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Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
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7:50 pm - Up to Something Else Which I am Not Mentioning
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I'm a pretty secretive person, mainly because I worked out a long time ago that if I decide I want to do something, all I get out of telling other people is an increased risk that someone will meddle. So I tend to restrict information to a need-to-know basis until a project is complete, failed, out of my control (as with illness), or unstoppable. This preference for secrecy runs from Halloween costumes and goodbyes at parties on one end to weddings and the starting of businesses on the other. I just like to do things in my own way, and while I am doing those things, I will lie regularly but innocuously to get what I need without revealing what it's actually for. Trying to tell the truth in these situations is just awkward - everybody defaults to stereotypes, and I have to spend a lot of time expositing badly. If I ever get pregnant, it's a coin toss whether anyone's going to know about it before the kid's fully ambulatory.
In any case, I've lost about 13 pounds over the past six and a half weeks, which is a set of numbers that should make it fairly clear I did it deliberately, losing exactly the two pounds a week that's recommended as safe. This involved a lot of math. Ciro and I have both gotten pretty expert at eyeballing a meal and guessing how many calories are in it. Other than him, nobody knew I was deliberately losing weight. I did let on that I wasn't drinking this month, and that I was playing a lot of dance dance revolution (both true), but intimated that this might be stress related and/or a sign of my dissipated lifestyle. Nope. I just didn't want to be filed under the "dieter" label, didn't want people to think it was cool to discuss how good or bad my body looked, and didn't want to get involved in tedious discussions about patriarchal construction of body shame, medical pseudoscience, fad diets, and/or the proper social role of food.
In any case, I am now at the point I decided to get to, and although I look different with my clothes off, it's not a very dramatic difference. Before, I was a healthy weight for my frame. Now, I am still a healthy weight for my frame. I just moved from one end of a range to the other. My jawline looks nice. Objectively, I know that 13 pounds of fat takes up the same space as 13 pounds of butter, and also that my trousers are riding indecently low. I can run pretty fast and can see my muscles. However, if I were to lose the same proportional amount of height, I would be half a foot shorter. This . . . is not as dramatic as that.
Predictably, everything feels colder than it should. I regularly mis-guess the thermostat temperature by 2-3 degrees Fahrenheit. However, my cardiovascular fitness is through the roof, and I find cold less uncomfortable. So the world seems unusually chill, but more pleasant. It's like inverse peppermint tea, or something.
current mood:  furtive
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| Sunday, July 5th, 2009
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11:29 pm - You Do It to Yourself
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My underwear drawer has been looking kind of sad, by which I mean the elasticity has gone out of most of the elastic and the cotton is ridden with enough holes one might think moths had moved in. This is what happens when over the course of five or more years, you buy maybe three new pair of smallpants: your underthings dishevel beyond punk until they lose basic functionality.
Therefore, Ciro and I stormed Victoria Secret and bought a raft of frilly things at remarkable sale prices. Some of them have bows, embroidered fish, and sequins. It's patriotic.
However, I can't try any of them on for about a week, thanks to certain hormonal timings. We are reduced to arranging the panties on the floor and imagining.
current mood:  pyrrhic
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| Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
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12:58 pm
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[ROMIE and CIRO polish some SILVER using TOOTHPASTE. It is VERY EFFECTIVE. Then they brush their TEETH.]
R: If I were a Jedi, I would be the Emperor.
C: The Emperor is not a Jedi. He's a Sith. There's no such thing as Jedi.
R: Yes and that is a difference. I would win.
C: Mmmm.
R: Only no, I wouldn't, even in my giant throne room, surrounded by my red guys. I could build my own planet and people would still show up to be mean to me.
current mood:  defeated but minty
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| Thursday, June 18th, 2009
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12:48 am - Space!
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Today in 1983, Sally Ride left atmosphere. She was the first American woman to do so, Valentina Tereshkova having entered space 20 full years before that - the soviets being much more sensible about including the ladies, whatever their other grievous oversights.
But really what I'm getting at is look at this awesome website which compiles data and pictures of all the women who have ever been to space! Hooray! Hooray!
current mood: space!
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| Sunday, June 7th, 2009
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9:39 pm - The Glamourous Life of the Movies
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Ever since we watched Breathless together, Ciro and I have been alternating real kisses with old-movie-style kisses where you keep your mouth closed and toss your head gently back and forth. The message they send is one of silliness rather than the intended filmic passion, but they are their own kind of fun.
I'm editing "Aperture" (my thesis film) which makes me fidgety/obsessive and restless/tired, as editing usually does. I suppose I ultimately find it fulfilling, and it is absolutely necessary on this project - while I normally prefer a director/editor divide, this is a film made of mostly stills, many of which advance the film's emotion rather than its action, and by stepping outside of the editing role, I would also stop being the director - the decisions about rhythm and image order carry too much of the film. (I will have a sound editor, who will receive copious notes but a great deal of freedom.)
Ciro has been assisting me by telling me that it is not time for a break yet (I ask about every five minutes), bringing coffee at regular intervals, and taking care of technical and setup stuff so that I don't have to spend time on it. He is pretty good. Or really mean. During the shoot, he would not let me help him, of course. All I had to do was pick up an extension cord, and -
Ciro: Leave that stuff to the camera department.
Romie: I am sort of camera department.
Ciro: No ma'am. You're sitting with a pencil, talking about feelings.
I need a fancy director hat, or something. With lots of plumes, and a veil. And a functioning cannon.
current mood:  frizzy
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| Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
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6:33 pm - This One's for Pepys
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The sort of thing historians get excited about when they read old journals: when I went to the dentist last week, they took digital x-rays of my teeth. For my whole life, x-rays have been on film - little sharp rectangles I hold in my mouth while a large machine fires radiation at my teeth. This time, I bit down on a reusable digital sensor instead of film, and the image came up immediately on a computer screen, at a variety of resolutions. In the case it wasn't a clear image, it could be retaken immediately. The ray gun and lead apron were the same.
current mood:  helpful
current music: The Magnetic Fields
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| Monday, June 1st, 2009
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4:37 pm - The Murder of Dr. George Tiller
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Without getting into my views on abortion in general, I can say with certainty that I believe that when a woman and her doctors all decide a procedure is necessary, and that procedure is both legal and comfortably within the bounds of current medical practice, that there should be a specialist able to perform it. I can say also that I believe in hospice care, living wills, and death with dignity. I believe there are any number of medical situations in which death is inevitable, and the artificial continuation of life is grotesque, expensive, painful, and assaultive - particularly when that life's extension directly harms the health of the survivors. I believe in allowing dying people to die a few days earlier if they want to; I believe in providing morphine to ease the transition. I believe in euthanasia of mangled and mutilated cats. Although I oppose the death penalty, what I oppose most about it is the unwillingness of medical professionals to administer it, and the resulting brutal cruelties as neither the lethal dose nor the palliative is injected correctly.
I believe in the work of Dr. George Tiller. I am ashamed that there are only two doctors left in America who will do the work he did. I am stunned by the cowardice of the medical community. I am stunned by how many of them can agree that a procedure is right, and how few of them are willing to perform it. I am outraged by the effectiveness of our local terrorists.
I feel like nothing I can do with my life will ever be adequate when I know there is this absence, and know I have not chosen to fill it.
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| Friday, May 15th, 2009
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10:19 pm - My Milkshake
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Shooting my grad film, which means that last night the crew was holed up in a closed gym and spent quite a lot of time playing around on the weight machines while waiting for setups. Amazingly, I am not sore at all, although I did feel kind of ill late in the evening because all I had to eat was Little Debbie snack cakes. (Zebra Cakes = huge hit.)
This film will complete my informal "alienated young women going through sci-fi-inflected existential crises" trilogy. I am tired from being in the sun all day, and I smell like sunblock.
current mood:  accomplished
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| Sunday, May 10th, 2009
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11:51 pm - Animal Demands
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) movingfinger has pointed out that one can adopt a puffin as a mother's day gift. This has set off a chain of events wherein I have demanded of Ciro that every time I give birth to a child, I must be gifted with a pet of my choice. After all, when my younger sister was born, I was given a stuffed animal, and clearly my future participation in childbirth will be more involved.
In essence, what I am saying is that I need to get pregnant immediately, so I can buy a pig while they're cheap.
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| Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
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11:52 pm - Snapshot
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How Ciro and I spend our free time (such as it is) is something of a mystery to some members of my family, although it looks a lot like how most of my friends spend time. We do write, although we tend to think of this as working. We also read, in a way that is sometimes like killing time and sometimes like relaxing. At other times, we read nonfiction obsessively, because we care a lot about science, politics (which necessarily includes a knowledge of history), and philosophy (including artistic philosophy). We go to a lot of gallery openings, where we spend a lot of time talking about the pieces with each other and with other people. We go to free lectures on subjects that seem interesting. We attend free theater shows and free movies. (Free is big with us, for we are poor.)
We don't spend that much time playing computer games, although at other times, we spend a lot of time playing computer games, in boom and bust cycles. We watch Friday Night Lights on Hulu. On Mondays, we watch bad movies with a rowdy group of gay guys. On Tuesdays, we watch The Biggest Loser with our next door neighbor and try to anticipate commercial breaks and product placement spots. We watch movies when we are not too tired for them.
I tend to cook things that involve chopping a lot of vegetables into very small pieces, and I dislike the sound of food processors and blenders, so that takes time which would otherwise be free.
I like board games and card games much more than Ciro does, but sometimes we play a rummy game about tracking down Jack the Ripper. It's a favorite mostly because one can use outlandish conspiracy theories to try to psych out other players. We have nicknames for all the suspects, some of which are many steps away from the actual name. (Sir Gull -> Sea Gull -> Soap Girl -> Soap Dish. Montague Druit, recently, has been christened Adroit Cricket.) Despite these nicknames, our guesses as to whodunit are more likely to be clever poems about the nature of crime (Ciro) or demands for food items (Romie).
current mood:  lethargic
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| Saturday, April 4th, 2009
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2:20 pm - Hey Paul Krugman
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| Friday, March 20th, 2009
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12:32 pm - Warning
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| Saturday, March 7th, 2009
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10:19 am - Short sightedness
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I've been trying to write fantasy lately, partly because I am bad at it and am trying to come to an understanding. One of the main tenets of science fiction is that you have to follow your conclusions to their logical ramifications. You can't have a single idea; you have to have a system. If you go too far in applying this to fantasy, your magic does not feel magical and your story does not satisfy the larger needs of a person who wants to read fantasy instead of sci fi. On the other hand, if you don't go far enough, your magic has no weight and feels like a lazy application of surrealism.
So I've been trying not to think in a sci fi worldbuilding way as I write. I'm just not applying it. However, it's still a deep part of my brain structures, and it automatically informs how I view the real world outside my writing.
Two things have been nagging at me lately, even though they are not such a big deal. The first is the number of people who have said things along the lines that there is a major conspiracy of people with money running the government. On the one hand, this is true, insofar as the general need to bail out Wall Street, and also in the degree to which political pressures have shifted. Party affiliation has become incredibly important, because in most areas of the country, simply getting on the ballot with the right letter by your name is enough to win. Therefore, you don't have to worry about the voting public; you have to worry about whether the party is going to back you. Representing your constituents is irrelevant; what matters is satisfying the ideologues that decide whether they'll allow you to run. It is rule by a handful of guys with money, a new sort of aristocracy who get to decide what's best for us little people.
On the other hand, this is really not true, or not true in a "conspiracy of bankers determined to control the government" way. It's a natural effect of a system which we could and can change both through our behavior and through the normal workings of legislature. It's worth trying to change, not worth panicking over or giving up on. But I'm hearing more and more people accept as fact that there is a secret and sinister conspiracy behind the scenes profiting from the current disaster. There may be facts to back this up in some places, although some of them are likely coincidence. What's disturbing about it is not the idea itself, which is always an idea that lurks around, but the idea's surge in popularity. An individual person believes it because of things they've heard and seen, but on a deeper level, people are primed to believe it now in a way they weren't a few years ago when it was just as true, because currently we are in a chaos. And when there is chaos, it is less frightening to believe it is actually a plan by someone we don't know, who could therefore be stopped. Or who could not be stopped, but who is a controlling intelligence - God who must have a reason for sending the tornado which we can't figure out because we are only people.
Conspiracy thinking was certainly popular in the late '60s, after the wave of assassinations and at the height of the nuclear standoff. But this kind of conspiracy thinking hasn't been so popular since the deflation of the 1930s, when the idea of a banking conspiracy was widely accepted and the Mafia was assumed to control all crime. I don't think the same Naziism is going to arise, particularly since it's harder now to scapegoat the bankers - they don't seem as much to have their own culture, and are not as easily marked out by ethnicity. But I think a lot of Fritz Lang's movies about Dr. Mabuse, and the audiences that loved them, and it makes me sad that nobody much remembers that history.
My other frustration is more direct - a few days ago, a NY Times food columnist was on the Colbert Report promoting his book about ways to make the food industry more sustainable, and ways we need to change our approach to consumption of agricultural products. He said a lot of smart things, along with some silly things, and I particularly liked his acknowledgment of the fact that market trade across countries and regions is not a bad thing - that some food does need to be shipped because some areas can grow much more than they can eat and others can't grow enough. Solid economics.
However, his main thrust was that we can't consume as we have been consuming - that there is a huge amount of waste involved in pre-prepared food. The average person spends 30 minutes a day preparing food, he said. Maybe that needs to be more like 2 hours.
This sounds difficult but reasonable. However, it's a misleading average. The average person spends either 2 hours a day preparing food, or no time at all, because the average meal preparer cooks for a family - they're not each working for half an hour. Separate out the zeroes and multiply that meal preparer time by 4, and you're talking about 8 daily hours of food prep. Which is exactly what the average adult woman did before industrialization - spent all day in the kitchen shelling peas and soaking beans and putting up preserves and making pastry. And this is what would have to happen again if we returned to a model without the convenience of pre-prepared short cuts. It would fall disproportionately on women, who would have to leave the workforce. Get back to the kitchen, women. Otherwise you are going to kill the planet. This is even better than "God says so."
Look, idiot. Economies of scale apply to cooking, too. I would rather work at a job I love and then use my money to pay somebody else at a packaging plant or a restaurant.
I'm sure I could put this better if I had time, but I have to go to work now.
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| Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
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3:33 pm - Five Things
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Via jonquil: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with (if you're lucky). Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
My five: movies - art - true love - travel - poetry
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| Saturday, February 21st, 2009
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11:57 pm - Movin' Right Along
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4308 / 50000 words. 9% done!
Oh yes. You thought it would never happen, but I am all the way to Chapter 2. Picture me holding up two fingers, and then count those fingers, as an illustration of the fact that I have moved beyond Chapter 1. Tomorrow, the moon!
current mood: silly
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| Friday, February 20th, 2009
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12:23 pm - Old Men Mismanaging the Majors
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We want to like Joaquin Phoenix, and so we make excuses for him. After we make fun of his music, we talk at length about what a fine actor he is, forgetting that he was only passable in Walk the Line and was downright terrible in Gladiator. There are certain characters in movies that in other times would have been played by Oliver Reed, Marlon Brando, John Wayne - possibly Michael Caine or Michael Hogan after they reached a certain age. Currently, we have no one, because working class toughs do not become actors, and acting classes never teach you to plausibly play vacantly brutal characters. Russell Crowe will do for some things, but we want a Russell Crowe crossed with Peter Lorrie. We try to convince ourselves that Joaquin Phoenix is good because we miss his brother, and because we want someone masterful playing these roles. We need these characters. We need to believe they are well executed. It is probably too late for Coldplay to come along and replace Joaquin Phoenix's Travis.
*
Last year, the only profitable movie made by News Corp was Marley and Me. (News Corp owns all the Fox subsidiaries.) If the studios are smart, they will see three things in this: one, that the current development cycle takes too long, so that films hit theaters two years after they were greenlit, which can lead to timing disasters like a bunch of downer pictures in theaters right as a recession hits. Two, that Oscar baiting by the classics divisions has gotten out of hand, so that limited-interest films are being made with budgets they can't possibly recoup, and are all released in December so they directly compete for that limited audience, which goes untended to the rest of the year. Three, that there will always be a market for simple movies that let us spend time with actors who we like, even if there are no special effects and not much happens. Hangout movies cost very little and have a broad audience; they are as resilient as horror. They are the bread and butter that lets the studio take risks on higher concepts. They are the bank. During the days of easy credit, we forgot we needed them. We do. If the studios notice this in time, they will be able to save themselves.
At the moment, their main strategy is to put spectacle back in the theater experience by putting us in 3D glasses. They are fooling themselves. There is no reason to think audiences want 3D across the board; we're pretty comfortable with flat screens, and have never had trouble believing they are immersive. 3D will never be more than a gimmick - and an expensive one. It drives off audiences with vision problems, or with heads the wrong size or shape to wear 3D glasses comfortably, and there is nothing sexy or classy about having to put on a plastic headset when you're out on a date. More to the point, the fact that a 3D movie is different from your home television is precisely the problem - any 3D movie which relies on its dimensionality will not translate well to DVD release, and any 3D movie which is just as good flat renders 3D pointless. Movie releases exist to create buzz for tie-ins and DVDs down the line; they are an ad campaign. Movie theaters exist to drive up business at nearby restaurants. Any movie release that can't be sold as a DVD and can't be part of an evening out (theater upgrades mean expensive tickets that make me forgo dinner or attend a non-mealtime matinee) has fatally misunderstood revenue streams.
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| Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
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1:54 pm - Choose Your Own Ground
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Yesterday morning, I found a pile of vomit next to my car door, from which I guessed that the neighbor who parks in the spot next to mine had a severely drunk evening. Today, I found there was more vomit on top of the old vomit. I mean precisely on top, not overlapping. It seems almost ritualistic.
I will be parking in another spot until the situation resolves itself. Yet I have to admit some fascinated part of me wants this to continue.
--
"Music, a series of ascending and descending tones, died today. The cause was Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience. After the death, a Chevrolet truck was driven to a levee, but the levee turned out to be dry, and several Southern men were seen consuming alcoholic beverages and discussing their mortality." A.J. Jacobs, "Recent Obits," Esquire, March 2009
current mood: recumbent
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| Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
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11:21 pm - When Are We Going to Make This Chicken House a Chicken Home?
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I cooked tonight for what feels like the first time in more than two years. In between, I've occasionally made eggs or sandwiches, and done a lot of reheating of food made by other people. I have a special affection for food, but not for cooking - I don't dislike it, and enjoy both chopping and plating, but I'm not especially passionate. Nor have I been horrified by restricted eating choices - although one part of me views meals as a sensual and social experience, an equally big part is hacker happy to eat Taco Bell every day because it's cheap and fast and keeps my body working. To say that I've missed cooking would be an overstatement, even though my choice to stop wasn't so much choice as the circumstance of being kitchenless, whether because I lived in a dorm or because a homeless man was living in it. The best way of looking at things is that I cook if the space is there, but don't seek it out otherwise.
I didn't do anything especially fancy - I threw together some unused odds to make udon noodles in an improvised peanut garlic sauce, with some eggs for extra protein and grilled grapefruit for color. It used two pans and took maybe 15 minutes including prep and waiting for water to boil. It was neither spectacular or disastrous. It felt like stretching in the morning or changing out of jeans. I've made a lot of little steps in the past few days, doing things like cleaning the stove or mopping the floor. Little extensions of peacefulness and responsibility. Sometime tonight I switched to feeling like I live here, and not like the cheerful guest I've been for the last several years. It was so gentle I didn't notice it happening.
The most interesting thing to me is the sense that I'm returning to the improvisational style of cooking I used when I lived with Valancy and gave up for more routinized menus when I lived with Patrick, for reasons I don't remember. I don't know whether it's just a phase I go through when I start up (I'd undergone a cooking hiatus prior to living with Val as well) and abandon as I get bored, or whether it's my natural state of interacting with groceries and was interrupted by a period of life in which I was in many significant ways not myself.
current mood: peaceful
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| Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
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4:38 pm - Water Ox
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When I am in a car among a bunch of pedestrians and I am in a good mood, I feel like I am a giant animal moving through a herd of small animals, and I want them to jostle against me, oblivious to my size, and I want to gently nudge them over so they will fall safely and scramble up again.
current mood: relaxed
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| Monday, February 2nd, 2009
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3:57 pm - Well, What Now?
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For the past six months, I have been developing a film. This has not been obvious, because I have not talked about it much to people who weren't directly involved, and haven't written much about it publicly. The film is my graduate thesis. I have until July to finish it, and could stretch it out to next July, but I wanted it finished by the end of April. That is now not going to happen. This is what did happen:
Back in September, I checked to see whether I could get a location which I thought I probably couldn't get. However, the store manager said no problem. I double checked with the guys in corporate. They said no problem, and they said it in writing. That was enough to make me feel safe moving ahead with pulling together the other things you need to make a film - equipment, crew, insurance, story, style - with an eye to shooting in late February.
In early December, I went back to the location to double check my dates with them, and was told out of the blue that I needed to talk to someone else I'd never heard of, as a formality. I did, and she said no. I said "even though your boss said okay?" and she said "oh, I thought you were someone else - I'll get back to you in January." She didn't. And then I found out I didn't need to talk to this person, and her no or yes didn't mean anything. Okay.
So are we okay? No. I find out a few days ago that there is yet another person who has never been mentioned in the six months previous who I need to talk to. At this point, we are late in the game enough - with assurances throughout that the film is go - that I've started reserving time with crew, have put money toward a software package I need, and have spent a lot of time working out the aesthetics and structure of the film. This person I've never heard of says no, I can't film because I'm not with a major local media outlet.
I could get with a major local media outlet. I've sent an e-mail to this effect and gotten a sort of "well, maybe that would be okay if you also switched to filming during the day and also all on one day and some other things that I'll think of later." I could probably fulfill all of that, but at this point, I don't know that I want to, because I don't trust that a yes or a no means anything, or that anyone has the authority to give one. I don't have the patience to jump through any more hoops without a corresponding guarantee, and my motivation for making something that says "this is a place for artists" shrinks each time there is dithering.
Starting at square one kind of fucks me over, although it also doesn't because I move pretty quickly. I'm ready for this film to happen. I've been working on it for a long time. But the beauty of being a director/producer is that I'm the one who instigates and therefore creates the value. I can take my money and play somewhere else. Mostly, I'm mad that six months of my time have been wasted, my writer's time has been wasted, and my cinematographer's time has been wasted - we've all done other stuff while we've waited around, but as long as this budget was tied up in this concept, I couldn't put it toward anything else, or start the process of getting permits for somewhere else.
I would have liked this experience much more if the people involved had said no at the beginning instead of trying to be nice. Nice sucks. A simple "no" up front is not a problem. I like a good hard no. I get rejected and move on with my life. I even like a "no, unless," provided it's clear. But there is a reason I don't date straight chicks even if they say okay: it is not going to work.
I don't know what I'm going to make a film about now, and I'm going to need to figure it out within a few days, because I want to get going. I have some possibilities in mind, but I'm not in love with any of them yet. If anybody wants to pitch me an idea or pose me a challenge before I come up with one myself, the floor is open. I need to be able to wrap it by mid-July, and to bring it in on a budget of a little more than $6000. I have unlimited access to editing software, animation software, music editing programs, studio mics, and stills cameras (both digital and non), but will have to rent, buy, or borrow any video or film cameras, any lighting equipment, and any location sound equipment.
Incidentally, I don't hold anything against the store in question, given that they are trying to be nice and trying to do their jobs; they're just in the sorts of decentralized bureaucracies where nobody has authority and nobody much can remember what is a rule and what is a preference. Aside from that, a lot has changed in the last six months. Given that the store involved is high-end retail, I'm sure they're reeling and frightened right now for reasons that have nothing to do with me, and that makes their unwritten preferences harden into rules, which seem safer. I've been going through the same thing recently with several government bureaucracies, the county jail, and a particularly insightful art installation. The main upthrust is that I look forward to the day when my friend Merlin manages to found his benevolent dictatorship, where there will be long lists of possibly nonsensical things I can't (or must) do, but where it will be perfectly clear where authority rests.
current mood: secessionist
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