SNAKES ON A... I'm not gonna go there.

Against my better judgment, I went to see snakes on a plane tonight. I have to admit, it's one of the more absurd movies I've seen lately. But it was also a lot more unsettling than I expected. The first two deaths involve snakes snapping at parts more private than one is comfortable with. And there are a few sort of gruesome deaths not even involving snakes. The film begins with a cheap, pop-music-and-hawaiian-beach-imagery imaginary, followed by a brief stab at some sort of mobster/crime drama plot, and then entrenches itself as a high-altitude comedy-thriller. But it's not as firmly entrenched as it hopes. There are competing impulses, as one is alternately compelled to laugh uncontrollably at the occasionally well-placed absurdity, hold one's breath at the out-of-place brutality of some of the violence, and rub one off to the pornographic sex scenes cumbersomely (i think, intentionally cumbersomely) placed at the start of the thrill ride. I have to say I really enjoyed the green filtered shots embodying the hyper-aggressive gaze of the snakes, a technique used liberally and effectively. The film is definitely full of the outrageousness that has made it so pre-emptively popular, but those elements (mostly, the one-liners and the typical mid-attack moments of comedy) feel overused even the first time you see them here. And you aren't even allowed to fully immerse yourself in the absurdity because you're constantly confronted with truly disturbing images and sounds of people being attacked by hyper-aggressive, almost alien snakes, impaling their victims in every unsettling way possible. All the laughs in snakes on a plane feel like half-hearted reenactments of the laughs you had in the car on the way to the movie, as you struggle to figure out when exactly you're allowed to laugh and for how long. I would be lying if I said I didn't laugh at it. In fact, I spent much of the movie laughing. But, it was often a sort of uneasy laughing, hoping the movie would hurry up and get around to being as funny as I wanted it to be. Mostly what you come away with are the one-liners, which aren't even as versatile as the ones that napoleon dynamite spawned. Quite honestly, the media hype surrounding the film is more entertaining and interesting than the film itself. I found it pretty interesting how much fan input actually made it into the project in some way. I'll leave you with one shot i actually supported:If only the rest of the snake/human interactions had been as purely preposterous as this...

Battlestar Arachnia

I've been thinking a little bit about how I'll remember this summer (since it's soon going to be over). I always remember semesters, summers, and winter breaks by a few key things or events. A lot of times it's not even a tangible thing, just a mood or a sense or feeling that you'll recreate elsewhere and instantly wonder what exactly it reminds you of...oh yeah! a whole season. Like my sophomore spring semester is cider parties and watching Inuyasha w/ James (across the internet) before bed. Last summer was the Richmond downtown in a muggy rain. Junior fall was the SunLab, too-sweet chai tea, and a woefully excessive amount of gaming. Junior spring was all about pleasing environments and lighting/sounds.

I think this summer will be waking up uncomfortable (i don't know why - maybe my matress sucks), menial jobs, too-beautiful sunset-y afternoons w/ an old book and tea, a less woefully excessive amount of gaming, and X-files. I feel a little lame having so much of a period of time dominated by a TV show (you may be wondering why I don't feel the same way about a video game - such is the nature of complete addiction), but I don't look forward to too many things with the same gusto as I do for the X-files.


I've been transferred out of the Hay to the Rock, but I've realized the staff is basically the same. My work is comparably menial to what it was before - except now I work on a computer. It's normally straightforward data entry in the computer followed by some quick bureaucratic stamping (which I've improved noticably at in the few days I've worked w/ them). Today I noticed that the data entry library program I'm using has a little window up that shows the java code of everything you do in the program. I then realized that I could understand a lot of it because it's just a really complicated linked list! I spent about 30 minutes going through each step in the process (a process which usually takes 30 seconds), and then going through the code to see what was happening. Heh, I bet the programmers didn't realize that that little black window with the code would hinder productivity so much in a small fraction of the users who happened to have javacode experience. I'm getting a big dose of office/cubicle life that I've never really gotten before. I think I could probably get used to it for a while, but my current situation is not ideal...I work on a computer in full view of everyone so I can't procrastinate on the internet, which I feel is a really important part of office life that I'm missing.

There are also some weird objects near where I work..objects you'd only find in a library office, or maybe in a museum office. The first day of work, this guy was teaching me the whole process of what I'd be doing for the next few days but all I could focus on was this curious machine perched on a shelf right over where I work. From what I can tell, it has two little needles that draw lines on rotating rolls of paper, corresponding to the temperature of the room. So I guess it's an over-complicated mechanical thermometer.

I'm much more visible to the other employees of the library so I can't really take the kind of flagrantly long breaks that I'm used to. I still manage to get a little Melville in outside the library on the steps.

I've been struggling a lot with questions of mortality lately thanks to frequent battles with a population of small ants in my house. The first great clash was during an X-files marathon. My housemate dropped a cheez-it on the ground and left it there. After he'd gone to sleep (maybe an hour later), I switched to his spot and reached down in the dark to pick the cheez-it off the floor. The cheez-it was soft, and wriggly, so I immediately threw it on the table and turned the lights on. It had been covered in ants and there was a huge trail from the wall to where the cheez-it had been. I was at first amazed at how fast the ants had worked, but soon I was overcome in a blind rage at their invasion of my space during my favorite tv show. I started killing them one by one with my hand, a brutal, inefficient method that put me finger to face with my victims. Still enraged, I was numb to any sympathy at this point. I needed a more efficient way to destroy the encroaching enemies. I got a bottle of Raid and rained death upon their quickly-shriveling little bodies. When I was done, it was a truly moving scene. A whole 3 foot line of crumpled, lifeless ant corpses - a veritable massacre. By this time, my rage had died down and I was overcome with grief at my actions. I saw a hapless survivor blindly staggering into a big pool of poisonous Raid, struggling to get to some kind of safety. I tried to steer him clear but I was too late; he charged blindly into the searing liquid and a slow, painful death followed. At this point, I swore off all aggression to the ants, at least in the form of weapons of mass destruction (especially chemical warfare). I've kept up this policy for the most part. However, the recent arrival of a spider in our bathroom has complicated things. He's set up his web and I have to confess that I get a great deal of entertainment out of throwing the occasional ant in our bathroom into his web, watching the spider shoot across the web to the captured ant, and then wrap the catch up. Maybe I've seen too many animal planet tv shows, but it's that moment that fascinates me: caught in the web, feeling the spider bearing down on you, facing death in the face. I've legitimated my actions in my eyes since I'm feeding the spider, and he already had a sizable graveyard of ant bodies near him so I assume he'd be successful without my help anyway. Besides, I'm not completely sympathetic to one side or the other. In fact, just today, I inadvertently boiled a spider to its death - it was apparently living in the half-empty, open box of shells that I cooked for dinner. Really I'm a free agent in this life-or-death battle, open to bribes and persuasion from both sides, the ants and the spiders.

6 hours before my train sets out

As my stay at home draws to a close, I am sitting in my room, watching a movie w/ Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson playing inept spies or something. A fitting end. I've got an 8am train with my name on it. I have high hopes for this train ride, mainly because my sister somehow managed to procure 3 free Chipotle burritos the other night at some festival she went to. I've eaten one of them (I ate it a mere 4 hours after I'd gone to Chipotle and eaten a burrito and chips earlier - when Chipotle is involved, my stomach becomes all-inclusive). That means I have 2 Chipotle burritos for the train ride tomorrow. Let me repeat that for emphasis: I have 2 CHIPOTLE BURRITOS....2 (i.e. more than one) full wraps...a DUO of DELICIOUS, GIGANTIC, BURRITOS. That means, at least twice tomorrow, I will immerse myself in the phallic majesty of the powerful Chipotle burrito proper.

I want to watch the Deer Hunter tomorrow on the train as well, but I'm worried about watching it in the view of the other passengers. I feel I have to at least have a little consideration for the other travelers, who may not want to see Vietnam carnage on their morning commute. I'll most likely try to find a quiet seat in the back and watch it early on, before the train fills up. For later, I have Garden State. My expectations for passenger acceptance are high, but for my own enjoyment, they are low. Regardless, there's always Moby Dick. I read it briefly in the snack car on the ride down when my own car was too hot for my liking. I sat across from an old man who vaguely reminded me of Steve Martin. He looked up after a while and said "Old book." I agreed, gave him a little background on it, and kept reading.

I always walk around my house thoughtfully late the night before I leave to go back to school. It doesn't make any sense that I would get sad - I'm perfectly happy up at school. Guess it's just a tangible reminder of change.

X-phile

The Monday night X-files marathon was one of the best I've seen recently.

The first episode had an astonishing opening sequence, paced a lot like the opening to Once Upon a Time in the West. A series of low-level drug dealers and other shady folk get tipped off by an anonymous phone call that a person they're after will be at a cafe. Actually at the cafe is a man with his computer. Then the shady guys start slowly filtering in, one by one (or two by two), carefully eyeing the other people at the cafe. The masterfully built tension is released when two U.S. Marshals (also tipped by the anonymous phone call) burst in and a firefight breaks out, catching the computer guy in the crossfire.

The second episode was a comedic exploration of narrative structure (similar to Rashoman). It opens with a red-headed kid running in the woods from an anonymous dark villain. Finally, the boy trips, the villain jumps on him and then stabs the boy through the heart with a stake. At this point we realize the murderer is Mulder. Scully catches up and they open the boys mouth, revealing two vampiric fangs. However, Scully realizes they are fake. The episode then consists of first Scully's account of what led to that incident, and then Mulder's account. Luke Wilson plays a local sheriff, rustically handsome in Scully's account, exceedingly dimwitted in Mulder's. It also featured some of the most gruesome autopsy scenes I've seen in the series so far - meant to be amusing, but kind of unsettling.

The last two episodes I watched were part of the larger narrative arc concerning the government conspiracy to cover-up an alien invasion. Only, these episodes took place at a point late in the series where Mulder has come to doubt his most precious beliefs. I won't reveal any spoilers for other afficionados newly discovering the series like me. Suffice it to say that these kinds of episodes are always my favorites.


by the way, today I almost made it an entire train ride without getting really antsy. I did the best I've ever done. I didn't start getting anxious until around 7:30, a full 9 hours after our journey began. If I can just conquer that last hour, I'll be happy. I watched two movies (capote and goodnight, and goodluck), read some great chapters of Moby Dick, and listened to music. Somehow, that filled 10 hours.

I've watched 3 movies in two days.

Yesterday. Hot... I opened my eyes from the floor of my grandparents' tiny dining room. How did i get there... I guess I'd rolled off of the couch in my unconscious confusion to get to the cooler air 2 feet below. There I lay, half under a table, staring up at the ceiling through the heavy afternoon humidity. The lace curtains swayed as much as they could. I stuck my head against the window to try to catch the phantom breeze that propelled them so. Where had everyone gone.. I didn't have the energy to find out, I fell back on the floor, eyes on the ceiling again, feeling the wet ends of my hair on my forehead. A single drop rolled down into my eye. I could faintly hear the soft whir of the fans in the next room, the dull roll of the highway down the street. I wished, for that one moment of delirious warmth, that all the sounds of cars, buildings, airplanes, would stop. the quiet would be deafening. The more conscious I got, the harder the floor felt, through the weak carpeting. I climbed back up to the couch. That couch was made for August afternoons. It was thin, made of a firm fabric, the color of an old greenhouse. I had one eye open; the late afternoon sunlight colored everything in a rusty gold. I hobbled to my feet and entered the living room. My mother and grandparents looked like damp corpses, sprawled around the furniture, the slowly rotating fans buzzing like flies. We'd all been victims to the heat. And they would be resurrected soon enough, just as I had, into the cooler, dark night and a glass of ice water.