post new years blues

i don't buy into the whole new years resolutions bullshit but every time the reality of the new year starts to settle in (around mid january) i sit down and make a list of at least 20 ways i can do something marketable in the new year that's different than what i did the year before.

legal things

its easy to do what you WANT to create, but its important to keep the money coming in more than the money going out. this year seemed a little harder, took a little longer than most years. in the middle of a depressed economy its hard to imagine what might make money.

but the list is done.

i have sources of income right now, of course, but i hate to rely on anything concrete. things always change, and are changing. that's why i call it the Fuckit List.

no, i just came up with that actually.

Che Part 1

"I am not Christ or a philanthropist, old lady, I am all the contrary of a Christ.... I fight for the things I believe in, with all the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other man dead so that I don't get nailed to a cross or any other place."

it doesn't matter if you agree with his philosophy or not, you have to admire the man. someone who fought for what they believed in even though it wouldn't have had an impact directly on his own country, his own life if he had stayed in argentina as a doctor. yes, he was a communist obviously misguided and a product of the place he was raised and the people he associated with. none of that should matter to the example he set.

they commendingly stay far away from making him into a superhero and they delve into (a little, maybe not enough) the complexities of the good/bad of what the rebels are doing.

when it was over, for me, the movie did such a a great job of making che into a real person, with real flaws, that it drove home the fact that "ordinary" people can make a difference. afterwards i felt energized, still do.

we did a back to back of motorcycle diaries then che part 1 and within this context it isn't hard to understand how even communism must be better than the utter poverty rampant around them. yes, the movie presents che's arguments against the USA but it does it in a non-judgemental way. the characters speak what we know they spoke, they feel how we think they probably felt, but it isn't SHOWN to be true. at least not in part 1. the US is not the big bad villain of this movie. its not propoganda, at least not anti-american propoganda.

it does sometimes gets bogged down in the endless series of towns in cuba as they make their way through the island. che parts 1 and 2 together will be over 5 hours long so i'm not sure why this 2 hour part 1 should feel padded but it does. i was grateful for the flash-forwards we get of him visiting the US that are interspersed thoughout the narrative. it breaks up the endless new towns well.

i forgot it was del torro somewhere early on which is rare for me and even the subtitles doesn't bog it down. the person i watched it with isn't very used to subtitles but they didn't seem to bother her.

i think it comes out in general release at the end of the month.

blindess review

we watched the movie Blindness last night. i wanted to do nothing, no social interaction and no writing, and this was the closest i could come to that. it was an interesting movie, disturbing. i can't really say it was GOOD but it was worth seeing.

the premise is a slow building disease of some sort causes people to go blind. thinking its contagious and can be contained, they start putting the newly blind in an old hospital to quarantine them. one woman can still see but pretends she can't to stay with her husband and help him in the hospital.

its sort of lord of the flies meets the happening (that shitty M Night movie), with all the good and bad associated with both.

not ready..... yet

i haven't been watching many commercials since i get all the shows i want to watch commercial free and i don't have cable, only getting one decent station in over-the-air high def and that's fox. i live in new york city and there probably is maybe even less political commercials than normal. so maybe this commercial has been running a lot and i just didn't know.

i tuned into the barracomercial and right after that a mccain commercial comes on talking about how inexeperienced obama is (forgetting that palin is even less experienced), interpsersed with images of poor people for some reason and at the end of all that the announcer says "obama, not ready..... yet"

what is this supposed to make us think of? it immediately evoked for me the idea that this is mccain's last chance, but obama might have more chances in the future. it made me think how sad john mccain is to be taking this angle and it even underscored how OLD he is.

i'm taking the day off next week, heading to pennsylvania on monday night to hang out at the voting booth and vote on tuesday.

never seem to find the time....

i'm busier these days and its hard to split between the three areas you need to devote time to: creating, experiencing and maintaining relationships. its been my experience that you need all three to reach full potential.

lately i've been drawn inward, working on too many projects at the same time and ignoring the last two categories.

i've spent time with friends but only when they come to visit, which is usually only my good friends really. and i'm working in the background with a movie on or something even then. so i apologize to the people i've ignored and social plans i;ve backed out of.

i'll actually venture out and work from a coffee shop for a few hours today, i think.

the debate a wash?

i don't feel any different about either candidate after this debate. the two undecided people watching with me claim to still be undecided, the republican with me is still against obama.

as an obama supporter, i was worried that he might blow it and he didn't so that was a relief.

i like when they addressed each other, as lehrar tried to do again and again, but mccain was less comfortable with that. lehrar did ok but the questions left too much room for ambiguity.

mccain seemed to be hitting talking points more often, especially at the end when he claimed obama wasn't able to admit to being wrong about the surge even though a half hour before he said that obama recently HAD admitted it. trying somehow to tag obama to bush was WAY out there. he was also handling the questions like an outsider. but he's had 30 years to try and change things and he hasn't. he now has to be seen as part of the problem with things, not as a solution.

obama seemed too much on the defensive. he felt he had to address every utterance of "naive" and it began to appear painfully obvious. also his overly correct pronounciation of every silly name in this world was obvious. it felt faked.

i read not too long ago that the debates were timed to not coincide with jewish holidays. so why was this one held on a friday night?

have to turn this crap off, only fox comes in in HD over my rabbit ears.