shadowkat | This and that

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This and that

Well...I've been productive these past few days. Networked. Met new people. Re-connected with a few. Ran into some more brick walls or log ones, not sure which. And am forcing myself to keep a stiff upper lip as the saying goes. "Don't let the turkey's get you down" - my Dad used to tell me when I was in college. Good advice.

Today, I interviewed with the Volunteer Referral Service - which uncovered two non-profit organizations that I might be able to do some volunteer work with. Both require computer skills, writing, organization and general office work. I'm hoping this will get me out of the apartment and honing my skills. Still afraid they are getting rusty. I've relied on volunteer work before - so this is nothing new. And I met with pumpkinpuss who kindly loaned me all her Jim Butcher novels.

Now if I can just keep myself from getting muddled.

The more I try to focus on one area to research or go after, the more uncertain I get and well, muddled. Not sure about this. Would see another career counselor - except the last one cost me a mint and did very little to focus or direct me. UGH. Perhaps the problem is I'm second-guessing myself due to the lack of positive responses? Could be. I'm very adept at second-guessing myself. I so want to do the right thing, have limited funds which have to be spent very carefully, no room for mistakes here. This makes it exceedingly difficult to figure out - 1. Should I take another course through NYU's school of continuing education? The last four haven't really done much networking or career wise. I've learned a few things. But without practice those things seem to drift away. And it's a lot of money. NYU, not cheap. 2. Should I join execunet.com which is also pricey but has some seminars and networking deals as well as a search system and comes highly recommended. Problem? It seems to be for people with a tad more professional experience than I have and a little higher management level. 3. Should I try to get another career assessment, maybe NYU?

See muddled. Game plan is to followup on some of the suggestions I got last week. Already made progress on fresne's and working on that networking meetings suggestions. Also met with the volunteer group today. And am researching American Express and Google as companies to attempt to get a job with. That's a focus. Need to make up my mind on the NYU HR recruiting course this week - assuming it's not too late to register. I'm partly dragging my feet because I'm not overly crazy about the instructor. Also recruiting hits a bit close to home right now. Do I want to sit in a classroom and see how to read a resume? OTOH it might give me some good tid-bits on how to write a resume with HR in mind. Or it might serve to muddle me further and add to all the second-guessing. Ugh. By Thursday I must decide. Classes begin the 25.

In other news - I saw a couple of films this weekend. Three on video. One in the movie theater. Haven't rented a movie in ages. Don't tend to much any more due to lack of time and funds. At any rate - the films I rented were excellent, the film I saw in the theater was...bad. I'm sorry, Van Helsing by Stephen Sommers is not a good movie. The story in of itself, while a little on the sappy side, isn't all that bad. The acting is pretty good. The leads do have chemistry and are interesting. But it is bludgeoned and overwhelmed by special effects, sound, theme music, and one-too-many action sequences. Van Helsing is what would happen if you gave a 10 year old video game fanatic a 100 million dollars to make the movie of his dreams. Enough on Van Helsing, much prefer to discuss the one's I did like. Fussing over things I don't like feels like a waste of energy and time at the moment. Enough negativity in the world as it is.

The rentals were:

1. Master and Commander - The Far Side of The World, by Peter Weir. Peter Weir may be one of the few directors out there who can convincingly portray war without getting overly melodramatic or preachy. His other films Gallopi and Year of Living Dangerously - both show violent conflicts, show both sides of the conflict, and refuse to tell you what to think necessarily. Of the three Master and Commander may be the most impartial due to how removed it is from our present. It shows unflinchingly the violence of battle, the unethical dilemmas you run across, and the humanity. And Weir unlike some directors is far more interested in character, the battles are his means of examining and exploring his characters. He *never* does action for action's sake. A movie that will stay with you long after the closing credits. Certainly deserving of the academy award nomination that it garnered. But then, I admit, I'm partial to Peter Weir, a master of mood and character and style, without forsaking substance.

2. Love Actually. (no idea who the director was). It starred Laura Linny, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman - which alone makes me happy. Happen to be a fan of all of those actors. This movie surprised me - I didn't expect to like it. I loved it. Adore it. Finally a romantic comedy for those of us who don't find romance, who aren't married or dating, and struggle in the whole romance olympics. This lovely tour de fource is all about the struggle to connect. Loving people. Trying to tell them. Getting rejected. Circumstance getting in the way. Some of the people get together, some don't. One of the funniest bits is the couple that meets while doing a soft-porn film.
While pretending to have sex, they connect with conversation. This is juxatposed brilliantly with a couple who don't speak the same language, yet connect with body language (not sex) just being together. And with yet another couple that can't get together due to outside circumstances. A film that made me laugh and cry. Highly recommend it.

3. Ripley's Game based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith and starring John Malkovich and Dougray Scott.
If you want to know what a sociopath is? Rent Ripley's Game.
Or true "noir" for that matter. This film is noir through and through. With the anti-hero, Ripley, at its center. Here's a sample line, which is what Ripley tells one of the supporting players: "I lack your sense of conscience. It used to bother me when I was younger, it doesn't any longer. Why did I pick you? Because your conscience interested me and I knew you could and you insulted me and well it's the game." Violent in places but also focused on character. It uses the violence to further the characters and plot. It also comments on it. Like the other two films, showing not telling. This movie unfortunately never really made it to the theaters, direct to video. But it is brilliant and trust me, if you like noir films, better than most of the stuff out there right now.

Did see Wrinkle in Time last night. Not quite as wonderful as I remembered. But then I almost have no memory of the novel, having read it over 20 years ago.

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I'm half-way through that series. ; )

Yep, was the Dresden files. Fool Moon in audio and book version. And up to book five. Should keep me busy for a while. I'd heard the audio version of Storm Front, via Deadsoul who kindly sent me tapes of it.
So looking forward to hearing Fool Moon and reading the rest.

Course have to make it through the Dorothy Dunnett Lymond Chronicles first, which aren't easy reads and emotionally grueling. Dunnett makes Whedon look like a pussycat when it comes to torturing characters. But! It's a great read. The lead character is pretty much Angel mixed with Lawrence of Arabia as played by Peter O'Toole. And there's this great arc in second - fifth books that's very similar to Darla/Angel/Connor/Holtz/Justine/Wes. So if you can handle torture and dense writing - it's worth it.

That's author Dorothy Dunnett
series name "Lymond Chronicles"?

That's author Dorothy Dunnett
series name "Lymond Chronicles"?

Yes. It's Dorothy Dunnett, author of The Lymond Chronicles.
Books are : Game of Kings, Queens' Play, Disorderly Knights, Pawn in Frankincense, The Ringed Castle, and Checkmate.

The first two books set up who the lead character is - sort of like
Angel S1 and S2, the next three are like Angel S3/4/5 - the Connor arc. Not exact, but I see parallels. I'm wondering if part of the reason I'm less upset by Joss' torture treatments is that I'm reading Dunnett's at the same time? Dunnett's are in some ways worse.

She has an interesting storytelling technique though - most of the time you view the lead through the eyes of supporting characters, not his own.

Sounds cool!

Oh it is. Not supernatural of course. But it's located in the distant past so still escapist. And in some ways I'm finding it more rewarding than what Whedon gave us, not that the two are completely comparable. They aren't. Visual vs. non-visual mediums. But Dunnett seems to have more freedom to explore every facet of her characters, to explore the dark reaches of morality and philosophy without worrying too much about viewer response. So while dense at times, I find it oddly freeing. Makes me wonder what Whedon could do if Angel The Series had been on a less constricting medium? Then again, knowing how tortorous Dunnett gets, maybe I don't want to know the answer to that.

Love, love, love the Dresden Files!

Just had to say that. :-)

Oh, btw, it's been signed on as a TV movie for Sci Fi Channel next season, with the option to make it into a regular series. Here's hoping they don't mess it up!

Here's hoping they don't mess it up!

That's a constant refrain with TV and movie tie-ins to books nowadays isn't it? *Alas*

I saw "A Wrinkle in Time" too...words cannot convey how much I loathed it. Probably because I remember the book quite well, and the movie completely missed most, if not all, of the major themes of the book, and tranformed a semi-dark morality fable into a cheap AfterSchool Special.

Er...yeah, I feel a rant coming on. A huge one.

It probably helps that I can't really remember the book at all. The only part I sort of vaguely remember is how she stops It. But it's a very vague memory. So I can't tell if the movie conveyed it well or not.

Did I enjoy the movie? It was okay. Didn't hate it. But wasn't expecting much. Disney had done another adaptation of one of D'Engle's books - Swiftly Tilting Planet, which was truly horrible.
Couldn't make it through that one. So I expected this to be unwatchable. It wasn't, at least for me. That said? I found out from pumpkinpuss (who did find it unwatchable) that there was a broadcast of the original stage production of Eugene O'Neal's The Iceman Cometh starring Jason Robards Jr. on PBS in NYC area which was opposite and I missed. Dang! I would have much preferred that. Oh well.

As a means of forcibly restraining my rant, I'll try to be succint. The book centered around the seduction of conformity, the appeal of being "normal" and "accepted" in society. The negative images of the suburbia and the processing center were off-set by the visceral power of IT, drawing people into a world where there truly was no pain, no loss, no unhappiness. In a sense, it was a precursor to the Borg, and the most insidious aspect of the conformist ethic was that the "evil" was overt (red eyes, giant brain) but one instantly fell into its rhythms anyway because it was so seductively reassuring. What is more terrifying: the evil one recognizes and is repulsed by, or the evil one recognizes and yet can't seem to resist no matter how repulsive it is?

The movie transformed much of this into a Fustian bargain and an appeal to the power of ego. There were traces of the original themes, but when Meg starts reciting the periodic chart in the movie, it becomes apparent that there's something major missing -- reciting rote rhythms in the book made sense...reciting them in the movie seemed to come out of nowhere. Charles Wallace was drawn out by his ego, to be sure, but not because IT or IT's henchmen made much of a deliberate appeal to this aspect. Rather, the danger in the book was almost entirely the debasement/twisting of our desires and intentions by ourselves. The movie became about power and control. The red-eyed man offered Charles Wallace a deal, a challenge that appealed to his ego, and much of the rest of the process -- both the first and second time they converged on Meg -- was about what power and control IT could offer Meg. In the book, it was simply the most basic of appeals...freedom from pain, freedom from unpredictability. Meg fights back by reciting multiplication tables to create her own rhythm opposed to the normative rhythm of IT, but those are drawn into the rhythms. She recites squares tables, ditto. It is when she begins to recite the Declaration of Independence that she begins to find escape..for there are some rhythms that break free of the generic rhythms, and it is then she realizes what Jefferson was saying about "equality." So when the movie turned that whole confrontation into a incoherent mishmash of campy behaviour and Helsinki Syndrome-ish dialogue, it basically ruined the most important -- thematically -- scene in the book.

As a final note, the feel-good "freeing the society" of the movie wasn't even remotely part of the book for a good reason -- they barely escaped IT. Evil is never so easily vanquished, and the fact that IT was brought down so...easily just made it seem cheap. And the means -- Meg expressing love for Charles Wallace -- was somehow twisted into a deus ex machina in the movie. CW keeps saying "you hate me" (why? what would motivate IT to get him to say that?!?) and that sparks Meg and 45 seconds later, IT is dead from...something. The original premise was that IT could offer everything...except love. IT was the perfect analytic organism -- for love is, in this light, actually a weakness -- but it is human flaws, human emotions, that make us capable of resisting the darkness. For every person who does stupid, irrational things out of emotion, there is always another who does unspeakably beautiful and transcendent thigs out of emotion. But those are for ourselves, and evil is not so easily defeated...the book is saying we have to fight, but sometimes the battle isn't to defeat the enemy directly, but to save ourselves and the ones we love. The whole deal at the end where the three "witches" were expressing their admiration and love for humans...ghaaggh! The book made no bones: humans were a grubby, dangerous lot, almost as deeply in the shadows as Cammazotz, and only a few, shining luminaries helped redeem us (Meg starts citing those too, fighting against IT.)

Okay, a little longer than intended, but nowhere near as long as I might have gone, given that I haven't even addressed 2/3 of the major issues I had with it.

Glad I missed it. That was one of my favorite books when I was in elementary school.

From what I've read that seems to be an awfully important part of the job search. The volunteer work seems like a wonderful thing to do also - it'll get you out and showing your skills, in addition to sharpening them, and it gives you a chance for even more practical networking. It sounds like it could be a more helpful (in many ways) method of getting yourself out there and building skills, than expensive course work. Just know that I'm still sitting up here rooting for you!

Just know that I'm still sitting up here rooting for you!

Thanks! Need all the rooting I can get.

The volunteer work seems like a wonderful thing to do also - it'll get you out and showing your skills, in addition to sharpening them, and it gives you a chance for even more practical networking. It sounds like it could be a more helpful (in many ways) method of getting yourself out there and building skills, than expensive course work.

That's what my gut is telling me. It makes more sense right now perhaps to spend the money on things like this networking site and seminars and possibly reference checks - then more courses that don't lead anywhere. OTOH - the courses do show people I've been doing something. For some odd reason no one considers hunting a job as doing anything. Especially if you don't achieve results.

I loved Love Actually as well. I laughed, I cried, I think, for a moment in there, I even bought that Hugh Grant could play the PM.

When you're done with Dunnet *smile* Patrick O'Brien? Or have you read already?

Have read all of O'Brien, didn't pull me in. I did read Master and Commander, and stopped there. Not sure why. My father absolutely adores O'Brien, read the entire series. Didn't quite grip me though. O'Brien is nicer to his characters than Dunnett, more interested in the warfare and naval situations and how you operate a boat at sea in the 1700s then in the relationships and ambiguity of the political climate. While he does examine the relationship between the lead two characters and does delve a little into the political ambiguity - it's still very pro Britian, anti-Napolean, and the characters of Aubrey and Stephen remain more or less unblemished and heroic. Not so with Dunnetts.

A good analogy of O'Brien and Dunnett might be Highlander vs. Angel, or Star Trek Next Generation vs. Deep Space Nine? Not sure.

The other huge historical novelist - is Bernard Cornwell who did the Sharpe books (which Rahael comments on in her livejournal), Sharpe books were made into a series of teleplays starring Scean Bean in the title role. A young Scean Bean. My mother fell in love with the character and devoured the whole series. Sharpe takes place in the 1700s or 1800s, not sure which.

Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles are a bit like reading Baroness Orzy's Scarlett Pimpernell mixed with Dumas' stories. Except with tons of research and historical accuracy.

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This and that

The Dresden files?

Re: The Dresden files?

Re: The Dresden files?

Lymond Chronicles

Re: Lymond Chronicles

Re: Lymond Chronicles

Re: The Dresden files?

Re: The Dresden files?

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Heh.

Re: Heh.

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So Glad to hear you're doing more networking!

Re: So Glad to hear you're doing more networking!

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Yep