This is the End | Effed by the Wind

God, I Hate You Michael Bay

Guess who wants to remake Rosemary's Baby?

So yet another classic film (and one of my favorites) is being stripped of its soul and artistic credibility and crapified for the blockbuster crowd.

I take some small solace in the fact that Michael Bay have probably never heard of Straight to Hell or Cemetery Man. I would make some joke about a Brett Ratner remake of Chinatown or a Zach Snyder remake of Re-Animator, but I'll probably just come to find that it's true. When I heard about Bay remaking the Transformers movie, I joked about a Clash of the Titans remake and THAT came to fruition.

Hollywood makes me feel sad and hollow.

March 4, 2008
Categories: Filmpinions, This is the End . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

The Dangers of a "Free" Craigslist

You get harassed via email by strangers who think they know better than you and are also somewhat illiterate. I just HAVE to post the email correspondence that I've had this morning with a guy who responded to my free dresser ad:

Robby
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 9:25 AM
To: sale-591065651@craigslist.org

I can come get it right now.Call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX still available.Thanks

Jessica Baxter
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 9:29 AM
To: Robby
Which are you referring to? I posted several pieces of furniture this morning.

Robby
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 9:52 AM
To: Jessica Baxter
White dresser

Robby
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 9:54 AM
To: Jessica Baxter
I can come right now and get it.I would not hold it because there is alot of no shows on free stuff.

Jessica Baxter
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 9:55 AM
To: Robby
Someone else has already expressed interest, but if they don't show, I will let you know. They are supposed to come tomorrow at 11. I am at work right now so unfortunately, I can't unload the item immediately.

Robby
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:11 AM
To: Jessica Baxter
Dude you are going to hold it that long get out of fhere.I dont hold nothing until the next day.I said I would come right now and get it.Tomorrow you will learn I dont HOLD ANYTHING.Call me when you are inroute.Most people dont show on free stuff.I said I would come right now.You will learn the hard way.

Robby
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:11 AM
To: Jessica Baxter
Tomorrow called say sorry have someone coming right now first come first serve.CALL ME WHEN YOU ARE INROUTE

Robby
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:13 AM
To: Jessica Baxter
Most people dont show on fres stuff alot more thne on stuff you sell..I have have heard that from alot of people that is why you dont hold your stuff beyond the same day.Trust me take it from a person that has been selling online for 2 years.

Jessica Baxter
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:14 AM
To: Robby
I believe you and have experienced it myself but I am at work right now so you wouldn't be able to get it till later anyway.

Robby
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:20 AM
To: Jessica Baxter
Why dont you delete the ad.I also said I would come get it today.I am just saying would not hold it until tomorrow tell them I have someone coming today.90% of the pople are no shows.Ball is in your court.I am not driving there after 3 pm from Everett today because traffic sucks on Fridays.My ph is XXX-XXX-XXX.

Jessica Baxter
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:22 AM
To: Robby
Dude. Alright. I didn't delete the ad because I wanted to have backup in case they didn't show. And I AM doing first come first serve but I'm going by the person who emailed me first. To me that seems fair. Let me do this my way please thanks.

Robby
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:26 AM
To: Jessica Baxter
Back up get the fuck out of here probably have over 20 emails on that Dresser.I know how fast Dressers sell on the site.That is a $50.00 dressr and it would sell for that in one day white highboy.Email box probably has over 20 emails on the Dresser.Dressers are the number 111111111111 seeling thing on craigslist.That Dresser would sell for $50.00 in one day.I now for a face that your email is full on replyes on that dresser white highboy get out of here.

Robby
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:28 AM
To: Jessica Baxter
I can beieve you are giving thqat thing away post that pic with an ad under furniture for $50.0 would be gone in one day.White highboy 5 drawer dresser sold.

At this point I stop replying to him.

Robby
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:30 AM
To: Jessica Baxter
Anything white with woman sells very very very fast.That Dresser would sell for $50.00 in one day.

Robby Lawson
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:38 AM
To: Jessica Baxter
I wont email you anymore.I am surprised you dont sell that dresser because it would sell very very very fast at $50.00 .I sell alot of dressers and they dont sit very long.White dressers are a very very hot seller with woman.WOuld have better luck with people showing.Post it Dresser white highboy 5 drawer as your heading and it will be gone quick trust me.

And then I get an email from another guy who sounds suspiciously like our Robby but may be just be some like-minded nutter.

billy smitty
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:40 AM
To: thebaxter
I would just come over pick it up picture post it and sell it and make $50.00 in one day like alot of othere people will do with free stuff like that your loss is there gain.Alot of the people on the site are doing that now.get it for free bring it home picture post sell $50.00 easy money.

Jessica Baxter
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:43 AM
To: billy smitty
Thanks for your honesty. Don't come over.

billy smitty
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:51 AM
To: Jessica Baxter
I wont someone else will and do the same thing because you are stupid and give free shit away so someone else can make money or your stuff.Turn your trash into cash.Most people will tell you what you want to hear and go home picture post sell and make $50.00 woo hoo.

Jessica Baxter
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 12:04 PM
To: billy smitty
I really don't care. I just want it out of my house. Which is why it's free. Kindly fuck off and don't call me stupid. You are just making me never want to use Craigslist again.

billy smitty
Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 12:19 PM
To: Jessica Baxter
Dont use it ask me if I care

At which point I stopped responding to Mr. Billy.

The End??

February 29, 2008
Categories: Dear Diary, This is the End . . Author: Baxter . Comments: 1 Comment

The Puritanical Age

Newsweek reports that the Amsterdam City Government is attempting to close down the Red Light District, citing general shadiness. From the sound of the article, however, they just have some naive, prudish bastard in charge who wants to “clean up the city”. The article is right to compare it with Giuliani's policies.

I call it naive because you can't wipe out prostitution by turning a few brothels into boutiques. It is, after all, the World's Oldest Profession. You can only make it less safe for everyone, especially the women involved. (The same goes for abortion, mind you.) Amsterdam was once an enlightened city, but now it is being overtaken by a conservative, out-of-touch government. These same people also want to ban magic mushrooms and for what? Amsterdam is not a dangerous city, relatively speaking. In fact, I found it kind of magical. And I didn't even eat any mushrooms. I hope they open a T.G.I. Fridays in the soon-to-be former Moulin Rouge. Now that's an attraction that EVERYONE can enjoy.

February 12, 2008
Categories: This is the End . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

It's a Joke, Right?

Conjugal Harmony is internet dating for the ladies on the inside. Surely it's a joke. I mean, they website copy is so misogynistic and one of those ladies has her EYES closed in the photo. Regardless, it's as hilarious as it is horrifying.

Meet BrandiY:

Age: 20
State: California
Convictions: Drug deal went bad and it's just like that I'm up for killing a cop.
Favorite hobbies in prison: I play ping pong and dream I'm playing ping pong somewhere else not prison.
Why I deserve another chance: I try like hell to get the guards to cut me off a little something something but the never do because they'd lose they job if we got caught or pregnant. I am so lonely and I can't live if I know my whole life I'll never taste another man. Will you be the glass I drink from so deep?

This definitely beats 10K 4 a Wife. (By the way, I love checking in on that guy from time to time. When Sherwood first alerted me to that website's existence some years ago, he just looked like a corporate douchebag. Now he's poorly Photoshopping his wrinkles. Still no wife, eh? Do you think he might have unrealistic expectations? I bet some of those prison ladies might could use $10K.)

January 24, 2008
Categories: This is the End . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Be Careful Out There

I am pretty disturbed by this story in the Slog about a woman my age who was stabbed in my old neighborhood on New Years Eve for seemingly no reason.

Few new details have emerged yet in the sad story of Shannon Harps’ death, except a rather scary-looking sketch of a “person of interest” in the murder, released by police earlier today. (The sketch of the “person of interest” matches the description of the suspect police released yesterday). Representatives from the Sierra Club, where Harps worked as an associate regional representative promoting the Cascade Chapter’s Cool State campaign, have not returned calls for comment.

Friends and coworkers we have talked to, however, describe Harps as a quiet, mild-mannered young woman who was a little shy but who had a great sense of humor once you drew her out. Harps worked for the Sierra Club for at least eight years—first in Columbus, Ohio, and then in Seattle, where much of her job involved signing cities up for the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, in which cities agree to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions. “It’ll be a terrible loss,” says Sierra Club Cascade Chapter chair Mike O’Brien, who worked closely with Harps. O’Brien describes Harps as thoughtful and helpful—always the first person to show up at events to help out and the last person to leave after cleaning up. “She was just a really good person… just very positive and uplifting,” O’Brien says.

Marc Conte, a friend of Harps who worked with her in the Club’s Columbus office, says Harps was always supportive and positive, even when victories were few and far between (as they frequently were in Ohio.) She never got mad or raised her voice, he says, even during heated debates. “Some take an adversarial approach but Shannon rose above it. People on ‘the other side’ of an issue were her opponents, not enemies. She might have disagreements with those folks but never arguments…”

Harps moved to Seattle about four years ago to work at the Sierra Club. She was stabbed by a bearded, “scruffy-looking” man, according to witnesses, outside a condo building on 15th and Howell, where she had lived for two years, and died of injuries to her upper chest and abdomen before paramedics could get her to a hospital. She had planned to meet up with friends for a New Year’s Eve party, and was just heading back from Madison Market with groceries when she was attacked. Police haven’t yet said whether they believe the killer was someone Harps knew, but an SPD spokesman did confirm to the Stranger that police are interviewing co-workers to determine whether the man was connected to the Sierra Club. Meanwhile, police have increased patrols in the area around 15th and Howell. O’Brien says he can’t imagine anyone targeting someone like Harps for a random attack; however, the alternative is equally unimaginable. “It doesn’t make sense,” O’Brien says. “If it’s not random, then who the hell would want to target someone like that?”

I still know quite a few people who live on Capitol Hill, some of them RIGHT IN THAT AREA. Ladies (and gents too, for that matter), if you don't already own some pepper spray, please buy some. A friend of ours has been giving us girls nice sharp butterfly knives for our birthdays over the past year. I'm thinking now might be a good time to learn how to use it.

January 2, 2008
Categories: Seattle, This is the End . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Another Sacred Childhood Memory Pooped On

My beloved Clash of the Titans, a film which I not only watched daily as a child, but continue to immensely enjoy in my adult life (just this WEEK, in fact) is, naturally, being effing REMADE. Who's behind this travesty? The man who directed Blade and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the latter being the flop which Sean Connery signed on with after turning down the role of GANDALF in a little fantasy trilogy called THE LORD OF THE RINGS).

For fun, I will hypothetically cast this film to give it maximum, wound-salting potential.

In the role of my dreamy, fuzzy-chested, dim-but-powerful Perseus (a.k.a. Harry Hamlin):

In the Burgess Meredith side-kick role:

Playing the lovely but equally dim and fairly helpless Andromeda:

Playing the hot, misunderstood Calibus:

The Gods:

The Stygian Witches:

And, of course, instead of Ray Harryhausen's genius stop-motion effects, we will have crappy C.G. versions of Pegasus, Bubo, Medusa (voiced by Angelina Jolie?) and the Kraken.

Who do YOU think they will cast?

December 14, 2007
Categories: Filmpinions, This is the End . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Weatherpocalypse 2K7/8

On Friday, Brugos and I drove two hours East to a cabin outside of Leavenworth (the Bavarian town, not the prison) to spend the weekend with some friends for a birthday. Snow was in the forecast, which isn't unusual for that area, but we, like all Seattle kids, are inexperienced and unprepared when it comes to snow, so we drove with trepidation on Friday. Friday's trip was uneventful. We arrived at the cabin (Which was effing HUGE and full of the most awesome random yard sale kitsch ever. Pictures forthcoming.) and didn't really worry about the weather again, until Sunday when we realized that it has actually snowed about THREE FEET since our arrival. We had chains, (well, some of us) but that didn't change the fact that the huge front yard, driveway, and roads leading to the main one weren't plowed. Eventually, we learned that they weren't planning to plow the roads till Monday morning. This was after our friend with whom we drove attempted to put on his chains, only to learn that THEY WERE TOO BIG. Les Schwab screwed us. Two people, who had fitted chains, decided to risk it anyway, and got home, but they said it was touch and go. The rest of us decided to wait till morning when they plowed the roads. Overnight, another FOOT of snow fell, so they were behind on plowing, but it helped that it started pouring down rain. At least it helped us get out of the cabin and onto the road. But the rain washed snow down from the mountains onto the passes and so one pass was completely closed, and another was closed temporarily. We spent the day either backtracking or waiting for major highways to re-open. It took about 8 hours to get back to Seattle where apparently it had also snowed (NSFW snow sculpture), then flooded, but to a lesser degree. I know that part of this is people being unprepared for this kind of weather, but Eastern Washingtonians ARE used to snow. They just aren't used to 4 feet of it in 48 hours followed by torrential downpours. This shit is WEIRD people.

When we got home, we wondered why poor Tobe, usually the picture of cleanliness, was covered in gunk and filth, until I checked his food station and found that it was surrounded by an inch-deep puddle of gross basement water.

Weatherpocalypse, ya'll.

December 4, 2007
Categories: This is the End . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Weighing in on Tragedy

Here's what I don't get.

ONE guy makes a liquid bomb and tries to bring it on a airplane. They catch him. No one dies. But to this damned day, we can't bring our own bottled water onto a airplane and we have all kind of ridiculous rules about how big our shampoo bottle can be.

How many school shootings have there been? How many kids have accidentally shot their best friends when fucking around with their dad's hand guns? All those disgruntled government workers in the 90s that coined the phrase “Going Postal”? What about Columbine? And now, Columbine revisited in Virginia? We are reactionary as hell about one guy's idea to make a liquid bomb. Yet it's still easy for any depressed nut job to buy a gun and, 90 days later when they're STILL a nut job, buy a shitload of ammo for said gun, no questions asked, and kill people. Do you think maybe we should make it harder for people to buy guns and ammo? No? OK. Just thought I'd ask.

April 18, 2007
Categories: Dear Diary, This is the End . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Humpin' Around

I just heard that “My Humps” won a Grammy. I learned this from Stephen Colbert (via ) who said “I used to hate 'My Humps' until it won a Grammy.” In case there was ANY doubt about the legitimacy of the Grammy awards as a means to recognize musical talent, this proves it. The Grammys are a crock.

I'd also like to say Fuck the Police. And I don't mean that in an N.W.A. kind of way.

February 14, 2007
Categories: The Soundtrack, This is the End . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Thanks a bunch, National News

Dear National News,

Why did you tell my mom Seattle was being evacuated?! She called me in a panic. I was out getting teriyaki. She'd just tried my office line and there was NO ANSWER. She called my cell phone and I, as usual, didn't hear it the first time because the city is loud. So she left me a voicemail telling her to call her back IMMEDIATELY if I was ALIVE and OK.

So I did, and she told me that YOU told her Seattle was being evacuated, that streets were flooded, power was out and public transportation was out of commission. Granted, all of these were true, but only on a relatively small scale. This is no hurricane Katrina and the only people who had to evacuate anything were people who's homes had trees fall on them. They didn't need to leave the city and hopefully, they have friends and family who could take them in.

Maybe you DIDN'T say that the entire city was being evacuated. You might have just said the WORD “evacuate” and that was enough to take several years off my mother's life. But I know you, National News. You are as prone to sensationalizing things as my mother is. So between the two of you, wires got crossed and I had to get out of line at the teriyaki place to calm my mother down and assure her that I was unharmed and, apart from having not showered this morning and being late to work because of the power outage, otherwise unaffected by the storm. It didn't help that all of her equally unstable friends who know of me called one after the other to ask if she'd SPOKEN TO HER DAUGHTER YET!!!! What a mess.

Anyway, all I ask is that you PLEASE try to be EXTRA careful when using words like “evacuate” and “disaster” to be sure they are appropriate to the magnitude of the situation. Fragile old women like my mother just can't handle it.

Thanks a bunch!

Love,

Baxter

December 15, 2006
Categories: Dear Diary, Seattle, This is the End . Tags: weatherocalypse . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Top Posts