Chaining A Wandering Mind

Procrastination is an infectious disease.

My goal for today was to wake up early (early-ish) and begin a full day of researching. The deadline is for this Tuesday and I still haven't started ANYTHING. The internet is a curse and a gift all wrapped in one. Like a candy-coated pill. With so many links and such information of course my mind was going to wander.

Recently a new friend of mine nudged me to watch Sherlock Holmes BBC. (Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman [Loved him in HGTTG]) I've been re-watching the episodes. What he didn't know of course was my latent obsession with the good ol' Baker Street sociopath. It wouldn't help of course that I have been patiently fucking waiting for the next installment for the movie version starring Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law and STEPHEN fucking FRY! (I'm a fan. End of.) Surely my excitement will take a physical form, fill this whole flat and slowly suffocate any organic aerobic functioning matter in the surrounding area.

And what stemmed from watching Sherlock Holmes? None other than a spark in my interest in Psychology. I wasted hours pouring over online texts on psychoanalysis, sociopaths, psychopaths, you name it. It's times like these that I wonder why I chose a media based degree. Surely I should have picked something that I spend most of my time obsessing over. Etymology, Anthropology, Psychology, Cosmology, Astrology. A lot of g's. Then I argue that that if I was studying my time wasting interests then it would suck all the colour out of it. Like painting an unchanging scene. Over and over and over...

It has been a reoccurring theme lately. I spend quite a lot of time wondering if I'm wasting my time with this degree. I sit and wonder. What will be the outcome? Will there be one at all? Maybe.

And here I am. 18 and already wishing to start it all over again.

Could This Be?

Finally we have lift-off! Internet now resides in my home. But I have to say, after a month without home-centered internet I was not as affected that I thought I would be. What with my Korean drama ''problem'', my YouTube surfing and other stumbleupon related business I thought I would hit internet withdrawal with a BAM to the psychosis... Now I'm not saying that this is a huge feat here. Again this is my mental storage dump. So on to the dumping!

Sitting on my bed with my laptop propped on an old Yamaha PSR-175 keyboard. Sipping a delicious concoction of brownie hot chocolate out of Jack Skellington's cranium. Some little quirks of my household. Without fail me and my flatmates will dirty all of our mugs in one day. One flatmate is a tea fiend (2 teabags + 5-6 spoons of sugar per tea. Not exaggerating here). The other likes her caffeine, hot chocolate and tea (of course). And me? I've been guzzling green tea, ginger and honey tea. When you enter our flat it will either small of rose incense, my lavender candle or curry. If you smell curry I'm probably not home. Mushrooms do not last at all in this house. The one window in the living room faces a brick wall. On the one window in the living room quotes from 'Fight Club', 'Absolutely Fabulous' and 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' are scribbled beside a gigantic doodle of a cat wearing a witch's hat and holding a ridiculously proportioned broom in one paw.

Movies I have watched lately include the oh-so-very mind fuck of Shutter Island directed by Michael Scorsese. DiCaprio sure likes to play in mind-playing movies. In this case he plays U.S. Marshal Edward ''Teddy'' Daniels who alongside his partner Chuck (Mark Rufallo) investigates a missing prisoner/patient from a mental institution for the criminally insane. 1954. The movie - like most movies these days - dragged on for a long time before climbing the highest peak of the roller coaster. (The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder). Scorsese likes to play with your perception. Little tricks, anagrams and omitted details that you would never really notice in the first two times watching the movie and on an empty bladder. One mind tease in particular. During the patient interrogation scene a woman fakes drinking water. She mimes drinking water out of her cupped hand. Walking nightmares, corrupted memories of Teddy's days of World War II. And of course that means that there are Nazi flashbacks. Visually chilling scenes of snow falling on iced bodies of men, women, parents, children. Mahler playing in the background.

I have to say though, does anyone notice how Ben Kingsley's accent changes from German to English? Or am I on a Shutter Island of my own?

Weather: Er... cold? It's midnight weather.
Disposition: Craving some Taeyang ambience

Shutter Island is an anagram of both "Truths and Lies" and "Truths / Denials".

Crazy Spacey

Kevin Spacey freaks me out. I can't deny it. It's his leering voice. His staring eyes. He's the ultimate villain character for me. Is this where the blurring between actor and character begins? If an actor plays the hero consecutively if you met him in real life will you think him any less than a hero? A shining beacon of bravery and unwavering goodness. And if they play the enemy over and over will you think them an asshole? Is this where some people cannot separate the actor from the 15ft tall alien character stretched on the movie screen? I know for a fact that my flatmate can't really take Leonardo DiCaprio seriously in any role post-2000. Which corresponds to Leo's transformation into adulthood. So the real reason she doesn't like Leo in any other role is because his pretty face in Romeo + Juliet and The Beach changed. Inevitably.

Back to Kevin.

In 1995 when Se7en was released Spacey insisted that his name should be unlisted in the beginning credits. And rightly so. The suspense for me was unsettling and when I heard his voice over the phone I couldn't help feel a shiver. He's the ultimate villain for me. How could he ever play the hero? It's just the way he lilts his words. Then again in American Beauty. OK. In this movie he bungee-jumps between pathetic loser father to sociopath to pedophile to complete zen master. The voice over of the movie is of course Kevin 'Creepy Voice' Spacey himself.  Shiver. Shiver. Shiver.

Am I alone here? Is Kevin Spacey creepy off screen and more so on screen?

For me the answer is yes, yes, yes holy fracking yes. 

Kevin Spacey. Creepy Mofo Extraordinaire.

Weather: WHY IS LONDON SO FUCKING BOILING???
Disposition: Debating if I should start sucking on ice cubes for sustenance...

Moving Picture Overload Complex

So for the past few days my flatmates have been suffering from Moving Picture Overload Complex. For the lack of internet we have been digesting movie after movie after movie after show after show after show.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Lars and the Real Girl
Nowhere Boy
(500) Days of Summer
Romeo and Juliet
The X-Files
Shutter Island
Rushmore
Black Books
Factory Girl
Movie
Show
Movie
I don't know why but I never get sick of watching the moving picture. Whether it be a TV series or a movie marathon I don't feel like giving up. Maybe it's from my summer training of watching series of K-Dramas. As said in my previous post there is a heavy tone of nudity in the past few movies. Were they even necessary for the progression of the movie? Maybe the selection we have at home just have a too much nipple frontal action...
Ones where 'suspending your disbelief' becomes just too difficult to do. Lars and the Real Girl. While it was an entertaining movie I just couldn't help scoffing at the screen. Ryan Gosling's character Lars begins an unorthodox relationship with a sex doll. Don't worry. Throughout the movie Lars doesn't actually test if the life-like plastic woman really does what she says on the box. If anything his character makes an object of  lesser sense into something completely innocent. Into just a companion of conversation. The town-folk people are all exposed to Lars' new ''girlfriend'' and after a few shifting eyes and not enough hesitancy they accept the girlfriend. Inviting her to Christmas parties, hospital children readings, church choir and on and on. She's made out of latex! LATEX!

Oh Hollywood. What ever goes through your mind?

Weather: I'm melting but wearing weather appropriate clothing this time.
Disposition: Internet deprived but not displaying withdrawal symptoms.