No, *you're* procrastinating.
My goals for this week are:
As of Friday I hadn't read (or checked out or searched for) the books for HoS, and I had maybe 8 pages of the Yohanan draft together. Since I'd written them in a burst under the inspiration of the haiku generator, I figured the best thing I could do for myself, academically speaking, was not to work. Conveniently, I discovered that a movie I'd heard about and wanted to see was about to complete its eye-blink theatrical run at the place down the street: when I looked for it maybe two weeks ago, it wasn't listed yet, but when I looked Thursday, there were no showings scheduled after Friday (12:05 and 10). I leapt upon the earlier showing like a wolf upon the fold, like a procrastinator upon a VH-1 marathon, like a lone female upon a sparsely-attended imported sci-fi/fantasy film somewhat in the Matrix vein. And when I say "lone female" I mean, of course, that the other seven people in the audience were male, and, more troublingly, I imply that when the first two of those males entered the theater where I sat, serene, in the best seat, the weight average increased. We nerds are not a healthy group.
Ночной Дозор [Night Watch] is, as I say, in the Matrix vein, both structurally - it's the first part of a sci-fi/fantasy trilogy - and cinematographically, meaning that it is edited to within an inch of the audience's collective life. The movie thinks it's cool, for sure. I'm inclined to agree, even if there were moments when I wanted to grab the camera by the neck, drag it to a reasonable distance from the action, and sink it halfway in cement so it would sit still. I imagine parents of children with ADD feel much the same way.
Against the film: taking the original Matrix and LotR:FotR as my poles, I'd say that the separate films in a trilogy fall on a spectrum between "self-contained" and "x third of a story." The audience could extrapolate pretty easily from Neo's last actions to a satisfying conclusion (and the writers should have let them, for real), but getting from, uh, Boromir dying at Amon Hen to Frodo on the white ship requires a competent guide. Night Watch did a good job setting out the trilogy's supra-plot (Plot), but some of the steps of Plot1 only made sense in the context of Plot. "The character must discover some fact!" "Okay, here is a computer. He clicks, he learns." "Wait, why would he-" "Ла ЛА, ла ла ла лаааааааа… We've got an arc to build, люди." Then Plot1, having served its purpose, Resolves Itself with a quickness so we can cut to bigger things elsewhere.
In favor: You know I can love a gimmick, and the subtitles in this movie are just as frenetic as the action sequences; they get caught behind items in the foreground, shatter, pile up. All that effort also explains, I suppose, why this particular foreign film was running on the wide-release American films side of the theater, as opposed to the Ciné Arts side. This film, like The Matrix, is about following people - the Others - who perceive things differently than we do, so the heavy, heavy reliance on special effects never quite becomes gratuitous. A little style for the sake of style never hurt anyone either. I'll be disappointed if the other movies don't do more to explain the mechanics of the world we're dealing with, but there's also something to be said for "'The Gloom' must be why that vampire's kicking his ass" as an answer to "Wait, 'the Gloom'? The hell is 'the Gloom'?"
What we do get of the wider mythology is appropriately messy. At some point in the past, Light and Dark realized they were evenly matched, and hence that open combat wouldn't solve anything. Instead, they cut a deal to wait until a special Other comes whose free choice, for Light or Dark, will settle the matter. Meanwhile, the checks and balances - Night Watch keeps an eye on Dark, Day Watch keeps an eye on Light - that hold their conflict down to a lukewarm competition between bureaucracies create serious ideological problems for Night Watch/Light (their cover in Moscow is the electric company, which I love), since it limits them to a more or less reactive role, licensing Dark to commit certain acts in moderation and then trying to keep them from overstepping the bounds of permission.
The issue, no secret to either side, is that while Dark can be limited and still live up to its name, Light that allows some amount of evil to happen - Light lite - greys out. By agreeing to countenance some Darkness, Light undercuts its whole reason to exist; it's a very realistic situation, c.f. any "peace-keeping" mission, but not one that maps well onto a Manichean dichotomy. With Light so compromised, both sides frankly assume that when the special Other does choose, he'll choose Dark. In the leader of Light's words, "it's easier for a man to destroy the Lightness inside him than defeat all the Darkness around him"; he doesn't mention that it's easier to do either than to withstand Darkness when you can't defeat it, because everyone there already knows.
I'm thinking B- for Plot1, but a projected A- for Plot; Day Watch is already out in Russia, and Dusk Watch won't be far behind, so we'll know soon enough. Obviously I'm in the mood to bloviate about its philosophical underpinnings (I'm one of them! I'm sorry), and if you saw it, we could bloviate together. Awww.
Since I'm already talking about seeing movies by myself in the middle of the day, I'll leave you with two additional benefits of contented singlehood; they're both beyond TMI, so you can stop reading now. First, I haven't shaved my legs since Thanksgiving. Second, I'm on (roughly) day 72, and thanks to my lifestyle choices I can recognize that fact as indicative of future fertility problems, rather than of an immediate "fertility problem." Surely you are happy for me.
- write four reading responses for Bushnell
- submit a draft of last spring's lit. review to Yohanan
- attend a… talky-thingy related to some book we read in HoS
- write my HoS paper
- get myself enrolled in BCS
- take my BCS final
- get on the plane
- I've read for two, and written 1 1/2
- I have a 20-page document requiring serious editing
- uhh, lunch will be provided?
- I've read seven books and have some ideas
- seriously, I cannot believe what a pain in the ass this has been
- whatever
- WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
As of Friday I hadn't read (or checked out or searched for) the books for HoS, and I had maybe 8 pages of the Yohanan draft together. Since I'd written them in a burst under the inspiration of the haiku generator, I figured the best thing I could do for myself, academically speaking, was not to work. Conveniently, I discovered that a movie I'd heard about and wanted to see was about to complete its eye-blink theatrical run at the place down the street: when I looked for it maybe two weeks ago, it wasn't listed yet, but when I looked Thursday, there were no showings scheduled after Friday (12:05 and 10). I leapt upon the earlier showing like a wolf upon the fold, like a procrastinator upon a VH-1 marathon, like a lone female upon a sparsely-attended imported sci-fi/fantasy film somewhat in the Matrix vein. And when I say "lone female" I mean, of course, that the other seven people in the audience were male, and, more troublingly, I imply that when the first two of those males entered the theater where I sat, serene, in the best seat, the weight average increased. We nerds are not a healthy group.
Ночной Дозор [Night Watch] is, as I say, in the Matrix vein, both structurally - it's the first part of a sci-fi/fantasy trilogy - and cinematographically, meaning that it is edited to within an inch of the audience's collective life. The movie thinks it's cool, for sure. I'm inclined to agree, even if there were moments when I wanted to grab the camera by the neck, drag it to a reasonable distance from the action, and sink it halfway in cement so it would sit still. I imagine parents of children with ADD feel much the same way.
Against the film: taking the original Matrix and LotR:FotR as my poles, I'd say that the separate films in a trilogy fall on a spectrum between "self-contained" and "x third of a story." The audience could extrapolate pretty easily from Neo's last actions to a satisfying conclusion (and the writers should have let them, for real), but getting from, uh, Boromir dying at Amon Hen to Frodo on the white ship requires a competent guide. Night Watch did a good job setting out the trilogy's supra-plot (Plot), but some of the steps of Plot1 only made sense in the context of Plot. "The character must discover some fact!" "Okay, here is a computer. He clicks, he learns." "Wait, why would he-" "Ла ЛА, ла ла ла лаааааааа… We've got an arc to build, люди." Then Plot1, having served its purpose, Resolves Itself with a quickness so we can cut to bigger things elsewhere.
In favor: You know I can love a gimmick, and the subtitles in this movie are just as frenetic as the action sequences; they get caught behind items in the foreground, shatter, pile up. All that effort also explains, I suppose, why this particular foreign film was running on the wide-release American films side of the theater, as opposed to the Ciné Arts side. This film, like The Matrix, is about following people - the Others - who perceive things differently than we do, so the heavy, heavy reliance on special effects never quite becomes gratuitous. A little style for the sake of style never hurt anyone either. I'll be disappointed if the other movies don't do more to explain the mechanics of the world we're dealing with, but there's also something to be said for "'The Gloom' must be why that vampire's kicking his ass" as an answer to "Wait, 'the Gloom'? The hell is 'the Gloom'?"
What we do get of the wider mythology is appropriately messy. At some point in the past, Light and Dark realized they were evenly matched, and hence that open combat wouldn't solve anything. Instead, they cut a deal to wait until a special Other comes whose free choice, for Light or Dark, will settle the matter. Meanwhile, the checks and balances - Night Watch keeps an eye on Dark, Day Watch keeps an eye on Light - that hold their conflict down to a lukewarm competition between bureaucracies create serious ideological problems for Night Watch/Light (their cover in Moscow is the electric company, which I love), since it limits them to a more or less reactive role, licensing Dark to commit certain acts in moderation and then trying to keep them from overstepping the bounds of permission.
The issue, no secret to either side, is that while Dark can be limited and still live up to its name, Light that allows some amount of evil to happen - Light lite - greys out. By agreeing to countenance some Darkness, Light undercuts its whole reason to exist; it's a very realistic situation, c.f. any "peace-keeping" mission, but not one that maps well onto a Manichean dichotomy. With Light so compromised, both sides frankly assume that when the special Other does choose, he'll choose Dark. In the leader of Light's words, "it's easier for a man to destroy the Lightness inside him than defeat all the Darkness around him"; he doesn't mention that it's easier to do either than to withstand Darkness when you can't defeat it, because everyone there already knows.
I'm thinking B- for Plot1, but a projected A- for Plot; Day Watch is already out in Russia, and Dusk Watch won't be far behind, so we'll know soon enough. Obviously I'm in the mood to bloviate about its philosophical underpinnings (I'm one of them! I'm sorry), and if you saw it, we could bloviate together. Awww.
Since I'm already talking about seeing movies by myself in the middle of the day, I'll leave you with two additional benefits of contented singlehood; they're both beyond TMI, so you can stop reading now. First, I haven't shaved my legs since Thanksgiving. Second, I'm on (roughly) day 72, and thanks to my lifestyle choices I can recognize that fact as indicative of future fertility problems, rather than of an immediate "fertility problem." Surely you are happy for me.