She talks to wolves...

The short one:

If you like monster movies, as in the old school monster-destroying-a-city movies, go see Cloverfield. It's great fun and you won't be sorry you did!

The long one:

I think a lot of what made this film was J.J. Abrams' marketing genius. I don't know about Alias, but I've been with JJA through Lost, so I know how he likes to play games to seriously vitalize and deepen the experience of film.

For the past six months, interested parties have been given a wealth of cryptic background information on Cloverfield (pretty much all of which you can read back through by visiting Cloverfield Clues). We were introduced to the characters, their MySpace pages, given random teaser promo photos, mangas, Slusho commercials, even private video blogs of a girl to her boyfriend who'd been working for a mysterious company in Japan. We've learned about Slusho, a company related to the film, distributing a drink that contains "seabed nectar" as its secret ingredient. (Slusho! You can't drink just six.) We've learned about the company behind Slusho, Tagruato, and their mining corporation and even more information about that.

And still, with all this off-screen story unfolding before the release of the film, still we were able to go in and have a pristine monster movie experience.

Although the entire film is actually told through handicam footage, I found it to be superior in quality to that featured in The Blair Witch Project. I had heard that you don't get to see the monster that much because of the way in which the narrative unfolds (i.e. by people who aren't exactly going to stand around and videotape a damn monster coming for them), but I found that to be pleasantly untrue: yes, the people reacted properly to the monster's presence, but the monster still got a lot of screen time for all that. ( Maybe a slight spoiler... )

This film was pure fluff: great fun, an enjoyable monster flick, but lacking in any emotional or psychological meat. I think my enjoyment was heightened by the intellectual stimulation of knowing (or, rather, partially knowing) a lot of back story going in. It let me theorize about many things on screen that I would have been completely clueless about otherwise.

The handicam method of storytelling worked very well, although some of the scenes were a bit nauseating when there was a lot of running. However, due to the introduction of the film "evidence" and the nature of the "home footage" itself, the audience was left feeling very separated from the events of the story. It was very clearly happening to someone else, like a news story that has no bearing on you personally. You weren't right there with the characters, man, you weren't with them in all their terror and loss and humanity. (Like I said above: enjoyable and thrilling, just no emotional meat.)

The dialogue was also pretty good, as was the characterization, but I felt the film really could have benefited from the word "fuck." ( Spoilery example of why I feel this... ) That would just be my natural reaction.

Half-kidding aside, there were some genuinely great lines that I would quote but they would not be nearly as great out of context.

My one big complaint about the film would be the date thing. ALL of the internet-hype, the behind-the-scenes storytelling, the teaser images, EVERYTHING has been dated 1-18-08. And then they went and had the date-stamp on the camera be May 22nd and May 23rd. This wasn't the internal clock on the camera being off: the main character confirms the date on-screen at one point. It's really a minor point, but it just seems incredibly sloppy.

I hope that the brilliant marketing campaign will continue and interesting background information on the monster, what it is, where it came from, Tagruato (the mysterious company), and Slusho (their product; you can't drink just six!) will continue to emerge. I'm fascinated by the story and the experience they've built here.

The DVD is going to be amazing. (Extras FTW!)

I need to have an HD player of some sort by then.

P.S. We totally just walked into the theatre without presenting our tickets again tonight. They didn't start taking tickets at the door until after we'd already gone into the screen and gotten our seats. I went back out to have my ticket torn to get the promotional item, which happens to be a Kodak disposable camera. I was mildly disappointed, but I'm not saying no to free film! But couldn't we have had some Slusho promotional items? Some cups or something?

P.P.S. After presenting us with something that takes pictures, knowing we were about to watch a hyped movie with a super-secret monster, they were very serious about warning us that any opened camera would be confiscated and anyone engaging in flash photography would be thrown out.

P.P.P.S. They don't realize that some enterprising soul already caught the Cloverfield monster on their cel phone and has been spreading it around the Internet at least since yesterday.

P.P.P.P.S. Still sick. Glad I took that three hour nap earlier and stayed quiet until movie time. Equally glad I didn't have to stand in the cold outside and that the movie involved merely sitting down.

I'm so close to the end of this story that I can taste it.

Of course, in a way, then the real work begins. I only had the barest idea of who I was writing about and how I wanted to accomplish my vision of the end when I started. Now I get to go back and fill in some blanks, tuck in some places, fill out others, and in general make it a more compelling story.

In spite of my awesome progress on Sunday, Monday saw me bogged down and distracted by the application process. So I only wrote 41 words yesterday.

I don't have much of an excuse for today, other than that running around took too long this afternoon and then I dragged my feet on getting my schoolwork done and then Andy and I watched a movie during dinner. This carried me right past my target writing time of 8-10 PM and left me on the other side of 10 PM, feeling exhausted and vaguely sick (headache, emotional miasma). The best I could manage was 576 words and most of that was cheating: I typed up a scene I'd written for this story months ago. It'd been biding it's time in a notebook, waiting to see it's turn in the narrative.

My review of Vera Nazarian's Salt of the Air is up in today's edition of Green Man Review. Check it out. (Also, this is quite a packed issue, featuring reviews of papersky's Ha'Penny and truepenny's Mélusine.)

As we know, I got behind on my writing this weekend. I ended up owing 2,817 words before I even factored in today's wordcount. Here's what I've managed to get done:

For Friday: 122 words.
For Saturday: Nothing.

For Sunday:

Today's Goal: 750 words, and owing 2817 due to previous shortages.
Goal met? Daily goal was met: I wrote 1369 words, leaving me owing 2198.
Reason for stopping: I finished a scene and I need to get some sleep before school in the morning.

Project: Short story, title of "Green Dream."
Status of project: Carin made it to Dunwain, had "tipsy coffee" with another unforeseen minor character, and is now stumbling around the city.

I have to learn to manage my time better: it's not that I'm disorganized, it's that I'm so organized I'm starting to micromanage myself. I'd really like these habits I'm developing to feel more natural than obsessive.

It'll be better when I finish the hunt for a second job. And finish up these applications for graduate school. And don't have grades to turn in. I think. At least then it'll be down to typical school-planning and writing.

This afternoon, I tried to fill out four job applications (managed one on-line that took forever, plus the majority of two paper ones); finish up one of the pending grad. school applications (realized too late I was working on the wrong one, really); prepare grades for the rest of my classes (mostly done, though there are a handful of students whose grades are still pending); make class plans for my three classes tomorrow, make/assemble my class materials, and put them on my flash drive (succeeded at, yay); make wordcount (also done successfully, even if most of what I'm writing is subpar and I'm almost certainly sure won't be in the final draft); and spend time with sirandrew (which I'd been neglecting in the face of all my other many tasks these past several days).

Whew. And blah.

Today's Goal: 750 words, and still owing 983 due to previous shortages.
Goal met? Met and exceeded at 772, leaving me owing 961.
Reason for stopping: Exhausted + feeling crazy + it's bedtime.

Project: Short story, title of "Green Dream."
Status of project: Avian alien pirate from nowhere, but she gets awesome magenta plumage and a fantastic wardrobe. Also apparently biomechanical nightingales, which I certainly didn't see coming.

Tomorrow's docket includes finishing up the UTenn application (involves researching faculty and revising SOP/writing sample), finishing grades during my free period at school, also putting the finishing touches on my job applications during the free period, and dropping off said applications after work.

According to Roy Scheider, I CAN DO IT!

Today's Goal: 750 words, and still owing 1028 due to previous shortages.
Goal met? Met and exceeded at 795, leaving me owing 983.
Reason for stopping: Exhausted + it's bedtime.

Project: A review of George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin + a short story entitled "Green Dream."
Status of project: The review is finished, pending a final read-through tomorrow. Carin didn't make it much farther than actually onto the transport ship itself tonight and is reflecting on Trellan in spring.

I didn't get any work done on applications or syllabi, but I did get off to a fantastic start on writing my story tonight. I mean, I still feel like everything is one step to the left of right, but one step away from what I'm shooting for is much better than nonexistent! I'm tentatively excited over a few parts of what I wrote, though I'll probably return to the glum humdrum when I work on it tomorrow.

A few highlights from tonight's writing:

- I've almost settled on actually calling it "Green Dream." It was a placeholder title at first, but some things that suddenly occurred to me as I was writing tonight revealed that it might be more apt than I thought.

- I almost pulled something out of the following Christina Rossetti poem for the title, but concluded that it didn't quite mean what I'm going for:

( The poem. )

- On my new planet, florists sell temporary stasis chambers in single-blossom and bouquet sizes. It's only legal to put plant matter in them, but some off-worlders are trying to adapt the technology to be suitable for other organic matter (it's better than deep freezing and the new technology wouldn't necessarily be looked for yet by the law, making it easier on smugglers who are into organics).

- the_red_shoes is an awesome cheerleader!


Today's Goal: 750 words.
Goal met? Met and blown away, baby! 1345 words.
Reason for stopping: A scene change stymied me and I wanted to spend a little time with Andy, snuggled and watching a movie, before we go to bed.

Project: Short story, tentative title "Green Dream."
Status of project: Carin has left a meeting with an Aide to the Elders with a curious flower I had not foreseen and is on her way back to her ship for the journey to Dunwain starport. Irritated pirates and wondrous alien cities imminent.

To close, Andy and I totally just sat through Balls of Fury together. It was made fun by fun-making, a few funny jokes, and conversation.

My personal favorite moment was when I turned to Andy about 30 minutes in and said, (insert Walken accent here) "Wait a minute, wait. What I need here is... more Christopher Walken. This is not working for me... without the Christopher Walken. Please, guys, more Walken."

Ah well. If you can laugh at yourself, you'll never cease to be amused. Am I right?

P.S. Who (besides sirandrew and without Googling) can tell me where the quote in my subject line comes from?

Today, I find myself in a foul mood feeling rather like a waste of space. I have not plumbed all the reasons for this feeling, but I imagine a fair measure of it is tied up with the fact that I have neither been job searching nor grading papers over this break. I suppose I should give myself a break for, well, giving myself a break; however, I just haven't been conditioned that way. It's work-work-work and flagellate yourself if you're slacking.

Another fair measure of my attitude is tied up with my recent writings. For the past several years, I have allowed myself to write creatively only when I was "in the mood," which wasn't often due to the insane amount of academic work I completed while in college. Now that I'm trying to attain any notable level of productivity again (which I want, given how many awesome ideas I have laying about the place), I am suffering wave after wave of negative thought patterns that can be broken down into the following catch-phrases:

1. None of this is worth the digital paper it's written on: i.e., it's crap writing.
2. None of this is worth the digital paper it's written on: i.e., the writing's fair enough but no one could possibly care about my stupid story.
3. I'm not a skilled enough writer to pull this off; who am I kidding?
4. This feels like work: I must be doing something wrong. I'm an imposter.
5. ARGH, argh! glsglkhglkshglhg! What the fucking fuck, I am a fucking idiot, grrr, argh!

I have hopes that these are growing pains and I will get past them by ignoring them to the best of my ability and soldiering on. Please, for the love of GoD, someone tell me that I am correct.

Yet another part of my poor feeling could be due to the Lord of the Rings marathon I successfully pulled off today. I love Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings is one of the formative stories of my life: one of those books that built me as a child, given my mother indoctrinated me on it from an early age. As such, it's a very intimate story and I'm closely tied up with the journey of the Fellowship. It always affects me emotionally. And although our friends are successful in the end, the story pierces my heart, leaving me feeling wrung out after fully experiencing the story.

So here we are: the close of a Lord of the Rings marathon and me trying to prod myself into writing. Is it any wonder I'm feeling surly?

Instead of writing for the past hour, I have spent some time blocking out the story. I really think I'll benefit from this tomorrow as I try to make up word count: I have a brilliant idea, a haunted and beautiful place in the heart of sentient beings I want to evoke, but I wasn't entirely sure how to get my setting and characters to that one moment in time. I think I have it now, though only the writing (and then the reading) of it will prove my case.

Today's Goal: 750 words.
Goal met? No, only produced 319 words.
Reason for stopping: Foul mood; need to step away from the computer and relax with a book.

Project: Short story, working title "Green Dream."
Status of project: Blocked out a framework.

Time to scare up a nice cup of tea and snuggle down into bed with The Princess and the Goblin, an odd little literary fairy tale from the late 19th century.

Just because I know you're all dying to know how my research paper writing class turned out, in the end. Here's the tally:

Student 1: Brilliant student and the only one of two worth anything. Learned the process, practiced the process, wrote several rough drafts, worked with me to improve her drafts, turned in a complete final paper.
Topic: Racism and Social Injustice Portrayed Through Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

Student 2: An average student, but usually committed to working really hard. Started out working thoroughly but tapered off half-way through the semester into wishy-washiness. Changed his topic three weeks before the paper was due. Still seemed to be on track to getting it done, then just turned up yesterday with nothing. Desperately typed up a page at the library and handed it in to me.
Topic: How Wilson Rawls Wove His Own Life and Experiences Into Where the Red Fern Grows.

Student 3: She was withdrawn from our school (maybe coming back?), but she didn't do much work anyway. She made it half-way through the outlining process, but kept turning in quotes-from-the-book-masquerading-as-plot-summary every time she tried to write a rough draft.
Topic: The Plight of the Black Woman as Interpreted from Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

Student 4: He could have had such an awesome paper. He was a bit lazy, but he worked with me really well up through the outline. He had such a clear and meaty outline too! He should have had no problem getting the required page count. Instead, his work ethic suddenly fizzled out and he turned up yesterday with a "No, I didn't do my paper. This is my last week at this school anyway." As if that makes this semester not count: no, sir, you're going to have to work harder in your senior year now to make up for this.
Topic: Symbolism in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death."

Student 5: This fellow fought me from day one. He chose to write his paper on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, assuming it would be easy: and it would have been too, if he'd done even a little bit of work! Yet he didn't even finish reading the novel, much less seek out any sources. I kept meeting with him and reiterating what he needed to do, but it was like trying to drag a mule up an incline it was wholly dedicated to never setting foot on. After all this, though, he claimed he had his paper done and just "forgot it at home." This was an hour and 14 minutes before the deadline, so I told him he better start working on getting it up to the school. He left with some of the other boys in the class to "go get it," except he didn't call back up to the school until 12:36 (nearly an hour after the deadline) to say that he couldn't get a ride back up to the school. This was two hours after he'd left the school. There was no way I was softening on the deadline anyway, but he didn't really try, did he?
Topic: Christian Symbolism in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Student 6: I was so excited when this student first chose his topic. He was going to do a paper using Dr. Seuss! How fresh and invigorating an intellectual exercise that would have been, both for him and me. Definitely not the usual well-trod ground of high school research papers. We worked out a smashing outline togeter-- and then he just stopped working. Going to the library was entirely too much to ask, in his opinion. I did everything I could, but he just refused to write his paper in the end. He gave me a title page and a hand-written sheet of something yesterday. Sigh.
Topic: Dr. Seuss' The Butter Battle Book and The Sneetches as Cautionary Tales.

Student 7: This student has disappeared. We haven't been able to contact him in weeks and none of the numbers we have for him are working. Awesome. Prior to disappearing, he was also dedicated to fighting me every step of the way. He chose the shortest book he could (Jack London's The Call of the Wild), didn't read it, and insisted that he'd never find time in two and a half months to go by a library for research. Apparently neither could he find the time to ever develop an actual topic. He had his mother start making excuses for him before he disappeared. And he obviously didn't turn a paper in yesterday.
Topic: ???? in Jack London's Call of the Wild.

Student 8: This is the plagiarist I posted about the other day: the one who turned up for all of five classes out of the entire semester. He was never present enough to learn the process of writing a research paper and certainly didn't grok it on his own. Meetings with his mother, with him, with him AND his mother never resulted in actual attendance or dedication to picking up the pieces of his education. He turned in a plagiarized rough draft: you all saw my comments on it. He neglected to return to school this week (big surprise, that) and turn in a final paper. Or take his tests in his other classes. Which he also never attended.
Topic: Something about love in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Student 9: This student could only be bothered to come to classes half the time and, when he did show up, couldn't be bothered to actually keep up with his homework or attend to what was going on. The only formal work he did for me was work with me on choosing his topic and the early conceptual steps in putting together an outline. And that was where the work got too hard for him to bother with anymore. However, he did turn in a paper yesterday. Complete with screenshots from the film version of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." No, I don't know why he thought that was appropriate. I've only glanced at it so far, but it's all biographical information about Poe and loosely-related thoughts on "The Tell-Tale Heart." Clearly written by someone who has no idea how to write a research paper.
Topic: An Analysis of the Mad Narrator in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart."



This rate of failure makes me feel like a failure. I mean, obviously I'm doing something wrong, right? My teaching style is apparently off and I'm just not doing it right, yeah?

No. Because then I analyze myself and my teaching very carefully and very thoroughly. I often go overboard with the self-analysis, you know. And the truth is that I am NOT a bad teacher and I am NOT a failure. I bend over backwards for these kids and I spoon-feed them and I go really far in putting up with their bullshit before I snap and write snarky comments on their plagiarized rough drafts.

It doesn't matter. These kids are here because they don't care and their parents don't know what else to do with them, but at least have enough money to keep them in a school somewhere and off the streets. Which several of these kids seem to resent: they want to be on the streets. They honestly do not see why they need to have any kind of skills in researching or analytical thinking, and they laugh when I tell them they'll be doing this kind of stuff in college. ("Not at Trenholm Tech!" they crow.) And when I desperately try to appeal to them that these are skills they need in life, that the ability to find information and USE information to analyze, to deduce is vital to any kind of success in life... well, they think that's pretty funny too. Or they just stare at me with blank faces.

And it's all so very depressing.

Now, Therefore, I, Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States of America , do hereby call upon all of our citizens to observe Thursday, November 11, 1954 , as Veterans Day. On that day let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.

From the proclamation by Eisenhower changing the observance of Armistice Day to Veterans Day in 1954. You can read the entire proclamation at the Wikpedia article.

Another website, chronicling the history of Veterans Day: History of Veterans Day.

Some people wear poppies on Veterans Day: most often paper poppies, sometimes made by disabled veterans. It is said that this tradition originated from a poem by Lieutenant Colonel John McRae, MD, who wrote "In Flanders Fields" on May 3rd, 1915:

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Although Veterans Day (or Armistice Day or Remembrance Day) was yesterday, many places in the U.S. observe it today (greedy for the 3-day weekend, you know). Most of our kids certainly haven't bothered to show up to school today, though I'm sure it's not because they're preoccupied with reflection over the deeds of veterans or visiting cemeteries in remembrance of dead heroes.

For my part, I attended the reenactment of a Civil War battle on Saturday, after which there was a small ceremony to honor all veterans (present and gone) of the many wars Americans have fought. The veterans present were all called out, both from the ranks of the uniformed reenactors and from the horde of spectators. There were veterans from Vietnam, from Korea, from Desert Storm, and (sadly) so on. There were women veterans as well as men, although the announcer of the ceremony persisted in using "men" to refer to all the brave souls who stood forth. The ceremony closed with a three volley salute from all assembled companies, including the cannons.

My mother's family has a strong military-oriented history, and I'd like to mark with pride that my grandfather (my own Poppy) had a long career in the U.S. Air Force before retiring as a Bird Colonel. He served in World War II and would have served in Vietnam had not a torn ACL meant he could not fly his plane. He was shot down behind enemy lines during WWII, but managed to survive (secreted away in the basement of a Polish family's farmhouse) and return to his family. He'd already been reported dead and they'd given his clothes away back at his base. He laughs about that now, but I always wondered how he took it then.

A poem I wrote on February 2nd, 2004, when thinking about my grandfather and his WWII experience:

Thinking About Poland

The German birds fly high above him.

They shot him down in Poland,
behind enemy lines.
I don’t know if my family knew
when he fell out of the sky.
I don’t think they’d care to know
what color the sky was, cerulean
or gray, or whether there was snow
on the ground.
But I do.
I want to know the terror
of the fall, the hardness
of the foreign landscape, the shape
twisted metal made
and what color my grandfather’s eyes
were when he realized where he was.

In secret, Poland answered his cry for aid.

They hid him in the basement
of their farmhouse.
For weeks on end, he sat in cold
dankness, developing a decided
dislike for Spam. The strength of one
was small, yet he fought against the one
invading army that presented itself:
the rats learned to fear him
and he took amusement in his shots
that picked them out.
I want to know how time moved,
whether he thought about eating the rats.
I want to feel the beard he grew
and hear how thankful he was to be alive,
to still have a chance to swagger home.

I don’t think he swaggered when America finally brought him home.

I'm a bit shy to ask him about the experience (about the emotions, not the facts), but I think I may screw up the courage to do so soon. A magazine in Poland (the equivalent of the Polish Times, I've been told) did a piece on my grandfather and his battalion (not sure of the term). They interviewed him and produced a pretty detailed story: we even have a copy of the article, but it's in Polish. I need to get it translated so that I can read it.

All this is to say that I remember our veterans, thinking about them both over the weekend and today on Veterans Day Observed in the U.S. I hope you do, as well.

I took the GRE today, at last:

Verbal: 720
Quantitative: 570

I don't remember exactly what I made when I took it back in October of 2002, but I know that my Verbal score definitely didn't break 700 (maybe 670?) and that my math score was probably approximately the same (around 570).

So, seeing as how I'm applying for graduate programs in English, I guess being in the 98th percentile on my Verbal is pretty competitive?

I won't get the results on the writing part of the exam for about 10-15 days.