Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Depressing, depressing movie. And really lovely.

It could save relationships, in a mildly twisted sort of way. Doesn't approach my still-favorite of the genre, but it must be the best film i've seen in a while, i think....

or maybe, parts just hit a little close to home.

C: Joel, this is it. It's gonna be gone soon. What do we do?

J: Enjoy it.


p.s.

Natty, Updated

Full disclosure--

1. I was a temp secretary myself last year.
2. Government job, no less.
3. But they wouldn't give me internet access, so i held the First Annual NY State Health Department One-Person Solitaire Tournament instead.
4. Did you know that, scoring Vegas-style, it is possible to lose four thousand dollars to Windows in one day?
5. Didn't think so.
   

Such A Natty New Look

Reliable sources, after their weekly five-minute Google search before their newsmagazine article deadlines, inform me that blogging is ever so trendy this year. I can't tell you how relieved i was to learn this. All this time i'd been thinking it was just a lot of stupored temp secretaries and forlorn corporate helpdesk staffers desperate enough for personal validation to believe that anyone will ever see or care about the 482 photos they took on their yearly trip to Cancun. Or the three posts they'll actually make before forgetting about the whole thing.

Well. To mark the occasion, i have succumbed, as you see, to the sweetly seductive lure of commercialized hosting. It was the post-by-email capability that did it. I am now but a faceless helot, prostrate at Blogger's orange and blue tentacles. I mean feet.

In honor of all this, i offer here my own little blogroll (ooh! ooh! another word i just learned) for your perusal, because i think anyone named Katie and Jeremy should be listened to.

Jeremy & Katie Siek

Jeremy Marshall & Katie Gilchrist
Katie B & Jeremy

Sorry, you weren't meant to actually click on those.

In any case, it's great to know i'm in such good company. I mean, sixteen bajillion Blogger users certainly can't be wrong. Good thing, too, as my particular subject matter is hardly the most scintillating. Volunteer nonprofit work is so 2004.

A Midweek Dilemma

The power went out on Wednesday. This happens from time to time when we're on shore power - shore power meaning that instead of using our big Cat generators we're just running the whole ship on a glorified extension cord (albeit one the size of your arm) from the dock. Being on shore power has has several different ramifications for the engineering department, mainly positive, but the one that mostly affected me on Wednesday was the lack of emergency lights in the bathrooms.

When the power goes out, everything goes out but the emergency lights. If one is at sea, the instruments and radios and steerage run off a big bank of daisy-chained batteries until one can start the emergency generator (which generally takes six engineers and a full can of starting fluid), so there is a safety margin. In port, however, one sits and waits for Hoboken Light & Power to plug one in again. And if one were - for example - sitting buck-naked on the john in the pitch-black bathroom, just about to flush and get into the shower, well, it could potentially be a bit of a wait.

In this particular situation, there are several possible conclusions one could infer from the sudden and complete loss of all light.

1. The power company will have it back in just a few seconds. No problem.

2. The shipyard's forklift driver backed into a pole and everything will be down for the rest of the day. Inconvenient, but given a few minutes, i can probably manage to locate my clothes. Also maybe even the flush handle.

3. There is a fire in the engine room and the alarm's going to ring in a split second and my fire team will have to run and suit up to put it out RIGHT NOW.

As i said, several possible conclusions. And if one has personally witnessed all of these, then there are many things that run through one's mind when one finds oneself sitting completely naked in the pitch-dark bowels of the ship. Such as--

1. How much of my clothing do i really need to find?

2. Maybe it's just a little fire.

3. Do we really need two fire teams? Maybe Team One could just handle it. They're smart guys, aren't they?

Fortunately, one's dilemma can also be solved by the return of power after three or four minutes of this sort of careful deliberation. Then one can simply flush and step into the shower in peace.

See? This is what i'm talking about. Years of therapy to sort through this stuff.

Cheap Thrills

Didn't get to Panera last night - the internet was working here - but i did catch Constantine at the two-dollar theater in Mobile.

For a while there it was a regular Tuesday night thing, that theater - we'd fill up the fifteen-passenger van and fan out between the ten or so two-month-old films they offer. You enter the building at the sheet of paper reading "MOVIE THEATRE" taped to the door, and you buy your ticket from the same person who then runs back to sell you popcorn (and, if you notice, also the same one who starts your projector before running off next door to do the same there). The most people i have ever shared a theater with there is, i think, six. On Tuesday nights, even with all fifteen Mercy Ships people wandering around, it is entirely possible you'll be in a movie all by yourself.

This theater is actually very nice, a whole multiplex, stadium seating and all. It used to be full-price, but since the mall around it died it has apparently changed strategies. I am unsure of the wisdom of this, as by my calculations, the fifteen of us, at two dollars each, are not contributing enough even to pay the one high school kid who runs the place.

But anyhow. Constantine. The movie wasn't that great, in case you were holding your breath, but i did gain a lot of respect for Rachel Weisz, and i rather liked Satan. In general, playing the Prince of Darkness would seem to be a challenging experience, but i really think Peter Stormare pulled it off. Depends what kind of Satan you're looking for, of course. Willem Dafoe is still my personal favorite. It seems to be a difficult role not to overplay, but Stormare kept it in pretty close. Except maybe for the part with the licking.

If you were wondering, this is another reason you don't see a comments link here.

The Ignominity Of It All

Is ignominity a word? I don't really know.

The Ignominy Of It All

The Caribbean Mercy made what may be its final sail yesterday, if you want to call it that. In maritime terms it's called a dead ship tow - no control on board, without engine or helm. Two river tugs pushed and dragged us upstream like a barge, maneuvering us past downtown Mobile, under the bridge, and several more miles on up to our new home in Chickasaw.

Chickasaw, Alabama, that was.

All right, enough of that. It seems quite nice here - much greener, much quieter than the shipyard, where they were sandblasting drydocked barges at all hours. There's a warehouse of sorts here, but last year's four hurricanes left it a bit on the interpretive side, as functional architecture goes. Then there's a weedy concrete dock, with kind of a dirt path leading out to the mile-long backroad to the Whataburger (so i hear) and civilization, as it were. We're in a small inlet off the tree-lined river, just wide and deep enough for us and the alligators, of which two have been sighted so far. [click here.] If we make it out to the gate tonight, we're going to Panera to post these updates, so if you're reading this, we haven't been eaten yet. To be continued.

Sheesh

I think 'sheesh' is a word that deserves to be restored to more common usage.

Some things in this world, you can just hear them crying out for another chance. The Thundercats, for one. Tasseled loafers. Richie Sambora.

But i digress. In the case of 'sheesh', just take a moment; listen. You'll hear.

"Please," it begs. "It's not fair! Just because Charles Schulz ruined everything he touched--" Nay, not even Calvin and Hobbes could atone for the sins of Peanuts, try as they might. But i believe the time has come.

Plus, there are any number of nicely related words.

baksheesh (bahk-sheesh') NOUN

Inflected forms: pl. baksheesh

A gratuity, tip, or bribe paid to expedite service, especially in some Middle Eastern countries.

hasheesh (hash-eesh') NOUN

A variant of hashish

So, maybe the last one was a stretch. But i stand my ground. It's perky. It's retro! Gol ding it,* it's just so all-purpose. It says hip, world-weary, and devil-may-care comfort, all in one jaunty syllable. If Old Navy has not yet used it in a commercial, I swear they are salivating over the prospect.

Just try it. 'Sheesh.' Stretch it out; roll it off your upper teeth a few times, Hunter S. Thompson-style. It feels so wonderfully naughty if you do it right. I think you'll agree.

*Next week: Gol Ding.

A Quote, Upon The Occasion Of Sunday Afternoon In A Downtown Park

Oh we are living in the future

And I'll tell you how I know

I read it in the newspaper

Fifteen years ago

We're all driving rocket ships

And talking with our minds

And wearing turquoise jeweler-y

And standing in soup lines

John Prine

The Crank Resurfaces, For A Short Harangue

So the other day i walked into the morning meeting and there was this music video thing playing while everyone was coming in. It was a "praise song," and there were all these people on a beach, kind of dancing around in slow motion, all grinning a little desperately at the camera, like they'd just been Botoxed. They were all clearly middle-class American evangelicals of one skin tone or another, covering the short distance from fashionably dark Caucasian to fashionably light African-American, but they were dressed up in a wide variety of what seemed to be painfully obvious stabs at worldwide multicultural fashion. I thought maybe it was the new Paul McCartney video, or else definitely a pharmaceutical commercial, but i was soon informed that this is the very latest thing in worship - the "iWorship @Home" series. A prepackaged series of a dozen or so songs with videos to match, this product line obviates all the hassle and inconvenience of going to church with actual people. At last, i thought. I hadn't been feeling like enough of a spectator lately in church. [click here.] Plus i was getting so tired of that part where you have to sort of half-turn to your neighbor and mutter something about the "peace of Christ." I mean, come on - just because i sat in the row behind someone doesn't mean i want to hear their life story. Besides, it's really about time Christians caught up with modern trends in convenience and style. Church in my La-Z-Boy, with a pause button. Now that's emergent worship.

Well,

now that it's official--

this is the news.

The Caribbean Mercy will be laid up and inoperative for at least six months to a year, beginning in about a month. This is simply because the repairs needed before the ship can sail again would cost more than Mercy Ships has to its name right now. The organization as a whole, having been run by the grace of God (i'll call it that, since i see nothing else it possibly could be) on a see-through shoestring for twenty-six years and counting, is as broke as ever. In spite of all that continues to be done by the Anastasis in Africa as we speak, the Caribbean Mercy is being forced to bow out for now.

It has been really good to watch this crew pull together and support each other through this tough time--really, since before Christmas. For many here, this is home, and now they have to do some serious individual reexamining of what's next. In the cargo industry, taking a ship out of service for a time is not uncommon, but for this one-of-a-kind "global charity" in the midst of its growth pains, struggling to graduate from its mom-and-pop pioneering stage, it's really hard. Mercy Ships does not want to sell this ship--not least since no one wants to have to change our name to Mercy Ship, singular (even if many old hands at the IOC have still been seeing it that way all along). And the Africa Mercy, of course, is still in Newcastle, which is where all the money's been going. So laying up the Caribbean Mercy for a time seems to be the best thing to do right now. For the crew, this means everyone will need to transfer off to another Mercy Ships location, probably within about six weeks. For the ship, it means remaining in Mobile, laid up with only a small caretaker crew, until the money comes in.

Ah.

"I like this place

and willingly could waste my time in it."

William Shakespeare