Blogs are from Mars

I hadn't planned on posting anything tonight. Not even the sick stuff I learned about Superman and Spiderman over pizza. But I found some tasty software that I'm using to compose this post with, and you know me, if it is in the least bit geeky, I'm there.

So what is this delicious morsel of blog writing goodness? It's an app called MarsEdit. It's been around for a while, and while I hate to admit that I'm familiar with the name, for whatever reason it never clicked that it would work with Blogger allowing me to compose offline and post later. Mmmm, now that's appealing!

I've been using it now for all of 5 minutes so I can't really give a review of it just yet, but I will say that so far I'm impressed. Drafting this post has been a lot faster than the web interface I've been used to. Over the next 30-days (which is how long the trial period lasts) I will hopefully have the chance to put it through its paces. Now if they'd only come up with a version for my iPhone I would be in blogger bliss.

Why aren't you re-watching: American Beauty

I'm so ashamed. I'd forgotten how excellent American Beauty is. I had been putting of watching it for years. It's literally been sitting on myself, still in the wrapper, since the day I bought it 5 years ago. What a fool I've been for taking it for granted all of this time. The storytelling. The characters. The performances. The music. The cinematography. The art direction. It's a modern masterpiece. Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening could not have been more perfect. Thora Birch is entrancing. Wes Bently is engrossing. Chris Cooper is gut-wrenching. And Allison Janney is surprisingly heartbreaking even in the scenes where she doesn't say a word.

The DVD has been retired back to its case for an hour already but the high you feel from watching something truly exceptional and so utterly captivating is sticking with me. I feel so inspired to create, to reinvest time into the pursuit of the film making ambitions of days gone by, to remind everyone there's a experience waiting for them on DVD that outshines brainless summer television broadcasts and big-budget popcorn flicks at the theater or pretty much anything made in the past 10 years and you owe it to yourself to watch it as soon as you can. And apparently I was inspired to write the longest sentence in the history of this blog. Phew! If you've got a DVD player and receiver capable of processing DTS 5.1 soundtracks, I highly recommend watching the movie with the DTS 5.1 soundtrack over the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. I won't bore you with the details, but your ears will thank me.

Open a nice bottle of red wine—it isn't required to make the movie amazing, but trust me, it ties in perfectly even if only from a color pallet perspective— and watch this movie tonight!

Living the American Dream Nightmare

There goes the neighborhood. Well, technically it's the neighbors whom are going. But what they're selling for is unnaturally skewing the home values in the rest of the neighborhood lower. Right now my home is almost worth less than I still owe on it. I'm not sure what I should do. I'm clearly in over my head, and according to this Lifehacker survey titled "Are You Living Below Your Means?" I'll be totally boned (and not in the good way) with just one moderate sized personal emergency. I know I should count my lucky stars that at least I haven't reach foreclosure status yet like so many other Californians, but with the end to this economic (and now emotional) depression anyone's guess, it's often hard to keep one's mind in a positive frame. It's time to reevaluate which is more important, the emotional freedom that living alone offers, or the financial boost having a roommate will provide. Owning this home has turned out to be far from what I had dreamed it would be.