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Monday, November 2nd, 2009
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balistic
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I will be heading to Attawapiskat, on the edge of James Bay for a week in January to do some filming for an aboriginal documentary what a great way to begin the new year! : )
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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iopha
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On Friday I was talking with a fellow Montreal expatriate who had come to London for grad school about the transition to living in a new place. She's in her first year of a PhD, bright, attractive, sagacious, mildly flirtatious, highly self-aware, the kind of girl I generally end up admiring from a distance as a well put-together human specimen in altogether many qualities, but not quite weird enough for me to be seriously interested (over and above the fact that I'm currently involved).
I was saying the hardest thing was forging new relationships while trying, best as you can, to keep the old ones going (and the weird guilt this brings about), but you know, things also carry on without you and by this Sunday or Monday on Facebook you will see Halloween pictures coming in and see your friends having a good time and your first reaction will be: "oh, fun!" and then "aw, fuck" and that's just the process, things will carry on, and the vicissitudes of academia are thus that you in all likelihood will never go home again, chasing the same scarce work that hundreds of graduate students all compete for, ready to settle in Redneck's Asshole, Texas if it means a tenure-track position, and the versimilitude of online interaction keeps you in some ambient awareness of old social networks that are palpably rusting away so you can count the reddish flecks in your hands like little measures of an entropy founded in your own will to do this one thing, which might be a bit dramatic for an eight-hour drive's worth of travel from London to Montreal.
"Don't make me cry," she chided, sarcastic, vulnerable, but of course I was just bracing myself, the self-absorbed fuck I am.
Saiche was away for the weekend at a conference. Some of the other graduate students were watching horror movies at one guy's place, but I couln't really go for reasons I can't get into now. So I stayed home, played guitar, read Amanda Palmer's blog and listened to the Cure (oh my gawth!) and watched The Wire's final few episodes.
All this to say: I miss you guys. Blah.
Damn November blues.
Also: watch The Wire. It's to television what Émile Zola is to the novel, a exemplar of social naturalism in a preposterous thicket of escapism and Romantic fan-service. It is the kind of show that makes you look back on everything before it that you liked and wonder why the fuck you thought it was any good, why we needed ridiculous space battles to pretend we gave two shits about prisoner abuse, civil rights, or the war on terror, or whatever veiled allegory justified the aesthetic and psychological excesses of histrionic science fiction and fantasy.
The Wire begins with a systemic demonstration of the ways in which institutional dysfunction ends up shaping the lives of those living in the colossal shadow of given sets of overlapping power; by the end of it though we are bequeathed something entirely different. A strange gift: genuine empathy for the human condition, not that bullshit sympathy where all blame is absolved in some bleeding-heart false consciousness, but a kind of first stab at authentic understanding of the hidden subjectivities we walk past every day. Just go buy or download the fucking thing, will you?
iopha
p.s. with gratitude to Cato, who berated me until I watched the damned thing.
p.p.s David Simon, the show's creator, said in an interview:
"We are not selling hope, or audience gratification, or cheap victories with this show. The Wire is making an argument about what institutions—bureaucracies, criminal enterprises, the cultures of addiction, raw capitalism even—do to individuals. It is not designed purely as an entertainment. It is, I'm afraid, a somewhat angry show."
p.p.p.s: Not that it's a documentary. But it tries harder than anything that's tried before. One perceptive comment: “Where I come from, women run most of the things [that the show] talks about. It’s the women that have the power in the ghetto. This show totally got it wrong when they made it all about men. Women are the politicians; they can get you a gun, they got the cash, they can get you land to build something on.”
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, November 1st, 2009
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xanda_k
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I have so much to do in the next few days, but I really don't feel like doing anything.
I feel under-appreciated today, and it makes me a little queasy to look back, and see someone else being treated in the same way that I was for close to two years. I take it from her, still--but it doesn't sting. It doesn't feel like it would have had if we were still together. It's disappointing more than anything.
I know why she's doing it, and I know that it happens every year around her birthday, but I wish she would stop trying to take everyone down with her.
Instead, I'll read a book and focus on school for now.
I've got a good grip on that at least this semester.
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Saturday, October 31st, 2009
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iopha
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Recorded with the godawful Logicam, because I don't have a better working video capture device currently. I was going to record something newer first, but what the hell, it's October 31, and I'm fond of the bad old ones.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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cymry
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time is flying. there's a million things to do; I'm surprised I got as much reading done as I did. actually, I'm astounded I did. Most of them were quick, light reads though.
( October 2009: )
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Friday, October 30th, 2009
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stargazingchild
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The week's over and though I come back technically tomorrow morning, for me its just one long night, so I do consider this my last day here.
One more night with the clients - I've mostly shut myself off from work though, putting in only half the effort I usually do. Can't help it though, I'm exhausted.
And the customers have in fact not forgotten about their plans to accidentally kill me. At 1pm we are going over to one of their homes for burgers, which the guns will inevitably come out at some point.
I'm still going to try to avoid them. Something tells me they'll be quite insistent regardless.
Whatever the outcome, my own personal wish is to have a safe trip back and have the Saturday I've been hoping for ever since I left two weeks ago.
Logging out from Virginia,
sg
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stargazingchild
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For Halloween, the plan is, unless it changes since I'm still far from home, is to go on a third date, after which maybe start my novel for NanoWriMo 2009, play a little of Uncharted, and revel in being home after a long two weeks away.
I guess dressing up is not in the cards for me this year.
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Thursday, October 29th, 2009
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stargazingchild
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One interesting story from last night's shift... our customer accidentally turned off the wrong circuit breaker in a basement room, which cut power to pretty much most cabinet and ship equipment in the entire facility.
If this had happened during the day shift, he would have been in serious trouble and he would have had several base commanders after him. I could just picture the scenario.
Customer: Ok Dave, what we want to film for your project is, in order to refill the water cooling tank, you first need to turn off this switch right here...
(sound of distant equipment powering down)
Customer: That was odd...anyways, continuing on, next we're going to film turning on the alarm panel here, and...
Blaring Intercom: FC (Insert Customer Name here), report immediately to the quarterdeck.
Customer, slowly turning and looking at the cb, jaw slowly dropping: Oh... Crap...
Dave: Everything ok? Do we need to go up stairs and check it out?
Customer: ok, look, the rest of the project is really not that difficult, just press the buttons over there until you can complete your procedures, I gotta uhm, head out through the back door here... and if anyone comes looking for me, you haven't seen me all day. They'll probably be armed but they won't shoot if you're smiling...
... but as it happened at 10pm, he had just the fury of a dozen instructors to deal with, rather than the entire facility, so it worked out in the end.
After which was another uneventful drive in deer country. Which is good it was uneventful, I really don't want to cap this trip off by running over Bambi. Its a good thing one of our clients warned us it was deer hunting season and to take an alternate route home. I'm sure the other guy wouldn't have cared and would have actually hoped we'dc oome in to work the next day with an awesome deer accident story.
Speaking of which, this customer, after I asked an innocent question of whether they owned firearms (of course they do, they're americans), got wind that I don't own guns nor have I ever seen or fired one, and is adamant I stop by his place before work on Friday so we can "fire some rounds in the woods."
Ok, I had not realized until last night that the thought of doing said activity frightens me to no end. Me + Firearms just doesn't sound like a good mix.
Anyone who knows me would disagree? Don't think so.
I see in my mind how this would end in a most astoundingly set of weird coincidences that would lead to a gun wound. I want to stay as far away from the above scenario from playing out, and I am hoping they have forgotten today about their plans to accidentally kill me.
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Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
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shyfayrie
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Quick question-
Can you see this?
If so, what browser and operating system are you using?
Thanks! :)
EDIT:
Thank you everyone!
Figured out and fixed my problem :)
Thanks!
In case you were wondering, it was for my animated banner on this wonderful blog-
http://downandoutchic.blogspot.com/
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Comments: Read 8 or Add Your Own.
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stargazingchild
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Evening shifts suck, you spend the whole day up only to follow with 8 hours of work.
Working in Virginia sucks. A lot of time is spent doing nothing because there's nothing to do inside or outside of the hotel.
This hotel sucks. Creepy staff that laughs when you walk by, or on the last trip, I was actually asked "Are you depressed or something?" by some cleaning staff person.
Working in our military base sucks, since none of the equipment ever works or when it does, doesn't work like real life giving us erroneous data.
Our camcorder sucks, since it still uses tapes, and the mic output has broken causing us to be unable to verify if the audio is actually recording.
Our procurement department sucks, as the trip would have been a lot easier with the wireless mics we ordered (and those we'd KNOW if the batteries died right away)...but they still haven't arrived despite ordering them over a month before this trip.
This particular contract sucks, because its defined a lot of things that the customers don't care about, and the customers want me to film what they want even though I am not meeting our contract requirements.
Yup, lots of suckage.
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Monday, October 26th, 2009
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righteousbabes
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I saw her on Saturday in Seattle and then again Sunday in Bellingham.
Anais Mitchell opened and she is absolutely wonderful, with awesome little quirks and beautiful voice/songs.
Ani was in top form! I've seen her a couple times before and she never ceases to amaze, but her Bellingham show was perfection for me. I'll try to remember some of the Seattle setlist:
Anticipate
78% H2O
Swandive
Grey (in which she said it was "Seattle's hue"...so great)
Coming up
November 4
Smiling Underneath
Albacore
Alla This
Splinter
Providence
Garden of Simple
She Says
Imagine That
Which Side Are You On? (Pete Seeger cover)
New Song (Just Me?)
New Song (If You're Not?
Smiling Underneath
Encores:
Both Hands
Hypnotized (i know she played this at some point; i think it was encore)
(i'm sorry I can't think of any more songs; my mind was just BLOWN last night in Bellingham, so that setlist is fresher on my mind! if anyone can post the official one, that would be great!)
Some highlights from Bellingham:
God's Country
Half-Assed
Studying Stones
Untouchable Face
Educated Guess
Alla This
Red Letter Year
Manhole
Present/Infant
The Atom
Nicotine
the song for Obama
Which Side Are You On
Encores:
Little Plastic Castle
Overlap
a Gillian Welch song, which she sang with Anais Mitchell and Animal.
They were in "halloween costumes" for the Gillian Welch song. Ani in devil horns, Anais in a pink wig and cowboy hat and Animal in an afro wig and cowboy hat.
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Comments: Read 9 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, October 25th, 2009
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stargazingchild
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Ok, 10 minutes to write this before I am kicked out of the coffee shop (my hotel connection no longer works....again)
Me and Mike went to downtown Washington today. This time we parked at a metro station and took the metro to the mall area as opposed to trying to find parking in the crazy city. That worked out much better.
We then decided to go to the Holocaust Museum instead of the Natural History. It did feel quite rushed as the exhibits were mostly photo and text and I wasn't there on my own, but if I ever am in Washington by myself I'd go back even after having seen everything.
I've read a lot about the Holocaust, maybe not as much as my sister, but the museum makes you see it in the way no can until they walk through those exhibits.
Seeing the shoes, personal belongings, the replicas of the train cars, concentration camp bunkers, gas chambers can't bring it home any more than visiting the camps themselves.
It was a moving experience, as most people who go there say. I've already spent half my time typing the above paragraphs, so I must sign off soon.
Went back to the hotel, had a nice chat with Rej, looks like I will officially have a date waiting when I return ;) I think the week will go by fast in any event, working the evening shifts...i am sad no more internet in hotel but I'll manage like usual.
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stargazingchild
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If I know the friend or relative pretty well, I don't let racist comments usually slide and let them know in a non-offending manner.
Homophobic comments are more complicated. I don't think I've been pushed to limits as to what I'd tolerate before I say something, but I have not said anything in the past at times when doing so would not be worth the trouble (the ensuing questions / uncomfrtableness / avoidable confrontation) but I feel like I have yet to be tested in this area.
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