No post-Halloween sugar withdrawl this year, thankfully.
November 1, 2003
I estimate that I’ve seen Alien probably about a dozen times since I first saw it as a child of ten years of age or so. I’ve the first sequel, Aliens probably twice that over the years, though that’s a pretty liberal estimate. In any case, I know just about everything there is to know about that movie visually, perhaps missing some of the deeper symbolism that I tend to gloss over in favor of paying more attention to the story, and so there were few surprises in the movie. Yes, it’s a director’s cut, so there is some additional footage that’s been tacked in, but I’ve seen the main addition before (it’s on my copy of the DVD) and the other pieces were just a few seconds or a minute or two long. Nothing more than a few minutes at a time, but there were no new digital effects, nothing changed beyond that. Regardless of how many times I’ve seen the movie, though, my heart was still pounding. I know the movie, I love the movie, I’m scared by the movie. I’m usually not affected by it, but in a cold theater late at night on the big screen, it got to me and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest just like the first time I got to the final scene in The Blair Witch Project. Strange, very strange. If you’ve never seen Alien before or you’ve only seen it once or twice, I highly recommend seeing this in the theater. Don’t go down to the video store and rent it, but see it on the big screen. Movies are made to be seen in a theater, and despite being 24 years old (just like me!), this is one of the best movies ever made, and it certainly ranks up there in the top five of the most frightening psychologlical movies ever made. No gory attacks (scratch that–one gory attack, but it’s one that everyone already knows about), no bloody murders, and only one cheap scare. Just pure, unadulterated horror.
I remember the first time I ever saw the movie, actually. I saw it in the very room I’m sitting in right now at my Dad’s with my Dad and my sister, and surprisingly, the movie didn’t frighten me at all. There was only one moment that really scraed me, but it was the cheap scare that I mentioned above. I should have seen it coming, but I was too hung on on the events transpirring on screen to really think. I went back to the film the next day before we returned it to the store and fast forwarded to the scene to watch it again, and it wasn’t as scary that time around. Yes, I knew it was coming, but I felt that confronting a scene that had frightened me so much was the best course of action. I was weaned into horror with movies such as Nightmare on Elm Street, The Andromeda Strain (more thriller than horror, but you get it), Them, and many others. Since then, scary movies haven’t bothered me nearly as much. The Alien movies, at least the first two films and some of the ideas in the other two, didn’t scare me until I was much older in my teens and I looked at the films and what they represented with different eyes. I’ve always found that to be odd, but hey, I’m an odd duck. Despite how frightening they are, Alien and Aliens are two of my favorite movies of all time.
Last night as I was driving through downtown Portland getting to the parking garage where I had parked, I had a close call. I was sitting at a light waiting for it to change, and when it turned green the car in front of me started to go. I tapped the accelerator and right at that moment sneezed into my arm, and as I came up I was horrified to see that despite its previous forward movement, the car in front of me had not moved, so I slammed on my brakes, producing a squeal from both my tires and my engine as it rocked forward in the momentum. I hadn’t pressed on the accelerator so hard that I was intending to speed away, but in that split second when I didn’t look in front of me, I almost rammed my nice car into the vehicle in front of me.
The moral of the story is to always sneeze before you press on the accelerator.
My second interview with Elephant’s Deli was kind of an interesting experience. I showed up at the deli at 12:32–I left in plenty of time, but I arrived at the exact moment when every single parking spot was filled, and to make matters worse, when I circled around the first parking lot there were half a dozen spots empty–and asked for the HR manager, but apparently she wasn’t there. In fact, she NEVER went in on Fridays. Instead they sent for the woman I interviewed with last week (the store manager, I think), and she said that I was supposed to have gone to the Central Kitchen location. *Sigh* I hadn’t remembered her saying that, and I checked when I got home and she indeed hadn’t said it, but no big deal. The Central Kitchen was across the river, though, about 35 blocks away, and I was supposed to meet with the HR manager 15 minutes before….
So I hopped back in my car and sped off to places unknown. Well not exactly unknown. I had the cross street of the place, but I didn’t know *exactly* where it was. It was across the river, though, and so I had to fight traffic downtown in the middle of the day to find a way onto the Hawthorne Bridge. Let me tell you, that bridge is a pain to get on at times. Downtown Portland is arranged in a strange set of one-way streets and cross streets, and I can never remember what streets lead to what bridges (of which there are seven, I might add). You’d think that you could just get on Hawthorne to cross the Hawthorne Bridge, but alas, it’s not that simple. So to make a long story short, I made it across the river and found where I was supposed to go by 1 PM. I met with the HR manager, but it seems she didn’t have my application or my resume because they hadn’t been given to me or sent over beforehand. That made my interview a little difficult, naturally, but we talked for about 20 minutes about me and my experiences, and just to be on the safe side I told her that the concerns that my previous interviewer had about my happiness in the position and whether I’d be suited.
It turned out that the HR manager of Elephant’s is a tech person, also doing the IT stuff for the company, so she had a few suggestions of companies I could look into that are frequently hiring. She and her husband also lived in Beloit previously, so we had a good talk about that crazy town and how it’s circling the drain. Good conversation, but I’m not sure what’s going to happen with that. I may have a tough gamble coming up, and I’m not thinking about it too much before then, since everything comes down to timing and trying to wrestle with a decision before I have all the information is almost pointless, even if you think you’ve anticipated all the possible nuances of the outcomes.
So instead I play the waiting game. I hate waiting. I’m an impatient person by nature. I may regret not trying to work things out beforehand later, but I think that it’s better that constantly worrying about what may or may not happen in the next two weeks.
So now I’m back over at my Dad’s house to continue the never-ending saga of his computer at some point this weekend. This day is almost over and I haven’t done anything yet, and I’m pretty tired so I may not even get to it today. I wasn’t up all that late last night, but I didn’t sleep well and I got up a lot earlier than I meant to. I didn’t “fall back” on one of the clocks in my room, so at some point I either looked at that clock or misread my other clock and got up two hours earlier than I thought it was. Hmmm…I guess that’s only the latter, then. Silly nighttime vision. I thought sleeping in until 10:30 was late enough. Too bad it was really 8:30. I tried napping this afternoon with the help of the beer I had over lunch with my Dad, but I couldn’t seem to fall asleep and just dozed in and out of awareness of my surroundings. You know the feeling I’m talking about? You lie there with your eyes closed and relaxed long enough, and you can literally feel your body switching to you being “asleep”, and your brain even tells you “All right! Time to sleep!”, you’re overcome with a feeling of extreme relaxation, and then BAM! Something pulls you back out, whether it’s as simple as a bird chirping, a fleeting thought, or another annoyance. I put up with that for an hour and then I got up again.
So here I am, sitting at my Dad’s with little to do, a mug of McMenamin’s Nebraska Bitter beer at my side. My Dad refilled a half-gallon McMenamin’s jug when we went out to lunch, and since they were out of the Scarecrow ESB seasonal beer, we chose the Nebraska Bitter instead. Interesting fact…where do you think Nebraska Bitter comes from/was inspired by? If you said Nebraska, I’m sorry, but you don’t get the Daily Double. Nebraska Bitter, like the lauded Baghdad Ale, is named for the McMenamin’s from whence it hails, in this case the Fulton Pub. Why isn’t it called Fulton Bitter, then? Because the Fulton Pub is on Nebraska Street in Portland….
There’s your random fact for the day. On that note, then, I will take my leave.
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