Ma malaise
Mar. 18th, 2006 01:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yrmencynI've been in a pretty bad funk the past week or so. I've had some up moments, like going and eating out with French folk on Wednesday night, but overall I've just felt... off. There have been other emotions on top, of course -- it's not like I've been sitting in a padded room bemoaning my sorry fate -- but there's been this constant, underlying malaise that keeps poking its head up. I finally identified it tonight while I was talking with Mandi: I'm nostalgic/homesick (two sides of the same coin, really). I miss my friends in Ohio, terribly. Luckily for me, I'm headed up soon, so until then I've just got to deal. This has all sorts of potential ramifications running through my head... part of me wants to say "see, this is what your heart is telling you to do." Another part of me notes that this is really symptomatic of "I wish I could go back to college" syndrome, and that I'll find that nothing is as I remember it. I have to find some sort of balance between the halves of my schizo brain, because as it is now I'm just trading in raw emotion, and that's not only unsettling, it's profoundly irresponsible. In retrospect, I probably should have gone up over winter break and damn the finances... I really could have used that little 'fix'. Above all this hovers Indiana, Damocletian. As I told Shane this evening, I almost don't even care anymore if I get in or not, I just want it to stop flapping around above my head like a manic bat, adding to my general dis-ease. This whole situation needs to be resolved and quickly, because it's ruining my carefully crafted façade of self-deprecation and wise jocularity.
On related notes: I'm trying to figure out where to stay. Some of this depends on the madness that is COTA - do they still just do a quick visual check of your student ID, or have they set up some fancy swipy thing? Because, in all laziness, talyr and squish's places are closer to a bus line (I think), but if I can't use the bus the rennie house is closer to the campus area (big plus even for my scary calves), plus I get the impression it functions as a common gathering point? Give me some input here. (And thank you, everyone, for your offers of housing; I appreciate it.)
Rosepurr, could you get me some sort of contact info for lit_girl? I just found her comments, but she's less simple to web-stalk than most.
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I went with Erin and Hans to see V for Vendetta today. Hans had been describing it in very action movie terms, all Matrix etc, and I didn't care less. Until, that is, I read Lev Grossman's write-up in TIME and saw Natalie Portman's Daily Show appearance a couple nights ago, and realized that Hans' impressions weren't really the most accurate. Likely consequently, while Hans hated it, Erin and I loved it. The film is profoundly disturbing. It plays with our basic moral judgments about order, conformity, security, and freedom, all while referencing (sometimes a tad anviliciously, I'll admit) the visual and verbal propagandist touchstones of the past century (look at some production stills: the High Chancellor's addresses look palpably Hitleresque without really directly referencing Nazis at all). What's most shocking is the true catalyst of the art. The comic on which the movie is based (Shane owns the entire bound edition; I'll be reading it, although I strongly dislike the art style) is reacting not to the preset Bush administration, but to Britain's Thatcher administration, contemporaneous to our own Reagan presidency. Yet, the film glosses quite well in the current political climate, both because of judicious alteration on the part of the Wachowski brothers, I'm sure, and because it's applicable already. Different people, I'm sure, will take different lessons from the film. I took it as a call to arms, and resolution never to be silent, never to be unheard, and for all its flaws (all movies have flaws) I found it quite moving. All this not to mention a generally tight script (including some virtuosic alliteration) and some truly gorgeous visuals.
Just go see the movie, really. Even if you tend to shy away from comic-book movies (as I do), go. It's not a superhero movie, occasional excessive set piece fights aside.
On related notes: I'm trying to figure out where to stay. Some of this depends on the madness that is COTA - do they still just do a quick visual check of your student ID, or have they set up some fancy swipy thing? Because, in all laziness, talyr and squish's places are closer to a bus line (I think), but if I can't use the bus the rennie house is closer to the campus area (big plus even for my scary calves), plus I get the impression it functions as a common gathering point? Give me some input here. (And thank you, everyone, for your offers of housing; I appreciate it.)
Rosepurr, could you get me some sort of contact info for lit_girl? I just found her comments, but she's less simple to web-stalk than most.
--------------
I went with Erin and Hans to see V for Vendetta today. Hans had been describing it in very action movie terms, all Matrix etc, and I didn't care less. Until, that is, I read Lev Grossman's write-up in TIME and saw Natalie Portman's Daily Show appearance a couple nights ago, and realized that Hans' impressions weren't really the most accurate. Likely consequently, while Hans hated it, Erin and I loved it. The film is profoundly disturbing. It plays with our basic moral judgments about order, conformity, security, and freedom, all while referencing (sometimes a tad anviliciously, I'll admit) the visual and verbal propagandist touchstones of the past century (look at some production stills: the High Chancellor's addresses look palpably Hitleresque without really directly referencing Nazis at all). What's most shocking is the true catalyst of the art. The comic on which the movie is based (Shane owns the entire bound edition; I'll be reading it, although I strongly dislike the art style) is reacting not to the preset Bush administration, but to Britain's Thatcher administration, contemporaneous to our own Reagan presidency. Yet, the film glosses quite well in the current political climate, both because of judicious alteration on the part of the Wachowski brothers, I'm sure, and because it's applicable already. Different people, I'm sure, will take different lessons from the film. I took it as a call to arms, and resolution never to be silent, never to be unheard, and for all its flaws (all movies have flaws) I found it quite moving. All this not to mention a generally tight script (including some virtuosic alliteration) and some truly gorgeous visuals.
Just go see the movie, really. Even if you tend to shy away from comic-book movies (as I do), go. It's not a superhero movie, occasional excessive set piece fights aside.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 07:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 12:34 pm (UTC)there's no major check of Buck•IDs, Rennie house is frequently a common gathering point and is on very near two Bus Routes (both to campus and along Indianola. (The COTA site now has some stuff online)
Make descisions about what you'll do in either outcome of the Iowa situation. That way, whatever happens, you're just waiting for a switch to turn on or off, and not worrying about what to do after. I think that your wise jocularity is more than a façade, but maybe you actually don't know how deeply it goes.
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Going to see V for Vendetta tonight, with any luck. I'm glad to see that you felt it actually carries the plot and content that it deserves.
Pyr.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 02:54 pm (UTC)V was so awesome. I agree that the way they adapted it for current politics was great. It was very believeable. When I left, I wanted to drag my Fox-News-Lovin grandpa to see it, point at the screen, and say "This is what we're afraid of as an end result of current politics"