Gone

Sad news people. This past Monday the stress just got to be too much for me. I resigned my position as a 911 operator. I just couldn't handle the stress of all my decisions being potentially life or death...

I really don't have a lot more to say about that, just a lesson: when stress is affecting your health it's time to get out.

Holiday Depression...

... No,no,no! Not mine. Yours. You must have been depressed (both of you) due to the great amount of time that has passed since my last entry.

Anyway, the Holidays were great to me! I graduated from the Academy at work and am now taking calls from real live people in distress (and others...)! I am still under supervision but I think I am doing well, and as soon as I quit over thinking everything and just do the job, I'll be released to take calls on my own.

Christmas itself wasn't too shabby either. I got 'World War Z' from Keith, and read it pretty much straight through. Great book, if you haven't read it go and do so... I'll wait...

Back? Wasn't that GOOD!? I loved it! I also got a $50 gift certificate backed by the Federal Government from my Dad! you know the kind with the picture of Grant on it? (i.e. CASH, it's everywhere you want to be...) Got quite a lot of mileage out of it too... went to the movies, bought some DVD's, CD's you know...

Speaking of movies: I saw 'Apocalypto', 'Blood Diamond', and 'The Good Shepherd' All highly recommended!! I used to not like Leonardo DiCaprio, but he is really turning into an actor...


Well that's all I have for you this time. Tune in soon for updates...



(no really, soon... trust me.) ;)

Cat Power

This is my kind of music!

I can't remember how I first heard Cat Power (Chan Marshall), my usual route of hearing about a musician through my friends wasn't the case because none of my friends seem to know who she is.

But I know.

And I love her.

She's got exactly the kind of voice I want to listen to and sings songs that I want to hear.

My musical review skills are exceedingly underdeveloped, so I don't believe I can do justice in that regard. My opinions are quite shallow and I don’t know the history of music enough to make thoughtful comparisons… What I do know is that I like Cat Power!

Other stuff I like (so you can judge what ‘my kind of music’ means)

Evanescence
Garbage
Holly Golightly
Jesca Hoop
Julie London
Kirsty MacColl
Leonard Cohen
Lucinda Williams
Sarah Mclachlan

That’s not everything, but you get the idea. (I hope)

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Literate Good Citizen You read to inform or entertain yourself, but you're not nerdy about it. You've read most major classics (in school) and you have a favorite genre or two.
Fad Reader
Book Snob
Dedicated Reader
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

Communications Officer I

I must first appologize for the extreme tardiness of this entry. As regular readers will remember I was applying for the position of Communications Officer I here in Virginia Beach. (re: Please sir. I want a job...) Well I finally got the job!! (yay me.) It has been quite a grueling training regimen, and it's only about half over... Then I get to go for supervized On-The-Job training. If I continue to do well, I will eventually be released as a 911 call taker.

I will be the voice on the other end of the line when citizens of our fair city are having the worst day of their lives, and cry out for succor. Hopefully I will be able to get them the help they need so that it isn't the last day of someones life...

As a result of all this training (which is stressful in itself) and the more normally stressful parts of my life I have sadly neglected my duties as a member of the blogosphere, again I submit my humblest appologies... ;)

Crank

Have you seen it??

Go. Watch. Enjoy.

Who you are in 50 questions.

This is me!

INTJ - "Mastermind". Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population.

Free Jung Personality Test (similar to Myers-Briggs/MBTI)

I believe it to be somewhat accurate, but... just 50 questions!?

Four - Oh!

Having recently had a birthday, I am now apparently old. Everyone is making fun of me (including me). They ask me how it feels to be old. I must say, I don’t know. I am usually only distantly aware of my age. In years past I have had to actually calculate my age as I had forgotten just how old I was. It just wasn’t something I often thought about.

This is the age that everyone seems to agree upon as being too old. For what, I don’t know. It seems expected that people lie about being forty. This is a concept which I cannot fathom. If you look younger than your age and you lie about it people will just think “oh, well there you go.” whereas if you tell your true age they will think “wow, you look good!” If you look your age (or, heaven forbid, older) and you lie people will think “my god, what a vain little idiot thinking we wouldn’t know.” but if you don’t lie people will think “oh, well there you go.” I just don’t see the up side of lying about your age. If you and the people you’re lying too care only about appearances you would be better by comparison if you look younger than your age, and no worse off if you look your age. If you don’t care about appearances (or if that is not all you care about) who cares how long you’ve been wandering around?

And another thing, why are so many people obsessed with birthday celebrations? Like it’s some big hallmark and there should always be a marking of the day. I like eating cake and getting presents as much as the next guy, but it’s not going to ruin my life if we just move on…

(Christmas is different; everyone should get presents on Christmas…)

The Modern League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

I was discussing Alan Moore's excellent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with a friend. We were trying to come up with a modern incarnation of the league when we realized that limiting ourselves to the printed word was ignoring the fact that popular literature has been taken over by popular television.

The rules we used to populate this list were that each character must both be created (written) and live (set) in the last 50 years or so.

This is our group.

Gary Seven - Agent of Peace.
Mr. Seven was recruited and trained by alien beings and returned to Earth to protect us from ourselves, he has brought together the new league and gives them their assignments.





John Steed - Gentleman Spy.
The quintessentially British secret agent. He can accomplish more with a bowler, a bumbershoot, and a quick wit than others can with a Walther, a submarine car, and a licence to kill.






Willow Rosenberg - Powerful Wicca.
Familiar with the strange and horrific world most of us choose to ignore. Willow has been helping save the world since she was fifteen.






Colonel Steve Austin - Former Astronaut.
Barely alive after his experimental aircraft crashed, Steve was rebuilt at a cost of six million dollars.







Special Agent Dana Scully - Level headed seeker of truth.
Originally assigned to debunk the wild theories of Fox Mulder, Dana came to see the truth and fight the future planned for us by unseen conspirators.





Carl Kolchak - Investigator of the Macabre.
Never satisfied with official explanations doled out by PR cronies, Carl will get to the bottom of a story no matter who, or what, gets in his way.

Do movie reviewers ever actually watch movies?

This past weekend I saw two movies. 'Lady in the Water' and 'My Super Ex-Girlfriend'.

They are both getting terrible reviews. But I must have seen different versions of these films than the ones shown to movie reviewers, as I enjoyed them both immensely.

Which prompts the question.

I believe much of the problem is that movie reviewers become jaded and grow to resent that which they once loved. (I refuse to think that someone who never liked movies would become a movie reviewer.) They learn the 'secrets' of the storytelling form and know what to expect at certain points in the narative. When they're right the film is predictable, when they're wrong the film is a directionless mess...

I truely believe that our local reviewer no longer truely watches new movies. He routinely gets plot elements wrong, misinterprets character motivations, and generally cannot be bothered to follow what's on the screen. However, if you get him while he's talking about an older film, his honest love of the medium comes out. He knows things! He knows the ins and outs of the cast, the director, the producers, and the details and history of the script. He can hold discourse about the intricate meanings of small passages of dialogue and the interplay of the characters. All this leads me to believe that he has seen too many movies and, knowing that they will not be the same, dismisses new films out of hand.

So if many, or most, reviewers are jaded old farts or snobbish young artistes out of step with the movie going public, why do we read their reviews? Well, every once in a while you may be able to distill some random information about the film from their viscious diratribes and superficial meanderings. But I believe it is more akin to a train wreck; no matter how horrible the scene, you simply must look. A friend of mine takes perverse pleasure in our local reviewers ability to infuriate him. Over and over again he will seek out and read the reviews just to cringe and deride the fact that the reviewer missed the point...

The truth of the matter is that the only persons opinion that matters is yours. Nobody can tell you what you like, you have to go see for yourself. But then you've already spent your money and waisted your time... and the movie reviewers job is based on the fiction that it dosen't have to be that way.

And in the end, the whole system is perpetuated by the simple, unavoidable fact that however distant and cynical a reviewer becomes, sometimes they're right.

Worth

Just because you're necessary doesn't mean you're important.