Squeeee!!

Being compulsive, obsessive, and mentally disturbed is generally a drag. But it does have it's moments.

Right now I'm in that happy place that only the OCD, nerds, and geeks can relate to: premature overabundance of acquisition.

It's when you go on a collecting spree and order a bunch of stuff. Then the agonizing wait begins. Will the mailbox bear fruit, or only the ashen taste of bitter disappointment when you come home?

I'm in the sweet spot. This is the dimension where you have placed a bunch of orders and conveniently forgotten what you ordered. So each package is a surprise. And the bestest part is: all the lead times were VASTLY *over*calculated.

That's right, bay-bee! All my orders are arriving SOONER than expected. The mailbox, while still full of vexing important things that are not going well, bears a gift virtually every day. Even my damn Netflix DVD came in two days early.

It's like freaking Christmakwanzaakah all over again up in here. I have too much to watch! My cup runneth over! My DVR is backing up. Too. Much. Yay!

It really doesn't take much, folks. Not at all.

It's fading. . .

. . .but man.

I'm in a really weird headspace right now.

At least I have something pretty to look at

But my eyes are so tired. I feel a migraine in my future.

I hate insomnia. Why can't I be this awake at the end of the day, when I could go do things?
Why can't I be this awake at 6 a.m., when I'm supposed to get up for work?
Guess I'll just close my eyes and pray for that poetic perchance.

I should be feeling in the prime of my life, or so it's said. But all I keep thinking is "I'm too old for this shit."

Up

Interesting word, there. Can mean so many things.

Sometimes I wake in the night, for reasons I can't discern. Is it a dream? A noise outside? Some internal anxiety clock?

I don't know, and never will. But I think it's a noted phenomena for more than just me. It has it's own peculiar regularity. It seems to happen between the hours of 3 and 4 am, everytime.

An hour ago I was asleep, then suddenly I was not.

In the most general way, with all the possibilities, permutations, and variables of each situation, I think a safe assumption could be made that it stems from some aspect of not caring for yourself properly.

It's a piss poor time to wake up, I'll tell you. You're almost guaranteed not to be truly sleepy until it's time to really get up. But you usually feel like refried shit, so getting up and being productive doesn't seem very appealing.

And anything you take would only make you woozy enough in time to get up for work.

Feels like it's going to be a long day, tater. I had plans for today, for this evening. Good, healthy plans. Let's see if I'll make it.

********
Last night I had three interesting sets of conversation. One was a random interlude with a couple at a bar--she's an award winning architect and he's in the music business. They gave me their card, and he said he liked me. I reminded him of Tina Fey.

I had a fascinating discussion about linguistics while undergoing a semi-tortuous grooming ritual. My torturer/groomer had a mother who was a linguist and an anthropologist. Best painful experience I've had in a long while.

I was kindly chatted up by a lovely young women named Anna. She was their with her group of friends who were from  England, but currently worked in Scotland. Their reason in the States? Bob, the producer, had his animated film "The Illusionist" up for nomination in the Golden Globes this past weekend.

At the risk of sounding snotty, I'm going to posit that I really don't think I would have managed to have any of those conversations in my last state of residence. And certainly not in one night, in random succession, in one 1/4 block area.

Welcome to La La Land.

Apparently, it's Quotation Weekend

Rather than blather on about my tripe, let me give you the words of someone else who very succinctly expresses something I've tried to say many times. I came across this in a rather random way, just minutes ago:

I think the concept that there’s one person who’s gonna make you whole, this Gibran kind of thinking, is so detrimental. I don’t think it’s the other person’s responsibility to make you whole at all. It’s the other person’s responsibility to make you laugh, to give you a dance now and then, to read the newspaper and tell you about things you don’t have time to read about, to introduce you to music you don’t know, to tell you when you’re full of shit, to fight fair, to be good in bed, to say, “Come on, let’s go have an adventure” when you’ve become a little bit of a stick in the mud. But it’s not their job to make you whole, and until you are whole, I don’t think you can really enter into a relationship with somebody and have it work. The test for me of a great romantic relationship is how productive you are during the relationship.--Susan Sarandon, interviewed by Martha Frankel

I love that this quote is essentially in response to Sarandon answering "Yes" to considering herself a romantic. I had never considered one of the benchmarks of a healthy relationship being one's productivity, but I like and agree with this notion. It's another way of measuring how healthy you are---are you out there living and doing and being? 


Conversely, if your relationship (be it familial, friendly, or romantic) is the source of all your mental energy, I think that's a bad sign. You shouldn't be spending all your time doing damage control, worrying, attending to, planning for, or evening thinking about just one person. Not only is it unhealthy for you and a doom for the relationship, but it's unfair to the other person and the relationship.


Nothing can be your everything. We have this strange idea/ideal of what our relationships are supposed to encompass. I think goes something like this:

1. Completeness of the self through union
2. Union must be of a sexual/romantic nature (friends are just a by-way on the road to finding The One, and can be tossed aside when objective is achieved)
3. Union must be strictly one on one (monogamy only--which makes life a lot simpler, in many ways. But if we didn't focus so much on the sexuality of the relationship, then we could be fulfilled by many people. You know, like friends.)
4. Union fulfills all possible emotional needs (minor exceptions made for having children, which is the other glorified idea/ideal we worship as  sacred cow)

What a set up! You have to be not only my only thing, but my everything. You are responsible for meeting all my psychological, sociological, and physical desires. If you really do care for someone,  how can you place such an unachievable expectation on them and then think it will work out? They will fail you, at some point, and you will both suffer for it. 


In a related thought, and one I have trouble implementing, is this: your significant other is not your therapist. That's a tricky one, if your focus is on honesty and open communication. There's a line you have draw when it goes from talking to dumping. 


The people we bring into our lives should be both our guests and our hosts. I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't have a primary companion--but I am advocating giving serious consideration to how you go about setting that up. And I'm not trying to promote a free love/open marriage/whatever thing. That's part of my problem with the whole ideal---the fact that we focus so much on the sexual aspect makes us overlook the value of the emotion, affection and attention of everything from friends to family to pets. 


I don't talk about this type of stuff much, because there's always a responding air of "the lady doth protest too much" or "you're just a bitter betty" or "it just hasn't happened for you" or "wow, you are one cynical sumbitch."


All of which miss my intention entirely. I'm not down on the concept of love. It's one of the better things humanity has managed to cook up for itself. The best might be music, but that's a whole other kettle of crawfish. 


I think we deify love, we exalt it, we pay it lip service, but we don't do it in the way of it. We don't help it out. We don't give it much thought. We expect it to happen, and get pissed when it doesn't happen exactly like we want it to. We narrow our definitions, and worse, we try to police how other people express their sense of the emotion. 


We talk about love as a beautiful flowering plant, then when we get it, we stick it on the shelf and forget about it. Then we have the audacity to be angry when it dies. We  treat it like an acquisition that, once obtained, requires no further energy or action. 


Jeez. I should really be out buying a chair to sit in or going to work out or something. In regular fashion, I've managed to take a decent wake up time and squander it's benefits. Oy.

Dark Little Treat of a Scene

SPOILER ALERT (for a movie you will never see) called Dream Lover. If you like the idea of film noir, or if the film Double Indemnity means anything to you, stop reading this right now and go find a copy of this film. Shoot, I think you can watch the whole thing on the YouTubes interwebz you kids like to use.

I have just rewatched the ending to this movie three times in a row. I'm posting the very last words of the scene, and of the film. On paper it probably doesn't look like much. But the delivery in this whole scene is prime.

He: Who are you, Lena? Who will you be when you die?


She: You don't have the guts.


He: Don't I?


She: No Ray. You're too practical. And what about the consequences?


He: There are no consequences. That's the flaw in your plan. I'm crazy. You've driven me crazy.


She: That was the whole idea.


He: Well crazy people aren't responsible. Crazy people aren't legally responsible. Not guilty by reason of insanity. In a year, I'll be sane again. And they'll have to let me out. 


Okay, I know I've been fanwanking about Spader here a bit. But Got-dayum. This may not be the best movie he's ever done, but this may be one of his best pieces of acting ever.

Bold words, I know. Especially since I have barely touched a third of his film oeuvre, but this is striking me as really good. I mean---look, I just told you I watched the last ten minutes three times in a row.

The trick here is that we get all of the Spadery-goodness wrapped up in one character. But you don't even realize you're getting it, or that he's done it, until the credits roll. For the price of a single admission you get Sensitive!Spader, Schlemiel!Spader, Sexy!Spader, Breakdown!Spader, Crazy!Spader, and a special appearance of the legendary Shark!Spader (know him by his eyes, his cold, predatory, hypnotizing eyes).

Okay, let me take it out of Spaderisms and put it like this: what's done in this film is to take the Everyman role, place him in the WTF Is Going On plot, and have it sell, completely. Our protagonist is a nice guy, but not too nice. He loves his wife and wants to believe her, but he still has doubts. We suspect right along with him, probably more than him. And we get to watch him talk himself out it, fall for seduction, and develop the quirks, paranoia, rage and other emotions you'd imagine a real person going through in such a situation.

Lots of actors do great jobs playing characters that kind of blow our minds. Anthony Hopkin's Hannibal Lecter is great example. It's a stellar performance, and Sir Tony does the amazing job of making you believe in an unbelievable character. An unrelatable character. A person (most) people will never meet, yet we believe he exists.

But playing the character that you do know. The guy you could be, or could be your best friend. And watching *that* person go through a slow descent into a surreal crisis. Watching your Everyman evolve, adapt, or maybe just finally flex a muscle that was only hinted at earlier---that takes some talent.

I'm not doing a very good job here. In other movies, when the villain gets their comeuppance at the hands of our Finally-Driven-To-The-Edge hero, it's usually an accident. Or self defense. Or temporary insanity. Or just a nice satisfying bullet to the face that makes the audience feel good, but doesn't really necessarily jibe with the Hero's character. But it works for the plot, so. . .

What's amazing about what Spader does here is that it is totally within his character, within the realm of plot possibility, and even though it's surprising, it's still plausible. When our Hero gets his revenge, it's beyond revenge. And even though we know he's this sweet, loving, caring, Average Joe, we also know that he's smart enough, mad enough, has the history for it, and maybe just secretly shitty enough to pull it off.

The last scene is the corker. Because that's when it all gels. You get about 5 Spaders! in rapid succession, but it isn't hammy or overblown. It's just our Hero, taken to a logical conclusion. And maybe, just like all of us, with a little more of the abyss inside than we ever like to admit.

Unff

That's the sound of a sucker punch to the gutinoids. But not necessarily a bad one.

I'm stewing over a few things, holed up in my Fortress of Solitude, when I get a call from a whole room full of people I used to work with.

It's my old bosses, PDiddy and the Chuckster, running a proposal. Apparently, there have been five in the last month since I left. The irony of that is...well, I don't even know if irony is the right word. That's just life in Proposal Land. They always almost drop, almost drop, almost drop, then BLAMMO--without fail they all drop at the same, worst possible time.

I had just this morning been thinking, rather fondly, about my old boss PDiddy, and told the guys as much on the phone. I had actually been on the verge of writing him an email this morning, but chickened out for some reason or another.

I realize that under his tutelage, I have either been trained to be the most amazing secretary ever, or a completely deranged, compulsive obsessive, detail fixating nutjob. These might not be mutually exclusive concepts.

But there is a secret in all of this. All I really wanted to say in my email was this:

I miss you.

Because I do.

One of the things I didn't anticipate was the vast difference in feel between an office I'd worked at for almost 6 years and a brand new one. Sure, the people I've met have been friendly. And I probably have more in common with a larger percentage of them than I might with the crew I left behind. But still. . .

I guess I just didn't bank on the obvious fact that we end up spending a sizable chunk of our waking lives with our coworkers. I can honestly state that I saw more of my coworkers, even socially, than I did of anybody in my family. And in the last two years, more than any one in my social circle/friends.

And the kind of work they were in the middle of today--it's grueling, hellish, thankless work. But for some of us it engendered a foxhole camaraderie. After we worked a few weekends, or months of weekends together, we became a kind of loose knit team. We got stuff done, when it *had* to be done. And we didn't bitch. Well, not too much. Everybody had their quirks, and you pretty much knew when to give somebody a pass or some free space.

And never, EVER, print anything out on legal sized paper for PDiddy. Unless, like me, you just find some kind of perverse pleasure in seeing him get riled up. Yeah, I'm sick like that. Just ask Bef. She's lived with it for years.

(BTW---how is your SpaderWaiter, Beffrany? Dost thou stalk him at new locations? Is he working at TGIFs now? I know that you know, you sick little thing you. And Billy Zane is still teh gay).

I think I lost the thread here. But in case it didn't come through, that was a cool phone call to get.

It made me smile. In fact, I'm still smiling.