Mental Leakage

Today I went to have hookah with a friend at our usual spot. Which by the way is on the verge of possibly losing business. So if you and your lovely groups of friends enjoy hookah and an awesome atmosphere, please check the place out and support them. The owner Mike, and his family run the place. They're some of the most awesome people you'll meet.
Anyways my friend and I, or mostly me, decided we were going to play Uno and checkers [there's games laid out for you to enjoy]. Now checkers, I kick ass at that game. My friend hasn't played it in a long time [neither have I] but he was getting frustrated because it's forcing him to think. All I could do was laugh and say, "That's exactly why I wanted to play." Needless to say I won both games. We talked about vinyl records, which I meant to listen to earlier but I got distracted by this damn blog. But I did get all poetic when we were talking about the quality and difference in sound of vinyls as opposed to CDs and such. I described it as very organic, very real. There's just something about them that makes you really focus on the music more than you ever would whilst listening to a CD.
I still just don't understand people. I guess I never will [in regards to the picture on the left].

One of my biggest internet/written communication pet peeves is typos, grammatical errors, misspellings, etc.
Read what you write! I personally have a whole system of procedures I go through with every blog post. Now, I know they're not perfect, some errors slip by me. Same with my texting, which I give more slack to because there is no spell check. But Firefox, at least, has a built in spell check, this blog site as well as others have the spell check option. Use it! The funniest thing about this, however, is that I have been meaning to blog about this for awhile and all this time I have noticed more and more errors in my own writing. It's really frustrating that they are still there. Every post includes the draft in which I may read and reread before publishing. Then once I publish it I read or reread it again and make all the needed corrections as well as possibly adding more thoughts that I may have forgotten. And then I may repeat that step again and maybe again and again. More often than not I will read older posts and come across little errors that I will fix. I tend to read my blogs a handful of times, kind of obsessively actually. Some of it is to make sure it makes sense and such. Some of it is to process that information further, to learn more about myself. Some of it is, especially when I have new readers, I try to read them through the eyes of the audience, usually a specific person whether it be that they said something about it, they posted a comment, or if I gained a new reader. A majority of my readers are close friends and new privileged ones that only know about this because I personally told them the address. I have a couple, at least that I am aware of, strangers that read my blog. And I recently changed the privacy setting of this blog from blocking Google searches to link to my blog to now allowing that to happen. I also recently set up an account with Google Analytics, which is really cool but still new to me. It tracks all the activity on my page, the number of visits, the locations of these visits, the keywords and other sites that lead them to my page, and so on. It's pretty neat.

I was supposed to read for some homework this evening. Obviously that didn't happen. I'll take the entire day to do that tomorrow. I decided to also further distract myself by renting How to Be from the lovely Redbox. I'm excited to watch it.
I also just jizzed in my pants because I found out last month Massive Attack released a new album. I feel like a shitfuck for not knowing! Heligoland, it is. Ahhhh. Just exactly what I need, more Massive Attack. I haven't been able to stop listening to them since...um, about a year ago. Wow. It's utterly amazing how that band has not tired me yet. It's definitely earned it's title in my top ten. Heh, just that phrase reminds me of High Fidelity.

I could of said this sooner but I didn't want to include it in my more serious post. But that same episode of Ellen that I had described in the post also included some references to the film Sling Blade. Which the first time around when I saw that episode I never knew what Sling Blade was so I didn't get the reference. However this time around, I was laughing my ass of in class. We also watched about half of "The Puppy Episode 2" which starts off with Billy Bob Thornton as a character in Ellen's dream and he starts of speaking in his sling-blade-voice and then clears his throat to talk normally. I was, in actuality, the only one that laughed in class at that part. Well, I definitely appreciated it.
I just remembered that the DeafNation expo is around this time. *Searches the interweb* Oh damn! I missed it. It was March 6th. Well it looks like I missed all the deaf awareness events in the valley. However there are usually deaf awareness events during the fall as well. Unfortunately Donna Leff, an extraordinary deaf sign language teacher at ASU hasn't been updating her event blog.

Speaking of deafness. I have my craving to watch Children of a Lesser God. Immediately, without much thought, I would say this is the ultimate choice of film that I feel every person should see. But when I think about it more, it is not. Well, first of all, I can't make such a decision as that because I have not seen every film there is and definitely have not seen every film that involves deafness in some way. In fact I need to research and compose a list of films that do! Off the top of my head, any film or show [that I have seen] that has some aspect of this includes: The L Word, There Will Be Blood, Hear No Evil, The Family Stone, Seinfeld episode "The Lip Reader," a handful of CSI episodes, Sweet Nothing in my Ear, A Lot Like Love, as well as probably everything that Marlee Matlin has been a part of. For later personal references, I want to put this link here. And while I'm still on the subject in this completely randomized post, here is something, if you're interested, to read. It is a Wikipedia entry on "Deaf culture." I'm pointing this out for two, well three reasons. First, so you know that it exists, as it can be defined by Wikipedia at the least! Second, although I did not read it all the way through [most I already know] it is something you should learn about. And third, or really as this is combined with the other two, awareness. Awareness. Awareness. Awareness. Awareness. Awareness. Very fucking important. Yes, there are separate posts for every separate link. Pay attention.

And hopefully this is the last part of this post and the last post for the day. Although it is actually nearly 1am now. [The posting times stated at the end of each post is only the time of when the blog was started. Yeah.] I wanted to say that I realized something in terms of coping and art. For a lot of people, music helps them get through things. And to be honest, I don't think it really does so for me, at least not nearly to the extent that it does for others. I enjoy the hell out of music, absolutely. But I don't necessarily use it as a means to guide me through life. Or specifically to guide me through problems and stress. Yes, it may help me relieve stress and enjoy moments more but I mean the literal lyrics do not provide me any kind of consolation or guide, nor do I look for it there. But film, film ultimately does that for me and I do seek it there. Books do as well. There's a pattern here, as I have pointed out here and there that I process things that are visual better/faster than things that are spoken/heard. Film, obviously visual. Literature, visual in the sense that I see the words as well as I imagine the descriptions. There's a hell of a lot more I can add to this but I'll stop. I'm getting tired and my hands are actually hurting from typing. And I still have to edit!

Spring break is causing major mental leakage here!