active learning vs. passive self-preservation

Well, the wiki has been marching along, diminishing the number of possibilities available to me. And I find myself with two competing responses: first, to want to know whyyyyyyyy? what did I do wrooooooooong? I want to know what I did so that I can correct the mistakes next time around. Was my writing sample too primitive? Was my cover letter too packed and incomprehensible? Is it the ABD thing? What? What?

Realistically though, there's no way to know and I've been told over and over that I can't take the results of this process too personally or to try to over-analyze them. Which leads us to approach number two, to put my narrative of the job hunt process into the passive voice: "it just didn't work out." Note, not my fault, no one to blame, simply that something occurred. I'm totally pleased with this approach--when I can pull it off, that is. It enables me to just move on with things as if I had never actually done tried my hand at it. I do wish no one had known that I was on the market--no one at all. That way I could be truly amnesiac about it.

Last night I saw two more terrible movies, one in the theaters, one from the netflixy.
Love in the Time of Cholera
It's bad, people. There's no question, Colombia looks beautiful and the languid pacing of the movie does convey the sense of temporality in hot humid climes. But the philosophy of love that is proposed--in accented English, can someone explain this to me? Either have the movie in Spanish, or if it's going to be in English, why not just have them speak as if they were comfortable with their means of expression--is pretty inscrutable. Why people continue loving and stop loving is not believable, in part because the lead actress is so terrible. She has one mode of reaction, dead fish-eyed look and trembling lip and seizure-like shoulder shaking. Javier Bardem is fine, but otherwise the whole thing is a wash. Too bad.

Netflixed
Paris, je t'aime
I often love the conceit of interconnected vignettes, and the idea behind this film, how various directors each evoke Paris, is very attractive to me. But it is difficult to understand what links each of these vignettes to Paris in any way, and more importantly, it is virtually impossible to have any sort of connection to the characters, who are presented in snippets that are much too short. The best of the bunch: Walter Salles's was well-done but very obvious; the worst: Gus Van Sant absolutely shit the bed on this one, sorry to say.

Restau 99
M Cafe de Chaya
Macrobiotic food. Hip, communal tables. I had a tofu bibimbap. It was fine, but the sauce was overwhelming and it was sad to have only the pickled sides instead of all the yummyness.