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Update for Tuesday October 4.
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bongirl5 out for her birthday. I had a much better time than I would have had at Knott's Scary Farm, both because I was sick that weekend, and because a quiet outing with a friend is more pleasant than than attempting to be civil with people whose behavior demonstrates a basic lack of civility (fool me once...). While I utterly loathe not being 100 percent healthy, in this case, not feeling well was a deliverance of fate. The large group apparently stayed mostly in tact (which went contrary to one of the original selling points for going). Yuck.
While we're at it, I have finished my reread of The Fountainhead and have decided that I'm not taking advantage of the benefits of my adoption of Objectivism. I'm doing things like scrupulously refraining from demanding that my mutual friends take sides for me (or even voice their opinion without fear of retribution), but I'm not benefiting from the central tenant of the philosophy: To not only ask no one to live for you, but to not live for anyone else. Which roughly translates to, I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do.
That's my reward for my supreme acts of self-discipline in the recent months. That's the price my friends have to pay for being friends with me. I'm not going to pressure my friends, but I'm not going to let myself be pressured either. I'm living by my philosophy, not theirs. So - I don't want to attend any event in which I am going to be uncomfortable. So - I'm not going to. Perhaps that will be seen by the unenlightened as a retreat from the field (and in "unenlightened" I include myself up until now), but I will take Roarke's supremely crushing line to heart:
"What do you think of me?" asks the villain of the story, after having laid all his machinations in place to break the protagonist.
"But I don't think of you," replies the Roarke, the hero.
While that way of thinking doesn't come naturally, at least I have a model, and a goal, to train myself up to. Allowing only others, not myself, to benefit from my adherence to my philosophy is ironically the kind of selflessness that my philosophy abhors.
*blinks*
Well, that all just poured out of me without warning, didn't it?
So, Bonnie's one-day-early birthday. I took her for Thai food, which was very delicious. We wandered in Barnes and Noble, where Bonnie obsessively checked out knitting stuff, and I was vaguely interested in jewelry making. Then we caught Roll Bounce, which is a goofy little movie you probably haven't noticed. It's about some teenage kids in the '70s who enter a roller-skating/dance competition.
The movie is sweet. There are a few scenes that are astonishingly well-written and acted. My chief complaint is that there didn't seem to be enough roller skating in it, and that the roller skating routines that were shot, during the competition, were cut together too fast to really establish the choreography. Disco roller skating is all about what one does with one's whole body; to be constantly cutting to the face or the feet felt distracting and was actually off-putting.
But it's still worth seeing. John Ford once described a successful moving as having "three good scenes, no bad ones." This movie had one astonishing scene, some smaller, very nice once, and nothing bad. And Roll Bounce ended up being about the era, and the characters, which was nice. I wasn't expecting it to be a comedy that had me laughing, laugh for laugh, as much as The 40 Year Old Virgin did. Bonnie certainly seemed to enjoy the soundtrack, which included just about every '70s song that I would recognize if asked.
Back at Bonnie's house, we lamented the temporary hiatus of House and instead watched some more Firefly DVDs. I'm slowly getting there, to where I'll want to see the movie. Two discs left to go. I will admit, the series is a bit predictable, and I am so tired of Joss's convention of granting his protagonists heaping doses of Hero's Advantage. I know that grand nobility in the face of overwhelming odds is a staple of the genre, but after watching Battlestar Galactica, after seeing the sophistication and the nuance of characters making real-world practical decisions, Joss's "we always do the Right Thing regardless of the circumstance" tripe is harder to swallow. But then, Joss has always had a big weird blind spot when it came to challenging the notions of "right" and "wrong," in a significant way. His protagonists tend to do the Right Thing, as dictated to them by society's broad notions of what that Right Thing is. They don't take into account the circumstances or basic logic and philosophy, only what the Right Thing is, and that they must do it.
Meh. Enough of this.
I took
bongirl5 out for her birthday. I had a much better time than I would have had at Knott's Scary Farm, both because I was sick that weekend, and because a quiet outing with a friend is more pleasant than than attempting to be civil with people whose behavior demonstrates a basic lack of civility (fool me once...). While I utterly loathe not being 100 percent healthy, in this case, not feeling well was a deliverance of fate. The large group apparently stayed mostly in tact (which went contrary to one of the original selling points for going). Yuck.While we're at it, I have finished my reread of The Fountainhead and have decided that I'm not taking advantage of the benefits of my adoption of Objectivism. I'm doing things like scrupulously refraining from demanding that my mutual friends take sides for me (or even voice their opinion without fear of retribution), but I'm not benefiting from the central tenant of the philosophy: To not only ask no one to live for you, but to not live for anyone else. Which roughly translates to, I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do.
That's my reward for my supreme acts of self-discipline in the recent months. That's the price my friends have to pay for being friends with me. I'm not going to pressure my friends, but I'm not going to let myself be pressured either. I'm living by my philosophy, not theirs. So - I don't want to attend any event in which I am going to be uncomfortable. So - I'm not going to. Perhaps that will be seen by the unenlightened as a retreat from the field (and in "unenlightened" I include myself up until now), but I will take Roarke's supremely crushing line to heart:
"What do you think of me?" asks the villain of the story, after having laid all his machinations in place to break the protagonist.
"But I don't think of you," replies the Roarke, the hero.
While that way of thinking doesn't come naturally, at least I have a model, and a goal, to train myself up to. Allowing only others, not myself, to benefit from my adherence to my philosophy is ironically the kind of selflessness that my philosophy abhors.
*blinks*
Well, that all just poured out of me without warning, didn't it?
So, Bonnie's one-day-early birthday. I took her for Thai food, which was very delicious. We wandered in Barnes and Noble, where Bonnie obsessively checked out knitting stuff, and I was vaguely interested in jewelry making. Then we caught Roll Bounce, which is a goofy little movie you probably haven't noticed. It's about some teenage kids in the '70s who enter a roller-skating/dance competition.
The movie is sweet. There are a few scenes that are astonishingly well-written and acted. My chief complaint is that there didn't seem to be enough roller skating in it, and that the roller skating routines that were shot, during the competition, were cut together too fast to really establish the choreography. Disco roller skating is all about what one does with one's whole body; to be constantly cutting to the face or the feet felt distracting and was actually off-putting.
But it's still worth seeing. John Ford once described a successful moving as having "three good scenes, no bad ones." This movie had one astonishing scene, some smaller, very nice once, and nothing bad. And Roll Bounce ended up being about the era, and the characters, which was nice. I wasn't expecting it to be a comedy that had me laughing, laugh for laugh, as much as The 40 Year Old Virgin did. Bonnie certainly seemed to enjoy the soundtrack, which included just about every '70s song that I would recognize if asked.
Back at Bonnie's house, we lamented the temporary hiatus of House and instead watched some more Firefly DVDs. I'm slowly getting there, to where I'll want to see the movie. Two discs left to go. I will admit, the series is a bit predictable, and I am so tired of Joss's convention of granting his protagonists heaping doses of Hero's Advantage. I know that grand nobility in the face of overwhelming odds is a staple of the genre, but after watching Battlestar Galactica, after seeing the sophistication and the nuance of characters making real-world practical decisions, Joss's "we always do the Right Thing regardless of the circumstance" tripe is harder to swallow. But then, Joss has always had a big weird blind spot when it came to challenging the notions of "right" and "wrong," in a significant way. His protagonists tend to do the Right Thing, as dictated to them by society's broad notions of what that Right Thing is. They don't take into account the circumstances or basic logic and philosophy, only what the Right Thing is, and that they must do it.
Meh. Enough of this.
