This Side of Lost

To be selfish, that is. Here's my wishlist. Oh, and here's Samantha's, while you're at it.

Mary Shelley's novel gets its quote-unquote definitive film treatment in this 1931 classic horror flick from director James Whale. A scientist (Colin Clive) creates life from death by building a creature (Boris Karloff) from parts of exhumed corpses. Hilarity ensues.

I don't think I have the cinema chops to appreciate this film. The things I've read laud the strength of the mood setting, and the excellent pacing. But to me, it just looks so dated. It's slow. The acting is wooden and melodramatic. The painted backdrops are cheap and look bad. The three different sets are dull looking. I don't know. I guess this was cutting edge in 1931.

I presume that this film is on the list because (along with Dracula) it basically created the horror film genre. So I can understand that. Perhaps this is why it seems so dated. I see the hunchbacked assistant and the lurching monster and while I know that this is the film that those (now) cliches came from, I still can't escape feeling that the whole exercise is silly.

Perhaps I would have a higher opinion of the movie if I saw the many imitations and parodies that followed. To my (and Samantha's) eye, it doesn't really stay true to the source material. But perhaps, compared to others, it does. I have a feeling, though, that I'll never find out -- which, for better or for worse, I don't think is a huge loss.

(See this post if you're confused why I'm reviewing movies.)

Can it really be two and a half weeks since I made a useful update? I honestly can't believe this. I feel like I haven't done anything since the last update, but I know that I've done quite a bit.

Like I've finished my fall semester. Whee. We turned in our "final project" (basically a double-size assignment) for Cataloguing last week and got a 28/30 on it. And I turned in my documentation for my Gary's website yesterday. Go me, I took a whole two classes.

I've also pretty successfully survived a semester working four jobs. My work for Gary was pretty one-sided (monitoring his class), but I did get paid for some of the web work I did. My long, long Wednesdays at the SLIS labs are over, thank goodness. My hours will be better there next semester. I only ended up teaching the minimum required four instruction sessions for job #3. Which is okay, it turned out to be not such a great job anyway. The Tech. Services mail opening job ended up being the most lucrative. Ironic, since the hourly pay there was the worst. But the required 16 hours a week certainly added up.

The madness will not continue next semester. With an internship an hour away to take up a day and a half of my work week, I will be quitting two of these jobs. Can you guess which two? The instruction assistant (bad hours, no set schedule) and the Tech. Services gig (too many hours, not flexible enough). Yeah, I'm pretty picky about my work -- but you can afford to be when you have four jobs, I guess. Gary is upping my hours with him -- definitely the best possible situation, since his hourly rate is the best.

I'll also be picking up one more temporary gig -- teaching one module of a section of 401. (For new viewers -- 401 is the required computer skills course in SLIS. It teaches basic computing, searching, Unix, HTML and databases.) I'll only be teaching the first module, but hey, that's a little extra cash and some more instruction experience.

If you couldn't tell, work and work-like experience seems to be dominating my school life this year. We're all slaves to the almightly dollar though, so might as well start now. ;)

Christmas is coming. Like, a week away. Yikes! We've done a good bit of shopping, but there are still people unaccounted for. My sisters are always the toughest to shop for... suggestions, anyone?

Our travel plans look like this:

• Mon 19th: Head up to Samantha's uncles' place in Indy to chill and park the car.
• Wed 21st: Taxi to the airport and wing our way to Atlanta, where Ben will cart us around to meet up with Pete and DJ, Samantha's adopted "parents" and then back to Statesboro. Spend the official holidays with her family this year (next year with my family -- the grand holiday trade-off begins...)
• Wed 28th: Back to ATL and back to Indianapolis. When we get back in the car depends on how we feel. But when we do, we'll head to Minnesota to celebrate a little belated Christmas there, too.
• Fri 30th: Attend the wedding of David Parker and Kelsay Ludwig. Hooray for winter weddings.
• Thurs 5th: Leave (in my new car!) to return to Bloomington for the last semester. Ever. Duh-duh-DAH!

If our geographical location intersects with yours at any point during these periods of time, and you wish to make use of such a fortunate happenstance, you should let me know. Most likely I will reciprocate such an inclination.

Anything else you want to know? Tough luck. JK LOL BFF. And peace. Thank goodness there's no slick online acronym for saying that yet.