South Park
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Rant
I watch South Park, not “religiously”, but certainly avidly. I’ve always been a fan of Matt and Trey’s ability to lampoon anything and still make it funny. There are some episodes that I don’t care for too much, but if any of them come on, I turn the channel or turn off the TV.

So I’ve been watching the new season, and there has definitely been a change of tone in it from their previous seasons. The seem much angrier and I guess that’s understandable, considering what could be seen as betrayal from several sides, what with Isaac Hayes quitting and Comedy Central pulling episodes. So, on the off chance that Matt and Trey would ever see this web page, I offer this advice:

Matt and Trey,
I’ve been a big fan of South Park for several years now. I’ve enjoyed watching you poke fun indiscriminately at anyone and anything that you felt like. I think it’s great that you have your show to be your soapbox for all of your ideas, but there’s been a change. During this last season, it doesn’t seem like you’ve been having as much fun with South Park. Some recent events might have made you bitter, and I can understand why. If you aren’t having fun right now though guys, why don’t you take a break. Give South Park some time off, let things turn back to some resemblance of normality, and then pick up where you left off. This is something it seems like you guys have done in the past because you enjoyed it. It seems like you’re not enjoying it as much now. If you are, great. If you aren’t, then figure out how to get it back to that enjoyment, or maybe take a break. Whatever you do, I’m sure your fans will support you.

As far as everybody else goes… Isaac Hayes, you hypocrite. You sit there and do nothing while South Park makes fun of Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism, and a bunch of other beliefs that people may have, but the pick on Scientology and now you say that some things shouldn’t be made fun of? Give me a break.

And to all you people who whined and complained and got an episode of South Park pulled… What the hell is wrong with you idiots? Is your TV smarter than you or something? Do you not know how to change the channel or shut the damn thing off? If something is on TV that bothers you, DON’T WATCH IT! If you sit and watch a show that you find offensive or morally wrong or anything like that and then call to complain, I think that the person who answers the phone ought to be able to laugh in your face, because your TV is apparently smarter than you.

Trey and Matt said it about as bluntly as possible in the “Family Guy”/Mohammed episodes (during which, by the way, Comedy Central censored an image of Mohammed giving a football helmet to Peter just before showing George W. Bush and a bunch of people defecating on the American flag while Jesus defecated on G.W. and the flag). They said either everything is fair game, or nothing. Me, I go with everything. And even if they do find one of the very few things that would offend me, I can still turn off the TV.

A bad start
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Rant
Okay, so here's what's been up. I've been really bad about blogging, as mentioned before because the net police at my job have decided that blogging isn't something that a person can do at work, even on a break, which I guess could be understandable, if it weren't for the fact that I'm doing it on my time then, which I think is alright. Ah well, I guess it does no good to worry about it really.

I was on a break from work from about the 16th until now, which was nice. 11 days of relaxation and decompression. Working technical theatre is difficult because there is a tendency for there to be longer periods of very little work interspersed with short periods of frenetic activity, some days which run up to, oh I think my longest recent one was 17 hours. So usually, by the end of a quarter of school I’m pretty wiped out, which was doubly true for this last quarter because the week before our play went up this time, I had a conference I had to attend, which made coming back and trying to finish up for opening a very stressful period.

Combined that with the fact that in the middle of our run, one of the music instructors had an interactive jazz concert with streaming video on the stage where my set was (which I had to make disappear as best I could without actually taking anything apart), and last quarter ended up being very stressful. So the break was much appreciated.

Cut to today, about 10 minutes after I get here, as I am sitting down and trying to find my place after my time off, my supervisor walks in with four pieces of news. One I already kind of knew about, which was my overtime for part of the last quarter hadn’t gone through. This isn’t a great thing because I had been expecting it, but it’s also okay, because now I will most likely be getting a bit more money than I was thanks to that discussion.

The second thing I was told is that because he spoke with the head of human resources, I most likely will be not able to direct a play this quarter. Conflict of interest, inability to pay someone on two different pay scales (they say they’d have to pay me as faculty if I directed). This was of course the start of a downhill trend in the conversation which has ruined my outlook on the rest of the day/week, if not the rest of the quarter (My bad quarter started on March 27th at 9:00am, yours?).

Of course, this ruining of my day/week/quarter has already made me ruin one other persons day, and I might possibly be ruining a few other peoples days. It’s kind of a crap situation. If I don’t tell some people some things, then someone else will, and they’ll either be mad that I wasn’t the one that told them, or if I do tell them they’ll be mad at the information still. So I’m in a lose/lose situation there.

I won’t go in to the rest of the stuff that’s going on, but suffice it to say, out of four things my supervisor spoke to me about, only one ended up being a good thing. I’m sure I’ll figure it all out and everything that I’ve been working on will come out alright, and hopefully the way I want it to.

I could go on with this if I wanted and be all pissed off and rant on and on about this stuff, and depending on how tomorrow goes, I may well decide to do that then, but I think I’m going to be done for now and try and put it behind me.

Lousy Goddamn Conferences
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Rant
Sometimes emoticons let you down, I had to choose "irritated" for my mood, which is not how I feel. How come there is no emoticon for "Totally Pissed Off"? I hate conferences, or maybe just the one I'm required to go to yearly. I spend a week surrounded by fake sincerity, acting, and bullshit. Hooray. So why so I go? Well, a couple reasons really.

First they need me to drive part of our group to it, since the other people who could drive are scared of any vehicle over sedan sized, while I spent over a year driving a 13 person passenger van (it was a Ford Chateau... yep, so damn big they just called it a house).

Second, somewhere along the line someone noticed I am not a very social person. Not their problem, but they decided that sending me to this damn conference to be surrounded by bunch of people I wouldn't want to meet in the first place might encourage me to be less shy and stand-offish and more social. Screw that. All these damn conferences do is make me dislike people more.

I guess it needs more explaining than that. I don't hate people (all the time), but I do hate crowds. I won't introduce myself to people, but I am happy to talk to them if they start a conversation with me, unless the person is stupid or fake, in which case I do my best to ignore them. Well, almost everyone at this damn conference is stupid and/or fake, so I don't like hanging out in public areas.

These damn conferences are also a real self-esteem booster for me. Like I said, I don't spend a lot of time in the public areas, but I do go out there some to try and spot friends, and I catch some sometimes, I hang out for a bit usually, but then they'll say something like "I'm gonna go do/check out/see real quick, but I'll be back in a bit." or "Hey, I'll give you a call, we'll go get dinner.", etc., etc. So I kind of wait around a bit and no one ever gets back to me. Stupid damn people, stupid damn conference, I hate this crap, and I'm glad I get to go home tomorrow to see the people I know are going to be genuinely happy to see me (my wife, and my cat, who is, at least in her own mind, a person).

Posted by Wolfen at 10:59 PM PST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post

Goddamn country music!!
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: Rant
Okay, so I worked an event last night in my theatre. It was a singing contest, American Idolish, except without the talent. At first I was pleasantly happy because the event coordinator had told me that there was only going to be one country singer.

Let me explain... someone screwed up when they made the states. Western Washington and Western Oregon should have been one state... something like "It never stops raining-ton" while Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon should have been somehting like "No matter where you go you'll still smell the cows-berg". Unfortunately for me that means I am in the middle of country music land (also spanish music land, but for the purposes of this entry, I'll ignore it).

I hate country music, so suffice it to say that I was pleasantly suprised to hear there was only one country song scheduled.

Here my friends is where my evening got all shot to hell, it turns out there were four country songs on the agenda... one gospel country, two(three if you count his sound check) from some guy who was way impressed with his own singing abilities who spent his time trying to see how close he could have the microphone to his mouth without actually deepthroating it, singing loudly enough to distort the sound and make it all fuzzy.

Now you'd think he'd take the crown of the king of bad country for the night, but no, there was something worse. Some jack ass decided he was gonna sing the Beatles song "I Will" as an accoustic country song. He lucky I wasn't back stage or I would have grabbed his guitar and beaten him with it until me and my two other techies were tired.

Oh, and the gravest injustice of the evening... there was a guy there who sang a mariachi tune, and he kicked ass. He was intense, we didn't even need to mic him and we could hear him more clearly than any other contestant. And who won? The singing orgasm. Some girl who played piano and moaned. Hell, this guy wasn't even in the top three.

Oh well... we gave him the techies award... ummm... he just doesn't know that we did... so yeah..

A quick rant against Dubya
Topic: Rant
I am not political. I guess I already reasoned this out in a previous post. It's here somewhere, find it if you want. Here's my beef with Dubya, although it has lost its prominence recently due to all of the scandal and implosion happening in the White House recently.

Remember the whole gay marriange issue? Dubya wanted to create a constitutional amendment to specifically ban gay marriange in the US. That has always bugged me, but I hadn't really thought about why until today (assuming I guess that Bush is an idiot and I don't like him so that's why I though his plan was stupid), it hit me as I was working.

Marriage is not a federal institution. States don't even have to recognize a marriage from another state. They do out of courtesy basically. It really not realistic to make people remarry if the move to another state, so the states just basically agree to honor each others marriages. So the federal government doesn't enter into it, why should they try and regulate it?

Heck, even the states don't need to regulate who gets married as far as I'm concerned. A marriage is a choice of two people who love each other to declare their desire to spend the rest of their lives together (ideally, or anywhere from the rest of there lives to the rest of the night in reality).

Who are we as a people to say that we have a right to control what other people do? Why limit other peoples freedoms because they don't believe the same as you? Greater diversity of cultures and beliefs gives us more knowledge about ourselves and others. Isn't it kind of shooting yourself in the foot when you decide to not allow people to diversify?

I don't know if I'm saying this the way I want the way I want to, but I guess this gets my thoughts across as best as I can right now.

P.S. Succeeding really looks weird as a word...

One of those days
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Rant
Ever have one of those days where everyone seems to know what's ging on but you? I'm toatally having one of those right now.

I've been getting pestered for the past couple days about an event that's going on, of a type which I regularly work on (I'm basically in charge of all the events in the theatre where I work), but this one as far as I knew was not going to require my presence.

Now, let it be known that according to all of the information I had, including official forms, I was right, they hadn't booked a room in my theatre and there was a rehearsal in there to boot.

Apparently, however, an understanding was reached that wasn't communicated to me, great, fine, I don't need to know these things, all it does is make sure I look like an idiot for saying that no one is supposed to be there from what I've heard and also sucks three hours out of my life because now I have to be there.

Here's the part that pisses me off though. I am the person most effected by this. The event is in my building and I have to be there if it happens, right? Well shouldn't I be in the know then dammit? How the hell do I get left out of the loop on this? Between this and some of the other crap I've had to deal with today (and the fact that The Kingdom of Loathing is still down until like 8/8:30ish tonight, it's enough to put me in a foul mood for a while.

A quick P.S. to this post, while I was writing this the damn internet went out too, WTF?

KoL woes
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Rant
Arrrggghhh, my favorite free game is offline for at least a day! The Kingdom of Loathing is an awesome free browser game with a unique art style and a great sense of humor. If you've played any MMORPGs then you'll probably start laughing when you read the character description for the "Seal Clubber". If you're not a MMORPGer then you might actually have to start playing the game (but maybe not).

I've gotten several of my friends to play this game and I use it to pass the time when I am bored or not too busy. It is great.

And now it's offline for at least 24 hours! Noooooo! How will I cope... well at least partially by blogging apparently.

Ah well, guess I can make it through a day without it. But they'd better have it fixed today... 2 days? I don't know if I could cope.