Anyone who has The Incredibles on DVD needs to watch the special features. There’s a guy in there — one of the animation team, I think — who is a first for Pixar. I swear to you, he’s not real — he’s a CGI creation. It’s astonishing how realistic he is.

No, seriously. Long black hair, rail thin, glasses… You’ll know exactly who I’m talking about.

Creepy. But very impressive, how far technology has come.

Baby’s First Root Canal was my alternate choice. Which is worse?

At least there’s some warning in my primary choice.

Oh, yeah, and there’s an extraction in a month, too.

Party in my mouth! Who wants to come?

I was asked not too long ago if I enjoyed being sad.

It’s a question that I’ve had posed more than a few times in my life. And the answer, generally speaking, is no, not particularly. I’m sure that there is some part of me that finds being engulfed in sorrow quite comforting; but that’s a world away from being happy when I’m sad. For the most part, I really dislike feeling down/sad/miserable… give it a name. I am sad a lot, but it doesn’t mean that I enjoy it; sometimes, though, when you suffer from depression, it’s just easier and almost cozy to just let yourself be sad.

Today, though…

It’s been a crazy day, mostly toothache related. Lots of pain, even through the medication. And due to a lack of sleep related to waking up every half-hour or so, my reactions to a lot of things in the office were a little overboard — not outwardly, but on the interior.

But the last part of the day was spent catching up with an old friend and fellow “freak among corporations,” (though I’m fairly certain she wouldn’t appreciate the title, it works) and knowing that I’ve got a good shot at making things work there. Money should be coming my way shortly. I’ve got a dentist appointment tomorrow to take care of this damnable shooting pain. Wednesday night I pick up Kevin and Liesl’s sectional sofa, which I’ve envied for a while. Life feels pretty good.

And I get home, and find the UNFAITHFUL soundtrack in my mailbox. It’s a wonderful gift, a thoughtful reminder of what was and what could have been. And I’m a little saddened by it.

But it’s a good sad, if anyone can relate. And I’m enjoying it, sitting on my roof, listening to the music, watching the world keep on keeping on, and feeling sad.

Thanks, darlin’. You know who you are.

Sometimes, I find myself wanting a couple of do-overs. I’m sure that I would have blown my life’s allotment way too early, especially given my mindset in my twenties, but damn it, it would be nice to have a little reset button right now.

To all the people I’ve ever hurt, I apologize. And I promise, I’m trying to learn from my life, and fix the things that need to be fixed. Small consolation now, I’m sure, but still…

This toothache is the result of a collective karmic payback, isn’t it?

I really like the idea of the TV miniseries. It allows for the telling of a story beyond the maximum 2 hour length that most people will sit through — the adaptations of King’s work like his new SHINING and THE STAND are both great examples. They needed longer to fully develop the stories than a commercially released film would allow; the eventual DVD releases of movies like that and ANGELS IN AMERICA allows for the viewer to digest the story in whatever bites they can handle.

Cable outlets like HBO and Showtime — and even FX, to a lesser extent — are probably the best, allowing for more realistic content (language, violence, whatever). ANGELS IN AMERICA is a great example — even some of those themes wouldn’t have been allowed on network TV, but the story demands their inclusion.

Which brings to mind episodic TV like X-FILES and LOST. Both of which almost seem to demand miniseries formatting, with a definite beginning (which both had) and a definite end (which X-FILES lacked and LOST probably will). X-FILES jumped the shark big time — as most long running shows will — and I imagine that LOST could easily suffer the same fate (worse: LOST gets cancelled and en ending will have to be rushed).

Rare is the show that starts and ends satisfactorily. BUFFY and ANGEL both did really nice jobs, even if certain seasons could have been better. Give credit to Joss Whedon and his staff on those… But imagine if creators were allowed to pitch shows as three season runs, no more, no less; then you know full-well that you have time to finish your full stories, and you don’t have to worry about stretching the run past it’s natural life expectancy.

In the comic book realm, Warren Ellis is doing a smart thing like this with PLANETARY. No worries about having to see the characters and storylines suffer. Story begins and ends, and if there is the occasional one-shot story that needs to be told — not necessarily part of the overall arc, but belonging to the cast and atmosphere — it can be put down with no worries.

Rambling thoughts… One day, hopefully to be put to use. The short stories I tell are what come naturally, but I can see a 400 page screenplay in my head, perhaps.

Why doesn’t this guy who writes for a living know how to spell?

I’ve just reread some of my old posts, and two things occur to me:

1.) I type too fast and make too many typos.

2.) I’m too lazy to edit my old posts, or even to read my new posts before I hit the publish button.

So there. Now you’ll never know which words are misspelled and which ones are just errors of my fingers.

The Dead Kenny Gs.

I know nothing about them, and honestly don’t want to, for fear of ruining the excellent mental image I have.

Still, not quite as good as Daniel and Jonathan’s Catheter Hepburn (album title: Shoes to Match the Bag), or Eric’s desire to start a band called the Barry White Stripes (I liked Frank Black Sabbath myself, but so it goes).

Yup. Just spent Friday night:

1. Watching TV on my computer.
2. Watching NUMB3RS, and understanding the math.
3. Changing my blog template.

It could be worse. I could have shaved my head again…

“Freedom is a challenge. You decide who you are by what you do. It’s like a question, like a fork in the road. An ongoing question you have to answer correctly. There’s a touch of the high-wire to it. I’ve never been able to walk high-wires, but I get the feeling.”

-Hunter S. Thompson, excerpted from the May, 2005 Playboy feature, “Postcards From the Proud Highway”

So, the week went from suck to whatever here is in an awful hurry.

Things in the social arena went south, to be euphumistic and strangely accurate. Howward Jones lyrics are dashing through my head — which is better than Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home”, thank you, Eric McGinty. The universe unfolds as it will, but sometimes I can’t help but question why it does so in the manner it does…

And so this weird numbness sets in, like being under emotional anasthetia. I sat in my bedroom last night, window open to a cool breeze, and smelled autumn. So I took advantage of the moment as best as possible: turned out the lights, burned a little Ocean Breeze��� incense, and cranked up Harold Budd’s ROOM disc (I can not remember the actual name of the disc, ever, but I’ve taken to referring to it as such ever since Daniel introduced me to it years back). I sat and listened to Southside at night, cars passing, neighbors talking over their beers, damnable dogs barking at everything that came within 50 yards. It was really nice, a little November in April.

And then I returned today to the corporate world, ending my first week back Working For The Man after eight months. It’s not as bad as I had expected — things might even be much better than I would have hoped. The people that I report to directly are really good folk, intelligent and hard working and — most important to me — two of the few guys at UAB that I ever had any respect for. There’s a lot of work to be done, so I don’t have to dick around waiting for something to do, and it’s actual productive work, not some busy task handed to me for political appearances.

See, that’s one thing that I hate about the corporate world. Maybe I should amend that: that’s one thing I hate about the world in general. Too often, people get so caught up playing to the vanity of those around and “above” them (which is to say, those who have something or control over something they want) that they start looking for the same in those around them. And so the PC/playing the game virus spreads, until it’s less important what kind of work quality you produce than how much you agree with them and torture yourself to make their life easy.

I just can’t bring myself to do that. And I’m sure that, career-wise, I’ll suffer long and greatly for it. But at least I’ll have my dignity and my sad, sad, idealism…

At any rate, fortunately, the people around me now are, for the most part, not the type that I just described. I thought that before, when I worked in a parallel department, and even in this first week, they’ve given me more applicable evidence of the same.

And it appears that I’ll have plenty of chances to impress in the coming months, as the other person in my department announced a resignation mere days after I started. I was warned — suspicions were confirmed, I should say — that there are people in parallel departments that are waiting for me to misstep, to pounce and scream for my head. But that’s fine, because I’m in a different headset than I was a year ago, a better fitting job, and in the mood to disappoint my detractors.

Three’s a lot of change, all at once, and I can only hope that maybe this is my life jumping back onto the track that it’s supposed to be on. It’s worth the stress and the work and the adjustments to think that I’m headed in the right direction, wherever that may be leading me.

And then, of course, there’s the fucking tooth in my head that has decided, after months of semi-soreness and aggravation, to really cut loose and have an all-night kegger in my head. OHMYGODTHISREALLYFUCKINGHURTS. A few of my friends were kind enough to give me some industrial strength ibuprofin, but even that isn’t helping. Heat doesn’t work. Orajel is useless (except on my tongue, thanks). I don’t think I’m dealing with an abscess, as there’s no swelling, no bitter taste, no oozing pus (just to make sure you’re still awake and paying attention)… My best guess is that something in the air has triggered my sinusitis on a minor level — minor enough that I don’t feel the extra pressure in my head, but enough that the swelling is compounding the dental nightmare I’m having.

Ladies, if you’re looking for a man to pass strong teeth to your spawn through the miracle of genetics, then look elsewhere. For any number of reasons.

But if you want a man with more artifice than nature attached to the peridontal ligament (as well as someone who refuses to play nice with the English language): I’m your guy.