I started working when I was sixteen, and I have always had a job since then. I’ve progressed from working for £2.45 an hour in Kwik Save, to becoming an office manager with a £25k salary.

Most of the time my work has supplemented my studies or creative endeavours. I’ve had a couple of jobs that I’ve enjoyed, or at least I’ve enjoyed their perks (working in the cinema, arts centre and library), but most of my jobs haven’t been fun or fulfilling. At the same time, working has taught me about responsibility, time management, working with others and has provided me with some financial freedom.

Right now I’m working in a counselling centre, and I should feel good about that. I used to feel good about the fact that my work was connected to helping people in need, but I currently feel really unconnected to the overall worth of my job, and its contribution to society. All I can see are the mundane tasks set before me, the endless letters, and phonecalls, and statistics and “I’m sorry to bother you but…” and the rest. It’s like I’m the hamster spinning on the wheel, and I can’t get off. I’m hungry, unfocussed and need a break but as there’s no one to relieve me I have to stay in the office for 7 hours straight.

It’s been a slow process, but I think the turning point was the trip to Jamaica in May 2007. I don’t know why that’s the turning point, but since I returned from that trip I’ve been less happy about working here and less productive (though I still get the necessary work done).

I guess there’s a kind of irony that a couple of years ago part of my job was to motivate disaffected workers, and now I’m the unmotivated employee. I need to quit. I’ve been planning to hand in my notice at the beginning of September, as I can take some annual leave in August and find another job. I wish I could do it sooner.

Usually I start a movie review with a brief summary of the plot, then I give my reactions, but I feel like changing that method for this particular movie.

At the end of the movie, as the credits began to roll, my friend asked me if I thought that there would be an extra scene after the credits. My logical mind started to answer that based on the final scene I didn’t think there was more to add. In fact the final scene could have been used as a post-credits addition. But instead, rendered weary and depressed by the movie, I said, “I don’t care, I’ve had enough of this movie. Let’s go, now.”

Then a guy got up from his seat on the other side of the cinema and started shouting and gesturing as he walked down the stairs, “That was a crap movie. The worst film I’ve ever seen.” His girlfriend smirked as she followed him out.

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My overall opinion is that The Happening was a compelling idea, poorly executed. I went into that cinema with my eyes open, I’d known that many people were criticising the movie, but I was still hoping that I would enjoy it. Either that or that it would be “so bad that it was good”.

The basic plot is that suddenly random groups of people in the North-Eest region of the USA commit suicide, seeming due to an airbourne virus. Mark Wahlberg plays Elliot Moore, a science teacher trying to escape the threat along with his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), fellow teacher Julian (John Leguizamo) and Julian’s young daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez).

From reading other reviews of the film I have discovered that the version shown in the UK (and also Germany) had the goriest scenes edited (e.g. the man with the lawnmower and the guy with the lions), which explains why the film is only a 12A here (i.e. children can see it with an adult) but received an R-rating in America.

So what did I like about the movie?

Well I appreciated the early scene when the construction workers were jumping off the scaffolding, that was very frightening. I found it interesting that in order to produce empathy there would (nearly) always be one person who was aware of what was happening to the people around them, so that we could experience the fear and confusion in their expressions. I liked John Leguizamo’s character, so I was sad that he couldn’t have had more scene time.

And what didn’t I like?

Well the dialogue was awful, really dire. I’m wondering if Wahlberg and Deschanel signed up to this film without reading the script, and couldn’t back out of doing when they realised how crappy it was as they seemed to have given up by the second half of the movie.

I’ve never seen Zooey Deschanel in anything before, but her character was so irritating and whiney and dumb. Just the fact that Elliot was supposed to be married to her made me hate him too. For instance, the bit near the end of the movie, when Elliot calls to Alma and tells her to close the windows and doors (to avoid the airbourne virus that they’ve been running from for the entire movie) she asks him why? And when she turns her nose up at the hot dogs?

There was no chemistry between those two either. I was more worried about the cute kid killing herself to get away from them than anything actually happening to them.

I cringed during the scene where people on the other side of the field started dying and Alma demands that Elliot helps them. While we endure an extended close-up of his flairing nostrils he cries, “Give me a minute! Give me a minute!”

I didn’t like that they made the recluse lady so creepy, but the actress who played her was very convincing.

It could have been hilarious tension relief when Elliiot tried to talk to the (rubber) plant, but it just came over like another idiotic gesture.

All in all, it was a disappointment for me. I know some people out there will say that the script and acting were deliberately bad, and that it’s an absurdist masterpiece, etc. - well I’m glad that they got something out of it.

Urban Recluse Rating:

I’ve nearly finished a double Mills and Boon book by Penny Jordan which I just started this evening after coming home from the cinema (I saw Wanted). I took a break to clear the junk off my bed and this song popped into my head. When I typed the title into youtube I found a live performance of the song on a moving bus, which is unbelievably cool.

I also love the fact that she’s strumming a tiny spanish/classical guitar, it’s just so perfect.

Vid: I Feel it All by Feist

In his book On Writing, Stephen King talks about finding your ideal reader, your fantasy audience condensed into a single person. This person could be real or imagined, but real is usually preferable.

For my blogging I don’t have a single person in mind when I’m writing, I’m writing to amuse myself and hoping that other people will enjoy reading my thoughts. And judging from the comments I receive, not many people who end up here are much like me, but we’re still having fun together.

However, if I were writing a novel, I’d have to be more focused about my audience. The person who’d walk out of WH Smith with a Silhouette Intrigue probably wouldn’t go for a Martina Cole crime novel, and so on. If I were writing a niche blog I’d also have to think about this issue seriously, but here the rules don’t apply. Welcome to my world.

Ginuwine: Number 1 Fan

My mum ordered a new mattress for my bed, as the old one was past its prime. I didn’t pay much attention to it when she showed it to me in the catalogue, but now it’s here I’m rather overwhelmed by its splendour.

The old one was made by Silentnight, and was pretty firm. When we have visitors they often comment on how comfy it is. The new one is by Rest Assured, and is twice the thickness of the old one. I almost have to leap onto it.

Now I feel almost like the Princess who had to sleep on 20+ mattresses to prove her royalty. Only difference is, that I doubt that I’d feel a pea under my 28cm mattress.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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The movie started with a brief montage showing how an experiment gone wrong turned Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) into the Hulk, and put his lover Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) in the hospital.

We catch up with Banner, who is lying low in Rio De Janeiro, working in a Guarana bottling factory. He also works on his self-control by practising Aikido, and breathing techniques (I loved the instructor’s impressive diaphragm movements).

Unfortunately, despite his best efforts, General Ross (William Hurt) tracks him down, which leads to an amazing chase scene through the favelas (with occasional brief rests to stop himself from Hulking-out). Finally Bruce is cornered in the bottling factory, and out of options he gives in to the rage.

The first appearance of the Hulk was amazing, in the dark he seemed even more huge and deadly, and gave the General’s men a good thrashing.

So forced out of hiding he moves on and returns to Virginia where he is spotted by Betty, who was apparently in love with another guy but drops him like a hot rock as soon as Banner shows up (and strangely he didn’t seem too angry about it).

Meanwhile, hardcore soldier Emil Blonsky (born Russian, bred in Britain - Tim Roth), who was lucky not to get pulverised in the Rio factory, wants a piece of the Hulk and convinces Gen. Ross to pump him full of super soldier serum. Emil gets the chance to try out his enhancements when the General tracks Banner down again at a college campus, and he actually does pretty well against the Hulk (for a minute).

I enjoyed the scene with the Hulk and Betty in the cave, though it reminded me slightly of King Kong. Somehow those quieter scenes made me more aware that Liv Tyler would have had to imagine the CGI Hulk, that he would have been slotted in after her performance. Despite that, the scene helped to show the Hulk as a more sympathetic. more human character. The love between Bruce and Betty is vital to the movie, as without it we’d just have a 2-hour soulless CGI-powered wrestlemania bout, plus she’s the only one who can connect with the Hulk, which is handy.

So later on, Blonsky wants another shot at the Hulk and gets himself turned into the Abomination, who is larger and more powerful than the Hulk. By this time we’re in New York (of course) which becomes victim to the Abomination’s tantrum. So in an echo of the death of the Hulk in the series, Banner jumps out of a helicopter, but survives to fight the Abomination.

During that last fight scene I liked the bit when fire threatens Betty and despite his hands being full, the Hulk does some kind of hand clap and puts out the fire. What I didn’t like was when Betty told him to stop his choke-hold - which was an anticlimax for me.

At the end there’s an open ending, and the potential for a sequel, which I’d definitely go to see. Overall I really enjoyed the movie; it wasn’t perfect but it was a fantastic interpretation of this modern Jekyll and Hyde story. I really appreciated Edward Norton in his role, as he personified the cerebral scientist who contrasts so much physically and emotionally with the Hulk. I wasn’t totally into Liv Tyler, who seemed too sweet at times. William Hurt was pretty good, quite intimidating. Tim Roth was intense, and increasingly creepy as his body changed during the movie. (Interesting that though the Hulk looks like a big green human, Blonsky looks like a misshapen reptile hybrid with protruding bits…) The main source of humour is the character of Samuel Sterns, an eccentric scientist who has an important role in the plot.

Other things that stuck in my mind:

• In Rio, why did Banner have to come across his pretty co-worker while she was undressed? Bit of a cheap way to perk up the horny lads.
• I liked the scene in Mexico when he bought some trousers and asked if she had stretchier ones.
• My friend noted that the first two times that Banner changed into the Hulk we only see a portion of his body, thereby maximising the tension of his metamorphosis. It was only later in Sterns’s lab that we see the full change.

And the essential cameos and self-referential bits:

• Stan Lee in an amusing bit
• Lou Ferrigno as a pizza-loving security guard, and the voice of the Hulk
• The late Bill Bixby from the original series in a dubbed tv show (blink and you’ll miss it)
  Plus the well-publicised Tony Stark scene (I also noted the Stark Industries logo during the opening credits).
• When he tries to say, “Don’t make me angry, you won’t like me when I’m angry’ in Portuguese - and fails amusingly.

And here’s a funny video review of the movie that I found:

Find more videos like this on The Spill.com Movie Community

Urban Recluse Rating:

I haven’t been very active on here in the last couple of weeks. I just didn’t feel like blogging, and whatever I wrote felt forced. The lack of comments also bothered me, as I started to feel like I wasn’t connecting with anyone, or that the people who used to come here had lost interest.

At the same time, I’ve had a load of new visitors to the old post that was stumbled, and strangely I felt very uncomfortable with the extra attention. I was also sensitive to the criticism that the post provoked and the feeling that I had to defend myself to people who didn’t give a damn about me. I guess it made me feel vulnerable, and wary of revealing my feelings while all of that was still going on. I guess it wasn’t totally a bad situation, as I’ve picked up a couple of new readers. I’m such a contrary creature, lots of bloggers would kill to have thousands of visitors like that, but perhaps I’m not ready for the masses right now.

So what’s been happening for me? Here’s a quick catchup of the last week or so.

Fri 13 June: Not long after I’d left work at 6pm I saw a guy in his 50s walking down the road. He was shouting obscenities as he walked along, and as he passed me (without actually looking directly at me) he shouted out the N-word. It was the first time that I’ve ever been called that, and though it was a shock I didn’t take it personally as the guy was obviously mental.

Sat 14 June: The house next door to my parent’s home is up for sale, and after seeing the for sale sign I called up the estate agents and got an appointment to view. It was more for curiousity than anything else, as I wouldn’t really want to live next to my parents, wouldn’t want a 3 bedroom house to myself and wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage anyway. The guy who’d lived there died a few months ago of Emphysema, I think he was in his late 50s and seemed like a nice guy. The estate agents had given a price of about £230,000, and said that it needed modernisation, so I wasn’t expecting a palace, but the house was quite dilapidated and looked like nothing had changed in the last 30 years. Though structurally the house was a mirror image of ours, it looked smaller somehow. It would take a lot of work for someone to fix up that house, but it could have a lot of potential for a property developer or a family who didn’t need to move in straight away.

Wednesday 18 June: Had my last session with the counsellor. It was a strange session, and I felt quite ambivalent about the whole thing. One thing I said was that I felt that the eight sessions weren’t really enough, it was like using a plaster to cover a gunshot wound. It wasn’t a total waste of time, and we did discuss some issues that have been affecting me for a long time. One of the things I can keep in mind from the sessions is that sometimes I assume that I know what other people think of me, and sometimes I use those assumptions to push people away.

I also have trust issues, but I feel entitled to them since I always get hurt when I trust people. During one session when I discussed a guy who had betrayed my trust quite recently, she asked me why I was blaming myself when he was the one who’d lied and misled me, and I told her that I was upset with myself for not trusting my instincts, for giving someone the benefit of the doubt when I should have listened to my intuition.

Unless I pay for private therapy I don’t really have many other options. I’ve still got a spare pack of Prozac which I could possibly return to, but I’m not sure that it’s the best option for me. I prefer to feel the way I feel, even if I feel like crap.

Friday 20 June: I went out to get a very late work lunch at 4pm. In the chicken and chips shop this Eastern European man starts talking to me. I looked at him briefly and realised from his reddened face that he was probably drunk. When he whispered something about my breasts I felt sick and ignored him.

After work I took the tube to Oxford Circus and visited Chappells, a music shop, for a particular jazz and blues sax song book. Though the shop has moved from its previous home in New Bond Street to Waldour St, it still felt like visiting a old friend. I was reminded of the old me, the girl who was so taken with her musical dreams.

Later on, a few streets from home, a old geezer tried to sweet-talk me, but I ignored him. Then to top it all off, when I got home and checked my email I saw a bizarre message sent via my contact form: “u are so sexy u no dat. can u send me some of ur pictures naked to my email.” My only response to that lovely message was the delete button.

And in other news: The other day at work I was asked to fax our payroll request to the bank because my colleague had called in sick so that we would all get paid on time. When I saw the sheet I realised that my colleague, Kay, was getting paid nearly £500 more than me after tax, and she only works half a day more than me. Seeing that information has really changed my attitude towards her and my job in general. She often asks me for advice, especially with computing and technical stuff, but since there’s so much difference between our pay (and she’s not my boss) I’m going to concentrate on my work and leave her to get on with hers. It’s becoming more obvious how much this job is just a dead-end for me, though I still haven’t sorted out what to do next.

My boss asked me to help her with a short-term project for the next few weeks in addition to my normal hours. Though the work itself is very tedious and boring, I decided to go ahead with it for the money. The only good thing about it is that I’m working from home. I’ve been finding it really hard to give up my days-off, but I console myself that this arrangement is not forever.

Check out the following video, sit through the entire piece of music then tell me how it made you feel. For me it was intense and yet charged with humour. Once the novelty of it fades the experience heightens for everyone involved. I would have loved to have been sitting in the Barbican while this was performed.

4′33″

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. ~ John Cage

Friday 13 June. 6:30pm. IMAX.
Me. Plus friend.

I used to watched the television series as a kid and liked that bit in the opening credits when Banner said to that guy who was investigating him, “Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

Grrrrh

Today wasn’t a bad day. I didn’t have a lunch break at work, but I’d brought sandwiches to keep me going. My right eye was and is still itchy from hay fever, and my nose is slightly icky, but I’m not feeling too awful overall.

Walking home from the train station, I found myself walking behind a woman who had an amazing figure. She was wearing blue jeans and a lovely purple top. I envied her a little bit, but also stored that image as additional motivation to aim for my ideal figure.

As I passed the vet’s office a young black guy with an Afro paused at the end of the road in a red car, which was pumping out that classic tune: “Papa was a Rolling Stone”.

An hour ago I was watching this new reality tv show: Mary Queen of Shops, which featured Amanda, a woman who was running a clothes boutique aimed at fuller-figured women, though she seemed to look down on her customers because of their size. Mary, the fashion expert, had to re-educate her not to criticise her customers’ bodies and to think of them as normal women who aren’t catered for by the mainstream fashion industry. It was both sad and funny to watch that clueless woman making such a mess of things, selling the equivalent of tents and sacks to her curvy clientele.

Though she seemed to make a huge improvement by the end of the show, I still got the impression that she wasn’t totally sincere and that she may have been putting on a front, that she probably still felt that larger women were “sad” and “misshapen”. The whole thing made me wonder why she wanted to develop a business for that market, she would have probably been happier selling fitness clothing for size-zeros.

And in other news, a 3G version of the iPhone was announced today, but I still don’t want to buy one at this stage. Allow me to buy it sim-free, or open up availability to more than one UK network and I’d think about it seriously. In the meantime I’ve just bought a new Sony Ericsson K800i from Tesco (I know, but it was a good deal). It’s a great little phone with a very nice camera. Even my dad likes it, plus it was the official phone from Casino Royale…

And why did I feel okay today? I think it’s connected to the exercise that I did last night, but I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.