Lingering

Hello.

I am still alive though I haven't been posting. I have been commenting in a lot of LJs and that's perhaps indicative of the fact that I'm more reactive these days than I am, um, initiative.

I got a nasty cold last weekend and it's taken days and days to shake it and I'm left with a big energy deficit that I will try to redress tomorrow. Work has been nasty. I work with one of my best friends and she just gave notice, not being able to stand the stress around here anymore. Furthermore, our idealistic little company shows signs of moving in directions I don't like, backing off on our president's agenda of encouraging sustainability and social good among our corporate and governmental clients and, instead, licking the ass of American corporations more and more to fuel our so far unprofitable growth.

What's terribly ironic is how, when we're encouraging sustainability and starting our work from a place of ideals, we seem to have better internal practices, organization and mutual respect. But, as soon as we start dealing with the ravenous, clueless global corporate sector, we become idiots internally -- screwing communication, falling below standards, becoming less and less communicative and angrier and more backbiting. This is exactly the kind of behaviour I have always seen when working for large corporations and why I swore I'd never go there again.

I hope I won't be forced to resign, too. I need the stability of this part-time job in order to have both the financial and emotional base in which to get my art done.

But if I'm to manage the despair I feel for the world, I can't -- CAN'T -- work in a place that is not making a difference and that is, in fact, slapping a number on its back to join the marathon of suicidal stupidity our fresh global community is hosting, to the cheers of the disenfranchised, impoverished crowds on the sidelines.

Fuck. I'm so entertaining. Why doesn't everyone want to friend me?

Happy Elections

Because I'm motivated almost entirely by guilt (and hunger), I feel the need to post something positive:

I rewatched Andrew Payne's brilliant second movie Election and it exceeded my memories of its quality. The story of a teacher who decides he must interfere in the outcome of the elections for student council president is a small masterpiece. He is the most precise and, simultaneously, playful new filmmaker around. The complexity of the moral situation and the love/hate feelings we have for the characters is astonishing. And the movie is hilarious, nasty and sweet all at the same time.

I even watched it again with the commentary and he confirmed things I had suspected about details like choices of cars and clothes for characters and the fact that the high school extras were really local high schoolers. I loved him for saying that he hates to see clean cars in movies. I was also grateful for the look at his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska -- a location that has come up recently in stories I've been reading.

I also recommend his first movie, Citizen Ruth, a blistering satire on the abortion debate with Laura Dern playing the most unlikeable main character in film history. The difference between the two is that Election managed to find a lot of love for its characters even as it questioned their choices all along the way.