The Trials and Tribulations of the not-so-New Bear Icon

Well we had a string of some really nice spring weather, even having a good weekend to take out the visiting bigmacbear to a party and then the Eagle. Overnight it turned rainy and cold. We had gotten rid of the comforter on the bed but Chris had to wake up and haul it out early this morning as the temperature dropped.

Here's a few more questions that I need to answer:

1. deanosota asks: Will you be seeing The Watchmen this weekend?

Well, that was a yes. I saw it at the midnight showing on Friday. It was a theater filled with nerds and geeks, so an audience that would know the material. I thought it was good, but didn't have the spark to really be considered great. Many scenes looked like they were taken directly from the comic, and that was good, but the movie lacks something as an adaptation.

Let's face it, Watchmen is a character study. Who are costumed heroes? What makes them tick? If we put them in a really desperate situation, would they really come out as heroic as comic books make out? Only Dr. Manhattan is really a superhero, per se, and his powers make him so different that he no longer connects with humanity. It's a cynical, but likely realistic thought.

The ending in the comic book is more there to finish the plot than it is to give a big action sequence, so it doesn't really translate well in a superhero move where people are looking for the big fight. I'm sure that will disappoint many casual viewers who are expecting something more.

Luckily the audience knew the story and knew what to expect. They expected penis. You could tell who in the audience didn't expect that coming. Frankly we really need to get over this whole "you can't show male full frontal". It's really silly. No one made a big deal of the breasts in the film. In many of the negative reviews of the movie the reviewers were more shocked by the big blue than they were the graphic violence and blood. Personally I'm squeamish, and I can't watch horror movies - this was coming pretty close for me as far as gore goes. I say less violence, more penis.

Oh, and the soundtrack. Yikes. i understand using poplar songs to evoke a time is to help the viewer, but man, could you try to find songs that were less clichéd. When I heard "Hallelujah" and "All Along the Watchtower" it really took me out of the scene. In fact "Hallelujah" got many unintentional laughs from the audience.

Lastly, since it is a character move, and the reasons for the heroes motivations are really deep in the book, it's sad that the Silk Specter wasn't really given as much depth. She's the whole reason for Dr. Manhattan's actions in the present, but it doesn't really connect on screen how she was pushed into the superhero life by her mother and how she's the last connection to humanity for Dr. Manhattan. Part of it is because her mother didn't seem like the sad character she was in the book. Nite-Owl and Rorschach were handled pretty well.

Worth seeing, but I think that more adaptation and less cribbing from the comic could have made the experience a lot richer in the end.

2. An Anonymous reader named Curious and Alone writes: How did you meet your husband?

We met right here on LJ. About six years ago I had just started here on LJ. Chris had been on for a while. In connecting with friends of friends here, Chris commented on a post or two and eventually wanted to meet with me.

Chris was supposed to surprise me and come down to the Dallas Diablos and Houston Roughnecks Rugby game where I said I was going to go. I instead responded to an invite to go to Austin that weekend and meet cristalskye, lostncove, and mattycub, who were there to see one of Randy's plays at the fringe festival.

So we missed each other that weekend, but Chris then messaged me about meeting for lunch one day before he would go back to Dallas, and we met. It was over chicken fingers at Skeeter's near my office in Greenway Plaza. I talked - a lot - because I was so nervous. I remember a hug and how I walked away back to the office in a bit of a cloud of excitement!

Chris and then met a few more times when I would visit my sister who was living in Dallas at the time. Eventually the visits to Dallas were to visit Chris rather than my sister, then eventually I moved in. The rest is history.

3. Another anonymous questioner asks: Why aren't you on Facebook?

I go back and forth on this, but really, I'm not too crazy about another site. I'm on Linked In, Flickr, and Twitter and sadly on MySpace (there's nothing to see there, really). I'm not sure I really want something else to look at. Besides, remember Friendster? Yeah, well MySpace is already going the way of Friendster and I think we can all say that Live journal is less vibrant than it once was (sadly - it was the one place you could find people who could write a whole sentence). I'm worried that Twitter and Facebook will be yesterdays news pretty quickly.

I guess I'm trying not to join Facebook because I know that will be the moment that Facebook will have become totally uncool. Not that I'm worried that much about cool, but I know that the parade would have moved on somewhere else. I just wish I knew where it was moving to.

Oh, and I love Twitter, but it's already reached the point where it is now being marketed to, and then it fills up with more folks trying to advertise than actually trying to connect. It's like when MySpace became more marketing tool for bands and media companies than an actual community. It's the one thing LiveJournal hasn't become. I guess it comes down to the fact that people want community, but don't really want to be bothered by what would actually make the site a sucessful ommercial venture.

That being said, I'll probably give in and join Facebook sometime soon, but I hate those little "sell your friends" games.

I'm out of questions. This may be a good thing, but we'll see. I'll still take them. If you have a question, comments are screened if you go to THIS post. Keep asking away.

The weekend was quiet. I turned down a trip to Six Flags because I didn't feel like doing anything. After two weekends in a row of travel and bears, i was ready to sit down and catch up with weeks of television.

At work, I've spent two weeks twiddling my thumbs as they have been slowly signing people off for the "phones with training wheels." Since we're in between the first and second of three training modules, we're to get on the basic phones for tax season, as it's generally the busiest time of the year.

There's 36 of us in training right now. Each one of us has to site with a mentor and take calls, and after a coaching period the mentor grades us and checks us off to fly solo. It's taken 2 weeks to sign off the first 12 people. Due to call volume there haven't been enough mentors to go around as they are all needed to take calls.

Today was my first day on the phones. I was initially nervous, not only to be listened to, but also that it's my first time on inbound phone calls in six years. I'm sort of phone-phobic anyway, and then add to that the randomness of customer service calls. My third call was for a customer wanting to take out a 401(k) loan (bad idea). Because of the legalese you have to spout out with it, all the rules and consequences, it's the most difficult call we are able to take. I managed to get through it rather well thanks to pages of job aids, and that was good enough for the mentor.

My mentor was told to get back on the phones just after lunch. The mentor, Chase, told my boss that I was ready to fly solo, the quickest release of anyone in the class. I was quite happy about it, even though it means much less internet surfing at work. Now after two weeks I actually have to work for a while. When do we go back to training?

Of course it wasn't all work today. This afternoon the tornado sirens went on and we were off to hide in the stairwell until the all clear was sounded. Everyone was on their cell phones trying to get information. Someone said that a tornado touched down at Garden Ridge. I wasn't sure if they meant the nearby road, or an actual Garden Ridge pottery store. If it was the store, I'm sure there was a giant mess of baskets and rattan furniture along it's path.

The office is a satellite of the main office, and hasn't been open long. It was interesting to hear management getting together after the warning was lifted going over the emergency plans which apparently haven't been used much so far. One of the things overheard was "Oh, everyone fit in the stairwells this time, but we'll need somewhere else to put people when we hire the next class."

I had to go back to the phones and listen to a guy who's father had died and needed help with completing his estate. I was trying to be respectful and empathetic about his loss, but I had to transfer the call to another area. I listened into the other rep speak to him, with no respect for his loss. He said "So, when did the guy die?" rather rudely, then proceeded to quickly give the son the information needed to process the transfer, doing it so quickly that the son wasn't able to understand and was very rattled. I left the call, knowing my work was all for naught. Oh well, off to another day.

*Stop with the Christmas ads already! It's too early for me. I'm a last minute shopper! I won't even start thinking of buying crap until your desperate 40-50% off sales the week before Christmas!

I'm not even in the Thanksgiving mood yet, certainly not ready for Christmas. I was up late watching nothing and I notices Paula Dean cooking stuff I'd never eat, but I appreciate that she has a lot of butter in it. She had Kermit the Frog on for no real reason and they were cooking fried Thanksgiving foods - certainly a good step. Ms. Dean said "I love Thanksgiving because there's not pressure to go out and search and shop like there is for Christmas." Amen.

*It's been a lovely fall. Yes, 75 degrees is fall in Texas. We're just happy it's not 95.

*I was getting dinner at Culver's last night (it's a bit of an extra drive, so I don't get to go there much - which is good because I love their fried cheese curd), and I noticed on the Diet Dr Pepper fountain there was a NutraSweet sticker. It's been a while since I've see that logo. What ever happened to that branding? You never hear that name anymore.

*Crocs are still bad footwear, and are made even worse with Ugg Boot lining. Just say no, people. Two things together don't necessarily make a Reeses Peanut Butter cup.

*As far as the new job hunt goes, despite the fact that there are people who need help managing their investments, is it really a good thing to become a financial representative at the start of a recession? I'm thinking not.

I have to go in to work today. I've been working a lot of Saturdays this year, but I get paid for it, so 4 overtime hours each week makes up for it. besides, Chris had to go into work too, so there's nothing going on at home. It's also raining. I have a stack of papers to be sent out on my desk that I wasn't able to get through this week, so that's my morning enjoyment. I may work out here too, before heading home Here's a couple of oddities at the Work Ranch right now.

When you build an office building in the middle of what used to be Ross Perot's pasture, you're bound to get a few critters now and again. Lately all the buzz has been about snakes found in the cafeteria. Hmm, let's think about it. On the third floor where i work we've had mice, so it's probably going to be the case that the cafeteria might also have some. A snake, looking for a meal would likely go where the mice would be...the cafeteria. If you don't want snakes, work on getting rid of the mice.

Of course you could also let the Bobcat that lives in the woods come in after the snakes. Do cats go after snakes? I don't know. or we can get one of the hawks in to catch the mice.

When they start building the new building out here, it will be interesting to see what critters get shaken up from that activity.

As far as humans go, there's this one lady that I've never worked with, but has an office on our floor. She's a Director - a manager of managers. I often see her going to get water at the water and Sonic ice dispenser (Sonic Ice is a sort of crushed ice that is in little rounded, tubular nuggets like they use at Sonic Drive Ins). She has short, spiky hair and always wears a pantsuit, much like Hillary Clinton does.

Unlike Hillary Clinton she doesn't look frumpy in her pantsuit. She looks like, especially when she's wearing white, Sigourney Weaver in the movie Jeffrey. If you've never seen Jeffery, give it 15 minutes and it will be on Logo. Every time i see her, I just want to yell "THAT"S DEBRA!"

"Gobblers Knob" *snicker*

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is the only holiday I know of that I get along with the bank tellers, but not with much of the rest of the world. Bank tellers get Columbus Day, but I do not. Most people don't get this day off because it is close to other holidays. Personally, I think we could honor Dr. King and still move this date to August when we don't have other holidays.

Still, much like the vacation day I took a month and a half ago, having this day off allowed me to miss the driver's pinball game that goes on in Dallas every time there is an ice storm. Chris was not so lucky, but he managed to get to and from work just fine. I got to sit on the couch and read comics and finally get through some of my Netflix movies while Joey the Dog harassed the Roomba cleaning upstairs.

We went out to Chili's tonight for dinner and the place was nearly deserted. I'm not sure if it was the cold, or the fact that the waitress who will not touch food was working. We've had her once, and she's horrible. Apparently we insulted her by not coloring a pepper for charity - you know, spend a buck for charity and color the logo to go on the wall to show how well the store has done getting people to fork over extra money. When we turned her down, I guess we ruined her percentage of sales or something, so her service for the rest of the meal was terrible. We call her "no touchy" (said like David Spade's character from "The Emperor's New Groove") as she has other people bring out all of her food and drinks, and has a busboy clear it. she never touches a plate, on out table or anyone else's. Very strange.

At dinner I told Chris that while watching the news in the afternoon, one of the weather forecasters said that he new that some precipitation would be coming down on Wednesday, but said we would have to watch the 6 o'clock news to find out what kind it will be. This was one of the dumbest teases I'd ever heard. For one thing, we can all check the internet to find out it's going to snow on Wednesday, but you don't tease the weather, you tease that something in your house can kill you, or that a celebrity was caught doing something. Personally I'm waiting for "We have video of children having sex. Find out if it's yours at ten!"

With snow in our forecast, that just means the local news can continue to train cameras on the freeway mixmasters to try to pinpoint when ice form. then they hope an accident will occur during the newscast.

Finally, Chris and I finally figured out what the cable channel LOGO needs. They need to take Lifetime movies and recast the leads as same-sex couples. I'm not sure who would play Valerie Bertinelli, or Meredith Baxter Burney, but think of the possibilities.

I was off from work today. I'm burning off my "use it or lose it" vacation days, scheduling the last two available days of the year. The entire month of December was booked before I ever stated with the company.

Today I did a little shopping and I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, enjoying the warm weather. Over the next two hours we're expecting a line of thunderstorms to come through and drop temperatures some 45 degrees from the 70's into the 30's. We're expecting sleet with the thunderstorms and possibly snow tomorrow as the temperature plummets into the 20's. It makes me long for no-freeze Houston weather.

Chris the other day said that he already had my Christmas gift, so now I'm worried about getting him something. I have no idea. I thought about getting the XBox 360 game Viva! Pinata!, but now I think it's looking a little childish. Of course we're both playing Lego Star Wars II.

We still haven't found a Wii. I looked around today with no luck. I think you have to get up early.

I did find some slippers at Khol's. Really, shoes and socks are the only things I can buy there. I wish they carried larger sizes. Still, I wish i could find some of those bear paws slippers. I know it's silly, but they're cute

I wish that more people would use BearLix or another chat service. Bear 411 is crap, but everyone's on it. Can we just all move to a new site and not tell the creepy people about it?

We've seen two movies at the theater this fall, Borat and Casino Royale, both were good in very different ways. Really, there's very few other movies this holiday season that are piquing my interest. Lord knows we don't need any more animated animals. We also could do without the bratty kids in Unaccompanied Minors.

I did have an interesting reaction seeing the first few minutes of the trailer for We Are Marshall when the team is on the plane, looking happy and the coach mentions Marshall...I remember gasping knowing what was coming. The rest of the trailer didn't excite me though. It was just knowing what the scene was leading to. I might go see the Matt Damon movie The Good Shepard.

I've interviewed a couple of times for a new position at work. I'm not really hopeful about it since it's not an area I'm familiar with, and I haven't been with the company for a year yet, but I'm at least trying to do something to make my situation better. I'm also getting back into the interviewing game.

Mall walking is boring and the people at the mall kiosks are getting more annoying. I don't want to try your skin cream, and I really don't want it if I was just asked by your other kiosk at the other end of the mall. Then you say I'm grouchy? Yea Christmas spirit.

Lastly, politics. Didn't it seem like President Bush was open to change a few weeks ago, when he found that the Democrats had won? Well, that's changed, and it seems like he's back to his ways of just being a selfish whiny fool, claiming that we'll stay in Iraq following the same stupid strategy we've been following the last four years. The guy is in a self-made vacuum and he's never coming out, is he?

What will be interesting is if the rumors of replacing Dick Cheney come true, and they really work on creating a candidate for President for 2008. I'm not sure anyone running would want to take the job if Bush continues to be such a doof. It wouldn't help to start campaigning in a pit.

Oh well. I should do a longer post about this year's television shows, but that will have to wait.

Today is Chris' (f__k) Birthday. (look, his username doesn't have a line through it anymore!) He's really the one thing that made me come back from Boston.

✩A couple of people at work have stopped me and said that I look like I've been loosing weight. Maybe it's because I have to pull my pants up as my belts are getting loose, and I've been too cheap to get a new one (and I really like my brown belt!). Thank goodness that Texas Tax-Free weekend is coming up.

Still, two people have noticed, and that feels good - now I'm waiting for all the hotties to notice. Chris has noticed as well, but he's biased. :-)

✡Mel Gibson. What a stupid guy. If you're going to be drunk, shut up - and rent a limo. We know his thoughts on Jews, and we know that he's not really fond of the gays either, so if he pisses off the Scientologists and the Kaballists, then he's pretty well fucked in Hollywood, isn't he?

Luckily the heatwave is taking our mind off the trouble in Lebanon, which took our mind off of the trouble in Iraq, which of course took our mind off of the trouble that is Lindsey Lohan.

✪Cuba. I guess since it's been somewhat verboten for americans to travel there for the last 50 years, you really want to see what it's like. Of course I find the ads for Cuba that are in Canada interesting. Heck, they have nationalized health care - but you have to drive a car with fins (maybe not the worst trade off).

It will be interesting to see what happens as power shifts. I need to get with the couple of Cuban Americans I know to get their opinions, but is an Americanized Cuba better than just letting them finding their own path without our interference. Heck, they might not like the new Castro in town without the help of those who are now americans.

✦I'm positively giddy that there's a Hurricane Chris right now. Unfortunately Hurricane Mike won't come for a few weeks more if this global warming keeps going.

❁Dang that Angela! Will you just be Auf'ed already!?

Look out! It's Tropical Storm Catherine Zeta-Jones!!!

Of course, it's in the mid 70's here, and will be for another week. It's doubtful, but couldn't you just see the Texas coast being hit by Hurricane Zeta in January? Crazy.

So will the next storm be Tropical Storm Eta, or will they got to the first name for 2006, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales? The actual hurricane season doesn't start until June.

Although Hurricane Eta sounds funny.