Journal entry number 146. Stardate: December 16, 2009. The year was 2009. The day was somewhere in between Tuesday and Thursday. One man sat down at his computer and composed the following, and the world was never the same:

Dear American Airlines is a book that is 180 pages long and took me twice as many days to read. Since we’ve been on the topic of book reviews recently (and yes, dear readers, I am fully aware of how “exciting” this topic has been), here is my review of Dear American Airlines. It sounds interesting. A novel length letter to American Airlines from a man whose flight to his estranged daughter’s wedding was cancelled, asking for money back. Throughout the letter, we learn about him, his past, his failed relationship with his daughter and her mother. He comes to know himself better and thus, we witness, through a refund request, a man’s transformation from jerk to jerk who knows he’s a jerk. Sounds interesting, right? Well, not so much. There are sections of this book that are fantastic, normally the ones involving the man describing his past actions with a sense of forlorn longing, wishing he could go back and change things. These sections of the book account for, by my estimation, a quarter to a third of the book. They’re great. They’re well written and they read fast. The other (we’ll say) two thirds of the book are split between the man describing what’s going on in the airport, which is okay but pretty pointless, and serves to remind us over and over and over again that he’s stuck in the airport and it’s uncomfortable and he isn’t happy about it; and a translation he’s working on of some Polish book. These sections are almost unbearable, because they have little to do with our hero’s plight, and the story they tell isn’t interesting. The book actually ends on one of these translated sections, and while I was hoping that it would finally tie this in to the main story arc, it didn’t, making the book feel like it was really straining to get to its already short length of 180 pages. So, skip it. It would have been a nice short story, if he had just focused on telling us our protagonist’s backstory, but it just doesn’t work as a novel, with so much padding.

It’s my favorite time of year. No, not Christmas time. Not Hanukkah time. It’s time for everyone to put out their end of the year lists! Best Music, Best Movies, Best Games, etc. And, as an added bonus, everyone is doing Best Whatevers of the DECADE! It’s like a super list! Oh, how I love lists. Well, anyway, these decade lists are weird because, really, how are you going to pick the single best album that came out in the last 10 years? Rolling Stone picked Radiohead’s “Kid A,” an album that I just don’t like. I know it’s supposedly one of the best things man has ever created, but I don’t like it. OK Computer was great. Kid A is too weird. The songs aren’t strong. I realize that Radiohead was experimenting and trying new things, but they left the songs behind. I listened to Kid A when I was in high school. I listened to it in college. I listened to it within the last year. And I just don’t like it. I’m sorry. The other one I remember is Paste Magazine calling Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinois” the best album of the decade. Sure, it’s a good album, but the best one of the decade? Illinois is one of the most painstakingly created albums I’ve ever heard. There’s so much going on, so many noises, sounds, instruments, vocals, backing vocals, that it’s no wonder that Stevens has basically given up on creating music now. But it’s not the best album I heard this decade. “So,” you ask, “if you’re going to tear everyone else’s choices apart, what is the best album of the decade?” The best album of the decade, without a doubt, is Justin Timberlake’s “Futuresex/lovesounds.”

One more thing. For the most part, I agree with Brian’s assessment of The Onion’s Top 50 Movies of the Decade: I’ve seen about half. The ones I’ve seen are memorable enough. I don’t really have a problem with them. I agree that Eternal Sunshine is probably the best movie I saw in the ‘00’s. I like The 25th Hour too, though I don’t know that it would make my top 10. But anyway, The New World is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. It’s a week and a half long, nothing happens, and by the time I was done watching it I had died from boredom and been reincarnated as the cool dude you know me as today. It’s in the top 10 movies of the decade though. You can ask whoever I watched that movie with (Cam or Danny), that movie sucks. It sucks not only because it’s boring and stupid and nothing happens and I would have had more fun listening to Justin Timberlake’s “Futuresex/lovesounds” for the seventeen years it took me to watch The New World, but also because it’s got that air of pretention that apparently fooled some people into thinking that there was a single redeeming factor about that movie. Like (read this in a British accent) “Yes, quite, quite the good movie, yes, hrumph hrumble, indeed, quite.” Give me a break with this New World shit.

Stardate: 20 minutes after the stardate at the beginning of this. World: Changed.