harry potter strikes again

in the space of two weeks, i finished the first three harry potter books. but of course if you checked alt.stuff and clicked on reading list, you would see this already. so go check out and make fun of my damn tastes. but don’t make fun unless you plan on telling me what you THINK i should read.
and i don’t give a fuck what anyone says, those harry potter books are damn scary! i had nightmares the other night after reading a particular scary scene. the problem i had/have with the books is that i can’t see how they are written for “kids 9-12”. i mean, they aren’t certainly adult books, but i dunno. paul was reading over my shoulder one night and he was like “this is for kids right?” and i grunted “mhm” and he couldn’t see how kids wouldn’t be freaked out by it. fuck, i’m 28 and some of the things Rowling wrote scared ME and i used to be the horror queen.
i do love the books but damn they are addictive. i stayed up till 2am to finish book 3 last night and paul found book 4 in pdf format (but i’ll probably go purchase it anyways). and i’m highly recommending it to all my non-reading friends because well fuck, the books are fun to read. and i’m so fucking tired of all these whiny, late 20something women books that i’ve been finding in the “just published!” section at BnN. it seems that every book i’ve been picking up lately has to do with some woman in her late 20s having a midlife crisis.
go figure.
also, i finally put away all the cds i had piled in a 100 cd-case from the cross country trip (nearly a year ago — geez how time flies). my desk is clean again and i also updated the list of cds and will probably be buying more this weekend. again, now that the radio in my car is fixed, i am sure that i’ll probably go back on a spending spree with cds again.
ironies
so, as i’ve talked about in the past, my father has set up a trust fund for me. it’s not much (at least in terms of USD) but it’s considerable and the lawyer offered to pay for my plane tickets and hotel stay and stuff when I was in Toronto, which equaled to some nice change. The lawyer calls me earlier this week and tells me that the probate has gone through and i can get that reiumbusement this week and it’ll be wired into my account. i was feeling a tad relieved because an unexpected bill came up and we were short for rent due on the fifth. by the conversation i had with the lawyer, i would have it friday at the latest.
so thrusday night (last night, whatever); i’m leaving work and i hear this loud squeaking noise. i start freaking out and brake hard a few times and the brakes feel really really soft — and so i drove, very very carefully home. i’m bummed out. depressed. the money isn’t in yet. rent is due. i don’t get paid for another week and we don’t have any money for gas or anything “extra” that might come up.
i make up my mind that rent will be late and that my car is more important. so i get up fucking god-awful early friday morning (this morning– err yah) after crashing out for only 3 hours after finishing mr potter. i stumble into the server room and check citibank (sometimes they are very good at what they do) and see that my account is suddenly flush. i dance around in joy at 7am and take my car in to get fixed.
So now i’m over 1k poorer: 700 for the car, 350 to my mom, 100 to brian (pauls brother — he pitched in cash for some stuff and i paid him back. i told him he should use his money for crap for HIM), 150 to my brother to fix his car (again).
The funny thing was, when I was at Satryn of Fairfax and intialing my life away to get a rental car, they required a cc. I said “I’m planning on pay by check and is that going to be a problem?” and they said no, this is just in case and we won’t charge anything against the card. So i find a card that has some money on it, give it to them and no less than an hour later, i get a phone call from Enterprise telling me i have to come up with 250 cash deposit or else another credit card. So i call another one of my cards and realised since i made good on payments try to get an emergancy limit increase of a min of 500. Because my brother is primary owner of the card, they required him to call — so I call my brother who calls the company and they will let him know “in a few days” if the increase went through or not. Even though my brother had stressed the importance of the reason WHY we were requesting the increase.
Call Satryn of Fairfax and my car will be ready tomorrow (Saturday — uh yah) and call Enterprise back and since the car rental is less than 24 hours, i don’t have to have the deposit.
i just thought it was funny with the credit card companies personally.
So I’m sending my mother money because she had emergancy surgrey on Monday and didn’t notify me about it. Jeff was out of town for basketball and he tells me late last night/this morning that she is out of commission for three weeks and the company she is working for changed her normal 90 day waiting period to 150 and so she has no health care benefits OR pay. ugh.
i told jeff that he better start taking better care of her because i do not plan on having two parental funerals this year.
this week has been weird with all these little things coming up. brian is still staying with us and now that we have money again we are finally going to go do stuff in the area before their parents come up in two weeks — whom i meet for the very first time. the funny thing is that since i’ve been living with paul for nearly a year (yah time does fucking fly) i’m not the least bit nervous. probably because i’ve got the sullivan brothers wrapped around my pinky fingers.
“lisa is a very well liked bitch at uunet” — our friend derrick (not moe) at dinner tonight.
moo.
this week has been strange. strange because i came up with an idea the other night from reading mightywords about publishing some of my older stuff — however i don’t have anything really “large” to contribute other than some of the older stuff like downpour on my soul which was over 20 pages when it was first contrived. so i re-read it for the very first time in quite some time (over a few years at least). and then i got depressed and then i had to go searching for andrew again.
and i found him.
he’s so easy.
and i decided in the same time frame to start cleaning out my harddrive and MY GOD, how much shit i have written and forgotten about it. just shoved away for the “rainy day” to finish and never did.
now i have something productive i want to do.
i had such a incredible response to the entry i posed a few days back “Open Letter to MTV Execs” that i got persuaded (like it’s really hard to persuade me) to send the letter to MTV. I rewrote it and cleaned it up before i sent it.
Of course I never heard anything back.
x0x0x0x
lisa

An Open Letter to MTV

Dear MTV Execs,
I’m a single, 28 year old female who’s been watching MTV since you first aired “Video Killed the Radio Star.”
What I want to know is, in over the decade since that shining moment, WHAT HAPPENED?
Suddenly, I’m finding that my same age group that made you who you are, are now almost discounted from your shows. What do I mean you are asking yourself? Simple. Almost every, no make that EVERY teevee show you are currently producing or have in production caters to the 15-26 crowd, in fact save for ONE show in your whole production schedule, no one CAN BE over the age of 25.
You seem to forget, oh dear MTV execs, that it is those of us OVER the age of 25 that helped bring your channel to what it is today. Our spending habits, our hobbies, our change in fashion, our thought and opinions which you have so SHAMELESSLY promoted before are now being ignored as my age group is now being shuffled over to VH1. The humility and the ageism of this is disgusting. It is as if you are promoting that the only way to enjoy the music is to be youthful.
As I am growing older, I’m noticing the ageism that is existing all over the place. In some places it’s needed (voting rights, drinking rights) but on a television channel that caters to music, where some of the greatest bands themselves are over the age of 30, you use ageism to segregate the shows.
I have one simple question:
Why?
Just because we are getting older doesn’t mean we enjoy the music any less or that we won’t be spending as much. A lot of us are not settled with children but have LARGE disposable incomes ready at our disposal to spend on crap that you shell out with each new band that keeps being produced. Every day I’m noticing this trend where the pop stars are getting younger, the shows are getting younger and those of us that actually HAVE THE INCOME to spend on the concerts, the merchandise and what not are over your age limit.
Why?
Within the last few years, I stopped watching MTV. All the good television shows that had some merit (120 Minutes, Amp, Liquid Television) — which were, may i remind you, about videos to begin with — were suddenly replaced with crap shows such as “Undressed” and more crappy Real World episodes. Is it not enough that we have soap operas on from noon to four pm everyday and prime time television shows that cater to the melodramatic in us all, but on a MUSIC CHANNEL? The fact that we have to see a show about “seven strangers!” who get “real!” on camera. Puh-lease. It’s all fake. You know that. I know that. We know that the shows are edited for content and that taking 24 hours of time and widdling it down to 1/2 hour is just plain stupid. The concept at first was good (and original like your first shows) — then suddenly the shows degraded to the point that you could interchange any of the characters in any of the shows and it wouldn’t matter because it would be the same damn thing but different location.
Why?
Why has MTV stopped being about music and became more about commercialism? Why has MTV stopped actually SHOWING videos and started showing in its stead crappy “series” based in the 15-25 demographic? Why are you constantly attempting to promote ideas of a cultural political village when you are segregating and alienating that same group?
MTV used to be on the edge. You could turn on 120 minutes and see the best music coming out of the indie/college scenes and see new ideas of style. You could watch liquid television and get addicted to its pull like crack. You could have a choice: you knew that Club MTV was on at 4, but you could see videos of your favorite artists afterwards. You’re taking out the content and putting serial fluff that is basically hogwash with fluff content showing teenagers today that the key to being cool is being an airhead. At one point, MTV used to be the cool kid on the block where people could watch and learn and see and now it’s becoming nothing more than a corporation of mass hysteria.
I’m a 28 year old female who still owns vinyl and remembers when the compilations from 120 minutes and “MTV party to go” meant something. I’m nothing but one voice — but one voice who represents many people who feel the same way as I do and yet feel that they can’t or shouldn’t say anything because how can one person change the world?
You may feel that I have my choice, and I do, to not watch your shows. I don’t. I may also have the choice of watching MTV2 if i was so disgruntled with your services, but I can’t as it’s not available in my area. You may also feel that I can watch VH1 but I choose not to as I can’t relate to that genre. Maybe I’ll always be 18 inside, but you gave me an opportunity to be heard via music and now you have removed that opportunity and THAT makes me angry.
I know this letter will end up in the circle bin. And maybe whoever reads this will feel some pangs of empathy. But as long as i know that it has written and that I will no longer actively watch your station nor the products that i see being advertised there, I feel a whole lot better.
Sincerely,
Lisa M. Rabey
An original GenXer

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