You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men –Max Beerbohm (1872 - 1956)

There is no limit to stupidity. Space itself is said to be bounded by its own curvature, but stupidity continues beyond infinity. — Gene Wolf

I don’t know where to begin…I’m trying very hard to not to discuss the factory so much these days; I spend almost half of any given 24-hour period there, five days a week, and I don’t see any need to hump home all the utter absurdity of my days. But sometimes, it even gets to me, this self-imposed lack of discussion regarding the fact my productivity has pretty much plummeted to an all-time low because my days are being split now between front and back; when I’m in the front, I cannot do the back-end work; when I’m in the back, I am officially excused from the front and all responsibilities therein in order to accomplish that back-end work. Unfortunately, the ratio of time allotted for each is a little skewed. Well, maybe it’s more than a little skewed. Front time is 7.5 hours, with an hour for lunch. Back time is 2.5 approved hours. Really, it should be the other way around, for I am falling farther and farther behind in the paperwork side of my job and can’t seem to even catch up with it in order to keep ahead of it.

Those 2.5 approved hours are just that; I suspect if the (wo) knew I was getting to work between 500am and 515am, she wouldn’t be very happy, although I haven’t determined if her unhappiness would be caused by the early hour or the situation. This has been going on for the better part of three weeks now and like I said earlier, it’s not even affording me the luxury of catching up to stay ahead. I’m barely barely barely keeping my head above water as it is and I’ve got seven more days of this trial period. This is the second trial period in the last four weeks; the first attempt was stymied by illnesses hitting my factory mates for multiple days in a row. This second attempt has been sickness-free on all fronts, but I’m still not getting anywhere.

There are some other forces playing into this; whether they are accurate or not I cannot say because I do not know. But I do know I’ve pretty much been moved from my main desk and relocated to two others (where I split my days); that my efficiency has been so reduced by the powers that be causes ugly and fearful thoughts to stream through my head when I allow them to take hold. I’m trying not to do that by losing myself in music during the back time and keeping my head low during the front time.

FEAR: Fuck everything and run.

FEAR: False evidence appearing real.

I think I see evidence of those other forces. I think I hear evidence of those other forces.

Or maybe I’m just fuckin’ paranoid. But something tells me I’m stupid not to be in this situation.

Some days, I pick door number one. Other days, I pick door number two.

Today I picked door number three and abruptly left a meeting at 430pm because I wanted to go home. Luckily it was almost over, anyway, but I didn’t want to sit around and bullshit with the others any longer than would be absolutely necessary.

A quote from Samuel Goldwyn, that renowned movie mogul of years gone by, and very apropos of many of the pictures I’ve uploaded to Flickr recently. Yes, I finally cleaned off the Compaq hard drive of all those screen caps I’ve been collecting and probably had the better part of five hundred. It’s a little excessive, perhaps a little obsessive as well. What more is there to say?

There’ll be more to come…someday. I love movies (I love television, too, but that’s another story). Getting these screen caps seems a natural collection to have, and even more so now that I’ve become so intrigued with the opening sequences of these films that I’ve created a separate Flickr set for them.

It seems to me these opening sequences, as well as the credits can be as telling as the movie itself as to the time period when the movie was made; I’m thinking specifically about movies from the 1930s, when these credits would use a very art deco font and designs - now that I’ve gone off on this very unexpected tangent, I regret not having any to include with this post. I’m not even sure opening sequence is the correct term for what I’m talking about; it’s not so much the credits, where the performers and such are listed (although they, too have their own level of interest), but what the above picture illustrates.

Now that the screen caps are off the Compaq, I gave some thought to starting it all over again, but between you and me, it’s nice to simply sit back and watch a movie, not worrying about anything but the story. Of course, I used the screen cap exercise as a way of remembering what I’d watched so I could update my movie page. It was also a good way for me to keep track of what movies I owned, but it would only be as helpful as my memory allows: I can only remember so much and unfortunately, I can’t remember every Honor Blackman movie in my collection, nor can I recall the filming order of The Thin Man series; to this end, I’ve gone over to dvdspot.com (thanks to Wes for giving me the heads up on this some time ago!) in order to keep track of these myriad DVDs (I plan to totally buck the system there and include my VHS tapes, too - HA!)

The movie page will disappear eventually, I think…but I do reserve the right to change my mind.

I’m already changing my mind about the screen caps - there are a couple I’d to grab tonight, if they show up again in the second episode of Bishôjo Senshi Sailor Moon, the live action version of the anime. Ooh, what a hoot this show is, but I’m hooked already and can’t wait to get back to it tonight.These are from the commercials, but oh my God, I nearly fell off the couch last night when they came on. I’m not sure if the subtitles are correct, but if they are, it’s pretty damn sick, but so sick as to be almost painfully funny in a way.

God help me…how do I end up in the twilight of my thirties (also known as the dark side of my thirties) and suddenly find Sailor fucking Moon so intriguing? Seriously. There’s something wrong with that. It would be understandable if I’d had a previous infatuation with it, but for crying out loud, not this. Of course, this way, I can introduce Star and Bar to it when they’re of an age.

Yes, that must be it.

It’s not often a television program jack-rabbits its way onto my shortlist of favorites: to wit, how long did it take for the obsession with Doctor Who to blossom?

Not so with The IT Crowd. It’s a gem, no doubt about it; I’ve just rewatched the first two seasons and still find it funny, side-splittingly so, if not absolutely funnier the second time around. I was plagued with the silent type of laughing, as well as the guffawing and outright snorting at least a dozen times each episode.

This is the type of program I must watch in its entirety, if possible…but not all in one sitting. Heaven forbid I don’t drag it out as long as humanly possible. But until TITC was viewed from the first to the last episode, I could not move on to other things.

And those other things include a backlog of the Doctor and seven new Carole Lombard movies I’ve had now for a week and haven’t made any attempt to watch. And with the absolute obsession I’ve got for both, it’s a good indication of how brilliant (most of the time) TITC is.

I’ve lived by a man’s code designed to fit a man’s world, yet at the same time I never forget that a woman’s first job is to choose the right shade of lipstick. –Carole Lombard