I have had a slow December.

I have tried to make the best of this recession by honing my skills. Seems like somewhere, sometime I read that in times of economic downturn the underemployed should sharpen their skillset as best they can so as to emerge from hard tymez ahead of the employable market curve. Not only does this scream sound advice, it has been echoing out of my mouth ever since like I'm an authority on cyclical economies.
Time I used some of my own freecycled advice.

So, I have been drawing again for the first time since tour two of Justin's Higher Learning Tour of Duty, some for my own damn self, some for work stuffs. I'm learning (or trying to) drafting from my buddy and sometimes boss Craig, and once I understand the basics upgrade to Computer Aided Drafting. Yay!

I have concurrently been playing professional and/or circumstantial tennis with every project that has come my way this month. A call from a movie I started work on in 2007 came a-calling for pick ups, I agreed, then they pushed to January. Then a post-apocalyptic webisode tossed to me from aforementioned Craig, subsequently pushed to January. I even interviewed for a costume design job this month, something I have never done before hence am totally unqualified for, they passed on me (as well they should have). Finally, I just received a script for quite possibly the Worst Movie Everz. No, I shouldn't say that, but it is totally not right for me. Which is funny, because it takes place in New Mexico, about illegal immegrants crossing the border thru Mexico, basically the same thing. But, this movie is torture porn, dangerously wrapped in a half-baked "message."
What is the message exactly? The film is about an extremist group called [nevermind] and they have taken upon themselves to exact justice upon illegal immigrants for taking American jobs and bleeding the medical system. The script paints these ideas in the ludicrous palette of bullshit rhetoric that it should and not a single bad guy is in the least bit sympathetic. But, in making them so evil, and the violence so graphic, we as an audience wish for them to be maimed in the same way that they maim so the extended torture scenes become as sadistic as they are masochistic.
This quote about the making of Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects from the above hyperlinked article strikes me deeply enough to call it out for all of ya'll who don't feel like reading something well written:

When, during filming, the actor playing the most sadistic of the psychos became traumatized by what he had to do, Zombie reportedly told him, “Art is not safe.” But with characters who have no larger awareness—who are just inexplicably deranged—The Devil’s Rejects isn’t art by any definition I can think of.

And neither, I would argue, is this film, though the characters do believe they are serving a higher purpose. And this makes it dangerous.

Now, I'm no gore-prude. I love horror films, have wasted way too many dollars on full price admission to 'em. But this trend-turned-genre of gross out violence that leaves audience members watching movies thru their fingers and unable to eat for days is unnerving.
This article is interesting, especially the idea that we should see this disturbed man's video to shake us out of complacency with the war that is so abstract to us here on home soil. That is an unsafe space I can get behind.

Two hours of brutal torture is not something I have time for anymore. And somehow, it feels liberating to have decided that.

Unicorn Hoax!
or, I have no legs, the titular inspiration.

I'm dusting off the aborted fetus that was once my Public Blog, abandoned with such carelessness in favor of those other private blogs. Yes WorldWeb, you may now savor the richness that is my Bloated Log Of Gaffes, publicly, at long last.
Because nothing says unemployment like a New Blog!