Ravings of a newly appointed factory worker

I’ve recently moved from working in a small cooperation, for 7 years, to being unemployed for 3 months to moving into an organization that is 5000 employees large.

Now, this has mostly been quite a shock to the system but there are moments where you think, ‘wow, really, are you serious, really?

But what I want to share in the post is some of the intriguing things I picked up in big corps:

• There is a department called Strategic Intelligence, now this dude has a business card that reads: Name Surname Strategic Intelligence, how awesomely cool is that? I want to be in that department, I want Strategic Intelligence on my business card, then, then, the only thing I would have to get to go along with that is an actuarial qualification. No problem.

• Opposite to this is a title I saw going through one of the time-wasting invitations to yet another seminar that will teach you to do-the-obvious strategically, which is asls painfully obvious, in a time of economic difficulty. This dude’s title was: Name Surname, Chief Strategic Communications Officer! Now, for someone who works at White House, in the West Wing and is named Toby Ziegler, then this title would be a perfect fit. BUT if you actually are a specialist in internal communications, media relations, and brand positioning in a company made up of 3 people, then….

What funny titles have you come across?

There is also new language that I have to get use to. What the hell is Brand Activation? The ‘equity’ I know relates to money in the business sense, only asset managers and such people can use the word understandably for me. Of course the other meaning relates to fairness etc. but what the hell does it mean in the context of marketing? I slowly learning that terms get invented to make one’s job more scientic and financial. And I suppose that is a good thing, but why then come up with other phrases like green fields and blue sky. WTF?

The biggest frustration though coming into a big organization is the restricted access. Cannot access blog websites, work-related or not, I cannot access social media, even though some of my activities that I need to track featured there. I cannot access my gmail, my skype, any instant messaging, which is often needed to keep in touch with social and business contacts. The tool that was my right-hand (because my filling leaves a lot to be desired) google destop, I cannot access. My cyber life has been cut in quality so much that sometimes it brings me to tears. I get mimesweep emails 5 times a day to say that my mails have been quarantined. ‘Mimesweep’? ‘quarantined’? but the funniest thing, the saddest thing is that even with this, with all of this, we got a virus that took almost a week to figure out and sort out. The humanity!

The thing I miss the most though, the thing I mourn is being in control. In control of my finances for example. They don’t trust you to pay your own medical aid, no, even though you are paying for it, it has to come out of your salary and not your bank account. You have made your own plans for retirement, to die before you reach it or have separate savings, that is not good enough, you join our scheme or find another job.

How do people do it? How do you stay sane in the midst of such madness.

The upside to all of this I suppose is that it is all for your protection and the company’s. It is all for the greater good. You are part of a successful big corporation that contributes to the heartbeat of the economy and society. One is given opportunities to give off their time to charity and money (this is made so much easier), one is given a chance to be part of a community that is bigger than 10 people, and in that, the odds are raised to actually finding that other half of your self you’ve been doing without. But hell, if that other half is here, what does it say about my half…

District 9 - revised

We finally went to see District 9. By 'we' I mean my sister and I - the fellow contributor to this blog. Perhaps its worth mentioning that she wasn't keen to post something on this. She just didn't feel like it. After the movie, she was just too exhausted to do it. It wore her out. Too long...she thought. I agree. It was too long. It took too long for it to actually start get going.

I wonder about the intentions of the people that made this movie. There was so much 'making fun of' mostly black people I thought. Yeh, sure, they made fun of white people too, the main character being a prime example burrrrt...Lets just say I can understand why the Nigerian government banned the movie over there.

But generally speaking...I mean to have that alien be named 'Christopher' for instance...does that not remind you of the 'good old days' when the 'baas' would call his 'girl' 'Betty' even though her real name was Mogomotsi? Even that whole squatter camp scenario - I mean? Like white people are known to be residents in those parts.

The whole 'illegal aliens' thing - you know they aren't talking about any Americans or Europeans or Asians (think pre-BEE status) for that matter!

There were a lot of under tones I thought. Stuff that I suppose the regular viewer would have missed completely but I was left thinking - these people are generally making fun of me.

I suppose that is partly the reason my sister wasn't keen to review this movie...what do you say about it...what can you say? Was it funny? Was it good? It was ambiguous I thought. Maybe not even that. It was a movie about black people. The aliens were black people and whatever the writer wanted to say about black people was said...just disguised as alien derogation.

I suppose I too do not know what to say about it. Was it funny. Hm...lets think. T'was only funny when the joke was on Wikus. Which is hilarious itself because he turned out to be the hero, the savior of the aliens.

The ending is all too familiar.

The Diamond-Shaped Glass Building

Okay Brokensword - lets play your game. I actually saw this today on E Entertainment News.
So...which movie?

GROUND ZERO

Thought it would be too morbid to step off the bus and go through the whole drama/tragedy that was September 11th.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, the Caster Semenya Story

I read this incredible book a few months ago whilst on sabbatical (on my couch) and it blew my mind. And as soon as the Caster Semenya story broke a month or so ago I knew the story of the main character was the story of Caster.

Now to get this out of the way, I cringe whenever I hear the word hermaphrodite. Surely the journalist community is wise enough to know that this is a highly offensive term and it is like calling someone a nigger or a morphei or a stabane. The term is used to hurt and demean and should be stricken from any kind of reporting!!!

The correct term is intersexual, but I also think ‘middlesex’ is a little softer, less clinical and ‘androgynous’ a bit more endearing? To me androgynous means flexible and fluid in your identification. Who wants to be just one thing?

During my sabbatical I resolved to start reading all the Pulitzer prize winning novels and Middlesex was therefore on my list. It is a big book but because of the constant drama in the book it is very quick to read and totally engaging.

Middlesex is a story of Calliope and how she came to be and how she eventually found himself and continued to be, ‘in spite but not spiteful’.

The book suggests that the intersexuals develop that way because of a mix of genes that should not have happened. Calliope’s grandparents were brother and sister and I hate to ruin the beginning of the book for everyone reading this but there will be plenty other juicy bits in the book. The premise is that incest is the cause of this… (I don’t want to call it) deformity (because what you get from incest are people that resemble the characters in ‘Deliverance’).

The book proposes that because Calliope’s grandparents sinned when they got together, their punishment would be to have an intersexual grandchild. At least this is what the grandmother believes and she is very superstitious. In the world of the book you kind of buy into that and there is a scientific genetic drawing they do of why this is true.

Outside of the world of the book I am not so sure. Just as I have no capacity to grow eyebrows so too is the capacity to turn out one way or another.

But I get a feeling here in the outside world that Caster is getting punished for something that is not her fault, something that is not a fault, something that should be celebrated as getting closer to the ideal human. The chance to go through life and choose to do it not as a man and not as a woman but as someone far more measured and weighed with both sexes’ characteristics. I think it’s awesome and extremely sexy.

I suppose if Caster were to read this blog I would want her first to read the book, and then to know that she is supper sexy to me.

HERE'S SOMETHING YOU DON'T SEE EVERYDAY - HONEST ADVERTISING!

Sorry

I've moved from Caoe Town to Jo'burg and have not had the time to watch District 9, GI Joe and the rest. If you are up to discussing it or have watched any interesting flicks lateley, post a comment on this post. Jo'burg sucks ass 20% of the time.

Knowing - the movie

Like Michael Bay below, has his style, I knew I’d seen the shades and angles in this thriller/sci-fi or sci-fi/thriller flick. Alex Proyas is the dude that came up with the incredible and never-seen-before, ingenuous, darkly refreshing ‘Dark City’ which, at the time (1998), really really blew my mind. A little more wiki-ing and I discover that he is also behind The Crow, also one of my top ten movies ever.

I almost did not watch this movie because I reckoned it was another Nicolas Cage pick which is sometimes just fun to watch but you feel yourself losing a few brain cells for watching them. The premise of ‘Next’ and the embellished-for-dramatic-expedience ‘American history’ of National Treasure left us all a little dumber and I just do not trust Nicolas’ choices.

So because there was a problem with Bruno reel at the cinema () I had to fall back on watching Knowing and I am soooo glad I did.


SPOILER BELOW!!!!

I have very mixed feelings about this movie though, mainly because it tries to cram so many ideas into it that these ideas do not always gel nicely together. There is loss, there is father-son relationships across generations, there is science, there are aliens there is time travel, there is family, there are people that see the future, there are stones and much much more. I am sure when I watch this again, all these bits and pieces will gel but on a first viewing it was too much to piece together.

This is an Armageddon movie, it is about the end of the world and how we as humans would face this prospect if we knew for sure that it was coming.

The movie follows an MIT professor’s discovery of this certainty and his way of dealing with his and the world’s end. This is where the sentimentality of the movie unsettles me a little. I get that sometimes this sentiment is often what is lacking in other flicks where the focus is on the special effects and the exquisite bodies of the lead characters. I get that and I think it was right for Proyas to spend a little time for us connect with these characters. The thing is though, even with this, I was unable to mist up at the end when all the investment is suppose to pay off.

On the other hand the effects in this, like we had in Dark City, are not your every day Michael Bay explosions (I am sorry but I am going to use Mr Bay as a reference for all over the top bad action movies from now on) with no meaning. The big effects scenes were incredible and there was one specific scene that I swear was straight out of my nightmares. I have this recurring nightmare where I actually witness a plane crash and the way that Proyas shot this particular scene instantly took me back to that nightmare of mine. The plane crash scene we see in the previews is spectacular and I thought this would be the highlight of the movie but it was not. Moments following the crash are incredible. Having just had the two recent plane crashes in the real world it is a wonder they did not delay the release of this movie.

Also, there is another nightmare scene where the little boy in the movie sees somebody in his room in the middle of the night and is paralysed unable to scream or run. I am sure you’ve had that dream as well. This scene was so perfectly shot that you instantly remember your own personal nightmares.

So ya, on style, look and feel, Knowing gets 5 spoons. On the idea, premise and plot flow of the movie, I give it 3.

My issues with the movie, The main character of the movie is an MIT professor and he struggles to convince people that the numbers uncovered in the time capsule predict the future. If people do not believe an MIT professor, who the hell is there to believe?! That’s like not believing Einstein if he says the square root of 4 is 2. They should have made the character a high school teacher or something because even in the opening scene, he is suppose to be giving a lecture to MIT students, the lecture was more on the level of philosophical questions for dummies.

BET Awards!

I'm reading all that good stuff about how all the black artists at the 2009 BET Awards paid a tribute in some form to the kind of pop - MJ...and I'm sitting here wondering why in the hell we never get to see this on the multitudes of channels DSTV has us paying for?
I mean, we get the Oscars, the Grammys...you name it. Why not BET!
Come to think of it, I've been craving to see these awards for as long as I can remember...why don't they show 'em?

There is the slim chance ofcourse that our satellite television providers did show them...and that I just am not in touch with my satellite offering? Brokensword?

I'm reading about how Jamie Foxx (the host) was doing the moon walk and thinking to me self, I NEED to see this me-self!

Terminator Salvation

I probably was not going to see this film, mainly based on what Barry Ronge and Alan Silverman said on their Sunday morning show a few weeks ago. Barry was saying that it was too loud and they both said too religious. Given their misgivings, whatever they were, I enjoyed it. Much more than I enjoyed the Transformers which they raved about. I think having heard what they had to say I was a little bit prepared for Terminator. I chose the middle seat away from the speakers and opened my mind to whatever religious suggestions there may be.

I must say, this was a cool flick. It was the escape from the MJ tragic and lamented saga I needed. Escape from delayed job offers and my four walls that I needed.

Yes it was loud. Yes it had religious undertones. But that did not spoil it for me. If anything it made the story more solid. The greatest ever told.

And Christian Bale, the Bat Man?? Even with the recorded outburst (and I am kinda thinking this was a preview to the movie? Who knows) on the set, you want to enjoy this flick, you want to see the next installment of the Terminator saga that started with our California governor, who they cleverly replicated (I am sure Arnie did not have anything to do with this movie) to fight another day. I thought (and hope a little) that it was a kind of middle finger to Arnie and his republicans to reproduce him in the movie. After all, they did not reproduce the scariest terminator, that mercury dude. He was scarier than Arnie but not scarier than a Republican led United States. Bush, Arnie, they are the ultimate antagonists.

Suspension of belief is key to enjoying these types of movies. You need to say, yes it is okay that only Arnie was up for the fight against Connor, that the fact that they were and had, manufactured a thousand other Arnies does not fit. You have to let go of the consequences of a father meeting, his yet to be conceived son, in the future. You have to wonder who the little girl is and why Kyle is tied to her. You have to wonder why there would be capital punishment in the future (or was it the past?). All this has to be sacrificed for the enjoyment of the flick and it is, utterly enjoyable.

I give it 3 spoons with much of that going toward the new Terminator, he is just gorgeous!

Oh and Christian also got to ride his bat-cycle again. That was cool this time around as well!