Work and randomness

I remain diseased.

The sore throat persists, although for a while yesterday I thought it might be getting better. This morning it threatened to turn into a full-blown cold, but thus far I have beaten it into submission with the liberal application of NyQuil (well, the recommended therapeutic dose, anyway). So the sore throat is still there, but otherwise I appear to be okay.

We have finally, finally got a new boss at work. After Boss!Man and the manager I never bothered to give a nickname to left, we were in limbo for about two months. We're still in limbo, but at least now we have an idea of where we might be going. The CAM did not, thank every god, get the position of senior manager. I know she really wanted it, and I'm a little sorry that she's so disappointed, but it would have been a complete nightmare to work in a department in which she was the senior manager. Mind you, I think that the main reason she wasn't promoted was that she hit the proverbial glass ceiling, rather than because she wasn't competent enough to do the job. She has all the requirements, even if I personally would have found it difficult to work with her. Plus ça change…

The new Boss!Man seems like a pretty nice guy. I didn't get to meet him, of course, since I was, once again, answering the phones like a good little minion while everyone else got to be part of the departmental meeting. Not that I'm bitter, or anything. He's an administrative type, less concerned with the business aspect of the department than with the way it's run. Speaking as the receptionist, I'm quite happy to hear this. Our department is pretty damned fly-by-night in its practices, and that drives me and L absolutely batshit crazy. No one respects the procedures in place, there's no consistency, nothing. I'm hoping this guy will be able to straighten out any number of kinks in the system when he officially starts in his new position in about a month's time.

We're still lacking a manager, of course, but that will fall to the senior manager to hire someone new. Right now I am cautiously optimistic about the new guy. Let's call him New!Boss for now. I really liked Boss!Man, of course, and I got along well with him for the most part (except for the whole homophobia bit, but those instances were few and far-between). He was a hell of a character: loud, charismatic, and spreading chaos wherever he went. In other words, I found him vastly entertaining. However, New!Boss looks like he'll be pretty easy to get along with as well, and with any luck the department will start running the way it's supposed to again. People have been very stressed because of the situation, so it'll be nice to have everything resolved in a tidy fashion.

Random thoughts about movies I've seen lately and a sort-of GIP

New icon!


I've been on a movie-watching kick lately. I went to see "V for Vendetta" last Thursday with F, whom I can't quite call a girlfriend yet, but it was definitely a date. F will not get mentioned too often in here, as she is a very private person and I don't think she'd like it very much if I broadcast a whole bunch of details about her over the internet. At least, not in a public post.

( Lots of rambling on about 'V for Vendetta.' )

Otherwise, I haven't been to the cinema much lately. I think I mentioned seeing "Take the Lead," which was cute if uninspired and unrealistic. What I have been doing, though, is renting movies. I rented "The Shipping News," which I think I would have enjoyed more if at least one of the characters had been sympathetic to me. Seriously, it's rare that I won't be able to empathise with any character at all in a book or movie, but in this case none of the characters were likeable in the slightest. Bleh.

I finally got around to watching "The Silence of the Lambs," only about twelve years after it came out. :P I think the movie has suffered from the lapse of time. Not because it's not a good movie, but because now most of us are quite familiar with the stereotype of the brilliant and compelling sociopath, whereas audiences at the time the movie came out were not. Now the whole "I ate his liver with a side of fava beans and a nice chianti" is pretty clichéd, even though this is the movie that started the cliché. I had the same problem when I finally saw "The Godfather." It was difficult not to laugh when Marlon Brando started talking about favours and offers people couldn't refuse, and yet this was the film that started it all. So I ended up feeling a little dissatisfied with "The Silence of the Lambs" because I expected more from it: I wanted a deeper exploration of Lecter's relationship to Clarice, especially, why he becomes obsessed with her, why he wants to help her, why she becomes obsessed with him. I wanted motivation, dammit, and I got very little. I ought to read the book: I'm sure I'll find what I'm missing in there.

On a more light-hearted, silly note, I've also been renting action films. I rented "The Fantastic Four," and enjoyed it, without attempting in the slightest to make any kind of critical judgment. This isn't the kind of movie that stands up well to scrutiny, so I left well enough alone. It's too bad Jessica Alba couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag, because her role needed more than she could give it.

Twenty years later, I finally watched "The Terminator," and found that it doesn't do too badly after all this time. The clothes and hairstyles are painfully eighties, and some of the special effects are a little off by today's standards, but the story is compelling nonetheless. I'm currently watching "Terminator 2," but haven't finished it (I was really tired and fell asleep), and while the effects are better in this movie, I'm not sure I like the "bad guy" in this version. While I had no trouble believing the larger-than-life Terminator portrayed by Ah-nold, this new guy (whatever his name is), seems kind of ordinary. Evil, yes, but in a kind of secondary-minion way. Schwarzenegger's Terminator was a kind of mythological being, and looked every inch like it was unstoppable. This new guy doesn't really pull it off well at all. The story still works well, though, and so I'm going to finish it tonight and see what happens.

That's it for what I've been watching. I'm still following 24, but generally I've been a little too tired when I get home to post my thoughts about the show. Next week is the season finale, so I might do something then.