Acquired Situational Narcissism

I've been very introspective for the past few weeks, I felt like all the interesting things in my life were happening inside my head and it's hard to put that onto paper. Luckily, interesting things have started happening outside my head too.

Quitting my job and going to grad school seems to have finally sunk in. I had a few conversations with people over the weekend that reminded me that I should probably get a job while I'm in grad school. I'm very partial to warm meals and a roof over my head after all. I think I've worked out what I'll need to maintain my current standard of living; there's a lot of variables like loans, part-time hours and benefits that work into the equation.

There's a lot of big changes coming up and it's equal parts scary, annoying and exciting. I've had a good routine built up over the last two years. Sure, work was banal but it was also safe and consistent. I'm going to miss the security that came with it but I'm looking forward to the challenge. I've complained about boredom so often that I've forgotten the clench in my guts when confronted with an unknown future.

Yeah, it's kind of exciting and life-affirming but it's also a pain in the butt when you're trying to sleep.

I've been having a hard time sleeping on Sunday nights. I suspect it's because I know I'm waking up to Monday morning and the long slog back to work. Still, staying up until 3 AM or later doesn't really help me out. Then again, habits and tics tend to be illogical.

Michael Jackson died last Thursday, it's still a little weird. It was hard enough to reconcile his immense impact on music with his alleged pederasty and surgical obsessions when he was alive, but in death? He's the Saint of Pop.

Of course, Chris Onstad's "Achewood" offers a unique perspective of it's own.

I had a revelation over the weekend thanks to some interesting conversation: I've always worked in female-dominated workplaces. My immediate superior has always been a women. My co-workers are always 90% women. It's an unbroken string, ever since I started getting a paycheck from college workstudy jobs.

A large part of it is due to the gender ratio in psychology. In 2005, "72% of the new PhDs and PsyDs entering psychology were women, according to APA's Center for Psychology Workforce Analysis and Research." At my group interview at UMass Boston, I was the only male applicant out of the ten or twelve there. Outside of that, I've only worked clerical/administrative office positions which also tend to be female-dominated.

I figured this out because A. and I were discussing the idea of the "feminization" of male Americans by women entering the office space and I realized that I can't compare my experiences against a male-dominated work place. Am I missing out on some sort of important male bonding? I don't have any work friends to speak of, but that might be as much due to circumstances or me than gender relations.

I had jury duty this week too, I don't know why a lot of people I know are getting jury duty now around the same time. It was kind of a hike, but in the end they didn't need any of us and I had a free day off. I'm not complaining, guess I'll get called in three years. I kind of wanted to do my civic duty but time off is a treasure these days.

I fixed my laptop hinge! I'm actually pretty proud of that, I actually had to take the screen apart and buy some needle-nose pliers to get it done but it made a big difference. The outer chassis is pretty sturdy, some sort of carbon fiber material, so it didn't actually crack. There was some sort of weird screw/hinge issue that took me several trial-and-error tests to figure out but I put it back together and it works and that's pretty awesome.

Still, there goes my excuse for a new laptop. I'm going to see how much more life I can get out of this one before I upgrade to some sort of sturdy business-grade one. Maybe some new RAM or a new hard drive?

Woo Friday! Sometimes there is nothing sweeter than marking time off a calendar and easing into the weekend. Personally, I expect to spend the weekend chilling with A. and playing "Red Faction: Guerilla" a lot.

May felt kind of hazy at times, like I spent most of the month in stasis. I'm in this weird in-between place where I've jumped through all the hoops for grad school and I'm totally pumped and ready for it, but I'm still working at my boring old job and I'm still bored. VERY bored. Well, I suppose it's better that than being depressed or stressed out from not getting in somewhere. Still, I'm an impatient guy.

Yesterday, the kung fu movie world actually lost two luminaries, David Carradine and Shek Kin. I always liked Carradine; I loved "Kung Fu" and I even liked "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues" which (I think) was on before or after "Babylon 5" way back in the day. Shek Kin is a lot more obscure, but everyone will remember Mr. Han from "Enter the Dragon", that guy with the claw hand. R.I.P. gentlemen.

I've been browsing through the SCP Foundation Wiki for weeks now so I should probably share it around. It's basically a Wiki of weird fictional artifacts collected from around the world, probably the basis of someone's fan-fiction or role-playing world.

There are literally hundreds of entries on the Wiki, written in a clinical style that uses censorship and classified information in a way that reminds me of H.P. Lovecraft if he were a typical government bureaucrat. Lovecraftian office horror! The black bars and redacted information adds a sense of ambiguity to the entries that invites the mind to fill in the blanks in the worst possible ways.

Of course, they're not all good. Some entries are fairly mundane or, at worst, embody the worst self-referential tendencies of fanfiction. Still, there's a general level of quality that keeps me coming back and clicking on random entries. If I tried running a d20 modern campaign again, this would be the perfect story hook generator.

As much as I enjoy the summer movie phenomena, I'm getting real tired of genre sequels, remakes and adaptations. I understand that, financially, it's the most prudent thing to do. Movies are expensive to make, especially blockbusters, and established franchises are a safe bet at making a nice profit.

Still, there's something about it that feels creatively bankrupt. You know how things will ultimately play out; Kirk will always be the id to Spock's superego and Bond will always escape the deathtrap and fuck the girl. It's the new comfort food of cinema, familiar and delicious but not very adventurous.

There's some small hope for interesting original genre movies on the horizon. "9" looks like rag dolls versus evil machines and you can't beat a Coheed and Cambria song in the trailers. I've also heard very good things about "Moon", a movie about a solitary man on the moon and his HAL-esque computer companion.

I'm personally excited for "District 9" which looks like a faux documentary of refugee aliens in South Africa. It's being directed by Neill Blomkamp who was *this* close to directing the Halo movie and made the short and interesting "Alive in Joburg" film which is what District 9 essentially expands upon.

Hm, I should start writing on that movie blog again. Maybe I'll cross post this, make it even longer.

Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Briefing Covers

Biblical quotes? For a war against a pre-dominantly Muslim nation? It's a little bit too "Crusades: The Next Generation" I think. Also, the terrible design reminds me a lot of the thousands of ridiculous Evangelical Protestant websites I have to check for work, which is no surprise.

The amount of shit coming out from the last administration is going to be fascinating.

(via GQ)

I'm fascinated by this "Atlantic" article about the Grant Study, a longitudinal study of Harvard sophomores from the 1930s. The study followed this group of men for more than seventy years, recording their physical data, their mental history, their entire lives essentially.

It's an honest and beautiful piece of writing that not only captures the breadth and scope of the study, but the personality of the man behind it's current incarnation, Dr. George Vaillant. It's a must-read for anyone remotely interested in psychology, sociology and the pursuit of happiness.

What struck me most was how organic the lives of these men played out. They lived their life from day to day, from interview to interview, and they can only begin to see the true shape of it with the distance of time. Their stories weren't just written, they were experienced.

It reminded me of what I had to do when I wrote my grad school statements. I had to look back on the past eight years and try to sum up that experience in a way that made sense. There had to be a narrative, some evidence of personal growth and change. I mean, I have grown and I have changed but it didn't feel nearly so neat and tidy at the time. It's ok though, in the end, I found my story.