Worked and paid our union dues—what did years of that produce?
When I got to Davis Square this evening to pick up a medication and meet ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch for dinner on his half-hour break, a busker with good queer style and an electric guitar was performing the English-language verses of Daniel Kahn's "March of the Jobless Corps." I left money in their guitar case because I spent a portion of this afternoon seriously considering applying for a job that would require me to move half a dozen states down the Eastern Seaboard, which is not my first choice despite a strong ancestral tradition of going where the work is, but there's real money in it and health benefits and I am sick of clearing the rent by an ever-narrowing margin of not being able to afford anything else. I think we exceeded the metaphor of drowning and struggling for breath some months ago and are now firmly in the realm of waterlogged corpse somehow keeps screaming.
Last weekend I patched two pairs of my jeans so that I could keep wearing them. Tonight the zipper on the less-worn of the two pairs abruptly broke. So I guess I get to spend this weekend replacing a zipper. It is not an option to replace the jeans; they have been discontinued by the manufacturer, which infuriates me because they were the one style of 100% cotton, non-stretchy jeans I was able to find in more than ten years that actually fit my body and didn't make me want to peel off my skin. They fit so beautifully that I bought three pairs. I expected them to last longer than two years. For that matter, I didn't expect them to be discontinued within two years. Nothing is made to last anymore and we are always supposed to have the money to buy the next thing.
I rewatched Metropolis (1927) this afternoon, the 149-minute Kino restoration currently on Kanopy that's as close as we're going to get to the full original release without another broom closet in Argentina. I'd seen it last in 2010, accompanied by the Alloy Orchestra. This one had a re-recording of the original score by Gottfried Huppertz, which oddly I feel I paid less attention to except when it was quoting from the "Dies Irae." I love the movie; I did from the time I saw a scratchy videocassette of the butchered short cut in high school; it is still such a weird and beautiful thing. I'd like to write about it properly sometime, but I am so tired that that time is not going to be now.
I am glad to see that HIAS is throwing itself into the border crisis. The Supreme Court decision on gerrymandering really scares me.
I've just been working so much and I want to do something else and instead I find myself thinking about moving to another state so that I can work more. That can't be right.
spatch for dinner on his half-hour break, a busker with good queer style and an electric guitar was performing the English-language verses of Daniel Kahn's "March of the Jobless Corps." I left money in their guitar case because I spent a portion of this afternoon seriously considering applying for a job that would require me to move half a dozen states down the Eastern Seaboard, which is not my first choice despite a strong ancestral tradition of going where the work is, but there's real money in it and health benefits and I am sick of clearing the rent by an ever-narrowing margin of not being able to afford anything else. I think we exceeded the metaphor of drowning and struggling for breath some months ago and are now firmly in the realm of waterlogged corpse somehow keeps screaming.Last weekend I patched two pairs of my jeans so that I could keep wearing them. Tonight the zipper on the less-worn of the two pairs abruptly broke. So I guess I get to spend this weekend replacing a zipper. It is not an option to replace the jeans; they have been discontinued by the manufacturer, which infuriates me because they were the one style of 100% cotton, non-stretchy jeans I was able to find in more than ten years that actually fit my body and didn't make me want to peel off my skin. They fit so beautifully that I bought three pairs. I expected them to last longer than two years. For that matter, I didn't expect them to be discontinued within two years. Nothing is made to last anymore and we are always supposed to have the money to buy the next thing.
I rewatched Metropolis (1927) this afternoon, the 149-minute Kino restoration currently on Kanopy that's as close as we're going to get to the full original release without another broom closet in Argentina. I'd seen it last in 2010, accompanied by the Alloy Orchestra. This one had a re-recording of the original score by Gottfried Huppertz, which oddly I feel I paid less attention to except when it was quoting from the "Dies Irae." I love the movie; I did from the time I saw a scratchy videocassette of the butchered short cut in high school; it is still such a weird and beautiful thing. I'd like to write about it properly sometime, but I am so tired that that time is not going to be now.
I am glad to see that HIAS is throwing itself into the border crisis. The Supreme Court decision on gerrymandering really scares me.
I've just been working so much and I want to do something else and instead I find myself thinking about moving to another state so that I can work more. That can't be right.
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The court decision scares me a lot, too.
♥ ♥ ♥ on the job situation.
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It's an heirloom!
♥ ♥ ♥ on the job situation.
Thank you.
*hugs*
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It's important.
(I'm sorry about the frustration, though.)
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You're welcome! I got him from
[edit] I forgot, I actually discovered him in November 2016 with his Yiddish "Hallelujah." And then
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I really love it.
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It's complicated. Expanding on my answer to
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I've been contemplating that principle. I really need a better-written resume. I suspect it of being old-style, which nobody wants.
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As for everything else, I hope things get better for you soon.
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I just don't think it gets old. I see new things in it every time, and not only because of the restorations. This time around I noticed a detail of Freder's vision of Moloch that I adored: that even at the height of the vision, when the machine has become the bronze mouth of the god and the workers chained prisoners hauled up to be fed to its fires, you can still see the pistons of the machine chewing and revolving behind the curtain of flames, even in Canaanite drag it's that hungry machine.
As for everything else, I hope things get better for you soon.
Thank you.
Scream of Empathy About Clothing Styles
"Nothing is made to last anymore and we are always supposed to have the money to buy the next thing."
SFX: Prolonged scream of clothing-shoppers' frustration!
Re: Scream of Empathy About Clothing Styles
I'm sorry, and I'm surprised by that! I thought the pocket problem was strictly confined to women's clothing.
Re: Scream of Empathy About Clothing Styles
Nope, pockets have become an all-genders issue of clothing design concern. We all need pockets designed into our clothes, in ways that suit our personal convenience.
Aux armes pour les poches, tout le monde!
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Oh, that's stupid. Are we supposed to carry all our personal possessions in the cloud now? Tattooed onto our wrists?
Aux armes pour les poches, tout le monde!
Amen!
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I've just been working so much and I want to do something else and instead I find myself thinking about moving to another state so that I can work more. That can't be right.
If I may offer a reframe, it's not to work more. It's to work for better compensation, which, one would hope, would afford you less stress and more leisure time.
I love Metropolis. It was the first b&w film I'd ever seen, when I was living near Coolidge Corner and they screened the restoration. It wasn't the screening with the Alloy Orchestra though, and it was before the material in Argentina was discovered. It was still powerfully haunting.
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That is a more useful way to think of it. Thank you.
It wasn't the screening with the Alloy Orchestra though, and it was before the material in Argentina was discovered. It was still powerfully haunting.
It may be unbreakable. Despite everything it influenced, it still doesn't look like anything else.
*hugs*
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I saw Metropolis when I was in high school and thought it was one of the most ethereal and beautiful things I'd ever seen. I can understand why you enjoy it so much.
I understand the financial struggle, and I know that working more seems like a pain in the ass answer, but I am right there with you. Take heart and I hope that it works out for you.
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Everybody that matters feels so far out from power already and all I can see is that this will keep them there.
I saw Metropolis when I was in high school and thought it was one of the most ethereal and beautiful things I'd ever seen. I can understand why you enjoy it so much.
I've seen it four times now, I think, and I can imagine watching it many more.
I understand the financial struggle, and I know that working more seems like a pain in the ass answer, but I am right there with you. Take heart and I hope that it works out for you.
Thank you.
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Applying for the job doesn't mean you're committed to it, and I think it's good to have choices.
Metropolis is so awesome. I saw the last theatrical release, that had some of the wild and crazy rich people in it, but not since then. Thanks for the heads up on the new restoration.
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Thank you.
*hugs*
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I don't suppose you have any suggestions? It has been astonishingly difficult for me to buy pants for years. I didn't even used to think I had that weird a body type, but the American fashion industry has taught me that I am in fact a Lovecraftian tentacle monster.
Applying for the job doesn't mean you're committed to it, and I think it's good to have choices.
Thank you. That is the direction I'm leaning, which means I need to overhaul my resume and write a cover letter, oh, God.
I saw the last theatrical release, that had some of the wild and crazy rich people in it, but not since then. Thanks for the heads up on the new restoration.
It may be the same version you saw, if you saw it in or after 2010—it's the one that's missing just about five minutes of footage that was too badly damaged to be restored from the Argentinian broom closet, but everything else is right there, reduced to 16 mm and sometimes grainy, but invaluable and beautiful all the same.
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I appreciate it. The problem is that I am slender but have hips and this seems to cause some sort of fatal short-circuit in the minds of people who design pants: either the waist is right but I can't pull them up past my hips, or I can get them past my hips and then I have at least an extra size's worth around my waist. It drives me nuts.
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I know people with small waists who swear by hip-hugger jeans precisely because they need not fit the waist. I also know some (one of my daughters among them) who have switched to high-waisted jeans of the type that used to be decried as "mom jeans" and are now marketed under that description. Presumably the roominess that is meant to be for a middle-aged belly also works for accommodating hips, but I suspect an all-cotton version, if there is any, would be baggy in the legs for you.
makeyourownjeans.com has custom fitted 100% cotton jeans for $79. Not in most people's jeans budgets but not a completely unthinkable price.
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That's traditionally been my problem with the concept of "relaxed fit." I really don't tolerate spandex, and it makes modern clothes difficult.
makeyourownjeans.com has custom fitted 100% cotton jeans for $79. Not in most people's jeans budgets but not a completely unthinkable price.
If they really fit and they don't fall apart in three years, they might be worth the outlay, and I hadn't even known they were an option. Thank you. [edit] Have you used their services yourself?
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No, I haven't. And now I look at some reviews they may not be all that great. And see this post about some sketchy business practices. Sorry to raise false hopes, but maybe there is a better company doing something similar.
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I appreciate both the original thought and the follow-up information.
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Recently I also found out that we kind of owe Curt Siodmak’s screenwriting career, and possibly his brother’s directing career, to Metropolis: Siodmak was a journalist who visited the set to write a behind-the-scenes article (I think he actually became an extra for the inside scoop) and decided to switch to moviemaking.
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I love Josaphat. (The novelization and the film may spell his name differently—it's definitely the shorter version in the German intertitles. I've never read the novelization.) I realized this time around that one of the reasons I love him is not just that he's a steadfast friend to Freder and a fearless co-rescuer of the workers' children at the climax and stands up to the Thin Man and so forth, it's that he does all of that while being a middle-aged former secretary introduced to the audience so stunned by his summary dismissal from his master's service that he can't even find the doorknob to let himself decently out. I think the internal timeline of the film is about two weeks and he's just quietly—or occasionally loudly, as when he yells at Freder and Maria to save their reunion scene until they're all out of danger of drowning—awesome for damn near all of it. It has always been important to me to have heroes in a narrative who don't conventionally look it, but I hadn't understood how much that was driving my affection for Josaphat until now. (I mean, I also think he has a nice face, but I think that because of the character inside it. Theodor Loos himself I think turned into a Nazi, which always makes pre-WWII German cinema a bit of a problematic fave.)
Each restoration added a bit more back in, and there was a huge jump 10-15 years back when the Murnau Foundation did a frame-by-frame clean-up, and I could suddenly see that the acting and makeup had been much more naturalistic than I’d originally thought.
I think that was the 2005 restoration, which I watched on DVD with friends in grad school and it just blew me away. I couldn't believe that so much had been excised that was obviously critically important. It was a fever dream, but it was a fever dream with a plot.
Recently I also found out that we kind of owe Curt Siodmak’s screenwriting career, and possibly his brother’s directing career, to Metropolis: Siodmak was a journalist who visited the set to write a behind-the-scenes article (I think he actually became an extra for the inside scoop) and decided to switch to moviemaking.
I didn't know that! I'm so glad he did.
Menschen am Sonntag (1930) is currently on Criterion and I'm thinking I should really watch it. It's whatever that inverse of a supergroup is called—where absolutely everyone involved in the band went off and become stupidly famous, even though they only released one EP and a couple of tracks on compilations.
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I seem to recall he was described as a “pale-faced youth” or something in the novelization, but then I’ve given up trying to guess what age anyone in an old movie is *meant* to be, because hair and clothing styles, etc, often cause me to perceive them as older than the actors actually were, plus I live in an era where social adulthood seems to be pretty fluid and often delayed. Also I googled Otto Wernicke’s birth date and Inspector Lohmann, in the second movie, is five years younger than I currently am (I have multiple diegetic and non-diegetic thoughts about that), so at this point I’ve just given up and embraced the fact that I’m ancient and also unable to identify anyone else’s age, which is kind of fun because I can pretend I’m a slightly bemused supernatural being who has trouble with human timescales.
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It's a piercing emotional gesture and also a great piece of physical acting. The whole movie is full of them. I was amazed this time by some of the things Brigitte Helm does with her body as the false Maria; she looks like she has too many joints in her fingers, like her arms and her torso and her hips are all separately articulated or possibly dislocated. I always loved that one slow lolling broken-doll wink, but the way she laughs as the workers are hauling her to the stake—the way she laughs in the fire—is exactly the way she laughed at the young men fighting over her in the Yoshiwara. It's like a combination of broken programming and demonic possession.
I seem to recall he was described as a “pale-faced youth” or something in the novelization, but then I’ve given up trying to guess what age anyone in an old movie is *meant* to be, because hair and clothing styles, etc, often cause me to perceive them as older than the actors actually were, plus I live in an era where social adulthood seems to be pretty fluid and often delayed.
I was going by the actor's age, which is the kind of thing I tend to look up because I am terrible at people's ages full stop. I have always been able to gauge "generally younger than me," "vaguely in my age range," and "obviously older," and otherwise I have no clue. What I find ironic is that this interdeterminacy also appears to apply to me—I spent much of high school being mistaken for a college student and much of college being mistaken for a grad student and now that I haven't been near a university in more than a decade I am regularly mistaken for a college or grad student, which actually bothers me quite a lot, but it's been a constant of my interactions with the Yiddish chorus. I don't know what to do about it. I'm not sure there is anything.
Also I googled Otto Wernicke’s birth date and Inspector Lohmann, in the second movie, is five years younger than I currently am (I have multiple diegetic and non-diegetic thoughts about that), so at this point I’ve just given up and embraced the fact that I’m ancient and also unable to identify anyone else’s age, which is kind of fun because I can pretend I’m a slightly bemused supernatural being who has trouble with human timescales.
I am now older than Hans Conried in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953). That's nuts.
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Same here. I think it may be a geek/fannish thing: as kids/teens our research into our hyperfixations and/or fear of screwing up socially can get us read as unusually mature; as adults the same thing can make us seem younger than we’re supposed to be. In my late teens to early twenties either could happen, depending on the situation and what I was wearing.
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I recognize it was meant in the spirit of solidarity, but this comment had the approximate effect of tossing a grenade into my suicidal ideation. I'm also not sure it's actually the problem I'm having.
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Should I take it down?
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I don't think so. I imagine it's a useful take for other people. It just wasn't for me.
Thank you.
[edit] You are not responsible for the minefields in my head and I do not think you were aiming for them. I wanted to explain what had happened.
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Mid-range boots are expensive enough you think you’re at least getting something that will last, but I find quite often they cost at least twice as much, sometimes three times as much, as the cheapest ones, while only lasting one-and-a-half times as long; so that really if you can afford the mid-range brand, you’re actually better off buying two pairs of the cheap brand and switching them out as needed. In theory the Really Expensive Brand might actually last long enough to be worth the price tag, but it’s too expensive to find out, especially if you’ve already wasted your money on the Medium Brand.
I don’t know if it was ever thus, or if this is the result of companies with a good reputation based on past performance falling under new management who decide to coast on the name while cutting corners in the actual manufacture (probably then selling off the stock before anyone notices the drop in quality, paying themselves a dividend, declaring bankruptcy, and moving on to the next previously-reputable company).
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That's demoralizing, especially since my experience with trying various brands suggests that if I wanted Really Expensive Jeans, I'd have to get them either bespoke or heavily tailored and that's Really Expensively right out.
I don’t know if it was ever thus, or if this is the result of companies with a good reputation based on past performance falling under new management who decide to coast on the name while cutting corners in the actual manufacture
I don't know, but it did not escape my notice that the previous pair of jeans of this brand lasted ten years before shredding through at the knees (prompting the purchase of the three pairs, which I figured would cover me for decades) and I was still wearing the cutoffs at the beach last summer. I don't like it.
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Is the job attractive in itself - other than being in the wrong state, I mean?
I am so sorry about your jeans: it feels trivial to say this, because it's not the biggest problem in this post, and it's one you can take ation on. But it's so disappointing ewhen clothes you think werr going to be really good turn out not to be. And while I have replaced zips in the past, it's really above my competence level.
Sympathy all tound, in fact.
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It is attractive in that it would be social justice work in a Jewish context and, if I got the job, I would come in knowing some of the people I was working with. If it were geographically closer, I wouldn't even hesitate. The massive uprooting it would require to move is daunting and it really isn't somewhere I would want to spend the rest of my life if I managed to get that lucky. It's a very frustrating situation.
Sympathy all tound, in fact.
Thank you.
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Glad you're keeping the jeans alive. I like patching jeans.
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See replies to
I would hate to have you not-in-the-Boston-area because having you there feeds into my imagination that I can see you sometime, even when, in fact, several years (including this one), I don't even make it out to Readercon. But your having health benefits and security matter much more than my notional, never-acted-on idea of possibly seeing you.
I would prefer to stay in the Boston area! I like this city. I like New England. I would miss the North Atlantic. I'm just not having any luck finding local work and the cost of living might be less battering in the prospective location.
(I'm sorry not to see you at Readercon!)
Glad you're keeping the jeans alive. I like patching jeans.
This was a very simple job of knee patches, one exterior and one interior, but I was pretty pleased with myself. That's part of the reason I'm so bitter about the zipper.
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Nodding vigorously.