boldly going!

okay, so here are some more of the star trek pics msg and i did a while back.

don't get too involved in the storyline ... it kinda ends on a cliffhanger.

hmm. do i hear something?

seems to be coming from over here ...

getting closer ...

whoa! what is that???

it's some kind of alien life form! i wonder if it's friendly?

(i know, i know, i'm wearing a red shirt and i'm about to reach down and pick up an alien life form. how smart can that be?)

well, there are some more pics, but the alien life form turns out to be a little naughty, so if msg ever finishes photoshopping them and i post them, they'll go up on the naughty blog. if you don't want to go to the naughty blog, or if we don't get around to posting them, just imagine that i met a suitably red-shirted end after the last pic above!

surrogates

so we just watched this movie, surrogates, with bruce willis. (i mean the movie was with bruce willis, not we watched it with bruce willis. although that would have been awesome, i don’t want to mislead anybody.)

i have not seen a movie with a more interesting concept in a long time, and it was super cool the way all the surrogates looked just slightly fake. (yeah, i know, look who’s talking!)

unfortunately, i’ve got to give a big spoiler alert here and tell you that it kind of tanked at the end. i’d say it’s still worth seeing, even though i didn’t like the ending, so don’t read any more of what i’m about to type unless you just totally aren’t interested in seeing this movie, ever.

so here’s the deal. firstly, our hero kinda gets played for a patsy at the end. he doesn’t solve the big mystery, or really figure out much of anything himself. he does end up saving the lives of everybody on the planet, only it’s not very believable that he manages it, cos he pulls it off by rushing into the secret lab of the semi-evil genius, james cromwell. now, the whole reason the story started off is, the giant corporation that makes the surrogates was trying to kill james cromwell. and to do it, they needed a super-duper weapon that could kill him through his surrogate. why would they need that, if one guy could just rush past cromwell’s security guards and find his secret lab? i mean, it turns out that getting to james cromwell is really crazy-easy, so he should already be dead, because the giant corporation needs to off him to keep him from shutting them down.

but that’s only a bit of plot goofiness, which i’m usually willing to overlook when a movie has heart or a powerful or brainy message.

what gave me a real bug up my undies was, the message at the end didn’t actually make any sense. bruce stops cromwell’s virus from killing everybody, but he lets it destroy all their surrogates, so they’ll have to start living their lives “for real.”

now, i liked this message in wall-e, but wall-e made it clear that living through the viewscreens was really bad for everybody. they were all fat and out of touch and passive about everything. but this movie doesn’t show that at all. the people in this movie live very active and engaged lives through their surrogates, and when everybody comes stumbling out at the end, they mostly look pretty normal. and obviously there must be thousands or millions of paraplegics and other invalids who are totally screwed at the end because the surrogates get turned off.

so i’m not sure i really buy the movie’s point that the surrogates were making the world a worse place. there was no murder, almost no violent crime, everybody was safe from tragic accidents, everyone seemed to be gainfully employed, and after work things looked like pretty much a constant party.

but even if we accept that it was really a bad thing for them to all be living fake lives through these robot bodies ... then what the hell are we doing watching a movie anyway? what is bruce willis’s character if he’s not a surrogate through which we get to save billions of lives and set the world right? even in his “meatbag” body, he’s a fine hunk o’ man, let me tell you, and his wife is a hottie despite the fact that she’s got a scar from the car wreck that killed their poor kid. we’re fooling ourselves more by watching him do all this unbelievable stuff and fix his marriage in the process than the surrogate users are fooling themselves by walking out of their apartments in android bodies.

so if it was a good thing for bruce to let the virus whack all the surrogates at the end, then it would also be a good thing for us to stop watching movies, right?

i guess i do have to give a certain amount of credit to a movie that manages to completely disprove its own reason for existence ... only i kinda don’t think that’s what the filmmakers were trying to do.

anyhoo, i give it 3 stars out of 4, on account of the first 3/4 of the movie really rocked, and even the weako ending made me think about things.

thinking’s always good, right?

boxes, boxes, boxes

i noticed my special guy doing this thing he does sometimes where he gets all gloomy and glum but pretends nothing is wrong because he doesn’t want to bring anybody else down with him.

so i bugged him about it until he coughed it up and said, “i don’t know - sometimes it just feels like my whole life is confined. like i’m shut up in a box.”

i just raised an eyebrow and said, “really? you’re going to complain to me about being in a box?”

he got all apologetic and started trying to say he was sorry and how of course i have it worse than him on that score and he shouldn’t have picked those words, and i just had to laugh and stop him and say no, i was only joking.

“look, msg,” i told him, “you’ve got it way worse than me and way worse than most people, because your brain is just so good at imagining amazing things. i mean, i’m not saying i’m completely uncreative or anything, but my imagination only goes so far. i can’t dream up anything any better than the times when i’m ‘out of the box.’ life pinches us all in and squeezes us and won’t let us have all the things we want, but for most of us, we know that we do get some semi-regular moments when we’re free, at ease, and able to do what we want. and the rest of the time, we can live by looking forward to those moments. i’m perfectly happy to be shut up in my day-to-day box, because i know that sooner or later i’ll get some more of something that’s better than anything i can imagine - you.”

“well, that’s sweet and i really appreciate it,” he said, “i really, really do. only it also makes me feel guilty, because shouldn’t i be able to say the same thing about you? shouldn’t i be happy in my box knowing that sometimes i’m let out to be with you?”

i patted him on the top of his head. “yeah, probably, except for this giant writer’s brain of yours. you’ve got it trained to spend big chunks of time imagining wonderful things that most people could never dream of. i do watch you and listen to you, you know. your problem is that you can’t shut it off. and that’s great, because if it wasn’t so good at doing what it does, you wouldn’t be able to write the kind of stories you write.”

“but maybe i’d be happier.”

“yeah, and maybe you’d be an accountant,” i said. “i’d probably still love you, only i don’t think you’d be as interesting a person - and more importantly, i don’t know if you’d have the same chance to bring joy into other people’s lives, and i know that matters to you. i mean, come on. you wouldn’t really change the way your brain works if you could, would you?”

he sighed. “no, i guess not.”

“so maybe you just need to work a little harder to remember that i’m here in the box with you - even if sometimes i’m tucked away over in a corner of the box where you can’t see me. and maybe that will help you remember that there’s lots of other great things in the box with you too. and even though most of the time you can imagine things being a lot better than they are, that imagination is a great thing too, and you’re lucky to have it.”

“like i’m lucky to have you,” he said, sounding like he meant it, although he obviously still wasn’t entirely perked up.

“you bet your tootin’ booty,” i said. “now why don’t you come over here and let claire make everything better, hmmm? some boxes are very cozy, you know.”

this line of reasoning pretty quickly convinced him to be in a better mood.

i do have my talents!

ensign claire, reporting for duty!

okay, so this is not the classic 1960s red miniskirt star trek uniform i have always dreamed of, but it's pretty good for a cereal-box offer!

msg and i had fun doing this photo shoot last night. there are more, but msg has to do some kind of phase transducer reroute to get them to look right. (haha, that just means he has to add backgrounds and fidget with them in photoshop.)

so let me tell you a story ...

there was this boy with a camera, taking pictures of me. he was very into it, and very into me, and i have to admit i was pretty darn into him, and yeah i'm vain enough to get kind of a kick out of having my picture taken.

i recommend this activity.

it makes you feel appreciated, which is a really good way to feel.

we took a lot of pictures, and some of them were better than others, and this one was one of my favorites. so i was pretty happy when msg finally got it tweaked around in photoshop the way he wanted it and said i should go ahead and post it.

(confession time: for those who might have gotten the impression i'm 100 percent sweetness and light, i did kinda give msg a lot of grief about how long he was taking. i was, like, "if it's really such a good picture and you really think i look so beautiful, why do you have to monkey with it so much?" and he was like, "just wait, just wait," and i was like [frowny, pouty face], and he was like "you're cute when you're mad," and i was like, "am i cute when i throw things?" and he was like, "i don't know, are you thinking of something soft like a pillow, or are you thinking of something hard?" and i was like, "now i'm thinking of something hard, but not to throw. are you sure you don't want to hurry up and finish that?" and he was like, "well, okay!")

so anyway, here it is, and i have to admit, i guess i'm glad he took the time to get rid of some of the flash shadows and forehead glare and stuff. when i compared it to the original, i was like, "damn, girl, that's some f***ed-up shiny forehead you've got on you."

so it's all better now, and everybody lived happily ever after. the end!

at-home friday night

so i got out the guitar and msg got out the camera, and i messed around with the guitar and he messed around with the camera and then of course we messed around together ...

it was a good night!

there are some more pics, but of course msg wants to fiddle with them on the computer before we put them up.

you know how boys are.

sigh ... wait ... no sighing!

it's a big world full of ugly things, and one of the ugliest is the way you can sometimes feel really lonely even though someone you care about and who cares about you is, like, right there.

sorry to be in such a mopey-butt kinda mood, but there it is. i did not exactly have huge ambitions when i started this blog. i did not expect to change the world -- and that was okay, on account of i had already changed one person's world, in a big way. a way he pretty regularly reminds me that he's super grateful about.

but even though i did not expect to change the world, i did expect to come here more often, and have more fun, and take more pictures and share them and all that.

but the world gets in the way.

and when you can't get the things done that you want to get done for yourself, it makes you start feeling kinda small. and pretty soon 'small' turns into 'lonely.'

it's sneaky about doing it, and i don't know how it manages the trick, but it does.

and then you're lonely, even though you've got this great person right beside you, or maybe lots of great people around you, and you feel stupid about it and you know you should ask for help, only if you do you wonder if they'll get insecure or have their feelings hurt by the fact that you're lonely when they're right there, plus you know that they're already stressed about all their own stuff they've got going on, and ... ugh.

so if anyone out there is feeling lonely, here's a hug. because you deserve it, and you're not small, and you need to stop thinking that way.

i'm making an effort to, right now.

xoxo

claire