The Scrolls

Suspended.

Whether or not you’re a fan of the Oscars, there’s wasn’t much else on tonight. ABC wasn’t airing new episodes of Once Upon a Time and other channels didn’t want to compete with the yearly awards show so there were a lot of reruns. This is why I tuned into the Academy Awards tonight. Except, I just couldn’t get into it. Perhaps it’s because once you’ve seen one awards show, you’ve seen them all or perhaps it was because this year was particularly underwhelming in turns of fashion. I mean, could you even see Sandra Bullock’s eyes? And am I the only one who thinks Natalie Portman looks so much better as a tomboy?

Still, my biggest complaint is with the little skits put on by the presenters. For a show that awards actors, the actors themselves didn’t do very well in this realm. It’s different than their normal work, I get it, but I always find the supposed-to-be-funny bits entirely unfunny. I can get swept up in movies and TV shows but I have a hard time suspending disbelief when the entertainment isn’t removed enough from my own reality. I have a similar issue when viewing plays. I want to like them as shows but I just can’t get past the fact that the actors are so close to me and the effects are so meager in comparison to Hollywood’s big budget.

Suspension of disbelief is equally important when reading and I have a hard time with that, too. I know it’s my own “fault” that I can’t get out of my head and I respect play actors but it can never be my thing. And the Oscars? Just stick to saying nice things and stop trying to be funny. I’m talking to you Zach WTFever-your-last-name-is!

The Cat Shirt

Around the time that my sister was in the hospital, my grandma started making people T-shirts. I guess she acquired a printer that allowed her to print on fabric so she would give us all t-shirts as presents. Although these specific gifts were a fad, Grandma cross-stitches these days and gives us all table runners and towels and pillowcases like it’s going out of style. Anyway, she gave me The Cat Shirt. The Cat Shirt featured a fuzzy grey kitty surrounded by pink and purple flowers and I fuckin’ loved it. But it was bad. It was like the Tween version of the 3 wolf shirt. And the shirt itself was a white tee, which is almost never flattering, but was too big on me anyway.

But that didn’t stop me for wearing it on a weekly basis for, like, 3 years. It was bad guys. I wore it all the time until when, one day in sixth grade, I was working on a video project with a group of girls. We were doing a skit about bullying and our group of four split up into pairs and I, of course, wound up being one of the uncool kids and.. it was, in part, because of The Cat Shirt.

I stopped wearing The Cat Shirt after that and I forgot all about it, until, the other night, I opened an email from my aunt. In that email was a collage of family photos and there I was, standing next to Grandma, in my cat shirt. I was covering my face in an effort to escape having my picture taken or perhaps having my picture taken in The Cat Shirt. Nevertheless, photographic evidence exists.

I don’t know if I am embarrassed more by the fact that I liked The Cat Shirt as much as I did or because I still would have, had I not realized how uncool it was.

Where I’ve Been

Watching lots and lots of Castle. In fact, I started and caught up on all four seasons within the time-frame of a week. Talked about hooked. I don’t understand how a show about murder can be so good. Fillion just makes me laugh and smile and pant and “awww” the whole time but there’s not a single character — save for the new captain — whom I don’t really like. Detective Ryan is adorable, himself.

Anyway, I can’t believe the freaking “to be continued” shit tonight. I can’t wait a week!

Spam, Spam, Spam

I clean out the spam comments on my blog on a pretty regular basis. I find that my plug-ins are damned good at catching them and I rarely even look to see if they’ve caught something I want to keep. Sometimes, though, I look and cannot help but be amused by them. So here are a few recent examples.

Whatever you do, don’t have sex with him. He’s probably trying to make you jealous or use you because he’s hurt.

Great advice! It has nothing to do with this post, though.

I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you. – Roy Croft

Sweet. Who are you?!

GERMAN SCIENTIST PROVES VIRUSES ARE NOT ALIVE:

OKAY I BELIEVE YOU.

Where exactly is the facebook like button ?

Relevant question spam. I am confused. You can like any post on the individual post page, though. I’m not so fond of that plug-in these days. hmm..

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson: “That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.”

Things just got profound.

J’approuve completement.

Merci.

There are also a surprisingly large number of comments about theZune. Do they even make that any more?

Last Night

Last night was among one of the crazier things I’ve done in my life and, to be honest, it wasn’t that crazy for a lot of people. It was for me, though.

I was a little sad, somewhat annoyed, exhausted and a whole lot of angry. So I did the adult thing, downed an entire bottle of alcohol and posted all my angry, man-hating thoughts for the world to see on Facebook/Twitter.

This is not an apology.

I mean, it was annoying, I can give you that. But I am not sorry. I needed a night to not care. I needed some time to refrain from being the responsible adult. I needed to express anger and I needed to let myself feel sadness and I needed to let it all out — which I pretty much never do.

Luckily, I did so in a pretty entertaining way and no one seems upset with me. In fact, the general consensus is pretty much that I would be a hoot to drink with when, you know, I wasn’t full of angry hate. I think anyone who knows me even moderately understands that I am not that person. I have tried so very hard to be responsible, mindful, positive and strong in the past couple years. I’ve made great strides but sometimes I needed a reminder that I don’t have to be those things all the time.

Last night, I found support from some awesome people, who I would expect to be there, and some awesome people who surprised me by being there. They all surprised me by telling me it was okay for me to feel and act the way I felt and acted because they understood.

I also knew that I would sleep on it and feel better in the morning. Which I did, more or less. Some of the things that set me off didn’t matter in the morning light and some of them are going to make me feel a little blue for a while but none of them are the end of the world or even any worse than anything I’ve had to handle before. And I guess that makes me feel pretty good. Maybe I just needed to check out for a little bit but I’m awesome enough to know how far out I can go and able to reel it back in when I need to.

What happened last night won’t be a regular occurrence, thankfully, but last night needed to happen.

Maplestory stopped working after patch? Try this.

The other day, I downloaded the patch for Maplestory and was excited to sign in. Little did I expect that when I would click any shortcut or try to open GameLauncher.exe from the Maplestory folder, than nothing would happen.

I actually had the same thing happen before and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t find the solution so I stopped playing and uninstalled it for a while. I randomly re-installed it to find that it worked a couple months later.

The problem, it seems, is that Maplestory is now Windows 7 compliant. This is actually a good thing but your game won’t launch if you’ve been running it in Compatibility Mode, which you needed to before. If the game doesn’t launch after a patch, try this:

1. Open the Maplestory folder on your computer. For me, it’s located here: C:\Nexon\MapleStory
2. Right-click GameLauncher and select Properties.
3. Click the Compatibility tab and uncheck “Run this in compatibility mode for.” Make sure “Run as Administrator” is checked.
4. Click “Ok”.
5. Repeat the process for Maplestory.exe if you have been running that in Compatibility Mode.
6. Relaunch your game.
7. Give me all your mesos.

Changing My Tune

When I first heard that there were not one, but two!, fairy-tale inspired stories coming to night-time television last fall, I was pretty excited. I wanted to check out both Grimm and One Upon a Time and.. I did. I actually watched Grimm first and couldn’t get into it, at first. The format was more dramatic and crime procedural than I expected so I turned it off within a few minutes, despite feeling that the main character was pretty hot.

I think I forced myself to like Once Upon a Time because there was no way I was going to not like any fairy-tale television show. And I like how the plot incorporates your favorite stories into a modern day version. There’s enough of a spin to keep it interesting and some of the characters are masterfully cast. Specifically, Mr Gold/Rumpelstiltskin and the mayor. There’s some cheesy CGI and plot holes in general but nothing that will keep me from watching it. It’s a family-friendly show that requires a little bit of suspension of disbelief but it feels good and.. magical.

But I decided to give Grimm another chance the other night and now.. I have to admit that I not only like it but I like it better than I like Once Upon a Time but.. it’s not fairy-tale-esque. Although the main character is a descendent of the ancient Grimm family and, as such, is expected to hunt monsters like werewolves and such, it’s not about fairy tales. Because he’s a cop, this definitely has a dramatic, police feel to it. So it’s not magical but, that’s okay. I already have a magical show to watch.

As I described Grimm to Wendy, she asked if it was like Supernatural. It’s not quite as dark but, yes. Most of the adversaries have been were-like creatures: bears, pigs, bees and, yes, wolves. There was a stay ogre, too. Grimm isn’t necessarily any more realistic than Once Upon a Time and the focus is more on the drama and action than on the characters, like in One Upon a Time, which focuses on character development. Still, I really enjoy the main character’s werewolf buddy. He brings some great comic relief to the show and was well cast himself. Grimm also has some of the same CGI problems but it feels a little more polished than Once Upon a Time.

Anyway, they’re both good but only one of them is really about fairy tales.

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