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contours provocations
journal - 2001-0712 - thu 2000 I Watch An Orgy; I Look For Orchids In My Sink; I Ax ATT; I Try To Find A "Smalltown Boy" For Queerscribe I'm sitting here watching Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" on HBO. Two guesses which scene has just started. Yep, you got it right. The orgy bit. Fascinating to watch, even if it is all hetro. As before I noticed how much Tom Cruise sounds like HAL in "2001." Some perverse toxic joke by Kubrick, no doubt. And for all the explicit and implicit fucking, it is not a very erotic experience. But then maybe you have to think of it as being from the persepctive of Tom Cruise's character who is not very imaginative. During the last couple of weeks, two other Kubrick films, "Full Metal Jacket" and "Clockwork Orange," have been on HBO or Showtime. And in thinking of all three, I'm struck by the element of chance. As though the characters do not have power over their own existence. People are propelled by circumstances but not volition. Hence Tom Cruise's character's voice is not his own. My other take on this is that Kubrick got a big kick out of doing long fluid tracking shots. But to make these effective, he had to have those pesky characters. So he regarded performers as a necessary evil. So many of Kubrick's characters are sterile. Certainly not very warm and fuzzy. Even the "good" guys are slightly repellant. Try thinking of a Kurbrick character you identify with. I can't think of a one. Maybe Scatman Crothers in "The Shining." It was humid and sultry and overcast today. Finally around 4, the sky turned violet, and a storm sweapt in. In my office, I could hear the rain pounding on the roof. Outside my window, the air and ground were filled with splashing water. This was rain not unlike some watery beast tearing at the world. When I left work, the rain had shrunk to a trickle. But it was sultry and muggy and very uncomfortable. And when I walked through my back door, the kitchen was like a greenhouse. I expected to see orchids growing in the sink. I immediately turned on the AC and only now is the living room beginning to feel habitable. Last night, I hustled through some bill-paying and check-writing. And I noticed a charge that I couldn't place. Then it began to slowly come back to me that it was for ATT Internet service. What bothered me was that I thought I'd cancelled it months ago. In fact I couldn't even remember the login name, much less the password. So this morning I called the 800 number, and punched various buttons until I was headed for the billing department. Then I waited ... and waited ... and waited. I think I could have read a couple of chapters of "War and Peace" in that time. Actually, I could have WRITTEN a coupld of chapters of "War and Peace" in the time it took to finally get a voice. Then when I told her what I wanted to do, she said cancellations were handled by another department, and she would have to transfer me. But this wait was only a few minutes. So now I have an official cancellation number to prove the service had been cancelled. I got an e-note the other day from Queerscribe about my entry on re-discovering the "Smalltown Boy" video. He wondered where he could get a copy. I looked at Amazon, and did some searching but to no avail. And wrote back to him and suggested e-Bay. All this to point up that finding something is not as easy as you would think. Maybe the only way to find anything is to think of yourself as being like one of Kubrick's characters and hope the karma is good. PAX!
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