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For the first time in years… I watched the Oscars, and wasn’t furious at their outcome. I don’t know if I should attribute this to actually agreeing with the academy members, or… if this year’s movies just weren’t particularly diverse. It was a fine year for movies, but not great. Which is to say that, aside from Brick (which, obviously, wasn’t Oscar material), there weren’t any films that I reacted particularly strongly too. The Departed was good. Nothing that hadn’t been done before, but done particularly well. Babel was really good, but not stereotypical Academy material, and not a film that, despite being really good, I’m going to rant and rave about. Letters From Iwo Jima was pretty good, too. I feel a little mixed about it, actually.

For one, Iwo Jima felt like … a war film, told form the Japanese perspective … by an American. I can’t pin down exactly what it was about the film that made it feel American… but it did? Probably because I’ve never seen a foreign war movie that felt like Saving Private Ryan— which is the sort of feel that Iwo Jima had. The sound editing was VERY crisp. It’s ambient noise and use of positional audio was some of the best I’ve heard in a movie, bar none. There were a few points where it was actually slightly distracting–the idea that the artist tells a lie to show us the truth–where the sounds seemed slightly overdone, but on balance… the sound editing made my ears sizzle.

Unfortunately, Clint doesn’t seem willing to let anyone else compose his scores. Not that I have anything against … simple … music, but sometimes a scene would be so much better with more than one instrument, and more than a small handful of notes…

I also had a problem with the cigarette / blue filters that were used when the film was shot, giving it a sombre, World War II mood. The filters themselves were good, but there were points where color was emphasized by removing the filter from a specific part of the screen– exploding flames, or red blood, for example. Clint, again, is no Robert Rodriguez. His strengths are elsewhere. Best to leave selective use of color to someone better. It was just … distracting–because it wasn’t especially well done.

Right-o.

There were a few other films that came out this year that were … pretty good (worth owning), but nothing epic, nothing stunning…. meh

Pan’s Labyrinth was really good and really dark… but again, not epic, not life changing, although thoroughly enjoyable.

I’m excited for 300. If it fulfills its ambitious previews, it might be the best movie in two years.

This is stupid, and boring.

It’s snowing. Thick, heavy flakes. Again. For the 50th time this month. God, Bozeman’s beautiful. There’s something ugly about Bozeman, too. It bothers me. I can’t put my finger on it. But it bothers me.

Spark notes: Academy Awards didn’t piss me off this year, partially because there weren’t any particularly impressive films.

Obviously, the gods smile upon me. Consider my recent fortunes:

Last night, I didn’t get a chance to grab dinner before my T&C class. So, at 9:30, I head over to Reid to clean some computers and and stuff, and, half-way up, I find a half-dozen abandoned pizzas–obviously left over from some event. They were even vegetarian! So yeah. I definitely got some free pizza for dinner last night (after not getting dinner!). That was sweet.

THEN, walking to work this morning, I found $5 on the ground. I went and bought myself a Red Bull, a Nutrigrain bar, and still had $2.45 left over. Man, that was pretty sweet, too.

Also, I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that it has been SEVEN YEARS since the 90s (god bless them, each and every year). Man, that makes me feel old. The POINT, though, is that it is no longer acceptable to show your midriff in public. Those days are over. There’s no going back. You’re going to have to wait at least ten years before it is once again fashionable to dress like you did in the 90s. Sheesh.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to buy some lottery tickets. =)

It’s snowing outside. A lot. It’s dumping, actually.

Of all the places in the world, it only dumps like this in Bozeman, Montana. To walk through it is to walk through a world of ethereal, whirling whiteness. And, like that scene in Babel, you see noise all around you, but you hear nothing– not even the crunch of your own boots in the snow. It’s as though you step outside, and sound ceases to exist. Fffpt. Gone. …

Then, you step back inside, and a grinding barrage of sound overwhelms you!– the harsh sound of creaking doors, the grating of squeaking boots, booming footsteps, vociferous, rustling coats.

It’s not so, outside.

Outside, you scream, and the sound is sucked away into the dense, whirling whiteness, as though you had no voice of your own.

Across the way is that girl from class, her hair glistening, patchwork of gold and white. She smiles. She calls out, lips and eyes forming words. You hear nothing, but hear it perfectly. Crystal clear.

—

If I say the right words, you’ll forget what they mean. You’ll hear them through the snow, from the form of my lips, and glimmer in my eyes. The right words have no sound, only form, and meaning long forgotten. It’s as though we communicate, but we’ve lost sight of why, of how. “How’s the weather?” No, that’s not the question. “How are you?” Better, or worse. “…” Closer. Too much, but not enough.

But in the snow, across the way, then we communicate. It’s the form of the words that carry their meaning. Not their sounds.

Boy: “Place the turkey in a pre-heated oven.”
Girl: “I don’t know what you mean.”
Boy: “Put the form in a self-addressed, stamped envelope.”
Girl: “I don’t understand.”
Boy: “(   ) (     ) (  ) (   ) (   ).”
Girl: “Mm. And me, you.”

…

boycott my latest personal crisis
boycott starbucks for social justice
boycott war for peace
boycott love for hate
boycott for boyscouts
boycott getting up in the morning.

boycott snow
boycott cold

boycott being ridiculous and unfeeling
boycott truth for art
boycott jesus christ
boycott jesus christ for forgetting us
boycott Allah for boycotting us

boycott humility for grace
boycott wholeness for brokenness
boycott religious motifs

boycott thinking for feeling
boycott feeling for knowing
boycott knowing for ignorance

boycott love for truth
boycott truth for happiness
boycott happiness for screaming emo emotion

boycott sensitivity for objectivity
boycott experience for innocence
boycott alcohol for sobriety

boycott then for now

boycott exceptional-ism for mediocrity

boycott reality for a fantasy
boycott reality for a modicum of happiness
boycott happiness for screaming emo emotion

boycott honesty for affected emotion
boycott sincerity for affected humanity

There’s that one cliché first-date get-to-know-ya whatever question that’s like “if you were an animal, what animal would you be?” Yeah, it’s a stupid question. I mean, let’s be honest. Who cares. You can’t be an animal, unless you’re a Hindu, and even if I wanted the be a cow, the point is that you don’t get to choose. Unless there’s a Sanskrit “previous-life to next-life-form” equivalence chart, in which case I could try to tailor my actions in this life to ensure me birth as a platypus in the next. It’s got to be a delicate balance, though. I mean, wouldn’t it suck if you spent your whole life getting the precise karma coefficient required to come back as an eagle, and, with your dying breath, you killed an ant, and came back as the next animal down, which could be a rhinoceros, for all you know? I mean, that’d be rough. That’d be a pretty big risk. Maybe you’d have to find TWO animals next to each other, in case you accidentally did something good or bad at the last minute.

Maybe I should start an RSS feed for my karma score. I mean, knowing my credit score is interesting, but my karma score… that’d be valuable information! I might drive a little more carefully, for example, if I knew my reincarnation coefficient was at “sewer rat” or, worse still, “ogre”.

Tangent.

The point is that I now have a stupid answer to that stupid question. I mean, Oh, if I could have all those first dates back! Things could be so different!

…

But really, it’s quite obvious. I’d be a goldfish. Duh. I mean, I’m half-way there already, really. Think about it. My skin is scaly and gold… and I love water!

Er. No. Actually, what I was saying is that, mostly, I have the attention span of a goldfish. They have, what is it? A seven second short-term memory? I mean, my memory’s fine, it’s just remembering what I was doing seven seconds ago that gets a bit troubling. But really, I can’t believe she’d do that. That was so out of character for her.

Sorry. That was shameless.

Similarly, though, goldfish are exceptional fish (ah, yes! I’m an exceptional fish!) for their uncanny ability to grow to fill any space. In a small bowl, say, a goldfish might not grow (despite any amount of food) to be any more than 4 or 5cm. In a pond, however, a goldfish might grow to be 25 or 30cm! This is truly amazing!

A line that touches but does not cross a curve.

Similarly amazing is my ability to fill any amount of open space with (STUFF!!). I noted this similarity walking into the long room (not MY room, mind you) in the quad this morning, at some ungodly hour. At some point last night, apparently my own, appropriated, corner just wasn’t big enough for me, and I began to spread on to my third table. There are four tables in the room. I mean, we’re talking big tables, here. And, somehow, my stuff is just everywhere! Books, paper, more papers, pens, stationary, folders… it’s a mess. But it’s only because there’s so much space! With only a 2×2′ desk that I could call my own, my mess would be quite neat and tidy. I just … expand to fill any space.

Rather like a gold-fish.

Also, like a goldfish, I’m seriously reconsidering my grad-school thoughts. The limit of my interest in math, as “X” approaches a grad-school-satisfactory-amount, is … zero, to say nothing of my ABILITY (which, as the course numbers go toward infinity, also approaches zero).

Now, thinking, maybe I should just go buy a goldfish. Oh, the conversations we could have. And are the Dodgers still playing in Brooklyn? I mean, is it even baseball season?