Just Kristin

A dear friend is com­ing to town on Tues­day, and I hope to go with her to see the movie Shut­ter Island. I have been want­ing to see the film since I saw its trailer as a pre­view to Avatar, a film bet­ter viewed with the sound down, head­phones in, and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side on repeat. I was fas­ci­nated from the get-go by Shut­ter Island because:

1. I am com­pletely fas­ci­nated by mad­ness. (“Um, excuse me? We pre­fer to be called ‘dif­fer­ently sane’, ok?” say the monkeys.)
2. I find old, espe­cially aban­doned, insti­tu­tional build­ings to be heart-wrenchingly beau­ti­ful. (Not just insti­tu­tional build­ings like schools, churches, hos­pi­tals and asy­lums, mind you, but any build­ing that was meant to be filled with peo­ple, such as train sta­tions or malls… Is there a word for that kind of build­ing or place?) When they are aban­doned, there is a gor­geous creepi­ness about them…
3. I am all for a well-done sus­pense­ful thriller, and Shut­ter Island seemed to be just that.

Before see­ing the movie, how­ever, I was deter­mined to read the book, as I had heard good things about it. Know­ing that I would have lit­tle time to fin­ish it before my friend arrived, I plowed through it today, and fin­ished it a few hours ago. I am still recov­er­ing, emo­tion­ally. I will not say that it was beau­ti­fully writ­ten, but it is a well-crafted tale. I had a hard time putting it down, and (oddly for me) did not see com­ing what came. I still look for­ward to see­ing the film, but there will have to be uni­corn chasers.

Glad to see that I was not alone in my dis­gust over all the “poor, sad, emas­cu­lated men” ads dur­ing this lamest-ads-ever Super Bowl. Whiny rather than clever, the ads alien­ated every view­ing female, as well as the less testosterone-fueled troglodytes men in the bunch. The video below is one of the best responses to the whole fiasco I have seen:

Thanks for shar­ing this, Emile!

EMBED-Awesome Who Dat Dog — Watch more free videos

Accord­ing to CBS Corporation’s Diver­sity page:

CBS Cor­po­ra­tion, and its divi­sions, are com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing an envi­ron­ment that cel­e­brates and encour­ages dif­fer­ences in peo­ple, their ideas, beliefs and cul­tural back­grounds, which, in turn, pos­i­tively influ­ences busi­ness con­duct, the pro­duc­tions, shows, prod­ucts and ser­vices we deliver, as well as, our respon­si­bil­i­ties to the com­mu­ni­ties we serve and soci­ety as a whole. This com­mit­ment enables us to attract and retain employ­ees with the tal­ent, cre­ativ­ity and inno­va­tion nec­es­sary to grow our indus­try lead­er­ship posi­tion and to deliver the finan­cial per­for­mance required by our stockholders.

Really? Unless, of course, you are a woman who wants con­trol over her own body. In that case, you are trumped by the right-wing fringe-loony group Focus on the Fam­ily and its well-on-his-way-to-permanent-dane-bramage col­lege ball star patsy, Tim Tebow. Adding insult to that injury, ads that crit­i­cize Bush or con­tain non-hateful mes­sages regard­ing the GLBT com­mu­nity have been rejected. What can we do about this?

• Sign a peti­tion or five — they have no real power but they are a venue for noisemaking
• Con­tact CBS directly and let them know what you think of their unfair, unbal­anced ad prac­tices and their back­wards mosey into the 1950s
• Con­tact other Super Bowl spon­sors and let them know you will not be watching.

Any other ideas, anyone?

I am enchanted by sto­ries of insan­ity, espe­cially those of long ago. This per­for­mance of “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song” is beau­ti­ful in its near-frothing lunacy:

The moon’s my con­stant Mis­trisse,
And the lowly owl my mor­rowe,
The flam­ing Drake and the Night­crow make
Me music to my sorrow.

Face­Book is a huge, extended-family reunion. It is a huge, extended-family reunion that you get to wan­der in and out of. As such, it is a given that you will run into some of the peo­ple dear­est to you, includ­ing a few whom you haven’t seen in ages, and you may even get to speak to them for a bit. You might also be lucky enough to nib­ble some tasty food and get the recipes, score the phone num­bers or email addresses of peo­ple you haven’t heard from in a while, play a game of extreme bocce with your cousins, or roast a few marsh­mal­lows to per­fec­tion over uncle Bert’s Weber grill. How­ever, if you take a look at the amount of time spent at the reunion, and give an hon­est account­ing of it, you will note that only 5 to 10 per­cent of your time at the reunion is spent at the above activ­i­ties. The rest of your reunion stints will be filled with: answer­ing the same ques­tions about your life posed by count­less peo­ple you should have thought but didn’t think you’d run into there, hav­ing the peo­ple you *do* want to talk to get pulled away by other fam­ily mem­bers, eat­ing copi­ous amounts of junk food, get­ting roped into play­ing stu­pid games for stu­pid (if any) prizes, lis­ten­ing to count­less bel­liger­ent drunks spew forth about what is impor­tant to them and should be impor­tant to you as well, and guilt­ing your­self into stay­ing late to help with clean up.

I love reunions, but I always end up feel­ing dis­ap­pointed and wish­ing I could have my time back. I curse myself for get­ting sucked in. Once you are there, how­ever, you can­not leave with­out hurt­ing someone’s feel­ings, or even worse, wor­ry­ing about whether any­one noticed you leave. It is a lose-lose(-lose?) situation.

I know that I have pre­vi­ously touched upon my issues with change, espe­cially change that I didn’t see com­ing. Change I con­trol? Fine. I could move any­where in the world, as long as I was part of the decision-making process tak­ing me there. Change I can at least see com­ing? Fine. Lay­offs are a piece of cake, because all one need do to avoid being blind­sided is pay atten­tion. (My most recent lay­off occurred between my two inter­views for the Zoo!) Change that takes me by sur­prise, how­ever, can knock me right on my butt. Even small things like hav­ing to rush or wait or make a sud­den deci­sion are enough to get all my mon­keys scream­ing at once.

It is a won­der, then, that I pre­fer change­able weather. We have had quite a bit of rain in San Diego over the last week or so, and it has actu­ally been as close to WI weather as I have seen since I’ve lived here: the rain is inter­mit­tent, with patches of sun­shine between, and there has been thun­der and light­ning and floods, and — rather freak­ishly — a tor­nado warn­ing. There are even patches of green sprout­ing here and there! Still, it is South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, after all, and these bits of flux were anchored in the stag­nant gray of the storm(s) — tiny devi­a­tions from the rain-norm, much in the same way that the occa­sional Santa Ana serves as enough of a depar­ture from the sun-norm to give our mete­o­rol­o­gists some­thing to say other than “another per­fect day, sunny and warm with low clouds in the morn­ing which should burn off by 10.” There is a rea­son (other than mos­qui­toes) that I never visit my WI fam­ily in the summer.

Per­haps this long­ing for change­able weather is what makes me so fond of things like this. I don’t think I have a gad­get that does not have a “foul” weather sim­u­la­tor of some kind on it. I have been stand­ing in the rain lately instead of lis­ten­ing to mp3s of it, tho. Lucky me!

Last time the river between our offices and Fash­ion Val­ley flooded, there were ducks swim­ming across the road. I love ducks! This time, how­ever, the cur­rent is too strong and the ducks are too smart to be out in this weather. Wendy and I went to check it out, and to watch peo­ple (who are appar­ently less smart than ducks) try to tra­verse either road, only to finally honor the block­ades and flip a U.

I love the rain, but I do wish it would soak in. And, as long as I am wish­ing, more ducks, please!

I found a new photo mod­i­fi­ca­tion app for my iPhone: Pho­toTro­pe­delic. It makes things like this:

Gabe has a bet­ter han­dle on the thing. I will add his to the album after I get his per­mis­sion. At any rate, neat app. :)

Good bye! Please? Now that the Charg­ers have shuf­fled off the grid­iron, hav­ing lost quite mis­er­ably in their final play-off game (to an audi­ence of sold-out minus 500?!?), can we please get them out of mom’s base­ment? I have noth­ing against each indi­vid­ual player, please under­stand, but I have noth­ing but dis­gust in my heart for Spanos, the money-grubbing sleaze-bag who wants an impov­er­ished city to pony up tax­payer money in order to keep a team that, only mar­gin­ally and then debat­ably, brings it any fis­cal ben­e­fit, so that he can make oodles more money. I am fur­ther sad­dened by the peo­ple who vote for Spanos-spurred fund­ing ini­tia­tives, think­ing with their testosterone-laden bits rather than their brains, leav­ing schools, libraries and gen­eral pub­lic ser­vices to lan­guish in their regard as less impor­tant than a mediocre foot­ball team.

Don’t get me wrong: I love foot­ball. I love the game. How about this for a solu­tion: Spanos, sell the team to the city of San Diego, to its peo­ple. Take the pro­ceeds and buy your­self an island some­where where you can live in lux­ury but with­out fur­ther inflict­ing your­self upon the world. Let the city, and the peo­ple who love the team decide what the team needs, and let the peo­ple and the city ben­e­fit from what­ever prof­its may arise as well as tak­ing the eco­nomic sacks of own­ing a team.

If you won’t sell, then take your team, and your ball, and go home, move out of Mother San Diego’s base­ment, get a real job and stop play­ing games, you hor­ri­ble sponge. You need to grow up and start tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for your­self. Your mom has done all she could, and then some. She owes you noth­ing and deserves some respect. Move on.