random quarter

one. the supremely idiotic green bay packers cut graham harrell. i am supremely unthrilled.

two. i do not like the dallas cowboys. they are not, as they would prefer you believe, america's team.

three. the only time i would watch idiotic green bay or arrogant dallas is if the cowboys were going to thrash the packers. and that's a huge if. HUGE. bigger than that circus of a stadium.

four. i don't understand the fascination with gerard butler. the man is not hot. at all.

five. generally as a rule, martial arts movies are so stupid. the whole thing is choreographed and specially effected. and yet men are as addicted to them as junkies are to crack.

six. generally as a rule, i detest tom cruise. but some of the films he's made i love. that he's in them is somewhat of a detracting factor. and the whole time i'm watching him act, i'm conflicted. because he does well, but i don't like him. like the last samurai. it's a good movie. maybe even a great one. not because of him. he's good in it. not great. ken watanabe is great.

seven. i am addicted to minute maid's cherry limeade juice. mom bought three cartons of it the other day. i am halfway through the last one.

eight. i've met folks like nora roberts, richard marcinko, earl campbell and cheech marin. of those cheech is, of course, my favorite.

nine. i didn't vote in the last presidential election because i'd forgotten i was registered to vote in behar county rather than montgomery. but i doubt my vote would've changed too much about the election results. from what i recall, obama didn't win texas. yeah. i just checked it. i'd say mccain won my grand state by a million more votes than obama. too bad he couldn't've won the nation that way.

ten. i bought an aggie corps sticker for phineas. my older brother was in the corps. in the fish drill team and was the guidon bearer for trident p-2, his unit, his sophomore year. he got kicked out, of course. got busted for hazing. badly. a fish dared to touch the flag on his watch. it shames me to say it. but prior to this, i was proud to watch him toss that rifle and march into kyle field. i prefer to look to that than the other. i prefer to say that i'm proud that my brother was a member of that corps for a time.

eleven. i hate guns. i wish they didn't exist.

twelve. bows and arrows are so much cooler. some of my favorite scenes in films involve them. like the scene in the last samurai in which nobutada assists with katsumoto's escape. at least the first of it. and the scene in king arthur when the knights of the round table are on their way back to england and are confronted on a rather wide frozen river by a rather sizable group of saxons and the only way the english can save themselves is by shooting a bunch of arrows at the saxons and making them close ranks which causes the ice to crack under the weight of all those soldiers' feet. so the saxons end up retreating, and the english get back to the other side of hadrian's wall. so much cooler than shooting at each other.

thirteen. sometimes my father is such an overbearing, intimidating, stubborn, manipulative, hypocritical, argumentative, monstrous pain the ass. of course, i'm exactly like him, so what does that say about me? and my mother bitches at me because i don't handle things the way she thinks i ought to handle them. the woman heaps on guilt like those catholic priests who lash themselves ... and that crap about no one can make you feel inferior but yourself? it's crap. the woman knows just the buttons and when to push them.

fourteen. having said all that, i love my mommy and daddy. a lot. seriously. because my mommy does things like bail me out of special education classes and my daddy ... my daddy.

fifteen. my younger brother's closest friend called me hypocritical the other day. it didn't sit well. it's not sitting well right now, either. i try very, very hard not to be that way.

sixteen. today, i am about a thousand different shades of bored. not that i don't have anything to do. there's this humongous pile of laundry sitting in the corner. there's that closet to muck out. and the desk. there's that list of a hundred and one things i've to accomplish in less than a thousand days. there's the damned novel to write. and those oscar movies to watch. and those banned books to read. i'd much rather sit propped up in bed typing.

seventeen. my favorite soundtrack composers are alexandre desplat, james horner, thomas newman, rachel portman and hans zimmer.

eighteen. there's a picture of my sister-in-law, a woman we consider to be a sister, and i (that's three women, if you didn't follow that -- i even put the oxford comma in there so it would be less confusing, though it gave me great pains to do it) sitting atop my dresser. in it we have donned silly stuffed animal type hats. the girls were having their picture taken. i was content not to be in it. my younger brother insisted, however, that i grace the photographer's presence, and so there i am with a silly, multi-colored, furry joker's hat on my head. i didn't want to be in the photo. you wouldn't know this from the grin. and no. you don't get to see the picture. the woman we consider to be a sister, she and her husband had the photo framed and gave it to me as a birthday present.

nineteen. club crackers has clubstix now and miniclubs. and they don't even package their regular-sized crackers the same. once upon a time, you opened the box to find one large wax-paperedesque package containing sheets of club crackers. each sheet was perforated so that the crackers could be broken into four smaller crackers rather than one big one. i used to love snapping them in half and then half again. and now they've made even the one small cracker smaller and smaller still.

twenty. i hate it when people tell me to relax. to go with the flow. to let things go. maybe i've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. if you really want to be my friend, don't say that shit to me. let me vent. let me be angsty and get it, whatever it is, out of my system. listen. sympathize or empathize or whatever it is. but don't tell me to relax and go with the flow. inside, when people say this, i'm imagining wrapping my hands around your throat and throttling you or clubbing you over the head with a baseball bat. not long enough or hard enough to kill, mind you, but enough to bring me satisfaction.

twenty-one. the aggies switched from serving coke products to pepsi. i am unthrilled. it's probably for the best. i'm not supposed to drink sodas anyway.

twenty-two. i don't like wasps. at all. or bees. or bugs in general. really. don't like them. but more, i hate that noise they make when you kill them. especially cockroaches.

twenty-three. the only piercings i have are in my ears. one in each. i've never really understood why people feel the need to get piercings elsewhere. like my younger brother, for example. he used to have his ears pierced and the holes stretched to a quarter of an inch in diameter, in addition to his septum and his tongue pierced. i don't even wear earrings that often because they usually end up irritating my ear lobes. and there're people out there walking around with this, that and the other things pierced.

twenty-four. the only sandals i like to wear are flip-flops. and the bands have to be made of a soft fabric. i don't like having those things between my toes.

twenty-five. there are times i'm incredibly, incredibly grateful i don't have a sister. and then there are times when i wish i had one. thankfully, there are more of the former moments than the latter.