I did two things this weekend that made me very happy. Number one, I went to see L.A. Confidential. Number two, we bought a new hard drive.
Now, understand, I don't like truly violent movies. I loathe having to squinch up my eyes so I can just barely but not really see the screen while the icky close-ups are happening. I have to stick my fingers in my ears to cut down on the gross sound effects. I never, ever go to movies by Paul Verhoeven or Tim Burton. I have never seen most of the movies you (yes, you!) have seen. This is because while it's up there, bigger than life, I believe it can happen. Where I'm different from the ordinary movie public is once the movie's over, I still believe it can happen. Nightmares and nausea are the usual aftereffects of a night out at an American movie. So I avoid anything that looks like it'll involve lotsa death and lotsa guns and lotsa gore. But the buzz has been amazing for L.A.C., James Ellroy is a great writer, I love period pieces in movies, and I think Kevin Spacey is superb so I took a chance. The movie was incredibly violent, I have to say, but it was also incredibly good. Not once, in two and a half hours, did my attention wander from the movie. The actors were so impressive, especially when you consider two of the leads were Australians and had accents to contend with along with conveying shady, tough cops tinged with idealism. There was a clever mix of real and fictional characters, lots of references to 50's L.A. culture, and some killer old cars. My one beef was the casting of Danny Devito. He always plays Danny Devito. He ain't that interesting, catch my drift?
Today I decided my main goal would be to yank myself out of this godawful bad mood I've been in for weeks. I was a bitch at work all last week, and everyone noticed. I just can't afford to lose my temper, I really cannot. Also, I don't like being a bitch. It makes me feel unhappy and out of control. There's absolutely no reason why I should lay waste to the stupid people around me. They can't help being stupid. I, on the other hand, can help being hateful and unkind. Only right now I can't help it. I even shouted at some woman last night who dared to question whether I was going to clean up after my dog. Yes, I said, I was, but since you DISTRACTED me from looking at where she was going and it's NIGHT I cannot now see WHERE to clean up. Your unctuous, sanctimonious interfering has lead to EXACTLY what you hoped to avoid. HAPPY?
Naturally, she turned out to be the vice president of the homeowners association at our condominium complex. Way to go, Luce, way to go.
Anyway. My temper is paper thin. I don't like this. I do blame part of it on going completely off the anti-panic-attack drugs. As I said last week, don't mess with SSRI's. I've been careful but there is definitely some funky bad mojo at work in me. At least I'm no longer crying at ads in the paper or Olympic events. This doesn't solve the problem of the missing control, though. I thought I'd be perfectly happy once I was out of Tennessee for good. It appears that was just removing the most egregious problem. I still have all these issues to resolve, dude. Like getting a job that doesn't suck. Learning to tolerate other people's habits. Expanding my sphere of influence. Taking over the wo... wait a minute.
Maybe there's another way of looking at these things. Here, for instance, is faithful reader and long-time pal Kim Huett's take on me:
"When the Treaty of SLAC was signed in 1997 Lucy was finally in a
position to re-establish her power in Northern California. In a
typically bold move she transferred consort, subjects, and all the
trappings of power to Palo Alto at the first available opportunity. For
a time she was content to establish herself there and impose a rigorous
regime of feng shui on the immediate vicinity. However, being a woman of
restless energy these limited objectives failed to hold her interest for
long. It was not a matter of would she embroil herself in foreign
ventures but of when. Almost from the start a joint expedition to South
America was mooted. In the end the project was shelved due to
administrative problems. It was immediately replaced by a plan to secure
the east coast of the US. Other, even more exotic targets, England,
Turkey, East Africa, Australia, were freely hinted at. Speculation in
regards to these future targets was rife even though it was suggested in
some quarters that all these territories were beyond the reach of any
one individual given the suggested timeframe. It was argued that even
someone with the vast resources and boundless energy Lucy possessed
would have to make some hard choices. In the meantime the world held its
breath."
Someone's been reading The Origins of Modern Germany, apparently. Still, it's apt enough.
Of course, you can't take over the world if your hard drive is choking so I went to Fry's this afternoon. God, what a zoo. It's done up in a hokey Old West theme which is very weird since it's all electronics. John and I debated what size drive we needed. I suggested we might as well think big (and spend big) and get 4.3 gigs. It was definitely more than we set out to buy but I hate wasting money and I know we nickel and dimed ourselves buying memory upgrades. Let's face it, John is king of the .tiff files and I am queen of the ultra cool applications. We need disk space! And now we've got it, sitting right here next to me in its ugly little putty-colored case. The internal fan is making an awful lot of noise although nothing that smacks of wrongness. I downloaded Netscape 4.0 finally, and stored it on the new drive, and it works really, really fast! I am so happy that I think I've lost my bad mood.
Cool. All I need to improve my temper is to buy something I really want. I'll be a very calm, very happy, very broke person. Have a nice day.
