Darius Whiteplume had a post on her possible nerdiness. Not sure how accurate that is, but even though the opinions I've heard on her album of Tom Waits covers weren't particularly positive (I've never heard it myself), it kind of strikes me that you'd have to be at least somewhat geeky to even know who Tom Waits is.

( And I guess I should augment this with some pictures. )