So, it turns out if you give workers notice of big changes equivalent to or greater than sacking notice, it doesn't count and you can't claim you've been sacked. And I thought Robin was being so great by keeping us in the loop. Fuck. Now I feel more nervous than I already would have about asking Robin and Batman nicely to sack me, since they've obviously gone to pains to not 'accidentally' sack us.
So I'm in a pisser I can only alleviate by working through the mountain of things I need to do. They are getting done and besides one or two social or moving-around type things I'm shutting down shop this weekend to work on a school application. Today I'm working the minimum so as to look into my options more fully. I got some 'interesting' suggestions last night from the totally amoral people I dined with. Lady's roommate had good ones. J*Fish had crap ones.
Anyways. Blah blah blah. Life isn't all assfucks and thorny crowns at the moment. I finished the Goya review and on the same day received a copy of Martin Amis' new novel, House of Meetings, and ordered the upcoming Air CD and - oh yes - the upcoming Harry Connick Jr. CD. I don't know anything about Harry Connick Jr., besides some women thinking he's hot, but the new album seems to be in French and I like that shit. So at least one thing in this world is superb: review copies. Lovely, lovely review copies. Here's the Goya review.
venerdì, gennaio 05, 2007
giovedì, gennaio 04, 2007
Free Will-y
Had a talk with my analyst last night about advertising to children. Does anybody in the English-speaking world, besides me, him, and Mr. N's girlfriend, still think that's wrong? It's been fucking getting me down, I suppose in combination with new little media stinks about free will and the absence thereof but mostly because of the increased pro-telepissing spin at work.
Well, blah blah - I believe for all intents and purposes we have free will, in the sense that we may have fewer reactions and choices than we think we do, but that we can still make decisions about them. But I'm also starting to believe - and this is no doubt a symptom of working at a job that promotes advertising by promoting its (still principal) vehicle - that people, especially children, can be trained out of believing they have free will. That they can be trained to believe impulses equal decisions and that the impulses that make you a consumptive member of consumer society are the ones you pay attention to above the others.
So, too much child-directed crap at work, including spin articles about how great it is that children still watch so much telepissing. And how great that younger children watch more than older children, who still watch alot. And that computers aren't a real risk, because older kids use them socially in a multi-task type way while watching telepissing. Argh.
Anyways, my analyst made me feel better about my own prospects as a human, aunt, and (when something breaks) mother by telling me it's awful et cetera but smart imaginative kids will still be smart imaginative kids. He also sent me this - well, he sent me the Times text but Disney is now desperate enough to retain market share that it reprints criticism to look progressive-like, which I have to admit I find endearing, especially when it's free to read and the New York Times archive isn't.
Anyways again, that was followed with a phone conversation with my brother offering me a job nannying his kids until I leave if I manage to get myself sacked at work. If I could get sacked, you see, what he could afford to pay me and my EI payments would about equal what I get now. And it would let me spend lots of time with the kids before I left, enough probably for us to get royally sick of each other, which would be perfect. So now I really want to get sacked but I'm thinking of just quitting outright and finding a way to flesh out my income, if I can't get EI, by teaching in the evenings at Figaro's old agency. I'll need to talk to my brother about it again and see if it's practical. And get in touch with the labour board, which in my lethargy I have not yet done.
So much to fucking do . . . I need to write a list of it all today, which I will, after I finish and publish that Goya review.
Well, blah blah - I believe for all intents and purposes we have free will, in the sense that we may have fewer reactions and choices than we think we do, but that we can still make decisions about them. But I'm also starting to believe - and this is no doubt a symptom of working at a job that promotes advertising by promoting its (still principal) vehicle - that people, especially children, can be trained out of believing they have free will. That they can be trained to believe impulses equal decisions and that the impulses that make you a consumptive member of consumer society are the ones you pay attention to above the others.
So, too much child-directed crap at work, including spin articles about how great it is that children still watch so much telepissing. And how great that younger children watch more than older children, who still watch alot. And that computers aren't a real risk, because older kids use them socially in a multi-task type way while watching telepissing. Argh.
Anyways, my analyst made me feel better about my own prospects as a human, aunt, and (when something breaks) mother by telling me it's awful et cetera but smart imaginative kids will still be smart imaginative kids. He also sent me this - well, he sent me the Times text but Disney is now desperate enough to retain market share that it reprints criticism to look progressive-like, which I have to admit I find endearing, especially when it's free to read and the New York Times archive isn't.
Anyways again, that was followed with a phone conversation with my brother offering me a job nannying his kids until I leave if I manage to get myself sacked at work. If I could get sacked, you see, what he could afford to pay me and my EI payments would about equal what I get now. And it would let me spend lots of time with the kids before I left, enough probably for us to get royally sick of each other, which would be perfect. So now I really want to get sacked but I'm thinking of just quitting outright and finding a way to flesh out my income, if I can't get EI, by teaching in the evenings at Figaro's old agency. I'll need to talk to my brother about it again and see if it's practical. And get in touch with the labour board, which in my lethargy I have not yet done.
So much to fucking do . . . I need to write a list of it all today, which I will, after I finish and publish that Goya review.
mercoledì, gennaio 03, 2007
Sisters are Doing It With Teams of Parliamentary Lawyers
Oh Jeebus, why doesn't someone give me a new job right now? At work we have a sense of where things are going but so far the changes don't look too rough. Slowly trying to boil us alive, I think - they did start using the 'spin' word about our writing but only an idiot wasn't spinning like a top already. Well, outside of the state of my soul and a burgeoning desire to move back to Europe there's no big hurry. The F-word has actually found a position that's on track to legal and I have money to save.
Not much else to say, except to strongly reccommend The Trial of Queen Caroline by Jane Robins. The Economist really liked it and so I read it, only to realize once more the Economist is always right. At least about books. I have to admit I've sort of hated historical biography about women as a genre - turned off by too much Antonia Fraser-esque struggling to make subjects seem like feminist icons who could step into our modern society and start dating Brad Pitt. To me that seems like a sort of huge disrespect to the historical figures written about, as well as to the truth, which has something to do with achievements that are mind-boggling in the face of strong, opposing social strictures - internal and external.
Anyways, The Trial of Queen Caroline makes no such struggle. It examines its subject and the people around her with a voyeuristic eye but most importantly of all, with evidence, with documentation, with a firm grasp of contemporary conditions. Even with all that technical goodness Robins makes the prose really readable and the story, dare I say, exciting. It's about the Stupid Prince Regent, BTW, the one who built Brighton, trying to get rid of his wife - except it's about so much more.
Not much else to say, except to strongly reccommend The Trial of Queen Caroline by Jane Robins. The Economist really liked it and so I read it, only to realize once more the Economist is always right. At least about books. I have to admit I've sort of hated historical biography about women as a genre - turned off by too much Antonia Fraser-esque struggling to make subjects seem like feminist icons who could step into our modern society and start dating Brad Pitt. To me that seems like a sort of huge disrespect to the historical figures written about, as well as to the truth, which has something to do with achievements that are mind-boggling in the face of strong, opposing social strictures - internal and external.
Anyways, The Trial of Queen Caroline makes no such struggle. It examines its subject and the people around her with a voyeuristic eye but most importantly of all, with evidence, with documentation, with a firm grasp of contemporary conditions. Even with all that technical goodness Robins makes the prose really readable and the story, dare I say, exciting. It's about the Stupid Prince Regent, BTW, the one who built Brighton, trying to get rid of his wife - except it's about so much more.
martedì, gennaio 02, 2007
The Red Dragon Girds Herself Up
So it turns out Arrested Development is really, really fucking funny. It's probably just as well I found this out now, post-cancellation, so I didn't have to go through the pissed-offedness of whatever being cancelled when I liked it and can now calmishly remember my belief that non-animated television comedies shouldn't stay on air for more than a few seasons anyways.
I saw a few episodes when it was on-air and thought it was fine, but now that Figaro got the first season for Christmas and we can sit and watch it without commercials or delaying the gratification of watching the next episode, it makes me laugh and laugh and laugh, like a happy baby or Graham Chapman playing international hide-and-seek. All the characters are great at what they do. GOB is funniest, maybe. Wow. Fucking funneeee. I understand now why Mr. S thought Fox should have kept it on even unprofitably to redeem itself for all the other crap it airs.
So there's that. I'm going back to work today. I think. I don't know. Nonetheless I'm in a good mood because I woke up early this morning and the sun was already doing this:
I saw a few episodes when it was on-air and thought it was fine, but now that Figaro got the first season for Christmas and we can sit and watch it without commercials or delaying the gratification of watching the next episode, it makes me laugh and laugh and laugh, like a happy baby or Graham Chapman playing international hide-and-seek. All the characters are great at what they do. GOB is funniest, maybe. Wow. Fucking funneeee. I understand now why Mr. S thought Fox should have kept it on even unprofitably to redeem itself for all the other crap it airs.
So there's that. I'm going back to work today. I think. I don't know. Nonetheless I'm in a good mood because I woke up early this morning and the sun was already doing this:
lunedì, gennaio 01, 2007
The Red Dragon Resolves to Be Red Dragonly
Isn't this a lovely fish? I like it. 
This is my 400th post on the first day of 2007. How odd. 2006 was one of the least predictable years of my life, despite things like job and apartment and whatnot not changing and only one trip abroad . . . but what a trip that was . . . and you know what I think will happen in 2007? I have no fucking idea, none at all. Which is fine. Besides a timid hope of using this morning's hangover as a high water mark for the year ahead (headache, case of stupids, and ardent need for homefries - pleasant actually) I have no resolutions. Except to be stroppier about the things I believe. Lucky rest of the world. Today it turns out I don't believe at all in the death penalty and its existence sickens me.
The penal system as such, retributive justice, there's something about it that makes me profoundly uncomfortable. Maybe no one has ever hurt me badly enough for me to want them to pay with their time or their life for what they've done, or else I'd get it better. But living in the neighborhood where I do and understanding the amount of time people spend incarcerated for bad things only to do more bad things on their release . . . seems a low-budget and ineffective way of sweeping problems under the carpet, the state saying 'look, we're fixing things' while continuing to allow an under-educated, under-funded social environment inside and outside of prisons that makes violence pay. Not to mention allowing a legal system where money can buy you a lawyer/champion whose expertise can let obviously guilty people walk. Positively fucking medieval. Fudging the post-Enlightenment social contract, in short.
And then the death penalty seems like a cynical extension of that 'look, look, we're doing something' social contract fudging. Nothing is particularly fixed besides the hunger of the revenge instinct, and the state has made itself into a murderer into the bargain.
On my mind both because of pictures of Saddam Hussein's death being everywhere, even the fucking Guardian, and look; it's a state murderer getting murdered by a new state, not some breaking story about a massacre in Darfur and you've got to get the public whipped up by showing them dead babies. It doesn't need to be in the fucking Guardian. Fuck you, Guardian. Also on my mind because of the Christmas present I got Figaro by promising to write a review of it, a Robert Hughes book about Goya. It's a lovely book but there aren't enough illustrations. Enough, though, to drive home visually the point that state murder, murder en famille and thuggery murder are all equally murderous. Except there are more people to point your finger at with state murder.
This is my 400th post on the first day of 2007. How odd. 2006 was one of the least predictable years of my life, despite things like job and apartment and whatnot not changing and only one trip abroad . . . but what a trip that was . . . and you know what I think will happen in 2007? I have no fucking idea, none at all. Which is fine. Besides a timid hope of using this morning's hangover as a high water mark for the year ahead (headache, case of stupids, and ardent need for homefries - pleasant actually) I have no resolutions. Except to be stroppier about the things I believe. Lucky rest of the world. Today it turns out I don't believe at all in the death penalty and its existence sickens me.The penal system as such, retributive justice, there's something about it that makes me profoundly uncomfortable. Maybe no one has ever hurt me badly enough for me to want them to pay with their time or their life for what they've done, or else I'd get it better. But living in the neighborhood where I do and understanding the amount of time people spend incarcerated for bad things only to do more bad things on their release . . . seems a low-budget and ineffective way of sweeping problems under the carpet, the state saying 'look, we're fixing things' while continuing to allow an under-educated, under-funded social environment inside and outside of prisons that makes violence pay. Not to mention allowing a legal system where money can buy you a lawyer/champion whose expertise can let obviously guilty people walk. Positively fucking medieval. Fudging the post-Enlightenment social contract, in short.
And then the death penalty seems like a cynical extension of that 'look, look, we're doing something' social contract fudging. Nothing is particularly fixed besides the hunger of the revenge instinct, and the state has made itself into a murderer into the bargain.
On my mind both because of pictures of Saddam Hussein's death being everywhere, even the fucking Guardian, and look; it's a state murderer getting murdered by a new state, not some breaking story about a massacre in Darfur and you've got to get the public whipped up by showing them dead babies. It doesn't need to be in the fucking Guardian. Fuck you, Guardian. Also on my mind because of the Christmas present I got Figaro by promising to write a review of it, a Robert Hughes book about Goya. It's a lovely book but there aren't enough illustrations. Enough, though, to drive home visually the point that state murder, murder en famille and thuggery murder are all equally murderous. Except there are more people to point your finger at with state murder.
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