An account of my dream, obviously about the royal wedding

So P.C. and I and a bunch of other people were on this semi-tropical island for a medical conference that was also some kind of modeling competition, and his mother, who in the dream was cruel and spiteful toward all the other women in his life (and therefore played very ably by Angelica Huston, and definitely not his real-life mom), was also there, along with a long list of players who I don't know in real life.

The basic plot of the dream was that P.C. and I were in a solid relationship, but that for some reasons not made perfectly clear, he had to also pretend to be in a relationship sometimes with another woman (doctor) named Jane. And eventually, since he's a nice guy (and in the dream, he was less weird and silly than in real life, which was the first clue), the relationship with Jane began to make me question our relationship.

But there was also a young blond model named Crystal -- not the kind who are waif-thin and annoyingly obsessed with food, but a very cute young woman who was the "life of the party" sort (which was the second clue). P.C. paid some friendly attention to her as well, which in retrospect within the dream, also seemed somewhat alarming to me.

Then I was going to go to a community college in Michigan to study some course that only that community college had, possibly in storytelling. (Which is ridiculous, because the only college that has that course of study in the entire nation is ETSU in Tennessee.) But I wasn't sure I should, since the medical/model conference seemed to be pretty fun and suddenly I wasn't sure if P.C. would end up marrying Jane or not if I left.

Then the news hit: Jane had not been chosen for some sort of medical internship award. She wasn't good enough. Angelica Huston was very cruel, at this point telling her what a terrible person and doctor she was. I witnessed the whole thing -- and learned that Angelica Huston hated Jane at least as much as she hated me (the under-achieving, Michigan-community-college-attending girlfriend) -- but Jane rebuffed my attempts to comfort her at first.

We all went out (this being a semi-tropical island) to hear the presentation of awards along with a marimba concert on the patio area in the back of the very strange hotel we were staying in (third clue), and P.C. was emceeing. I finally cornered Jane -- literally speaking to her right in front of a corner, though one that poked out rather than in, so it shouldn't have trapped her -- and asked if she wanted a hug, which she did. She explained that she'd thought before that I was going to scold her just like Angelica Huston.

In this dream, there was also an ad (this being some kind of model conference) for "Eddy Waters Makeup." I thought even in the dream that this was an extremely clever and inappropriate name for a makeup company.

Then P.C. went up to emcee the ceremony, except that as soon as he started, he pointed back through the crowd along the side of the stage to where Jane and I were standing at a corner, and I knew he was calling Jane up to explain whatever recent work she'd been doing or to extol her virtues and generally redeem her. But she'd already headed toward the stage, so I pointed into the crowd where she seemed to be, and when I saw her step up onto it, I pointed to the spot where she'd disappeared onto stage with the marimba band.

It turned out P.C. hadn't been pointing at her, but at me. And also, he was holding a microphone shaped like a rosebud slightly opened, which he brought directly up to me, too close for me to comment. Luckily, I had nothing to say anyway.

And then he proposed, somehow. The dream logic is vague, but the important thing is that I suddenly realized that our relationship had been solid all along, and if it had ever been in danger from Jane or Crystal or Angelica Huston, it wasn't anymore.

And that was my dream, obviously, about William & Kate. I had that dream instead of watching them get married, though I imagine there'll be coverage available throughout the day, and I'll probably catch some of it.

Good luck to them.

I'm dating a troll.

[That commercial comes on where the white man falls into the black family's living room couch, and the black woman kind of looks at him and then smiles knowingly.]

Me: "Now, that white hipster guy just drops into that family's living room, and the black family just sits there and the lady is like 'hey, white guy' and just smiles at him. Now imagine if that had been the opposite, and a black guy dropped from the sky into a white family's living room. Would their reaction be the same, just like 'hey, black guy, welcome to the living room'? No it would not."

P.C.: [playing Minecraft, does not respond.] ...

[Half an hour later, same commercial comes on again.]

Me: "See what I mean? See that white guy just fall into that family's living room?"

P.C.: "Hey, do you think that would be different if the white guy was a black guy?"

Me: "Are you trolling me? You better be trolling me. You're either trolling me or we're broken up."

P.C.: [Smiles] "What is trolling?"

Me: "Trolling means I'm gonna punch you in the face. Your choice is I can punch you in the face or we're broken up."

P.C.: [Thinks about it.] "Can it be both?"

Me: [Thinks about it.] "Yes."

Local Trivia: If it's just a fact that we're all white people, is that still racist? (Yes. Yes it is.)

To be fair, my mother and I were crossing the road, and we're both white.

Local Trivia: Subway sign update

Here's a pictorial update of what went down with that old Subway/Family Dollar/Liquor Store/Discount Tobacco sign being held up by a hefty yellow strap a few months ago, in picture form:

It completely fell apart. The bushes are all crunched up in the middle where doubtless the bits of Subway and Family Dollar fell on them. Today there were workers out there upgrading the sign to a form that will never be able to be held up by a strap:


And the punchline: the Subway shares space with Discount Tobacco.

The 5 "people" who wrote me spam today.

"Congratulations!!!
CONGRATULATIONS
"Congratulations!!!
CONGRATULATIONS
Congratulations!!!

That depends on what the meaning of the word "sample" is.

Me, reading the subject of a spam-mail I received: "No risk Natalie Portman sample."

P.C.: "Ooh."

Me: "No, not 'ooh.' You'd probably get a toe or something. It wouldn't be something good, like an eye."

P.C.: "But it's no risk."

Me: "That doesn't mean you're going to get something good, it means you won't get a disease."

P.C.: "Well, I thought it would be a sampling of Natalie Portman over the years...and it's no risk, so you're not gonna get Star Wars."

MFHTDWF #12

Note: With the recent explosion in popularity of the already inexplicably popular Charlie Sheen, based almost solely on his antics as a famous person, we at Continue Unprotected have decided to resume publication of the “Manual For How To Deal With Fame.” We begin where we left off, at principle #12.

Principle: Do threaten to take other people to court.

While principle #11 states that you should never get caught up in a boring court case, the air of litigiousness surrounding famous people who threaten legal action can effectively add to their fame, but only if you never actually approach the courtroom.

Remember, your purpose as a famous person is to fascinate and terrify, which means you can go one of two directions in your faux-litigiousness.

First, you can focus on one individual who has supposedly harmed you. Make sure to choose someone for whom your fans have no sympathy, but don’t choose an easy mark either, like tobacco companies or people that hunt pelicans. The target of your supposed lawsuit should be surprising, but also someone about whom your fans will say “I always knew there was something wrong with that guy” – i.e. Steve Buscemi.

Make sure your statements in reference to the possible lawsuit, however focused on one person, remain randomly strewn about your speech. Do not give Steve Buscemi’s lawyers a chance to charge you with libel or you will end up in court.

The second direction you could take is a period of over-litigiousness, during which you may be prone to declaring that you will sue anyone who crosses your path for any reason whatsoever. The waitress brought your toast to you cold? You will sue her, sue the restaurant, sue the entire city! The cat groomer clipped your Siamese’s coat a bit too short? Threaten to sue Thailand.

If you take the second route, be sure to lay off the threats after a few months, or it will become as boring as an actual court case. During this time, you may choose to associate yourself with the church of Scientology, as such a church and over-litigiousness go hand in hand. Leaving this church at the end of your over-litigious period will also provide narrative closure for fans who wonder why you stopped threatening to sue all the time.

Examples of famous people who succeed at this principle: Charlie Sheen, John Travolta*

Examples of famous people who succeed at this principle inversely, by virtue of constantly being associated with lawsuits but never being the instigators: Steve Buscemi

Examples of famous people who fail at this principle: Everyone related to Anna Nicole Smith

*Scientologist

In Defense of Poppery, XVI: Saws 1-7

Pop example: Saw film cycle, I-VII

Problematic critical reception: “The Problem of Saw: ‘Torture Porn’ and the Conservatism of Contemporary Horror” by Christopher Sharrett – excerpts:

“Most important, [in the 1960’s] the horror film began to eschew the supernatural in favor of the psychological, as the genre looked to horror as the product of middleclass life, not caused by external demons or a mad scientist's freak accident. The genre investigated the neurosis that is basic, as the heirs of Freud inform us, to the creation of notions of normality and otherness.”

“The psychological themes of the horror film, with their adjacent social criticism, became grossly transmogrified into the misogynist teen-kill "slasher" films of the Eighties, the most degraded example being the Friday the 13th cycle.”

What redeems it: Oh, how sad for us. All the “good” horror happened in the 1960’s and had socially liberal messages. And now all we have is this unreasonable, meaningless Saw cycle and its subgeneric cohort to watch.

Anyone who cannot see a reason for a horror film or, even worse, a series of horror films, is not thinking creatively enough or is too elitist to see the truth. Christopher Sharrett seems to be both: calling a horror subgenre “misogynist teen-kill ‘slasher films of the Eighties” and then citing its ‘most degraded example,” the Friday the 13^th movies, implies that those films weren’t expressing a real fear felt by people (perhaps particularly teens) at the time they were produced…and implying that there are fears that are somehow more worthy of expression.

Really? Fears that become ‘worthy’ of horror flicks? How does that work, exactly?

Acting as though certain types of fear are somehow more civilized than others, perhaps even assuming that on viewing these movies we’ll all instantly give in to our ids and become serial killers (assuming also that we’re all, at heart, serial killers minus opportunity), is acting as if we are all basically evil and must, even in our expressions of primal fear, strive to “rise above.”

We, the horror viewers, are not children. We know that this is make believe but also that it in some way reflects our reality. If there is misogyny in our horror films, that’s probably because misogyny exists and has to be dealt with. Showing women tortured may titillate as well as horrify, but if it does so, that’s because the problem of torturing women being sexy already existed. The job of horror is not to pretend these issues don’t exist, but to draw them out and resolve them.

This is not a problem, because horror isn’t an Aesop fable. Horror films are not normalizing. We do not learn how to be by watching horror films, not directly. Everyone knows you go to a scary movie to be scared and confront yourself and fears, not to figure out how to function properly in society.

Horror is a subversive genre, and while Sharrett says “the subversive component nearly vanished, as the genre was relegated to a lowbrow vehicle for shouting "boo!" that its snobbish attackers accused it of being since its inception” way back in 1980, I say this in reference not only to the “great” horror movies of the 1960’s (some of which are definitely great: Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, for instance. Watch them), but even to the “torture porn” we’ve been seeing recently.

Horror is about showing the unshowable truths that comedy and drama reign in. Our bodies degrade. We die. Time never returns us to where we think now we probably were happiest. And when we were there/then, we weren’t as happy as now we think we must have been. The things we love flee from us, somehow or other. We don’t get beautiful monologues on our deathbeds, declaring “the rest is silence” – it just is. Saying so subverts those narrative myths and the politenesses that allow us to live narrated lives.

Horror is unruly, and that should make analysis of it that much more rich. There are narratives that “don’t work,” that don’t function as they should, because those are controlled accounts of our lives (or the lives of characters), but horror films that terrify – ones that are popular being the best guess as to which ones definitely do terrify us – do “work.” They obviously work. They’re meant to scare us, and if they do, they’re working.

So this brings me to my defense of the Saw movies, which I believe this reviewer has completely – perhaps willfully – misunderstood. The premise of the cycle of films is, more or less, that a serial killer called Jigsaw has begun setting traps for his victims that end up with most of those victims murdering themselves, mainly through failure to adhere to the extremely rigid rules set by Jigsaw, or by being physically incapable of fulfilling them. (Spoilers to follow) Each movie reveals more about the previous movie’s events as well as furthering the torture in what becomes a smorgasbord of physical torture; Russian doll style, these films nest together such that layers of information filter down through the viewer’s understanding of each previous movie to change “what you know” to “what you thought you knew.” Jigsaw’s original intent, the one he repeats throughout, seems to be to teach people to “truly live,” in a needlessly complex set of Raymond-K.-Essel scenarios. What took Fight Club thirty seconds takes the Saw franchise seven movies.

Sometimes this seems ridiculous. And young teen boys, which over and over again I see listed as the supposed audience for these films, probably do have a stake in proving their nascent manliness by being “less scared” or “less grossed-out” than their friends at the extremely torturous traps set by Jigsaw, making the torture for them an end in itself. But set those imaginary boys aside for a second, and set aside the visceral gruesomeness of the movies, and take a look at what’s going on with Jigsaw’s supposed motivations, an “inane morality” that Sharrett dismisses without even bothering to interrogate it. You’ve missed the point, fellow reviewer. This statement of motivation, and Jigsaw’s moral system, is the point of these movies. The torture is about the morality, not the other way around.

Specifically, the torture is the effect of the stringent and extremely specific morality of Jigsaw. He creates these traps assuring the audience, whatever audience he can get, that if they play by the rules, his victims will emerge victorious and more full of life than they ever were. Most don’t survive, which he sees as weakness deserving of death.

But here’s the kicker, and for my part the whole meaning of the cycle (and a major spoiler): some appear to survive the torture. Some appear to go on living after their ordeals. But none of them do.

In the end, the Russian dolls, so brilliant in their constant re-framing of the events of previous movies, reveal the truth about Jigsaw’s hard-ass morality, which is that nobody ever survives it. Ever.

Jigsaw doesn’t survive, obviously, because he had cancer when he started his escapades. But every single victim he puts through “a test” or “a game,” as he likes to call them, either becomes one of his cohort, putting others to constant tests and being tested themselves, committing the same atrocities he does, in fact; or they die. Once you have started down the path of an absolutist morality that “takes no prisoners” and shows no mercy, you have already sealed your doom. You are already either also evil or dead by your own hand.

The fact that his victims die by machines, or die by their own hands in some way or another, or that they’re willing to kill others once they’ve been traumatized by their own horrible experiences, supports my hypothesis that the films are about the personal standards we hold ourselves and others to...and in fact the horror of believing that (in this modern, machine-filled, medically supported world) we have the choice to be perfect, but somehow can never make that choice, can never achieve it. If we could, somehow we could have lived forever.

No killer needs to lay a hand on us for us to “die” psychologically in this way. This level of stringent morality, this perspective on life, is suicide.

Jigsaw fails. He fails every single time to produce the effect he says he seeks, which is the production of a fully alive, grateful, absolutely moral human being. His failures betray the principle he adheres to. They show that such mercilessness cannot help but destroy.

And from that perspective, I can see the point of the torture. It’s a physical manifestation of a psychological reality – a physical inducement of that psychological reality, in fact. The physicality is not the point. “Mortify the flesh”: that is the point. "Mind over matter" is the point. The point is the psychological and metaphorical link between the body and “the flesh,” the parts of us that keep requiring critique, that keep failing at perfection, and the supposed liberation of the mind from that flesh that can only/supposedly be achieved through torture.

But then we torture ourselves, and the torture always fails.

My point, here, is that this is to me a revolutionary message for a horror film to be sending, that a judgmental eye will always end up gouging itself out. And it does not, definitely does not, read as a conservative message to me, something that Sharrett accuses it of doing.

In fact, to the contrary: I'd say Saw is one of the most effectively liberal cycles of film I have seen in a long time – more effective even (perhaps) than bleeding-heart documentary because, like a good bleeding-heart documentary, it gets us mad, but unlike many of those documentaries, it also makes us fear for our lives in our guts and not just in our brains.

What could be more internal and psychologically basic than that?

PSA: NPR writes sarcastic article!

Check out this article on which people will benefit, and how, if the government shuts down due to idiocy.

It's a very short, thin list -- so thin, in fact, that I can only conclude it's a sarcastic statement on the state of American politics today as well as an indirect indictment of the journalist's credo to "tell both sides of a story." There isn't another side to this story, and trying to tell it just makes that more glaringly obvious.

I can understand the desire to be "out of debt" (although that desire seems to have gotten us into at least as much economic trouble in the past as the supposed spend-thriftiness mostly Democrats have been accused of). I can even relate to the hard-headedness that will cause people to say "at all costs!" when they speak of the deficit. But that doesn't stop me from saying that those people are stupid...specifically, stupid the way a very young child is stupid when they say "no, Mommy! You're bad!"

First, they don't seem to know what they're talking about (those who do manage to have real and civil conversations about this are exempt, here), and yet they feel they must know better thanks to "common sense" than the experts. (Who would want to drink a beer with an economist?) Same crowd that believes in creationism and refuses to acknowledge global warming (because...??? Because coal is so super awesome that using wind or solar power would be an insult to God? I still don't understand what dog they have in this fight).

Second, they -- and in this case, I suppose I mean Republicans, or whoever would dig in their heels and "insist" the government do such-and-such "or it gets shut down!"; more likely Tea Partiers -- are acting paternal, which is annoying to begin with, but doing so in exactly the way a toddler would do it: by holding others hostage with a temper tantrum. Toddlers assert their independence by acting like their parents on the one hand, scolding and waving fingers, but also by being big babies, which means throwing their bodies on the ground and screaming until we either give them what they want or take them away.

So no, I don't believe there's a bright side to the idea the government may shut down, because I believe the shutdown would be motivated by idiots.

And don't be fooled by the NPR's only serious-seeming claim to benefit from the shutdown, the International Spy Museum.

I've been. It's pretty boring and can't compete with Smithsonian.

PSA: The Children of the Corn probably just needed social workers.

This was the photo that showed up with an ad for a 1 yr. social work degree on my Facebook page.

This completely confirms my decision not to become a social worker.

Local-ish Trivia: Quite a disturbing sentence.

"Police suspect a serial killer but so far have no suspects."

Ooh. Creepy.

Pretty disturbing content. But what also disturbs me about this sentence is the double-use of the word "suspect," even though in one case it's a verb and in the other it's a noun.

I am then meta-disturbed that word choice disturbs me here, since obviously there are more important things going on than the use of words that have legitimate meaning, if not the poetic sensibility I appear to expect from aggregated crime reporting.

And on further reflection I also feel disturbed that this whole scenario -- four women (one from CT) found dead on the side of the road, more or less, and four more bodies recovered in addition to those -- refers me automatically to TV rather than any real-life events. Murders are almost entirely mediated in my mind, not visceral or impactful at all.

But maybe that last one's for the best.

(Note: In writing this post, I had originally copied the characterization of the women found in the article -- "four prostitutes" -- but when I actually wrote it out, I found myself resisting that label. Why specify that they were prostitutes, as though that's a different kind of human than "women"? Nobody finds four dudes dead on the side of the road and says "the four investment bankers [blah blah blah]." And if they did, despite the fact that investment bankers have screwed us all, while prostitutes have only screwed a small fraction of us -- and then at our request, and for our apparent benefit, and to their own peril -- we'd probably think something like "oh, they were investment bankers -- upstanding citizens who probably had families." These women had families, too. Probably. If this kind of sensationalist reportorial nonsensical characterization continues, I'll be forced to take a defensive position in favor of legalized prostitution, rather than continuing to believe that investment bankers should probably be made illegal.)

Update: 27 seasons of TV (since 1/1/11)

Modern Family, s1 (x2)

Rescue Me, s4

Drop Dead Diva, s1

30 Rock, s4

Damages, s2

Caroline in the City, s2

Stella, s1

Grey’s Anatomy, s6

Rescue Me, s5.0

L-Word, s4

L-Word, s5

L-Word, s6

Big Love, s4

Community, s1 (x3)

Drop Dead Diva, s2

Lie to Me, s2

Lie to Me, s3

The Walking Dead, s1

House, s6

BBT, s3

Grosse Pointe

Starter Wife

Chuck, s3

Weeds, s6

Edit: The Guild! I forgot to add to my personal list The Guild, s3 and 4. You can also watch The Guild.

Update: 20x11 New Year's Resolution

For those of you who may have been keeping close track of my New Year's resolutions, distressed at the lack of information gathered on how I've been following up on those -- due probably to your not living within binocular-distance of my apartment, in tandem with me not posting anything on it here -- I'm happy to report my progress.

In terms of the rest of the stuff, there's not much progress -- I mean, I have tried to find a new job, I've gotten rid of a bookshelf's worth of books (though not all the ones I've marked to be culled), and I'm preparing for a themed party by "renting" plates from the Goodwill (that is, buying them with the intention of re-donating after the party), so if anyone wants to come, you're all totally invited -- but I think we all knew which resolution would be right in my wheelhouse, anyway.

Perhaps I should have resolved something related to the use of dashes to set off long parentheticals. But it's too late now.

The resolution in question: "I will watch 52 seasons of TV."

I'm happy to report that I am now just over halfway through this resolution, having just finished watching Weeds (s6). I'll post the 27 seasons of TV I've watched since Jan 1 in a separate, dash-free post, and you are all welcome and encouraged to comment.

Just don't say "wow, Alicia, why don't you get a life instead of watching TV all the time," because you were warned in the resolutions, and if you were gonna say something, you should've said it then.

*Note: Also don't go back to the resolutions post and put a comment up there and pretend it was there all along. I'll know.