Another day older and you're deeper in debt I�m on the last hour of another Saturday 12 hour shift and again I�m wondering why the hell I agree to do these things. Mostly because I get paid handsomely for sitting on my tuckus watching movies. Today had two offerings. The first was Wisconsin Death Trip and I�m honestly not sure what I was expecting, although what I got was a very well-done but slightly dry documentary of an area of Northern Wisconsin and the number of odd happenings up there in the 1890�s to 1910 or so. We think of violence and craziness to be a fairly modern phenomena but it�s pretty obvious folks went pretty nuts back then too. And I think they had a lot more to go nuts about. Children dying of a diphtheria epidemic, folks freezing to death, folks lying on train tracks on purpose, husbands killing their wives on suspected adultery, men killing themselves as they went bankrupt, etc. It was all taken from newspaper articles and photographs of the era, which in the 1970�s went into a book by the same name. It�s actually kind of neat to watch and it�s beautifully photographed. It was orginially aired on CineMax and it has a nice Discovery channel kind of feel. I�ll have to look up the book now. One of the more compelling stories which went through the entire movie was the story of a woman named Mary Sweeney, and she got into cocaine and smashing windows after a head injury. She was eventually institutionalized (along with a few other people from the same town) which made me sad, mostly because she seems like such a caged bird. She couldn�t explain why she really dug breaking windows, nor could she stop this compelling habit of hers. One story said that she went on a window-breaking tour all over Wisconsin, causing an alleged $50K in damage. In 1890�s dollars. Wow. I could really get into breaking some windows. There�s a whole catharsis in destruction that is so powerful, because it really is about POWER over something else. I don�t blame Mary Sweeney for those feelings. The other offering today was a little gem called Saved! with Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, and Macauley Caulkin. I was expecting this rather irreverent religious comedy kind of along the lines of Soul Plane (Not that that movie is religious at all, but something along the lines of that sort of comedy) but I was rather pleasantly surprised about just how human and touching this movie is. Yes, Mandy Moore�s character is really out there, but I�ve met people like Hayley Faye so her charismatic religious behavior is not completely out of line with reality. Although the moment when she throws her Bible at Jena Malone while screaming �I am FILLED with the love of Jesus!� nearly made me fall off my chair. Jena Malone played her angst-ish teenager again as she did in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys and Donnie Darko and I�d like to see her do something else, but she always looks lovely and she played this part of Mary very well. Here Mary misunderstands the message of Jesus, or at least misinterprets His �sign� to her. How often that happens to us in the human race. Extreme behavior in the name of Jesus is still extreme behavior, and to be so narrow-minded you can look through a keyhole with both eyes is not a good thing. Anyhoo, got a call Friday from the �rents and they informed me that the SIL went through surgery swimmingly and is now in ICU for a few days while they watch her brain pulsate. She should be moved into a regular room soon and they�re hoping to come home in about a week or so but I know she�ll have a long recovery at home. Hell, I didn�t feel like doing a damn thing for a week after my surgery and mine was relatively minor in comparison. Although Gary says that all surgery can have complications and my surgery was around my heart and lungs and other very important organs which is his way of telling me he was all scared and stuff. Aww. Gary finished Harry Potter so he�s back on the computer games again. There you go. I actually bowled with a 100 average last night which surprised the hell out of me. I also sold a bunch of Mary Kay which seems to help me bowl better. Hmmm. The bad news is I was fired by the bride who hired me to plan her wedding and then she proceeded to do everything herself, prompting her to ask why the heck she paid me a bunch of money. It seems that here in Arizona folks don�t want a planner, at least not one directly connected to a resort or caterer or something. Oh well. One less business to lose money on to report to the Feds, and less hassle at tax time. It�s going to be bad enough with the damn 1099 I�ll get from this job. 15 more minutes and then I can put my shoes on and mosey. I wonder if April will follow me down the hall as I�m leaving again today. I swear she�s one of those that�s a clinger. She continues the conversation after I�ve already ended it several times. I know it�s because she has no life and no friends (that I�m aware of) but she also has no social skills. She spends all of her free time either shopping at Wal-Mart or playing internet Multi-player games (which is I think how she met her previous two boyfriends). I feel sorry for her. I wonder though if she�ll go back to day shift when Kevin figures out what the hell he�s doing with his life. That means she�ll probably move back into the cube next to me, which then means I�ll have to start using stronger candles to ward off the cigarette reek of that woman. Ewwww. I wonder, since cigarette smoke affects my sarcoid, can she stay in a cube further away from me? Or can I move? Not that it makes much difference because she stands in my cube doorway all day anyway and chats with me and complains about how damn much work we have to do. Hmmm. I�ve answered to phones about 20 times today, yes, logged 6 cases and answered 3 emails, but also watched 2 movies and typed a diaryland entry and generally goofed off for the past twelve hours and gotten paid for every single minute of it. 10 more minutes baby, then BUH-BYE. Ta!
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