life:

I guess Halloween is an apt time to end my mini-vacation between an old and a new job, but I’m not really looking forward to working again. This week off has meant a lot to me, and I’ve been very busy sleeping, eating, watching movies, wasting hours on the internet, buying coats I can’t afford, doing yoga in the living room, riding the motorcycle around the back woods of Rhode Island, catching up on politics & pop culture, and watching that amazing Hugo Chavez documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Seriously, click that link and watch the whole thing, if you haven’t seen it already. Meanwhile, I will be dragging myself back to the pukey flourescence of a dim office existence to fight the good labor fight. Muah!

All my learning is online learning, these days. Here’s a list of my current podcast subscriptions:

- MIT technology review (videocast)
- Photoshop TV (videocast)
- Power Vinyasa Yoga Classes (audio)
- Tapioca World Tour (!)
- Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum concert series (audio)
- The InDesigner software tutorial (videocast)

At my old work computer, I’d also downloaded lots of language tutorials, videography tutorials, and sometimes international radio feeds and news programs. People, if you haven’t already gotten on the podcast boat, what are you waiting for! The waters of freedom are nipping at your heels…

The Science of Sleep
Not as cool as you think it is, but I like the fact that most women in Euro films don’t wear makeup or pricey clothes. The acting is decent, and we all know how much I loooooooove Gael Garcia Bernal, and I do like what they were trying to accomplish with the whole dream motif, because by the end you’re not sure which scenes are dreams and which are reality…but as DD said, it’s more like a Bjork video than a movie.

The Departed
Awesome. Amazing acting, directing, soundtrack, plot, shirtless buff guys. Go see it! Then see it again! (PS – some graphic violence. Not for the timid.)

Marie Antoinette
Run! Run away, now! Run far, far, far away from every theatre playing this movie! It was 3 hours of Kirsten Dunst’s big head and skinny body in a series of scenes that were more like really bad music videos. Her non-verbal acting was alright, but every time she opened her mouth, I cringed. Did I mention there is no plot? None. Whatesoever. DD’s analysis was quite on target for this film too: Sofia Coppola is obsessed with theme of the bored rich girl, lounging around in her underwear, apathetic but sweet, hanging out with famous people and partying (ie, Coppola’s autobiography). It worked for Lost in Translation, but definitely crumbled with the release of this travesty. My God, don’t see this movie.

Sayonara
Ok, so I realize this was released in 1954 and therefore does not qualify as a recent movie, but rent it anyway. Marlon Brando delivers another stellar performance as the military dope turned culturally-sensitive political rebel. I was also very impressed that a South Pacific-era film could so tactfully and successfully present Japanese customs and people to an American audience, and rally for interracial marriage in the process. Only downside is its casting of a Puerto Rican guy as a Japanese man. Otherwise, great film.

I think this is a cool photo project about photographing a child from every country on earth in NYC. Thanks to HH for sending it along.

BB sent me this today. It’s us several years ago, looking young and short-haired, respectively. Look at the red walls! Doesn’t it make you want to cry?

Ok, just me.

Urgent Action: 3000 Villages in Eastern Burma Destroyed (Message re-posted from US Campaign for Burma)

Help us send 3,000 postcards to Kofi Annan demanding that he immediately press for a binding UN Security Council resolution on Burma. He has called for action on Sudan, Lebanon, and elsewhere where there have been huge refugee flows and deaths of civilians. Much of the destruction of villages has occurred on his watch as UN Secretary General.

Sign Up NOW and we’ll send you postcards, a video, and printed materials in the mail today.

1) Collect signatures on these postcards to Kofi Annan. If you are a student, set up a table on campus and ask your students, staff, and faculty to sign. If you are a professional, ask your family, friends, and colleagues to sign the postcards.

Ask everyone who signs a postcard to donate a single quarter for the cost of postage. Give each person who sends a postcard an information sheet about Eastern Burma so they can learn more — we will mail you these sheets.

On November 3, count up all the individually-signed postcards you’ve collected, tell us how many they are, slap 24 cents of postage on them, and drop them in the nearest mail box!

2) Host a film screening at your school or home. We will send you a new documentary DVD about Eastern Burma from the human rights organization WITNESS and its partner, Burma Issues.

After the film is over, call up a trusty Burma-expert on speakerphone or video conferencing and have a Q&A session with between us and your audience. Make sure nobody leaves your event without signing a postcard!

3) Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. You can write your opinion about the situation in eastern Burma and send it to your local newspaper, student newspaper, or even a national newspaper.

Blog about Burma, too! One out of every four people who use the internet in the US reads blogs online – get your message out there every way you can.

We’ve compiled some facts about Eastern Burma that you will want to include in your letter and easy instructions on how to submit it to a paper.
Download facts on Eastern Burma (in pdf),
Letter-to-the-Editor Help (in pdf).

4) Join us for an event with a message in New York City on November 11th, 2006. This will be the first-ever demonstration to demand United Nations action on Eastern Burma, and we’ll provide ample ways to express your compassion for the people of Burma and to make sure your voices (and thereby the voices of the people of Eastern Burma) are heard.

5) Make origami houses. Whether or not you can make it to New York on November 11, be part of that precedent-setting day by helping to make more than 3000 origami houses that we use in New York to demonstrate the scale of the Burmese military’s brutality. We are building an origami house for every single village destroyed.

Download instructions (coming soon!) for making an origami house, get as many of your friends and family to make as many as they can, and send them to the US Campaign for Burma headquarters by November 3 along with your postcards so we can take them to New York!

It’s fall now. The leaves are changing, I’ve busted out my leather jackets. I’ve been privileged to have been able to bite into food the past few months — cookies, hamburgers, crunchy vegetables, etc. I forgot how it is to have your teeth ache for days on end…until now.

My 25th visit to the ortho was brief but brilliant, and by brilliant I mean torturous, reminiscent of last year. He switched out the light wire on top for a heavier silver one, then attached painful elastics between all of my front teeth, to pull them all together and close the gaps. I’m also still supposed to wear those dang elasics inside my mouth to keep correcting my crossbite and hold my FIC (formerly impacted canine) in place.

It hurt. My doc was not amused. He kept telling me to relax and be quiet, to stop whining, because there were other patients in the room. In a flash, I was out with achey teeth. They still ache. I can barely chew. Fortunately, the spaces are closing up quickly. With any luck, this will be finished by Christmas, but who knows.

From an email from my coworker…

Residents of MA:

As you probably already know, we’re a month away from a state election which will be held on Tuesday, November 7th. If you are wondering where to vote, or need to register to vote, you can go to the following link:

http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/

Please note that if you are a resident of MA but have not yet registered to vote, the DEADLINE for voter registration is in 12 short days on Wednesday October 18.