Whole Lot of Not Much Going On

I'll be up front about it-- I've been doing nothing of substance. With the exception of applying for a few more jobs and (yay!) scheduling an interview for one, my days have been remarkably full of not much. I've learned to shrink my economic footprint by burrowing deeper into library books, but even the unhealthy amount of reading I do has ceased being productive.

I'm currently locked into a war of attrition with the novel Snow by Orham Pamuk. According to the book jacket prose, which I read like a literary nutrition label, this one is supposed to be beefing up my knowledge of the conflicts between secular and religious Turkish society, but unfortunately my main character is a poet, and wanders through the novel like someone heavily dosed on valium, commenting mostly on his boredom, the beauty of the snow, and his unquenchable lust for a woman about whom he appears to know nothing, whose only interesting feature appears to be her stubbornly zipped fly. All around this guy a military coup is unfolding, a teenager zealot has been shot right through the eye and abandoned in the morgue, and countless officials and henchmen from both sides of the conflict have taken an inexplicable interest in monitoring our protagonist's movements. So far the book has inspired in me a fervent wish for some kind of narrative megaphone with which I could address all the characters: "Ka (the main character) is a retard. Stop encouraging him. Go about your coup."

A friend is coming from Texas to visit me next week and already I'm nervous about how to explain to her the normal trajectory of my day:

6:00 Run 4.5 miles with dog who won't stop pulling on the leash. Look like a sadist trying to remedy this situation.

7:00 Return to front yard, try to conceal dry-heaving from last ill-advised sprint. Dunk purplish face under kitchen faucet and lie prone on tile floor trying to fend off dog licks for at least half an hour.

8:00 Check internet for signs of latest Britney Spears meltdown. Click sheepishly over to the BBC when Pants walks into study.

9:00-2:00 Do something or other. Options include staging Swiffer battles against mounting snowdrifts of pet fur, collecting-- grudgingly-- the little trails of dishes, clothing, trash that mark Pants's journeys through the house, read, search for jobs, embark on random internet searches for exotic diseases and cool music videos.

2:00-5:00 Lament heat. (Close all window coverings, close A/C vents in all rooms but the living room, devour ice from recycled Super Big Gulp cup, lie prone on tile floor, periodically check the totally ineffective thermostat. When inside temperature reaches 92, resort to nakedness and whimpering).

5:00-midnight Attempt to cool down by cajoling various friends with better A/C to invite you over. Bring beer to express your gratitude.

Yeah, she's going to love that.

Recently my mom hooked Pants and I up with a three-month subscription to NetFlix (my mom subsidizes easily 90% of our "fun" budget, which, when you consider what a little shit I was for much of my teenage years, is nothing short of amazing) and we've also been on an obscure movie kick. Our first three were Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds, a Miyazaki movie I still hadn't seen, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Gaslight.

"Nausicca" was thematically rich and engaging, but since Pants finds my obsession with Miyazaki sometimes tedious-- never ask him about My Neighbor Totoro; his review is, "Everything sucked but the cat bus."-- I let him sit this one out. When it became clear that the movie included extended scenes of pilots being eaten by giant bugs, a horrifying combination tailored to Pants's specific neuroses, I was glad I'd exempted him. Still, the environmentalism message was impressively complex-- not just "Fuck you, Humanity, for sullying this treasured earth" but more of a measured look at complex biological interdependencies that aren't immediately obvious, and the value of a non-reactionary approach to conflict.

"Sierra Madre" was excellent but for the part where the DVD shat the bed two scenes from the end. All I was able to figure out is that Humphrey Bogart gets whacked by some peasants who take his shoes and scatter his hard-earned gold dust and then somehow his compatriots ride laughing into the sunset. Thanks, NetFlix. Watching Bogart go slowly crazy was better than I'd predicted. I expected a lot of progressively whackier monologues delivered in that same machine gun-paced hard-boiled detective delivery he perfected so well in "The Maltese Falcon," but he managed to keep that in check and appear genuinely unhinged.

"Gaslight" was great, even though the mystery bad guy is obvious from the beginning-- those sleazy continental Europeans with their long cigarettes!-- but I found myself wondering yet again how actors in old movies could stand delivering their lines in such close facial proximity. Seriously, could Ingrid Bergman really have focused on anything but Charles Boyer's nose hairs when she delivers all those lines in crushing face-to-face embraces? She also employs some of my least favorite female lead conventions of the time period-- the rushed, passionately delivered line immediately followed by a shaking half swoon into the nearest doorway-- but thankfully the Punch Kiss wasn't in there. Pants and I named this phenomenon after watching "Casablanca" about a thousand times. It's where the female lead gets all hysterical, as women tend to do, and the only recourse is to shake her and then plant a kiss on her mouth that would break any mortal's incisors. Pants and I actually tried this at half speed and still managed to come perilously close to one fat lip apiece. All of this is to say that I admire Ingrid Bergman's acting for all the reasons any normal person would suspect, but also for the fact that she endured an incredible number of Punch Kisses and eye-crossing embrace monologues.

Pants has just come home and informed me that we're due at a 90's costume party tonight. If I'm true to my 90's self, I'll go in baggy jeans, a flannel shirt with a Nirvana T-shirt under it, black Converse All-Stars with purposefully obscure Kurt Vonnegut quotes written on them, and a surly scowl hidden behind a curtain of reddish-dyed hair. I'll be damn near intolerable with my sarcasm and ennui and will answer questions with angry song lyrics. Charming!