assembly

Preamble

A week and a day since last I said something here? Lord. Too long. Too much silence. Folks, I've had zero to say over the last week. I've written quite a bit, but none of it's suitable or of sufficient quality for such a high-high falutin venue such as the weblog. Unless you like reading my pathetic cover letters to various companies that never knew of my existence, and who, to judge from the responses, still don't. Every office in the country, it seems, has a small fire dedicated to my resumes. There's a printer that prints out page after page of my acomplishments with a tray that drops the pages directly into the blaze. The fire powers a little wheel that provides the current to light the supply closet so the work experience student from the local highschool doesn't stub his toe the next time he goes for sticky notes. And that is how I contribute to our economy.

Job

Why am I saying such things? I don't know, especially since I've been offered work again, which I am a little leery of pursuing but excited about at the same time. Leery, because I will be a full producer, which means that my paycheque comes directly from the funding that I raise (more or less), and excited for the same reason. At my former place o' employment I was shielded or compartmentalized from the grubby business of squeezing the fickle teats of government and broadcasters for money, but now I must squeeze without shielding of any kind. Naked I squeeze teats for broadcast bucks! I can't wait to see the Google referrers for that line. The offer is for a documentary on sex offenders, which repulses and intrigues me at the same time, but it's a chance to do something relevant and interesting. I'll likely be doing the interviews, serving as field producer and writing the damn thing as well. Come visit me in hospital when the show's finished.

Health & Parousia

Last Monday I capped off a wretched persistent cold by throwing my back out. How it happened I'm not sure, but I do know that people in a coffee shop will stare at you strangely when you get up from your chair and make a series of horrible wheezing noises while your lower back spasms and tries to throw you to the floor. It's true like geometry or the presence of rocks is true. Which reminds me: my friend Graham has a younger brother Cameron who named his stuffed rabbit The Presence Of Jesus as a kid. Imagine taking The Presence Of Jesus to bed with you every night, or crying as The Presence Of Jesus slowly gets rattier with every year, button eyes loosening and fake fur matting up. What would you think when, as an adult, you found The Presence of Jesus at the bottom of a trunk along with some old blankets and maybe a pair of Spidey Underoos?

Memorable

The most memorable phrase from a comic book cover ever is "Superman's stymied by the Purple Piledriver!!" Or something like that. I don't remember. What's important is that a google search for the Purple Piledriver turns up, along with the sorts of things you'd expect with a search string like that, the site fucksouthdakota.com. The site author makes a powerful argument for some South Dakota fucking, but I need no appeal to reason to endorse the fucking of South Dakota. Preferably with a good old purple piledriver, or something that will level it all, except for that really good Mexican restaurant in Rapid City.

Eyes

Eyes are good for seeing things. I've been using my eyes over the last week to see a whole bunch of movies. My eyes were put to the test by the devilishly clever and cool high school noir Brick. I'm not sure if the director decided that lighting was just a convention, or if the movie theatre was running with an exceptionally weak bulb inside the projector, but I found myself straining to make out what was going on throughout. Brick is modelled on classic noir, though, so it barely matters whether you can see the screen; plot is opaque, characters appear and disappear, and the language is late-stage decadent noir, so heavy with gangster slang and verbal embroiderings (eg. "you've been hovering around like a vampire bat looking for a nick on a horse's ear to suck the blood from" or words to that effect) that there's no point in trying to follow along. Just watch highschool students behave like characters out of The Big Sleep for two hours. It's gorgeous that way.

Eyes that are mine have also seen X-Men TheLastStandMovieDotNet. How did the studio manage to assemble an array of potentially fascinating stories and characters and then proceed to kill off or quash everything interesting about the X-Men? Is the Jean Grey/Phoenix story worth your time? Not if the character does nothing but stand around in the woods for half an hour staring at the trees. Magneto, queeny aesthete of mutantdom? He's a sloganeering terrorist with a big hideout in the forest. He should be assembling a giant metal Art Deco fortress/ziggurat of death beneath the ocean, but instead he's got some tents and a makeshift stage to shout from. What a loser. As for Mystique, the last two X-Men movies have founded a filmmaking principle: if you paint a naked Rebecca Romjin in blue and let her kick people to death, you will automatically have a quality film on your hands. If, however, you take a valuable asset like a naked blue kicking Rebecca Romjin and write her out of the story within thirty minutes, you are a fool. Also, the line "Way to go, furball" is an inappropriate way to end a movie. It didn't work for Casablanca, and it doesn't work here.

When are my eyes going to pack it in? Not yet. I watched Woody Allen's Match Point on Monday evening, and all I can say is - Woody Allen, I forgive you. I forgive you for Small Time Crooks, Shadows and Fog, Celebrity, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, and all those other middling movies of the last decade.

I believe I also watched Underworld: Evolution. Whatever.

More

Not right now. It's my fifth wedding anniversary, and I have things to attend to.