Occasionally Wright

Step Away From the Ring...

I've lost track of how many wrestlers have died since I started watching wrestling about a dozen years ago. I do know that a colleague and I were able to take turns rattling them off one after the other as we walked to lunch today, and none of them died of natural causes, unless heart failure due to steroid abuse is natural.

I stopped watching wrestling regularly at least three years ago, but I've gone to a few live events over the last few years and I've casually checked in on the storylines every now and then.

That's the end of that though. As if the events of the last few days that saw a wrestler take the life of his wife and son before ending his own life weren't disgusting enough, I just can't stomach anything produced by a company that can actually release the following statement (emphasis mine):

"In keeping with company policy, and with limited knowledge regarding facts of the case, WWE choose to air a memorial dedicated to the career of Chris Benoit."

It says something about a company when they have a set procedure for what kind of show to air after an employee dies. How many times do they have to invoke the policy before they actually take a serious look at what's causing the deaths of their employees?

The Great Georgia Weather

Despite the category listing that this post is under (Life in Atlanta) I don't technically live in Atlanta anymore. I live in Marietta, or East Cobb County. Cobb County might sound familiar to anyone that grew up watching the late Big Boss Man wrestle in the WWF. He was always announced as being from Cobb County, Georgia, and as far as I know he was, though he retired to Paulding County which isn't too far away. He passed away in 2004 at the ripe old age of 42. If you've never lived in Georgia you probably didn't know that Georgia has more counties than any other state in the country. It's true. I've already lived in three of them, which is the same number of counties in all of Prince Edward Island.

Anyway, one of the things I love about Georgia is the summer thunderstorms. We've been in a drought for a while and we probably went six weeks without a drop of rain until last Thursday. Since then we've had thunderstorms four of the last six days. More often than not they roll in out of nowhere and disappear within an hour or two. It's been hot enough that when they hit in the afternoon the roads are dry ten minutes after they stop.

Today I happened to be at home when one started to roll in around 8:15pm. Here's what it looked like form our back deck before the rain started. you might want to turn your sound up for the full effect.

The best part about the thunderstorms, aside form being able to enjoy them from a screened in sun porch, is the way they can make the temperature drop 15-20 degree Farenheit within about 30 minutes. At 8pm it was 82 degrees. An hour later it was 65. On Friday the temperature went from 91 to 78 in 20 minutes (you've got to love backyard weather stations).

A Gem within A Masterpiece

It took me about two years to break myself of the habit of watching a movie and automatically thinking of how I could analyze it in an academic paper. That's what happens when you spend five years studying rhetoric and communication.

Last night, for the first time in about four years, I found myself doing it again as I watched Pan's Labyrinth, or El Laberinto del fauno if you prefer the original Spanish title.

It might not be for everyone, but what a brilliant movie. As director Guillermo del Toro said in one of the extra features, the movie has a lot of layers and a lot of symbolism. It also has sub-titles, which somehow made it even better for me. Nothing forces you to hang on every word like sub-titles.

Anyway, without giving away any of the movie (just in case someone reading this plans to watch it but hasn't had the privilege yet) I wanted to share this monologue (delivered as a eulogy) from this piece of art:

"Because the paths of the Lord are inscrutable; because the essence of His forgiveness lies in His word and in His mystery; because although God sends us the message, it is our task to decipher it. Because when we open our arms the earth takes in only a hollow and senseless shell. Far away is the soul in its eternal glory. Because it is in pain that we find the meaning of life and the state of grace that we lose when we are born. Because God, in His infinite wisdom, puts the solution in our hands. And because it is only in His physical absence, that the place He occupies in our souls is reaffirmed."

That's a good bit of writing and a whole lot of theology crammed into about 90 seconds of a film that doesn't have any overtly religious themes, although there are some clear Abraham/Isaac parallels at one point.

I'm not sure what to make of the eulogy yet, but I wanted to share it, and I wanted to have it written down somewhere so I can come back to it later. It almost strikes me as something that was written as a catechism or prayer and just used in the movie, but I can't any evidence of it.

Now that my mind is back on this train of thought I might have to try to deconstruct some other themes in Pan's Labyrinth. If you like analyzing layers of meaning and the symbolism of seemingly innocuous events you'd love this film.

All I know now is that I'll be adding del Toro's previous work to my Blockbuster Exclusive Queue.

I Know The New Black

I've been keeping an eye on Peter Rukavina's blog lately and yesterday he declared Steven Garrity "the new black." I'm happy to say that I knew Steven back before he was an internet legend and when he was just "Steve." Even before he was a rock star in Horton's Choice. Back when he was a scared kid trying to figure out why someone was nailing the windows of our camp cabin shut on the last night (though I'm pretty sure the windows weren't actually nailed shut. Nobody bothered to test them though).

Now that he's an internet guru of sorts and I'm actually employed thanks to the internet it's kind of interesting (to me at least) that my first actual encounters with the internet were all at Steven's house, circa 1993 or '94 or so. Back then there weren't many real web pages and most of our time was spent on music bulletin boards digging up posts by Ed Rock and seeing what we could find out about Fleming and John, Gene Eugene, Steve Taylor and Sixpence.

So thank you Steven for getting me into computers to a moderate degree and for showing plenty of us out here that this whole internet thing can make a guy a pretty decent living.

By the way, if you're a system admin type and you're interested in living in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, you might want to get in touch with Steven and the guys at silverorange. It's one of the coolest companies you could ask to work for, but you've got to be the right kind of person.