Facebook is a Creeper.

Facebook has been getting a little creepy lately:

Facebook you are a creeper.
Annnnnd... I just wrote a blog post in which Facebook proposed to me.
Is it even possible to get a restraining order against a website?

Contest: Make your own. Out funny me.
Directions: Hit Print Screen and use Microsoft paint.
As you can see I was too lazy to actually download the Facebook font which is lucida grande, so I used lucida sans unicode. Which is close enough for couch potatoes like me.
Life effort?= none.
Report card on commitment to excellence = none. Too lazy to download a font for proper spoof.

Additionally Facebook is giving unhelpful social advice. To answer the first one, "how are you feeling, Liz?" is a Facebook faux pas.
"I am really happy, because Grace had to do the dishes and I didn't"
"I feel sad. For no reason whatsoever. I am staring at a blank wall."
boring, boring...
"Why don't they ever have good t.v. shows on at the emergency room? My snapping turtle bit off my pinky toe."
Better.
Maybe I should do a series called "A Month of Lies", in which all of my status updates are completely fallacious.
Like "Bungee jumping off the Eiffel tower in a Barney costume! Could today get any better?"

Les Miserables: Movie Review, A Symphony of Tears

Les Miserables, was pretty straight up awesome, I loved it.
I would probably watch all two and a half hours of it again, right now.
Caveat: I love musicals. Les Mis is my favorite musical of all, so I am biased in its favor. If you don't like musicals you probably won't like it. I saw a review that said, "they sang the whole time!" Yes. Yes they did. Because it is a musical (although really I think 5 non-singing words were said, someone should go count them).

It's time for Losers and Winners Les Miserables edition.
Actually its more like Winners and Warnings, there were not really Losers in this movie.
Spoiler Alert! probably there is a spoiler somewhere in here...

LOSER? WINNER?...WARNING this motion picture causes: EXCESSIVE WEEPING.
Les Miserables is a very accurate title. I feel slightly miserable. I just spent about two hours and thirty seven minutes crying and blubbering.

FANTINE: I dreamed that love would never die....
I dreamed that God would be forgiving

ME: I never dreamed that I would Crrrryyyyy
I never dreamed I would be weeping.
Here in this theater, oh my! (looks around in ashamed fashion)
Some tissues I should have been keeping. (some tissues to be thrown for effect)

My nose is running, and no lie
I wiped on an unknown stranger (blow nose upon stranger sitting next to me)
good grief it makes me want to dieeee
If I leave now they'll see my eyes
all red and puffy, no secret keeping.

anyway...
me in the theater blowing my nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt being like,
TOUGH ME (the one who spends a lot of time telling me not to be desperate, and causing mental anguish when I make mistakes):  "keep it together Liz, for God's sake you're six foot one, you cant let your huge mean looking self fall to pieces every time some one starts singing..."
SENSITIVE ME: snifffff...snort, nasty crying face.
They let Anne Hathaway do the full on crying face in this movie. None of that single tear, "I am sad but my face still looks pretty" actress nonsense.
TOUGH ME: "oh cut out...you're going to be dehydrated."
...
TOUGH ME: Are you putting this on the blog?!! OH Cuss! No stop!
I don't remember crying in a movie theater ever. I did, however, cry during two other movies in my life: Crash, and Lilo and Stitch. That cute blue alien does me in.

On the way out my mom heard some people talking:
Person 1: "Well that was't very moving."
Person 2: "If it wasn't moving why were you crying?"
The theater was a symphony of sobbing. In the bathroom people who had just left Les Miserables were quite easily identified by their puffy red eyes.

TRIPLE WIN: Anne Hathaway as Fantine. Anne Hathaway, I have no idea why people don't like you. I am sorry. You are a great Saturday Night Live host, and you made a great Fantine. The Cat Woman stint was iffy, not bad...just not evil. You see she's supposed to be evil. Not a female Robin Hood who turns out to be kinda nice.
   Hathaway apparently went to the premiere in something that looked ridiculous. So I included a picture for you.

LOSER: Not being able to sing along. When this comes out on DVD some serious sing-along is going down.
WARNING: watching this musical may cause the uncontrollable desire to sing everywhere and everywhen. After I saw it I felt like running into the food court in the mall and belting out, "I dreamed a dream in times gone byyyyy"
...except that Marius is more within my vocal range so I should probably go for "A Heart Full of Love" or something.
It would be fun to walk out of a Les Miserables movie showing with a bunch of people and then all start singing it. Somebody should make me do that.

WINNER: Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean.
 Russel Crowe once he got his act together...the first songs by Russel, were not so great. By the last song, however, he made it into the winners circle.

WINNER: Victor Hugo. He wrote a story about love and mercy. This story is the reason that the musical is great. Slightly melodramatic? Yes, but still beautiful for some reason.

 The musical is one of the best adaptations of a book that I have ever seen. It captures the spirit of the book perfectly.
       Unlike several other film editions. In one (I believe the 1998 version) Jean Valjean walks away after watching Inspector Javert drown himself. Come on! Did anyone read the book?!
(Liz did you read the book? "Yes the un-abridged version" she said haughtily)

More WINNERS: Sacha Baron Choen and Hellena Bonham Carter as the Thenardiers. They are funny. Probably the only thing in the movie that does not make one start to cry.

This picture might have been taken with a potato.

 Some odd boring thoughts that are not funny:

1. Marius Pontmercy fights with the French revolutionaries for equality and for those who are severely impoverished. Five movie minutes later he is hosting an incredibly swankified wedding reception. Is this inconsistent? What do you think?

2. When Valjean is living as Monsieur Madeline (mayor and businessman of Montreiul-sur-Mer) he is forced to reveal himself or let an innocent man take the fall for him. Many of the poor depend on his business for survival and this is part of his dilemma. Since he knows he is a convict and that he could be caught, should he have a better plan B to keep that company running than "wandering hands" foreman?

4. I keep thinking about how Alexis De Tocqueville says in the Old Regime and the French Revolution that the French revolution didn't change much of anything at all. It is depressing.

3.They left this out, it's kind of interesting: Gavroche is the Thenardier's son. Ms. Thenardier ignores him (though she dotes on her daughters) and they abandon him to the streets.

Really I would watch the whole thing again right now. And cry buckets again.

Comments: You are now able to comment on Seize the Absurd

In order to enable commenting from non-Google users I just had to change some settings.
You may be asking:
How did you not figure this out before?
How dumb are you?
Those are good questions.
I think not even my technological ineptitude is a tenable excuse. I have idiotically been shooting myself in the foot for the past six months by making it very difficult to comment. NO MORE!

And now introducing:
The complete guide to commenting on Seize the Absurd, in unnecessary detail, with screen shots.

1. Go to the bottom of the blog post where these handy buttons are and click on the bit which says in this case "2 comments:"

2. you get this.

3. Type your comment and then choose what you want to "comment as"

4. If you have an address for AIM for example you can use it to comment.

5. If not comment anonymously but please leave your name.

6. Then you have to do one of those various nonsense checks to prove that you are not spam. I included a picture of mine because it called me a fool.

Then publish and you are good to go!
Feel free to comment on older posts as well.
Sorry about that, Oh the problems that a Google search could have solved long ago. Well I will file this one in  "various embarrassing mistakes"

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

Here is a drawing for you, it is a mistletoe monster.

Watch out.

1. Some Comments on Christmas Dinner.
I love Christmas dinner but not the beginning of it because people keep making me pass stuff as I try to stuff as much food as possible in my mouth.
"can I have the butter?"
ME: "No. Don't distract me. The snowplow that I am using as spoon is heavy machinery, and do we stop people who are operating heavy machinery to ask them to pass the butter? No we do not."

It might be a good thing I have never been to someone else's house for Christmas.

2. Some blog begging.
All I want for Christmas is for the internet to love me.
Is that asking a lot? Yes, but hear me out. I want to be a comedian and cartoonist professionally, this is for some reason the greatest dream of my small Grinch-ish heart. This is the big, unrealistic, sort of dream that requires the sort of luck that I don't possess. Every time you tell somebody about my blog, every time this sad little graph goes a little higher, I get hope that I have a shot.

 A shot at stuff that looks impossible like writing screenplays and TV shows. Yes, successful blogging can open a path towards a profession in comedy.
The other day someone was asking me what I wanted to do after school and one of my friends said, "Liz wants to be Tina Fey."
Yes I do.
I need your help.

Well that broke my rules of desperation. Namely "being desperate is not attractive, so cut it out Liz." But if I am honest with myself I really am desperate for this to succeed. If you have ideas on how to reach more people, tell me. If you know some people who might like this, tell them. Thanks I think that was a sufficient amount of desperation, I am gonna be done now.

3. Theodore James Rosema: I am glad that that you are my brother and that we both have tea party names (Elizabeth Ann...ha.). Merry Christmas, I miss you especially today. Also I haven't bought you anything.

The Truth About Figgy Pudding

 Look at it...ew! it is blackened and it has spiky leaves (yes you have to eat the spiky leaves too)
Recently we at Seize the Absurd have investigated the classic Christmas song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" resulting in some interesting conclusions. Upon further observation Christmas songs appear to have many oddities. While caroling I discovered that singing is not a viable career option for me, and also that one who sings "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" makes rude demands for figgy pudding.
ME: "Song, you are crazy.
Seeing as we are making vehement demands which no one will take seriously we could demand anything.
Anything... cars...chocolate...that the next hobbit movie be better...
And yet we demand figgy pudding.
Really? Who even wants that?"

Also now I am envisioning some gangster carolers, "bring us the cussing figgy pudding. Bring it right cussing here, you cussing cuss."
Anyway...

Acceptable uses for figgy Pudding:
Eat? No.
Douse in alcohol, set on fire, and throw at unwanted passers-by? Yes.

(Additional Questions: You are the only one who writes Seize the Absurd. Why did you refer to yourself as we? Are you using the royal we? snob.
ME: Plural we, referring to multiple personalities which I may or may not possess. My predominant personality over the Christmas season is one who despises leaving the house and lives in constant horror of mobs at shopping malls. Who knows when they will go completely insane over their inability to purchase furbys for their children? Mob mentality is a fearsome thing.)

Gingerbread Battle

A man sits beside a cozy fire place in a purple sweater vest and messy white hair indicating that he is either insane or Albert Einstein. 

He says: "Welcome to the Not-history channel. Today we would like to discuss the history of a hidden people, one that lives right under our noses. Few have payed attention to the intricate history of this civilization. The civilization of Gingerbread men."

There are Gingerbread houses:

And then there are Gingerbread houses, the great Gingerbread families of Sugardom. Proud Lords and Ladies of the Gingerbread people. The noble Gingermen have fought long, bitter battles for the Gingerbread throne. The War of the Gumdrops was particularly horrific. Soldiers present recalled the battlefield strewn with the crumbs of mutilated gingerbread men. They poured glasses of milk onto their enemies, turning them into nasty disintegrated mush.

anyway here is a gingerbread battle.

A Hairy Foot's tale: The Hobbit

It is hard to be the hairy foot of a hobbit. Especially the hairy foot of an adventurous hobbit like Mr. Bilbo Baggins. Traipsing all over Middle Earth with nary a boot to be found, who can condone such shod-less behavior? My once lush toe hair is often frozen and has begun to develop unseemly split ends.
                                                               Sincerely,
                                                                      The Complaining Hairy Foot of Bilbo Baggins.
P.S. My associate, the other hairy foot of Bilbo does not find our adventures unfortunate at all! What an annoying fellow.

I believe that that was my first time attempting to write a letter as if I was a foot.
This is a new experience for me. Yesterday, we finished a week of finals( in which I only threw Aristotle's Physics across the room once, only throwing one book across the room is a sort of anger management triumph for me). Afterwards we all went to see the Hobbit. It was fairly bad with some fun bits, it was so eclectic that I feel like writing a winners and losers for it.

(SPOILER ALERT!!!!- not that this can be spoiled for you because you have already read the book.
But anyway I might ruin it for you or something, and I don't want you to hate me forever.)
If however you have seen the movie and would like to share in its good and bad moments with me, here we Go.

DID YOU SEE THE PART WHERE I SAID SPOILER ALERT (All the warning symbols having been given: caps, bold, italics and underline. I am innocent from here on out.)


WINNER: DWARF SONG
 Base harmony in the house! That house being Bag End. Why did they cut that off? what were they thinking? Do they sell that on itunes? I should go buy that right now.

LOSER: Pale Hand-less Orc with vendetta (can anyone say: obvious plot device? What about: "long scenes where Thorin and the Orc glare at each other" while everyone in the entire audience is thinking "who cut this film?")



WINNER: GANDALF THE GREY
LOSER: RADAGAST THE BROWN
the question of the evening was, "is there bird poop in his hair?" I had thought that it was moss, because....well because bird poop would be gross to have in your hair. I was wrong. Also the first scene with him and the dying hedgehog was odd.

LOSER: RADAGAST'S BUNNY CARRIAGE it is just too hard for a bunny carriage to pull off "epic chase scene"
WINNER RADAGAST'S BUNNY CARRIAGE it was funny, in a stupid way.

WINNER: Gladriel reading Gandalf's thoughts- that was cool until...
LOSER: Awkwardness between Gandalf and Galadriel - heck no, that relationship best be strictly platonic. Why did they go and do the weird face petting thing?

WINNER: BOMBUR

LOSER: THORIN"S HIGLIGHTS. What? Is he trying to take over Anderson Coopers established position as the silver fox?

LOSER: GOBLIN KING. No really that's gross.





WINNER: MESSENGER GOBLIN- I cant find a very good picture of this guy he is a tiny little goblin who takes notes. This is a model.

The Twelve Days of Cussmas

While I was attempting to write a Twelve Days of Christmas parody entitled "The Twelve Days of Finals". I took some time to contemplate the oddities of this holiday favorite. Here are my musings.

It is done in traditional poverty style with colored pencils.

That is all I look forward to being done with finals so I can do some more cartoons.
Also I am sorry for not posting last week. In case you are wondering I am not giving up.
 I am going to write this blog until somebody reads it.

Thanksgiving and the Grubbsters

Thanksgiving no longer.
Seize the Absurd had re-dubbed this holiday Thanksgrubbing.

This holiday even comes with a new holiday character.
 Easter has a bunny, and Christmas has Santa, Thanksgrubbing has the grubbster.

 Which is the odd white object you see there around which various foods are exploding. It's eyes starred with joy. The grubbster is a fat white blob without legs, and he embodies the spirit of gluttony.
No really food is awesome.
The first sightings of them were in my notebook: (here are some dubious quality photographs of these hideous and inefficient life forms)

  Remember that Thanksgrubbing is about avoiding the mean.
 Aristotle says moderation is choosing the mean with respect to bodily pleasures.
The grubbster never chooses the mean.

Thanksgrubbing is one of the most food-glorious days of the year.
The other food-glorious day being "chefs table" which requires some explaining. The cafeteria at my college is run by Bon Appetit, once a year chefs from other schools all come to my school and dump food on us by the truck load.
This year there were Korean tacos.
What is that? I still don't know... some sort of mouthwatering trade-your-baby-for-them goodness.
Anyway I ate about a thousand of them, and gave my last will and testament which was:

ME:  I ate so much that I am going to die, and at my funeral my parents will say, "at least she went out the way she wanted to".

But back to the miracles of Thanksgrubbing: specifically that canned cranberry sauce is better, just better.
Better than cranberry sauce with anything that looks like cranberries in it.

Which reminds me to announce that I have invented a new Thanksgrubbing tradition.
Wishbones are not fun.

Instead people should see who can get the canned cranberry sauce out first, as shown:

Also pretty soon, people will forget that thanksgiving ever existed. Instead it will be, "when we stuff ourselves the day before so that we don't have to stop anywhere to eat during Black Friday".