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Catching Up
Jan. 26th, 2011 11:23 amWEDENSDAY/THURSDAY:
Nothing much has happened, but it was a grueling nothing much. Busy at work. Head cold. Breath smells like cooked cauliflower.
FRIDAY:
Ciro made good soup. Dad and I made an expedition to the video game store and bought many video games, on the grounds that we have a video game system and it is very cold out. Many of Dad's and my early expeditions from when I was a wee child similarly centered on buying computer games, mainly graphic adventures.
Finished writing song. Is potentially quite good, although I am currently playing the unplugged version, given that what I have is an accoustic guitar. Think it will be better with a harder edge, although it's not now bad.
SATURDAY:
Having to pull together music not for the film, but to suggest to the editor the tone I want for certain scenes in the film. This is something lots of editors, production designers, and cinematographers ask me for. It is also something I find debilitating and just about the meanest thing you can ask of me. I can't sleep with music on. I don't write with music on. I don't listen to music casually. And when I make a film, I know what I want the music to sound like in terms of tempo and instrumentation, and I find the person to write that for me. I can't just pull preexisting stuff, any more than I can describe a painting to you by finding other people's poems about it.
Hate hate hate hate hate.
Ciro cleverly removed anniversary our date from facebook so that we won't get a million "congratulations!" comments on our wall from people who don't know us well.
23 below. Not an exaggeration. coldest day in Boston in five years.
SUNDAY:
Since I work Monday nights and that was our wedding anniversary, Ciro and I went out to dinner at a mediocre Italian restaurant in town (as it was notably too cold to go in to Boston). There was a fruit fly bothering us, and I caught it out of the air, which is something I can do. What I can't then do is close my fist hard enough to crush it, so I had to sort of wave my hand around so it would get confused and then drop it onto the table and smack it before it flew away. Yet another example of my eccentric but ultimately thorough extermination methods.
Worked out the ending of Digby manuscript, which is easily more than 1000 pages off.
MONDAY:
Still very cold. Went to the dermatologist. Don't have skin cancer, hooray! Do have broken blood vessels which could be zapped with lasers in future if I like. Compelling, since I do like lasers.
There was a brief power outage, but our backup power supplies kept the network and my computer running without a hitch and captions were not interrupted. Dad and I feeling pleased with ourselves and our setup, as though we have just completed a successful test on the lunar module.
I made more soup.
TUESDAY:
Been compulsively hungry the past few days, where I want to steal food from other people so I can eat it, but then am full after I eat maybe a bite of anything. Am forcing my brain to remain in control and ignoring digestive system, which has obviously gone crazy.
Lots of back and forth about a film discussion I'm leading next Friday. Have investigated getting rights for public screenings, and if anybody needs to know this in future, it pretty much all goes through Swank, who are effectively the ASCAP of the movie biz.
REL performed one of her weird dominance displays this afternoon, which always throw me for a loop; I can't for the life of me figure out where she picked up her pack-like social behaviors (segregation of genders, clear alphas, clear in- and out-groups, the strange marking and dominance displays she'll do out of nowhere, unease with non-heteronormativity or un-conformity except in specific proscribed ways, priviledging of any of her experiences as "normal" and "the same for everyone" even in the face of contradictions). I don't even think they're conscious. I am sure that she wouldn't think they were a good idea if I asked her. They're nothing like the behavior of anyone else in the family; they're almost a cartoon of 1950s blue collar ideas I'm pretty sure she's never been exposed to.
Plus yelling. A lot of yelling, interrupting other people, picking fights with them, and then telling them they're making a big deal out of nothing. Usual pattern is she interrupts what someone's doing to demand they do what she wants, they go ahead and start to do it, but she doesn't notice and/or it isn't instant enough, and she starts yelling. Then whoever it is leaves and/or calls her a jerk, and then she yells at them for thinking she's a jerk and blowing things out of proportion and aren't they stupid overreactive people, and after all she doesn't care. If at all possible, she also makes some kind of claim to authority on whatever subject, usually something the person being asked the favor knows more about, and invades their physical space (but while following the "no touching" rule, so it's not aggressive, right?)*
Since I was feeling a bit off today, I thought "hey, since human-style reactions to this don't seem to have effect, let's try let's try animal ones," so when she got in my face I spit on her. Then I refused to talk to her until she apologizes to me, and stared her down until she fled the room. This is pretty much an unreasonable way to act, and not especially enjoyable, but I'm at least somewhat intrigued to find out how it plays out ultimately.
I will add that I have a side fascination with how upset people are when you spit on them, even when they are perfectly comfortable drinking from your water glass, and were not raised in culture in which this is a particular insult, or even happens at all. But for whatever reason, people find this more violating than, say, hair pulling. Spitting is an insult that is at worst gross, and hair pulling is an assault which can do injury. You would not think this based on people's reactions.
* Strangest of all, she does this even to people who are taller and much more physically violent than her, not to mention people with higher social standing. And she tries to make territorial claims not only to common areas, but to other people's spaces. Other taller meaner people. I'm relatively pacifistic in most situations, although not globally, and it's an ongoing challenge to not knock her teeth out and/or smother her to death. Scarlett feels similarly, minus the pacifism. It is outright bizarre to me she hasn't been punched in the face more times. Her actions seem counter to her own survival.** I am surprised to fully understand a Flannery O'Connor character in a non-superficial way:
"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
** This particular blowup was for me not moving fast enough when she demanded I move to a different space on the sofa . . . through a space she was occupying. My 30 seconds of slowness (and I know the time because I was looking at something timed I was doing) was me gathering my stuff and asking her to pause what she was doing so that I could move through the space I needed to move through in order to move.
Nothing much has happened, but it was a grueling nothing much. Busy at work. Head cold. Breath smells like cooked cauliflower.
FRIDAY:
Ciro made good soup. Dad and I made an expedition to the video game store and bought many video games, on the grounds that we have a video game system and it is very cold out. Many of Dad's and my early expeditions from when I was a wee child similarly centered on buying computer games, mainly graphic adventures.
Finished writing song. Is potentially quite good, although I am currently playing the unplugged version, given that what I have is an accoustic guitar. Think it will be better with a harder edge, although it's not now bad.
SATURDAY:
Having to pull together music not for the film, but to suggest to the editor the tone I want for certain scenes in the film. This is something lots of editors, production designers, and cinematographers ask me for. It is also something I find debilitating and just about the meanest thing you can ask of me. I can't sleep with music on. I don't write with music on. I don't listen to music casually. And when I make a film, I know what I want the music to sound like in terms of tempo and instrumentation, and I find the person to write that for me. I can't just pull preexisting stuff, any more than I can describe a painting to you by finding other people's poems about it.
Hate hate hate hate hate.
Ciro cleverly removed anniversary our date from facebook so that we won't get a million "congratulations!" comments on our wall from people who don't know us well.
23 below. Not an exaggeration. coldest day in Boston in five years.
SUNDAY:
Since I work Monday nights and that was our wedding anniversary, Ciro and I went out to dinner at a mediocre Italian restaurant in town (as it was notably too cold to go in to Boston). There was a fruit fly bothering us, and I caught it out of the air, which is something I can do. What I can't then do is close my fist hard enough to crush it, so I had to sort of wave my hand around so it would get confused and then drop it onto the table and smack it before it flew away. Yet another example of my eccentric but ultimately thorough extermination methods.
Worked out the ending of Digby manuscript, which is easily more than 1000 pages off.
MONDAY:
Still very cold. Went to the dermatologist. Don't have skin cancer, hooray! Do have broken blood vessels which could be zapped with lasers in future if I like. Compelling, since I do like lasers.
There was a brief power outage, but our backup power supplies kept the network and my computer running without a hitch and captions were not interrupted. Dad and I feeling pleased with ourselves and our setup, as though we have just completed a successful test on the lunar module.
I made more soup.
TUESDAY:
Been compulsively hungry the past few days, where I want to steal food from other people so I can eat it, but then am full after I eat maybe a bite of anything. Am forcing my brain to remain in control and ignoring digestive system, which has obviously gone crazy.
Lots of back and forth about a film discussion I'm leading next Friday. Have investigated getting rights for public screenings, and if anybody needs to know this in future, it pretty much all goes through Swank, who are effectively the ASCAP of the movie biz.
REL performed one of her weird dominance displays this afternoon, which always throw me for a loop; I can't for the life of me figure out where she picked up her pack-like social behaviors (segregation of genders, clear alphas, clear in- and out-groups, the strange marking and dominance displays she'll do out of nowhere, unease with non-heteronormativity or un-conformity except in specific proscribed ways, priviledging of any of her experiences as "normal" and "the same for everyone" even in the face of contradictions). I don't even think they're conscious. I am sure that she wouldn't think they were a good idea if I asked her. They're nothing like the behavior of anyone else in the family; they're almost a cartoon of 1950s blue collar ideas I'm pretty sure she's never been exposed to.
Plus yelling. A lot of yelling, interrupting other people, picking fights with them, and then telling them they're making a big deal out of nothing. Usual pattern is she interrupts what someone's doing to demand they do what she wants, they go ahead and start to do it, but she doesn't notice and/or it isn't instant enough, and she starts yelling. Then whoever it is leaves and/or calls her a jerk, and then she yells at them for thinking she's a jerk and blowing things out of proportion and aren't they stupid overreactive people, and after all she doesn't care. If at all possible, she also makes some kind of claim to authority on whatever subject, usually something the person being asked the favor knows more about, and invades their physical space (but while following the "no touching" rule, so it's not aggressive, right?)*
Since I was feeling a bit off today, I thought "hey, since human-style reactions to this don't seem to have effect, let's try let's try animal ones," so when she got in my face I spit on her. Then I refused to talk to her until she apologizes to me, and stared her down until she fled the room. This is pretty much an unreasonable way to act, and not especially enjoyable, but I'm at least somewhat intrigued to find out how it plays out ultimately.
I will add that I have a side fascination with how upset people are when you spit on them, even when they are perfectly comfortable drinking from your water glass, and were not raised in culture in which this is a particular insult, or even happens at all. But for whatever reason, people find this more violating than, say, hair pulling. Spitting is an insult that is at worst gross, and hair pulling is an assault which can do injury. You would not think this based on people's reactions.
* Strangest of all, she does this even to people who are taller and much more physically violent than her, not to mention people with higher social standing. And she tries to make territorial claims not only to common areas, but to other people's spaces. Other taller meaner people. I'm relatively pacifistic in most situations, although not globally, and it's an ongoing challenge to not knock her teeth out and/or smother her to death. Scarlett feels similarly, minus the pacifism. It is outright bizarre to me she hasn't been punched in the face more times. Her actions seem counter to her own survival.** I am surprised to fully understand a Flannery O'Connor character in a non-superficial way:
"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
** This particular blowup was for me not moving fast enough when she demanded I move to a different space on the sofa . . . through a space she was occupying. My 30 seconds of slowness (and I know the time because I was looking at something timed I was doing) was me gathering my stuff and asking her to pause what she was doing so that I could move through the space I needed to move through in order to move.
