Today officially sucks an ass. There is no real specific reason for this ass sucking, it just happens to exist. I woke up later than I wanted to and had to go to fucking work. This is not especially specific, mind you, since I go to work 5 fucking days out of the week, but notably, each one sucks more than the last. My back hurts like a crazy ass motherfucker tonight, I mean a crazy ass motherfucker, and I have no idea why this might be the case. I haven't worked especially hard, but the day has just been dragging fucking on. Get it fucking over with already. I cannot wait for this summer to be over because holy fuck do I hate working at Wal-Mart.
What else is there really to talk about besides beavers. So here is the thing about beavers, they are, in all actuality, quite cute. Some people will call them water rats and such, but fundamentally they look alot like otters and have a similarly cute behavior. Denis Leary classified the cute behavior of otters as "I swim around on my back and do cute little human things with my hands." The beaver, simply chews trees and builds shit. This doesn't sound especially cute, I will grant you this. But sit down and watch the mighty beaver work. I loved to check out the beaver dam at the MN Zoo back in the day, because they had that really innovative setup whereby you could see inside the dam. Most people, at least in my opinion, were not aware that a beaver dam didn't just serve to stop up a river, but rather was also a little casa.
I always thought it was weird that they had more than one room in their dam, because, they are like, fucking beavers man. I mean, what do beavers need privacy for. Apparently, I would learn later, the rooms serve to support the roof of the dam rather than simply divide up the space, but nonetheless, beavers can often be observed maintaining a division between rooms based on the activities that occur in them. The entry way is an entryway and nothing more. This makes instinctual sense to me. The whole point of having a dam is that predators can't get at you, since they would have to swim underwater and up into your house and most predators aren't that kind of swimmer. Nonetheless, if you were a beaver, and you were grooming yourself in the entryway to your dam and a fucking wolf popped up through the entry hole you would be totally fucked. So you only enter in the entry way, all other activities are done in places where you might have enough time to react or something. But why is it that beavers sleep in one room and groom themselves in another room? Fuck you Darwin, what the fuck, Is there a reason for this that I am not aware of.
I know that we humans have bathrooms and bedrooms and everything, but notably, we do that because we need running water in the bathroom and that often is not available in the bedroom. Beavers ain't got no running water, so what is the dilly yo. Maybe this is peculiar behavior only found in zoo beavers, but I don't know why. From what has been explained to me about the beaver exhibit at the MN Zoo, they pretty much built an area like what beavers would occupy in the wild and then let them go at the dam themselves. Maybe this is just a romantic memory of mine about the beauty of the beaver lodge, but I don't think so. I think the little buggers have OCD.
I just wrote like three paragraphs about beavers. This should give you an idea of what an absolutely uninteresting person I am when shit comes down to it. My computer leaves with my fiance and I get ready to quit smoking and all of a sudden I am just all beavers all the time. Not in the good Vin Diesel playa' sense either, like the furry little dam builders. I suck so much ass.
That should also be noted, I suppose, that I am going to attempt to quit smoking at the end of this upcoming week. I am really really really dreading this process, it is almost all I can think about, besides beavers, MTV Hits, and Reese's Sticks...mmmm Reese's Sticks. I have literally been having nightmares about the process of quitting. Nightmares about quitting may be a strong word, I have had dreams about quitting and they aren't fun. Basically, however, I think they are accurate. Its not like I am sick all the time or whatever. Its not like I have headaches and can't handle the cravings. In fact, the physical cravings are fairly weak, every now and then I might notice them.
The really really really really shitty ass shitty thing that bothers me about quitting smoking is just not being able to smoke anymore. I don't care if it is tobacco, I don't care if it gives me a buzz, I don't care if it tastes as good as a Parliament full flavor or produces the same volume and concentration of smoke. I really like smoking, its one of my favorite things to do and I am going to miss it. Fucking A!
I have decided that the one decision I regret most in my life is the decision to begin smoking and not because I hated smoking or anything, much to the contrary, I love it now and I am sure I will until the day I die of non-smoking related circumstances. It was the worst decision I ever made simply because I am now going to stop. So ever single mother fucking day, every time I wake up, every time I eat, every time I drive, I have to think about smoking and not do it. Fuck.
Oh well, I shouldn't dwell on the whole ciggarette thing. I will quit and eventually it will get better and I won't think about it all the time. If I do I will go to increasingly powerful hypnotherapists and block out the idea of cigarettes altogether. Maybe I can get a hypnotist to make me think that I am smoking even though I am not. I can have all the psycho-physical satisfaction I get as a smoker plus non of the death-like side effects.
What else is there to talk about. I suppose I could digress on Adaptation, a film which I purchased yesterday, largely simply because it was only 8.99 at Blockbuster. I went in simply with the intention of renting a game, which I also did, but walked out of there with the second collaboration between Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman.
I like this film, I like it alot more than many people did. I don't know how much I agree with it and I am not sure how much I buy into the characters that surround Kaufman versus how much I buy into Kaufman's own thing. The really interesting thing about the flick is the way that it reintegrates a style that hasn't been done in quite a while, that being the film making itself thing. Don't get me wrong, its done in miniature style all the time, a film will talk about being a film or some character will say "I hate it when movies do this (X)" and then the film itself will do X. The interesting thing about Adaptation is that the whole fucking flick is actually the construction of itself, something that was increasingly common in Italian neo-realism, spurred by Fellini's masterful 8 1/2, the movie that, at least to my knowledge, pioneered the genre. There are others, I think Antonioni did one, which are essentially the same thing, but I haven't seen a Hollywood version that I can remember until now. I guess Mullholand Drive has more elements which belong to that theme than most films, but its not David Lynch's style to explore it as explicitly. I mean we have the Cowboy and his whole "if you do good you will see me one more time" but nowhere does Adam Kesher pick up a tape recorder and read verbatim dialogue from earlier in the film.
I don't find subtlety in film to necessarily be the indicator of quality, as many do, nor do I find the upfront-ness of the story to be so mind blowing that I automatically rank Adaptation amongst my favorite movies. But I find a number of things interesting, some of which just happen to be the more subtle elements near the conclusion. Again, remember, I really like the whole premise of being about the process of adapting the movie. The phrase adaptation taking on a multiplicity of varied and related usages in the worlds of evolution, the lives of the Kaufmans, and Susan Orlean. Nonetheless, the end of the film is of the most interest to me.
Upon my first viewing in the theater, I was wowed but fairly convinced that I knew at least what had happened (not plot wise, I was obvioulsy able to figure this out-hey you are the same fuck who couldn't tell the difference between Christina's and Britney's songs aren't you, fuck you dude) but when I watched again last night I had some doubts. So there is the marked difference from the point where Donald goes into Susan's office to pretend that he is Charles right. I mean, I guess it starts shortly after that, but that is when we start to speculate about what it is that happens after the book. We do all the things which had earlier been postulated by Charlie to be all the shitty and contrived Hollywood things which could ruin his otherwise pure movie about flowers. All those elements develop, but not simply as elements within a movie, they are also elements in real life, the fucked up part about a movie which is so self-constructive. So at this point while the film is still reflecting on its mode of production, there is none of the explicit self-referentiality which was so pronounced when Charlie was working on the script.
There are obviously elements near the end here which you are simply supposed to laugh at, I won't go into them for those who have not seen the film, but they are ridiculous, and I think quite obviously so, at least in the context of the rest of the movie. The other thing that I am not sure about is the two characters of Kaufman. This obviously means alot to him and there are some filmic and some extra-filmic elements which should indicate as such. For instance, his fictional brother is listed in all the credits and even on the Oscar nomination (which according to someone, I think it was some IMDB review, remains the only fictional character ever nominated for an Academy Award). There is the first easy reading; that somehow they are the two halves of Charlie Kaufman, that his confident Catherine Keener-boning self isn't all too distinct from the neurotic author of Being John Malkovich. At the same time, some stuff complicates that. Does Kaufman really have a side which is so bound by awful stereotyped ideas. Look at the list of films he has made, none of them actually fall into the types of cliches that this film makes fun of. Furthermore, what, then, is the deal with the very end of the film? Doens't make any sense to me, as it would seem to seal off the self-success of the film, illustrated by the very fact that it exists.
Enough. That is my initial discussion of Adaptation, I'm sure I will end up saying more someday, as I often do, though I don't want to ruin it for Katie and any possible other readers who have not seen the flick.
This movie obviously was Andy Kemp's favorite film of all time, largely because of the multitude of ideas that he seems to share with Charlie Kaufman, and probably the series of neuroses that accompany them. I don't know that Kaufman ever actually whipped a glass accross a BW3 restaurant, but if he had a couple long islands and had to hang around with Kevin for an hour, I wouldn't put it past him.
To add a little bit of news into the mix, I am unsure about Bush's recent trip to Africa. Not because it is an obvious attempt to drum up support for the invasion of Liberia, which in itself is an interesting little topic: while I don't really support military intervention in the abstract there is something to be said that the USFG is at least taking notice of Liberia-since most African genocides tend to go without official notice (qua the Congo, Rwanda, etc.). There is also a flip side to the selection of Liberia specifically. On the one hand intervening to secure a state which was established by and for ex-slaves is probably a pretty obvious, but not reprehensible move to argue that the Bush administration, despite their stance against the SC decision involving Michigan, is not neutral to racism. On the other, Liberia, especially in the recent American media blitz to portray it, has been sort of singled out from the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. The current President, for instance, is named Charles Taylor, a name which is markedly different from the more diverse governing names on the continent. The question then is whether Bush is intervening in Africa only when it threatens the "African Taylors," many of whom are explicitly ex-Americans and others are at least more "Americanized." Basically, is he abandoning the rest of Africa, even though it may have, and often does, just as much violence, questionable democracy, and warlording as Liberia has ever known.
On the lighter side of Africa, there is the media coverage by my personal favorite news source, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Here is the thing, I admire the attempt to do political humor about Africa, largely because the writers obviously know less about Africa then even the Bush administration. Most of the jokes had already been done by the Simpson's go to Africa episode a couple years back. You've got your constantly changing leaders, your random country names, adding People's and Republic and Democratic to other names at random. You've got the difficulty of pronunciation and the consonant sounds which don't exist in any romantic or germanic languages. Blah blah blah. Very little of the Daily Show's coverage of the Africa trip has been funny. Notably, what the fuck were they supposed to say. Have you read the news coverage of the trip, because this is where the Daily Show gets a strong majority of the jokes. Sure, they have had some funny things about Bush's bold stance AGAINST SLAVERY and AGAINST APARTHEID and how patronizingly he treated African leaders, but it didn't really dominate the show. The weird thing is, I don't know what I could have done better. Obviously there is some level of racism or at least ignorance involved in this portrayal, but the only alternative that pops into my head is just to not do many jokes about it. Find something else and make fun of that even though there is a major presidential trip underway. I don't know that this is even a better idea anyway.
Oh well, that is seriously all I have got for now. That was so fucking long. I cannot believe how fucking long that is. Wow. Alright, gotta watch some TV now, this much writing is bad for my brains.
Peace,
MB-K
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