Triumph of the Will

During my Staycation a couple of months ago, I watched "Triumph of the Will", a propaganda film about the 1934 NAZI party congress and rally at Nuremberg, made at Hiter's behest by Leni Riefenstahl.  The film can be found on YouTube with English subtitles here.

Triumph is widely recognized as the first modern documentary and a masterwork of film-making and propaganda.  Roger Ebert reviewed it in his series of "Great Movies".  Interestingly, when he revisited the film in 2008, what had seemed decades before like a masterpiece struck Ebert as "a terrible film, paralyzingly dull, simpleminded, overlong and not even "manipulative," because it is too clumsy to manipulate anyone but a true believer. It is not a "great movie" in the sense that the other films in this group are great, but it is "great" in the reputation it has and the shadow it casts."

This was the first time I ever saw Triumph and I found it fascinating.  The NAZIs knew how to create a spectacle which made their horrific philosophy appear legitimate, even heroic and inspirational.  One can understand how the images of hundreds of thousands of Germans acting in unison would instill nationalistic fervor in pre-war Germans.  All the footage was carefully calculated to produce a particular response.  Racial politics are only mentioned once, when one of Hitler's functionaries refers to racial "purity".  They weren't advertising their full-blown genocidal intentions just yet.

I found the "pre-rally" footage to be especially interesting, with thousands of tents lined up to house the participants, giving us a too-brief glimpse of camp life.  The shots of shirtless German youth in their absurd pulled-high shorts washing each other seems hilariously homo-erotic in a culture that despised gays.

As Ebert says, the film is slow and overlong, filled with endless shots of buildings, rows of people, and speeches.  But its power is clear.

It's disturbing to know that even as this happy, optimistic and sanitized rally was occurring, millions of Germans were already being imprisoned, tortured and murdered while Germany prepared for war.  The film also produces mixed emotions with the realization that a short eleven years later, most of the people pictured would be dead due to the very things they're celebrating in the film.

If you're interested in history, Triumph is well worth your time.

Staycation 2011 - The summificationing

During Staycation 2011, I spent a whole bunch of time not working but did actually work.  Just what did I get done?

(Kindly note that some of these are more impressive than others.)

Here's the list:

• Cleaned out my pajama drawer
• Cleaned our shower curtain liner
• Installed a new floor vent in Ben's room
• Fixed the dryer
• Cleaned and organized the garage
• Reprogrammed the thermostat
• Installed a new toilet seat in the guest bathroom
• Fixed the popped out siding above the grill
• Added dirt to side yard, fertilized and planted grass
• Had the trees trimmed and the pine tree removed
• Replaced the bad fence rails
• Removed the rear gate
• Planted more grass in front yard
• Washed and stowed the hammock
• Turned off the dehumidifier
• Fixed my netbook's hard drive issue
• Prepped our Christmas photo
• Fixed the broken pull on my messenger bag
• Redid Carol and my Just One Club cards
• Partially cleaned the utility room
• Converted all our old home videos to digital

And that's about it. 

To the fun end, I watched an all day marathon of Lord of the Rings, went out to lunch with Carol, played some Call of Duty: Black Ops on XBOX, watched a couple of Doctor Who episodes on Netflix, took a few naps, went to a couple of gaming sessions, went to lunch with Carol and Rachel, explained 9/11 to Ben, and watched "Triumph of the Will" on YouTube (more on that later).

I did not get my massage.  :-(

Was it worth it?  Absolutely.  I barely thought about work and feel good about making a dent in my projects list.  The time seemed to go slowly at first but then got faster as the week progressed.  I was surprised I didn't take more naps but my energy level was usually high.  I found it easy to lose track of what day it was, which surprised me.  It was also pretty easy to get motivated on most days, which also surprised me.

When I returned to work yesterday I was relaxed and ready to get back into everything.

That's all for Staycation 2011.  I hope I have the chance to do it again someday.

Staycation - Day 11, the Final Day

It was with a heavy heart that I awoke yesterday, the last day of my Staycation.  Still, I had lots to do.

The tree guys were supposed to arrive at 9:30 but called because they were running late.  They arrived at 10:30 and got to work.  Many of the trees around our house were actually touching the house, one so much that a squirrel can jump onto our roof, move through a hole in our gutter and live in our attic (a problem for another day).  In addition, they were to take down our pine tree.  They took the extra step of completely removing the stump which was awesome.

While they worked, I went around the house finishing up projects.  I finished cleaning the garage and reparked the car.  I cleaned the basement and utility room.  I made a list of all our laserdiscs that I need to sell.  Nothing huge.

After the tree guys left for the day, I got everything ready for work in the morning and had a nice leisurely evening.  It was great not having to run around or go out.

And this morning I was back at work.

Tomorrow I'll post a list of everything I got done.  It was quite a bit of work and a load off my mind to make so much progress on so many projects.  And I barely thought about work at all.

Staycation - Day 10, the Penultimate

One of the big things I hoped to get done this vacation was to get the trees trimmed around the house and have a pine tree removed.  We were referred to a tree company last week and after they gave us an estimate, we asked them to come by on Monday at 9:30.

So, I woke up at 9AM, early by my vacation standards, until they called a few minutes later and rescheduled for Tuesday.  Rats.  Unfortunately, this threw off my entire day.  I was sleepy for hours.

I did find it in me to clean up the basement for Monday night gaming.  And I did a couple of small things around the house.  I also took a couple of naps.  :-)

Monday night gaming was fun. 

One more day to go.

Staycation - Day 9

Sunday was brutal.

My goal was to finish replacing the bad rails in our split rail fence.  While there weren't too many left, the rails that needed replacing were not the standard 11 feet sizes that you can just swap in and out.  I had some 3-4 foot rails next to the gate and some rails in the back that were about 8 feet long.  This meant the chain saw came into use!  Unfortunately, it also meant a bunch of chiseling and experimenting to get a good tapered end that would fit into the slots.  I'm no chainsaw artist so it was difficult, if eventually moderately successful.

The biggest challenge of the day was replacing an end post in the back yard.  The existing end post had fallen and was easy to pull out.  Unfortunately, as I dug down to get a hole deep enough to plant the new end post, I met the remainder of the original post about a foot down.  Basically, the post had broken in two with a good two foot section stuck underground.  That had to be removed before I could put in the new post.

Ugh.  It took hours to dig down and pull up the existing post.  It was filthy and exhausting work.  But finally, it was done.

And that pretty much crapped me out for the rest of the day.

Here's the completed fence section.

Staycation - Day 8

I took a break yesterday and the whole family went to some friends for an all-day, back-to-back Lord of the Rings marathon!  We watched the new Blu-Ray discs of the extended versions of all three movies.  Took about thirteen hours with breaks and dinner. 

The last time I did a back-to-back viewing was five years ago.  Seeing the movies in beautiful high definition in our friends' home theatre was just amazing. 

Can't wait for the Hobbit so we can do it again.  :-)

Staycation - Day 7

I didn't have a chance to update yesterday, so here's what I did on Friday.

We had a gaming get-together Friday evening, so I had limited hours to work.  After a trip to the dump to get rid of some stuff that had been cluttering up the garage, Carol, Rachel and I went to Lowe's to get some dirt to replace the washed away section of the side yard.  I concluded once again that Lowe's is so much better than Home Depot.  It has a wider and better selection of just about everything.  Afterwards we ate lunch at Crepes A-Go-Go at the Kentlands which was excellent.

When I returned home, I fixed the side yard, and spent some time chiseling away at split rails to replace some of the old and disintegrating rails in the fence that runs around our back yard.

I did a couple of other small jobs, but not much more to report.

We had a great time gaming on Friday night.  Ben attended a concert in Pennsylvania with his youth group so Carol and I had to pick him up at 1:30AM.

Staycation - Day 6

Yesterday I briefly hit the wall.

Carol and I met for lunch at Yuraku's awesome sushi buffet.  When I returned home, I just couldn't get it together to get anything done.  I took a pseudo-nap (didn't actually fall asleep) and kind of loafed around.

But after I picked up Rachel from school and got my second wind I made a considerable dent in cleaning and reorganizing our utility room.  The utility room is in the basement where I keep the tools, paints, wood, and other things we use to keep the house in order.  The room often accumulates stuff that we don't have space to store until you can't even walk in without moving something.  I spent several hours cleaning it up yesterday.

I also finished converting all our tapes to WMVs.  Hooray!

To top it off, I had a terrible time sleeping last night.  I don't think I fell asleep until around 4AM.  Ugh.

But I feel good today and I'm eager to get back to work.

Staycation - Day 5 (Wednesday)

Yesterday was hard.  I tasked myself with finishing cleaning the garage and planting the side yard.  That meant more hauling of bags of dirt and more carrying things in and out of the garage.

After a trip to my second home, Home Depot, I added another 15 bags of dirt to the side yard, spread fertilizer, seeds and watered.  Hooray!  Then there was a huge lightning storm last night and when I checked this morning, the torrential rain had washed a narrow channel through part of the yard, down to the original dirt.  Aargh!  More dirt buying and spreading are in my future.

I finished the garage except for the getting rid of the old toys part.  It looks much better and will be easier to get in and out.  Still a little bit of work to finish up, but really close to where I want to be.

I also digitized a bunch of video tapes, took a short nap, and was delighted to watch Rachel help Ben with his math last night.

One interesting thing that keeps happening is that I'm having these momentary mini panic attacks as I think about the things I still want to get done.  Then I realize that as of last night, I still hadn't hit the halfway mark in my staycation and that I have a lot of time left.  In fact, as I'm posting this, I just passed the halfway mark.  If I can get as much done over the next five days, I'll have accomplished a great deal.

Staycation - Day 4

My main job yesterday was tackling the side yard, that is, the lack of side yard.  We have a small area to one side of our house where the swing set sits under a tree.  Because of the lack of sun (and the lack of effort on my part over the years), most of this area is barren of grass.  The other day, Ben and I raked all the detritus up so that I could lay down some soil and get some grass growing.

I went to Home Depot and picked up 20 bags of soil and came home to spread them.  Twenty bags wasn't enough.  The exposed roots of the tree are too big; there just wasn't enough dirt to cover them sufficiently to plant on top of them.  So,  I'm going to have to return for more dirt today.

Recently, Ben said that he didn't know what 9/11 was.  Last night I found a bunch of videos on YouTube and sat down with him to walk him through what happened.  They apparently talked about it last week at school because he knew some things, but I think it was still eye-opening for him.  He isn't quite mature enough yet to process the images, so he found some of the people's reactions to the events (screaming, crying) funny.  But he watched and I explained, so now he's better aware of the defining event of 21st century America.

I did a lot of video processing yesterday, making my way through a bunch of old videotapes.  That makes me very happy since they are deteriorating rapidly.  I found the tape my father bought with bootleg versions of Star Wars, Empire and Return of the Jedi in all their original, pre-CGI glory.  I watched a few parts to remind myself of what they were before Lucas mangled them.  I was planning on throwing the tape away anyway, but it snapped when I rewound it.  I took that as an editiorial comment on Lucas.

Staycation - Day 3

Yesterday, after two days of working on small projects, I decided I needed to tackle something big.  So I started cleaning the garage.  I say started because I didn't have time (or energy) to finish the whole thing in one day.  Yikes.

Now that the kids are both teens, there are boxes of old toys throughout the house that we need to organize, clean and donate.  The garage has a couple of big containers of toys as well as old bikes, sports equipment, jackets and backpacks. that need to be "dealt with".  I did get rid of a bunch of boxes for electronics that I've bought.  I like to keep them around during the return period in case there's a problem.  For most of the packaging, that was long ago.  Anyway, I'll finish up the garage before the week is over.

In other news, I worked on digitizing more old videotapes and brought the hammock in for the winter.  Carol had a meeting, so I took Rachel to her dance class last night.  That was nice.

One of these days I'm going to try and do something fun.

Staycation - Day 2

I did more yardwork today.  Ben helped me clear out part of the backyard where no grass grows (by the swingset, under a tree).  Now that it's raked out, I'm going to add dirt and then plant some shade grass.  We'll see how it does.  Also outside, I cleaned the hammock.  Once it's dry, I'll store it for the winter. 

In a rare twofer, Ben helped me remove a gate that we no longer need.  It was pretty deeply planted and took both of us to lift out the post.  Now it will sit, leaning against the back of the house, until our community has a bulk trash day.

Once I finished the outside work, I cleaned up the basement a bit and made new "Justoneclubcards" for Carol and me.  Justoneclubcard is a website which converts all of your retail store discount cards into one card.  It's pretty simple.  You enter the bar code numbers of up to 8 of your cards and the website creates a page with all of the bar codes in a credit card-sized area.  You just print it out and cut.  I have my Giant, Safeway, Best Buy, CVS, etc. cards on just one small card that I laminated.  It really saves a lot of space in my wallet.

To the fun side, I played some more Black Ops and watched some more Doctor Who.  :-)  I really need to vary my routine a bit more.

Onward to tomorrow!

Staycation - Day 1

One day down already! Man it seems like I just started this thing yesterday.

 First the fun stuff! I stayed up until 3AM on Friday night and slept in until 11:15 yesterday morning. I played a good amount of Call of Duty: Black Ops on the XBOX. I watched the Doctor Who episode "Love & Monsters" again and watched the new episode "The Girl Who Waited" with Rachel after she got off work.

 I did a few things on my TO DO list, the most notable of which was reseeding and fertilizing the front lawn. Now that the annual summer drought is over, I have time to get a new lawn going before winter hits. Then I should be in good shape come spring. I also started organizing our old home videos (VHS) to be converted to digital format. Otherwise, I finished a few small projects around the house. It still feels like it's just a weekend since I haven't actually not gone to work yet. That should be fun.

The Staycation 2011 Begins

Every summer, the family and I visit our family in Indiana for a week.  Then, sometime earlier or later in the summer we take an actual vacation.  Carol budgets it so that we go somewhere "big" (aka expensive) every other year.  Last year we went to Los Angeles, the year before New York City, the year before Florida and Disney World, etc.

This summer, after we went to Indiana in June, work got really busy for me.  We had a new rulemaking issue in August (yep, more job-killing regulations!) and I needed to be there for that.  Plus, Rachel and Carol have been taking some time visiting colleges around the Northeast.  So, our actual vacation just didn't get a chance to happen.

Now that the kids are back to school and work has calmed down somewhat, I've decided to take some time off.  I'm on vacation starting Monday until the following Wednesday.  My plan is to stay home, get some things done around the house, use my massage gift card (yes, I've been so busy I haven't used the massage card Carol got me for Christmas), and rest.  I've wanted to try this for years and now can do so without guilt.

My intent is to post every day, detailing what I get done (or don't).  We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, let the Staycation begin!