The Disappointing, The Awesome, and the Utterly Horrendous

This is a Multiverse Post.

By which I mean, I'm gonna be all over the place and talk about a lot of things, because a lot of things happened in my brain yesterday and I wanna talk about all of them.

First, since it holds onto the thread of yesterday's post:

I'm really not surprised that the two most boring contestants were the ones preferred by America. But whatever, because Beverly and Vicci will still put out cds, and I will still be able to buy them, and life will be good.

Second:

I finally saw X-Men First Class, and I really quite liked it. I'm nervous about any movie that claims to have Emma Frost in it, because Wolverine Origins really hurt my feelings with their Not-Emma-Frost. Emma Frost is a fan favorite and they finally got some writers in the franchise who realize that, but they apparently didn't get someone who was actually a fan, and what they gave us was a little girl who... no, this review isn't about that movie.

This review is about a movie that managed to almost get Emma Frost right. I was nervous about January Jones, I admit, but there had been rumors about her as Emma Frost for a while. She wasn't terrible. She was actually almost perfect. She needed to beef up her voice, though. Especially when she was speaking telepathically, her voice sounded kittenish and girly. Emma Frost needs to command.

It's kind of a pet peeve of mine when they give Emma her diamond skin mutation before she's supposed to have it, but I understand that it's a great visual. It's apparently not enough for her to be the third most powerful telepath in the world. At least First Class used the fact that she was a telepath, unlike in Origins where no one even mentioned it.

Michael Fassbender was great as Magneto, and I'm looking forward to reading the reactions in the fan community to the Magneto-Mystique-Beast triangle that the writers decided to develop. Mystique was the wrong age, comic-canon wise (when exactly is Nightcrawler supposed to be born, now?) but I loved the characterization in a character that has generally only been used to show off pretty special effects.

My one complaint is the change in Beast's character. Hank McCoy was a football player and a television personality - he was big, gregarious, and people liked him. Yes, he hid his mutation for a long time, until the whole "turning blue" thing kind of ruined that, but he was nothing like the pipe cleaner with eyes First Class turned him into.

Third:

Transformers 3.

Don't go if you care at all about Transformers. Michael Bay doesn't care about you.

Also, I was really very glad I didn't see it in 3D or IMAX. I think I might have had a seizure. I was expecting explosions, but I wasn't expecting odd, shuttering camera flickers.

Walking out of the theater, the Uber Transfan wiped her eyes and said, "I've never sobbed when a character died before in my life!"

Catface Meowmers and I were silent for a moment, because she was really quite upset, and then Catface Meowmers spoke up, quietly: "Not... not even when Simba's dad died?"

The Voice is almost over.

Notice: I'm changing the BFFFE's name to Uber TransFan. You'll understand that later.

So, the finale of The Voice is tonight. Unfortunately, dogsitting ended this morning, so I won't be able to watch it live. On the off chance that you're just tuning in, and you don't know who to root for, I thought I'd recap last night's episode, so you feel up to speed.

The judges opened it for us by singing "Under Pressure." Badly. I mean, I couldn't believe it, it was so bad. If any of the contestants had been singing like that, America would have voted them off the island. I mean stage.

Xtina came in a good half-beat behind her cue, and seemed to really struggle to hold pitch. At the time I thought it was just due to how distressed she was at the others' performances - no one's voice was really meshing or harmonizing at all. It was four people from four different musical styles who all thought they were the awesomest. Then I decided that maybe it was the fifty pounds of hair they'd glued to her scalp.

Then I decided that she was really on drugs.

In fact, at one point, Carson Daly turned to her for comment, and while I'm sure it's not really what she said, what I heard was, "My boobs. And this Valium."

Unfortunately, the interwebs have not yet provided me with a picture of what she was wearing for you, but let me assure you, I now have expert knowledge of the Xtina's solar plexus. I could probably draw you a diagram of it. I almost typed 'diaphragm' there in an effort to make a pun, but I just couldn't do it.

The contestants were doing original songs that they wrote themselves, like Glee at Nationals, interspersed with random performances by people who were already famous, like Dia Frampton. Also Pitbull, and Brad Paisley.

I spent a few minutes chuckling over the fact that Pitbull looked a lot like Beverly with a fake little mustache slapped on like my Wilson friends used to do for drag night. "No, guys. That was my original song. I wrote it myself. Hustlers move aside, so I'm tip-toein', keep flowin', got it locked up like Lindsay Loha - no? I should have written a song about break-ups like everyone else?"

Javier and Vicci killed it on their original songs, and then Dia Frampton came on and of course performed a beautiful original song. She really shouldn't be on this show. She's Dia Frampton. When she started singing during blind auditions, you could tell on the judges faces that they recognized her voice. Because she's Dia Frampton.

I really quite liked Javier's song. It's too bad that I find him boring as a performer. I don't like watching him. His voice is beautiful but he doesn't hold me riveted while he performs. Vicci and Beverly nail my eyes to the screen.

Also Dia Frampton is already famous! And she can't seem to say anything intelligent on this show! She and Blake Shelton's duet was clearly a send-up to Blues Brothers, and Dia clearly didn't get it at all. She even took her sunglasses off. I've been wondering this whole time why they continually refer to her as a kid, and this is the first time I began to understand.

And then Beverly and Xtina did this:

And Beverly won The Voice. Just like that. I mean, I'm still hoping that Vicci will win, but I'm fairly certain that that performance really just ended the competition right then.

When Brad Paisley performed, Xtina was kind-of clapping and looking around with a confused look on her face that exactly mirrored the confused look on my face: "Why is Brad Paisley performing right now?"

You could almost hear someone screaming backstage: "Someone get the Xtina another Valium! She is starting to question the show!"

Beverly's amazing original song performance felt like a victory lap to me. And then Vicci and Cee Lo did this.

SO FUCKING EPIC.

Musical Quickie

I've got Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm by the Crash Test Dummies stuck in my head, which is possibly the most inconvenient song to ever get stuck in your head, because it's impossible to sing if you're not a bass-baritone. You just sound like you're humming some other song, or maybe you're just making up a tune like a four year old who just discovered humming. Color me annoyed, Brad Roberts.

Here's a different song by them. I realize they're not everyone's flavor, but it's a unique sound and you have to recognize that. Different may not always be better, but having it around is always good.

My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding was a rerun.

I'm watching Guy Ferry talk with his mouth full and get in real chefs' ways on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, and having my foot licked off by the Savage Beast.

It's a compromise. She wanted to lick my face off. See?

She's not vicious. She just loves you so much she can't stand it.

This morning I went on my longest bike ride to date, 41 miles. Not that it's impressive by Real Bikers' standards, but considering the fact that I'm not really a biker, I'm happy with it. I can feel in my body - especially my legs and that place where my legs meet my back - that I'm using muscles in ways I don't normally. I'm in great shape but it's a very specific kind of shape. By the end of these two weeks, it'll be interesting to see what my legs look like. Right now I'm just hoping that my glutes will stop being sore. Not being able to run is such a pain in the ass.

Haha. See how this injury is affecting my sense of humor?

There's a commercial for these things called Pajama Jeans, which annoy me. Because they're not real pants. I don't accept that people can wear pajamas out as regular pants. If they were regular pants, they wouldn't be called pajamas.

I think it really bothers me that there's a huge market for stuff that lets you fake things. Fake jeans, fake bodies. Yes, my brain goes there. It's a logical step. Pajama jeans look a lot like the Curve Control Jeans brought to you by the makers of the Kymaro New Body Shaper.

The Kymaro New Body Shaper is simultaneously the funniest and most deplorable thing I've ever seen being hawked in an infomercial, and back when I worked night shift, I watched a ton of infomercials. They're in the same vein for me as bad disaster movies.

So, this is the Kymaro New Body Shaper:

It's basically control top panty hose for your whole body.

The thing that always stymies me at the end is that... well, ostensibly you're wearing this thing to be more attractive, yes? And you want to be more attractive in order to get laid. It's OK - everyone has the same goal. We all want to be attractive to get laid in order to feel more attractive.

But consider this:

1. You put on your Kymaro New Body Shaper.

2. Feeling skinny and slightly light-headed because you can only take shallow breaths, you nance out on your high heels to a club. (There's no way you'd go to the trouble of Kymaro New Body Shaper and not be wearing high heels.)

3. You find someone who will have sex with you.

4. You arrive at a previously agreed upon location in order to have this sex.

5. Now what?

You have to take your clothes off, that's what.

Chew on that for a minute.

Bones About It

One of my favorite product review blogs, The Impulsive Buy, is accepting submissions for another staff writer, and I want that gig. So I decided to write a product review, just to show them my writing style. They asked that I include pictures, so I decided to do that, too.

This is what happened.

----------------------------------

I'm petsitting this weekend, and this dog, while very sweet, is made of crazy. She's so high energy she vibrates. She doesn't have an ounce of fat on her body. She's the living embodiment of a Powerplate Platform. She may be endorsed by Madonna.

Others tell me that she calms down and acts like a normal dog sometimes, but she almost never does around me. I walk in the door and she starts bouncing from me, to the wall, to me, to the other wall... she bashes into furniture and sometimes gets so excited she pees on the floor. I've been around dogs my whole life and watched many episodes of 'It's Me Or The Dog,' so I ignore her and walk through to the kitchen, settle myself around the house, and avoid eye contact.

It doesn't work.

And since the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results... this time I came armed with a very special technique happened upon by The Librarian. I call it, 'Give her something to eat besides my face.'

I brought these:


They came in a three pack for $7.98 at Walmart, and I spent a few minutes standing in the pet toy aisle, eying them suspiciously. Would three be enough? I'm petsitting all weekend, after all, and even though these were the largest white rawhides offered (any color rawhide + white carpet = disaster of biblical proportions) they didn't seem all that large to me. How much peace could $7.98 bring me?

Anything was better than no peace at all, though. After all, there's a really great Chinese takeout place near their house, the best I've located so far, and I want to be able to eat my Broccoli with Garlic Sauce on previously mentioned white carpet without stress.

Here's a comparison photo of one of the bones with the face it would hopefully be replacing:

(Serious face because it's serious business.)

As you can see, they're fairly close to a foot long. They're light and feel dryer to me than a lot of the rawhide products I've handled in the past. The label makes it very clear that they're not for human consumption, so I can't speak to their taste. I can speak to the fact that they Tamed The Savage Beast.

For, you know, a little while.

I'm not a dog. I don't understand the appeal of dry, untanned animal hide, but then, I've also never had the impulse to roll around in rotting dead animals, which I'm given to understand is a favorite past time of members of the Canid family. But I tossed the first bone onto the floor and for the next four hours, the Beast's entire attention span was focused on something that was not me.

Within the first twenty minutes, she had gotten one of the ends completely off. I think I was right about these being somehow drier that regular rawhide, because when she got it separated, she left a trail of crumbly little rawhide bits on the carpet. The rest of the bone put up a good long fight before it succumbed to the Beast's Big Sharp Pointy Teeth. It took a while.

Sometimes the Beast tried new techniques, including one that involved letting gravity do some of the work and just opening and closing her jaws.

I really do love this dog.

And this Chinese food.


The Dragon Wok on Skeet Club in High Point, for you locals. Same shopping center as Feeney's Frozen Yogurt.

Item: Exer-hides Rawhide Bones
Price: $7.98 plus tax
Size: 16.2 ounces (for 3 bones)
Purchased at: WalMart
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Taming the savage beast. My delicious dinner.
Cons: Eventual defeat. Little bits on the carpet. Gross if you think about it too much. Extra gross if you Google it.

Sometimes I worry about faces.

6 days. 177 miles. 983 minutes. Not bad, but yea gods, I want to run again.

I went to the store last night just to hang out, and it wasn't as hangdog as I thought it would be. I only experienced two bouts of "WAIT TAKE ME WITH YOU!!!!!" Honestly I think the biking is staving off the crazy for the moment. Next week I might be ready to kill someone, but so far my body is so focused on the new, exciting burn of biking that it hasn't seemed to notice it isn't being taken out for its runs.

So, here's the full skinny on my ankle:
I have what the Orthodoc calls a "stress reaction" in the place where my heel and talus bones connect. As far as Google can tell, "stress reaction" is just a fancy, I-went-to-medical-school way of saying "If you don't stop right the fuck now and let it chill out, it's going to be a stress fracture."

So I'm actually very proud of myself for listening to the pain and stopping when I did. It may have saved Richmond for me. As it is, I can't run or do any other impact sports for 2 weeks. I have some prescription anti-inflammatories (not straight up painkillers, thankfully, because I don't wanna be doped up for 2 weeks) and an ankle brace.

I'm allowed to bike as long as I stop if it hurts. Unfortunately, biking is just about the only thing that doesn't hurt - I limp outside in the morning and sigh in relief the minute both feet touch the pedals. It's gonna be a long 2 weeks, but I'm gonna do what the Orthodoc says, because I've got the time and I'm trying to be a smarter runner.

In other news, I just finished my last exam and am now officially on vacation. I've decided that I'm going to write and polish up a short story this summer. I tried to think about the plot this morning during my ride, and instead I wrote this:

R'lyeh-yeh-yeh
R'lyeh-yeh-yeh
Cthulhu's world!

R'lyeh-yeh-yeh
R'lyeh-yeh-yeh
Cthulhu's world!

Cthulhu loves destruction!
And chaos too!
That's Cthulhu's world!

Food Network Masterchef. Wait. That's not right...

I stream Masterchef and Food Network Star on Hulu while I do other, real stuff like sit-ups and homework. I frequently get the two confused so if I'm talking about something that happened on Masterchef that didn't, I probably mean FNS, and vis versa.

The thing I have to remember is that Gordon Ramsay is on Masterchef (but he's nice, so it's hard to remember that it's him) and Giada's boobs are on FNS. I honestly don't understand the appeal of Giada. I mean, I get the low cut shirt hello cleavage thing because I am a red-blooded American lesbian and even green-blooded, queer Vulcan men would get that, but I'm inevitably distracted from the cleavage by the fact that she looks like a bobblehead.

I clearly remember that I used to find Giada attractive. Let me see if I can... yes, a quick Google confirms it.

This is Giada ca. 2008:
And this is Giada now:
I mean, jeez.

But so I'm watching FNS, and there's this contestant called Jyll. Yes, Jill-with-a-y. I'm not even gonna begin to complain about that, because for all I know her parents could actually have named her that. No, what I'm complaining about with Jyll is the fact that she is constantly referring to things as "Jyllicious." I get that portmanteau is cute and people like 'em. I'll eat the hell out of some brunch with a spork while listening to Motown and writing in my blog.

But when you refer to something as "you + delicious," my brain assumes that you're saying it literally tastes like you, which just seems really unsanitary in a catering situation.

I need my ankles to smell like oranges and mangoes.

I ducked home instead of going straight to the Superlab after my ride because I'm going to the orthopedist today. And everyone knows that means that I need to dry shave my legs and put on good-smelling lotion. People are going to be touching my legs.

I meant to do it before I left the house, but I forgot. I've become increasingly unable to function first thing in the morning. I had an entire conversation with the BFFFE the other morning, and then half an hour and several miles down the road later realized that it had all taken place in my head. I'm concerned that the rest of the Collective is going to think I'm avoiding conversation or something else silly like that. I just am Not Awake.

I've had this song in my head for two days, and I looked up the video on YouTube to listen to it, and I somehow managed to forget how simple and yet mind-blowing this video is. I don't really need to introduce it, do I?

I won't say 'massive waste of time' out loud, but I'll certainly blog about it.

Things I've learned from this section:

1. Gravity causes things to go down.
2. When anchoring vegetation is removed, shit rolls downhill.
3. Aquitard is a word.
4. Antarctica is bogarting all our fresh water.
5. No, one couldn't say that a glacier is just an iceberg that didn't get the memo.
6. Deserts are very different from more humid places.
7. Desert plants are highly tolerant of drought.

It was so deadpan it took me ten minutes to realize how funny it was.

I dragged my ass out of bed Too Early this morning to go get my ride in before everything had to happen - though I still had the 'Talk Myself Into Doing It Now Instead of Later' conversation which culminated with a check of the hourly weather forecast.

I made it home in time to shower and put on clean clothes before meeting my mom and Albuquirky Aunt for lunch, and thank god cause I was really sweaty and probably smelled bad and was in general not an adequate representation of myself.

So I was walking out the door, and I stick my hand in the back pocket of my jeans, and find two dollar bills. "Oh," I said, surprised and not altogether displeased. "Freshly laundered money."

The BearCat-CatBear didn't look up from his instant coffee doctoring. "I've heard about that. Isn't that what you do when you get drugs on it?"

"That's what I hear," I agreed, unfolding the stiff, slightly blue edges and trying to remember why I'd put two dollars in my back pocket and not my wallet.

"Yeah, I don't understand the process, either. Hm, this is actually quite good." He took a long slurp of instant coffee and SoDelicious coconut-based creamer, staring fuzzily out into the backyard. "Welp, have a nice day."

"You, too."

I put the dollars back in my pocket and left for lunch.

Creole Lady Xtina

This performance could be epic. I don't know. I was laughing too hard.

Honestly, did Christina not feel like learning a new song?

My favorite part is when she turns to her team and demands, "Say my name!" I mean, really, Xtina. Frenchie is... oh, wow. I didn't realize you were 30 now, and I would never have guessed that Frenchie is only 2 years older than you. WELL, Beverly is 11 years older than you, and also she could kick your ass if she wasn't so chivalrous, so delivering a musical bitchslap and screaming "Say my name!" is a little inappropriate.

Also, and understand that I'm a lesbian who thinks you're absolutely beautiful when I say this, I think sometimes you should wear pants.

One of the Youtube commentors said this: "My prediction for final 4: Javier, Frenchie, Vicci, and Dia Frampton because for some reason white people really seem to like her voice." So now every time I see Dia Frampton on this show all I can think is, "Dia Framption: Catnip For White People."

Meg & Dia will never be the same for me.

SOMEONE got a Wilson Phillips song stuck in my head.

Got up and rode 25 miles this morning. I'm trying not to get too down about the fact that I can't run, so I'm coming up with a list of reasons why biking is more fun than running. Here's what I've got:

1. I can eat breakfast and drink coffee and then immediately go biking without major stomach issues.

2. I can carry stuff with me. Like my wallet and my cell phone, and a bottle of water so I don't have to hunt down public water fountains mid-run.

3. I can wear regular clothes - well, regular enough to bike straight to class or to a restaurant. I can also carry a change of clothes if need be (see #2).

4. ...

Well, I'm working on it. Biking is a lot of fun, but it's just not as satisfying as running. It feels like something fun to do on the side instead of something I can focus my energies on and accomplish. I think I'll always bike, even once I'm running again, because it's fun and good for me and intellectually I know that, but running is... running. It's really great to have biking as a back-up in case of injuries like this, though.

Life is hard when you have a Better'N Peanut Butter and Strawberry Jelly Sandwich in your backpack, and it's an hour till lunchtime. I'm not hungry but I love PB&J so much that I just constantly want to eat it. I'll finish one sandwich and still want another one. It's not logical or graceful. And ever since The Librarian turned me on to Better'N Peanut Butter, it's practically compulsive. I love that stuff. I eat it with a spoon, I smear it on apples, I put it in baked goods and oatmeal and... if they ever need a spokesperson, I'm there. But they don't, because their product is so awesome it sells itself.

Luckily, I can't eat in the Superlab. So as long as I stay here, my sandwich stays in my backpack.

I've been watching this show called The Voice on Hulu. This is the contestant I want to win.


It's basically American Idol, but if American Idol was doing it right. I.E., its main focus is musical talent and vocal ability. The contestants auditioned for the teams blind, so they were judged completely on how they sounded. There are sixteen year old kids versus women in their 40s and 50s, and neither of them have an advantage because they're being at least partly judged by people who know what the fuck music is supposed to sound like.

The one bad thing about it is that Christina Aguilera, who I love (as previously discussed in this post), comes off as extremely awkward and kind of... stupid... on camera. I'm positive she's not really like this, and it's just her feeling awkward about being on camera. I mean, she's not known for doing this type of thing. She's a goddamn musical prodigy. She sings.

And damn, does she on this show. She'll be coaching her contestants, and they won't get a rift right, and she'll say, "No, more like this." And without hesitating or even taking an extra breath as far as I can tell, incredible sound just erupts from her mouth.

And then her poor little contestants get this look in their eyes like, "Yeah, um... you're Christina Aguilera, and I need to go change my panties."

Obligatory Acknowledgement of Father's Day

My dad isn't a sentimental guy. He doesn't like greeting cards, or meandering trips down memory lane; all that is my mom's purview. She's the one who wants flowers and phone calls on her birthday and would happily spend the rest of our lives going over the giant plastic storage tubs full of photographs she took when I was a child, insisting I remember events and people I have no memory whatsoever of. I'm more like my dad, but I do all those things for her, because she likes them, and I like to make her happy.

I'm not totally insensitive to my dad's needs. He just doesn't really have them. Sometimes I do precious father/daughter things because Mom wants them done, but mostly I just hang out with my dad because he can be fun to hang out with. We don't "bond." We just hang out. We've known each other for a while, you see.

But I still had lunch with my dad today. Because it's farking Father's Day, and my dad likes eating at Emma Key's, and why not? Everyone around me lives far away from their fathers, and couldn't hang out with them today, and it made me unaccountably grateful for the fact that I live so close.

And, yeah, my mom and Albuquirky Aunt were there, and he and I were both grumpy for various reasons, but it counts. He had a Carolina-style burger (for those of you who don't know, that's a burger built like a real hotdog - chili, slaw, onions, mustard) (and chili means spicy ground beef in a sauce like a condiment, not soup with beans) and I had a "Vegan Cake" which is basically a falafel burger made with black beans. They almost never have the vegan bread but I'm not really vegan, so I don't care. It's yummy. You'd think a burger and shake shack would be the last place a lactose-intolerant vegetarian would like to eat, but I love it there.

Then obviously we ate ice cream because if I can't run, I'm going to eat goddamn ice cream. And since all this happened between 2 and 4 pm, I wasn't hungry at dinner and basically ate some greek yogurt with cereal out of habit at 9.

I found a cereal I don't like One Bit At All - Cookie Crisp! Honestly, it's this weird combination of chocolate and... not-chocolate... and it just doesn't work for me. The BearCat-CatBear says that it's really meant to be eaten in milk, but I don't like eating cereal in milk, so there you go. I like dry cereal, or cereal in yogurt if I'm feeling adventuresome. The best thing to me is Corn Flakes and strawberry yogurt. Seriously.

I'm talking about food here because that's how my dad and I communicate. Through food. We share a near-maniacal need to Eat Well. He taught it to me, through exposure, taking me along on all kinds of quests - the perfect hotdog, the best barbecue. I cringe, thinking about the various picky eater phases I went through, including the phase where I ate nothing but chicken caesar salads, and all the food experiences I could have been having instead.

Wednesday, my last night in Winston-Salem, I walk in the house after my crappy, ankle-stabbing run, and sitting on the counter in Grandma's kitchen was a styrofoam takeout container. Inside was a vegetable plate from the best shack in NC - and I mean it is literally a shack - Snook's Barbecue. I don't know if their barbecue is any good but I do know that they make hands down the best cabbage in the world.

Sometimes Dad can make things right without even knowing that something was wrong. That's why he's Dad, and everyone else is just a schmuck. (Kudos if you get the reference.)

Happy Cheese Day!

I meant to run 13 miles this morning with The Bad Influence, but instead I cut it short to 10 because I need to go see an ortho for my ankle. I decided on the way home that I would just bike until I get it x-rayed, because biking doesn't seem to bother it at all.

I don't wanna go to the doctor because I'm terrified that she'll say something is horribly wrong and I can't run again ever, but I need to suck it up and do the manly thing here.

And since my ankle hurts and I'm depressed/scared about it, I had twice the reason to have my usual Saturday Ice Cream Lunch. Yes, it's a thing, and yes, I really do it. See, I eat really big after my long run. Big enough that I'm usually not hungry for lunch. I get snacky about 2PM, and I started having my weekly dose of ice cream around that time. So it's easier just to say I have ice cream for lunch on Saturdays.

I've been planning for this one since Wednesday. I hunted for a week for the flavor of ice cream I wanted - Blue Bunny Red Carpet Red Velvet Cake - and finally found it at WalMart. I wrapped it up in plastic and shoved it in the very back of the freezer so no one would eat it until after I cracked into it, because I usually like the very top of the ice cream best. I got home and cleaned my 'room' to the point of feeling like a human and not a cave troll. Then I loaded up my mason jar I brought back from The Girl Who Says Fuck A Lot's wedding, because I've found it's the best receptacle for eating all sorts of things.

This is the best idea someone ever had. Seriously. It's vanilla ice cream with pieces of red velvet cake and a cream cheese frosting swirl, and it really is as good as it sounds. Sometimes ice cream flavors don't hit the notes they promise you, but this one is really that good. The red velvet cake bits are chewy and chunky like you're eating ice cream cake, and the cream cheese frosting is there without overpowering the taste of the red velvet.

My one criticism is that I was right - if I had not been squirrely and crazy and come to the ice cream eating party late, I would have had a lot less cake and a lot less frosting. Further down in the container, all of the additions were pushed to the outside and there was just a big pile of plain ice cream in the middle.

So now I'm in an ice cream coma, watching last season's Next Food Network Star, listening to Aarti talk about her 'tummy' like she's three and cringing knowing that she wins. When my brain wakes up a little bit more, I'll try to find something worth watching.

I don't get it.

Cereal companies put the nutrition facts of their cereal with half a cup of milk alongside the nutrition facts of plain, dry cereal. Can people not figure out that milk adds calories and nutrition?

Did you hear my brain imploding?

Song of the day?

Song of the CENTURY, my friends.

I probably wouldn't do anything for a Klondike bar.

Just finished taking my Geosystems exam - thank God I found out one of Grandma's neighbors doesn't protect their wireless network, so I could just get up, make coffee, and power into it - and since I budgeted 2hrs for it and finished in 1hr10mins, clearly I need to entirely squander away 50mins.

Track last night was awesome.

I mean, it didn't seem awesome while I was doing it. It was a relatively cool day, and I showed up to track without knowing what I was going to do (I never know what I'm going to do because I don't know what I'm doing), so when The Math Teacher showed up as the only person around my pace ability and she didn't know what we were going to do, The Librarian suggested we try 400s. Since track workouts aim for 3 miles total, that's 12 400s.

At about the eighth one I started trying to scheme my way out of doing the rest. "Why don't we drop down to 800s, or do a mile repeat?" The Math Teacher was too busy actually recovering during the minute rests we were taking, and so I talked myself out of it by realizing that there was something actually very comforting about the fact that I knew I only had to go around once. I felt better about trying to kill myself, knowing that it would be over sooner.

But round about the second lap of my cooldown, I found myself thinking, "Hey, that was fun!"

I was maybe a little delirious.

So then after track we ate Mexican food, and then went to an Irish pub to meet some friends because, hey, we're Americans. So then I wound up driving back to the cats in WS (about a 40 minute drive if I'm being paranoid about speed traps) at like 11pm.

Which could only mean one thing: I needed a good snack.

I adore 24hr grocery stores. I adore 24hr anything, to be honest, because truthfully I'm bad a remembering Time. The BFFFE asked me to bring her home Subway last night and I said, "Sure," not remembering that Subways close at night. So now I'll be slouching into the house this morning with belated Subway and a guilty expression.

So I went to the Taj MaTeeter at Friendly Center, in search of provisions.

I wound up with these:

Apparently I've been out of the loop for a while, just eating the plain White Cheddar rice cakes because they're AWESOME, but I wanted a crunchy snack that I could eat while driving without leaving a mess, and rice cakes leave a mess even if I'm not driving while I try to eat them. Last time I looked at Quakes, they had two flavors: Cheddar and Caramel Apple. The Cheddar are good, but Caramel Apple flavor paired with a crunchy texture I associate with salty things is too jarring for me.

I was torn between the Kettle Corn, the Sea Salt and Black Pepper, and the Sweet Chili. I veto'd the Sweet Chili first simply because I didn't like the word 'sweet' in the name - that's a word they use to reassure people things aren't that spicy - and the final decision was somewhat arbitrary.

I like Kettle Corn. I kind of liked these Quakes. They're a little too sweet for the amount of not-salty they are, if that makes sense. I like my Kettle flavors to be evenly balanced, but the first bite was all sweet, no salt. After a while, the salty flavor started building up in my mouth, but it wasn't as obvious when you ate the Quakes the way I like to eat them - in little nibbly bites. I like the texture. To get a good balance between sweet and salty, you had to shove a whole cake in your mouth. Not as fun. There was also initially an eggy taste - like in Corn Pops - that didn't fit into the description, but it either went away or faded into the background.

My final review is that I wish I'd gone with the Sea Salt and Black Pepper. But I will next time. In fact, I'll probably pick some up today, when I stop at WalMart as part of my Search For Red Velvet Cake Ice Cream. I actually went to the Blue Bunny website last night and did a 'store locator,' and all the stores that popped up were WalMarts. Ergo, WalMart is hiding my ice cream.

Yes, Cheese Day isn't until Saturday, but I'm preparing in advance. Red Velvet Cake Ice Cream.

Movin' on up...

You may notice a new feature on the blog - SPACE GHOST! I'm not feeling futzy enough to try to make the test all wiggly like the guy's voice in the show, but if you're like me, you added it anyways.

Space Ghost is there to help you (well, mostly help me) countdown to the Richmond SunTrust Marathon, which I am now officially registered for. I realized that it would be pretty lame if I did all this talking about running Richmond, and then the thing was sold out by the time I got around to it. So I fixed that and to celebrate the fact that all my catsitting money just bought about 4 hours of time in November, I put Mr Space Ghost up.

No turning back now. I paid for this thing.

I was walking into Harris Teeter last night at about 10pm to buy eggs for breakfast, and I spent a couple of minutes musing over the fact that if I was a vampire, this would be my normal shopping time, so how did the people hanging around in the parking lot know that I wasn't a vampire. "You're too tan now," a helpful weasel in my head whispered.

But then another weasel replied, "You'd think vampires would have figured out self-tanning lotion by this point."

Which is an excellent point. What is it about the sun that makes vampires burst into flame? I'm assuming it's some kind of UV intolerance, given the fact that Blade uses weapons armed with UV light bulbs, so self-tanning lotion would probably be safe for them to use. But it could be a reaction to their own melanin production, a kind of autoimmune response that is a nasty side effect of being their kind of undead. In which case, self-tanning lotion just went from slightly laughable product to deadly weapon in the battle against the undead.

Someone call Buffy.

Tick tick tick.

I really like TV, but not in a normal person kind of way. I don't really watch it. I mean it's on, and periodically some of the information on it enters my brain, but usually it's not what I'm doing, if you understand what I mean. Like, right now, I'm working on my rock lab (the textbook's website is so slow to load videos that I'm getting two or three paragraphs per section) and eating grapefruit.

To that end, I tend to watch a lot of... junk. Stuff I'm ashamed to admit that I watch.

This morning, it's 19 Kids And Counting.

There are several reasons for this. Number one is that it's just after 7 in the morning and there's nothing else really on. I need my computer to do this virtual rock lab (more on that in a minute because I think it's hysterical) so Hulu is out.

Number two is that I really need to pay attention to this lab, and I'm shocked by how Not Interested I am. These people are so intolerable to me that it's like a blessing to focus on homework.

I think the main reason I can't stand the show is the mom, and I think I can't stand her because she talks like she's a moron. And while she's not a rocket scientist, I don't think she's really all that stupid. I think she's just so used to talking and explaining things to small children that she's forgotten how to talk to adults.

I actually understand that pretty well, because my mom does that sometimes, too. I used to get ticked off because I felt like she was talking to me like I was a child, but now I can see that she speaks to everyone that way. It's not a reflection of how smart she is, it's just that when my brother and I were kids, she just got used to talking this way. People respond well to it because secretly everyone is still a kid inside, so she had and has no impetus to stop.

It annoys me, but just because I don't like... inanity. When I was a baby, and it was just me and her alone in the house all day, she would talk to me constantly. Monologue everything she was doing. But now I don't think that it's always necessary to talk and explain. Just like I don't think you should ask 'How are you?' unless you really want to know how someone is.

You know, it's probably because I'm never 100% focused on a situation. My mom and I will be driving, and she'll be monologuing the drive, you know, "Look at this, look at that, oh how cool," and I'm thinking about something else entirely, so it interrupts my train of thought to focus on a conversation about nothing.

When I'm making small talk, it's usually in an effort to maintain focus on a conversation or topic. Or it's because honestly what I'm thinking about is what the small talk is about, and sometimes it's such a relief to talk to someone in front of me about the thing in my brain that I can't shut up. But I don't pretend to be any good at small talk. I have gotten better and it's mostly because I finally have a group of friends who I truly like to do social, public things with. I meet new people all the time, running or eating, and I've actually stopped being paralyzingly afraid that they'll think I'm a moron. Also, taking sign language has really helped because I have to make eye contact in ASL, or I'm totally rude.

So for the first time in my life, I actually have some small talk skills.

And wow, that was a disjointed, rambling post, but I finished the rock identification part of my lab. I have to stop at Walmart and the gas station on the way out of town, because I had basically the worst run ever this morning, with intestinal issues so bad it doesn't even count as a run, and I'm going to use the time I was going to go to the store after class to run at Salem Lake. The exit is really right on the way back to Grandma's House and it's a shame to be driving past it every day.

So I'll tell you all about virtual rock id tonight.

Maybe it should be 'Run - Bears Chase You'...

My first night of catsitting coincided with my first late night run of the summer.

I prefer not to run at night for one very simple reason: I am a fraidy cat. And not a sensible, "I'm afraid the cars won't be able to see me" or "I'm scared someone with kidnap and murder me" type of fraidy cat, but an irrational, "even while I'm scared out of my mind I know I'm being stupid" fraidy cat.

I get deathly scared of bears.

Seriously. Every time I turn a corner or the shadows move funny, I'm convinced it's a bear (or sometimes a large dog or even a tiger if I'm in Country Park) waiting by the side of the road to gore me.

I don't know why I'm scared of bears when I run in the dark. All other times, I love bears. I even love bears while I'm camping and there IS a legit chance that bears will come and rip my tent open and gore me because I forgot I have a granola bar in my backpack. But something about night running makes bears really scary to me.

I had to run at night, though, because I had stuff to do all day. My mileage is already messed up for the week and cutting my Wednesday run means cutting another 10 miles off of it, and you can't make up 10 miles when you're already kind of maxed. So even though by the time the after dinner stopwatch read 2 hours (my minimum eat-a-meal-then-run time) it was 10pm, I put on my running shoes and went.

And you know? It was actually kind of nice. I mean, I DEFINITELY ate too much at dinner and I had to duck into a 24hr Harris Teeter and not buy anything like a shifty person, but it was really nice and quiet out there. If you know which neighborhoods to stay in, Winston-Salem is a really safe place to run at night. I was super slow for the same reason I had to visit Harris Teeter, but even that wasn't enough to ruin the overall impression.

When I was first adding distance, about this time last year, I had to run at night because it was so hot and my body still wasn't adapted to intense physical exertion. I remember one run out at Salem Lake (back when the loop was a little under 7 miles) and by mile 5 I had to stop and walk because I was so hot and dehydrated that my body had actually stopped sweating. I was dizzy and honestly thought I was going to die.

I love thinking about those times because it underscores how far I've come in so little time. I mean, I still don't like running in the heat. It's miserable and hard. But I can do it without serious risk of death.

Then of course when I got home I was too amped up to go to sleep, so I washed my running clothes (they'll thank me for that at the group run tonight) and watched Auction Hunters until my eyelids fell down. My grandma's cats didn't come in the house, but I've adopted a zen-like attitude towards that this go around.

By "zen like" I mean "could give a monkey's foot." The cats will come in the house when they're hungry and hot, whether or not they like me. And if they don't, well. They're all very overweight and they can just diet until Grandma and Grandpa get back next week. Also appparently they catch mice and snakes quite handily, so they won't starve.

I saw a cockroach outside this morning, and my first thought was that it clearly had rabies, since cockroaches are nocturnal and flee from the light. I think probably that's incorrect.

This is so cool. I love the Tom Tom Club and I fully support any and all efforts to revive them.

Try and tell me you wouldn't change lanes...

If you saw this guy coming up behind you.

Tell me that's not absolutely terrifying.

Monday, monday.

First: Supernova WILL return. I just have to finish watching it. Which I WILL DO. I was halfway through part two on Friday when The Librarian said, "Come over to our friends' house where I'm dogsitting and sit on the back porch with a bunch of our other friends 'cause it's a nice night."

So I went and did that. Then the next day I was hosting the run, and eating corn pancakes, and watching The Walking Dead with the Librarian while consuming a little bit too much Breyer's Blasted! Whoppers ice cream. Then I just HAD to eat some good Thai food with my dad and Albuquirky Aunt at Taste of Thai. I found out that the seaweed-wrapped tofu in red curry sauce I've been so infatuated with for so long is actually "imitated catfish," which it's nothing like catfish so it's not a very good act. It's still super tasty so I would recommend it. I just maybe wouldn't mention during my recommendation that it's supposedly reminiscent of catfish.

The next day I was bike riding for three hours, then sitting in the sun at Fishbones and eating the MOST AMAZING TACOS EVER (I took a picture because I was so infatuated with them, see below). Then later there was music in a park in front of a supposed "mansion" and... well, I've just been really busy doing all kinds of things that are more interesting than watching Supernova.

So now I've finished with my exam and I'm sitting here worrying about The Librarian and the only way I know to stop worrying about things is to a) run or b) distract myself with pointless things.

I can't go running right now because I have class in 20 minutes and also I have track (or something) tonight and I only ran 6 instead of 10 yesterday because my legs felt so bad, so I don't want to push them any harder than a normal track day. So I'm blogging, which at this juncture is pointless but therapeutic. So there you go.

I found out that I should get the internet at my house on Thursday, which is THE MOST EXCITING NEWS EVER, and means that I won't have to spend 4 hours sitting in the computer lab at the library every morning. Also that I can watch Hulu.

Which is almost a shame, because I totally hauled all of my DVDs to the house yesterday, and it's kind of obscene how many I have. I put them all on a shelf and had to keep myself from petting them and purring like a satisfied dragon. Several of them I had forgotten all about because I had to put so many in storage when I moved into the dorm. I can't tell you how stoked I am that I can have all of my stuff in the same place. All of my books in one location, like a real person.

The fact that my books outnumber my movies by Quite A Few and I apparently have Three Shit-Tons of movie, kind of concerns me, but I will forge ahead, even if I end up with more shelfspace than floorspace. It must be done.

I start catsitting for my grandma in Winston-Salem on Wednesday (which is tomorrow), and since I have to go back and forth to class and to the run on Saturday, I'll be bringing stuff with me when I come. Including the bookshelf that my mother has been using 'until I have a place to put it.' I told her three weeks ago that I now had a place to put it, so she should clear it out. As of yesterday, it's not cleared out, but it will be, even if she comes home from work one day and all of her cookbooks are stacked on the floor.

My mother has more cookbooks than anyone on the planet, which is strange considering I've never seen her cook from anything but her recipe card box, which has all of her mother's recipes along with some from Albuquirky Aunt, who is a baker extraordinaire. I may horde books and movies, but at least they are all relevant to my interests and I use them. The ones that I don't use get carted off to Eddie McKay's so I can have more of the things I want. Also I keep them in good shape, so that Eddie will take them from me. My mom's books are mostly falling apart.

Time for me to run to class. Still haven't heard from the Librarian, but... well, okay, so I wouldn't know if anything really bad was happening, because no one would know to tell me, but I trust that everything is fine. I usually do and it usually is.

I see the moon, and the moon sees me...

Tacos:

Supernova Pt3: I have a Land Rover

Supernova Pt1: Where the hell are we?
Supernova Pt2: SWITCH TO THE OMEGA!
Intermission: What do you mean, "Who is Tia Carrere?"


Step back, sons. I have a citronella candle, diet Canada Dry ginger ale, and a brand-new outdoor outlet on my back porch. It's time to watch part two of this epic adventure in style.

Here goes.

Well, we start out with different into music - a little less epic, a little more punk rock. Interesting choice. There's some more CG space animation mixed in with stock footage of what I'm sure are real disasters. So it's kind of like you're switching between watching the news and playing Starcraft.

Actually, it's exactly like that. Huh.

So, basically everything is on fire. EVEN THE GOATS!

They made sure to add a recording of a goat bleating in post. I'm assuming that it's bleating in terror, but then I don't speak goat. He might have just been asking for ice cream.

Things are also randomly blowing up all over the place. There's this American reporter telling us about it now, standing in front of a solid, mysteriously unexploded buildi- oh, nevermind. Boom goes the dynamite.

Then the camera pans back and it turns out that the US Military are just sitting around watching the news. The station goes to commercial, and Evil Leo props his hands on his camo-clad hips in a manly fashion and proceeds to monologue in fine supervillain fashion. He even manages to quote Abraham Lincoln. You can tell he's been practicing this in front of a mirror for years. He says we have to "face the arithmetic" and save the human race "without sentimentality."

In other words, "I've done this math on this thing and the more people we save, the less chance there is that Tia Carrere will sleep with me."

Speaking of Agent Delgado, she's there, and someone found her a hairbrush, which is a shame because I thought the post-helicopter-crash 80s 'do was really adding to her credibility.

She asks Evil Leo is he's heard anything about her mother and sister, and he says they refused to go into the Secret Underground Nazi City. Even though he said 'pretty please.'

Agent Delgado puts on her Resolve Face.

It's on, now.

Then suddenly, the scene cuts and the screen says we're in Washington DC. Fantastic. Maybe this is where all the Australian people are. The DoD are sitting in their command center talking about how the entire world is on fire and no one knows what's going on. They should really watch the news like the Military.

Cut to the lesbians, who are making home movies and enjoying brunch.

Before you make cliche jokes about UHauls, remember that THE ENTIRE FREAKING WORLD IS ENDING. Time is limited.

The British Journalist has been fired, but she's still gonna Get Her Story Out, I'm assuming using the Ginnyssistant's Skype and Twitter Savvy. Since everyone in this movie has time to stand around and watch the news, apparently.

Back to Luke Perry, the Brilliant Astrophysicist, whose brilliant escape plan is to... pry open an air vent an anorexic ballerina wouldn't be able to wedge through.

Thank God Agent Delgado is in this movie. She shows up with something useful - handcuffs.

Luke Perry puts up a fight, because he's never seen Star Wars.

Agent Delgado Does Not Have Time For This Shit. She forces him to wander around in a basement for a while and then shoves him into a car. Because it's been established that you can drive to the surface. Nevermind that for a ramp to work like that it would have to be miles and miles... hey. Maybe it's a ramp all the way through the planet, and that's why all the American people are in Australia.

Before I have time to consider this idea more fully, we're taken back to Luke Perry's wife. You know, it doesn't surprise me that she's not included in the Secret Underground Nazi City. Since she's clearly very unitarian and unprejudiced.

She and Evil Leo would totally get along. And they need a Secret place to go, anyways, because the guy she's so wigged about has escaped from prison and is Coming To Get Her. So she runs her ass away and leaves her slave behind to "get things in order" and be killed. As she drives away, the slave speaks for the first time. With a South African accent.

Meanwhile, British Journalist has posted her home videos up on Myspace. As you do.

It's taken Luke Perry all this side plot to realize that Tia Carrere is saving his ass. She promises to drive him to Sydney, but then he's on his own because she has to go save her mother and sister in St Louis. Missouri.

Luke Perry says, "You can't make it to St Louis from here. It's halfway around the world."

Tia Carrere says, "Watch me, bitch. I have a Land Rover."

Luke Perry's wife and daughter have decided to go camping on that other planet where the weather is positively bucolic. They should really just take the human race there. I guess it would really mess up the view, though. They bought another South African slave when they got there. I'm taken off guard when this slave calls her first name. I was actually assuming her name was 'Madam,' because it made the whole thing less offensive to me.

Anywho, Agent Delgado has managed to find a real Australian person! So she steals his car. Diplomacy is for those other people. You know, the ones who aren't awesome. Like Luke Perry. Who watches her steal the car, knows the car is stolen, but still has to be told to get in. As he buckles his seatbelt, he chides her for stealing it. IT'S THE END OF THE FREAKING WORLD, LUKE PERRY!

Meanwhile, in the Indian Ocean:

Brunch on the terrace?

How about a slumber party? We can paint each others' toenails and tell ghost stories!

Seriously, girls, if you ever get a guy into bed, and he has a cute little dolphin tattoo on his arm, you should probably start hinting that, you know, "If you were gay... that would be okay... I mean cause hey... I'd like you anyway..."

Aaaaaand back to the "action." Tia Carrere and Luke Perry are on the road trip from hell.

Luke Perry is writing in his diary.

Dear Diary.

Agent Delgado is such a bitch.

I'm so glad I'm HAPPILY married and NOT ATTRACTED TO HER AT ALL!!!!!!!!

Agent Delgado interrupts his furious journaling to tell him that they've been riding in the car from the Phantom Tollbooth this whole time, and his tiny, thoughtless brain is going to keep them from reaching St Louis.

He says, no, the Pacific Ocean is going to keep us from reaching St Louis.

She slaps him upside the head.

He makes sure to note in his diary that this is the WORST ROAD TRIP EVER.

Cut to a reminder that the WORLD IS FREAKING ENDING, thanks to these images from Starcraft

And some dramatic music.

British Journalist and Ginnyssistant have decided to take a road trip, too. For a movie about catastrophic climate change, no one seems very concerned about the environment.

That bitch slap Delgado delivered knocked the final thoughts from Luke Perry's head, so the Phantom Tollbooth car stopped working.

You thought I was kidding, didn't you?

So now they have to walk to St Louis. At least this way they'll be decreasing their carbon footprint. They should keep trying to protect the environment and conserve natural resources, because at this point I think they might have all completely forgotten that the WORLD IS FREAKING ENDING, so the script writers might have, too.

Supernova Intermission: What do you mean, 'Who is Tia Carrere?'

Confession: I haven't finished watching the miniseries yet. Honestly I haven't had the time. It's just a long movie. I promise I'll finish recapping it. Just not today. Today is 'Intermission.'

Apparently none of my friends know who Tia Carrere is. So when I'm telling them about why I started watching this movie, and I say, "Because Tia Carrere is in it," their original question still stands.

This is totally unacceptable. I thought my friends were cool, but apparently they're not cool enough to PARTY ON!

Now do you understand why I had to watch this movie?

She's not in this scene, but it's one of my favorite scenes ever, so it's totally the song of the day.

Link to Part 3

Supernova Pt2: SWITCH TO THE OMEGA!

Picking up exactly where I left off, we're watching TV with Luke Perry's wife again, and a news anchor with an American accent mentions that we are in the Southern Hemisphere. Finally. 35 minutes into this movie and it is established that we're in Australia.

So Delgado (Tia Carrere, in case you weren't paying attention during Pt1. It's okay because I kind of wasn't paying attention either, and I'm 99% sure none of the actors were.) has basically forced Luke Perry to go to this conference on the Sun and find out what Fabulous Scientist told the Top Scientists in his Doomsday Email.

Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you about the magically self-destructing emails. Fabulous Scientist sent out an email to, like, 5 or 6 major scientists before he disappeared. Delgado is assuming that they were important emails but she doesn't know what they said, because they destroyed themselves after being read. She can see who they were sent to, but she has no idea what the contents were.

Which, for the record, is totally 100% impossible.

Emails are not like letters. Any time an email is sent, it bounces from more than one server before it gets where it's going. Every time it bounces, essentially a copy of it is made.

If you're a "National Intelligence Organization" employee with jurisdiction that literally goes all the way around the world, and you have the resources to see that emails were sent, then you probably have a nerdy sidekick sitting in a basement room somewhere, spinning pixie sticks between his fingers and farming gold on WoW. And if you're Tia Carrere, you could just purr at him over the phone and he'd find the contents of every email ever sent.

So armed with a totally bogus premise that we have to let slide because it's a movie, and Tia Carrere just showed up and we have yet to see her in a low cut blouse, Luke Perry goes to this conference to talk to these Top Scientists.

He gets there and one of them has already killed himself. The others are all pissed off in various foreign accents. We finally hear an Australian accent, but unfortunately he's one of the Foreign Scientists. While Luke Perry is talking to them/spying for Delgado, we're introduced to some American military people in a DoD style command center. Does Australia even have a government?

One of the scientists finally gets so pissed off that he runs away screaming something about the KGB and Mother Russia, and Delgado chases after him. At first we think he's trying to jump off the roof and kill himself - afterall, the FREAKING WORLD IS ENDING and ostensibly these people all know that - but he's just trying to James Bond it to another rooftop.

He fails because he's a pissed off scientist, and

Delgado has to go get him. Honestly, it's so annoying when characters don't understand what part they're playing.

But it turns out this Foreign Scientist is so useless that he can't even manage to let Delgado save him, even though she was totally giving him a look right down her shirt.

I mean, if Tia Carrere's cleavage can't save you, what the hell can?

So the two Clean Cut Feds are standing back on the other roof looking over at Delgado like, well, Quantico didn't train us to run and jump, and she brushes her hair back and says, "Go get the others in the van."

What she means is, "I'm stuck on this roof now. You'll have to finish the movie without me."

And then, in a dramatic scene cut, there's the van, and the words we've all been waiting for: "SYNDEY, AUSTRALIA." The time is 47:51, and it's finally confirmed that we're in Australian.

Delgado understandably handcuffs all the scientists now, including Luke Perry. You know, since they seem to be trending towards freaking out and/or dying and/or messing up her hair. Luke Perry protests loudly and asks for a phone call to tell his family he's okay. To which Delgado's face says, "Psh, bitch, you're in Australia. Did you hear me Mirandize you? I'm pretty sure 'miranda' is Australian slang for something, but it aint 'rights.'" He asks her to take the handcuffs off, at least, and she just walks away. Luke Perry's face tells her, "You know we're going to have sex later. My wife is heavily armed and has hair like an Oompa Loompa."

No, really, she does. Look:

So then there's an EPIC WORLD DISASTER MONTAGE to remind us that IT'S THE END OF THE FREAKING WORLD. And since naturally they've put everyone who knows about it in a helicopter despite constantly talking about all the electrical storms and magnetic interference, the montage ends with the helicopter having a complete failure of all it's electrical systems.

That's bad, because they're flying it at night, and possibly all the way to America.

So the helicopter pilots shout a lot of mumbo-jumbo back and forth, shaking the control stick and randomly pushing buttons. Delgado pops her head between their seats and is all, "Hey, guys, what's up, do you need, like, a soda or anything? No? How about a look down my shirt?" And one of them is all, "Hey, thanks, maybe later please go buckle your seatbelt," and then the other one bellows, "SWITCH TO THE OMEGA!"

And the helicopter crashes.

Now that Delgado and Luke Perry (What is his character's name? I can't remember.) and everyone else who knows the WORLD IS FREAKING ENDING are dead, we cut over to the United States DoD command post, where they're freaking out because all the planes and helicopters in the world had to switch to the omega. No, really.

The head brass turns to the guy at the main computer and says, "How do we avoid this from ever happening again."

And the guy blinks and says, "Well, we could start by appointing a director of the DoD with a basic command of the English language..."

Meanwhile, in the Indian Ocean:

Refreshing fruity beverage?

Aaaaand Luke Perry is back from the dead. He is fall was apparently broken by a conveniently placed vat of stage blood. He sits up, looks over, and

BAM. Agent Delgado is one bad-ass motherfucker.

She calmly tells him in one sentence that they're the only survivors, and her cell phone isn't working. "Did you pull me out?" he asks.

She shrugs, "Yeah." Of course she did. She's Agent Fucking Delgado. I wouldn't be surprised if Agent actually IS her first name. She's that hardcore.

So then Luke Perry, sensing that he's no longer the Exemplary One here, tries to reassert himself as a loving family man, and starts staggering across the desert with Delgado half-heartedly trying to stop him before she finally just pulls out her gun and is like, "Fool, I just saved your ass and you're still under arrest and if we're hiking across this desert you're gonna fucking carry my water and my purse."

But then a new helicopter comes to get them, because no one ever makes a logical prediction in this movie. We're introduced to this hardcore military guy who reminds me of Leo McGarry from West Wing only evil, and he takes Luke Perry and Agent Delgado on a long elevator ride into a giant underground compound that they're planning on putting 10,000 people in to save the human race from extinction.

I'm not making this shit up. Someone else did, I swear.

So, Evil Leo McGarry outlines the plan for who to save - without saying the word 'eugenics' even though it's clearly what he's talking about - and then he's like, "Oh, yeah, you're on the list, Luke Perry."

Luke Perry says, "So what about my wife and daughter?"

Evil Leo says, "I'll have to check the list. But last time I checked, we weren't looking to preserve the gene for Oompa Loompa hair." Luke Perry then makes the logical leap from 'my wife' over to 'Agent Delgado,' and demands to know if she gets to come in the ark.

Evil Leo deadpans: "Agent Delgado has the necessary skills."

Translation: "I'm planning on tapping that once the world ends."

So then Luke Perry has a major freakout and steals a 4-wheeler. Agent Delgado is screaming at him, "You moron, did you time that elevator ride? We're miles and miles underground. This place is going to survive THE END OF THE FREAKING WORLD YOU CAN'T JUST -"

Oh, but Luke Perry CAN drive a 4-wheeler all the way to the surface of the world.

Well, fuck that. Agent Delgado can run after him in her high heels.

Take that, Luke Perry. Anything you can do, I can do bad-ass-er.

Back to the DoD, where they've found some scientist to explain how it's the END OF THE FREAKING WORLD, and the director of the DoD makes fun of his graphics.

The scientist kind of coughs and says, "Yeah, well the server that we had Photoshop on was knocked out during a magnetic storm."

And that's the end of Part 1. The actual Part 1 of the miniseries, not just a division I made up in my head so I could go to the bathroom and take a nap.

I'll watch Part 2 tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Link to the Intermission