unemployment

Oh. About Lord of the Rings last night.

Saw it.

See it.

That's all.

After my rash talk of finishing another entry for publication on Monday night, my computer promptly suffocated itself into unconsciousness; how or why, we've yet to determine. The Guy, tormented beyond belief by the thought that there's a PC somewhere in his vicinity that doesn't work, has been hammering furiously on the case until all hours of the night. Sporadically, he'll come out and give me reports.

"I think it's the power source," he told me while I lay on the couch, watching 'Xena the Musical,' one of my many quality Unemployment activities. "We have to replace it. Your power source is bad."

The next day I had a new power source. The computer was still crapping out, hard.

"I think it might be the hard drive," he said, with a wrinkle between his eyebrows. I like petting people's eyebrows. They're so, you know. Fuzzy. "I have to run a diagnostic."

Then it was, "Maybe it's the CPU?"

Frustration rolls off him in a palpable storm, scorching the carpets where he stands. It's aging him. I'm watching him deteriorate in front of my eyes. This morning he patted me on the head, still with that furrow dug between his eyebrows. "You'd better use the Dell today if you want to get some work done," he told me.

Two computers. I have two computers. Life is good.

So, anyway, that's my excuse for not updating on Monday like I'd promised. Now, on with the show.

I received many encouraging words from people after the last entry; Tara wrote me an email telling me that she had giggled at her desk in Germany over the entry, and ended up having to explain the joke to her very proper coworkers.

They wanted to know if the company would sue me over the value of the whiteboard. "Why would she steal it?" they wondered, puzzled.

"Tweety bird pajamas?" they echoed, blankly. "Tweety bird pajamas? Tweety bird? Like . . . the cartoon, Tweety bird?" They appeared to be having trouble with the idea that a grown woman would wear Tweety bird pajamas to work. Or maybe it was the fact that a grown woman would wear Tweety bird pajamas at all.

"You know," one of them told the rest. "Tweety bird. The cartoon." He picked up a whiteboard pen to draw it for them.

It occurred to me yesterday, driving the car up to San Francisco to meet my sister, that I really like Germans. I was listening on the BBC news -- that's NPR, for those of you who actually do any listening to radios that isn't Celene Dion and 'NSync; NPR is cool for when you answer government-funded phone surveys about your radio listening habits and don't want to look, you know, stupid -- about the new Euro dollar, coming out in a couple of weeks. BBC was interviewing people in Poland, who relied heavily on the stability of the German mark for its money caching. The estimate is that approximately $1 billion German marks are circulating in Poland right now, or ferreted away inside mattresses and the like.

"How do you feel about the change of the German mark to the Euro?" the interviewer asked a banker from Frankfurt. "Do you have any emotional attachment to the mark?"

"Not really," the banker said, adding pragmatically, "really, there might be a little grumbling at first from the older generations, but once you receive a paycheck in the new Euro, those will go away. I know that it's more sophisticated than the German mark, but my objection is that it doesn't look real. Like Monopoly money."

Right then and there, I felt a sudden fondness for Germans. No reason why, in particular. It simply occurs to me that there's a great cultural affinity shared between Germans and Japanese. I can understand why they became allies in the last World War. Their stereotypes are similar: both are regarded as humorless, pragmatic, hard-working, and stubborn. Both have polite genes that dominate over all other genetic traits. Both are loyal to the point of stupidity. Both are traditionalists, leaning towards the implementation of large institutions. Both are heavy drinkers.

Both look pretty stupid in mustaches.

I imagined generation upon generation of non-mustached, poker-assed Germans and Japanese coming together in business formal attire to share bows and handshakes over legally correct contracts and business cards, and giggled myself the rest of the way to San Francisco.

I fail to understand how it is that being Unemployed (notice the capital letter; it's a job title, these days) requires me to be so busy all of the time. In five days, I've yet to have a chance to do my laundry, clean my kitchen, my room, the living room, the bathroom, finish my resume, unpack my boxes from work, or repot my plants.

However, I did have a chance to buy tickets for the premiere of Lord of the Rings on Tuesday.

The Lord of the Rings was my own personal Harry Potter; my normal opinion of movie premieres is really unrepeatable on a public forum. I've only gone to two premieres in my life, both of them radically poor choices: Bram Stoker's Dracula was one, where I found myself waiting in line with my friends, the only normally clad people in the entire square mile, surrounded by teenagers with white-mask makeup and hair dyed black, wanna-be goths who succeeded in looking less like elegant vampires than half-frozen ethnic chickens in the middle of a Rochester winter. I giggled through the entire movie.

And then there was the premiere of the first Star Trek Next Generation movie, also an abysmal failure insofar as class acts were concerned. Volunteers from the Klingon Empire Club staged a little battle for our edification in the theatre, charging up and down the aisles with toy phaser pistols and making grand, eloquent speeches -- in Klingon. I cringed through the entire movie.

Despite my past two disappointments, I was still intent on going to the premiere of the Fellowship of the Ring. I puttered over to the movie theatre on Tuesday afternoon, and found the place deserted; no line for tickets, nothing. I suffered, shall we say, a qualm, and fluttered in front of the only open window, where a pleasant-looking young man stared at me through the glass.

"Yes?" he said, politely. "I can help you?"

His English was broken, heavily spiced with the Spanish flavor.

I have a bad habit, when faced with a non-English speaker of turning into my father. This is understandable, I suppose; I used to turn into my father for the benefit of the two and three year olds I used to teach. Two and three year olds require something different in the way of communication; communication with the face and body, as well as with the voice. Every thought, every emotion suddenly requires a dramatic shift in the facial expression, or a change in the way you stand. I never talked any slower for them, mind. I just made faces, and comported myself like a Dr. Seuss character.

I could feel the change happening, and I couldn't stop it. My eyes got bigger, and I leaned into the counter, jiggling slightly on my toes. I was Communicating Emotion: hopeful excitement.

"Are you selling tickets for the Lord of the Rings, tomorrow?" I asked.

The cashier looked blank. He was wearing a garish, brightly-colored vest: part of the uniform for ticket sellers. I didn't notice the pin that said, "Lord of the Rings tickets available now!" until several minutes into the conversation.

"Lord of the Rings?" he echoed, looking worried.

"It starts tomorrow," I explained. "I wanted to get tickets . . . if there are any available?" I let my voice trail off, and settled back on my heels. My eyebrows were squishing together. I was Communicating Emotion: sudden anxiety.

The cashier frowned, puzzled, and stabbed at his computer keyboard a few times with a rather hopeless expression before turning away to confer with a coworker in Spanish. It was a long, involved conversation. I started hopping on my tip-toes while waiting. I was communicating either 1) Worried Anticipation, or 2) Need Restroom.

The two argued at length, and finally turned back to bang on the computer keyboard. It squealed at them reproachfully. "Tickets," he said at last, relieved. "Yes, tickets."

"Great!" Again, I was leaning into the counter, eyes huge. I bared my teeth in an exaggerated, delighted grin. "I'd like two tickets for tomorrow night, please. Er...around nine-ish, if you have them. I hear the movie is three hours long."

"Tomorrow night, all sold out," the teller informed, presenting the information to me proudly. See, he was being helpful. "No more tickets."

"No more tickets?" I echoed. I started to crumple, shoulders slumping, head falling, eyebrows furrowing. My lower lip was starting to wrinkle. He stared at me through the window, apparently worried that I would start to cry. "It's all sold out?"

My lower lip started to quiver. I swear it started doing it on its own.

The training provided to ticket tellers at AMC theatres obviously doesn't lend itself to crying women. He developed the deer-caught-in-headlights look of a PETA member caught boiling small puppies, and dove back onto the computer to smash keys some more. As I was turning away with a forlorn "Thanks," he called after me with relief.

"Two tickets left," he declared. "Is 10:20 okay?"

10:20 was okay. I paid him, beaming, and received a reciprocal, happy smile in return. We were buds. We'd gone through a traumatic experience together. I got my tickets. I showered him with gratitude, still bouncing on my toes, and turned away to trot back to my car.

As I left, I heard the woman who had been behind me in the line demand of the cashier, "Did I hear you say that the Lord of the Rings is all sold out?!"

"All sold out," the cashier repeated, firmly.

I think I heard his voice crack.

In the car on the way to the movie:

Me: . . . what I'm saying is that it's partly a convergence of circumstance. I mean, Lincoln might well have been a decent president, but circumstance dictated that the events that caused the Civil War would come to a head under his leadership, and he became remembered in history as a great president. It's the same with George Bush. I mean, until September 11th happened, he was well on his way to becoming another mediocre president, but then, bang, and now he's going to be remembered as a decent one instead of not being remembered at all.

The Guy: So you think Lincoln might have been a bad president?

Me: No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that circumstances being what they were, Lincoln had a great, pivotal moment in history to be leader in, and he rose up to it. That's why he's remembered.

The Guy: I don't understand yams.

Me: (small silence) What?

The Guy: I don't understand yams. I mean, if you have a choice between potatoes and yams, why would you choose yams? I just don't get it.

The movie was fantastic. I loved it. I did. It was very much Tolkein, the way I'd imagined it, anyway. I was even okay with the small changes they had to make in the book in order to make it fit the time frame or to augment certain developments they wouldn't otherwise be able to get to for another two years. I wanted more.

I want the rest of the story, dammit. I have to wait another year for the Two Towers? You have to be kidding me.

Note to all out there who have eyes: Legolas bad, man. He's my elf.

Time for me to log off and do something productive. You know the things I'm talking about: brush my teeth, brush my hair, put on real clothes, shower. . .

I've finished my CV -- that's curriculum vitae for you folks out there who aren't in the know; it's a one-page version of your resume -- and it's now online. Those of you who are willing and capable to offer me advice and edits, please feel free. Just be warned that it's in MS Word at the moment. Working on that whole convert-to-ASCII thing. Bit by bit. Byte by byte. Day by day.

Hard to be motivated in Tweety bird pajamas. Posted by yhirata at December 20, 2001 03:05 PM