Sunday, November 9, 2014
Friday, November 7, 2014
Bureaucracy and the film Brazil
I first saw
the film Brazil in 1985 when it was
released. It seems to have made a lasting impression on me, since I have
remembered its basic message many years later. The message is that an
out-of-control bureaucracy goes hand-in-hand with an Orwellian world, a
dystopia, where the bureaucratic powers that be control the lives of society’s
citizens. Parts of the film (a satire) are funny, but if you’ve lived a while
and had anything at all to do with dysfunctional bureaucracies, you’ll
understand that what you’re seeing on the screen is far from funny. A functionary
named Sam Lowry, who is good at his low-level job but bored with his life, has
recurrent dreams about rescuing a pretty blond girl and flying away with her to
live a life of ‘happily ever after’. His mother, who is well-connected with all
of the important bureaucrats, is trying to get him promoted, which he doesn’t
want. She’s also trying to get him together with the daughter of a friend, something
neither he nor the young woman wants. One of his assignments is to rectify a form
error that resulted from a fly falling into a typewriter and causing the
typewriter to type B instead of T when writing the name Tuttle, which has dire
consequences for Archibald Buttle (a shoe cobbler with a family), not Archibald
Tuttle (a terrorist and enemy of the state). This proves to be more difficult
than he can imagine, and in this dystopian future, Archibald Buttle ends up
dead. The bureaucracy that caused his death wants nothing more than to cover up
this error and to forget it. Lowry ends up meeting Jill Layton, a neighbor of the
Buttle family who reports this error (she is the woman from his dreams), and
finds out that she is considered a terrorist because she insists on justice for
Buttle’s family. When he decides to help her, he is also labeled a terrorist
along with the woman he loves. Along the way, he ends up meeting terrorist Archibald
Tuttle, a heating engineer who doesn’t play by the rules and who fixes Lowry’s
heating system without the proper forms and authorized parts. This causes Lowry
a number of problems with the bureaucracy that simply won’t accept that he has
had unauthorized repair work done on his heating system, and his apartment is
taken away from him. Those scenes are funny and sadly enough, true if you work
in bureaucratic public sector workplaces and don’t play by their rules.
I’ve been
thinking about this film lately, mostly because a large percentage of work time
for many employees these days goes to appeasing the bureaucratic lions, tossing
them bones and keeping them happy. It’s not an easy job, especially when the
bureaucratic system is nothing but a dense jungle of incomprehensible rules and
regulations that can choke the life out of most well-meaning employees. Case in
point: you need an account number to order an instrument. You must talk to the accounting
department that has its own rules and regulations concerning ordering and
setting up an account number, but they haven’t talked to the order department
that has its own rules and regulations concerning the same. Emails are sent
back and forth, no one is on the same page, and weeks go by, even months. The
accounting and ordering departments have the mistaken idea that all employees
outside their departments actually understand accounting and ordering
procedures and terminology. God help those employees if they make a mistake at
any point along the way—if so, it’s ‘bless me father, for I have sinned’
against the great god of bureaucracy. If the system is insulted, it doesn’t
take kindly to that. Atonement takes the form of listening to the functionaries’
lectures and demands of obedience to their rules, and generally being
subservient to their wishes. I understand the need for bureaucracy in terms of
keeping an organization ‘organized’ and running efficiently. I draw the line at
having to toe their line, of having to jump when it tells you to jump. I draw
the line when the system begins to feel like a totalitarian regime and when you
actually become afraid to deal with it.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
The disappearance of Amy
I saw Gone Girl on Monday evening, and found it to be an absorbing thriller, one that is fast-paced and doesn't waste any time. The movie is much better than the book in my opinion. David Fincher, who directed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, did a great job of directing Gone Girl—it’s a taut thriller with a lot of unsettling things to say about personal relationships and about society’s addictive and obsessive relationship with television and the media. Ben Affleck
finally found a role that suits him in Nick Dunne. His Nick is an interesting combination
of clueless, indifferent, superficial, and opportunistic. He doesn’t invest
more of himself than is absolutely necessary in any aspect of his life. In
other words, Nick is no real prize—when he’s unemployed, he’s perfectly content
to let his wife’s money pay for the bar he owns in Missouri after they’ve moved
back there from New York, in order to be near his mother who has terminal
cancer. He teaches part-time at a local college and ends up having an affair
with one of his students, but even that seems half-hearted. He has promised his
lover that he is going to divorce his wife, but seems to be immobilized by
inertia or fear of telling her. Perhaps deep down, he knows that his wife is
bonkers and he knows too that he doesn’t have the energy to fight her. But as
the story progresses and he wakes up to the nightmare that his life has become, his anger starts to come out, and in the scenes where he
is angry, he is truly believable. Stupid, unsuspecting Nick, who finally wakes
up to the reality that he’s married to a psychopath, but by then it’s too late,
she’s pregnant with his child and there’s no way he’s going to let her raise
that child alone. So he ends up stuck in a loveless marriage, but he’s found
himself and his purpose, so to speak. Up until that point, it seems as though
he has mostly just drifted through his life.
Rosamund
Pike did an impressive job as Amy Dunne. She’s a scary woman—Amy, not one you’d want
to turn your back on for too long. ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’. And it would be nearly impossible not to scorn Amy. All
men pay dearly for perceived slights and indiscretions in Amy’s world. Nick pays
dearly for his infidelity, for his stupidity and insensitive treatment of Amy. She’s Amazing Amy for sure, but not in the way that her writer parents could ever have
imagined. Amy is a monster--a beautiful one, but a monster nonetheless. One of
the most manipulative women portrayed onscreen in a long time; I found myself
thinking of Sharon Stone’s character Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct from 1992. If you wonder about what kind of marriage
Catherine and Nick Curran (played by Michael Douglas) in Basic Instinct might have had, perhaps Amy and Nick’s marriage
might be one version of such a marriage, at least at the point when it started
to crumble.
Neil
Patrick Harris did a great job as Desi Collings, Amy’s presumed stalker from
her college years, manipulative in his own way, but no real match for Amy. He
can’t see through her, or see that he’s being manipulated, and he pays with his
life for his stupidity. Kim Dickens
character, Detective Rhonda Boney, the cop assigned to the case of the missing Amy,
is smart, tough, and demanding. It was a real pleasure to watch her in action,
to watch her deal with her colleagues; she could definitely hold her own. The same was true for Nick's sister Margo, played by Carrie Coon--another good performance.
The part of the story that dragged in the book, Amy’s
experiences toward the end with Desi Collings, has been shortened and makes for
a much more intense ending. The music score is appropriately jarring and creepy exactly at the times when it should be.
The film
reminded me in parts of the film Presumed
Innocent from 1990, with Harrison Ford and Bonnie Bedelia as husband and
wife. He has an affair with a colleague who ends up raped and murdered, and he
is accused of the crime. In reality, it is his wife who has murdered her to make her husband pay for his infidelity; the explanation for how it all happened was way out there,
just like the ending in Gone Girl,
and quite unusual for its time.
Gone Girl is an
unsettling film in yet another way—one that’s often discussed these days. It depicts clearly the power
of TV/media to make or break a person, a case, a cause, and the power that talk show
hosts wield over the American public. It struck me that Gone Girl is a peculiarly American film; nowhere else in the world
do talk show hosts have the type of power they have in America, at least as far as I know. They are the
judge and jury, and if they like you, you’re saved, if not, you’re sunk.
Innocent people, who don’t know how to play the manipulation game, will have
their jugulars ripped out by these packs of dogs. This world is peopled with psychopaths, who manipulate the people and situations around them to serve themselves and their ratings.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Press release for One Hundred Haikus for Modern Workplaces
And if you'd like to see the actual press release on PRWeb.com, here is the link: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/10/prweb12287136.htm#.VFZOyqUxgM0.email
Friday, October 31, 2014
Happy Halloween
I can
remember a time in Norway when Halloween was not celebrated, when the only
references to Halloween were in American horror films and books. In the late
1990s, a few adventurous souls, my stepdaughter Caroline being one of them,
decided that they wanted to experience Halloween as they had read about or seen
in films. In 1997, when she was a teenager, she threw a Halloween party for her
friends at our house; I helped her with the setup. She wanted bobbing for
apples, a cake in the shape of a pumpkin, and her friends to dress up in costumes.
They showed up as witches, vampires, zombies, and in one case, one of the young
men had made himself up as a woman, and you would have mistaken him for one. He
looked great. At the end of the evening, the kitchen floor was flooded with
water around the barrel containing the apples, the cake had disappeared, and my
stepdaughter and her friends were hanging around and talking. My husband and I
had gone out for the evening, and when we came home, the party broke up. All
agreed that it had been a lot of fun. For several years afterward, there were
sporadic Halloween celebrations on her part and in the country generally. There
were a few children who ventured out during the early evening, dressed in their
costumes and hoping to get some candy. But this was small-scale celebration compared
to nowadays.
Norway is a
nation of about five million people; this year the country spent about 20
million dollars on Halloween—costumes, makeup, candy, decorations, and parties.
The amounts spent have been steadily increasing over the past seventeen years
since Caroline had her party. Pumpkins are no longer difficult to find nor do
they cost a fortune as they used to; I carve them into jack-o-lanterns and then
use them in soups and breads after Halloween is over. It makes me happy that Norwegians
want to celebrate Halloween since it is yet one more thing that connects me to
my American roots. I so look forward to the neighborhood children knocking on
our door for candy; I get to hand out candy and to take a look at their
costumes. Some of them are quite creative. Mostly it’s just a lot of fun.
I’ve
accepted the reality (as has my husband) that I’m just a big child when it
comes to Halloween; I remember back to my childhood days and to the fun of
Halloween. Today, I bought a spider candle at one of the local stores. It’s one
of the coolest Halloween decorations I’ve seen or purchased in a long time, and
I’ve purchased some really strange Halloween decorations through the years. I found
a website that sells a similar spider candle; you can check it out here: http://www.angeliccompanions.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=96&products_id=565
Happy
Halloween!
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
'Making your unknown known'
Georgia O’Keefe
wrote: ’Whether you succeed or not is
irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important
thing’. This quote has been running through my mind the past couple of
days, for good reason. I finally understand what she means; I’ve understood her
words before, but more abstractly. Now I feel
the understanding and embrace it personally. Each time I publish a new
book, post new photos to this blog, or create short video clips, I am making my
unknown known. But I didn’t fully realize until recently that the reason I do
these things has more to do with unleashing my creative energy (true success) and
less to do with aiming for financial success. Just so I am not misunderstood;
if my books, photos or videos can earn some money, I’d be very pleased about
that. But it’s not the main reason I create them. It matters more to me that a
reader of one of my books or blog posts contacts me to tell me that he or she really
liked what I wrote, or that I helped him or her see a situation in a new way. I
know that’s true because that has happened in my own life. There are books,
albeit very few, that have changed my life for the better. Something about the
way they were written, in addition to the time in my life when I read them—a coincidence
that led to change. The written word has much power; that has been commented on
many times before. But the same has happened to me when I have watched a good
film or happened upon a very special song. Doors get unlocked in my mind, and I
get to wander through them and into new rooms--wide open spaces waiting to be
filled with new experiences. The creative world is a world that I simply could
not live without; it is true freedom that no one can take from you. Now that I live
in it, I have no desire to return to a world that wishes to shackle me. The
desire to shackle may not be intentional, but whenever the unappeasable demands
of others, e.g. in the workplace, supersede my own wishes, I feel shackled.
Whenever someone or something wants to waste my precious time, I feel shackled.
When you finally realize how precious time is, and how short life is, you don’t
want to squander it on activities or people that give you nothing in return.
Socrates
wrote: ‘The unexamined life is not worth
living’. It was important to him that he got in touch with his ‘unknown’;
that was his definition of being alive. I agree with him. If you never dig
deeper into yourself, you’ll never know what you could create. You’ll never
find your talents, and you’ll never make
your unknown known. Perhaps that doesn’t bother most people. But I don’t
know if I believe that. I wonder sometimes if most of us just never find the
time, or make the time, to make it happen. Time passes by, and suddenly a
lifetime does too. Suddenly I am reminded of Horace’s quote: ‘Carpe diem (seize the day)’. There’s no
time like the present to get started…….
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Update October 2014: One Hundred Haikus for Modern Workplaces
October is drawing to a close, and November is soon upon us. I've been busy with different projects, among them finishing up a collection of haiku poems that is now available as a Kindle edition on Amazon. This collection is entitled One Hundred Haikus for Modern Workplaces. It's a short collection that deals with workplace behaviors, bureaucracy, leadership, politics and trends, each summed up in short poems called haikus, which are three-line poems consisting of seventeen syllables--first line five syllables, second line seven syllables, and third line five syllables. It was quite enjoyable to write them, and the strict format actually helped to make each idea more concrete and focused. This collection does not cost much, just a couple of dollars, and can be downloaded to a Kindle or an iPad. I hope you will take a moment to check it out. You can find it here:
http://tinyurl.com/lkm6po4.
Thanks!
Here is the book cover:
http://tinyurl.com/lkm6po4.
Thanks!
Here is the book cover:
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Another adorable animal video
As many of you know, a little hedgehog stole my heart during the summer of 2013. Hedgie, as we called her, now lives happily on farmland in the south of Norway. It was a privilege to have helped her on her way to a (hopefully long) hedgehog life. Today, I came across this adorable video on social media of a tame porcupine eating small pumpkins, and it reminded me of Hedgie. You have to listen to the sounds this little porcupine makes as it eats the pumpkins--so sweet. All I know is that if I owned a lot of land and lived somewhere out in the country, my backyard would welcome hedgehogs and porcupines alike. Here's the video.......
Sunday, October 19, 2014
An autumn walk in Oslo
Autumn this year in Oslo has been mild and nice, with only a few chilly days in early October. Both the summer and autumn this year have been exceptionally warm seasons. I've been out walking a lot, exploring new areas and streets. I have been walking home from work on the nice days when I can, a distance of about two miles--an effort to fit training into my daily schedule if possible. This past Monday, I walked a different route--about a four-mile distance to home--a route that I have taken once before and which I decided I would do again so that I could take photos. Once I left my workplace, I walked down Gaustadalleen and then further on to Anne Maries vei (street); the lower part of Anne Maries vei runs parallel to a lovely brook called Sognsvannsbekken. Of course I had to stop along my way and take some photos of these streets and the brook, on a beautiful autumn day.
Gaustadalleen |
Sognsvannsbekken |
Sognsvannsbekken |
Anne Maries vei |
Sognsvannsbekken |
Sunday, October 12, 2014
As it was so is it now (a new poem)
Sunday
morning, windows open
Smell of
bacon in the chilly air
From
some unknown apartment
Down the
street
Indoors
the aroma of coffee brewing
Waking
up to breakfast in the city we call home
Now but in
any number of others
Morning
routines much the same
Small
things like these
Smells
that trigger glimpses of a life lived
Reaching
out my hand, still half-asleep,
To touch
the yesteryear of memory
Remember
back to an autumn morning
A Sunday
many years ago another city
Espresso
in a tiny pot and fresh bread for breakfast
From the
organic deli on the corner
Wandering
those city streets in peace
From sandy
shore to colorful center
A
latticework of travels
In our
quest to feel that city’s heartbeat
Outside
the trees' autumn colors
Grace
the gray backdrop of sky
Wan sun
has finally risen
But has
overslept like we have
--------------------------------
Copyright 2014
Paula M. De Angelis
Friday, October 10, 2014
Autumn visit to Jevnaker
This past Sunday, my husband and I drove about forty-five miles north of Oslo to the village of Jevnaker, which is located in Oppland county in the Jevnaker municipality. We've been to Jevnaker several times before, often during the autumn, to see the foliage and to eat dinner (very good traditional Norwegian food) at a restaurant called Oldemors Karjol: http://www.oldemors-karjol.no/ and http://tinyurl.com/lbuk7yx. If you're in the area, stop in at this restaurant; the homemade meat cakes are highly-recommended.
We stopped at the Jevnaker church, high on a hill with lovely views out over farmland and over Randsfjorden. The Jevnaker region is truly a pastoral setting, lovely at this time of year, with farmhouses, sheep and cattle dotting the landscape here and there. The leaves on the trees had changed color--mostly yellow and rust color this year, not much red, at least not yet. We drove on further to the Hadeland Glass Works, which is also a very pleasant place to visit; you may even find some special Christmas presents. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadeland_Glassverk
I'm including the route we took, which is quite scenic in and of itself: we drove east and then north of Oslo, via Harestua and Roa, to Jevnaker, and then back to Oslo via Klekken and Sollihøgda. The return trip took us past Tyrifjorden, which is a beautiful fjord. I'm also including some photos that I took in Jevnaker on a beautiful autumn day. Enjoy!
We stopped at the Jevnaker church, high on a hill with lovely views out over farmland and over Randsfjorden. The Jevnaker region is truly a pastoral setting, lovely at this time of year, with farmhouses, sheep and cattle dotting the landscape here and there. The leaves on the trees had changed color--mostly yellow and rust color this year, not much red, at least not yet. We drove on further to the Hadeland Glass Works, which is also a very pleasant place to visit; you may even find some special Christmas presents. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadeland_Glassverk
I'm including the route we took, which is quite scenic in and of itself: we drove east and then north of Oslo, via Harestua and Roa, to Jevnaker, and then back to Oslo via Klekken and Sollihøgda. The return trip took us past Tyrifjorden, which is a beautiful fjord. I'm also including some photos that I took in Jevnaker on a beautiful autumn day. Enjoy!
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Norway in the news yesterday
Yesterday was an unusual news day here in Norway. Two events
of major (and global) importance occurred, both involved Norwegians, and both received the news coverage they merited. Surprisingly enough, while the
two news stories were quite disparate in topic, both involved science and
medicine. The first story was that May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser at the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim received the Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their groundbreaking and fascinating work
on the brain’s internal GPS mechanism. They share the prize with their former
supervisor, neuroscientist John O’Keefe at University College London. If
you want to read about their work, I recommend an excellent article in Nature
that you will find here: http://www.nature.com/news/neuroscience-brains-of-norway-1.16079
The second story, less happy, was that Norway now joins the
list of countries that must deal with the Ebola virus; a Norwegian woman who
works for Doctors without Borders in Sierra Leone was confirmed to be infected
with the virus and flown back to Oslo for treatment last evening. She will be
quarantined in the isolation ward at Oslo University Hospital—UllevÃ¥l location.
There was a press conference on TV last night to announce this development and to
inform the public that there was no cause for alarm; that Norway can handle
this case as it has prepared and trained for such eventualities at different
hospitals. The medical professionals also assured the public that everything is
under control, which is likely true.
If ever there is doubt as to the importance of medical
research, these two news stories are proof that research is necessary. With
regard to the brain’s internal GPS, this work may be crucial to the eventual
understanding of what happens to Alzheimer’s patients, since losing one’s sense
of direction/location is an early symptom of this disease. Those
individuals at risk for Alzheimer’s may eventually benefit from treatment that could
evolve from this research. With regard
to the Ebola virus, the humanitarian crisis in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea
points out the need for increased medical research into cures for this virus and others
like it. Luckily, there are researchers who want to study these areas in the
hope of finding cures. Society should continue to do all it can to support
their tireless efforts.
Monday, October 6, 2014
Skies that remind me that we live on a planet
Some of the early morning skies were spectacular during the month of September, and when I was up early, I was able to photograph them. Some of the shots I took remind me that we live on a planet; the cloud covers and formations give me that feeling of living in a universe. I get the same feeling when I look out upon the stars on a clear night. Fun fact for the day: the Earth moves at about 100,000 km/h (about 67,000 miles per hour) around the Sun, in case you were wondering.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Another great song by Emerson, Lake & Palmer--From the Beginning
Another great song that found its way into my mind and heart from the moment I first heard it. I loved it from the first and still do--From the Beginning from ELP's Trilogy album released in 1972.
From the Beginning (2015 - Remaster) - YouTube
From the Beginning (2015 - Remaster) - YouTube
From The
Beginning
There
might have been things I missed
But
don't be unkind
It don't
mean I'm blind
Perhaps
there's a thing or two
I think
of lying in bed
I
shouldn't have said
But
there it is
You see
it's all clear
You were
meant to be here
From the
beginning
Maybe I
might have changed
And not
been so cruel
Not been
such a fool
Whatever
was done is done
I just
can't recall
It
doesn't matter at all
You see
it's all clear
You were
meant to be here
From the
beginning
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
A great song by Led Zeppelin--Ten Years Gone
Heard this song by Led Zeppelin yesterday on the way to work. The song is Ten Years Gone from their Physical Graffiti album, released in 1975. Seems like only yesterday that I heard it for the first time. An amazing song that brings me back to a time when it was actually ok to acknowledge feelings of regret, love, sadness, melancholy and others in songs. It's harder to do that now for some reason. In any case, I'm posting the lyrics as well. Almost forty years gone since I first heard it.........how the years fly.
Ten
Years Gone by Led Zeppelin
Then as
it was, then again it will be
An'
though the course may change sometimes
Rivers
always reach the sea
Blind
stars of fortune, each have several rays
On the
wings of maybe, down in birds of prey
Kind of
makes me feel sometimes, didn't have to grow
But as
the eagle leaves the nest, it's got so far to go
Changes
fill my time, baby, that's alright with me
In the
midst I think of you, and how it used to be
Did you
ever really need somebody, And really need 'em bad
Did you
ever really want somebody, The best love you ever had
Do you
ever remember me, baby, did it feel so good
'Cause
it was just the first time, And you knew you would
Through
the eyes an' I sparkle, Senses growing keen
Taste
your love along the way, See your feathers preen
Kind of
makes makes me feel sometimes, Didn't have to grow
We are
eagles of one nest, The nest is in our soul
Vixen in
my dreams, with great surprise to me
Never
thought I'd see your face the way it used to be
Oh
darlin', oh darlin'
I'm
never gonna leave you. I never gonna leave
Holdin'
on, ten years gone
Ten
years gone, holdin' on, ten years gone
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The Spinners--It's a Shame
I saw the movie The Holiday again recently, and one of the main characters had this song as his cell phone ringtone. I grew up with this mu...