New Things #101-103: various, random, things. (count all of the unnecessary commas!) (at least one!)

I am so annoyed at my computer and I so want to be asleep right now, but my annoyance at my computer is so much greater than even my desire to be asleep, which is really great, it’s a really great desire, it fucking is, I mean, really, truly; but, see, here’s the thing: I wrote about half of this blog entry already and then my computer froze and I lost everything I wrote and now I just want to go to bed, but I also don’t want to give up, so I’m writing this post again, but I’m going to write it entirely differently, yes, okay, yes, I’m going to embrace the fact that I lost the whole entry, I’m going to let it wash off of my back, or whatever that phrase is, and embrace the “new,” since that’s what this whole blog is about anyway, and while I’m at it, I’m going to lay claim to a new freaking attitude and hope I can keep it up.

Therefore, New Thing #101: I have accepted that my computer is a piece of shit and I’m never going to complain about it ever again. It is what it is. It does what I need it to do. Most of the time. Which is: it lets me type a whole bunch of words and it saves ‘em. And it does that really, really well most of the time. And most of the time is fine. Maybe if I start loving all of these technological gadgets that I’m always hating on because they’re always breaking on me—maybe if I really embrace them—then maybe they’ll embrace me back and they’ll stop breaking. It’s worth a shot.

Wow, okay. So: I love you, technology. And I will continue to love you through thick and thin in the hopes that maybe—just maybe—one of these days, you’ll love me back.

I’ve done several New Things this week, but I haven’t had time to blog about them so I’m going to try to play a little bit of catch up right now.

New Thing #102: I went to an Art Opening. Now, okay, yes, I have been to countless art shows and exhibits and everything, but until last weekend, I had never been to an actual, honest-to-goodness, Art Opening, with wine flowing and random celebrities gawking and gallery owners putting little red stickers next to pieces of art that have just been bought. It was my friend David’s show (okay, actually, a fourth of it was his show) (but it was his show, if you know what I mean) (and if you don’t, well, then I mean that his photos were the shit) (and if you’re not hep to the lingo, when I say that they were “the shit,” I mean that they were really fucking good) (and if you’re sitting there at your computer right now thinking, “is Erik on crack? who doesn’t know what ‘the shit’ means?” well, first of all, I’m not on crack, and second of all, I’m certain that SOMEONE doesn’t know what ‘the shit’ means, and I’m tired right now, so give me a break) (a fourth of the show was Viggo Mortenson’s, and his photos were really striking, but David’s photos were, like I said, “the shit”) and even though I had previously seen all of David’s photos in his book Skip, which is where the photos in the exhibit were from, they were even better in person, mounted, large, both haunting and inviting at the same time, which is a kind of weird combo, but I think it’s a good way to describe them. Part of me wanted to crawl inside the photos and live there, while another part of me was very happy to be standing in an art gallery, sipping on free wine and pretending to ignore Viggo Mortenson to my left and Helen Hunt to my right. Unfortunately, I couldn’t ignore Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I know that her real name is Emma Caulfield—because when I get obsessive about a TV show, I know enough to know everyone’s real names—but I also get obsessive to the point that, even though I intellectually know that she’s Emma Caulfield and she just wants to look at David’s photos in peace—there’s another part of my brain where she is so totally and completely Anya, and I want to go up to her and tell her that I’m really fucking mad at Xander for being all we-just-saved-the-world happy in the last episode of the series instead of (AND MAJOR SPOILER ALERT, IF YOU’RE COMPLETELY BEHIND THE TIMES AND YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, WHICH I KEEP ACCIDENTALLY TYPING AS “BUGGY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER,” WHICH SHOULD TOTALLY BE A SPIN-OFF, BUT I’M DIGRESSING AND IT’S NO GOOD WHEN I DIGRESS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE I THINK IT STARTS TO HURT READERS’ EYES AND I DON’T WANT TO DO THAT BUT I FORGET WHAT I WAS SAYING, AND, UM, OH RIGHT, IF YOU HAVEN’T GOTTEN ON BOARD THE BUFFY BANDWAGON YET, THEN SERIOUSLY, WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU, AND I’M ABOUT TO SPOIL SOMETHING FROM THE LAST EPISODE AND YOU’VE BEEN SO FULLY WARNED IT’S NOT EVEN FUNNY) being totally devastated, which is what Xander should have been after Anya so abruptly got her head chopped off—which is actually the one thing that I am really mad at Joss Whedon about—because I understand that he was trying to have this moment that was really quick in the last few minutes of the series where one of our favorite characters suddenly gets killed in the middle of battle and it was supposed to be a statement about how shit like that happens in war and you don’t even have time to mourn necessarily because you’re in the middle of it and it’s awful, but how fucking dare you kill my favorite character and then not let the guy who was supposedly in love with her have even one second of being sad about her death? Wow, I totally didn’t mean to go off on this right here, but I am really glad that I didn’t approach Emma Caulfield at David’s opening because I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted to hear my diatribe. Even though it sums up as “I loved your character! Sucks that she died!” I should probably break this paragraph up into multiple paragraphs right now, but at this point, I think I’ll just leave it. Speaking of fictional characters who I have an unhealthy attachment to, at one point during David’s art opening, my friend Ingrid (not fictional) came up to me and said that Graham Chase (fictional) was inside the gallery. I was like, “no fucking way.” And she was like, “way.” Except we didn’t really actually say that, but I like to think that we did. (And that reminds me of my favorite moment from the third season premiere of The 4400—there’s this moment when the NTAC agents, Tom and Diana, are talking about this potential terrorist who they’re trying to track down and while they’re talking about him, he calls their office, and Tom’s like, “it’s our guy on the phone,” and it’s a supremely coincidental moment, and Diana’s next line of dialogue is “no way,” and I was watching this with Jessica and we both burst out laughing because we started to imagine the one of the writers being like, “it’s kind of coincidental that the suspect calls them while they’re talking about him,” and then one of the other writers being like, “let’s have Diana mention how coincidental it is and then the audience won’t be able to fault us for this moment of great coincidence because we’ll have acknowledged it,” and then the other writer was like, “yeah—she can say ‘no way!’” I love The 4400. Even when it has really cheesy moments like Diana exclaiming “no way!”) Anyway, if you don’t know who Graham Chase is, well, he’s only Angela Chase’s dad, and if you don’t know who Angela Chase is, well, she’s only the most fascinating and real character ever to grace a television set, but whatever. So Ingrid was like, “Graham Chase is here!” And I was like, “Tom Irwin?!!? Really?!?!” (Because I’m good with the real names like that.) And she was like, “really.” And I got really excited and the thought of seeing him at the opening was even more exciting than the thought of seeing Anya at the opening because, in all honesty, I see Anya all the time, and I’ve never seen Graham Chase. But somehow I missed him at the gallery. I believe Ingrid—I believe that he was there—but our paths never crossed.

After the opening, several of us went to a restaurant that might have been named Hal’s or it might have been named Harold’s or it might have been named Hell’s, but I can’t really remember, and really, does it make any difference? No. While we were waiting for our food, we started to play a game that we invented (New Thing #103) (I should actually give “invented by” credit to my friend Thyra) (but I’m still claiming it as a New Thing because I’m really behind on New Things and I certainly had never played the game before, whether I invented it or not) called “What are you miming?” The game is fairly basic. Basically (that’s really lazy writing of me to end a sentence with the word “basic” and then begin the next sentence with the word “basically,” but by talking about the fact that I was being lazy just now—by highlighting it and therefore entering it into the discussion as a point of debate—am I actually being not-lazy?) (Or am I being just ridiculously too-tired-to-backspace lazy?) someone starts to randomly mime an action. They shouldn’t announce the fact that they’re miming anything. Part of the game is getting other people to realize that you’re miming something, at which point they say “what are you miming?” (Hence the name of the game.) And then you continue miming that action until they get it. Oh, and even though we never explicitly said this, I would say now that one of the main rules of “what are you miming?” is that you mime something very detailed and specific and elaborate.