I’ve discovered a lot of interesting things while excavating my room and packing. I found the SAT that I took as an eighth grader, and scored better on than most college-bound seniors. I found my old AP test booklets (seriously I have absolutely no reason to have kept them), pamphlets from the colleges (like FIDM) I would have applied to if I had wicked talents, and encouraging notes from my teachers that I’d saved. I came to the slightly depressing conclusion that while I had absolutely no fashion sense, I was quite a bit brighter at age thirteen than I am now.
Because for the last hour or so, I have been scouring my room trying to find a scarf which I know I brought in from the garage like yesterday so where is it this cannot possibly be this complicated.
(A missing scarf, you say; how fascinating. Stick around, for next week we’ll delve into the adventures of moving to a different state. Or at least we will as soon as I figure out internet.)
There are a few people in the world I would like to punch.
“Punch” has a broad definition, depending on the person. For some people, like Nicolas Cage, it’s just an irritated flick on the nose. For others, like Jon Gosselin or Megan Fox, it’s a pretty solid slap.
But today I’ve added Uwe Boll to the list of people I honest-to-God just wanna punch.
Before today, Uwe Boll was just an object of my amused scorn. He’s the director responsible for such terrible fare as “BloodRayne,” “In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale,” and “Postal,” an attempt to satirize 9/11 that garnered a whole 8% approval rating on RottenTomatoes (twice as high as the other two!). I’ve actually seen both “BloodRayne” and that Dungeon Seige thing, and they were both moderately entertaining in a Sci Fi Channel Original kind of way. But generally, Uwe Boll is regarded as one of the worst directors in the world.
But today Cinematical discovered that Boll has made – not “is making” or “is planning to make,” has already spewed out – a Serious Movie about Darfur.
I think the situation in Sudan suffered from the short attention span of the news cycle, and it does need to be reintroduced to the world at large. This cartoon surfaced recently:
It’s not precisely related, but it still reminds us that there are much more horrible things happening in the world than the Gosselin’s divorce. That said, Darfur getting publicity from Uwe Boll is about as helpful as Michael Moore suddenly becoming Secretary of State. The trailer itself isn’t too bad, but the article describes some of his directing techniques, and let’s just say they’re worthy of being punched in the face.
Oh, Michael Moore is another guy who’d get slapped. Well, maybe he’s just a nose-flick guy. Anyway. Do you trust Boll (or any director, for that matter) to make a film about Darfur? And out of curiosity, which famous person would you slap?
The trick-or-treating has begun. Amazingly, it’s not raining, which means that we actually get to see some of these costumes rather than guessing at what’s underneath various poofy winter coats. The day’s highlights include a toddler Yoda wearing a hood with pointy green ears, a three-year-old princess whose crown of roses kept falling in her face, and a kid who I swear was wearing a Scorpion costume.
GET OVER HERE.
As we finished dinner, the doorbell rang, and all three of us went to answer. The kids ring again and just in case we hadn’t heard them, they start kicking the door. We all pause and raise eyebrows. Mom’s hand is on the doorknob and we have the candy ready. Outside, though, we hear a little boy’s voice: “Okay, ready? One – two – “
Mom grins and leaves the door closed. Long pause outside. Again, the boy’s voice, this time louder: “Okay, READY? ONE – TWO – “
The door remains closed. We’re cackling. Outside another boy pipes up plaintively – “We can SEE you!”
So we open the door. Immediately a ninja, a Jedi, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Raphael, for those interested) swarm inside. They rummage in the buckets, searching for a Kit Kat. The Jedi picks up an extra Snickers – “For my mom,” he insists.
They rush out again, yelling “thank you” over their shoulders, and sure enough the Jedi deposits the Snickers in his mom’s hands. She waves at us, but as her troupe is preparing to leave, a last little boy dressed as Scooby Doo approaches the step, holding his purple candy bag and what looks a lot like his ninja brother’s scabbard. He stops at the step and looks uncertainly up at us.
“This is Jason,” his mom says cheerfully. “Jason, you have to go up to them!”
So he climbs up the step and carefully lifts out a Crunch bar. “Thank you,” he murmurs, then darts back down the step. His mom calls after him, “Say Happy Halloween!” But he’s long gone.
It’s only recently occurred to me that I’m not really doing Halloween this year. It’s a shame, because this is an almost perfect Halloween – it’s a Saturday night and I’m over 21. I actually did get invited to a party, but according to the girl who invited me, it’ll be full of “engineers and drunk people.” Now I know a few engineers, and they are overall pretty cool albeit quiet people who will allow me to commandeer their PS3 to play hours of “Little Big Planet,” but I didn’t know any of the engineers who would be at this party, and at the end of the day, I’m just not a party person. I would like to be, but I’m not.
So currently my plan is to watch some classic thriller like “Silence of the Lambs” or “The Shining,” or maybe a Hitchcock, with a couple high school friends. There will be no costumes; there probably won’t be alcohol; and I can only hope that there will be candy.
This will be fun, but in a way, it’s a little disappointing because I seem to have what others are lacking – a costume. Vanessa described how her costume hunt usually turns out, but for me, it was never a huge problem. This was probably due to having a mom who sewed, and who wanted ample time to create Kirsten’s and Felicity’s Christmas outfits for me. (Gosh, I miss that blue one. I wish everyday life had more excuses to wear ball gowns.)
I think I got less creative in high school, wearing all black and adding a pointy hat and calling myself a witch. For my freshman year of college, I borrowed an 80s bridesmaid dress from a closet – it was light blue, with a high waist and long flowing pleated skirt – added a crown of gold plastic leaves, and went as a Grecian goddess. Sophomore year my friends went as the cast from “Firefly,” but I had already pieced together a 20s-gangster sort of outfit, so I shoehorned myself in as Badger. Junior year, though, our sorority chose Twenties Night as theme for one of the recruitment events, and so I wound up with a super-adorable flapper dress that certainly wasn’t going to retire after only one use. And so for the last two years, I was a flapper. It was fun. I had the fishnets and the fedora and the long necklace and the cigarette holder and everything.
But really, it’s time to take that costume to the next level. I’m hoping next Halloween will be more exciting and I can get someone to do my makeup to transform me into…a zombie flapper.
to apologize to the readers who keep finding my blog by searching for Sir Walter Raleigh. Apparently there are a lot of you, even more than the ones who searched for “lady gaga see through dress,” and I’m sorry I don’t have anything of more academic worth for you. You’re probably working on some history paper and I let you down. Hopefully you at least found a little entertainment while you were here.
Tonight the Wheel of Fortune hosts took the time to point out some details on the Halloween set, which included gravestones for the free spin and “Common Courtesy,” but my favorite was one labeled “Trebek’s Moustache.”
And moustaches gone before make for a convenient transition to old magazines.
As part of my new effort to keep myself from going loco while sending resume after resume into the depths of the internet, I’m starting a few random projects to go to in between applications. One of them is scrapbooking the piles of photos and clippings and notes that have been accumulating since 6th grade (it’s a genetic thing), and another is packing up our 27 years of National Geographics.
They’ve spent the last twelve years or so up in the attic, but in hopes of setting up a pretentious library of yellow-framed magazines as soon as possible, I hauled them all out and started boxing them up. When I was in fifth grade, I would venture up and grab a whole stack and flip through them. For a long time, I wanted to be a National Geographic photographer, but then I realized that many photography assignments required going to places that were full of malaria or very cold or underwater, and my list of approved destinations narrowed to Western Europe and tropical islands. That dream has sort of taken a back seat, although I did enter Your Shot once in the feeble hope of actually being published.
I still feel like they deserve a better fate than being slowly eaten by spiders and attic dampness, though, so now they’re hanging out on my floor. I also got to add to the mix the handful of older issues I’ve found in antique stores, including one from December 1945.
But guess what, you need a lot of time and a lot of boxes to organize 27 years of National Geographic. However, it gave me a chance to see some issues I hadn’t gone through in a long time, as well as some pretty classic covers.
December 1988
August 1999
January 1982
October 1986. Having mostly grown up in the 90s, though, all I think of when I see this is 'PIGS IN SPAAAAAACE.'
March 1984. They really had a thing for holograms in the 80s.
October 1982. The chip! I don't even think it was 'micro' yet.
September 1988. Live long and prosper, Nat Geo.
I’m slowly coming to the sad realization that my life is definitely not as exciting as it was a month ago, so here, have a chipmunk from Sisters, OR:
Plus I’m tired from spending four hours on the road today trying to avoid an abnormally high number of morons who don’t know how to accelerate onto a freeway, so even if I had anything exciting to write about, it would have to wait.
Ooh, no, wait, I can tell you about the sweet Mustang GTs the Oregon cops were driving. I had just gotten onto I-5 south near Corvallis, and there was a white GT with black racing stripes – and flashing lights, and a sheriff writing some poor soul’s ticket. A few miles up, a plain white GT was lurking on the side of the freeway. Sneaky and actually pretty awesome. The end.
Well, we managed to get into our first-choice apartment! We’re taking care of all the exciting paperwork and such tomorrow. After that, I’ll have another two weeks of packing and increasingly frantic job hunting before we move.
Yikes.
It is a super-sweet apartment, though – two bedrooms, still well within our budget, with a nice new kitchen (with a dishwasher!) and carpet that doesn’t look too much like the 70s. I am excited to move in and start making it home.
I am not excited that I still don’t have a job, but hopefully that will wrap up within a month or so.
(Always fascinating, right?)
With all the blogging and Facebooking and Myspacing and Twittering etcetera that’s been going on for the last couple of years, some interesting questions about personal expression and freedom of speech and the sheer narcissism of assuming that the world wants to hear what you had for dinner come up. (Holy run-on sentence, Batman.) Everyone has to be careful about the information they post online; job-seekers have to monitor their Facebooks to make sure employers can’t find their Spring Break ‘02 pictures; and if you’re a more prolific blogger, you have to worry about writing about topics that will continue to bring you readers. (Not the worst problem to have, I guess, but still.) We all have to walk a fine line between expressing ourselves and getting our identities stolen.
There’s also been some discussion about what my generation is going to be like in the workplace, having grown up with all this widespread technology. How are our expectations different? How do we interact with our older coworkers?
But I was just looking through some webcomics on a site I don’t regularly visit, and I found a link to the artist’s Flickr, full of pictures of her very adorable baby wearing leopard-print dresses and making pirate faces. It was super cute and seeing cute babies naturally makes me smile, but it made me wonder what will life be like for her generation. She’s going to grow up and discover that her baby pictures had been seen online by thousands of total strangers before she could even distinguish shapes. So much for the threat of having her parents bust out the naked-baby-in-the-tub pictures or the kindergarten-Halloween-costume pictures – chances are, he or his parents have already seen them.
We’ve probably all posted our own pictures online, but would you post public pictures of your kids? I know a few moms whose photos are hidden in friends-only Facebook profiles, which seems reasonable, but I personally can’t imagine putting up public photos. Where’s the line?
I may have had a little breakdown yesterday about job searching. I feel like I keep hitting dead ends, and half the time I see something interesting on Craigslist, it turns out to be spam reposted in eighteen different cities. (Hey, that’s what I should do when this is all over – write the Normal Person’s Guide to Finding A Real Job On Craigslist…assuming it hasn’t been done already. And assuming my job actually comes from Craigslist. But I digress.) I’ve sent out a few applications – more than 5, less than 10, I think – and only gotten one hit back. I was – still am, a bit – frustrated, and I kept myself up late imagining myself at 30 and living in my sleeping bag in a cardboard box. I think I was wearing a terrible hat.
As usual, though, things seem to be a lot worse when it’s almost midnight and dark and cold than they really are. This morning I met with an old friend, my choir director from bygone days, and he had some words of wisdom and encouragement for me. Getting away from the computer and stupid Craigslist helped a bit, too.
With my courage bolstered, I took notes on the company I got an automated response from and called back this afternoon, pumped for this screening for this job I don’t particularly want but kind of need.
It was a total bust.
There was terrible miscommunication and mismatched expectations and I would be very surprised if I made it any further with their application process. It didn’t help that this was over the phone and the recruiter was probably just some outside Joe hired on a temp basis or something. I told my mom about it and naturally started crying, because I am a weak and emotional female please pass the smelling salts, and she looked at me blankly and said “You don’t want that job.” And (because moms are sometimes infuriating that way) she’s right. I am pretty introverted, and while I can lead a team and convince people to do stuff when I really have to, it’s not my favorite course of action. I like writing. I want to write correspondence or edit or write copy. It would be particularly nice if this all took place in an international programs office, where I have the most experience, and where I ultimately want to wind up as a marketing director or something similar.
For now, I’m continuing to apply for office-support type jobs, but I’m also looking back at the things that make me happy. I’m writing up some articles to submit (fingers crossed) to some travel magazines. I’m bringing my DSLR with me when I head back to Corvallis next week, in hopes of finding clear weather and some good photographs. I’m even looking back at selling stock photos. Oh yeah, I’m working on my book again, too.
The goal here is not to go crazy and to not become a jaded old woman. Step one: Stop checking Craigslist after 5 because nothing else is going to happen.
