Corwin's Musings of Vast Importance

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[corwinneuse]

Happiest Season, A Review

“Happiest Season” is a charming if overly derivative rom-com that definitively proves the almighty algorithm can recognize what Donald Trump and his ilk have spent the last four years steadfastly ignoring: that even the LGBTQ+ community deserves a little Yuletide pandering.

Starring Kristen Stewart—better known as Bella from the “Twilight” films—and Mackenzie Davis—recognizable from that one, really good episode of “Black Mirror” your coworkers tormented you about way back when, and also “Terminator: Dark Fate,” which came out only a year ago but you already forgot existed—“Happiest Season” is one part “Meet the Parents,” one part “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” and three parts Montezuma-brand tequila, because did you see what Rand Paul said on Twitter last night?

As in all the best cinematic romances—none of which spring readily to mind, but trust me, they exist—our central couple meets, falls in love, moves in together, and starts jointly filing their tax returns all during an opening credits montage. Subtitles hopefully if not entirely helpfully denote the passage of time, as though time, dates, or seasons have any meaning in these mid-coronavirus, quarantine days. In many ways, the characters’ experience of 2020 mirrors our own: seen only in sporadic splashes of chaos and color between violent and powerful blackouts, or, as the cineast would call them, “fades to black.” When is Donald Trump going to concede the election?

Overall, “Happiest Season” leaves the impression of an undoubtedly talented cast let down by a boring screenplay, not to mention a country full of liars, trolls, and insane bigots. Jesus, I can’t even anymore.

***

[corwinneuse]

Sources Say High School Ex Still Cleans Up Well

WASHINGTON - Anonymous sources are reporting that your significant other from high school still cleans up well.

Although sightings have been inconsistent and increasingly rare over the years, recent intelligence briefings suggest that your ex is still as devastating as ever, despite the expected effects of age and time. Unlike yourself, your former crush is reportedly wise, well-adjusted, financially independent, and free of any debilitating neuroses or chemical dependencies.

“The one who got away,” as per your best friends’ description, also does not own a cat, probably travels frequently, and also does not have to pay for rent, credit card bills, or student loan debt. 

[corwinneuse]

Day 1

Awful hangover. Feels like a railroad spike has been driven into the sinus cavity above my left eye. Amazed that in such a state I can be so clinical in my literary observations. Feeling of self-satisfaction quickly replaced by pain and horror of what I’ve woken up to. Was last night real? Was this morning? I check the news for confirmation, hoping against hope that it will all have turned out to have been a hallucination, or a practical joke perpetrated by a well known celebrity illusionist. Or maybe it’ll tell me an asteroid is about to hit earth, ending life as we know it, and this newfangled calamity will startle me from this nightmare. Nope. No such luck.

The city is quiet. The dazed denizens of the Metro are unusually silent, as though everyone is in shock or mourning or both, and possibly on their way to a funeral. The same funeral.

A man a few blocks from the subway is giving away free hugs. Without hesitation I take him up on the offer. Later, I will wonder why he was there, at that specific, seemingly sleepy and random street corner, when there were hardly any other people around.

Perhaps it was providence.

As sunlight creeps into my eyes new feelings seem to extend their tentacles down my arms and back. The familiar rage; embarrassment; a certain, creeping impotence; frustration; despair; confusion; hunger; panic.

Goddamnit.

I drink more. I eat a lot, and some things I probably shouldn’t have. I want to overwhelm my capacity to feel or think with new sensations, to blot out unwelcome reality.

I try methamphetamines for the first time. Wait, hold on, that should have read “ghost pepper.” For a spasmodic second, reality twists into a kaleidoscope of trippy colors, mostly reds and oranges, like someone melted down a box of crayons and then threw the resultant multi-colored goop into a slow spinning blender. Alternately, it looks like staring into the caldera of an active volcano. And at once I am ready to embrace the abyss, to leap into the fiery inferno and let fate and mortality and the impermanence and meaninglessness of human existence swallow me whole. But then the waitress brings me a glass of milk, and I return to life, if in a lesser, more harrowed form than before...

[corwinneuse]

Wait, is this a Disney cartoon?

It's easy to lose perspective from the lofty perch of your SUV, stuck in traffic, listening to Rush Limbaugh endlessly spew hatred about "Obamacare" socialists, taxes, gas prices, and that probably illegal immigrant family stuffed into that crappy Hyundai Accent ahead of you that won't get out of your damn lane even though you're late for work and keep honking at them/giving them the finger. Yet... If you ever stopped to think, and turned off the radio, put down your phone, and basically ignored every other self-important impulse to viciously radiate your own ignorance and insecurity onto others... You might wonder, how does that fat, rich white man know me so well? How can he so eloquently put to words every petty grievance, real or imagined, that I've ever felt but never articulated aloud?

Your empty thoughts reverberate around the 79.8 cubic feet of storage space behind you, since you took out those useless second- and third-row seats that nobody ever sat in. You glance up at your rear-view mirror and see... What, exactly? All the authenticity, creativity, and joy you left behind for the shallow pursuit of wealth, possessions, the image of contented domesticity? Or just the hulking 18-wheeler idling noisily behind you? Or worse, do you flinch in terror at a face you at first don't even recognize, at the vacant eyes and sunken, stubble-shorn cheeks of a madman, of a desperate fool at the end of his rope, crushed by past failure and the overwhelming weight of unfulfilled expectations...

The seat beside you unoccupied, you spare a thought for your absent wife. The light of your life. Well, besides your guitar collection. Don't knock it! We've got a four bedroom house! What else are we supposed to put in there? Don't answer that. Anyway, were she here, could she dissuade you from this malaise, creeping up on you like the UPS truck that's now perilously close to your rear bumper? Or is she, perhaps, feeling the same thing, stuck on a train with the uncut, unclean, uneducated masses, rocketing in the other direction, towards the big city, where she'll worship a small glowing rectangle in a giant silver and glass sarcophagus, ritualistically skull-fucking her own brain for eight hours with numbers and cents and... How does she do it? How does she put up with me? Why are we married? How can we all come together to put our energies towards constructing a better world for the future? For our children. That we may or may not even have. But these are just examples of questions you've never asked.

You may have had friends once. To disagree with, to challenge you, to share both triumph and tribulation... But what would you talk about now? He doesn't have a career; he doesn't even have a LinkedIn profile. He has to worry about whether getting his mystery ailments even diagnosed properly, let alone treated, might bankrupt him. She married someone else. Might as well be dead to you. But no, she lives on in your dreams, inhabiting the life you crave for yourself, full of spontaneity and extravagance. And song. And animated sparrows. Wait, is this a Disney cartoon? Why have you been watching so much children's television?

[corwinneuse]

Walt's "A Little Poo Just Came Out" face

[corwinneuse]

[abonerforbiffy]

mfw every episode of breaking bad finishes

[corwinneuse]

Yeah I'm reblogging my reblog. Because I agree with abonerforbiffy, Hank's "a little poo just came out" face is/would be totally appropriate for the end of every "Breaking Bad" episode. 

[corwinneuse]

Every time Hank makes this face, I hear that noise...

[corwinneuse]

Rough Draft

As long as he could remember, Peter had hated hikers. Smelly, dirty, and hopelessly uncivilized, they descended every summer like locusts, eating him out of house and home, endangering his livelihood, clogging his toilets, leaving naught but death and destruction in their wake. Peter silently seethed at their stupid smiling faces, they way they seemed to revel in their own filth, the way they masked the naked pointlessness of their pathetic little lives with some foolish sense of "camaraderie." They called it "fun." They called it "participating in a spiritual communion with whatever." Peter called it a crime against nature. Or humanity, rather. Nature could go to hell.

Peter had inherited White House Landing from his father, Richard. Once upon a time, it had been the family's summer home, conveniently located as it was on the picturesque shores of Lake Piscataquisomething, just one of countless others that blotted the otherwise woefully underutilized Maine wilderness. It was, in fact, in the middle of nowhere. Peter found it impossibly boring, sorely lacking the culture and worldliness that he had come to love and expect of the big city. Portland. With its diverse population of nearly seventy thousand, its myriad microbreweries, its four accredited universities, its restaurant, and that extremely tasteful Civil War monument. How Peter longed to go back there.

But no, his father had loved the lake house so much, he quit his eminently respectable and relatively high-paying job in the lumberyard and spurred the family to move out there year-round. Richard had been content to spend his remaining days, and his rapidly dwindling fortune—if that's the right word—sitting around on the porch swing, smoking pipe tobacco, fishing with Peter's nieces, playing cards with his mother, and occasionally taking in the random lost soul, making sure they were well fed and rested before inevitably, invariably, setting them back on the right course. Peter loathed to watch his inheritance squandered thusly, on an easy life of relaxation and comfort—ridiculous!—and dreamt only of escape.

After Richard had passed, Peter wasted no time monetizing the family's remaining assets. If he couldn't go back to the city, Peter thought, he would bring the city to him. He mortgaged everything and converted the house into a Bed & Breakfast, hoping to entice those polite city folk to spend a few nights away from the hustle and bustle with a quick flight up on his Cessna 185 floatplane.

[corwinneuse]

Duet

Girl, let me paint you a picture like Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet

Um, he was naturalist, not a painter, get your facts straight

Shut up! My dick head’s gonna explode in your mouth like J.F.K.

Back and to the left--Good, then I’m taking over like L.B.J.

I’m gonna ride your dick like the waves of Chesapeake Bay

Make you drink my pussy juice like a café au lait

Suck your balls dry, put ‘em out of business like CompUSA

Then shrug you off like my civic duties on election day

You don’t even vote? That’s so hot! Like a solar array

Yeah, talk science to me, what’s the torque of a V8 Chevrolet?

I dunno, but your breasts are like the mountains, your vagina the sea

And I’m going swimming--Uhhn, I want you inside me

My little explorer is going home to your French chalet

And by chalet I mean pussy, which my vigorous essay is going to leave in disarray

And by essay I mean definition number two,

As in attempt or effort--Fuck you too

[corwinneuse]

Love Song

Boobies, I’m going to miss your boobies

And the idle daydreams about you rolling doobies

For me, and I say that when I don’t even smoke

Boobies, you’re the air I breathe, without you I will choke

And die, a little bit inside, with every passing day

Please, don’t be the one, the one that got away

Wait, did I just call you boobies? I meant to call you 'Girl'

Just thinking of life without you makes me want to hurl

Girl, I admit, I’ve jerked it to your Facebook pic

Spilled enough seed to fill a container ship

I'm sorry, was that too much? Did I just TMI?

I’m just being honest here, to you I would never lie

For example: I want to eat you out like a slice of cherry pie

But now you’re gone, and so instead I cry and cry

Please girl, don’t be the one, the one that got away

I want you, I want your love, I want it all: China Buffet

[corwinneuse]

Armed with nothing but a bag of rancid feces, Billy looked the intruder in the face. He had been cleaning out the kitty litter when the door had suddenly been kicked in. Frozen with fear, and noting with some annoyance the damage done to the doorframe, Billy found himself oddly wishing the man had known the door had been unlocked in the first place. Meanwhile, the intruder stared at him open-mouthed, seemingly as surprised to see Billy as Billy was to see him. Had he not expected anyone to be home at the otherwise totally unreasonable hour of 9:50 PM?

[corwinneuse]

Rumsfeld: I give the Bush administration a D-, Obama gets an F

You know what's a bigger threat to the very idea of the "nation state" than these supposed "jihadists" who apparently cause Donald Rumsfeld to shit his Depends® at night? Corporations. Giant, megalithic, "international" corporations who slowly erode and dissolve our cultural identities, our individual freedoms, the very fabric of the way of life we have strove and fought for over hundreds of years. First they take away our "holidays," turning them into "sales," and making us forget why we celebrated them in the first place, because "savings." Then they take away our weekends and tell us we can't even go to church, because "business needs." Unlike "jihadists," these corporations are very real, affect millions of people every day, can be theoretically regulated by law, and yet we do nothing to stop them when the means to do so is so easily within our reach. Those in power want to shift our attentions elsewhere, like to these boogeymen in foreign countries who hate our "freedoms," when the ones who are actively ruining our lives are right here, living amongst us. No more! The line must be drawn here! Here and no further! Oh, and also, Donald Rumsfeld? Go fuck yourself.

[corwinneuse]

Possibly In Bad Taste: Simon West's All-CGI Iraq War Action Thriller 'Thunder Run'

This is a weird one. Suggesting that eight years is, eh, an acceptable amount of time to wait until shamelessly cashing in on a war that's claimed the lives of thousands of brave U.S. soldiers, killed over a hundred thousand innocent Iraqi civilians, and cost U.S. taxpayers literally trillions of dollars, "Con Air" and "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" director Simon West is prepping "Thunder Run," an all-CGI, 3D action thriller set in the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"The goal is to appeal to the 'Call of Duty' world. It’s not going to have a video game world feel, but [will] have a stylized look to it," admitted producer Brian Presley in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, thus betraying a callow insensitivity towards veterans and all others whose lives have been affected by this very real, non-stylized conflict, and the skewed priorities of a man who would put profit above patriotism.

Gerard Butler, Matthew McConaghey, and Sam Worthington will "star," lending their voices and, perhaps, some motion-capture input. Which—good for them—but what's the point of having Gerard Butler and Matthew McConaghey in your movie if you can't show them shirtless?

[corwinneuse]

Inertia

Just next door, but might as well be an ocean away. No courage to walk the fifty feet it'd take to bridge the gap. Instead will sit in a contemplative sadness, imagining the gaping spaces in life could be filled by you.

[corwinneuse]

Runnin' Runnin'

He'll always run away, even if it takes him across oceans and continents. And she has no more energy to chase him. She's just going to sit down and listen to music till he comes back around.

[corwinneuse]

Remember George Clooney's speech from "Up In The Air" about backpacks and the weight of all the pointless shit we fill our lives with? Like relationships, for example. Well, duh! Of course that shit is too heavy. But he's probably got the wrong backpack, anyway. I think he held up a Jansport like a twelve-year-old schoolgirl or some shit. He needs an Osprey. Plus that relationship better be made out of titanium or balsa wood or fucking mythril or some shit. You don't want to be carrying around a relationship unless that shit is ultra-light.

[corwinneuse]

Profound words drip from my lips like shit from the ass of an incontinent dog.