You Know Your Bureaucracy Is Fucked When

Even professional bureaucrats think your system is for shit.

To whit: the bank, the phone company, the electric company, the cable company, the Ministry of Transportation - will all let me change my address information online or over the phone without proof of residence.

But the public library, which only needs my contact information so that they can track me down if I try to steal their books? Won't change my address without proof of residence!

What the fucking fuck?! WHY SO STUPID GOD?! WHY?!

This & That

To paraphrase the Inestimable Ms. Margaret Cho, for me, being Bright. And. Shiny. is a full-time job. Some days I just don't have the slack in the mental rope to pull it off, which is why I find myself rather full of wroth and vinegar today. On the other hand, there's nothing like reading a review of a movie adapted from a novel written by a critic who obviously isn't familiar with the source material to irritate a person. Also, they had type writers in the 1930s and yes, journalists used them - take a look at His Girl Friday sometime if you don't believe me.

Then again, the Int'l Herald Tribune is a crap paper and I should know better than to look for sense from it (see also Mail, The Dail).

On another topic completely, Nigeria apparently sells more Guinness than Ireland - no I am not planning on personally rectifying this imbalance when I arrive in Ireland on Wednesday. Aside: the layout of the Guardian Online's front page can lead one to strange places but not alas "what would Beth Ditto do" which seems to be on hiatus.

I watched Notes on a Scandal last night, which struck me as a horrendous object lesson on the dangers of keeping a journal, crushing on celebrities and not getting enough sex with boys - apparently it turns you into a vinegary old demonic spinster with a bad orange dye job and greasy hair. Normally, the prospect of turning into Dame Judi Dench is less horrifying - especially when she's playing Elizabeth I (although I suppose, technically, that's just another vinegary, demonic old spinster with a bad orange dye job and greasy hair but she got to rule England for nearly 50 years, so it's a step up from the nasty homunculus of a woman Dench plays in NoaS). The movie itself is very good but I felt that if they loaded one more 'single, bookish woman of a certain age' stereotype onto Dench's character (lesbian overtones, obsessive diarist, cat-owner, bad clothes, bad hair, spinster teacher, etc. etc.) it would collapse on itself like a house of cards.

Also on an unrelated topic, the trailer for Silk is running on the "Movies" page on today's New York Times online. I am less sanguine about the adaptation than I am about Atonement, although I want very badly for it to be good because Francois Girard is a brilliant filmmaker and his last film, The Red Violin was haunting and lovely and haunting lovely. They've cast Keira Knightley and Michael Pitt - who still kind of creeps me out from Hedwig and the Angry Inch - who have both been brilliant (if not consistently brilliant) in other things and Girard certainly has talent to burn. But I watch the trailer and I think "they've got it wrong" which is a very presumptious opinion on my part, since I've read Silk all the way through twice now and failed to understand the obsession that drives the main character each time. Luckily, it's a short story (not even really a novella).