the butterfly effect

upon finishing my last entry, i left the house to meet the potts at goode company bbq for lunch. when i opened the back door — as if on cue — a beautiful large butterfly came around the corner of the house and gracefully flapped and coasted its way a couple of feet off the ground right in front of me and went around the other corner of the house. it was like some sort of scene from a movie or something — a cheesy visual from a hack storyteller portraying how my mental fog had lifted and the world was in balance. except it really happened.
i took this past friday off from work because i was basically in an emotionally drained zombie-like state, shuffling along from place to place with little feeling or thought. i got a few offers from various people to hang out and/or stay with them. by friday night i decided maybe i should. i had to force myself to get up the energy to pack a few things, get outside, and drive. i went over to the potts and we watched what appears to have been a bootleg copy of wanted. i say that because a lot of the titles and some text in the movie were in cyrillic. (at least it appeared to me to be cyrillic.) the movie was like the child of a wu film and fight club, heavily filtered through the matrix. but with all of that wonderful genetic material, it still came out a loser. beautiful at times? yes. some cool sequences? yes. some witty dialogue here and there? yes. angelina jolie? yes. but overall: eh. i slept at the potts, then spent saturday until around 6pm with jack and the kids. from there i went over to jamie’s (amateria) place. i hung out and met her dad and his wife, did some things to try and finish setting up her wi-fi and getting her daughter’s desktop online, and ate supper. (she’d already done most of the hard stuff with the wi-fi and router. i just had to play with things a bit to get everything more finalized.) i stayed until around 11pm and then headed back to the house. which had no power.
however, i did have a box from amazon waiting for me on my front step. in it was one of the jerry reed cds i mentioned ordering earlier in the blog (the essential jerry reed). it also contained another cd i’d ordered:

  • (the little darlin’ sounds of) lloyd green — lloyd green (little darlin’/koch)

also inside were two dvds:

  • one flew over the cuckoo’s nest (warner brothers)
  • before sunrise – richard linklater (warner brothers)

and four of the five blu-ray discs i’d ordered:

  • the shining – stanley kubrick (warner brothers)
  • 2001: a space odyssey – stanley kubrick (warner brothers)
  • full metal jacket – stanley kubrick (warner brothers)
  • a clockwork orange – stanley kubrick (warner brothers)

yes, four of kubrick’s classic movies, all remastered and attached to a bunch of new extras. and all in 1080p.
but the blu-ray i put in my cart first — the one i’m considering my first blu-ray purchase is:

  • bottle rocket – wes anderson (criterion)

yep, the criterion release of bottle rocket. it doesn’t come out until november, but i went ahead and pre-ordered. and i decided to go ahead and step up to blu-ray. i guess i’ll have to get a blu-ray player and a tv that can display high-def by then. i’m not a gamer, but i’m considering a ps3 instead of a traditional blu-ray player. i don’t know.
oh yeah. and last week i got the other poster i ordered — a black and white still from the beginning of a clockwork orange of alex (mcdowell) looking maniacal holding a glass of milk in the korova milk bar. below it is the text: “a dark ironic tale of an ultraviolent future. clockwork orange” (and joyously it wasn’t mangled in transit like the johnny cash flipping the finger poster.)
hhmmm…of the six movies i got, five contain mental destruction or breakdowns of some sort of another as a major plot point: jack nicholson in both the shining and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, hal in 2001…, the cadets in full metal jacket, and alex in a clockwork orange. the only exception was before sunrise, which is a tale of meeting a romantic soulmate but only having until sunrise before you must part ways.
maybe that butterfly wasn’t just random chance.

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