Ruminating Slav

Post-Oscar thoughts on cinema

Apple, consider yourself in my good graces again. I dropped my Macbook Pro off at a DHL facility last Wednesday and got it back yesterday morning, with everything fixed. Houston repair center service technician number 31514, I salute you. I am enjoying the hell out of my DSPL, 15.4", WXGA++, AG, CHIMEI, M1. Whatever the hell that is. (New screen, I'm assuming?)

Internets, let's discuss the cinema. Namely, could someone solve the mystery of why movies that are regarded as "good" have to be so fucking depressing 95% of the time? What's with the suffering? The over-the-top brutality? Is it not possible to make an engaging film that is in some way extraordinary and will make you think without the pain and torture? Granted, the last few movies I've seen were Pan's Labyrinth, The Departed, and Babel, so maybe I'm due for a break. Check out what one Mr. Thomas Dunham has to say in his amazon.com review of Babel:

What a depressing film. This film is basically about a highly unlikey series of unfortunate events occuring to a small group of people, with each event more depressing and unbelievable than the last. It's an emotional snuff film, offering only a voyeuristic trip into human misery. If you like to watch people suffer at the mercy of situations beyond their control, then then film is for you!

About midway through this film it began to strike me almost as a parady of itself; the never-ending chain of gut-wrenching, anguishing events were truly over-the-top. The same movie could have been made simply by filming little children as their pet-kittens are pryed from their hands, and then thrown out the window into oncoming traffic. Do we really need a film to tell us how random and cruel life can be, or have people forgotten?

Now, I will admit that since Baxter came along I have become an enormous weenie, but still. Doesn't life throw enough sadness our way that we don't need to sit through one man killing another man by beating his nose back into his head with a beer bottle? What does that teach us? Why is our choice so often either one of these cinematic reminders of man's capacity to be monsterous or You, Me, and Dupree?

Most unforgivable hubris

I've somehow miraculously managed not to infect anyone with my latest mucous-fest

I was punished, of course. My own cold extended into a three-week long ordeal which involved more boxes of Plus Doux Kleenex than you could possibly imagine, and a cough so disgustingly wet it defied description. More punishment arrived in the form of a sick baby, which quickly morphed into sick baby who wailed and gnashed all night long. Enter said baby's first-ever ear infection. Then there was solo baby-wrangling caused by BK's business trip to New York, and then more solo baby-wrangling caused by BK being snowed in on said business trip. Finally, a sick BK. However! We all appear to be on the mend and I have made promises to the baby Jesus, many promises, and hopefully I will be punished no more. Because, fuck, these past few weeks have sucked.

I think that about does it for the Snot Report, so let's move on to Tales of Karo's Laptop, horror stories so frightening and perverse that they make even the boldest fireside camper run screaming into the woods. I have done the unthinkable and sent my MacBook Pro in for repair. Six repairs, actually, including:

• A two-inch long "smudge" on my monitor that appears only against dark backgrounds. I'm not the only one.
• Remember my bulging battery? That sucker actually warped my laptop case.
• Black spots are beginning to appear on my left wrist rest. Happy fun corrosion times!
• The lid falls shut on its own!
• The laptop no longer goes to sleep when the lid is closed. Look! 238 replies since September and yet no one I've talked to at Apple Care has ever heard of this problem.
• The DVD player refuses to play DVDs if they're even the slightest bit smudged. It laughs at any that have even a hint of a scratch.

The good news is that Apple has received my laptop and has ordered a mystery part (so much for my secret dream of them totaling it and giving me a new one). Now we'll just have to see how long it takes for them to send it back to me and how many of the six issues will have been resolved.

I might as well have thrown in a paragraph about the weather

You'd think paying top dollar for a vacuum cleaner would guarantee that the thing would really SUCK and keep on SUCKING for many years to come. But no. Unfortunately my Dyson now only sucks metaphorically. As opposed to literally. Because, you know, vacuum humor? HILARIOUS.

Continuing down my list of complaints about Items I Own That Get Plugged In, did you know that my MacBook Pro is not 802.11n compatible? Apparently I am one Intel Core short of a Duo. I found this out yesterday when FedEx delivered my new Airport Extreme, and while it's nice and I'm digging my new networked hard drive, it's less of an Airport Extreme and more of an Airport Pretty Good. However! Last night BK suggested that we sell my mother-in-law my current year-old laptop and get me a new one. I don't have to tell you I'm liking that plan. We'll see just how thrifty the in-laws want to be about their laptop purchase, but a well-taken-care-of $2000 laptop with a $350 extended warranty and hundreds of dollars of software pre-installed all for the low, low price of $1000? Who could say no?

Lastly, I've somehow miraculously managed not to infect anyone with my latest mucous-fest: not Tootie, not the baby, and not BK. In all fairness, BK is much too busy galavanting about the country staying at the Four Seasons ("Every other hotel in Austin was completely booked!"), so he's not home frequently enough to get sneezed on. As for the baby, I attribute this particular bullet-dodging to obsessive handwashing and, of course, his cast-iron Slavic constitution. Duh.

Ain't El Paso grand?

There's tootie, above the fruited plain. The bad news about the weekend was that I got sick 12 hours after I got to El Paso, so no margaritas were had. The good news is that we watched 14 episodes of Buffy and climbed a mountain. I also finally finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics, so I'm thinking I really need to get cracking on those plans to go visit friends in Australia by myself -- just imagine how much reading I could do on that plane trip.

Buenos noches, Señorita Margarita

Grand Cayman gets two Slavic thumbs up, internets. So lovely and warm, quite unlike Dallas where it snowed yesterday, for crap's sake. This weekend, though, I am leaving Dallas (and husband! and baby!) behind to visit dear Tootie in El Paso. And yes, Giles will be there, in our hearts and on our screen if not in person.

But back to Grand Cayman. I bet you didn't know I used up my annual crying quota on the way there, didja? It was my husband, you see, my husband who made me cry and wail (there may also have been teeth-gnashing) in the middle of DFW airport. My husband, who inexplicably (but yet, so very explicably) forgot his garment bag at home and realized this AT THE TICKET COUNTER, my husband who ended up having to take a later flight, my husband, who leisurely flew his little buns FIRST CLASS to the Caymans while I wrastled one very squirmy toddler all the way there by my lonesome, sans luggage, because by the time BK got his new flights squared away at the ticket counter it was too late to check anything.

This weekend, there will be margaritas, oh yes there will.