The Film Noir Experience

Smoking Monkey

That is the teaser trailer for the animated film John has been working on.  He has been toiling late into night, sitting at his desk which happens to be at the foot of our bed.  Sometimes he laughs while he works.  Sometimes he swears, but after he's edited he always come to bed happy.  And you can't beat that.  

I learned tonight that a teaser trailer is pretty much as advertised, it just teases.  Like the Transformers trailer, which tells you nothing about the film just teases you with the notion of its potential goodness (or entertaining-ness or badass-ness).  So, on that note, I can not tell you what else I know about the film other than to say that the ideas that have been shared with me are a riot and that I look forward to him finishing this piece.  

Posted by Kate at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, I'm sitting here listening to coffee brew and munching on a carrot and some pasta salad.  There is bacon in my pasta salad.  As I eat I wonder why it is that everything on this island somehow ends up having bacon in it.  No, seriously.  If they can put bacon in it, they have.  Except beans, for some reason.  I've seen baked beans with sausage but I have yet to see a can of baked beans with bacon.  There is also about 800 calories in my pasta salad. That's why I'm eating it with a carrot instead of with the 400 calorie fresh cream banana boat I wanted to eat it with.  I'm making a fresh pot of coffee because John said to me recently, "I don't think its good to drink the same pot of coffee two days in a row."  I think its fine, but then my coffee habits have always been questionable.

 

So far today I've been reading for my dissertation. Soon, when I'm done with my carrot and pasta salad I will pour myself some coffee that I will mix with milk and ice and fake sugar and I will get cracking on some writing for my dissertation.  I can't wait for this to be done.  Even if it sucks.  I keep thinking about what I'm going to do once its done but that just makes me sad.  I feel like I ought to be asking someone for advice, but I have no idea who that would be. Every time I come up with a plan something happens to nix it.  Like its doubtful I'll be able to make enough on 20 hours a week to live off of.  Or, my fiancee tries to talk me out of staying in Wales because he thinks I'm too good for him.   And, then I read about what everyone else is up to and everyone else seems excited and happy about where they are and what's going on in their lives but I feel like fate is conspiring against me and that I can only be happy for 37 seconds at a time.  This sucks.  I hate it.

Posted by Kate at 02:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This will be the second time I have written this entry.

 

 

My love monkey is ill.  He has come down with a bug (that I am not yet completely over).  He is currently taking another nap.

 

Today, after being prodded by an alarm that wasn't my own (and that sounded startlingly like a smoke detector) I ventured forth and went to the library.  Libraries are wonderful repositories of words.  Some of those words are printed on pieces of paper that are then bounded in volumes.  And, mostly those words seem to be part of longer sequences known as "sentences".  Some of these "sentences" were even of use today.  My dissertation supervisor has gone to Africa. I promised him pages to read upon his return.  More precisely he's gone some place in Nigeria, a plateau, where it rains at or around 1 p.m. every day.  Or, maybe it was 11 a.m.  Either way, it rains about the same time every day I thought, "That's incredible."  Clearly, he thought so as well because we obviously discussed it.  I have waited all day for it to rain here and all day I have been disappointed.  Although, I suppose I shouldn't be disappointed because that means I didn't get wet on walks to and from the library.  (Oh, and by the way, the new flat is so much closer to campus I would like to set fire to the description of the last place I lived that said, "walking distance to campus", which was so much a lie, as not really the full truth.  It took me fifteen to walk to school today.  It used to take me nearly half an hour.)

And while we're talking about the last place, I would just like to say I think I'm about to get hosed on the bond.  Sure, the tap was broken, but it has been broken since january and I told her so four times.  There comes a time in every woman's life where she just has to figure if the person owning the property isn't interested in fixing it, then its not really worth the hassle.  Maybe I'm wrong about these things. But, whatever.  I have to go cuddle an ill love monkey. 

 

 

Posted by Kate at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 

My Mother (who is pictured above.)  has this theory.  Well, its less of a theory than a routine.  She figures that as long as she has not seen it, she can class it as new. This is important when one of your favorite shows, Jeeves and Wooster, is no longer in production.  Since she enjoys the show and watching its new episodes so much, she also figures that she should stretch out the watching of the new ones for as long as she can.  So, she is watching them all in order, working her way through the seasons and every time she gets to a new episode, she goes back to the beginning and starts again.  Sure, that means that she's seen the first one buckets of times, (and as a matter of fact, so have I) but she still finds it enjoyable. (Funnily enough, I still find it enjoyable.  Its the one where Bertie's cousins are trying to get into the seekers.  Its also the one where Bertie gets done for trying to knick a constable's hat.) Keep my Mother's theory in mind.

 

About two months ago, we got Firefly on DVD under the recommendation of my friends back home and also a bar buddy of John's.  We watched the first episode, and I was immediately enthralled.  John enjoyed the show, but said that he had seen the movie Serenity and that sort of ruined the show for him.  Bummer.  So, I've been slowly watching the series, parcelling it out in bits, at first so as not to get too far ahead of John.  Recently, however, my Mother's theory has come into play. 

They are making no more of them.  And, I like them so I want to stretch out the newness of them for as long as possible.  John said to me the other day, "Haven't you already seen that one?"  And, the answer was, "yes.  Yes, I have."  But, these things hold up to repeated viewings, they are that well written.  In a sense, the remind me a little of Sports Night, another one of my favorite shows no longer in production.  Little comments or reminders come up in later episodes, I'm catching things I didn't catch the first time.  Which is exciting.  In the first episode, Kaylee, the ship's engineer points out something that could possibly go on the fritz and leave them drifting that becomes an important plot point in a later episode.  But, even before you get to that, if we're talking about the writing, we have to talk about how well-written the characters are.  I know people who are fiercely idealistic like the captain who would also batter you for abusing their friends.  I also know people so good natured that they can do no wrong. 

 

I am only about half way through the season, and having just gone back to episode one again yesterday I don't expect to be making swift progress any time soon.  But, I highly recommend the show.   I say yes.

Posted by Kate at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't know quite how taxes work here in the UK, but I do know that they have a council tax.  Apparently where we live the council tax is about 800 pounds sterling a year.  Now, I think thats a lot of money to fork out for property tax on property I don't own.  But, people keep telling me that its not property tax. 

 

As a student, I don't have to pay, which is lovely.  However, I won't be a student forever and not having a job it gives me one more thing to worry about money-wise. Anyway, the guy from the Cardiff council came along today to let us know that we would probably be owing money shortly.  Apparently the flat  has been empty since April, so he wanted to know when we moved in.  So, I got to go through the whole thing.  We've had the flat since June 9th, but I didn't move my stuff in until the 26th and then we went on holiday, so technically, we've only really been living in the flat for a week.  (And, what a week its been!)  Apparently, because I'm a student, John is going to get a discount and because we moved in after the start of the year, we'll also be getting a pro-rated council tax bill. 

 

To be honest, I only answered the buzz because I was hoping the cable was three days early.  Clearly, I was wrong.   

Posted by Kate at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes I wonder what its like to feel like a real person.  This, of course, is sort of a ridiculous thing to wonder because when I think person, I generally think human being, and I definitely fit the qualifications for one of those.  Its just, I don't know, sometimes I have small philosophical quarrels with myself and sometimes I have small debates about physics and sometime sI wonder what its like to be real or be a person or be a real person.  Maybe I'm not making sense.  Maybe I should back up. 

 

How do you define a person?  Is personhood a physcological state?  Is it a physical state?  Is it a legal state?  See, these are the questions I ask myself.  More importantly, these are questions I ask myself when I should be doing other things, like maybe getting back to my literature since I'm obviously not sleeping.   

Posted by Kate at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Moving is stressful.  I heard somewhere that it was on the top ten list of stressful things that one does in one's life and so I went out in search of support for this on the internet.  Not finding what I was looking for (preferably something involving research that listed ten stressors) I found this  (and this)  that agrees with me that folklore says moving is stressing. None of that really matters except that I find myself in an incredibly stressed out place right now having just moved and gone on vacation, and so its nice that someone agrees with me that I have a reason to feel a little stressed.  (and, not even a vacation really.  More like taking my fiancee home to meet everyone, which is less a vacation than a scramble to see people and to keep my introverted sweetie from freaking out about all the people suddenly interested in every aspect of his life.)  As part of my moving tasks, I had to switch my internet service over to my new place.

 

Now, I don't mind saying that utilities and services such as internet and phone are things, in general, that I think are run rather stupidly in Britain.  Really, its just the billing I have a problem with.  For starters, because I refuse to give them my bank details, I am paying an extra couple of pounds a month as some sort of billing processing fee.  They won't just set up my account to automatically bill to my credit card (which would be the most convenient thing for me).  Maybe I'm just a dumbass and I haven't figured out how to do this yet.  However, daft as I may be, none of the times I have called to pay my bill over the phone have they offered to set anything up for me.  Regardless of this, I find myself stuck with the company I am currently buying internet off of because a. I have a contract that runs through October, and b. because the flat that John and I moved into is already wired for the company I have an account with. This, I suppose, I should be grateful for.  I'm not particularly overjoyed.  On top of this, because the flat is wired with this cable company, the landlord didn't feel it was necessary to put an aerial on the roof, so at the moment we don't even get the local stations.  John had a portable aerial, and we tried that for awhile, but someone had to hold it, standing on one foot facing north and humming god save the queen in order to get a fuzzy picture.  So, it seems, that not only do we need to change over my internet, we also need to upgrade the package so that we can get the basic channels. 

 

After having spent half an hour on hold with them, I finally listened to the inane, pre-recorded chatter on the line I realized that I could be doing this moving house crap online.  So, I went back into the house (I had previously been using a payphone) to make the arrangements.  Now, I figure since we're getting cable and we already have internet, that I want a landline as well.  I know what you're thinking, why go to the trouble and added expense of adding a phone to the mess?  Simple, it seems with the tv packages offered by the stupid company I have my internet from, I have to rent a phone line from them anyway in order to get tv and mobile phones and VoIP calling doesn't always give you great reception.  (As a matter of fact, there are places in Cardiff, in particular in my flat where I don't get cell phone reception at all. Oh, and for some reason Skype is echo-y 9 times out of 10 when I call home).  I could go on, but why bother?  The point is, I'm going to have another, more reliable way of making and getting international phone calls and that makes me happy as I miss the pants off of everyone back home. 

 

So, I go through all the trouble of picking out packages and filling out forms and at the very end of it, the first time I fill out everything my request is rejected by the website because of the installation date.  Well, I think, at least I know what I want when I fill out the forms again.  I pick a new date and they say that they'll "take care of the rest" and, of course, to have a good move!  Which just makes me want to roll my eyes. This company, in the 9 months or so I've been using their services, hasn't been particularly helpful.  Oh well, we'll see how the rest of this goes.  I just hope I picked the right packages and that I won't be paying through the nose for the services they're going to be giving me. 

general, that I think are run rather stupidly in Britain.  Really, its just the billing I have a problem with.  For starters, because I refuse to give them my bank details, I am paying an extra couple of pounds a month as some sort of billing processing fee.  They won't just set up my account to automatically bill to my credit card (which would be the most convenient thing for me).  Maybe I'm just a dumbass and I haven't figured out how to do this yet.  However, daft as I may be, none of the times I have called to pay my bill over the phone have they offered to set anything up for me.  Regardless of this, I find myself stuck with the company I am currently buying internet off of because a. I have a contract that runs through October, and b. because the flat that John and I moved into is already wired for the company I have an account with. This, I suppose, I should be grateful for.  I'm not particularly overjoyed.  On top of this, because the flat is wired with this cable company, the landlord didn't feel it was necessary to put an aerial on the roof, so at the moment we don't even get the local stations.  John had a portable aerial, and we tried that for awhile, but someone had to hold it, standing on one foot facing north and humming god save the queen in order to get a fuzzy picture.  So, it seems, that not only do we need to change over my internet, we also need to upgrade the package so that we can get the basic channels. 

 

After having spent half an hour on hold with them, I finally listened to the inane, pre-recorded chatter on the line I realized that I could be doing this moving house crap online.  So, I went back into the house (I had previously been using a payphone) to make the arrangements.  Now, I figure since we're getting cable and we already have internet, that I want a landline as well.  I know what you're thinking, why go to the trouble and added expense of adding a phone to the mess?  Simple, it seems with the tv packages offered by the stupid company I have my internet from, I have to rent a phone line from them anyway in order to get tv and mobile phones and VoIP calling doesn't always give you great reception.  (As a matter of fact, there are places in Cardiff, in particular in my flat where I don't get cell phone reception at all. Oh, and for some reason Skype is echo-y 9 times out of 10 when I call home).  I could go on, but why bother?  The point is, I'm going to have another, more reliable way of making and getting international phone calls and that makes me happy as I miss the pants off of everyone back home. 

 

So, I go through all the trouble of picking out packages and filling out forms and at the very end of it, the first time I fill out everything my request is rejected by the website because of the installation date.  Well, I think, at least I know what I want when I fill out the forms again.  I pick a new date and they say that they'll "take care of the rest" and, of course, to have a good move!  Which just makes me want to roll my eyes. This company, in the 9 months or so I've been using their services, hasn't been particularly helpful.  Oh well, we'll see how the rest of this goes.  I just hope I picked the right packages and that I won't be paying through the nose for the services they're going to be giving me. 

Posted by Kate at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As can be expected when I reach a point of too much stress (I don't know if its this way with other people, too or not) I pretty just shut down and have to take some time off to just chill out or things get infinitely worse (example of infinitely worse: insomnia, uncontrollable crying, starving/binging, etc.  In short, what I'm saying is, there is a point where one can see another depressive episode on the horizon and one has an opportunity to do something about it.)  Unfortunately with stress and life, you can't necessarily take a day off from everything.  For example, there is laundry that must be done and food that must be bought in order to feed mouths (mines and Johns) that must be fed and there is, most importantly, rent that must be paid.  But, now that most of those things are done, I am in a position to sit back, relax and work on my dissertation.  Wait, that wasn't in the plan.  The plan was to sit back and relax.  I know.  That is relaxing.  Getting something done, having a sense of accomplishment makes me feel more relaxed and that makes me feel better about things in general. 

I know I only have, what, 2 actual returning readers, and if so I'm sure you're reading about the same things over and over and over again.  I seem to talk about the same things a lot.  I don't know.  I seem to figure things out and then forget things and have to figure things out again.  And, every time I figure something out it hits me and it seems like a revelation and I have to tell everyone about it.

 

My friend Stephanie was in London about a month ago and I went to see her while she was there. She told me about a book she had read about a woman who got divorced and then went on a little road trup and figured some things out.  I'll see if I can't find out what the book is called.  Anyway, Stephy said that one of this woman's revelations was that the reason why people tend to be so unhappy is that there is something they really reallywant to do, and they just aren't doing it.  Something they want to do and are capable of doing, I might add.  I was reading a few of my favorite blogs today, more on these to come, and it occurred to me that I was incredibly envious of them because they were doing what I want to do.  They are writing and having their stuff looked at on a regular basis.  I want to write and have stuff looked at on a regular basis.  And, there's nothing stopping me from doing so.  I'm even paying for space to do so, but I'm just not doing it on a regular basis.  Why am I not doing it? I have tons of material.  I'm an American living abroad.  I could write about that experience.  I could write about Wales.  I could write about Graduate school or my masters or about getting married.  But, am I?  No.  Instead I'm having weird little freak outs about not having time to do anything I want to do and not being able to get anything done when clearly this is not the case.  I was able to move in with John, (another topic I could be writing about) I was able to get into the masters program I'm in, I was able to complete the diploma stage and pick an interesting dissertation topic.  I'm clearly capable of making things happen, mostly I think I just have to stop thinking about it.  And, on that note, I'm going to go back to working on my dissertation for a little bit and then We'll see what happens.  

Posted by Kate at 08:57 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

“You think I’m talking just to hear myself talk?”  –Bill Cosby.

    Maybe I do like the sound of my own voice.  I don’t know.  I do know that I love language.  All language.  My language.  I like the well-crafted sonnets of John Donne as much as I like the colorful metaphor and imagery put forth by the Manic Street Preachers.  I find both to be evocative.  
    I must be weird.  I like being alone.  I like silence.  I like space.  These are not human norms.  Preliterate, tribal societies don’t have the concept of personal space that we have.  Life is a social thing, something that is spent, by default talking with and being near the same small group of people all the time.  I dig my clique, don’t get me wrong.  And I would go to great ends to see them happy and safe.  I know, that would make me not weird.  
    Its more... I like to talk about ideas.  Language is an idea.  Language is a different idea for everyone.  This is something that we do all day, everyday and I suppose in the space of our tribes, what we say, what we reference is common.  You don’t have to bother to define it further, because you were all there when it happened and saw it happen and understand what is being described and what is meant.  Guess you had to be there.  Literacy changes that.  Literacy creates language that spans time, place, class, and gender.  It gives language the appearance of being stark, immutable and the status quo.  Maybe its that I do a lot of identity theorizing.  But written/oral, person/persona, image/content, these are distinctions I can make and do make.  When I talk, I like talking about ideas.  Feelings are for feeling and living is for living they don’t need to be discussed.  I like to separate ideas out from emotions so that, like play-doh I can observe them, roll them over and manipulate them.  I like to engage with them.  Maybe that’s not weird.
    I like saying, “ I learned this thing...” And I like getting excited about it and I like telling people about it.  I like when this happens for other people.  The classical world doesn’t interest me, except when I get to hear it filtered through the excitement and presentation of my friend Elizabeth.  So, maybe this isn’t separating things from emotion... maybe its just separating them from things that aren’t love.  My point is, she’s not telling me about what’s going on in her life or what people were wearing, she’s connecting with the past and something beyond the immediate, getting excited about it and sharing it.  I like that.  I like that a lot.  
    

 

--August 2005 

Posted by Kate at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am incredibly sad.  I would like to say that is because I am home after having been back home but this is doubtfully the case.  More, I think its that I'm depressed because its not so much that I feel sad as that I don't really feel anything at all.  And, to be honest, I've felt this coming on for awhile now, but part of me really thought that if I just made to the states, or if I just made it back here I'd be okay.  However, anyone whose ever been depressed can tell you that "just making it through" things doesn't make you better... it just means you're still not well and that you didn't enjoy whatever it is that you've just "made it through".  I fucking hate that.  But, then I could just be over-reacting and this could be jet lag and I could wake up in the morning and feel and be spectacular.  I don't see this happening, but it is a possibility. 

 

We were sitting on the plane in Newark, and had been for about forty-five minutes when the pilot announced that we were somewhere around 30 or 40 in line to take off.  He said he didn't know why there were massive delays, but that there were massive delays.  In my head, I saw the massive delays caused by a few people on different airplanes simulataneously being freaking out and having enough of being on planes.  My worst fear was that the flight was going to be grounded and that John would have to go back through immigration or some shit like that and be thumbed scanned again so that we could stay in a shitty hotel in New Jersey while the airline sorted some other way to get us home.  I also had an incredible urge to cry on the flight partly from being tired of being at the whim of other people's plans and (at least in my head) other people's emotions and partly  because crying just seemed like a good idea at the time.  I settled for falling asleep with my neck wrenched upward which meant that I woke up in incredible pain (and was pained for the journey by the time we finally got off the ground an hour and a half late).  

 

Mostly right now, I am sitting in my house trying to remember where I put my phone card and thinking that my friends in Wales don't really know me.  But, then I don't think I really know me anymore, either.  I do, however, really, really miss my Iowa friends and am incredibly bummed that I don't get to see more of them, more often.  

Posted by Kate at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)