I Can Quit Anytime I Want, or Media Overload

I feel overwhelmed with things to say here, so I'll probably end up saying very little and trite information at that. On Friday there was a lot of snow here, so much that my friends decided not to visit me for dinner and a movie. In the absence of my planned activity, I laid in bed for eight hours or so (I was planning on taking a nap) and watched tv.

Since school started, I feel as though I've been inundated with things to watch. One friend lent me season one of Arrested Development and another season one of Gilmore Girls. In addition, my online rental has sent me (albeit dreadfully low in my queue) the first disc of Profit. So I bounced between these three shows for the entire day. Arrested Development is hilarious in a bizarre way that I'm loving. I'm not yet in love with Gilmore Girls though I'm enjoying it enough to keep watching (like Mt. Everest, the discs must watched because they are there). Profit is disturbing and creepy in a special the-protagonist-is-a-villainous-sociopath sort of way that was too much for mainstream audiences in the mid-90s (heck, it probably still is too much for most mainstream audiences, though not you, gentle reader).

On Saturday, Friday's activities were able to be renewed. We went to see Brokeback Mountain (perhaps slight spoilers ahead). There were some raw scenes that I was uncomfortable watching, but overall, it was interesting, I guess. More interesting however was the not-so-favorable-assessment of the film by my gay friend, who convincingly noted that the film isn't really progressive. Literature/Film often has homosexual characters who are 'punished', similar to the fates of two men in this film. Also, the film seems to be playing to unrealistic fantasies (like most media).

I feel a little bad that my money went to that film, and not End of the Spear a film about Jim Elliot and Nate Saint who were killed on a missionary trip to Ecuador, which my parents are currently seeing. I hadn't really heard of the film until today, and I wasn't prepared to see another film in the theatre so soon.

Well, hopefully, I'll be able to go soon and my students will appreciate the powerpoint on "What You (Should) Already Know About Writing" that I've put together in the meantime.