Monday, June 29, 2009

Ulterior Motives

Since I can't start looking for a real job until probably December, I have to find someplace to live and a way to support myself until then. My plan is to stay here and look for work at the university (this would be things like shelving books in the library) or at one of the temp agencies around here, and find myself a cheap furnished apartment of some sort. That way, if I end up finding a real job around here (I really, really like it here, so that's what I'm trying to do), I don't end up moving to a completely random city and then moving back here, and also, once I apply for a real job they're apparently supposed to pay my travel expenses when I go to do interviews, which is awesome. So I won't be moving very far in September.

Last night my parents Skyped me to confirm the date I get kicked out of the dorm, and to let me know they're planning to fly out to "help me move." This is a transparent lie. I tried the "well, I'm staying in [city], and I know very nice people with cars, and even if I didn't I have suitcases on wheels, and it would probably only take a couple of trips to move all my stuff, and even if I decide I'm too lazy to do that, taxis aren't very expensive" logical approach, and they pretended I hadn't said anything and continued with the "Yes, mid-September? And we'll get there on a Friday? Very good."

This worked better for them when I was living in L.A. I genuinely needed their help to move around every so often because the people with cars generally left before I did and moving your stuff between storage facilities and apartments sucks, and sucks hard. And you can't do the suitcase on wheels approach when your stuff has to go into storage across the very, very large city because the dorm kicks you out in May and your apartment lease doesn't start until August and you're flying home anyway. They could pretend they were being magnanimous and, as long as they were there, suggest that we maybe take a trip down to San Diego or up to Monterey just for a few days, as long as they were there anyway, it might be nice to see, you know.

When I was in high school, I wondered why they didn't object to my looking at universities so very far away from home. I knew a lot of people whose parents wanted them to stay within neighboring states. Only once I had gotten into a California university, and it was too late, did their ulterior motives become clear. They can tell their bosses "Yes, we need time off to help our children move, it's terrible but the poor things are so far away, and so helpless, and we want to be supportive" and then take off for a week or two and travel. This is the real reason why my declaration that they will have to pry England from my cold, dead hands filled them with glee rather than horror. They have a lifetime's worth of excuses to go to Europe now. I don't know how long it will take before they have reached the point where they are claiming that they have to go to England to dogsit for a weekend, but I bet they can stretch it out until retirement at least.

They've now had six years with California, since David followed me there. They'll get at least two more, since he's going to grad school out there as well, and he may even move there permanently, what with all the aerospace programs there. My dad began by seriously hating on L.A., being all "It's all faded and gross-looking and it all looks the same," (..."you could have picked a school in San Francisco, you know" - he did not actually say this) and now he knows where that great hole-in-the-wall Ukranian restaurant is and how to get everywhere without using a map, a skill that apparently impresses his colleagues when they go out there for conferences. And now they're doing the same thing with England. They will come out here several times a year on a transparent excuse, like "we needed to help you move!" or "it's Christmas and you refused to come home!" They will get to know the area (they are already well on their way, and didn't need maps by the time they left here in December.) They will learn where all the good restaurants are and how to get to all the neighboring areas without using maps. They will consider retiring here (nooooooooo!)

They had kids so they could have an excuse to follow us around.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

When Connie Willis published Passage in 2002, I went out and got it and spent pretty much the entire summer reading it over and over again. One of the chapter headings had a quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, (the "Do you think death could possibly be a boat?" line), and I discovered that one of my parents had a copy of the play (I suspect it's my dad's) so I stole it and read it and it became my favorite play.

(Oh God. The Student Guildhall is playing Spice Girls at top volume. That has nothing whatsoever to do with this post, I just thought I would spread the pain around.)

Okay. Where was I? For some unfathomable reason it's suddenly really hard to think. Anyway, the next year was my senior year in high school, and we did Hamlet that year. I was in honors English, so we also had to read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (it may have been only part of the play, I don't really recall now) and watch part of the movie. I didn't remember anything about it really; I think we only watched about 40 minutes worth and called it a day. The only thing I seem to have retained from that experience is that loose sheets of paper were an ongoing visual motif.

So this past week I thought maybe I should actually watch the movie the whole way through, what with this still being my favorite play and all. And I'm usually really wary of watching movies made from books that I'm really attached to, but 1) this was a play, not a book, so it's meant to be performed anyway; and 2) Tom Stoppard directed it, so I figured he wouldn't screw up his own work.

Yeah.

I don't want to be one of those insane people who claims they know the author's work better than the author does, and that they're totally doing it wrong (see: Harry Potter fans). Those people need to stick their heads in a bucket of ice water. But either I've been totally misinterpreting this play for the past seven years (I admit this is a distinct possibility) or Tom Stoppard mangled his own play, or maybe the producer stepped in and mangled it, I don't really know. But in the movie, the ending is very different, and I think it really changed the play, and I didn't like it.

In Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern disappear. Hamlet sends them to England and we never hear from them again; in the last scene we find out they were killed, but they never show up again and we never see them die. They just fail to reappear. I had assumed that part of the point of Tom Stoppard's play was a commentary on the way they just vanish and are never heard from again. Guildenstern has a line in Act 2, delivered to the Player, that was a reference to this:
No, no, no...you've got it all wrong...you can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen - it's not gasps and blood and falling about - that isn't what makes it death. It's jut a man failing to reappear, that's all - now you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back - an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.

And then, later on, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are killed, but we don't see it - it happens offstage, and we hear about it in the final scene.

In the movie, however, this line is cut, which made me mad because it's one of my favorites. What really pissed me off, though, is the fact that we see them die. I mean, either I missed the point, or the movie just went off in a totally random direction that ended up doing away with the original point of the play. I don't know. I thought the fact that they vanish in both plays and are never heard from again was the point, but maybe they needed visual drama or something.

I also didn't like Tim Roth's Guildenstern at all. Not one bit. (I always identified with Guildenstern and...no.) But that's a minor matter compared to the fact that either I've been misinterpreting this play for the past seven years, or Tom Stoppard allowed it to get mutilated this way.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

More random stuff

You know what doesn't seem right to me, somehow? The fact that, if I pay money for a DVD, I get subjected to obnoxious anti-piracy ads that I can't skip through, whereas if I download the DVD (by that I mean, "Skype home and ask my dad to download it and send it to me"), or borrow it from the library and rip it, I'm not subjected to this irritation. I wonder what exactly these ads are supposed to accomplish. Somehow I don't think encouraging me to stop buying movies altogether and start pirating exclusively is the desired effect, but that's what they're doing.

Now that I have nothing to think about besides my dissertation and, eventually, trying to find a temp job and a shitty apartment, I would like to get some drawing done. Unfortunately, I'm so drained that I can't seem to have ideas. I used to have this sketchbook that I made when I was working on that Cabinet of Curiosities project I did during my senior year. I was practicing using a proquill pen and just collecting random material I thought was cool-looking, and I couldn't flip through that thing without having an idea. It was full of drawings of interesting stuff - seashells, dancers, animals, bones, gaslamps, pieces of 19th century architecture, just anything that was interesting to me. I left that sketchbook in the States and I need it. I suppose this is an indication that I should start another one.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Music, Part 2

So, I have this MP3 player. It's a Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra, by Creative, and I'm pretty much in love with it. My parents gave it to me for my 20th birthday, so it's coming up on five years old. I have dropped it on hardwood and cement floors, exposed it to toxic amounts of ceramic-related dust and other insidious art related substances, and taken it out in the rain at night on numerous occasions, and it still works perfectly. The leather case is beginning to disintegrate and the snap is rusting, the original earbuds it came with are long dead, and it has outlived two pairs of replacement earbuds I bought for it. The one age-related fault it has is that the original battery no longer holds a charge very well, and the replacement battery I got for it doesn't fit as snugly as it should, so that if I use the new battery the player will sometimes randomly shut off, so I can only use it for 6-7 hours away from a power source. Its copyright notice is from 2003, so it's from the Stone Age of MP3 players. I'm kind of hoping it will live forever, but if it dies I can tell you right now that there will be tears and its replacement will probably also come from Creative.

This afternoon, I learned how ancient it really is. I decided to use Amazon UK's MP3 download service (yes, I know) which downloads tracks to Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player tells me that the drivers for my MP3 player are outdated, and sends me to their website. Their website is baffled and sends me to the Creative website, which informs me that the Nomad Jukebox Zen is so old that it has been archived and "has reached the end of its service life." I can't even download updated drivers! That is so alarming. Fortunately, the software it came with doesn't realize that it's obsolete, so I can still put stuff on it. But still. I guess 6 years is a long time in MP3 player years.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Done! I mean, assuming I pass.

I was just talking to NephthysWrath, and she reminded me that, since I had my exam this morning, I'm done with all my coursework! I just have to do my thesis, and I have my Master's. (My thesis is fascinating. I would do it even if I didn't have to, I think.) Woohoo! I think I need ice cream.

If anyone is interested in reading about the thesis, I have a locked blog on Livejournal where I talk about that and other stuff I can't talk about here because of privacy issues. The LJ blog is here. If you don't have an account, just make a dead one and friend me. I'm only interested in controlling the amount of people that can see it, so that if someone steals my research, I have a short list of people I can blame.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Thank you for your hypocrisy

I'm having a fight with my mother. Unfortunately, she is completely unaware that we are having a fight, because despite the fact that I have repeatedly called her on her bullshit, whenever we fight about this particular subject she resorts to patronizing me and assuming that I will inevitably come around to her point of view. She's extremely talented at completely missing the point.

My mother is convinced that I am going to get married and have kids.

That isn't even why I'm so angry. This happens to me all the time. When I was finishing up at the community college and getting ready to go to England, people kept telling me that I was going to fall in love with someone and not want to leave. It irritated the hell out of me, sure, but I couldn't really be angry with them because they didn't know me and I didn't know them. It annoys me that people are allowed to make assumptions about other people, but ultimately it doesn't matter because I don't care about those people anyway.

The thing is, I do know my mother and she does know me. And I know that she considers herself a feminist. And, as I've said before, the point of feminism is choice. I can choose to be a housewife, which would be a horrible decision, or I can choose to do what I want, which is buy myself a house and a dog and be happy with my own company for the rest of my life. (I am unbelievably grateful that I live in a time where, although there is still societal pressure to get married and spawn, I'm not going to get burned at the stake if I choose to live alone all my life.) And this is what makes me so goddamn angry. Because my mother's continual patronizing insistence that I'm going to get married whether I say I want to or not means that she thinks I don't have a choice, and that, by extension, none of us has a choice. Like our pathetic womanly little brains cannot actually choose anything for themselves because they will be overridden by their own biology. She's basically invalidating feminism by saying that even though we theoretically have choice, it doesn't matter because we're incapable of taking advantage of it. And no matter how many times I point this out to her, she refuses to understand me.

I'm not even saying she's wrong. It's been made extremely clear to me in the last couple of years that you can very easily get sucked down a path you never intended to go near. I can't say with 100% certainty that I will never marry (only 99%. Really, you'd think she'd never met me at all). It's her refusal to admit that she might be wrong, and that I am not predestined to get married and have kids just because I happen to possess a uterus, that makes me so angry.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Music

I found something I don't like about England. (Well, aside from the fact that it doesn't contain NephthysWrath, obviously. That's a huge drawback right there.) I've said before that they are better at movies than America is. There is way more stuff in print, and although new movies can be very expensive (at current exchange rates, something like $22-$25 for a DVD that's just come out) the prices drop very quickly, and older movies sell for much less than they do in the States (on Amazon UK, nearly all the movies I've bought have been $5-$6 or less.) It's completely bizarre, and the opposite of what I expected, but I'm not about to argue with it.

However, they are terrible at music. Absolutely terrible. It may be that I haven't found the right places to look, but I cannot find CDs I want for the life of me. I realize buying CDs makes me a little ridiculous, but they monitor your internet usage here, and the last thing I need is to get kicked out of the university for stealing music. And buying MP3's is hugely problematic for various reasons, so if I'm going to pay money I want a hard copy. I recently decided that Black Lab is my new favorite band, and I want all their stuff. (I don't change favorite bands very often. I have had the same two for....oh my God, five years now.) Amazon UK, however, will only sell me their first album (which is bizarre all by itself, because that one's out of print.) Even their sellers don't have any of the others. I'm going to have to get them sent from America. I'm deeply irked by this, because I don't want to pay $15 for shipping and wait three weeks. It's not just this one band, either, it's just that this was the only one I was willing to pay money for (everything else can wait until I have an unmonitored internet connection). I looked for other stuff by American bands, just out of curiosity, and they generally either have nothing, or they have only one out-of-print CD. This is not okay. Internet radio is all well and good, but I can't take it for walks with me.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Visas

Okay. I think I might finally have this figured out, after weeks of flailing desperately around.

The deal with the post-study work visa is, you can't have one until you've completed your course and gotten your official results. In my case, I will probably get them sometime around October or November. You also need to have had 800 pounds or more in your bank account for the past three months, and you have to apply within a year of finishing the course. This is, however, if you're applying from within the UK. If I were to finish the course, go back to the States, and try to apply from there, I would need to have had 2800 pounds in my bank account for the past three months. Leaving aside the fact that I don't want to go back to the States because I live here now, I don't have an extra $5,000 sitting around to leave in a bank account for three months, so I need to apply from within the UK. But, I need to be able to work to support myself, obviously, between when I finish in September and get kicked out of the dorms, and when I finally get the work visa in December.

The International Support people at the university say that once I finish the course I should be able to get my work provision changed so I can work fulltime until my student visa runs out, which is in January. I can't fill a permanent full-time vacancy, and I think this translates to "you must work a shitty temp job," but it means I can afford to stay here, which means I can afford to apply for the work visa. It's not an ideal situation, and everyone I have griped to in the past few weeks agrees that it's kind of on the ridiculous side, but I'm willing to put up with a slightly humiliating job for a few months if it means I get to stay here.

I probably shouldn't waitress, though.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

FINALLY

Connie Willis is putting out a new book! In February of 2010, yes, but the last one she published was in 2002, and she's been putting out nothing but novellas for years. And also I am a little upset about having left The Winds of Marble Arch in the States, because it's the size of a dictionary, but I have wanted to read "The Curse of Kings" on approximately 68493206420 separate occasions while doing this degree. And I only brought half her books with me, and no one over here sells them. I need a new book, one that's more than 90 pages long.