friday night

There’s a snappy title for you.

We had a nice quiet productive day at work, since Aggravation Receptionist stayed home (finally} and L showed up without classes to go to or personal drama to attend to, so was there all day long. We also had a staff meeting this morning, where the dean told us that she’d heard from a very reliable source that if we get 25 or so more cases of flu, the university is shutting down. Yikes. I also could have SWORN she said they’ve shut Wake Forest down, but I’m not finding anything online about it so maybe she said they’re on the verge of shutting down too. I do see they’re also having tremendous numbers of cases. Anyhow, NC appears to be in the midst of an epidemic. I’m glad I got a flu shot for once, although I’ve heard the shot doesn’t help with this current strain. I’m also taking bottles of C and Echinacea and garlic, and washing my hands compulsively. And wrapping myself in a layer of hand sanitizer.

We watched Borat tonight, which was very funny. When it first came out I didn’t care a thing about seeing it, but then I kept reading reviews and hearing reports from trusted sources who thought it was hysterical, so we finally got it from Netflix. And sure enough – it’s hysterical. I’m sure by now everyone on the planet knows it’s a "mocumentary" about a reporter from Kazakhstan who comes to America to make a documentary for his government about American culture, but gets sidetracked by Baywatch and becomes obsessed with finding and marrying Pamela Anderson. So I’ll just note that although it IS very vulgar and very very very politically incorrect and quite offensive, we were also howling with laughter. I read a quote from Sacha Baron Cohen about all the bigotry and racism, especially anti-Semiticism of his character, and basically he said that indifference and apathy are what we really need to fear, and that’s what he’s attacking in this movie. (Incidentally, he’s Jewish and his grandfather was a Holocaust survivor). The funniest – and scariest – things were the reactions of real, non-actor people who didn’t know who he was and that he was making this pretend satire documentary. Like the SC University frat boys that tried to sue him afterwards. Because they were drunk and saying some horrific things, and now everyone on earth has seen them and knows what they think about women and a whole bunch of minorities.

I think pretty much everyone in the movie either sued him or wanted to. Kazakhstan was very upset at the depiction of its residents. (On a side note I was VERY pleased that when I said I thought Kazakhstan was a real country and Baker B, aka Mr. Geography, laughed at me and said of course it’s not a real country, Geography Eedjit Girl, they made it up for the movie,  it turns out that yes it IS a real country. A real, very annoyed country.) The Gypsies are mad because Borat’s pretend village was actually a Gypsy village in Romania, and the filmmakers made it and its inhabitants look veeeeeeeery backward. And that’s just the countries, not all the people involved.

Anyhow. I recommend seeing Borat.

And that’s apparently all I have to say. I’m feeling very dismal about my uncle, and although Borat was a nice distraction, the blues are setting in again. So I think I’ll get off the computer and go read a book.

Oh, but first I’ll post some pictures – once again I’ve entered the local photography competition which is on its fifth year now, and I think I’ve entered it the last three, always to no avail. Last year I was particularly annoyed because they picked like 40 photos for the winners and runners up – but later I found out they had something like 600 entries. And it’s open to professionals and amateurs. This year they made it really easy to enter – you can submit photos online now. So of course I had to enter yet again. They have categories, so I did three culture, one flora and fauna, and one adventure.

For culture, I went with the odd:

Obviously I think the Appalachian culture consists of ruins. But it kind of DOES.

For Flora and Fauna I also went with odd:

For Adventure, I went with not-so-odd. I’m not even sure this is quite "adventure", OR "mountain sports", but it IS the Blowing Rock Horse Show which is the longest running horse show in the nation. So I’m hoping that counts as something like a mountain kind of sport. That category usually seems to have less entries too, so it might give me a better shot as well.

The good thing is I’ve already got them all in, and the deadline isn’t till six tomorrow evening. And they decide by late next week so I don’t have to wait around too long.

And now I HAVE to get OFF the COMPUTER.