MOVIE RIDICULOUSNESS...

     I've been watching a few of the Friday the 13th movies on AMC this morning because, "Why not?" and aside from my usual complaints about cable television censorship, I'm continually amazed at how dumb these movies are.

     Right now, it's up to Part VIII "Jason Takes Manhattan". It starts off with two teens, Jim and Suzy, sexing it up on a houseboat. The guy throws an anchor in the water which ends up dragging an electrical cable into the resting place of the hibernating (?) revenant, Jason Voorhees, resurrecting him for another round of mayhem.

     But before he bags his first two kills, Jim mentions that he doesn't like being so close to the campground where all those murders took place to which Suzy replies, "What murders?"

     I'm already taken out of the film. What do you mean, what murders? Like 70 people have died there in the first seven parts? And it's not like those murders happened over a hundred years ago and had fallen into local legend. No, they took place over the past ten years. There's no way you haven't heard of them.
     That's like when Han Solo from Star Wars says he'd never heard of the Jedi when they were keepers of the peace in the galaxy for over a thousand generations. They had only been made virtually extinct by the Galactic Empire and Darth Vader about thirty years ago but that wouldn't wipe out people's memories of them, even if it were just their name. Hitler's only been dead for seventy years and people have still heard of him.
     My point being that it's ridiculous for this girl to have never heard of the murder sprees that have taken place on Crystal Lake's campgrounds.

     The next thing that caught my attention was the cruise ship everyone was on to Manhattan is called "The Lazarus", AFTER Jason had already been resurrected. That should've been the name of the houseboat those doomed teens were on in the beginning. Instead it looks like it was called Lady Drifter.

     Movie, you're doing in-your-face symbolism wrong...

     I'm sure more awaits as this film goes on, but I'll post now instead of adding to this live...

THIS IS HALLOWEEN...

     See, I think what ultimately ruined Halloween as a festival of scary was business. It's hard to find genuinely terrifying things or provocations of unease or sources of existential dread throughout the month of October except in very niche environments. People like to say Halloween is "scary" but it's really not. There's talk of monsters like old-school vampires, werewolves, witches, and mummies and more modernly favored zombies, vengeance-fueled spirits, weapon-of-choice spree killers, and vampires but you get sanitized versions of them instead.

     I understand why. It's kinda hard to sell candy, costumes, and television specials to children while also giving them a real sense of mortal terror, challenging their faith in happy endings, and by enhancing our already natural fear of spiders, snakes, and the unknown. Brands can't really turn their mascots into genuinely frightening things. They have to make attractive the darkened Halloween palettes and present a kind of "fun" scary instead.

    I'm not sure in any real sense why Halloween needs to be scary but I suppose it's the age-old that's what we've been told kind of tradition. I just know that such celebrations are impossible in an atmosphere convincing consumers to buy shit.
    We get anthropological M&Ms as a cutesy vampire (watch out! fangs!), Frankenstein's monster (aah! bolts!), and a fashionable witch (help! she's wearing glasses!); Snap, Crackle, and Pop illuminated as if to tell a fun-scary story over a cauldron of Rice Krispies treats; coloring books of smiling friendly witches whose spells provoke delight rather than dread and dancing skeletons to entertain rather than warn of imminent danger; "scary" movies where the kids are always successful at pushing back the evil as though nothing had happened; it goes on...

    It's hard to deliver genuine scares, especially as one gets more sophisticated but I also don't think it unwise to use the holiday for public service. Movies which show how easily one can become enchanted by and to do service in the name of evil (think the masterminds behind the Hitler Youth), how peer pressure can override an overarching sense of what's right, how fear can make one complicit in wrongdoing, and so forth.


   I don't know what the solution is besides just sucking it up and not giving a shit about such trivialities. I think I look at the word "scary" in Halloween season much like the word "beautiful" in today's social media and how it's not only overused, but misused. Surrendering to the ever-changing tides of meaning is necessary lest one desire himself a linguistic Canute...

MISERY STREET...

     Sometimes I wonder if the reason I'm unhappy with working is not because I have to have a job in order to survive but that I'm largely constrained into having the same job in order to survive...

     I find that I get bored easily with both people and things. It is rare that I find a person or subject constantly interesting. I don't see why a job would be any different. Some people need constant novelty in their life experiences and I need constant novelty in my mental ones.

     The trouble is, while working multiple jobs is indeed possible, it would monumentally unwise to do so without a significant cash cushion as different jobs pay differently, if at all...and assuming you can even find one in a timely manner to begin with.

     I find I'm happiest when I am free to pursue my interests at will and without outside constraint on the speed and manner in which I tackle it. Life largely does not afford such opportunities to me, if it does at all. I'm so introverted that going to work counts as going out/socializing so my time off each day and on weekends is largely spent indoors not talking to anybody in order to simply recharge.
     And it's never quite enough. I only just start feeling recharged on the day I have to go back to work. I haven't quite gotten there yet but I suppose it's the mental equivalent of using duct tape to mend a broken pipe: serviceable, but hardly a true fix.
     It is only when I'm on vacation for an entire week that I actually have a few days (three, to be precise) where I'm fully recharged and more like myself again. I've been working so long at my place of employment that I have maxed out on my vacations. I get four weeks which means I get a total of twelve days a year where I feel like myself again. That's all I get. As you can imagine, I guard those days jealously.

     I remember when I first started doing my job that it was actually enjoyable. So long as I still had new things to learn and new routines to figure out, I didn't mind going. It also didn't feel like work. My time off was all I needed to recharge so I still got to feel like myself two days a week. As I maxed out in my experience though, it fell to only one day then only the aforementioned vacation days. My job ceased to challenge me but there was nowhere else I could go which would pay me enough to survive on, let alone live on.
    I was stuck. I've been stuck.

    It made me wonder though, if money wasn't an issue, would I be happier at work? I would be free to quit my job when either I've maxed out what it could teach me or if I were made to feel worthless as a human being...another thing I have to swallow, my need for dignity, because I am still in need of a reliable source of income to survive.

    But I think about that. What if I were free to satisfy my mind's desire for mental novelty? I could work anywhere that would take me for whatever they wished to pay me, if at all as I could just as easily do volunteer work at soup kitchens or animal shelters. Might I encounter new, constantly fascinating subjects that I could explore in great depth? Might I meet new, constantly interesting people to interact with...even love?

    I just hate knowing that I'll never know the answers to those questions...and that I only get four groups of three days to be myself a year. I just finished up my last three days for the year. I don't get to be myself again for another 4½ months. The time in-between vacations feels so long already...not that this weekend has done me any good.
    Four hours to go before I have to get ready to keep doing it all over again.

    No way out...