Round 1: All my problems smell like you

It's been.... an eventful week. Trying to reconcile the last of the things I've gotta do with my desire to break already. And the world is, like, flippin out all around me. I need some escapism. I need SWP.

I was working Monday night. Whereas the previous Thursday had been somewhat transcendent... it was just a lot of fun - this instance was pretty dry. It has a lot to do with the people I end up working with. The girl, the serious one with the glasses and the long-sleeve shirt seemed to take no regard to me one way or the other, never introduced herself (though to be fair, I never did either. I've actually worked with her before a few weeks ago, too.) The other guy was just... some dude. I did some riffing and he kinda no-sold it, and that's all I've got.

At the beginning of the shift, I ran into two of my co-workers, who apparently had been having a discussion about me (not one of those "talk behind your back" deals, just a "speak of the devil" type-thing.) They asked whether I was too nice to make fun of this other co-worker of ours. I paused for a moment and asked... "...to his face?" Laughs. The truth is, I'd known that guy in grade school and everybody made fun of him. And a lot of the personality traits that made him a target are still there. But while I was really on top of that stuff in grade 6, I got to the point in high school where I felt bad for picking easy targets. By grade 8 I (famously) started targeting people who really seemed to have it coming, and by midway through high school I was exclusively mocking people who thought they were better than me. That's not to say I won't rib the guy now, but times change, and I'm probably a lot less eager to cut him up that way.

At least, that's what I prefer to think.

I mean, I've made fun of people who didn't deserve it, mostly in years past, and then felt bad after. Then I took it as a lesson not to do again.

Anyway, that day was pretty tedious. We were watching the Faux Fire (actually Faux Fire 2) and that was the source of the riffing I was doing. Also I saw a guy who only had thumb-pinky on his left hand. Trippy. I was careful not to stare, although he probably gets that a lot.

Anyway. Tuesday. We watched an Ozu film in History, "I was Born But..." which was interesting given that the Japanese silent film industry depended on live narrators (Benshi performers) to do dialogue, so it was a bit more like a sound film. Also we got our papers back. I didn't do great but all things considered (not much faith in the paper anyway, marks lost for lateness) I think my mark was respectable. I just couldn't seem to claw my way out of this first semester slump.

Anyway. Between classes, I head to the lounge of the Innis first floor and I see this dude I've run into a few times around class. I don't know him that well but he sees me and points out my haircut (by now a few weeks old but anyway.) We get to talking, he asks what I do, I ask him what he does... it wasn't all that interesting of a conversation, but it was nice to talk with someone I'd never sat down and talked with before. There are certain people in my film classes that kinda act like dicks to me for no reason, possibly because they are dicks and don't mean anything by it. I don't take it personally either, I think we'd maybe get along if they weren't curt and aloof, but that's them. But by now I've got this rather unfortunate opinion of them that I don't usually like to have of people.

The next screening that day was Pulse, nominally a J-Horror film with sci-fi aspects. Coming out of it, my friend Chelsea and I agreed it was really bad, not very enjoyable at all. It was good for illustrating the points for the lecture, but this all leads to a point that became clear to me over the course of the semester and was hammered home on Wednesday. I was joking around about Pulse and I said out loud to the TA, "I'm gonna blow your mind. It starts in a garden, ends on a boat... it's a Biblical narrative. Eden to Noah." I meant it as a joke and I think he heard it as such but he said that if I could continue putting together slapdash theses like that I would go very far in academia, not even kidding. I shuddered. My thinking, after going over all these readings and everything, seeing how much bullshit is slung in the name of film study, is that Academic Film Study is the art of taking something meant purely for enjoyment and draining it of every ounce of enjoyability. Films are suddenly no longer intended to be action or comedy, but must be considered in terms of Freud and Baudrillard and others. Anything that cannot be perceived in this way is not valued and therefore cast off. I'm not saying there's no room for academic film study, but I'm saying the volume of bullshit flying around is sometimes staggering and to me, very disheartening. It's partly why I dropped Cinema Studies as a major, and just cling to it as a minor.

In the face of that mini-rant, the remainder of the day seems a bit minor. I wish I'd gotten to this sooner so I could recall the weather fluctuations and my moods changes. All I can really think of is how stressed out the news is making me. There was that whole coalition government notion that got everyone all pissy. Me, I don't even care. Unflinching, suffused with apathy. One shitty government, another, I just can't care. But people got really worked up. I used to care - years ago, before I was actually able to vote and even for a while after. Damn did I get cynical.

I got my AmLit test back. I felt like I did okay if not great on it, and yet my mark read "63 - good work." I did not think I got a 63, and I did not think it was particularly good work, so I felt bad. Then I double-checked and found out the TA had added up my mark wrong, dropping about 10 marks from the total. What a relief. Now I just gotta figure out how to improve that mark.

Today I ran my errands, the usual Thursday stuff... it's getting colder. I was riding the train home yesterday and I found myself enjoying the CanLit book I had to read, by Margaret Laurence - which is good since I was supposed to finish it a week or so ago. Hrm.

Yeah, really on to pof things. More later, I hope. Keep on rockin'
-Scott