(no subject)

Went to see a few locally produced film shorts with cthulhia, part of a week-long film festival going on at the Coolidge now. A couple of them were really good, especially Toonanooda, a cute animation in the same school as "Dr. Katz" (and featuring anthropomorphic pickles, so you know Cthulhia was all over it); Birdbeat, a gorgeous and very slick animation perfectly pairing twitchy, flighty CG birds with saxophones on the soundtrack; and Happy Peppy Sparky Dog!, which was much less painful than its title led me to expect. We all laughed in the intended fashion at it, and it kept itself to under three minutes: exactly the right length for a one-note gag-film.

The other shorts could have taken a lesson from Happy Peppy and applied some editing jesus god. One of the stinkers was a semi-coherent student film featuring a bunch of guys with Southie (Boston) accents drivin cahs around bahs and bein MOVIE STAAAAHHS and was made all the more b'zaa by the fact that the same guys and 200 of their friends were actually in the theatre, and shouted Hey, BUBBAY! Hey, CHUCKAY! at the screen whenever another person they knew appeared in the movie. Actually, it was kind of a novel experience. That didn't make the too-long movie much fun to watch, though.

Uh, and there was another one that was an interesting concept, rassling with the relationship between a person's name and her identity, but making me grit my teeth and squirm the whole time because (a) the actors were really, really stinky, invoking each line of casual conversation as if it were from an epic poem, and (b) it was interspersed with scenes of the characters walking around in the Cambridgeside Galleria (I think) reciting English 101 essays about why malls are evil and America is a capitalist sham. It was like the worst parts of Waking Life except without even the animation to distract you. Gaaaaaaaa.

Somewhere in between was an intentionally corny student-film-flavored student film that engaged in autoMST3K. Nothing outrageously clever, but a cute concept. The film instructor was the best part. "Er... why are you framing the doorknob like that? Is the doorknob important somehow?" Heh.

aiee

I've been working on this damned memory leak for three calendar days now. I won't say that I think I know where it is now, because every time I think that, it turns out not to be true. I will say that it's making me very sad. I don't think I've ever spent so much time fixing some little programming mistake that my past self has made somewhere. Sigh.

It is good to take a break after a few hours of this, though I kind of have to force myself. I felt a lot better after hitting the diesel for a sandwich and a coffee. Ran into mangosteen who excitedly babbled about his latest Cocoa explorations, so that was fun.

Now I have to go to Micro Center and return this bogus PhotoShop. This necessarily means being in the vicinity of Mac games for sale. Argh. Well, I can't think of any I want that are out now; here's hoping I'm right. (Though I guess I wouldn't mind paying for a pretty & dumb arcade game, something I can turn to for ten minutes of distraction when necessary, and which doesn't hit addiction buttons. Sometimes these things show up.)

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My shoes, purchased for Peter's wedding last June, are completely falling apart, all at once. Something in the heels of both has come loose, and makes an entertaining ratting sound with every step, like seeds in a hollow gourd. Sometimes I shake my feet just to hear it.

(no subject)

That was a nice walk. I discovered to my surprise that Micro Center sells console systems and games. I didn't buy any of that, but I noted for the first time the relative prices of the different systems; surprised to see that the PS2 is fully twice the price of the Game Cube.

Last year I swore to myself I'd get a modern video game system because it is a fine thing to have video games. I will give myself a crash course on the systems' relative merits and make my choice soon, I suppose. Friends who know the sorts of games I like -- and the games I like too much -- are welcome to weigh in. My personal exposure to these systems is very slight, limited to playing with a local friend's GC a few times. Super Monkey Ball! (I have actually had the most exposure to the now-defunct Sega Dreamcast.)

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Speaking of crash courses, I forgot to note that seeing short films of varying quality made me want to make movies, because I'm so sure I can do better than that. Do I know the first thing about cinematography? Hey: I'm surprised I spelled it correctly, just now. Do you know anything about this? Any pointers you can offer me? Books? Seriously.

Add this to the collection of things I want to do, I will do, if only I get the creative spark for it. But the tinder lies cold, cold while I continue to sit in my room (or in my cube) and natter away to myself. Generally I need to smellllllll the godforsaken FLOWERS. I have been on a hectic rush-rush go-go since putting the book down in November and... this is not the way to happiness. Rush-rush begets more rush-rush, more than it solves things.

If you don't count my recent unemployed period (and I don't), I haven't had a vacation in... in... I don't think I have taken once since the time I visited leahleaf &c. in 1999. Maybe you can count summer 2000, when daerr and I went to the O'Reilly open source convention in CA (which unexpectedly served as the springboard into my move to Massachusetts), and spent several extra days nosing around the west coast, visited meeshdoublel and zyxwvut, and generally did nothing work-related. So, coming up on three years since my last real vacation. Uh-huh. I don't think this has been very good for me.