Been two weeks since I even touched my text. I woke up today with the line:
    "Have you no heart?!"
    "Not on me right now, no."

Mockingjay and Macbeth review

Watched two heavy movies in a row, both with My Maja and Macbeth with Drej also. Though both were  flawed, I have to say I really loved them equally. They were monumental in the unusualness of their approach.

First Mockingjay, the last part of a trilogy or whatever that’s called when really you have four movies for some reason. That one surprised me. Perhaps because my expectations were really low; or perhaps because a lot of people whose opinion is always wrong said it was bad. Slow, long, no action, weird… Yes, please, give me slow, long, no action weird YoungAdults novel featuring a hot girl in a Dystopian future, where bow and arrow and a good propaganda team are a way to go and it makes you want to kill yourself.

Thing is, the emotional parts were really emotional. The scary parts were really scary. The tragic/angry parts were really tragic. I even like some of the adjustments they made from book to movie that are better in the movie. I imagine there would have been a lot more of Philip Seymour Hoffman if he hadn’t died, but I’ve been dreaming about him a lot, so that’s okay. I’ll say I prefer the movie to the book. Odd, I know. But I never really liked the books. They were written for a young audience, describing truly awful, horrible things. The very last line in the books is a horrible reference. How does anyone really recover from such an ordeal (except they do not), forced to survive? We are such strange species. Plutarch says it very well.

The movie, as it has been said, celebrates using your own mind to make decisions. Even though most of the time Katniss does things out of despair and like a true defeatist, everyone around her does not. Everyone else is really passionate (except perhaps for Haymitch, the surrogate father figure, who just sort of hovers nearby.) Jena Malone is awesome as the crazed, vindictive banshee, Julianne Moore as the Evil Queen, Peeta, clawing his way through his insanity; poor Gale and his manly idiocy.. J-Law is flawlessly beautiful thorough the entirety of her journey, her hair always perfectly washed and not a scar on her face – in the book she’s almost completely deformed by now – the only emotional conveyance done by her chin. She’s like a spectral zombie, going mindlessly from one scene to the next, long reduced to a symbol, no blood left, no will to live tomorrow. Even the world around her has turned to shades of metallic. I thought that was really well done.

I also loved seeing the Tokyo anti-flood drainage cavern. That shit’s amazing!

And the most terrible thing of it all – one that will haunt me for a very long time and am glad I’ve never thought of that on my own – that tar thing, those victims in the net or plastered to the yard …  That was genuinely beyond awful. I could never imagine anyone I cared about dying such a death, though luckily those were just extras and the heroes moved quickly on.

There was a line in a book that wasn’t in the movie that I appreciated: during the round table in the end, where Coin proposes the last Hunger Games, Katniss wonders if this was exactly how it was like 76 years ago – some tired, broken, angry people voting on a rotten way to make someone pay for rivalry.

 

Macbeth was almost identical in the way that it was done: the minimalistic framing in a barren wasteland, ghost sliding though a terrible story that couldn’t possibly end well for anybody, least of all the victors. Once the three of us, which I call the ‘hot strict teacher’, the ‘stillwater runs deep’ and ‘the village idiot’ and my cocoa sat down, I said: I hope there’s a happy ending! … and the two of them gave me the most startled of looks. :D Hihi.

I’ll have to brush on my Shakespeare and sieve through the source material, because my biggest boggle with this one was a missing midriff, a chapter missing between the good guy Macbeth and the loon. Also, I know that we should all be thoroughly familiar with everything the Bard man has ever written, but some of the character portrayal was done very poorly. The witches, for example. I always assumed there had to be three: the mother, the maiden and the Hag. In the end there were five already. Why? And what motivation did they have to stir shit up? All they did was mess with people, but their motivation is never explored. Was it for sport? Was it they hated doing it but had to? Was it a test and they hoped it would end differently? It’s never even touched upon and I have no idea. I always assumed that those stories were based on actual historic events, alas. It’s all great fiction. Or bad fiction with an excellent character study, if you are a really cynical student of humankind.

Macbeth is the role of a good soldier with ambition of greatness and a slight mental illness. He does good soldiering for a good king and is well rewarded and well respected. He is like all smart men, though: he cannot see a rest in this design: he cannot stop thinking he would either be a better king or he deserves it more for reasons he cannot think of just now, but surely some idea will present itself at some point. He has a fiery, ambitious wife, who also seems to really hate the fact they are majestic people, but stuck in a barren wasteland and surely there is more to life. After fucking in a makeshift local flavor church, they slaughter the guest king and nobody really questions anything much. As if nobody could put two and two together at a time. Or maybe it’s just illustrated, not so much narrated.

Then there’s a piece missing. Other than riding proudly to the castle and the coronation, there is nothing to show that being a king might be fun, although the sash IS pretty. (In fact all of the costumes in this movie are amazing. Except the high white collars of the noblewomen. I wasn’t sure about those.) Even the sound of the costumes is astonishing. The sound of the Queen’s jewelry in one scene was as elemental as the sparks in another scene - a long coastal shot in the dark of people standing very still – and you just know, from the very first spark you see and hope it was just a firefly, that the pyres have been lit. Though at least we’re spared the screams.

Right off the coronation, Macbeth is going nuts already, sitting on the floor, thinking how he’s actually done all he’s done for someone else’s kids. Kids or lack thereof is really strong here, but I don’t know why. Like someone thought it should be, but not why. He already makes enemies of his most loyal friends and has them reduced to ghosts. He’s already making most sense, conversationally and emotionally, when he’s communing with ghosts and apparitions. It’s mostly downhill from there – the wife dies for no apparent reason other than a broken heart and everyone else wants to see Macbeth killed, including himself. So Macduff comes and does that. I wonder if in the end they actually left his body to rot in the field. It’s what I would do.

There’s a line I missed and will look up, because it sounded really lovely – the first part of the prophecies about Birnam wood coming to the, whatitsname Hill. Which happens when Macduff burns it and soot flies.

All in all, even with all the carnage, it’s an incredibly well shot movie, every scene a wonder to behold. Especially the scenes which are so poorly lit that you can’t make but faintest shapes out of. I’ve mentioned some retarded critic stating that it was filmed so awfully low-budget that some scenes happen in a friggin’ tent and most other in a desert that is highlands. Clearly that critic’s never seen a movie before. Scottish weather itself played a role. I believe the best part of this film, other than the way they talked, was how like a dream, like a stage you watch from the very last row it was. Terrible characters doing terrible things and coming to terrible fates… You don’t get movies like that often enough. Or you do and they make a mess. Pompous minimalism is a very difficult thing to achieve tastefully.

Watching Marvel's Jessica Jones. Other than the fact she sleeps in perfect makeup and uses the wrong camera for night spying, I'm 20 minutes in, nothing's happened yet and it's awesome. Just the sort of noir I'm feeling lately. Kind of makes me miss New York, but you cunnat missa place you've nevah been.

P.S. Good poster design

 

It just occurred to me why a pullover is called a pullover. Tch.

Good lecture to an end

Been to the last of my favorite lectures - the criminal psychology, something that I've enjoyed immensely. Not just because the lecturer is pretty and knows very well how to lecture - the way she talks I manage to type fully formed sentences in my notes. I'm a good typist, but sometimes they lecture too quickly and the words are so smart and long I skip vowels or their forms and adjectives entirely. But mostly, it's a subject matter that gets to me, because it's full of stories and things I can relate to. There was a lecture about security agency management, which was also fun and good, but I didn't see any of myself in that area. Pathology of the mind, however, well, that's just right up my alley, innit?

I can now name all the stages of stress/trauma that I went through last week, plus all their consequences in timely order :D  health issues are still ongoing *cough*cough*sneeze*sneeze*

There were several chapters that hit home. Not so much trauma and stress of police force employees, as we are taught to manage such organizations, but also the history of psychological profiling, how it develops, how it can fuck up the pursuit, how it still has a lot to learn and how you can really make a difference, knowing certain theoretical aspects of an aproach.

Example. Last chapter was the Forensic Interview with Children. From ages 3 up, to teenagehood, there is actually a way to engage a child in a witness report. If you know what you are doing. If you don't, you can not only fuck up the interview, the testimony, the clues, the conviction, but also the kid. I remember there was a movie about a famous case in which interviewing children went terribly, terribly wrong. It's not that kids are bad witnesses, they're just very different witnesses. It's not that they lie or want to bullshit, it's that they are afraid of displeasing you and cannot understand abstracts. So, if you ask a kid: When that mister touched you, were you wearing short pants or long pants? And they will really want to answer you, because you are an adult, and so the answer... but he never touched me... -will not even come into consideration. Small kids also like to poke insides of things with their fingers, so when they put fingers into holes of dolls it's not necessarily to indicate intercourse - also, because they don't even fully comprehend that the doll represents them. And so forth. It's a long list of very logical, careful rules you have to follow and if you know what you're doing, kids make excellent witnesses. But we only know that now, after a long trial-and-error period, which may not even be over yet. Saves us from bad psychiatrists. They can be awfully sure of themselves and nothing you argue will make them see they're wrong in their approach.

With all the shit that's been happening around the world, in Paris and stuff, I had this really weird reaction yesterday. Mind, I was very tired and stresses as it was, but I was eating at McDonald's late at night (that's not the weird thing; wait for it.) and I thought I saw a woman wearing a long black coat and a black hijab walk in. It made me desperately want to get out of the train station... very quickly. Granted, there weren't really very many people there, strategically it wouldn't have been a good time, but it was in the only train station in the state capitol and I panicked for a few seconds. In truth the woman wasn't wearing a hijab at all, it was just cold and she had a black scarf wrapped around her head for comfort... But in my worn out, fatigued mind, it got awfully paranoid for a moment and I am not normally the paranoid type. It's how terrorizing works, isn't it?

Good news, dad is home, bad news I am so exhausted I'm experiencing a mental jet-lag. In my brain I had to hurry getting dad home from the hospital, so that I wouldn't be late for visiting him at the hospital. it's a very funny feeling. I also keep wanting to curl up in a ball in a corner and sleep for a very long time. 

In truth, dad eloped - he overheard the rounds doctors mentioning his condition has improved so much he may be going home today, which in his mind translated: I am so fucking fast out of here the door won't stop spinning for a week. I had to run there to help him get dressed and he kept telling mee we should hurry, because one of the young nurses is having an exam today and we shouldn't be in the way. We were nearly out the door by the time it occurred to me we didn't sign any release forms. Dad said fuck those, let's just go before they change their minds. We later drove mum to town to get the paperwork. I am so tired that when three people are talking to me at the same time, I get dizzy and wobbly. It fells like three irons (for ironing clothes) were being simultaneously pushed to my head from all sides. 

Today is the last psychology lecture and I really want to go, although the last time I went for detective studies, I was so brain dead and queasy from my stomach iced boiling, it was but a waste. If I don't go, I'll just pass out and sleep through the day, which certainly will be a waste. It's so funny

I swear, my dad's condition is like an episode of House MD. I'll write about it later, when some more things are dismissed or confirmed. I really hope his improving condition is a sign of medicine gaining the upper hand and not another trick the infection is pulling. 

Meanwhile, I've been learning so much and experiencing so much, the ending to my book makes less and less sense and am starting to doubt it. That's usually a good sign, meaning I am ready for another one of my chrysalis moments. Or maybe I'm just incredibly distracted and tired. Happens also.

Predictably, the stress took a toll on my health and yesterday when I offed to a lecture, the acid in my tummy kind of went on over-flow mode, causing me to get ill and during the night sort of melted my larynx, so I woke up with the mother of all laryngitis', tasting acid all the way up to my nose. I won't go into what happens when I use the restroom. My almost-healed-hemorrhoids are writing an official complaint to the management, starting with : WhatTheFuck?!

But I talked to the doctor today and although he's fed up with us completely, he was fair enough to explain it to me, one more time: I've told this to your father and your mother and will tell it again to you. He was admited with ....." and so on, he even subtitled some of the longer words. 

     I'd say: "But how do you know the an--"

     "We know by now which antibiotics are appropriate for his type of infection."

     "But why does he keep h--"

     "He will continue to get seizures until the infection subsides, though he is not running any fever and so we know it's not sepsis."

      "It's been going on for a week now."

      "It will last another month until he's back to normal."

      "He worried he'll have a heart attack."

      "He won't. If e did, his chest would hurt. But don't mention that, because his chest will instantly start to hurt."

...

And so on. It seems like the things have been calming down lately. Fine time for me to pass out. I had to pretend to be part of the study group during the lectures yesterday and I was so distracted and clueless some of the kids helped me.

Another trying day. When I have to drive, I drive really really slowly and carefully, because I am so distracted it's dangerous. Dad is getting slightly worse, because his infection in gaining momentum, but nobody can find where it's stationed. It's scary and I freak out from time to time. We bought him a phone, but it just saddened him, because he fears he'll have to stay in the hospital for ages. I saw him again in the evening, it felt awful. General made me take a pill to calm down. I hate being so incredibly powerless.

Same day as yesterday, mostly, minus some of the stress... Dad's getting better, he's getting cranky he can't go home yet. It's going to be St.Martin's day soon and he wants to shop and cook. It'll take a millstone to tie him down once he does get home. I'm running around, going to see him, looking for some updates, chauffeuring mum, looking for the dog, getting some McDonald's diner for people like normal people, trying to manage business deals and not sound rude to friends when I ignore their invitations... Tomorrow should be an easy day, just a business meeting in the morning (shower first, my hair is a mess) and the visit to dad in the afternoon... I put some silent Charlie Chaplin movies on the iPad, but he shunned them, saying he'd prefer some partisan Serbian flicks and some westerns... Picky bastard :D I've learned some Albanian words of politeness, because there's an Albanian man in the room who doesn't speak Slovenian and usually just smiles when people talk to him. 

Friday is seeing dad and then driving mum shopping and then going to the capital to the last lecture on detective agency management ... Saturday is shooting the firemen and the follow-up on the interview, I hope, then making pastry for the St. martin's feast, which is Sunday. 

These are all really mostly just running around errands, not much to show for by the end of the day... But I'm sooooo tired. I keep forgetting things. I'll go buy myself a cute planner I saw the other day. write down: go buy planner so as not to forget things. Don't forget. Okay? It's important.

Soooo tired. Spent the day running around a hospital, trying to make sure dad is okay and … well, okay.

As all men, my father has the tendency to downplay his medical conditions – somewhat because he's an old clumsy guy that gets hit by branches and tripped by dogs a lot, but also to an extend because mum doesn't take him very seriously sometimes and he is the kind of a guy who pulls out his own teeth. Sober.

Seriously, this is a guy who had a heart attack, drove me to work and then kind of phoned my grandma to mention he’s numb in one arm and can’t breathe; does she think that’s serious? Did I mention he’s a national award winning journalist? Uncanny.

                Yesterday we went to a doctor because he couldn’t pee or sleep for a while now and she tested his urine to find nothing, touched his kidneys a bit, nothing much there, but prescribed broad-spectrum antibiotics just in case, why not. This resulted in dad having the mother of all uroseptic shocks ever. I drove up, as we were scheduled for shopping and he wanted to see the doctor again and I said maybe I should be the one to do the driving. I walk in and there’s dad, shaking so terribly he was literally throwing himself off the sofa. He couldn’t communicate. He couldn’t drink when he asked for water.

Fuck me.

I panicked and called the cops, apologised, then called again for an ambulance and tried to explain what it looks like: it looked like an epileptic seizure with the lights still on. I know that if you’re having an epileptic fit you’re not really conscious and he was, although not really coherent. He kept telling me he doesn’t want me to call the ambulance, because he doesn’t have time to go to the hospital and he really doesn’t want to go to the hospital, not the hospital… He kept apologizing to mum and asking her permission. Later on he went into full delusion and kept trying to tell me to mark it by numbers so we can find it all again and although I KNEW he’s delusional because of the fever, I really wanted to crack the code what he was telling me. Usually I speak delusional. It unsettled me that this time I couldn’t.

Mum read through the side-effects of the new pills he’s taken and supposed he’s having a reaction, one of the side-effect being tremors, then put away both of the dogs. It would be hard for the medical team to come into a house to help a seizing man being guarded by a retriever and a Rottweiler. I know, because as soon as they came in, Starbark jumped out of nowhere and bit one of them in the ankle. Whoops. Had to lock her in the bathroom, which she tried to claw out from.

The med team were calm, though; they got dad into the van and drove him, slowly, to the hospital. I had to re-park and then find dad, which wasn’t the simplest thing to do, it’s a freakishly big hospital, but when I did, I managed to get out of the – they get younger every year, I swear – doctor guy that dad was running a fever, had elevated blood pressure, was in pain, had something something prostate and something something urinary infection, bottom line: urosepsis.

Google time.

An hour later he was in Pjs and a mean nurse was ordering him to pee; he found a next-bed conversation mate to talk about vineyards, he ate the small lunch like it was golden and sucked dry several intravenous hydration bottles. I kept texting people updates. I think he was a lot better. In the afternoon mum and sis went along with me to visit him and of course those two have doctorates in doctorates, so they declared he’ll be fine. I really wanna check, though, am not sure how. Don’t wanna go there to bother the whole room. I think I’ll just call. Most they can do is tell me to leave them alone. One sec :)

… No-one’s answering.

I hate it not having anyone in the ward. I’m used to having someone keeping me posted. Balls :/

Nightmares about a small plane going down :(

IN REALITY

Yesterday, while we were hunting, really not far from us – though we had no idea, it was a too small event – an ultra-light two-passenger sports plane nosedived into the field, no survivors. Although the shoot deployed, for some reason, it completely crashed the tiny thing.

IN MY DREAMS

In my dreams we’re either having family lunch at our parents’ house or wondering about the weird neighbours: the wife has resurfaced, claiming we were unfair to her husband and he’s sick now… Because the wife has died fifteen or so years ago, this is unsettling, but not so strange, considering the neighbours. They could have been faking it for insurance or something. She says she’s keeping her husband caged so he won’t fall off the bed, which isn’t too unusual either, but again, still unsettling. We are trying to have as little to do with them as possible for next door neighbours.

Then there’s a bang and I run out, thinking the central heating pump exploded, but in truth, a small plane has just crashed next to the house.

It’s the worst place to crash a small plane. First off, there are electrical wires everywhere, so there’s danger of shock. Second off, the whole terrain is so steep it’s built into elaborate terraces, very lovely ones, but unlike a freshly ploughed field, this is just hard edge upon hard edge of stone plates. Though I am afraid to look at injured or dead people, I run down, yelling instructions into the 911 call: it’s also a bitch, because the road is so narrow and crumbly, a large vehicle isn’t wise to use it.

There are four men in the wreckage, which is piled upon itself: the first one is moving, crawling from it. He’s in a jumper suit and it’s clear he’s really badly broken everywhere. But he’s in shock and he won’t stop crawling and we try to stop him or move him, only making his injuries worse. I tell mum to get a blanket as he starts to crawl up the sharp stairs, so that we wrap and immobilise him. I also tell mum to talk to him and pet his head to see if she can soothe him out of crawling. I’m aware that once the adrenaline calms, he’ll probably die. But maybe not. Help is on the way.

The other three are under a large, though not that heavy flower-pot lid. Dad and I remove it, but it’s a tangled mess. We know we are not supposed to move anything or anybody, so we just try to check their limp bodies for pulse. One man in impaled through, but so far the debris are preventing him from bleeding out, so he should be okay for now. It occurs to me – we have an old abandoned pool just next to the crash site, which is now a 2-ft deep pond for tiger lilies – that there may be another person in the water.

The firemen rescue arrives and they can’t come close to the house, because the neighbour’s three large dogs – which an old sick man can nowhere near control – are defending it. Because suddenly we have small puppies of our own which the three large dogs will surely kill, I have to run – there’s a crowd now – and deal with the neighbour. He is out of sickbed, but really wants to talk to my dad about the dogs. I say now is not the best time, because a plane crashed in our yard, but he gets emotional and claims dad is ignoring him and he wants to give us the dogs. Handling an old man with three large dogs while four little puppies with no survival instinct keep trying to play with my shoes…

I ran up to the parking lot where the on-lookers and my family were, and the firemen were erecting a ladder crane to get a better control of the scene pass all the tress and wires. I saw that my dad was taking photos with my phone, though for some reason the feed, the camera was still set on our summer vacation in a resort, so all the photos he was taking were actually of a resort, not the crash site.

I woke up at that point, sore and tense, and couldn’t go back to sleep.

I suppose this was my punishment for the hunt yesterday, during which four bunnies and a bird cawked it and I had to listen to a shot bunny scream before the dog silenced it. Half traumatising and half depressing. WTF, forest, I thought we had a deal!

First trailers and pics for Warcraft

I do hope it's more interesting than what the trailer is letting us think: just a clash of Orcs and Men. You can explain the First War and the second war in a 10-minute cutscene and it's not even that interesting. It certainly isn't all there was - it would be if these were just two human tribes colliding - but considering Azeroth and Kalimdor host ten different races with ten different reasons for fighting one another, it would be a waste to just make a really big and expensive commercial for the game in hopes of a sequel. 

Not that I'm saying Orgrim doesn't look awesome. I love it they're making them hairy. :D
He actually totally looks like the General when I wake him up :D 

The third, last chapter of Goose is written and set, but it is completely and utterly without a point. So now first I'll arrange it into a moral albeit funny tale of woe and compromise, then, ultimately, I'll try to wring a catharsis out of it. I already know what the inner turmoil is about, I just need to position it so that it counterweights the second chapter: where Kay decides - thinks that Morph 

is going morally unhinged - and chooses to follow him down. She thinks it would be better if they become villains, to give heroes a greater chance at glory. The third chapter feels like a morning after, afterwards. I think that's as far as I will arrange it, then leave it for a while to simmer while I go into the midriff, the infamous second chapter.... the fun part. 

Am reading a funny little children's book and I'm about to hop over to the library to get an anthropological study book I've been waiting for called Butts, snakes and fire are not toys... 

Seems appropriate :D

A scene from the 3rd chap, in which Kesi tries to school Kay on the rights to choose poorly.:

“Do you have any idea how quickly the light goes out in people?« asked Kestrel accusatory. “A horrid instance rips out the heart of them and it’s gone. Just … gone. It never comes back. Nothing can save them, not even you. Wasn’t there a boy you knew, who was like that?”

“A boy?”

“I think I remember a boy from some story you tried to help atone for. He repaid you by rather going back to die in his own narrative than staying with you in any other. What does that tell you?”

“That blind jerk?”

“No, not Spotter’s Sufi. A boy. You called him an evil looking little shit.”

“You’d have to be a bit specific.”

“He asked you to give him a sad backstory, so his dick moves wouldn’t be all there was to him. You wrote how he had to guard a political prisoner whom he ended up killing so that she wouldn’t be paraded in front of her enemies…”

“Oh, yes! I DO remember now. He WAS an evil looking little shit! Excellent lay, though; excellent pelvic thrust. Ah, well. Just because he chose to die rather than make the most of our options…”

                “That’s just it. Humans are not designed to face these many choices. Sooner or later you misstep, choose the wrong things and a million other things you chose right just drown in tar.”


See? It's there, it's just completely and utterly boring and pointless.