Great Expectations

There's a girl that works in the same building as me, has done since just a few days less than I have, so nearly six years. For these six years, she has been in love with me. Now, I know that's a little presumptuous, I'm sure it's not been exactly that time, nor has it been every day, she's been in at least one serious, house-sharing relationship in that time.

But every couple of months in the last two years, we've clashed over our respective feelings. She has far too many of these feelings for me and I don't really have any for her. However, as someone who doesn't normally get these kinds of feelings from anyone, I have in the past succumbed in small ways to her advances, and this tends to make things worse. Much, much worse.

I can't blame her... well, maybe I can. Maybe I do. But she can't really help how she feels, despite the fact that I just can't return those feelings. And why can't I? Why can't I just shrug and think, if it's there, don't sniff at it. Because I just can't. Because deep down and higher up, I'm just not that interested in her. She kinda scares me, to be honest.

In the most recent months (right when I really, really didn't need it), this has been getting very intense. I made a mistake and got too close and I've been punished for it. A long time ago I was so afraid of her that I considered telling my boss that she was sexually harassing me at work, which would have been pretty accurate back then. Now it's, oddly, relationship drama, despite the fact that we don't have a relationship.

So what do I do?

I can't ignore her because she works in the same building as me. I can't just not talk to her because she won't let me. She chips and chips and doesn't let go with all her little message of concern and her essay length emails of why we should be together. I just can't take it anymore. She has a lot of expectations from me and I just can't live up to any of them, mainly beacuse I don't want to live up to any of them.

You wanna know why?

She didn't taste right.

THE DESCENDANTS.

I really got the feeling that George Clooney was trying to recapture the success of Up In The Air and that Alexander Payne was trying to recapture the success of Sideways, and that together they would try to make it all work together and come up with something new and yet reassuringly familiar.

It didn't work. As far as I was concerned this wasn't the career making performace of Clooney's career, as several other critics have been saying. That was, quite frankly, Up In The Air. It wasn't the crowning jewel in Payne's career. That was, quite frankly, Sideways. So it didn't work.

It wasn't bad, it was an okay story, but the pace of it was so slow, relaxed and typically Hawaiian that I don't think it actually went anywhere. The issues it tried to raise weren't all that life altering, no matter how serious the nature of the story. All in all, this wasn't a great movie.

Next time: J. Edgar.