I am the proud owner of a Minolta X-570. It was my grandfather's, and I haven't found any of the extra lenses yet, but I've got what I've got.
I've never used an SLR before, just point and shoot digital, so this shall be a brand new experience. I still have to get battery and film, but it's going to be a while before the film and development costs are equal to the cost of the camera, so I've got that going for me. And, if I can get the hang of this, I'll be able to really know what I'm doing if I ever get a digital SLR.
Time for the job report of the week; I applied at the library in the next town over. They sent me back a very polite letter through the mail and everything that they'd filled the post. So, there's that.
But, I finally heard back from the JCPenney photographer's studio, whom I've e-mailed twice and gotten a bounce back vacation message. This time, they said to go pick up an application, so, there's that in the works.
The next town on the other side (not the next town over- in case you were confused) is looking for a director for their one week kids theatre camp. I will be e-mailing them.
Today, even though it's one in the morning, is my second wedding anniversary. We, being the hopeless romantics and splurgers that we are (hahah), decided to go halves on MarioKart Wii. If that's not love, I don't know what is.
My vision's getting worse. It is not as bad as my eleven year old nephew's who took his glasses off in the dim theatre before the fourth Indiana Jones and declared that he couldn't see anything but the "Cheerios" on the walls- the really ugly wall sconces. So, I feel better about that, but walking into a department store and realising that I can't make out details on the other side of the store is disenheartening.
Ah, yes, the fourth Indy movie. I preface this saying that I'd never seen an Indy movie until this year when The Boy made me watch all of them. They're honestly not bad, though the second one hurts a lot to watch and the third one makes me want to smack Dr. Jones and wish that Papa Jones would do it for me. It's that whole, "I hate being smarter than fictional characters with a professed intelligence higher than mine" thing. On the whole, though, they're not bad movies. Like Star Wars, they're movies that I can have on without having to get involved in them, but without being so unchallenged that I get bored.
The fourth one, really, is just more of the same. It's a weird combination of all three previous movies- it's painful in some places, annoying in others, and just way way way over the top in most places. I like the Indy movies because they're not The Mummy movies. The Mummy seemed that it was taking itself deadly serious, and being a cornball crappy movie. Indiana Jones doesn't do this, it knows that it's a well done B-movie trilogy (quadrology?), and it doesn't care.
I was also happy to see that the two men who brought us edited FBI agents searching the woods for an alien armed with flashlights and an army of robots and clones so that no real people have to die in their movies decided to stay true to the original meaning of PG 13.
I'm sick and tired of watching movies and video games pussyfoot around death and violence. No, you don't have to glorify it and make it cool, but neither do you have to make it non-existant. You have to take it in stride as is appropriate.
Like, OK, Twilight Princess. Basically, the premise of a Zelda game is that, outside town, anything that moves is probably trying to kill you. You kill it, and work out the puzzles to get back the things to return the land to safety. You're a lean, mean killing machine, and you get to earn all kinds of swords and weapons to make killing the bad guys a little easier. So, if this has properly desensitised me the way it's "supposed" to, how come I gasped when I watched the cutscene where one of the "good guys" is run down (and shot by arrows, I think) and kidnapped by one of the bad guys. All of it done on-screen.
I was amazed to consider the difference, this was somebody on my side, someone who should've been safe, and suddenly, they're in a lot of danger. This is different from the snarly evil dudes I'm supposed to take out from this point on. You can fill a game or a movie with death, but it's easy to make sure that there is more than one kind of death, and I think the question raised there is more important than shielding kids from death in all forms.
I dunno, I can't recall a time I didn't know what death was, and that all things die. I'm reminded of the line from Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead that we must have been born with the knowledge of our own mortality, or else it would be a horrible, awful thing to learn, suddenly. But, we don't really have to be taught. We do have to be taught the rituals of death, though. It's an interesting fact that I've been to more funerals in my life than weddings or birthday parties, most of these before I was in fourth grade. I know people my age now who have still never been to a funeral. That, to me, seems wrong and twisted. Not to have an understanding of the ritual of death, to know how we as a culture deal with death, that's more important than knowing pop bands.
How did I get here, anyway? Indiana Jones? Wow, it must be really late. G'night folks.