Yesterday, my roommate told me that he was planning on moving out by the end of November. When he told me that, I wanted to jump up and down with glee! But I played it cool and just said it was okay with me. Yippe!
Happy, happy, joy, joy!
Work was okay today. Dominic and Chris started work, and I helped out with their orientation and with setting up their accounts. Didn't get to go home to check on Sheddy von Stinkelstein at lunch, but I wasn't too worried because I kept checking on him throughout the day via webcam. He pretty much just slept, yawned, changed positions, and slept some more.
News outlets are reporting that 9 or 10 people got shot last night during the Halloween celebration in the Castro. I knew there was a reason that I've never gone up there for Halloween. It's just not a good combination: 200,000 people, all of whom are drunk? Uh, no, thanks.
It started to drizzle a little bit this evening. Thankfully the dog did his business right away, so we didn't get wet while we were out.
Nothing else to report, really. I think I'm gonna get in bed early tonight and continue reading Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs. I'm determined to finish the book before the movie disappears from the theaters.
Oh, wait, that reminds me...
Last Sunday I went to the movies to see The Bridge, the documentary about people who commit suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a bit of a controversial film, because it shows real people jumping off the bridge to their deaths. The filmmakers lied to the bridge authority about what they wanted to film, and didn't tell the agency that the documentary was about suicide.
It was a good film. I was a bit startled because the first death scene came within minutes of opening credits. It wasn't sensationalistic in the least, though. It focused mainly on interviews with the people who were left behind - family members and friends of the people who jumped. The interviews were interspersed with footage of the people in their final moments.
You get an idea of the turmoil in these people's lives and some sense of what drove them to kill themselves. Most of them were clinically depressed or schizophrenic. The scenes where people jump in full view of other people walking on the bridge are kind of jarring. You wonder about what seeing something like that would do to a person.
The most interesting thing was seeing how the suicides affected the people left behind. From the interviews, you see a whole range of reactions - from sadness, to resignation, to anger, and to peace.
One of the highlights was the interview with a young man who jumped and survived. He said that the minute he let go of the handrail he realized that he didn't want to die. Somehow, during the 7-second fall, he was able to flip his body so that he landed bottom-first. He shattered a whole bunch of bones but lived. That experience gave him the determination to do his best to manage his schizophrenia. Hearing him speak made me wonder just how many people regret jumping at the last second.
The film suffered from poor picture quality. I think that the filmmakers used cheap cameras, because the wide-angle shots suffered from poor resolution. The awesome views of the bridge, with the fog-shrouded Marin Headlands in the background, came out less-than-spectacular because of the poor picture quality.
Shots of the city on nice sunny days came out better. The juxtaposition of the "view shots" and the "death shots" made for a great metaphor. All around the city people are living their lives, having fun, while somewhere, someone is suffering alone, contemplating suicide.
All in all, I would recommend the film. At the very least you'll be shocked at just how easy it is to kill yourself on the Golden Gate. Not a single person they showed jumping had a difficult time going over the guardrail to their deaths.