Big Fish and Other Tales.

I took a leap of blind faith and bought Big Fish today. It was a pretty sure bet, but at one point in time (really, after I purchased Dungeons & Dragons) I had made the decision not to buy a movie without having seen it first. But... it was really good. It seemed a bit sentimental for a Tim Burton film... but not quite sentimental to a fault. I enjoyed it.

We got a new note from the bosses at work. There are several fun, exciting new developments, such as we are now required to be available for three of the five shifts between 5:00 on Friday and 10:00 Sunday night, and once the schedule is posted, we are not allowed to ask off (presumably even if we search for a replacement). We can no longer trade our creations for food with other restaurants. We have to work either July 4th weekend or Memorial Day weekend. We have to practice our sizing (pull and weigh three correctly sized scoops each of Like it (small), Love it (medium), and Gotta have it (large) sizes) before we start each shift. There was more.... but I can't remember it. I need a new job. Or an extended vacation in New York.... or Colorado.

Jason and Kyle began filming the movie version of my short story "A Plant Named Rachel", available for reading at left. They filmed in my apartment, and I ended up being Jason's P.A., which pretty much made me bitch for the night, but it was fun. One of my shelving units broke. That wasn't so fun, but the rest was fun. So, yeah. Fun fun fun.

I was thinking as I was researching for my environmental lit paper (the topic of which I have decided will be "Erotics of Place".... interesting, eh?) about humanity's role in the natural world. You know... how they say we are the only species that doesn't have a purpose, so we build tools so that we are able to do things that other species have been able to do through their own natural, God-given endowments? WELL... I was thinking that maybe our role in nature is not, as we have come to think it is, to "improve" the land by paving it over and building offices and earning money that has no real value anyway.... because that all comes from our manipulation of tools that weren't intended for us. Rather, with our (in most cases) developed brains and opposable thumbs, maybe it is our duty to be artists... recorders of natural and spiritual fact, and in that way we can interact with, preserve, and enjoy the natural world. Just a thought. Sort of a hippy thought. But still.... a thought. The destruction of the world around me in the name of empty desires and aspirations, and the fact that I've been raised in a world where I yearn for those things and have become another acculterated factor in an equation that I can only see ending in destruction... that bothers me. Maybe it doesn't bother you (and not just because I can't seem to find the right words to convey my thoughts)... and if that is the case, more power to you, because in this day and age, thoughts like mine don't really count. They are as passing and inconsequential as the death of thousands of species of animals in the name of cookie cutter suburbs, shopping malls, and mass transportation.

America the beautiful.

Indeed.

(Dunno where the ecopolitical turn came from... unarticulate as it was, maybe it's evidence that I'm actually starting to learn things in school.)