The Importance of Being Idle

No stunt doubles, no computer images, no strings attached

Well the day didn't get significantly better, but at least it didn't get worse.
I conquered my apathy and went grocery shopping, which turned out to be perfectly straight-forward. I don't know if this happens to everybody, but sometimes, particularly in difficult situations like this, everyday things, particularly things which involve interaction with the outside world, seem to take on an almost Herculean level of difficulty. I don't really know what that's about, probably a small degree of depression/paranoia, but no matter how I feel on the inside, it has become clear to me that nobody else knows. Its taken me a long time to realise that they can't just look at me and SEE how I'm feeling, so that I can actually behave with the pretense of normality, and no-one is any the wiser.
Then I got an e-mail from my (now completely) ex-wife to tell me that our divorce was finalised and that we were now single people once more. This was happy.
Then I watched Ong Bak, an absolutely mental Thai martial arts movie starring the incredible Tony Jaa. Seriously, the things this guy can do, and does do (the movies' tag line is "No stunt doubles, no computer images, no strings attached") are absolutely mind-boggling, and the film-makers frequently use double and even triple takes (and slow motion) so you can fully appreciate the complexity and intricacy of the moves. Plus the fights are insanely brutal. If you like martial arts movies (and I don't mean you saw 'Hero' or 'Crouching Tiger', I mean hardcore fighting) then you HAVE to see this. For ordinary folk, well I'd recommend seeing it anyway, but just be aware that your mileage may vary - there's no plot or characters or real acting to speak of, just enough to hang the incredible stunt work on.
Not long till the last ever Star Wars movie now, and all the related paraphenalia is starting to turn up in the shops: the novelisation (which we will dutifully ignore), and the far more exciting 'making of' and 'art of' books. I'll admit that I stood and geeked at these for quite a while today, and it was only with a quite tremendous effort of will that I didn't buy them right then and there. Two things stopped me; firstly that I don't think I deserve these things, and secondly and most importantly that a new Star Wars movie is a rare and wonderful thing, and I like to be as unaware as possible of whats going to happen. Of course that's particularly difficult with this one, cos we know lots of things that HAVE to happen, and a few things I personally want to happen (I want to see Anakin slaughter the Younglings, for instance) and there is only a limited amount of screen time available, so I want to preserve as many surprises as I possibly can.
There are other things I could and should talk about; the beginning of the Papal Conclave, the end of the Rover Group due to horrific mis-management, and of course the ever present threat of the General Election. But I can't be bothered, so you'll just have to make up your own rants on these things.
What I will suggest is that you look up your home town on wikipedia, and marvel at the amount of knowledge there appears to be about absolutely everything. To get you started, here's the town where I was born, and here's the place I live now. Enjoy!

posted by BadMonkey @ 8:27 PM