Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
Ready to Fly the Coop

I brought a terrible fate upon myself today by just being cooped up in my apartment too long. I got up and met my gal pal Anne for coffee and a bagel this morning, but then I came home. My assigned readings are done for the week, I graded a batch of grammar exercises for my intro class, and I just finished watching the wonderful Errol Morris documentary, Mr. Death. The film is both absurd in its premise and beautiful in its cinematography - but it tells the story of Leuchter. Apparently he is trained (or not trained) as an engineer and made a living working as a consultant for various state prison systems in the 1970s and 1980s. He supports capital punishment (including the death penalty) but has strong convictions that prisoners and prison officials have a right to humane treatment. He spent most of his professional life working ad-hoc and improving electric chairs, rebuilding gallows, and designing a lethal injection system for the state of Delaware. I've never politically supported the death penalty, but after Fred tells you about various, horrific "equipment failures" that sent eye-balls popping or failed to execute inmates, even I could muster some support for his cause.

In the 1980s, he was approached by a one of these Revisionist history types out to prove that the Holocaust never happened. Since Fred had consulted on so many "death penalty" systems, he was brought in to test the claim. After taking samples and investigating Auschwitz, Fred testified that he found no remnants of cyanide and that therefore, the Holocaust never happened. The film of course brings in historians and chemists to show the shortsideness of Fred's methods, but Fred never officially changes his views. He denies charges that he is an anti-Semite. By the end of the film you can't help but pity him when you see that these views lead to the quick collapse of his career, marriage, and life. He still tours on a circuit and delivers papers about his findings, but his life is really a disaster. On a completely random note, the best sequence in the film is when Fred tells the camera that he drinks 40 cups of coffee a day (and has been doing so since the age of 5) and smokes about 6 packs of cigarettes daily, between the cups of coffee, I suppose.

But anyway, it's a great film and I am clearly in a hardcore documentary mode these days.

Aside from the film, I feel cooped-up, like I do most Sundays. I got through some reading, but I feel like I have plenty left to do (for this paper), for the Berlin conference, and even for planning out my lesson plans for the week. But instead of really being proactive, I spent the day straightening up, putzing, and drinking about five cans of Faygo Diet Root Beer (a housebrand generic soda that retails for $1.79 a 12-pack, no deposit here in WI). It's close to midnight and I should go to bed soon or suffer the consequences tomorrow (Mondays are my LONGEST day). Ironing also beckons - eh, I am sick of getting ready in the mornings, just want to roll over and be at school like the old days, none of this ironing, packing a lunch, taking the bus garbage.
posted by lmjasinski at 11:59 PM