Everyone's a critic

Now that I’ve fully transitioned to my “new" (old) department, I thought I would try this old thing out again….seeing as I now have a little more free time to update this……at least for now!

While I was away, a new guy started working here (as my replacement) and since I’ve been back, we’ve been chatting & getting to know one another; he seems like a pretty cool dude with similar tastes & preferences for things like Lord of the Rings and Batman….! 

…or he did until I mentioned The Dark Knight to him. 

WHAT DID YOU SAY?

Even though he’s a big fan of the Batman comics (and loved Batman Begins), he thought that The Dark Knight was terrible – not so much as a regular action movie, just as a Batman movie.   

Needless to say, I thought he was nuts.  But then he handed me a 4-page essay, outlining his reasons for disliking the movie (and citing specific examples throughout the movie).  Having a written essay handy for just such an occasion worried me for a bit, but I’ve also been known to write a few choice blog posts about movies I thought were less than great too, now haven’t I? 

So I read it – and while I readily dismiss the majority of his arguments (ex. Movie inconsistencies, plot holes, etc.) as movie goofs -- he had many issues with Batman’s new costume, his “Bat-cyle” and the scene where Harvey Dent & Batman set a trap to catch the Joker – I have to admit that his character issues are pretty strong. 

For example - the backstory for Harvey Dent / Two-Face differs from comic to movie adaptation.  Harvey is a lot more bi-polar in the comics, being secretly abusive to his wife and family while generating a clean-cut image for Gotham’s media.  In the movie, he’s “Gotham’s White Knight” through and through.  And while this may have served the movie’s theme better, my co-worker’s problem with this is that it’s not true to the comic.   So, praising this as “the best Batman movie ever made” is a false claim. 

The same issue comes up with Heath Ledger’s depiction of the Joker.  

While Heath Ledger's Joker was indeed a great villain for the movie, my co-worker felt that he just wasn’t the same Joker that he grew up with in the DC comics.  Not only is the physique wrong (the Joker is always depicted as being a lot thinner and more feminine than Ledger’s character was), but he also got the very essence of the Joker wrong.  According to my co-worker, the Joker isn’t a psychopath who orchestrates grand schemes in order to prove a point to people like Batman, he’s just a random doer of evil, changing plans on a whim for no reason other than “he feels like it”.   (This one I’m a little iffy on, but I’ll take his word for it for now)

But while he may be right that this movie may not have been as ‘true to the comics’ as Batman Begins was, it was a pretty damn good movie.  And maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up with Batman like he did (I went with Marvel over DC), but I personally think these discrepancies from the comics made the characters *better*. 

And now that I’ve said that, I almost feel dirty after my last rant about how untrue to comics X-men: First Class was.  

"Just Roll w/it."

I would have to say that it’s been a crazy couple of months for me.  In addition to getting into that car accident and everything else, there have been a lot of really big changes for me going on at work. 

First of all, somebody in my old department got fired let go a couple of weeks ago, leaving them an employee down.  And since they’re a pretty vital department to our company (they work very closely with our database system), the bigwigs at the company made asked to step-in and help them out for a few weeks since I still have a pretty good working knowledge of said system and it would take a while for them to hire a replacement. 

A few days later, after I had a chance to re-acquaint myself with the job, they called me into their office and asked me if I’d like to return to my old department….that I only left a year ago to advance my career. 

Apparently, aside from my old boss, I was the only person in the company who knew the system so well.  And with my old boss being so indispensable (enough so that she can’t even go on vacation), they realized how vulnerable this potentially left the company should she decide to retire / leave.  As an incentive to return, they promised me an increase in pay as well as some managerial duties with a promise to promote me once my old boss retires (she’s sixty-one right now and will probably retire at sixty-five).  

Ultimately, though, they said the decision was mine; I could either move back to my old job and return to the boring old system-work that I used to do, or stay where I currently am and leave the company to fill that position from the outside. 

Initially, I was pretty hesitant.  It felt like a step back in my career (such as it is).  Plus, I didn’t particularly see myself being there for that much longer considering how overworked I’ve been lately (barely enough time to blog).  Plus, as much as I complained about how stressful my current job is, I have to admit it’s never boring: I now deal with multiple aspects of the company (billing, service issues, contracts, etc.) and have acquired quite a few job skills in the short time I've been doing it.   

Plus, commiserating with your co-workers is half of what makes the job fun. 

After talking it over with my mom and a few others, I decided that it’s better to not look this ‘gift horse’ in the mouth (especially in this economy).  So I’m taking the “senior position” that management created for me (along with a hefty pay increase – or so they promised; otherwise I'm staying where I am) and waiting for the job market to heal.  

Hopefully this means I’ll have more time to blog again.  I’m not sure how much more work will be required of me (more money = more responsibility), but hopefully I’ll have a little more free time on my hands. 

**NOTE** For those of you who know where I work, please don’t say anything on this blog.  They have this “tracker” thing that catches anything that mentions the company online and I’d rather not have this post show up in the company E-Newsletter, okay?  I’M TRUSTING YOU HERE. 

"First World Problems"

So I finally found myself having a few minutes of free “internet time” to give you a quick update on my doings. 

Things have been kind of rough the past couple weeks and I’m a little wary of posting this because of my policy on “whiny” blog posts.  But I figured that I should let people know in case they wonder why I’m not my usually chipper self: 

First off, my orthodontist told me I have to start wearing rubber bands over my braces.  This means I can’t really open my mouth too wide (yawning is kind of difficult now) and my teeth are more tender than usual due to the extra pressure from the bands.  Plus, I look like that much more like an awkward teenager.  I’m not really sure how long I’ll have to keep them on (*at least* five weeks, maybe longer, according to the orthodontist) but I hear that it’s best to just keep them on all the time (except while eating / brushing) to keep from having to wear them too long.  

@#$%^& Hate this

Right after I heard the “great news” about my teeth, my car got “sandwiched” on the freeway after a guy a couple cars in front of me stopped a little too suddenly for the guy behind me.  It didn’t look like a big crash but after taking my car to a mechanic, I found out that it sustained about $1400.00 in repairs.  Fortunately, we all had insurance no one was hurt.  And I’m now driving a rental for the next couple of days while the mechanics repair the damages to my car.  I’m driving a (gas-guzzling) Ford Escape right now and I feel pretty big on the road.  Good news, though – the mechanic called this morning saying I can pick up my car today! 

Not Actual Accident, but you get the idea

After I got home that day, my roommate told me our apartment lost it’s internet service.  I’m not 100% sure how that happened, but my roommate told me it had something to do with the online business he’s starting & how he tried to re-direct the phone number he created for it to his cell-phone.  Apparently, he also re-routed our landline (which we use to run our DSL), cutting off our access to the world wide web.  So now I can only go online at work.  Supposedly this’ll be fixed by Friday (9/23/11), but I’m not holding my breath….!  

A few days later, I got a big scare at work.  I’d rather not mention what happened, but it’s caused a lot of us to wonder about the security of our jobs. 

So yeah…..a lot happening in the past two weeks.  I figure I’ll let the older stuff go unsaid for now…..! 

Unrealized Dream #243

Did you know that Twitter doesn’t allow you to create a username with the word “Twitter” in it?  

I realized this when I had a brilliant idea to create a joke Twitter account named “The Twitter.”  The plan was just to follow everyone I could find with this account, and tweet as if the self-named account had somehow achieved self-awareness and was gathering information similar to how newborn children do. 

This was how I planned to achieve greatness…..even Godliness. 

This was going to be my Profile Picture

But unfortunately Twitter had foreseen this and prevented my tomfoolery from commencing. And my dream of greatness was never realized.  

I’m sure someone else already thought of this before me, probably around the time Twitter was becoming popular. 

But on the small chance that no one has, I’m writing this post to TM my idea. 

Sleep Self-Hypnosis

Last night I made the mistake of falling asleep with the TV on and now I’m worried it may have screwed with my head. 

I had a DVD playing (Season 2 of Arrested Development) and it has one of those “looping scenes” in their main menu where they play clips from the show over and over unless you do something about it.  

Anyway, I remember dreaming about specific lines from the show…and people saying them over and over again (Imagine a world where you try and speak to someone and they only repeat the same sentence over and over again; it’s hauntingly terrifying). 

When I woke up, I realized this was due to the fact that I had the TV on so loud that I could hear those lines in my sleep….and that they were influencing my dreams. 

Now I’m a little worried about how *else* those looped scenes might have affected my sub consciousness.  

This is your brain on TV media

If I start acting funny, get me professional help, okay? 

Originality is dead?

So Camp Hollywood – the annual swing dance camp I journey to every year for 3 non-stop days/nights of dancing – has come and gone….and there’s not much to say other than MAN, WHAT A GREAT TIME I HAD! 

Pretty sure I lost a couple pounds due to all the sweating (I sweated through 12 T-shirts) and a lot of people have said my form has improved since last weekend.  

Other than that, not much to say – but here’s a performance from the Showcase competition that I think you should all watch: 

Hard to believe they only placed 4^th in the contest (I guess it didn’t have as much actual ‘dancing’ as the other showcase performances did); but anyway…..! 

I hung out with my friend (and fellow ECLS major), Susan, the other day to catch up on what’s been going on in our lives.  I told her about Camp Hollywood & my trip to New York last month and she told me she was traveling to Italy soon for a friend’s wedding.  (Rich friends, amIrite?)  And while we initially planned to see a movie as our scheduled “friend activity” (aka ‘excuse to hang out’), we couldn’t decide on what to watch. 

(See, Susan was also a film major and has a huge pet peeve about movies being original – everything in the theatres was either a remake, a sequel, or based on some book / graphic novel franchise and she wasn’t about to pay good money to see those) 

So we ended up going to Barnes & Nobles and browsed their “summer & back to school reading” sections to see how many we’ve read /what we *really* thought of them.  It’s actually a pretty fun way for English Majors to pass the time! 

But getting back to Susan’s pet peeve:  I’ve heard this gripe before from a lot of other film buffs and I got to wondering when this started.  I mean, aren’t all stories derived from previous ones that came out before them?  And those that aren’t based on stories are based on real life experiences instead, so they’re not truly original either.  So were there ever any original ideas? 

If not, where did the idea of “there were original ideas before” come from? 

Maybe *that’s* the only true original idea……..! 

Or not.   

Sorry - it’s late and I’m rambling, trying to get ‘inspired’ to write a blog post. 

What does it mean?

I had the strangest dream last night.  

I dreamed that I was out in the ocean by some harbor and casually swam into the open mouth of a Blue whale that came up to the surface. 

The inside of the whale mouth was furnished with nice couches and tables, etc. but flooded waist-deep with water.  Also - the inside of the whale’s mouth was transparent (like glass) so I had a really nice view of the ocean from the whale’s perspective.  

My first thought upon seeing this - “what’s the rent on a whale like this, and can I afford it?” 

Then I noticed this girl floating / sleeping / drifting next to me.  She was a girl I knew from college.  On the far side of the whale, I saw a guy I went to high school with doing the same thing (floating). 

The whale then dived down back into the ocean and only then did I start panicking:  

 “How the hell am I going to get out of here??” 

I grudgingly woke up the girl floating next to me and explained to her my problem and she casually explained to me that the whale goes back to the surface for air every few hours or so and that I could probably leave then. 

Now calmer (but still a little freaked out), I swam over to the “window” of the whale and admired the view of the ocean. 

And then I woke up. 

ANY PSYCHO-ANALYSTS WANNA TELL ME WHAT MY DREAM MEANS?  

(Don’t say “I have a whale fetish” cuz it’s not true)