Oh COME ON, MTA (Oh, and the 30 Day Movie Challenge)
It doesn't fucking matter when I leave, I cannot seem to get to work before 9:30. I left fully half an hour before I usually do, with my usual departure usually getting me to work at 9:40. I got here between 9:25-9:30. I had fully intended to be here early to clean more of the lab before I had to leave for class. But the buses were stuffed and some just plain didn't stop to pick anyone up. Did they suddenly stop running as many buses because of cut backs, or what?
As for lab cleaning, I had wiped down counters and tucked things away all day yesterday only to be told the floors were being mopped/waxed and we had to pull everything out and off the floor. I just went around re-tucking things when I finally sat down to find an e-mail about floors being mopped in an hour. If the e-mail is not literally true--i.e. that its subject "hallways being mopped in one hour" doesn't mean that it's just the hallways being mopped and I have to go through all this bullshit again, I'll kill someone. For real. I am dressed up at work, in a shirt I didn't realize had a stain on it until just now (thank god for my sweater), and I'm tired and cranky and it's only 10 am. Help me, Jeebus, I might kill someone before day's end for looking at me funny. Time to meme before that becomes not just murderous thought but murderous reality.
30 Day Movie Challenge
Day 22 - The most underrated movie
I can't remember if I saw this before I saw The Matrix. I'm pretty sure I did. I know I saw eXistenZ before The Matrix. Those two movies and The Thirteenth Floor all came out around the same time, so it must have been something in the air in the late 1990s. Perhaps fear of the millennium?
It felt like, to me, The Thirteenth Floor got lost when The Matrix hit it big. eXistenZ was a quirky movie by a famously weird dude, so it got its minimal but art-movie approved props. The Thirteenth Floor came and went with almost no fanfare. I happen to love it. It's a wonderfully rendered (har har) techno noir. The pastiches and archetypes of the 1930s noir literally exist in the digital world that the characters have created to resemble that era. This is combined with futuristic technology that is at once both accessible--it's sort of like virtual reality--and mind-blowing--the idea that the avatar you inhabit when you "play" is actually able to think, live, and act independently of you when you're not around.
But, really, it's a noir at heart, right down to the hero who cannot trust anyone, even himself (he may have murdered his mentor but he has no memory of it); the mysterious femme fatale who emerges to claim rights as the victim's daughter (heretofore unheard of by the hero, who knew the victim well); and the grizzled detective dogging the hero, willing to consider any possibility because he believes the truth is never necessarily simple (and he would be right). I'm not the biggest fan of Gretchen Mol, but she's serviceable. Really, the movie hangs on Craig Bierko and Vincent D'onofrio's performances, and both are good as themselves and their avatars--the former's being rather clueless, the latter's...less so.
It's totally worth a rental's worth of your time.
Day 01
Day 02
Day 03 - 06
Day 07
Day 08
Day 09
Day 10
Day 11-13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17-19
Day 20
Day 21
As for lab cleaning, I had wiped down counters and tucked things away all day yesterday only to be told the floors were being mopped/waxed and we had to pull everything out and off the floor. I just went around re-tucking things when I finally sat down to find an e-mail about floors being mopped in an hour. If the e-mail is not literally true--i.e. that its subject "hallways being mopped in one hour" doesn't mean that it's just the hallways being mopped and I have to go through all this bullshit again, I'll kill someone. For real. I am dressed up at work, in a shirt I didn't realize had a stain on it until just now (thank god for my sweater), and I'm tired and cranky and it's only 10 am. Help me, Jeebus, I might kill someone before day's end for looking at me funny. Time to meme before that becomes not just murderous thought but murderous reality.
30 Day Movie Challenge
Day 22 - The most underrated movie
I can't remember if I saw this before I saw The Matrix. I'm pretty sure I did. I know I saw eXistenZ before The Matrix. Those two movies and The Thirteenth Floor all came out around the same time, so it must have been something in the air in the late 1990s. Perhaps fear of the millennium?
It felt like, to me, The Thirteenth Floor got lost when The Matrix hit it big. eXistenZ was a quirky movie by a famously weird dude, so it got its minimal but art-movie approved props. The Thirteenth Floor came and went with almost no fanfare. I happen to love it. It's a wonderfully rendered (har har) techno noir. The pastiches and archetypes of the 1930s noir literally exist in the digital world that the characters have created to resemble that era. This is combined with futuristic technology that is at once both accessible--it's sort of like virtual reality--and mind-blowing--the idea that the avatar you inhabit when you "play" is actually able to think, live, and act independently of you when you're not around.
But, really, it's a noir at heart, right down to the hero who cannot trust anyone, even himself (he may have murdered his mentor but he has no memory of it); the mysterious femme fatale who emerges to claim rights as the victim's daughter (heretofore unheard of by the hero, who knew the victim well); and the grizzled detective dogging the hero, willing to consider any possibility because he believes the truth is never necessarily simple (and he would be right). I'm not the biggest fan of Gretchen Mol, but she's serviceable. Really, the movie hangs on Craig Bierko and Vincent D'onofrio's performances, and both are good as themselves and their avatars--the former's being rather clueless, the latter's...less so.
It's totally worth a rental's worth of your time.
Day 01
Day 02
Day 03 - 06
Day 07
Day 08
Day 09
Day 10
Day 11-13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17-19
Day 20
Day 21