Things Posted About

[eredien]

1.) Crafts

I'm excited to be doing more crafts. I've been invited to two friends' craft nights, and am trying to attend both as many times as possible. I've been handed a good solution for the plethora of projects overwhelming me: organize them by time-sensitivity of each project.

Now I look at my list of 20 things and say, "gee, all I have to do is work on the most important thing first!" It's great.

2.) To do this weekend

I've listed this elsewhere in a private reference for me.

3.) Why Music Makes me Happy

I keep re-remembering this. It's silly because I know that music makes me happy. But I've been listening to iTunes at work, and it's been improving my mood and my productivity. I woke up this morning and sang Cat Empire's "The Crowd" in the shower. I'm trememdously happy.

4.) Problematic and non-problematic things in the movie "The Game"

So, this movie has incredibly creepy moments. I like that in movies. It also, upon further reflection, has a flawed premise.

This movie, in some senses, is very good.

1.) It has relatively strong women characters.
- The main character's ex-wife is not a bitch and genuinely cares about her ex but won't let him push her around.
- The first main character doesn't seem empowered at first, but this is actually a clever ruse. She's the one who, at the end of the movie, asks the main character out for coffee.

2.) It has incredibly creepy moments. They're creepy in a way that's very satisfying to me as someone who loves well-done horror that isn't guts-and-viscera variety horror. The scene where the main character realizes that an entire well-furnished apartment is just a setup is terrifiying.

3.) It has a neat way of duping the viewer just as much as the main charater is being duped. This is deliberate, and part of the point of the movie. The viewer's mind is deliberately being screwed with just as much as the main character's mind is and this reinforces the point of the movie, and the reveal for both of these comes at the same time in a nice twist of plottery.

4.) Here's the problem:
The premise is flawed. This guy hires a corporation to shake him out of the rut he's been in (rich white guy with a bad father complex who's a right bastard and a control freak). They do that by putting him in situations where he shakes himself out of the rut (Mexico, broke, running away from cops, etc.). The point is that they're providing these situations for him to show him that he's capable of changing, of being a better person. We start getting glimpses of that partway through the movie. He realizes he doesn't need as much money. He realizes he should learn Spanish. He realizes that he doesn't need to be a control freak. But the last situation feeds right back in to his fantasy of being a control freak, his father complex, and doesn't push him anywhere new. He *thinks* it's taking him somewhere new, but in fact it's the largest symbol we've seen so far that he's given up and that recognizing that having no control over life, no money, no power, makes a life not worth living. And, in fact, it takes him back to his old world--his friends wine and dine the new man that he is, he helps foot a huge bill because his funds are back in place after all, he has the possibility of a new romantic relationship, and he goes home to tidy up and slip back into a nice custom-made shirt and some brandy. I would have been happier had he decided that he didn't need that stuff and go sign up for the Peace Corps or something.

5.) Getting to Inbox 0

This goal seems impossible for my personal inboxes, but I am slowly but surely getting there.
I use gmail and am a little worried about archiving all my old mail because I am very bad at remembering a phrase in a particular email or who sent it to me or when it was, but very good at remembering that a certain email with the information I wanted was the 5th one down on the list, even if I don't remember what the information *was*. I routintely take 5 minutes to search for various permutations of phrases that are close to what I am looking for, but don't actually exist, until I find the right message. This is frustrating.

As computers move to search-based interfaces as opposed to directory/filetree based structures, it's becoming harder for me to find things and organize my files, not less difficult, because the signal-to-noise ratio seems so unstructured to me--a search turns up 15 things I don't want along with the one thing I do, whereas in a file folder with 16 files in it I can scroll to the thing I want every time.

So--what have others' experiences been with trying to whittle down your inbox to no emails and responding to or archiving the rest? Does anyone have my particular problem re: search vs. folders? Anyone found a way around it?

It's been a good technique for me at work to respond to everything as it comes in, but I can't and don't always want to do that with personal emails.

6.) Contact TIAA Cref again because my IRA information packet fell into a black hole

I should do this today.

7.) Fix credit card Now I need to fix all the autobilling. Sigh.

In the meantime, what kinds of things shoud I put on my website? Suggestions welcome.
You, internet and friends, are my audience, after all.

Thanks for the suggestions, friends.