squidbag

People are Sheep

Now that I am at home all day, I have plenty of time (not really, but it's a different set of responsibilities I'm blowing off) to float about the 'net and see what incisive and intelligent things people are saying to each other via Tweets and Facebook comments about the results of the Senate election in Massachusetts yesterday.  The primary thing I realized?  I was happier when I didn't do that.

Putting aside for this entry any opinions I most definitely fucking have about what this result is or is not a referendum (a word useage that always disturbs me a little) on, what it says about Obama, his policies failed, stalled, and otherwise, the rabid GOP, rudderless & pansiated dems or "the blame game," and most nebulously, "the direction our country is headed," what bothers me the most about all of this is the way we as a populace allow ourselves to be manipulated into jingoistic home team idiots the day after.  Everyone's either 'woo' or 'boo', and virtually no one is having a conversation about anything that doesn't turn personal.

I'm not suggesting that we should all huddle around chess boards in atria surrounded by shelves full of books and engage in quiet, orderly discourse over brandy & cigars with a modicum of dignity and decorum in place - after all, past entries here would disqualify me for membership in that particular club - but I would like to see some middle ground between that ideal of measured free exchange and the personal "liberals are all faggot morons" and "republicans are reactionary and evil" crap I've seen today.  I don't know when it got this personal - was it the Reagan era?  Before that?  Nixon?  Was it when Camelot ended?  Someone older than me have an opinion?  Regardless, the simple fact is that most of these exchanges accomplish nothing other than to see who can shout "YOUR GUYS SUCK" loudest.  If that's all we're doing, then it may not be long before I opt out of giving a shit on the national level entirely. 

I always try to build my poisonous & nasty rhetoric on a foundational idea - a point I have to make, not just dogma or regurgitated claptrap.  I am not always successful, but I do try.  If I do attack someone personally, it's usually a head of state (who Jefferson and Franklin would encourage me to take the piss out of, if they could still talk, because chipping away at pedestals is important) or someone who goes personal first.  And maybe I could stop doing even that...but I doubt it.  I get tired of talking to people I agree with all the time, but I don't have the wherewithal to yell all the time anymore.  So yeah, America - any chance of us all just calming the fuck down for ten seconds and talking shit over without breaking out the gloves and glassware?!?

I'll see you at Feh.

Moved.

For those of you who thought that perhaps I and my family had fallen off the edge of the map - either in actuality or just virtually - this is not the case.  We simply up and moved to Murfreesboro, and it has been quite the challenge getting settled over the last twelve days or so.  Moving house is a laborious process, and in point of fact, ate up the better part of a month in the packing and planning and the actual relocating.  My TiVo just got righted today, and I still don't have wall hangings.  Max has had two days at the new school, and is recovering from a foot injury he got during the move - a smashed toe, complete with blood and bruising and swelling.  Abby's moodswings are epic events of scope and power - hopefully, some of that will die down soon.  Our routine is different, and as yet, ill-established.  Sleep is not a given.  Our new place is cool; more space for less money, and more amenities close by than even we expected.

The primary focus of this entry would have to be the moving odessey thanks that need to be handed out, though.  To Steve and Dawn the Cleaner and Eli the Hauler & Laloni, and to my former neighbors, Daniel, Jessica, and Heather, none of whom had to come out and did anyway.  To Borofolk Tim and Kenny and Corwyn, with the logistical mojo and outload muscle.  Special thanks to Ron for multiple box runs, and Mer, for being here on the last night there and the first night here.  Extra special thanks to Dale, for sticking it out on two seperate weekend days, lifting the last shit there was to be lifted, having a vase miracle, putting up with our crap all day, and for taking a fishwater bath with me.  Dale is the rockstar of our move, and in general.  Thanks also to Kat & Jennifer for kind attentions paid to our offspring, especially considering the circumstances, and to Matt & Cayce, for not having taken their moving blankets back yet.

Turns out, from what I hear, I got out right when I should have.  We'll see how the rest turns out.

Transitional Period

Things always kind of suck during a transitional period.  There's really only two things that make it even remotely okay, and both are internal realizations.

1. As a transitional period, it will, by definition, be over at some other point in the relatively near future.

2. Things will likely be better at this aforementioned future point, or you wouldn't be doing this shit.

My household is, at present, undergoing major transitional upheaval, just in time to ring in 2010.  By the second week of this month, we will have moved, my kids will both be in new schools, and I will be gainfully unemployed.  For the short term.  I'm not sure how long I can go without working, having only done it for a couple of brief periods since age 10, but I'm pretty sure it begins to eat my brain after only a short duration.  I might probably blog more, though.  After we move.  From now until we move, I make no guarantees, since I'm trying to sell the desk my computer sits on via Craigslist, and at some point, I have to move the computer.  And blogging will become dramatically less important as we begin moving in earnest.

Today was my last day of work for the company I've been working for since we moved back to Nashville, and it's sixteen years to the day since I was awakened with an emergency beeper (remember those?) message that changed everything forever.  Really, everything changes everything, but the big things are easier to pick up on when they happen.  Today, it's snowing - sixteen years ago, there had been a major ice storm.  The sense of finality I have currently is big and random, unconnected to actual events and unfinalized.  I can't get a grip on it.  I need to sleep and rest.  I need maybe slightly less perspective.

We're moving on Saturday, renting a truck and picking up a final paycheck tomorrow.  We'll be living in Murfreesboro - new place, new job, new schools.  Shaking things up just to shake them?  Not quite, but there is an element of change for its own sake.  When the future is too certain, I tend to hold it in contempt.

Boxes all over my house.

Avatar: Spoiled

All I can say is, "wow."

Wow - after all the hype, all the talk about the technology, all the talking head promotional run-downs of this being a 12 year project for James Cameron, the comments about this changing film forever - at the end of the day it boils down to the overwhelming sense of, "What a fucking disappointment that was."

I tried.  I really did.  At first, I was reluctant to see the thing because it sounded derivative of so much of not only other movies & stories (It's Dances With Wolves, it's Battle for Terra, it's District 9's evil twin, it's The Last Samurai, somebody read Joe Conrad in junior high) but also a thousand shared narratives within the human collective experience.  I got arm-twisted because some people who I trust(ed) had said good things about it, and because I finally had a night out, just me and my wife - a nice quiet SONOFABITCHING LETDOWN.  Here's a movie with something to say that you learned in elementary school, probably the first time you studied Thanksgiving.  And the message is dumbed-down, predictable, expository and simple enough that even the most learning disabled kid you know would likely pick up on it.  A ritalin kid being attacked by a chimp.  Once again, a thrillingly beautiful movie for the lowest common denominator.  And people are loving it.  Look around - I am severely out of step with most of America right now in absolutely hating this thing.  But I tried.  For about forty minutes I tried not to snicker at the "unobtanium" in the first act - tantamount to actually having a character named MacGuffin and expecting me to take that seriously.  I tried to get involved with the characters despite the fact that none of them is deeper than a desert puddle, but couldn't engage at all.  And I tried to enjoy the beauty of Jimmy's artificial, obviously about-to-be-raped world, but kept thinking, "pressure sensitive blacklight planet - you dreamed this up while smoking sherm" and found the whole thing not even laughable or simply ridiculous (though those are both true) but boring.  Boring is not a sin this film should have been allowed to commit.

Sins James Cameron is allowed to commit: Getting Jessica Alba on TV motorbikes, casting Bill Paxton over and over and over again until America believes he is talented, drowning my evil twin.

And neither is rampant narrative and visual unoriginality.  The "lush and convincing" environment of Pandora is lame.  It looks great, sure - like you were selling 3D CGI to people who had never seen it before ("I have here, in my wagon, the answer to all your three dimensional needs!") - like a really advanced version of those stoner VHS tapes we had when C was in college.  Oh, and throw in some bioluminscent animals for good nature.  For the kids' toys.  Also, giant trees and noble, graceful blue people.  Who sparkle like Meyer's vampires.  And the blue people should ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO PHYSICALLY LINK TO ALL THE CREATURES ON THE PLANET, just in case some brain donor in the audience misses the point that we've carved into the end of this massive, unwieldy three hundred million dollar hammer.  That big point about being linked to nature and all.

Bad story, bad characterization.  I thought story was king, but then I have been naive about a lot of things.  There is no story here.  There is preaching, but not even in the interesting, black church on a Sunday way.  More the white Protestant non-holiday Wednesday night kind of way.  Flattest hollywood characters you have seen since the Police Academy movies, I shit you not.  One dimensional people in a nth-dimensional world.  Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver are wasted in their roles as hardass soldier and hardass researcher, respectively, and Zoe Saldana's a lot more used in Star Trek than here, where she's essentially a foil for the plot itself, inexplicably falling in love with the schmuck on a rope played by Sam Worthington.

I just don't get it - I heard people talking about what a "fun" movie this was.  Which part?  The violent rape of the planet?  The screaming death?  The corporate/military bullshit?  The Bambi-level lecturing about connections?  Or was it when it was over, and you left?  'Cause that was a fun part for me.

I'm also amused by the Mc-tie-ins this naturalistic film has.  And that the crowning achievement of all this tech is to explain how great and cool nature is, and how you're wrong to war on it.  Back to nature, with your soda in one hand, popcorn in the other, and 3D glasses stuck to your bastard head.

So, yeah.  I hated it.  I think it's a bad movie.  It's a pretty movie, but it's a pretty, bad movie.  There's nothing original going on here, you've seen it all before.  The only thing to be impressed with is that they were able to animate stuff you've seen, and they've done that before, too.  So if you're really into being impressed by other folks' skills at fucking with your eyes, then still - don't go see Avatar.  They've already got $800 million worldwide, they don't need your fucking coin.  The movie sucks, it's childish and stupid and full of holes, and you'll lose IQ points just looking at it.

Of course, you've all already seen it, and I am too late.