we have this new system here at work. doesn’t matter what it does, what’s important is that we have to use it periodically throughout the day. and it’s pc only. which is neither here nor there, except it sucks. transitioning to this new technology has been a BIG DEAL. for several months. it has caused a great deal of both CONCERN and FRUSTRATION. i ignored the whole thing until i absolutely had to get involved. aka: the last minute. in order to help us learn the New System, we decided to have these little lunch and learn sessions over the next few days. and we’d volunteer to take an aspect of the New System, and do a demo. that would mean we’d have to GET TO KNOW IT. the New System that is. so, my little piece was today. which meant i IMMERSED myself in the New System for most of yesterday and this morning. thusly, i came to the little lunch and learn thing with a minute and a half demonstration and 37 questions and concerns about the New System. all along we’ve been told that the New System is not intuitive, and not logical, and even though we are all technicians, we will not be able to just sit down and figure out. because if you do one thing while facing west, and do the same thing in a month ending with Y, you’ll get two different results. which begs the question, why didn’t we go with a Different New System. one with logic and reason. oh, mine is not to reason why, mine is just to do what i’m told. la lalala la la laaa la la. [happy song]
i’ve been listening to gregory macguire’s “mirror mirror” in the car lately. and it’s driving me absolutely freakin’ nuts. driving me nuts from two different directions. first, the style of the book itself. the language is very… ornate. and florid. [how’s THAT for a vocab word?]. so ornate that i am often left saying “what the fuck did he just say? that sentence lasted two and a half minutes!” this morning, it took 175 words, in my estimation, just to say that the hunter and his grandmother Primavera had nothing in common to facilitate conversation. and in that explanation, i swear to god, a description of the trees in florance came up, their military arrangement. and, i really think there was something about a squirrel running up your pant leg? i can’t even tell you all the crap that was said in that explanation. and every single description is like this. i don’t remember wicked being like this. i adored wicked. but maybe that’s because i read it, and didn’t listen to it. look, i read the classics, i can handle decorative prose, if it’s good. but…. secondly, the narration. there are four narrators. one, for the general telling of the story, which is in the third person. you hear him most. one for the dwarves, one for lucrezia [who is playing the part of the wicked stepmother in this story] and one for bianca [snow white.]. those three are in the first person. we’ve heard very little from first person bianca. she’s been a child, so far, in cd’s 1-4. of those narrators, 3 of them read in an overly theatrical manner, ala Masterpiece Theatre. the main narrator is the worst. he also pronounces all the italian words with an italian accent. which is very unnerving and sounds pretentious. and when he does the voice of little bianca? this man has a smokey voice. and he is an older gentleman, you can tell. it’s just wrong. very wrong. the story should have been read by a woman. one more thing, when little bianca calls her father, the narrator reads it as “paPA!” instead of plain old papa. oh it is so annoying.
evildeb pointed out that no one is making me listen to it. i want to borrow her book version and read the rest, so i can skim the wordy descriptions. so i can find out what happens in the end. maybe it’s because i just finished listening to “coraline” which was an absolutely delightful recording, read by the author. who managed to speak as a little girl and not sound like a two pack a day smoker speaking in in pretentious falsetto.
oh jodi… bitch bitch bitch.
ps: 4 out of 5 dentists agree, i get to punch lloyd the next time he get’s all cheery first thing on a monday morning. any morning, actually. no cheery until 11:30.