Burn After Reading:

Well, this is not something I read, so I can't burn it. There was a part of me, about half way through, that wished I could burn after viewing. However, something in the face of Frances McDormand kept me watching. It was something hopeful, and utterly hopeless. She was pathetic, as her character should have been. All of the people involved were utterly hopeless, and pathetic. This is a picture of ourselves, as we could be, if we let our utterly base selves rule the universe.

Malkovitch is perfect as ususal. His role here is a pathetic, washed-up CIA schmutz, and he wants to write his memoirs?? The wife, Tilda Swinton, is right to laugh. Who exactly is going to want to read the memoirs of an inside CIA analyst that had nothing to do with anything exciting except the Balkans? So Malkovitch's attempts at dictating on the couch in his bed attire could not have been more appropriate, and more funny. His overtired ankles sticking out above the slippers, the position of laying flat, looking at the ceiling. This was brilliant by the Cohens.

And surprising, although disturbingly funny, was the death of Pitt's character, the gym enthusiast. To see all of these relationships wrap up the way they did, with the CIA director acting as a distant and non-invasive god in the background, was both fun, and wise, and well-written.

I would have added one more thing, a twist: I would have had Tilda Swinton's character driving away in the end with one of the CIA people, and talking into a phone about her next appointment. We don't really know what happened to her directly, however, one can assume that she went on living in the same townhome, and maybe finding a new lover, and possibly a blood stain on the back of the closet.

All these people that you know....

I look on Facebook, and I see several hundred people all interfacing. Now there's a word for you. Interfacing. At least we suppose we're interfacing. Real interfacing is actually meeting face to face and exchanging glances, stories, comments, and emotions. Those are all things that just cannot happen on Facebook. So why do we spend so much time there? Maybe a sense of desperation? Isolation? Maybe a sense that the people that we're with are not interesting enough by themselves, and somehow we need to reach out to more? Maybe we have an inflated sense of ourselves, and somehow those we're with are not enough and we need to share ourselves with more than just the present company? Maybe the ones we're with have grown familiar and bred contempt? Perhaps it is also this interned sense of self that leads us to reach out to more because we look in the face of those we are with and they are not good enough for us, and then we look at ourselves.....and realize that we are not good enough for our selves either. There's a conundrum for you. Good enough for our own selves.

So we network, and interface, and share, and hope someone, like a fish on a line, will comment in our comment section, and thereby validate our parking ticket. We are parked here, yes. Waiting. Hmm.

Agitatus