Beautiful film

I used to watch a lot of artsy foreign films. I enjoy listening to the foreign languages while reading subtitles. Except when the language is French.

Last night I watched a wonderful Thai film that Rob has had on DVD for quite a while. Beautiful Boxer is about a transgender muay Thai fighter. He takes up boxing to support his family and later to earn money for a sex change operation.

The music and cinematography are gorgeous, as are the performances. The film shows Nong Toom as a novice monk and as a boxer-in-training. Watching it, you really get a sense of two of my favorite aspects of Thai culture: Buddhism and muay Thai.

Interesting too, that Nong Toom struggles with becoming a boxer, because it’s too violent. His trainer’s wife takes him to an early morning practice, where Nong Toom sees the beauty in the moves.

Highly recommended.

But, but, AOL started it!

The average worker admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per eight-hour workday, not including lunch and scheduled break time. An America Online/Salary.com survey shows that employees are wasting about twice as much time as their employers expect.

Top Time-Wasting Activities

1. Surfing Internet (personal use), 44.7 percent
2. Socializing with coworkers, 23.4 percent
3. Conducting personal business, 6.8 percent
4. Spacing out, 3.9 percent
5. Running errands off-premises, 3.1 percent
6. Making personal phone calls, 2.3 percent
7. Applying for other jobs, 1.3 percent
8. Planning personal events, 1.0 percent
9. Arriving late / Leaving early, 1.0 percent
10. Other, 12.5 percent

Yeah, well, at least I don’t socialize with my coworkers, and I’m not applying for another job.

Lonesome

Rob left me yesterday. To do some defensive tactics training in Tacoma. I feel so abandoned. My mom’s on the road to come help me with the move … so I’m without my usual e-mail companionship.

Which has led me to self-destructive thoughts. Such as, “My hair’s getting too long. Natalie Portman’s looks cute as it grows out from being totally shaved. Maybe I should cut mine like hers.”

New thread

The post that has nothing to do with my house or my iguana.

Midsummer is here, and the job was feeling a bit humdrum (especially when compared to the new house and the iguana). Yesterday, I came up with a project to give me something productive to do, rather than search Craigslist for a comfy chair on company time.

It’s all about the Audio Slideshow. I downloaded software to practice, and now all I need are some excellent pictures and some audio recording equipment. We have a spectacular new camera that I barely know how to use, so my pictures are turning out rather bleh.

I have taken publishable photos before. And these photos have in fact been published. I once considered myself a decent photographer.

I don’t know what happened, man.

In the first place, I took a half-dozen pictures this morning, wondering what the little flashing “stop” hand and exclamation mark meant, before realizing that I hadn’t pressed the pop-up flash button. Second, I know what Aperture and Shutter are, and what they do, yet I couldn’t remember what the A and S stood for on the camera’s dial. At least the word “Auto” was spelled out, and that function worked just fine.

It is motivating to have the words “Audio slideshow, audio slideshow” running through one’s head while in the field, because it provides an incentive to take a lot of good pictures, ‘sted of one that’s only halfway decent. But then I get back to the office, where I don’t even have Photoshop on my computer (which is fine because I don’t really know how to use that. I went to a class for photojournalists a few weeks ago and felt like a newbie at a Microsoft Word training who can’t find Save under the File menu).

This would be a good place to post one of the photos I took today, but they’re all still on the camera. I don’t have a cardreader and have to have someone else upload the pictures. Then about all I can do with them is put them in order and write clever captions. And a voice over script we can record once we get a microphone.

Instead, I’ll offer you a picture of dairy cows that I took with the company cell phone. Which I am afraid to ever use except for obvious company purposes, like taking pictures of dairy cows.

Stupidest thing I’ve read today

Calling someone a freeway blogger because they hang signs on freeway overpasses is like saying I text-messaged in high school by passing notes in class.

A cardboard sign is not on the Web and is not a log, and therefore the author is not a blogger, until they take a picture of the sign and post it on their blog. Which defeats the purpose if, as this story says, highway bloggers “favor bridges over websites as posting places.”

Now, if you’ll allow me to use this here Internet blog for the purpose it was intended: War is bad. Stop bombing innocent Lebanese and stop kidnapping Israeli soldiers and for Pete’s sake, stop blowing yourselves up. Get the troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Don’t go to war with North Korea or Iran.

Does that cover it?

Mel Gibson is responsible for all the wars in the world.

Peace.

Speaking of Deja vu

Me and Emerald, 2001

Me and Stew, 2006

I can’t let it go

I’ve got “Deja Vu” by Beyonce running through my head this morning. And am waiting for it to come on the radio. Shouldn’t be long. This is the same song that was on my radio when I parked my car Monday and was on again when I got back in it a few hours later.

Now, here’s a song I can’t imagine anyone else singing. Can you say Karaoke disaster? Then again, something about the pitch of her voice when she’s really wailing reminds me of Lea Salonga in “Miss Saigon.”

America Voted. I did not.

Oh Reality TV, how you have your hooks in me. Wednesday night I was in the grips of a solid three hours of Contest Shows. (Rock Star: Supernova, So You Think You Can Dance and Project Runway.)

I’m so bummed that Allison got cut from SYTYCD; she is meant to dance in the Celine Dion show (and that’s totally a compliment). Someone like Heidi, who is very good at Latin dance and ballroom, admits she can’t move her body like a contemporary dancer — and the prize for this show is a contract as a contemporary dancer.

Cat Deeley is right. It’s my fault for not voting for Allison. I’m sure she’ll get hired for something anyway. Now I’m rooting for Travis. And will actually have to vote for him next week.

Although I enjoy all the remaining dancers.

Stewpendous

Some days, I’m totally overwhelmed by how much work it’s going to be just to move into our new house. Just to move all the stuff. Then I think about the home repair projects and start making task lists of things that absolutely must be done before I will spend a night in that house.

It makes me want to pull the covers over my head and stay in our cave of an apartment forever.

But today, I’m feeling pretty energized and eager to get it all started. The move is a couple of weeks away and I’m just sitting at my desk, anxiously twitching the ankle of my crossed leg, thinking about how great our house will be.

Would like to be playing with Stew right now. He’s kind of an outdoor iguana. I used to take Emerald for walks in Chicago, tethering him to me with a blue harness. But Stew is used to hanging out on lawns, sans harness. I’m wary, and a little concerned that Rob’s mom will lose him during these next few weeks while he’s staying with her. But, hey, if she’s comfortable taking him outside…He happily runs around the yard, and doesn’t, like, whack me with his tail when I repeatedly interrupt his galavanting by picking him up and turning him in another direction. (Under the deck you will not go, my friend.)

Now if we could all just stop calling him “Emerald” by mistake.

You’ve got me? Who’s got you?

Ah, Superman Returns. It hit me right here. (Points to heart.) Was quite surprised at how dreamy the new guy is. Even when he was, as I call it, “All lacquered up” so his face looked made of plastic like Jude Law’s in A.I.

But come on, “How many F’s are there in catastrophic?” Please let’s not have a Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist not know how to spell.