I (heart sign) Jean-Pierre Jeunet, let me just say that first. So I'm inclined to like just about whatever he decides to put on the screen. Erin and I watched A Very Long Engagement last night, and today I thought I'd put two cents here, since I haven't written in a while.

I was originally going to say that Engagement isn't one of Jeunet's better films. But on thinnking about it I take it back. It's a bit different than his other films. The machinations for which he is known are not limited merely to physical devices in this film, but pervade the story as well. The Rube Goldberg variations are still present, but serve in this film not to highlight the wonderful minutia that make life worth living, but the strange logic that makes war man's worst and most terrible invention. A scene involving a hospital, a dirigible filled with hydrogen, a bomb caught in an unlikely place and a winch exhibits Jeunet's mastery of this technique with horrific results. The incomprehensibility of and casual inhumanity of WWI, of war in general, is made painfully clear, and it is in these scenes, visited over and again as we shift through various people's memories in search of the truth about the fate of one soldier, that the film is perhaps at its best. But call me the ugly American with the short attention span (I did have to take three breaks while writing this sentence to check my mail), but maybe the scenes are repeated too often. The film felt a little longer than necessary, and Jeunet's humor at times out of place.

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Been listening to a lot of early Talking Heads lately. No, wait, this is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Christ, I can't tell the difference.

Of course, I had similar thoughts about the Decemberists when I first heard them. I thought they sounded a lot like Neutral Milk Hotel, but now I can't really even make a comparison.

I may have mentioned this before, but I find now that if I dislike something initially, I usually end up loving it later. It's like the Pretenders said, I guess: "It's a thin line between love and hate."

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Speaking of hate, I guess it was a few weeks ago now I was obsesed with a friend of Erin's. In a bad way. She told me about this friend of hers, whom I have met and who, by all measures, is a nice guy. She told me about how he was trying not to buy a watch. He didn't want to buy it because the price was a bit too high, I think something like $500,000, which, you know, is a bit hard to justify. Or in my case, imagine.

After hearing this story I began to obsess about it and about its subject. I suppose because it highlighted my own, opposite situation. Lately, I haven't known for sure if I would be eating anything besides ramen in the next week, which I would be enjoying on the floor. Erin and I have been doing most things on the floor lately, besides the customary standing. Sleeping, sitting, working, and eating. Haven't been able to afford furniture, see.

So thinking about this, and then about the friend and his watch dilema made me angry. Very angry. And now I wish I could say I was angry in a broad, political sense. Social injustice, the concentration of wealth and so on. But really it was, I don't know, jealosy I guess. Envy. That's the word. Why are some people, I wondered, able to not buy half-million dollar watches when I can't afford a half sandwich? ME. Was I weaker? Unworthy? Less smart? Obsessing about my situation, I began to think so. To think myself somehow less. And then to hate myself for thinking in this way. And to hate Erin's friend, I guy I don't even know and have met only once, and who must be burdened with his own set of problems, for HAVING, while I HAD NOT.

In these thoughts, I hated myself. And worse, felt the need to be pittied, by myself if no-one else was around to do the job. They were low moments of desperation, and I'm sorry I felt them now.

Now, I'm fine! Erin and I have a piece of furniture: a lovely couch to sit on, and we've borrowed a futon and a microwave. I feel like a prince. With this meagre purchase my insecurities have seeming vanished, and my desperate thoughts are fading ghosts.

And this too is disturbing.