I know I don't write in my weblog very much, but I think about things I would like to write here all the time. Finally, last night as I was lying in bed, it occured to me that I should install the Radio software on my laptop! So I did, and now I can write here whenever the mood takes me - I have my laptop with me all the time, but since installing a wireless LAN in my
house, I rarely sit down at my desktop machine. So, look for lots of meaningless crap littering this page
in the days and weeks to come, readers.
So now I'm sitting on the back deck, enjoying the pleasant (if cloudy) spring weather, and throwing the ball for my dog. Everyone is happy.
This is clearly going to be one of those slice-of-life type entries in which I rarely engage . My life is giving me some trouble these days.
Coming to realize how deeply disturbing I find the news these days has been a real revelation. I'm one of those people who reads The New York Times every morning, then watches the Daily Show, CNN and CSPAN every night. I like the news. But, between the ever-mounting death toll in Iraq, terrorist activity around the world, and most recently, the Bush
administration's callow attempts to subvert the 9/11 commission's forward progress towards the truth, I am of late burdened with a vague, yet deep, mix of sadness, anger, and despair throughout my day. So, I'm trying to cut back, but I crave that understanding, you know? This week, I've limited myself to the NYT with my morning coffee, and a quick look at The Daily Show's midnight re-broadcast. Please do not email me with comments about The Daily Show not being "real news." Some days, it's the realest thing I see. And it makes me laugh.
I read an article in the Times this morning about a 16-yr. old, mentally retarded Palestinian suicide bomber. Apparently, the psychotic Islamists responsible for his care had mentally and physically abused him to the extent that, suicidally depressed, he was willing to strap a bunch of C-4 explosives to his person, head over to Israel, and blow himself and quite
a few others to shreds. Then, I turn to the Arts section to find yet another article about The Passion of The Christ. I particularly enjoy POTC-related business articles, in which the money Mel Gibson has made with his bloody little snuff film is discussed in endless detail. One hopes that Mr. Gibson is using said filthy lucre to lay in vast quantities of Vaseline, to facilitate his passage through the eye of the needle.
Whatever. I use irony and cynicism as defense mechanisms, preferentially, when writing about events that make me unbearably sad, and at times almost physically ill with disgust.
I also do not enjoy reading glowing reviews of Lars Von Trier films; Dogville, this iteration. I watched Breaking The Waves, and was absolutely sickened by its misogynistic, misanthropic, utterly hateful theme. I swore I would never watch another of his films, but then Dancer In The Dark came along, and I really, really wanted to see Bjork in a movie. I thought that Bjork would make an excellent actress, and of course I wanted to hear her soundtrack music. Again, I was deeply repulsed by the misogyny, the sheer hatefulness, and the aesthetic ugliness of his films (again, do NOT write and tell me about the Dogme 95 manifesto - I know all about it, and have enjoyed other films made to its precepts). It's telling that no actress who has worked with Von Trier will deign to work with him again Bjork said that she will never act again, under any circumstances, because of her experience with him, and Nicole Kidman has pulled out of the remaining two films that would have comprised the Dogville trilogy. However, Bjork's soundtrack to Dancer In The Dark is incredible, moving and beautiful - leave it to her to make a silk purse out of his unspeakable dross.
I've been spending a lot of time at my office this week, as well. The person in charge of managing my boss' junior staff moved to another department, so I'm filling that role in the interim. I'm kind of enjoying it, actually. I like talking to her staff about the work they're doing, what they would like to do in the future, helping them set goals to achieve that, allocating resources, and all that stuff. I meet with each of them individually for 30-45 minutes on Friday mornings, and I find myself looking forward to it. They're all bright, ambitious people with good ideas and interesting things to say. So that's fun.
The other thing I'm doing is working to hire four new junior employees for my larger group, who will not report directly to me. I'm very good at this on one level - I have a very clear understanding of what it is these people will do, so I can look at a resume and discern pretty quickly if we should talk to them. I'm also good at processing lots of data points, and holding all that information in my head, so I'm useful at compare and contrast-type stuff when it comes to assessing various candidates, one against the other.
What I'm not so good at is 1:1 interviewing. I'm pretty shy around strangers, and the stress inherent in the interviewing situation only makes that worse for me. I've found that the most useful role I can play is the no-affect, vaguely unfriendly "bad cop," and leave it to my more gregarious colleagues to make the personal connection necessary to assess their soft skills. That's fine, I like to be useful, but I also kind of prefer people to like me, rather than fear or avoid me. I feel very hyper-aware of their discomfort and nervousness, but am absolutely unable to do anything to assuage it. It's very demoralizing.
This too shall pass, however. I don't have to do any more interviews until Monday morning! I can spend the
weekend focused on my process work, and my studies.
I think I'll have a beer. I promise future entries will be happier, and full of things I actually enjoy. I want to write a bit about the various papers I'm working on at school. More on that later.
7:22:32 PM 
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