I see that nose of yours

I see that nose of yours, but not that dog I shall throw it to.
- Othello

So, I've gotten back into movie watching. Not to the level I was in my hayday, but still, watching movies nonetheless. In my Pebbleman fashion, I have a habit of it. I watch the three movies from Netflix over the weekend, send them back in and get the next three by the next weekend. In the past couple of weekends I have seen some truly awesome movies, and as such, I'm going to share them.

A recent spate of awesome movies I have seen:

Othello

No, not O, but Othello from 1995. I remember wanting to see it when it came out way back when, but I'm kind of glad I didn't. I wouldn't have been able to appreciate it back then, I think. It would've been more like "I'm watching Shakespeare, aren't I awesome and mature." Which is of course, dumb.

Now, despite the fact that this is a Shakespeare film and it has Kenneth Branagh in a large role, it is not a Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare film (though perhaps unsurprisingly, a ton of the actors in this film made it into Branagh's Hamlet a year later). It was actually directed by Oliver Parker. Somewhat poorly I might add. He used a number of cinematic tricks that I would have to call juvenile. What he should've done is gotten out of the way of the true beauty of this film: the acting.

Now, I'm a fan of Laurence Fishburne, but I must admit that in his roles he sometimes can be hit or miss. Not here. He was on target the whole way. It was beautiful the way he played a Shakespearean character but filtered in Moor-ish habits in very subtle ways. He was the first black man to be cast in the lead in a film version of this play, but he downplayed the race. It wasn't a huge thing, which was beautiful. But it wasn't absent either. It was woven into the context. A slight gesture here. A little accent there. It was sprinkled into the character, not over the top, but not missing. It was perfectly played into the overall character. It was genius! He didn't let the race get in the way of actual points of the character, which is just how the part was written. I am in awe.

The acting in the film was almost uniformly amazing. Irene Jacob as Desdemona was meh. Michael Maloney did a surprisingly poor job as Rodrigo considering how awesome he was as Laertes in Hamlet, but that might be more the fault of Shakespeare writing a fairly weak character. Other than that, everyone was awesome. This is a film to watch for the acting. I was astounded at how good it was.

Edward Scissorhands

Burton and Depp, need anything more be said? No, but I'm going to say it anyways.

I read this film described as a fairy tale. That really is the best way to describe it. But this ain't no Disney fairy tale. This is an old school Hans Christian Anderson/Brothers Grimm fairy tale. There ain't no happily ever after, it's a warning. It teaches a lesson.

This film is about, and I can't believe I'm going to use such a pretentious phrase, the duality of man. It's about humanities desire to create something beautiful and its seemingly inability to prevent itself from destroying it. Or, in a more general sense, mankind's ability to lavish dreams and wreak horrors at the same time. This is personified in Edward, a man that is capable of creating such lovely works of art, but is an accidental danger to himself and others. At first, people are entranced by his creations (the people being the denizens of a pastel NIGHTMARE of suburbia, honestly, I'd rather live in the creepy mansion than that neighborhood). But they quickly become disenchanted with Edward as they either fail to utilize him to their own demands or became afraid of his destructive nature. And therein lies one of the major messages in the film, the inability of people to either recognize or come to terms with their own duality. They accept the creativeness, but reject the destructiveness, not recognizing that they go hand in hand (or hand in scissor, haha, I'm so funny). Burton does a stunning job mixing the stark, gothic black and white nature of Edward (thereby boiling his person down into black and white, in essence making him...simplistic? No, wrong word. He becomes the symbol of the duality, black and white, yin and yang, creation and destruction) with the more colorful "real" people. Plus there is the secondary message, that of Edward being a gentle soul unable to find his place in a more cynical world (see the theft section and the ethics conversation).

Good fucking god, did I really just write that? Can you tell I've taken a film class or two? That's pretentious sounding as hell. But oh well, it's better than writing IT WAS AWESOME LAWL.

Secretary

It's hard to describe exactly how much I love this movie. It was amazing. Here is the plot synopsis from the imdb.

"Lee Holloway is a smart, quirky woman in her twenties who returns to her hometown in Florida after a brief stay in a mental hospital. In search of relief from herself and her oppressive childhood environment, she starts to date a nerdy friend from high school and takes a job as a secretary in a local law firm, soon developing an obsessive crush on her older boss, Mr. Grey. Through their increasingly bizarre relationship, Lee follows her deepest longings to the heights of masochism and finally to a place of self-affirmation."

This is a movie about needs and weaknesses. And it questions both. What is really weakness? Is the submissive in a sado-masochistic relationship weak? As the film shows, no. The submissive actually has a position of strength in that they allow themselves to be dominated. No, as the film shows, the truly weak person is the one that does not know themselves. And this is a message that plugs DIRECTLY into my personal philosophy. Temet nosce. Know thyself. This is seen in the relationship between Lee and Mr. Grey. Lee is a bit of a flibbertigibbet with a penchant for self mutilation (aka cutting). Eventually she enters into said sadomasochistic relationship with Mr. Grey, whereupon she gains an extraordinary level of self-confidence. I'll try not to spoil anything for those of you who will watch this movie, but the level or personal strength Lee gains after she realizes she enjoys the submissive lifestyle is astounding. She becomes a strong, self-willed person, even though she is a submissive. The real weakness is seen in Mr. Grey, a person unwilling to come to terms with his dominant nature. And there, between them, we see that how a person lives does not determine their weakness, but who they are.

The film is wonderfully non-judgmental. I'm going to quote a line from near the end of the film, it's one of the best things I've read/heard in some time.

"In one way or another I've always suffered. I didn't know why exactly. But I do know that I'm not so scared of suffering now. I feel more than I've ever felt and I've found someone to feel with. To play with. To love in a way that feels right for me. I hope he knows that I can see that he suffers too. And that I want to love him."

And the film also pulls back from the over-the-top SM stuff. There's no leather and whips and chains and all that business, which I imagine is just window dressing on the true nature of an SM relationship. The tonality is conveyed without the graphic images that would offend many people. It wouldn't offend me personally, I've dwelt on the dark side of the internet too long, but it's a subtlety in craft I have to admire. It gets the feeling across without being cliche.

Yeah, back to the nonjudgmental-ness. I love it. As if there is a right way and wrong way to live life. If you can find someone to live you life with that makes you happy, and makes them happy, then the particulars of it don't matter to me. I shall close with the lyrics from a Ramsay Midwood song "Grass'll Grow" that have been running through my mind for weeks now. They are apt to this message, and a larger message in general, and I'm half tempted to get them tattooed on my body.

Well there ain't no straight line on God's green
Least none I've ever seen
Even the bullets wobble and spin
There ain't no latitude, just a trade wind

There appears to be some unintentional side effects

Here is a funny story for you. About a week or so ago I get an email from some guy in my department asking if I or another person in my lab would like to switch our days for going over grad student practice talks. It's a pseudo-volunteer thing, it allows me to be critical of other people. So I'm like, sure, I'll switch days with you. He's all great, contact the person doing the talk this Wednesday (today), Anna, and get her papers so I can read them beforehand. I do so.

So yesterday I'm bopping around match.com because I'm a masochistic fuckhead who doesn't know when to cut his losses and give up. I see my view counter has gone up, some someone has checked out my profile. I hit the "who's viewed me" button. Huh, someone new, let's see who they are. Someone in Bloomington, eh? Hmmm, graduate student....in microbiology. Their screen name? Anna(somerandomnumber).

Oh come on.

Ayup.

Funny old world.

As an addendum to the story, she canceled her practice talk, to which I replied "Too bad, I wanted to see if you were the Anna(somerandomnumber) that checked me out on match.com yesterday. Which, if you were, would be slightly awkward but mostly hilarious."

It was her. She ain't interested in me, if you're getting any ideas. She wants someone athletic, or more specifically a "hunk of man" to which I replied was more of a "lump". I merely tell this story as something funny that came out of this online dating...fiasco is the word, I think.

This just in

A big man once told me
Don't wreck your mental health
Feelin' sorry for yourself
I eat breakfast by myself
Like to think that I'm doing well
Honey, I'm all out and down
Can't keep it off my mind
Can't fix this heart of mine
Lord, I'm just wastin' my time
- Patrick Sweaney, "Wastin' Time"

Eureka!

Have you met Archimedes? The one with the black spots, you see? You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he's received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks - insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife - she's forced to share a bed with this genius - convinces him to take a bath to relax. While he's entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that's a way to determine density - weight over volume. And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams "Eureka" and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king's palace to report his discovery.
- Pi

So, I figured out why the internet dating thing isn't working for me. I was working under a false assumption. I had assumed that I was a generally decent guy, that I had attributes many women would love, and the main reason my love life had been lackluster up to this point was due to timidness, from not trying, from not putting myself out there.

This, you see, was an error.

I forgot the basic principle of dating. Never get in a land war in Asia. No wait, wrong one. The most fundamental principle in dating is that one has to be attractive to the people you are trying to attract! I had forgotten how unattractive I am. How undesirable I am. Now it all makes sense.

I think this whole thing may have been a mistake. All it's really done is make me feel bad about myself. 90% of the people I contact never reply back. 9% reject me. And the 1% was ew. Plus it drives my obsessive nature absolutely nuts when I see someone I'm really interested in has gotten my message and doesn't reply back. I'm too crazy for this. Additionally, it's made my blog a really unpleasant thing to read. That's not cool.

Updates abound!

I had dinner with Very Nice Woman yesterday. Yeeeeaaaaah, thaaaaaaat's not gonna work. She sent me an email last night "blah blah blah I don't know why you're single blah blah you're awesome blah." And I had to be like "um, this isn't going to work, best of luck, buhbye."

Ok, so things were a lot more civil than that, but that's the gist of it. Oh well. My options are decreasing rapidly, but off we go, let's try the next.

It's finished! (sort of)

I've finally finished it! (kind of). I finished a draft of Pebbleman. After how many months? Let's not count them, shall we. But anyways, the last bit is written, finally got it all there. Now I just have to do, you know, the hard part. Make it good. Time to start editing it. And actually looking at it as a whole. This is the first story I've written out of sequence. There were good and bad points to that technique. One the one hand, you are writing stuff that you are basically inspired to write. You don't have to slog through one portion to get to the part you really want to write. On the other hand, it's harder to keep the whole of the story in mind, hard to see the overall arc when you are just doing it in essentially episodes. Plus, I constantly had to go back and check other parts to make sure they were internally consistent with each other, something that is not a problem when I write progressionally. On the other hand, doing bits and pieces allowed me to make some connections between different sections that probably would not have occurred otherwise (see the sneaking thing).

It's funny, one thing happened that I never would've predicted, the thing with Goffrey at Mrs. Fulmores house (I'm being purposefully vague to avoid spoiling things). It reminds me of something I learned in college. I read a story about a traveling salesman who meets up with some woman on a farm. I forget the specifics of it but the salesman ends up stealing the womans wooden leg or some other similar limb replacement. I don't even remember what the name of the story is (one of you literary types could probably tell me) but what I do remember is that the author said they didn't know the salesman was going to steal the leg until s/he wrote it. It was a complete surprise to them. That's what happened to me with the Goffrey thing. I was writing, then I wrote that bit, then went "wait a second, what did I just write?" I went back and read it, completely surprised, thinking "I didn't know he was going to do that." Then I thought about whether it was too cliche or not, but decided to stick with it. If it happened just like that, it must be ok. Times like that, I love writing.

Pebbleman, even at this rough stage, is the best thing I've written, but as I've stated before, that's not saying much. I do feel that the backstory parts I wrote in the first place are actually damn good. I'm proud of those. It's the rest of it that I'm worried about. But we'll see what I can do with the editing. See what goodness I can pull out of it.

I'll send out a couple of more invites for people to take a look. Those folks that expressed an interest or I missed in general before (i.e. suyapi, Noq, maybe my friend James). Everyone needs to remember this is just the first draft, lots of work yet to do. I've toyed with the idea of trying to publish it. Wouldn't know where to begin, but still, you never know.

Oh, and it should go without saying that if anyone steals anything from me I will track you down and kill you and I'm not even remotely joking. That would be beyond personal. I trust you guys. It's just, you know.

An update: An update

Well then.

Woman of My Dreams finally emails me back. To tell me my boldness has put her ill at ease and she cannot pursue this.

Well then.

Don't I feel like a shithead. A big ole shithead. While it certainly resolves the dichotomy of my previous quandary, it still sucks. Actually, what I feel worst about is that out there is a presumably very nice person that I made feel negatively. I don't like that. I feel very bad about that.

Oh well, another regret for the mantelpiece. At least, if this was going to end in regret, it's one from trying too hard rather than not trying at all. Still, I suck. Big time. Big ole asshole right here. Come see the big asshole. Five bucks.

I emailed her back, saying I was very sorry for any discomfort I caused and wished her the best of luck in the future.

Well then. I suck.

This just in

Dear Mr. Fantasy

When did my life get this complicated?: An Update

Ok, here is the situation as it stands. I joined eHarmony a couple weeks ago. I started a conversation with what seems to be a very nice woman, herein referred to as Very Nice Woman. Conversation progresses very slowly, but it progresses still.

Last week, I get bored and go check out Match.com on a lark. While browsing said website I come across the woman of my dreams, herein referred to as Woman of My Dreams. I proceed to spend the next couple days all moony-like, waiting for Woman of My Dreams to reply to my very bold and forward email. Woman of My Dreams finally responds to my email, stating basically what I thought, that she was very flattered by my email but also a little overwhelmed as well. However, she does not reject me outright, so there is hope. I send her an email back yesterday, chatting about what I do, trying to be funny, most likely looking like a crazy fucker and generally trying to hard. I have yet to hear back from her.

Yesterday I also get an email from Very Nice Woman telling me that she's dropping her sister off in Bloomington next weekend and would like to meet me. It is very obvious that Very Nice Woman is interested in me.

So now what do I do? Do I progress with Very Nice Woman while still waiting to see what happens with Woman of My Dreams? Do I tell Very Nice Woman about Woman of My Dreams, even though I already told her I'm a "one person at a time kind of person" which would make me look like a liar and a jerk? Scratch that, I wouldn't like like a liar and a jerk. I AM a liar and a jerk. Unsurprisingly, I spend most of my time thinking about Woman of My Dreams, but if that doesn't work out I'd hate to lose my chance at obviously-interested-in-me Very Nice Woman. Part of me thinks I could just keep things on the down low and see how they work out, but the larger part of me wants to tell everyone how it is because I hate...HATE...hiding things.

So, in a very short space of time my life went from being quiet and boring to sort of quiet and very complicated and confusing. On top of that, I spent all day Sunday in bed in a diabetic shock trying not to slip into a coma. So all in all, it's not been a pleasant weekend.

If there is any positive side to this, it's the fact that my love life should now be a potent source of entertainment to the readers of my blog who are A) married or B) abhor interpersonal relationships. So at least my misery should be fun for other people.

Cameron has never been in love

"Cameron has never been in love - at least, nobody's ever been in love with him. If things don't change for him, he's gonna marry the first girl he lays, and she's gonna treat him like shit, because she will have given him what he has built up in his mind as the end-all, be-all of human existence. She won't respect him, 'cause you can't respect somebody who kisses your ass. It just doesn't work."
- Ferris Bueller's Day Off

See that up there? Read that over again. Carefully. That's me. In a nutshell.

This whole dating business is madness, nonsense, missense, illsense and utter utter stupidity. I haven't even gone on a date and I'm already going crazy. I'm in conversation with one woman on eHarmony. One. There's another one I put on hold. I got curious today and looked around on Match.com. I found a woman so gorgeous, so wonderful I had to register and am currently awaiting profile approval so I can contact her. But what about this first woman? I told her I'm a one person at a time kind of guy. Now I'm a liar. Fuck me.

God fucking damnit, I swear this has to be more trouble than it's worth. GRAAAAAARG. That my friends, is the terrible call of the feeble. I'm going to go stab myself with fire. Why can't it be easy? Why can't I just fast forward to the part where I'm married and happily whipped? I wish I was Indian so my marriage could be arranged for me. That cultural idea has merit, I'm telling you.

And now for something completely different...