Wednesday, 26 Mar 2003

American Beauty - not as good as it was made out to be, but I have a hard time enjoying a movie that everyone raves about - especially when the buzz it mainstream Hollywood buzz - it builds my expectations up too high - I am easily suggestible that way. For a hollywood film with recognizable stars it was fairly decent, but too predictable in a lot of ways - or maybe I just saw to many previews or ads for it or heard too much about it. On a practical level I found it depressing, perhaps I could just relate to the protagonist’s situation too well. Dead-end unsatisfying job, dead marriage, emotionally estranged from everyone in his life. He was an island of unhappiness - until he decides to just say F-It to everyone and spends his time saying what he wants and doing what he wants. Maybe I didn’t like it because I am envious of his freedom and found his freedom unrealistic.

Donnie Darko - very interesting film, it is kind of non-linear or backwards elliptical but I can’t really describe it - I will need to watch it a few more times to find out what I really think of it. I have continued to think about it a couple of weeks after seeing it which for me is one way I gauge how good a film is.

Wednesday, 26 Mar 2003

m:American Beauty, Donnie Darko, p:Utne Reader, Life Mapping, Economical Living, www: 3D object repositories, 3D how-to articles, s:Cellar Door, The Strokes

Wednesday, 26 Mar 2003

Despite the fact that US television stations showed photos and video of captured Afghani and Taliban soldiers last year on their news programs, these same networks caved into pressure from the white house and did NOT display images of US military personell captured in the current conflict in Iraq. The argument from the white house? Donald Rumsfeld said that the Geneva Convention makes it illegal for prisoners of war to be “shown and pictured and humiliated” - why then was it ok for us to do the very same thing? Funny how we are eager to wave the flag of international agreements and conventions when it is in our interests to do so and we ignore them when we don’t like them.

Wednesday, 26 Mar 2003

Save the world, plant some bamboo. Seriously, bamboo stops erosion, produces 35% more oxygen than trees, can be turned into “plyboo” (a plywood made of bamboo that is as strong as most hardwood floors), can be harvested without killing the plant, and grows to harvestable size in 4-6 years - a fraction of the time it takes to grow a tree.

Wednesday, 19 Mar 2003

Argh. I hate these “All Hands” weekly team meetings - they devolve into side issues mostly because the project direction and leadership is severely lacking - people don’t feel confident that deadlines can be met because there is little communication about what is going on and what needs to be done to achieve goals. Argh. Here is what _I_ did during the meeting.

A project deadline,

speeding without direction

the journey feels long

slack face, vacant stare

corners of mouths turned down

project meetings suck

bright sun, melting snow.

inside; stale air and boredom.

trapped! 9 to 5.

birds circle dead trees

distract from words. Meetings!

I wish I was outside.