Sometimes I turn captions on when I'm watching stuff on Netflix. This is partially because I like to do other things while I watch stuff. If I miss a line, I can just take a look at the script on the screen.
I've noticed something.
Usually, a caption will indicate the presence of music in a scene with a simple phrase like "music playing". I'm pretty sure that I've even seen captions that just throw a few quarter ntoes up on the screen to indicate this. Occasionally, the actual song will be stated. I just can't imagine a purpose that would be adequately served by this. Is a person with congenital deafness going to know what Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" sounds like? He might be vaguely familiar with the general concept of music, but I'm skeptical about his abilities to differentiate between the thematical forces imparted upon a film by an alternative rock song and a dubstep track.
This practice might be slightly more helpful to an individual who lost his hearing at a later point in life, but I've got to think that it would mainly just be depressing for him.
"Aw, man. I remember 'Praise You'. That was my jam in the Nineties! I remember the Nineties. Great times. Hot tunes were on the radio! 'Austin Powers' was in theatres! And I could hear stuff. Damn."
Update on 2012-12-24 05:35 by Jaymes Buckman
Bonus Question!
Best subtitle? "The True Story of a "Most Objectionable Nazi" and... half-a-dozen Cats".
I wrote this one on Halloween. It's the only song I've ever written on a guitar, but I just realised that it sounds pretty awesome on the piano too.
Alright. So. It’s Friday night, and I’m returning from a trip to the local falafel shop. Actually, there are restaurants in my area that could be more fitting bearers of the title “local falafel shop”, but sometimes vague notions compel me to travel across slightly greater distances for a sandwich. There are still a few blocks between my apartment and me, and I’m realising that I won’t actually have time to eat before I go to work.
At that moment, a man runs up and grabs me. A drunk man. Obviously.
“You’ve got to come back to my place.”
He says this to me in what could effectively be imagined in a crude Doc Brown style.
“Not now, man. I’ve got to get to work.” “Why do you have to go to work?” “I need money.” “I have money.”
He pulls out a collection of bills. “Oh?” “Come back to my place.” “What did you have in mind?” “I’ll tell you when we get to my place.”
He gestures vaguely towards an apartment across from Spadina Station’s western entrance in a way that might not be meaningful at all. I give him my card because I believe in networking even in the most awkward situations. I’ve probably given my card to people who have openly expressed abject hatred for me. The glory of Jaymes Buckman shall be restricted to none. This is a core tenet of my ideology.
“Alright. I’m going to work.”
He gives me $10 and walks off in the direction of the indicated building as I continue on my own path.
“Come back to my place.”
Clearly, I don't.
In any case, I earned half of my night’s income by doing nothing. Actually, toss that. I got it by being awesome. That’s how we’re saying it.
I always feel slightly weird when I finish reading a novel. You know how it goes. It’s that emotional investment. I always feel as though I’ve come to inhabit the thing. Inhabit. Immerse. Yes, I’ve been known to wallow. I get a sense of vulnerability when I reach the end of the final page, and this lasts until the next engagement. I’ve been striving to make this gap progressively shorter, but it hasn’t fully disappeared. I can’t really embrace the idea of reading lists. Despite the awkward interregnum that always occurs, I feel that I’m generally able to happen upon the right book for the time, and I tend to believe that any set order could interfere with that. For this reason I endure.
I just finished “The Twelfth Enchantment”, a comfortable historical fantasy. It’s a genre I regularly enjoy, and this story's timely use of Austen’s particular flavour of love triangle was emphasised further for me by the fact that I reached the end of the book shortly after I saw “Bridget Jones’s Diary”. It can often be amusing to see the revelation of the supposed scoundrel’s gallantry as the apparently chivalrous suitor is shown to be a Byronic rake, though the effect is slightly spoiled when the latter is actually Byron. Still, liberal use of dead literary figures always tickles me. I believe that this is adequately evinced by my ardent devotion to John Cusack’s turn in “The Raven”.
I’m going to take this opportunity to briefly talk about Hugh Grant again. A fair number of his roles tend to occupy the Byronic corner of Austen’s triangle, but he portrayed the real Byron in “Rowing with the Wind”, a reasonably obscure Spanish film that preceded all of those roles. That seems backward somehow. Backward or prophetic.
Update on 2012-12-10 04:43 by Jaymes Buckman
Bonus Question!
Best dead literary figure? I'll tell you after I die.
"Bridget Jones's Diary" was playing at the theatre recently. I saw that. I love that stuff. It has the whole intersection of romance and loneliness that I deeply appreciate, and it has Hugh Grant. Beyond that, there's something about the combination of a British thing that's trying to imitate Hollywood and a Hollywood thing that's trying to imitate Britain that always gets me. "Love Actually" got me through some tough times. When I was 17, I was sent to spend the end of my summer in a hospital for some random heart inconvenience that came up on me. I didn't have a lot to do. I read. That's when I tried knitting. I'd obtained a copy of "Love Actually". I'd never seen it before, but I proceeded to watch it repeatedly. It's always good. I think that a bunch of Hugh Grant films might have been on television at that point, but it might have just been "Mickey Blue Eyes". That dude just happens to be in a lot of films that soothe my soul. Total love. I was also really excited to see "Love Actually" for Alan Rickman, but his hair colour in that film seemed to sap a good bit of his charm.
My aunt also happened to be on a trip to the city from England at the time, and she told me about Alan Rickman's actions at the performance school where she taught. It basically seemed to be his own personal reenactment of Snape's actions in the final Harry Potter book that had just been released. You know that part where he takes over the school and turns it into a crazy place? It was like that. I'm sure that it was for love, though. Like that thing in the book.
I’m starting to notice the fact that the only countries that get those emergency parachute packages are the war ones. The Toronto skyline is a decent one, but it’s not a sight that has ever been dubiously blessed by flying sandwiches. To my knowledge. If I’m wrong, it’s alright because I used the phrase “to my knowledge”. If you have ever seen full picnics descend from urban skies like revelatory angels, you can feel free to correct me. No hard feelings. Honestly. I’d welcome the input. It gets very lonely here.
Anyway. The places that get the gift baskets are the unsteady ones. The ones with the guns and the mines. The mines seem to be a slightly bigger deal when packages are getting randomly dropped across the land.
Your lunch has just landed in a minefield. Are you going to take the risk? How easily navigable are these places? I wouldn’t even wander into a corn maze for a free meal. I’m not going to dodge subterranean ninja explosives for some bread and a few apple slices. Oh? There’s caramel dip? This does nothing for me.
I can’t speak for everybody. Obviously. That’s obvious. I don’t pretend to do so. I never would. I might if I were paid for it. That would be the one exception. Apart from that, I never would.
Maybe the risk is acceptable for you. That’s alright. Maybe this whole thing is a worthy endeavour for you. Perhaps the quest is a reasonable one. How do I know? I don’t. Really. There’s an easy diagnostic, though. Which is more important to you? Salami or your leg?
Again. It’s not for me to judge.
I’m just struck by the frequency with which minefields and parachute meals coincide. Is it some sort of Pavlovian thing? Are the people with the button fingers just trying to bring people around to the state of affairs where bombs are concerned? Is that what’s happening? Are they attempting to make people more comfortable with explosions? Someone’s missing an arm and a few facial features, but he got a salad out of the deal. Mines and meals! After the next one, he’ll have a missing foot and lasagna. After a while, explosions and food are just going to be intrinsically linked in his mind. He’ll salivate when he hears loud noises.
“When’s dinner?” “Oh. Sorry, dear. I just dropped the phonebook.”
On the other hand, he might just cower under the dinner table when he sees a plate of spaghetti.
Doesn't this seem moderately redundant? It's a sign on a comic book store. Do they fear that people just naturally assume that they don't sell Marvel comics? This isn't a restaurant. Comic shops generally aren't encouraged to be partisans of one company over another, nor could they afford to be. Waiters who take requests for Coca-Cola are wont to say, "Sorry. We don't carry Coca-Cola. Is Pepsi okay?" This has been known to discourage repeated visits by a fairly specific type of customer in establishments that are otherwise impeccable. It's somewhat ridiculous, but it happens. It's a scenario that finds acceptance in reality. This Marvel affair doesn't.
"Hey. Do you have any 'X-Men' comics?"
"No. No, I'm sorry. We don't carry Marvel. Is 'The Flash' okay?"
I don't even feel required to mention the giant Hulk bust in the window.
Guy Fawkes Day just passed, and I happened to hear a lot of allegations against celebrants who supposedly missed some or all of its various points.The fact that its current popularity in North America is largely built upon the masks that have become increasingly available through the phenomena of “V for Vendetta” and Anonymous produces similar arguments from adherents of both. There are people who say that the comic diminishes the revolutionary, people who say that the movie diminishes the comic, people who say that the activist group diminishes the character, and people who just think that the call for anarchy is nothing but the hyperbolic whine of the wealthy youth’s dissatisfaction with the illegality of marijuana.
I can’t really support any of these viewpoints with true conviction, but my disposition tends towards the apolitical. In light of this, it probably seems silly for me to talk about politics at any sort of length, but the only thing that could ever match my silliness is my verbosity.
In any case, I can’t doubt that V is a worthy successor to Fawkes. The revolutionary claims of both men, supposedly made in the name of righteousness, served only to justify what they did for the sake of their personal grievances.
In this sense, I believe that the mask is a perfectly appropriate symbol for the hordes of marijuana anarchists who give their own voices to enhance the immortal confusion of political discourse.
At the beginning of the spring, I started working at a job that often brought me onto the campus of the school I left in the previous year. In the middle of the summer, that job brought me into contact with someone who gave me similar work on weekend nights in the club district. I just realised that I’ve had more encounters with people who knew me from school at the clubs than I’ve had at the actual school.
When I was 14, I had some mosquito bites that resembled the Big Dipper. This came in the midst of a minor obsession with the totemic significance of the bear. In my shamanistic delusion, I welcomed the appearance of the ursine constellation on my arm.
Happiness is the warm panoply of my messianic powers. I'll get around to saving the world when it suits me.
Only the very best rabbits may wear the Bunny Hat.
I saw this really stylish dude at the zombie party yesterday. He was wearing a tight black bra, tiny shorts, and a rabbit hood from which a sharp wave of black hair protruded. His stomach also protruded, but I noticed that he had a really beautiful back. Seriously. Are back models a thing? He would be at the top of that field. That thing was sculpted from iron wax. Its contours flowed in sinewy glory, and it glowed like burnished cream. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such striking inconsistency in a gentleman’s beauty, though I have seen a fair number of mediocre guys with great hair.
I feel that the centipedes I find in the outside world seem less deliberately offensive in their abhorrence. House centipedes seem nefarious in their abominable ugliness. The former seem to understand why they have to die. They know that I can't accept them at any point in my life, and they accept that fact to be a part of their own truncated lives. They've made peace with the situation that they've become through the sheer nature of their existence. House centipedes scurry around with baleful glares and a compact aura of palpable malice. If I had any extra zeal to give to their slaughter, they would receive it. They shall learn what comes to villains who twirl their moustaches so audaciously. They shall learn it through their stupid oozing backs.
At the beginning of the summer, I lost a card holder that essentially contained all of the things I use for everything. Transit pass. Debit card. Reward cards for various places. I only managed to replace the first two because of sheer necessity. I can't say that I am always motivated to go out and acquire things, but I am absolutely awful at replacing things. If I lost all of my stuff in a fire, I'm not even sure that financial cost would be my biggest consideration. I'd be more annoyed by the effort that I'd need to expend in order to go out and find things that I'd previously possessed. It would just be awesome to have an insurance company that would take a mildly excessive amount of money to create some portal to Hell that would return all of your things. I suppose that the alternative would be some agency that just let you take all of your resurrected stuff back at no cost if you were willing to actually go out and get it. I don't think that I'd take the second option over the first. It's just difficult for me to motivate myself to do something that I've already done. I suppose that I take a while to feel loss. Why would I go out to buy something I already have? I know that I don't have it anymore, but I still have the sensation of possession. It's phantom comfort. It's hard enough to do something that's completely unnecessary once. It just gets more unnecessary when I have to do it again.
We just played a show at Duffy’s Tavern to mark the debut of our beautiful new drummer, and we’re organising stuff for the rest of the season. It’s great to be back.
In other news, the bright hours of the dawn’s approach saw me attempt to grab a smoothie before the store closed. The Spadina bus was engaging in its usual foolishness, but I was able to run down in time because the proprietor wouldn’t close it until her customers had finished playing pool. That’s why gods invented billiard tables.
Honestly. I can’t think of any other reason for billiard tables.
I was listening to the shuffled library of my music player while I was walking through the mall a few days ago. “Back In Time”, the “Back to the Future” theme by Huey Lewis, came on. After a few moments of deliberation, I decided to let it play. I do love The News. I was in the middle of the song when I passed a dude who was wearing a shirt with the newspaper clipping about that clock tower from the film. You know the one?
Do you know the feeling that you get when you have an appointment at a place that isn't actually very far? You tend to leave too late, don't you? That false sense of security. That’s why I think that homeschool would be the worst thing of all time. It would be exaggerated to horrifying degrees.
"Oh. School's in the living room. I can get there in five seconds. I could use a bit of extra sleep."
I’ve basically been working on the same corner for the last six months. I’ve had some good times. Some bad times. One thing still perplexes me completely, though.
The corner in question is the location of the last bus stop before Spadina Station. The walk between the stop and the station is essentially incapable of lasting beyond three minutes. I don’t even really know why there is a stop on that corner, but I don’t question the TTC anymore. It’s a bad road to go down, you guys.
The route was used by a streetcar until the spring, but that service has been temporarily replaced by buses because the street was in dire need of significant construction. Dire. Need.
Apparently.
I’m assuming that the drivers who work on Spadina are wholly unfamiliar with the operation of street vehicles that have actual wheels. I make this assumption because the bus service is frequently atrocious to hilarious degrees. This is true even when it isn’t forced to make detours during periods of extra construction.
Like. Alright.
I live near Bathurst Station. I like to run down to the lake on most mornings. I usually ran down Bathurst to the lake and thence to the bottom of Spadina in 20 minutes. Then I’d take the bus to work on the aforementioned corner. That ride managed to take a minimum of 20 minutes. It’s a shorter distance on a vehicle that is ostensibly capable of speeds that exceed the limits of a humanoid runner.
Toss it. Anyway!
Hilarious degrees . . . Right. I’ve seen five buses arrive simultaneously after an inordinately long wait.
But this is what gets to me.
I see people wait at that stop for significant periods of time. Many of them do it frequently enough to know that the service is seriously flawed. Some even try to sprint to the stop in the vain hope of catching a bus that isn’t even in sight.
But the station is right there!
It’s not my place to speak out against laziness. This isn’t about that. I don’t care about that. People can do what they want. On a related note, I’ve been known to take excessive measures to avoid walking in the winter. That’s really due to my inability to process cold temperatures, but it’s the same basic concept. I’m therefore able to sympathise with people who get off a bus after one stop. Usually.
But this really goes beyond laziness. If one is going to put in the effort to actually keep one’s own legs, one can walk for a single minute to get to that station. It’s usually possible for a relaxed pedestrian to arrive at the station before the bus because there are two sets of traffic lights after the stop. Beyond that, the buses are often filled to capacity by the time of their arrival at this final stop. But these people still struggle into the hot, sweaty midst of the throngs aboard the vehicles to avoid a walk that takes less time and effort than the one between the station’s bus loop and its train platform.
I can understand a fair amount of human behaviour. I don’t necessarily agree with all of it, but I can generally see why people do the things they do. Some things just confuse me, though. I don’t know why people lie in situations that attach no disadvantages to the truth, and I don’t know why these individuals get on that damned bus at Sussex. Believe me. I have thought about it. I have plenty of time for that when I’m standing at that corner. It just doesn’t work.
Tom Morello. I know that you’re sad because that weird conservative politician guy likes your music. You should be sad. You’re an artist. You do great things with sadness. I just think that you should find better reasons to be sad.
You’re annoyed because one of your fans is an idiot. You have a lot of fans, man. You’re a successful musician. Most people are idiots, though. Therefore, most of your fans are probably idiots too. That’s how numbers work.
Update on 2012-09-03 03:31 by Jaymes Buckman
Bonus Question!
Best machine? Love. You know. The one that won't work for anybody but you.
My distaste for these stems from the fact that they can be used for anything without any legitimate humour,
but that can also make them irresistible at times.
I think that I was seventeen. I was on the receiving end of one of those conversations in which an authority figure derisively enumerates various real and imagined errors that are held to be characteristic of the other individual’s apparent flaws. I can credit my mother with one thing, though. In this instance, even the imagined errors seemed quite characteristic of me. It wasn’t a terribly bitter discussion. It really just seemed to be a whimsical iteration of a familiar theme. This may explain its especial accuracy.
She described several scenarios in an effort to illustrate why my affinity for uncanny action could pose potential problems. I don’t remember many of them, but they were the usual mix of memorable occurrences and reasonably credible fabrications. I remember the last one, though. I stopped her on the spot to thank her for the wondrous idea. Coconut milk on cereal. Yes.
I didn’t really understand the inclusion of Keith Richards in the hypothetical situation, but I didn’t really bother to seek logic in any part of it. The entire concept was too appealing. I immediately put it on my list.
I had a list at the time. It was a page in my notebook. I carried around a notebook at the time. I don’t really have either of these anymore.
For some reason, this story recently came up in a bar conversation on the eve of a friend’s departure. I hadn’t actually given the idea consideration in some time. I’ve had other things on my mind. I’ll readily admit that they weren’t important things, but they were there. They take up space. Alright? My mind is one great distraction. You understand. That’s life. The world. The craze.
Instantly, the idea was met with raucous enthusiasm, and plans were made to ingest the mysterious mixture on the following day. I love Keith Richards, but I can’t afford to wait for him.
What happened on the following day?
The mixture was ingested, baby.
Let me just say that the stuff is fantastic. It did not disappoint. I used Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops with a sprinkling of Rice Krispies, and my companion inadvertently incorporated a variety of Corn Pops that contained an infusion of cinnamon. Satisfaction was found.
So. Time seems to speed up as I get older. Obviously. The speed is the obvious part. I’m hoping that I’m not getting older in any obvious way. For one thing, I already sound like an old man sometimes. People generally don’t seem to notice because I’m basically adorable, but there’s probably a portrait of me in some attic that looks like Mickey Rooney. If I actually start to look like that, no one’s even going to pretend to listen.
I’m thinking that this whole phenomenon of temporal acceleration occurs because I tend to live in the past. It’s not my primary residence or anything. I’ve made a good house for myself in the realm of dreams. Reality could almost qualify to be a second home, but it’s probably just a job. It’s the workplace. It’s not even the main one. I wander into the office for a few hours in the week, but I generally just work where I live.
In any case, I seem to fill a consistent percentage of the past with myself. Some of my time must accompany me. At the earlier stages of life, my past wasn’t very big. Therefore, I didn’t have to dedicate much of my essence and time to it. Now it has become quite large, and its growth doesn’t slow with age. Accordingly, I must give more of myself over to it in order to fill that same percentage. The expenditure of time keeps up with these proportions, leaving less for contemporary use. That’s why my time seems to be moving faster. I have less of it to experience in the present.
Update on 2012-08-20 05:16 by Jaymes Buckman
Bonus Question!
Best way to save time? Don't borrow it. The mortgage will kill you.
Loss of ability is probably my biggest fear. Amputation is obviously the most definitive type in my mind; it also entails an aesthetic trouble. I’ll admit that the whole thing with the ragged empty sleeve can look quite stylish in an errant sort of way, but I doubt that it’s worth the trouble, and it’s not a fashion that lends itself readily to formal affairs. In fairness, I’m not either. The fact that death seems relatively simple actually makes some aspects of life easier. Death is still an instinctual concern. When they’re faced with a dangerous situation, most people think, “Will this kill me?” Lesser forms of disfigurement are indeed fearful prospects, but those concepts are slightly too intricate to have any real bearing in conditions with the potential for immediate peril. Thus death is the only question. If mortal dread doesn’t occupy any prominent section of the mind, all of those circumstances become easy propositions. Death is the worst outcome, but it’s not a frightening one. The frightening ones are forgotten in the middle.
Anyway.
I have this fear, but I’m also slightly annoyed by the fact that it means that I’ll probably never get to use a mechanical arm. The necessity horrifies me, but the mechanics intrigue me. I would think that they’d be too primitive to prevent suicide if I ever became intimately involved in scenarios that actually required them, but they could provide some interest for a while. It shouldn’t be too hard to build one that attaches at the shoulder, should it? Then we could just have additional arms. It would be as though we had extra people to carry our bags, but we’d be free of all of those nasty trust issues that prevent me from letting an actual person hold my bag.
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