Feb 26 2009
say no to average!
it's been so long since i've blogged that wordpress had logged me out. or, going by the 'remember me' option, WORDPRESS FORGOT ABOUT ME!!!! WAAAAAH! the horror. so anyway, um, stuff's been transpiring and whatnot. it seems the olbigatory recap of past events is due or something since i'm certain everyone has just been waiting with bated breath for me to blog. it's been almost two weeks, during which we joined a gym, commenced working out even, celebrated the first birthday of the wee one i get paid to hang out with, ben's back declared war on him a couple of times, i'm pretty much done with that bloody 'reflection' thing, (which is good since it's due wednesday), and i'm one french assignment away from requesting my final and wondering how long it will take them to mail it so i can take it and be done with it already. i'm sure there are many more fascinating details i've left out, but i'm tired, lea' me 'lone.
we also went to the movie theater THREE times during that stretch. three times! the insanity. at the moment i can't remember the last move we'd seen in the theater, but i think it was on the mediocre side. we've basically stopped going to movies unless it's something like the dark knight that must be viewed large and loud. the first of these excursions was a movie that required theater viewing: coraline 3D. it was freaking holy crap awesome. so good. so very very good. then we saw slumdog millionaire with em & josh. it was most excellent as well. then two days later we saw the wrestler. again, brilliant. shortly thereafter we realized we had forgotten how great movies could be. that was probably part of the reason we used to go see them so much. i'm pretty sure that netflix is the reason for this tragic loss of movie love. the vast majority of the movies we watch are crap, but not the good kind. mediocre. the thing i cannot tolerate. a movie either has to be awesome or so horrible it's awesome for me to really like it. mediocrity. this is how we squander our time? really? doing stuff that is at best awarded a judgment of "eh?" we watch things that end up in our queue because "it looked kinda interesting" or "i like that one actor/actress/director/writer." because it's a paid subscription, we can go through a lot of movies without really thinking about it, whereas going to a store and more deliberately picking out a film and then having to pay for that one tends to weed out the crap a little. we think about it more; it doesn't just come into our house with the magazines and the credit card offers, the mythical money taken out of our checking account every month without us having to give it a moment's thought. so we don't. we "add to queue" with much-too-reckless abandon. then we watch things like 'rocknrolla' and 'the strangers' and 'traitor' (to be fair i shouldn't judge that one since i couldn't manage to stay awake for the predictable and riveting ending). so i'm just gonna say it: we must not encourage mediocrity! of course it's easy and convenient - it's 'ordinary, average, middling, middle-of-the-road, uninspired, undistinguished, indifferent, unexceptional, unexciting, unremarkable, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian, prosaic, lackluster, forgettable, amateur, amateurish' according to my handy-dandy thesarus widget. i ask you, are those things really how we should be spending our time? mediocrity isn't mediocre - it SUCKS! and if we're this apathetic when it comes to something as silly as movie-watching, is that creeping in to other places as well? i know it is. it's easy, it's cheap, it's blah, blah, blah. it's the bloody participation ribbon they give kids on field day so everybody feels good or some crap like that. perhaps the lenten spirit is getting to me, but i am giving up mediocrity. i've decided. it's not really a lent thing at all, since a) i rarely do the lent thing b) the sacrifice is supposed to be something you will miss and finally, because i don't want the banishment to end. mediocrity be gone! ben, ya with me? can i delete saw 5? 
