Archive for May, 2007
what i’m laughing at: »
Friday, May 25th, 2007
this one will be a quickie. this guy is over the top the majority of the time, but he made a funny. well not really funny in the “ha, ha” sense, but more in the “this is why you need to renew my perscription” sense.
it’s an older one, but i just got to it now. shameful. but, this google reader is wicked fun like tivo for blogs. i’m not to the point of recommending it though.
the office »
Thursday, May 24th, 2007
so i didn’t bring a lunch today. which isn’t odd or noteworthy because i haven’t brought a lunch for two weeks too low on groceries to pack a lunch. but today’s important because someone brought dilly bars. well, i guess it’s not the dilly bars, but rather the fact that i had no remorse for going back for a second one due to my lunch-less status. i witnessed something that makes me so proud to be a white-collar employee i could cry if i had the capacity to do so over trivial occurances. keep in mind that the events to follow took place in roughly seven minutes.
the announcement of dilly bar presence over the loud speaker prompted my arrival in the kitchen area. there I saw four women around the counter opening and arranging the boxes of dillies. one woman was choosing an assortment of bars and packing them into her own separate box. she filled the box and left to probably or more accurately, hopefully distribute the bars among folk that sent her as their liaison. the other women were discussing the new practice of emailing school schedules instead of printing them off it’s all very nineties and futuristic. I made the hard-thought decision of the classic chocolate over vanilla and left as one of the other girls came to peruse the dillies.
i took a pause and used the bathroom and decided to get a paper towel safety first before sitting back at the desk. back in the kitchen one woman had left, two of the women were now putting the bars into the freezer, and another ate hers at the counter. I walked past and grabbed my towel rather quickly.
it took no time at all to reach the stick on the first one, even with my sensitive teeth i know, and people say I lack dedication, so I went back for another. I brought my water bottle with me. the kitchen had emptied and a note was left on a couple pieces of cardboard next to a dilly wrapper explaining that they had been moved to the freezer. when I got to the fridge and started dispensing ice another woman came up around the corner. without a second thought she swiped up the wrapper and note on her way to the freezer, tossing them casually into the trash while remarking, “good, they’ve been put in the freezer already.”
as I switched and began filling my bottle with my favorite hydrogen-oxygen molecule I watched her reach in and grab a dilly. and then she reached in for another. she was on her way down the hall as the bottle reached capacity. I screwed on the top and walked to the freezer for number two. as I walked back to my desk I got the mental image of piranha.
i pictured a hand casually dropped into the water off the side of a boat and nibbled to the bone in a frenzy of tiny, razor teeth. why did I picture predatory fish? because in the seven minutes and that’s being generous, I didn’t have the forethought to time it I saw seven different women, ate two dilly bars, and saw another twelve taken. not only that, but the last woman erased any sign that they were there in the first place.
which brought about another thought. why the hell would she do that? was she trying to keep the remaining dillies hidden? or is she that cleanliness obsessed that less than ten minutes from the boxes being opened she had to eradicate their existence completely? wouldn’t any considerate person leave the message out to direct interested parties?
who knows, maybe she was just under the impression D.Q. has begun decorating the inside of their packaging with personalized messages. Or maybe swiped it up thinking it was trash without a second look and then was too close to the garbage upon realizing her fault to turn back and have it found out. Or maybe she just wanted to hinder the search for dilly bars she’ll come back to eat in the coming days. mmm, office dynamics. so delicious
keep ‘er coming. »
Thursday, May 24th, 2007
The sweetness. Rain. Lots of it. According to the weather folk it’s running a few hours of consistent precip. Twould be a shitty day to move. But i’m not moving, and i have the other singular problem of a complete disaster area of bird shit on me car. It appears i was parked under a very popular tree the other day. It also appears that every bird that landed in that specific tree had to drop one before leaving it.
Maybe the birds are like cats; they find their spot to unload and stick with it. i just happened to be the unfortunate one who was under the tree on a day where they all coincidently did just that. Maybe the fact the car remains unmoved for days at a time infuriates them. Maybe they’re agents of Big Oil and see my prolonged vehicular idleness as a knock in the jaw of their associates.
In any case, there’s an inexplicably large quantity of avian feces decorating my auto, so i hope this rain does some work to rinse it off so i can see out the windows on my drive home this weekend.
debatable »
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007
As far as I’m concerned, the debates mean almost nothing. It is not the talking points between candidates that are relevant. It’s not even the discussion between parties. It’s how far away from their respective bases the policies have strayed that makes this campaign so interesting. It appears to be a competition for who listens less to public opinion.
The Republicans have come under constant fire. Their corruption has been exposed in many aspects of the political process. They advocate tax cuts and liberties to the richest one percent while a financial bloodletting is taking place among the other ninety-nine percent. Business is given allowances that are proving to be immensely detrimental to the country as a whole. They repeat the mantra, “support our troops,” while leaving them without armor in favor of contracting mercenaries. They redundantly reference nine-eleven—most notably just today—to tap into lingering fear to relinquish control at opportune times. They are ignorant to many environmental issues that are obvious to anyone with a passing interest in the world around them.
The Republican debate—fittingly in the Reagan library—depicted a group of Bush clones. They side themselves with the same policies that have the President at a twenty-eight percent approval rating. They deny the public opinion that stripped them of their advantage in Congress. The same policies that have the country at odds are being tauted as new and unique talking points. Their moderator remorselessly creates a horrific hypothetical situation that exemplified the party’s fear mongering. Their responses reflected the lack of progress our country has made in the years since that tragic attack they speak so tediously of.
Democrats are rich elite trying to connect with a middle class that their policies have killed. They are considered a diverse party, but are more accurately linked to minorities by default against the mono-racial right. They perpetuate a victim complex while creating weak policies. They’ve developed an obsession with environmental issues. They’ve completely turned their backs on the voters that gave them the slight majority. They don’t take the initiative to cut corporate influence or executive power. They lack backbone and are uncomfortable in their leadership roles.
The candidates repeat incessantly the need to get out of Iraq. But, they continue to provide the President with all the monies he requests. Their new proposal has weak benchmarks that will be talked up as a bold step. Their investigations into corruption are stalled and laughable. They avoid the topic, just as the right does, of Iraqis wanting an end to the occupation. This is likely because the oil companies are attempting to weasel into large portions of the reserves there and will have big money to donate to the political party in power.
We need a new party, made up of the people actually affected by the policies put before Congress. The dying middle class, the laborers, those that see corporatism as one of many symptoms in the death of our empire. The soldiers, returned from combat, fresh from their exploitation there. Where they were used as pawns by the administration without compassion.
But, it will fail. The media will ignore it aside from passing derogatory remarks. The campaigns will fizzle without the funding of nervous corporations. They will be dismissed as idealists by the masses. They will be denied the credibility granted those that have worked so hard to lose theirs.
So we’re left with two corporation-backed parties that are putting on an act. They pretend to represent a base that neither remembers. They continue a war of words, over social issues of little importance, to give the impression of opposition. Behind this facade is a well coordinated progression to a shared goal.
death of a president »
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007
My initial reaction after watching this one was a internal, “well shit.” It’s hard to describe what was going on in my head afterward. The film was good. It carried the punch that I was expecting, but it also left a bad taste in my mouth. I’d liken it to getting off a roller coaster and standing still for a moment to get your bearings. Or I guess a better comparison would be a short pause after exiting the car on a long drive. In some ways the movie is powerful, but it’s most powerful asset is its basis in present reality.
I’ll make false assumptions that you’ve heard the hype about this movie. And I’ll keep assuming that you know the general plot, so when I go into it it will be just redundancy run amok. So here I go repeating what you already know:
The film is a realistic, hypothetical depiction of an assassination of President W. Bush. It’s a short documentary looking back on the assassination a year after his death. Key players and suspects are interviewed in an attempt to solve the high-profile crime. The feel is similar to a History Channel program. There are numerous people involved, including the head of the Secret Service at the time, the head of the Chicago FBI bureau, and a veteran of Iraq II. The film opens the morning of the assassination and continues until it’s hypothetical production. It’s an in-depth look at the coverage and investigations that go into reporting the President’s slaying.
Going into watching this one I didn’t know what to expect. I had read some blurbs on it and they had sparked an interest, but I didn’t know how they could have done the things that were being talked about. To create a realistic scenario of the President’s assassination is not a small task. And they were characterizing the film as being almost disturbing in its realism, so I was conflicted. I had an open mind, but I wasn’t expecting to be blown away or stunned. For the most part I wasn’t, but it did impress me in some ways.
The acting was quality throughout. Add in the fact that the actors were generally not told the premise of the movie and it’s all the more impressive. The characters were not developed beyond a certain level, but the realistic portrayals of the likely suspects brought assumptions. The characters used their limited screen time well, expressing remorse, hostility, and doubt in small glimpses during the interviews.
The timing and direction of the altered footage is fantastic. It divulges just enough as the story progresses and remains simple so it brings you into the story instead of pushing you out. The computer alterations are subtle. The interactions around them are done very well. The speeches reflect the stigmas, prejudices, and basis of intelligence that plague today’s politics. They are saturated with mannerisms and tendencies of the real people they portray. The investigation proceeds as it would outside a film. The details are vague, but the concepts are exact in a way. They follow a natural progression. The sequence of events could happen tomorrow and be completely plausible.
The social climate of today is meticulously analyzed in the hypothetical. While the events depicted are unrealistic they aren’t exaggerated. Instead they just propose a “what if.” The events that lead up to the morning the film starts are brought straight from headlines. Events directly before the assassination are brought up in generalities, but could very well happen. And the events and actions taken after the President’s death have already happened in small doses, so the chain of events is not only plausible, but likely.
I think that’s why I don’t know how exactly to react. The movie was solid. It had twists and was deeply rooted in the world it portrays. The acting carried the interviews, which in turn carried the film. But the events that transpire are not only intriguing, but dissect our society and our prejudices to the point of causing unease. It’s an interesting movie and it’s not for everyone—there was a sort of silence from everyone as the credits rolled—but it’s done well. It’s not as good as it could have been, but did what it needed to do. If the filmmakers had tried to do more it may have gotten away from the simplistic reality they created.
****