Been a student. Been a clerk. Been a salesperson. Been a manager. Been a teacher. Been an expatriate. Am a husband, father, and chronicle.
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It is difficult to get all of these in a single film.
However:
- Art direction that makes you love design.
- Cinematography at such scale and intimacy that you love light, shadow, depth of field, and the rule of thirds
- Writing that makes you love language, references, and lived experiences
- Casting that extols the virtues of interpersonal chemistry
- Editing that forces you to feel pace, tone, and contemplation as the story demands
- A plot that twists, turns, and delivers a gut punch when you least expect it
- A twist-in-the-end that, on reflection (or re-watch), makes total sense.
- Compelling, developing characters responding to irresistible forces that wash through their being
- Murphy's Laws in full force: failure is an option, main characters can die
e:
- A true, hidden, and/or surprise villain whose perspective you can see and might even agree with.
Good examples:
- Synecodoche, New York
- Michael Clayton
- Sicario
- Requiem For a Dream
- No Country for Old Men
A foreword: there is no picture. The future has guidelines, tendencies, but no actual shape. There's nothing you're supposed to do. Life isn't planned out all at once. Those days are dead. In fact, they nay never have existed. You will become a new person, and have a new career or focus or stage of life, about once every 11 years. That's normal. That's life's uncertainty.
The piece of advice is the one I've given on many platforms for years: if you're —
- North American and
- from any "settler-colonial" culture and
- you're able,
then leave North America for at least one year. Live elsewhere, see how others live, and break out of the bubble built by the preschool to prison pipeline, the corporate cradle to coffin collective consciousness. This advice isn't exclusively for Gringos and Canucks, but it's based on the particular starting square I had and most of the people I've encountered. Also, I don't mean to exclude my Indigenous, Mexican, Mexica, and other Latino brothers and sisters, but my understanding is that you've already got reality pushing the movement narrative.
If you're a a first-generation North American (like me), also build connections within your community. There is much work to be done to diversify these places and so many other new, and first-gens could use some support. Detachment from one another is what harms us most. The communities I've had outside of El Norte continue to feed me. Admittedly, the job I have and the hours I keep prevent community-building. I need to get back to it.
Finally, get smart about money. Find teachers, take meetings at banks, go to teachings at libraries. Study the jargon in your credit card agreements. Make investments in yourself and your future. I failed pretty spectacularly at this one.
As far how to choose WHAT to do with all your time, well, the only thing I'd advise is to be a crafty, insightful, decisive disruptor. Nothing else that I've seen works. Be the best there is at a small thing you do. Identify a critical mass for your work and work hard to get to the place where 15% of the people you talk to will say 'yes' to you. Gain your repeat customers, followers, students, and acolytes. You can do what want. The trick is to have people support you or believe in your doing it.
Just a digest of what Ive seen here so far:
don't get bogged down planning too far ahead. Set yourself some achievable goals for the near future.
This is good advice.
there is a good chance that your future could look very different than what you imagine it might be.
This is not advice, but true and warrants remembering because you can bend the future.
find a good strategy for managing upkeep on whatever needs it.
Many people forget that anything and everything you obtain and want to keep working will require maintenance. Machines, subject knowledge, relationships, tools, whatever — all need upkeep. Know your shit so you can keep your shit together.
Focus on improving a single thing you can do in the short term.
I'd add to this. Short term goals should not be ends in themselves unless they are for entertainment. If you're focusing on a short term goal, connect it to a long term goal.
get[ ] a union job if you don’t have employment figured out yet.
Unions can protect you. But, if you're looking for satisfaction, the job has to be what you want it to be. Or, take pleasure in the union connections. If neither of these feeds you, a union can't save you from yourself.
Anyway, you asked and I'm stuck in a waiting room.
Tr. Do what excites you.
Unless it's heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, or other highly addictive drugs. Also, no gambling unless you're a mathematical genius. No extreme sports unless you're extremely fit and a physicist. No crimes or exploitation. No killing, forcibly confining, gaslighting, or coercing people. That'd be awkward. Also, no parenting unless you already have the means to spend $1M on someone other than yourself — while keeping yourself fed, clothed, housed, employed, and pretending to be happy.
So, yeah, whatever excites you and makes you fit, smart, caring, and socially ept.
Note to the CEOs:
Which EXACT side of history are you on? What are you willing to do to help... heal this country?
CEOs, all of you, can change everything. You can (somewhat) free yourselves of culpability by abandoning this violent system. End exploitation, support communities, prioritize people. This system cannibalizes us all. Do what it takes to not get eaten.
Set a new standard.
What your people, your state, and your nation need is a new course forward. Not riches. Not power. Not influence. Not dominion. Not any of the colonial values. No more. Abandon those hopes. Build back better.
Care. Not just "Minnesota nice." Human security for all.
Build. Sustainable, science-based solutions.
Action. Recognize, understand, apply, and create a future that depends on promoting people, not capital.
The next iteration of the American experiment awaits.
This one will make it sound like I'm a fan — I'm not — but I was a kid when Owen Hart entered the WWF and an adult when he died in the ring.
Wrestling had already lost its shine and appeal to me, early in the 90s. The characters, storylines, and action bled fake. And, as I grew up, I came to understand it was no different than any other staged play, entertainment, or storytelling. What really bothered me wasn't the fake drama, or the dumbing down of storytelling. It was serial betrayal, shameless advantage-taking, and the smooth-brained jingoism of it all. It became the refuge of every shameless American impulse.
Then Owen Hart died on camera. There was a brief reality check. Then, on with the show. The change, though was an acceptance that real death was no reason to stop, slow, or change directions on the machine. If anything, the show, the drama, the merch, and the culture became the basis for an entire political bloc.
Lest we forget: Linda McMahon is now Secretary of Education. Hard to think of a person worse than Betsy DeVos, but here we are.
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Toss Kurosawa's Throne of Blood in there.
In addition to the other thread descendants, staring with u/jjjalljs@ttrpg.network:
For all the bitching about capitalism, which basically every country on Earth uses for an economic system
This is only the case because it was instituted at gunpoint. The exploration, colonization, settlement, expropriation, amassment, warfare, thievery, and conquest of the world's economy is soaked in blood, laden in exploitation of people, places, and things and destruction of the commons. You'd know that if you were subject to it. Or, if you'd paused to read, ask, or think about it for 5 seconds.
And, I can't believe I'm saying this in public, "just because everyone is doing it, that doesn't make it right."
- We can vilify, undermine, and lead smear campaigns against unions under capitalism.
- We can break, or prevent, unions under capitalism.
- Our governments can attack us using local, state, provincial, and federal police forces whenever there is a perceived threat to capitalism.
Everything works fucking horribly with those 2781 billionaire capitalists robbing the world blind while blaming the victims.
Imagine that.
Im ready for the hate, but I content myself that I've gotten through these before having kids:
- Fullmetal Alchemist
- Hellsing
- Voltron (80s, I think I saw them all)
- Serial Experiments: Lain
And since having kids:
- Neon Genesis Evangelion
- One Punch Man
I read this in 2011, the same year I got my first iPhone and started teaching in a middle school.
Yeah, things have trended dystopian and proven this book prophetic in many, many ways
The way into Island is really buying into the paradise that it would be and being willing to learn the ways of the Palanese. Oh, and a healthy disdain for the world you'd leave behind.
I figure that's only gotten easier with time.
I can see you re-read it after. Hope you had a chuckle.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
"One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
"The other, of course, involves orcs."
[John Rogers, Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]
Was offered this in high school. I read Brave New World and Island by Aldous Huxley instead. I'd say those.
Used as insult by Uhura in first J.J. Abrams Star Trek (2009) film.
Urban Dictionary has an entry from 2004
I'm not going to pretend that I understand your culture, I don't. But I can understand the "child of immigrants" position in the world that we share. I just started a LOT longer ago.
And I won't belabour the point. I'll sum up.
They moved here because of what THEY wanted. They also want you to be eternally grateful and follow their example. Except, you are a person, too. So, if they can't see how glorious you can be, they can either watch you struggle with cognitive dissonance induced depression forever or they can let you grow, explore and find what you're great at.
For the record, I needed a clean break from my dad to be able to rebuild my life. He was the role in my life that was toxic in the same way you describe your mom. That was in 2005. Incidentally, part of my story also had me leave North America for over a decade. I spent some time in Korea and China while I was away.
Value is a loaded term here.
If, as I assume, she means "economic" value — in a twisted, Judeo-Christian, colonialist, capitalist, explotative system — then, sure, value is assigned to money and only the top 0.001% of earners "have value". Bully to the 99.999% of people on Earth who spend their lives delivering that value to the top. I hazard the guess your mom is one of those people.
Also, loaded into that term, if she has among her moral values those the western, chauvinistic, Biblical moral set, I might be inclined to question whether she lives up to her own values of charity, humility, and acceptance.
What everyone has is an "intrinsic" value; a unique set of experiences and gifts that has never existed before in the universe and never will again. We are here to delight in each other's presence and potential. This doesn't do much for the bottom line... until it does.
Collaboration on shared goals, building sustainable practices, and ensuring plenty for all are among humanity's highest intrinsic, economic, and moral functions. Previously, I said that the values system your mom probably considers correct is twisted; that's because in this system the highest functions are immense power, immediate profit, and absolute exploitation. These are ignored or invisible to most.
Your mom's blindness and/or ignorance is what makes her tragically wrong.
I didn't know that's what this was called. It is one carol that doesn't bother me no matter how many times it's played.
We all die alone. Unless you're the pilot.
Working retail for a decade-plus did it all in for me. 100 cumulative weeks of Christmas carols, decorations, impatience, childish adults, stress, and readjusting merchandising just so we could be told that we missed targets, underperformed, and failed at loss prevention.
So, I quit. I also quit X-mas. I celebrated on beaches for a few years. That was great. In deserts for a few as well. But, alas, I have returned to the rugged white north and the big-box spectacle. I have children who get a "normal" Christmas. The elf is on a shelf.
As for dying alone, I choose life. It's the part we experience. I have a partner and a family, true. More on this later. But, I don't plan on being parked in a nursing home as a drooling, vegetative, sieve-brained, line-item expense; or some mega-corp, health-sector, big-pharm farm animal. Milowda na animal.
When I can no-longer read and write and wipe my own bum — or when the pain, despair, and attendant paperwork for living threatens to overwhelm my desire to continue — I'll want no part of this life anymore.
I'm an introvert. My kids mourn my partner going to a yoga class more than they'll ever mourn my passing. My wife would be pissed it wasn't put in the shared calendar. I've not got roots anywhere anymore, so my funeral will be sparsely attended. My close friends, I see once a year. My sibs would attend. But, that's essentially it. None of my colleagues from previous schools. None of my students. None of the people I met in travels. None of my old schoolmates. All those ties are gone.
What's left? Not much. So be it. Today, I'm alive. Today, I can learn, create, and leave messages in bottles. Today, I can respond to you and say the time, place and circumstance of your death tells nothing about you. The times, places, and decisions of your life — from a single room to the infinite vacuum — only partially tell your story. You, being here, tell the rest.
For those who don't understand these words, I'll translate: driving a motor vehicle (car, truck, van, or other) with a manual-shift or stick-shift transmission.
In an automatic transmission vehicle, you have steering, gas, and brakes. The car itself decides automatically which gear to be in based on several conditions. This is the form of driving to which most are accustomed.
The rest of us can actually drive.