librarygrrrl.net

Sometimes, when I am blue, I wallow. Other times, I turn to the one form of media that is sure to boost my spirits. “What could that be?”, you might ask. Why, of course it’s the teen movie. You know the sort - Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Say Anything, Breakfast Club, and so on. (Yes, I realize that I’ve just dated myself horribly, but bear with me.) While I do own several of those on VHS, tonight I popped in the first DVD I ever bought - and the only DVD in my collection that I have yet to watch. It is a movie that blows me away every time I watch it - for different reasons each time.

Remember that one? With Christian Slater, and “introducing Samantha Mathis”? I do. Quite vividly. Honestly, I don’t remember when I first saw it, but I do remember being blown away by the soundtrack, and also remember watching it incessantly on video after I went back to college post-study-abroad (I came back in February of 1991.) I’ve owned the soundtrack for years, and still love it. Bad Brains, The Pixies, Peter Murphy, Soundgarden, Concrete Blonde…. can’t go wrong with that one.

At any rate, I was in a blue sort of space today and rather than wallow in it, I decided to watch this particular teen movie. I suppose that I wanted to recapture some fleeting sense of youth (why yes, another crop of students DID graduate yesterday, the crop I started with four years ago, thankyouverymuch!) or something like that. Maybe I just wanted to see Christian Slater all young and not all in jail or on drugs or somehow being a “real” bad boy (as opposed to the bad boy he plays in this film - the bookish sort of bad boy…) Or maybe I wanted to see what Samantha Mathis looked like again - it’s not like she’s had any real break-out roles since this one, although she has been in quite a few films over the years.

And then I started really watching the movie. A lot of review sites do hit the nail on the head about the movies’ shortcomings. But the writer of the film was eerily prescient about what was happening to corporate ownership of the media when this movie was written. The FCC is protrayed quite unsympathetically in the film - which only foreshadows the long, bleak road down which we have now travelled. (Worried? Go to Media Reform’s Free Press.net page on radio ownership to find out what you can do about this major issue!)

Obviously, the major thing missing in the movie that’s overhwelmed the media-savvy among us today is the Internet - I seriously doubt Allan Moyle (writer and director) could have envisioned the Internet as it now exists. What I would like to see is another film of this sort discussing the underground ‘net culture - those areas of the internet that various governmental organizations around the world are trying to regulate for content. Ideally this new film would be based in China or some other country which is known for its suppression of what I in the US consider to be “free” speech. It would involve complex characters (of both the “good” and “bad” variety - as opposed to the adult “bad” caricatures in PUtV). The music would kick ass, and the government/controlling agency would get the kids in the end, but not until something major had been unleashed.

Deep readings of (although not very deep ponderings on) what I used to think of as a silly teen flick with a few hot actors. Surprisingly relevant even today. I highly recommend it.

There is this problem that I have. It is a weakness that I once poo-poohed in other people. I remember laughing at my mom’s problem of similar magnitudes. And now I struggle with this problem.

I am addicted to magazines.

I wish it were the fluff ones, too, like People and Entertainment Weekly and US. Those I could flip through and throw out as the mood struck me. But no, I have to be addicted to a whole different genre of magazines. I am addicted to “lifestyle” magazines. You know the ones - Cooking LIght (a free subscription for becoming a member of WHYY last year), Martha Stewart Living (such gorgeous photography and layout!), Real Simple (who doesn’t want to like a magazine with a title like that?), Everyday Food (another Martha publication), and the like. Fortunately, my subscription to Cooking Light should lapse soon.

And then I remember. I also read Dwell, ReadyMade, Metropolitan Home, and the Utne. I read Newsweek and Knitter’s and Interweave Knits and Bust and Bitch and Ms. as well.

I swim in my magazines. I feel guilt when they pile up and the energy to read them leaves me. But I feel more guilt throwing them into the recycling without reading them. For what if the Perfect Article That Will Make My Life Instantly Better is in one of those magazines that I throw out? And then I keep them, pouring over them carefully for some snippet of wisdom that I can carry with me.

At the same time, I get so disgusted with the product placement in them - with the notable exceptions of Dwell, Utne, and Bitch. But the same products that are being advertised in the pages of most of these magazines are the ones the magazines themselves are shilling in their columns. And that depresses me.

I fear I’m going to have to go cold turkey on the magazines pretty soon. This Memorial Day I have spent not thinking about the members of the armed forces who have fought for the United States in wars and conflicts both noble in cause and ill-advised. No, no. I have spent this day barrelling through the pile of magazines next to my bed, the pile that threatened to topple over this past week, after I’d added on 3 new titles.

And I am halfway through that pile. Far enough through to feel some sense of accomplishment, but also far enough through to feel just a little bit dirty. LIke I’ve got to figure out where this problem stems from, and like I need to figure out how to fix it without giving up my new-found sense of identity as a magazine-reader.

I am powerless before the popular periodical. I am weak. I am the marketer’s wet dream - the 30-something-single-female-with-disposable-income-and-a-house-of-her-own. People, I implore you to help me with this disease. Come clean my closets and take my magazines. Rid my home of periodicals. Cancel my subscriptions. Force-feed me literature and theory and dusty tomes from the library shelves. Free me from the bonds of the glossy goodness that beckons to me in the supermarket check-out lanes (for I know WHEN I succumb to the pressure - it usually involves a small tray of sushi, a half-gallon of milk, and whatever fruit is on sale that day).

This addiction prevents me from focusing on any writing that requires more than 5 minutes to read. And that, for a librarygrrrl, is torture.

Explain to me how, if all our financial transactions are supposed to take place online these days (via Quicken, M$N Money, or some other such program), the bank can be DEAD?

Yes, it’s true. I keep trying to connect to my bank, so I can download my transactions and do more of them (no, none of my bills are overdue this month, why do you ask?) But the page just keeps on being unavailable. It doesn’t matter whether I try to connect through Quicken, or just by using my web browser. I’ve tried it both wireless and wired. This damn bank won’t give it up for me, and I’m getting pissed off. I have exactly ONE thing I need to do tonight, and it is pay bills. And I’m being thwarted, and that makes me unhappy.

Dead dead dead as a doornail.

Do you ever wonder where sayings like that come from? I do. Why is a doornail dead? Who killed it? Or did it die of natural causes, with no foul play suspected?

Update: hot damn! I got it to work. But why was my bank dead for 15 minutes? Banks shouldn’t be dead. And I suppose, rather than pondering the etymology of odd phrases, I shall go pay my bills instead.

Here are all the made-up words you suggestedin the comments, all neatly rolled up into one post.

These courtesy of Lloyd:

Dunderhead, as in “My foot would have remained firmly planted on the floor rather than securly lodged in my mouth if I were not such a DUNDERHEAD and asked that nice Mr. Sean Combs if he was into Hip Hop at all.”

This from Davey:

Oddfangled: like “newfangled” only pointlessly WEIRD instead of pointlessly new.

Courtesy of the always-hilarious Heather, we have:

BLEVE (Blev-ee, and always in all caps) is originally from a tanker term meaning Blast Levelling Everything Very Effectively. As I know it, though, it means the sudden upward and outward or downward and outward expellation of some degree of internal mass; that is, to vomit or to poo most spastically. Commonly uttered after a large, over-stuffing meal, “Oh, I’m gonna BLEVE.” Full-blown BLEVE can be avoided by the use of the BLEVE RELEASE VALVE: the passing of gas in monitored quantities (that is, wherein my father sidles up to my mother and proceeds to FART on her, much to her dismay) alleviates some of the BLEVE pressure and catastrophe is avoided.

From Pinkhaired Cyn:

Plush - It stands for “platonic crush” and is when you meet someone and you totally want them to be your best friend. Like, “I have a total plush on all the PhillyKnitters!”

I think those are about it. Thanks for playing!

Sulkbrarian offers a corollary to my post from yesterday. You ought to read it. The author of the post really gets at what’s wrong with library searches these days, and I won’t shy away from saying that I’ve participated in searches where the committee as a whole behaved badly. Of course, we were usually in the situation of having to follow university guidelines. Can I just tell you how inhumane many university guidelines are? They fly in the face of total common sense. There are a whole load of fun policies for your perusal on lots of libraries’ web sites. I would link to ones at places where I’ve worked, but that somehow seems mean and/or petty. And we all know that I’d never want to be accused of either of those things!

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently printed an article called The Rhetoric of Rejection by one Darin Hayton that all job seekers ought to read before they embark on their quest to find that perfect job. Then, in the event that they receive one of the weird rejections that Hayton discusses, they will be prepared for it.

No, the job search process is one fraught with anxiety on both sides of the equation. Job seekers and employers both are looking for the right person to fill the right job at the right time and in the right place. Imagine what a challenging process that can be!