A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES

For the first time in recent memory, I watched two movies tonight.

I got through three-quarters of Lost In Translation before leaving for Elf at the SUB theatre.

They are two wildly different movies, but share the common thread of being very good pieces of cinema. Bill Murray remains a favourite of mine. His string of recent of successes in more serious roles has given his career a new angle. It's hard to believe he used to sing the Star Wars theme in a ski lounge. Translation is a great looking film. Everything looks so clean so sterile in the movie, which only adds to what the main characters are feeling in Japan. Stupidly, I rented the full screen version of the film, so I wasn't able to see it in the correct aspect ratio. As a whole, the awards Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, and Sofia Coppola have won were much deserved.

Elf was a lot more heart-warming than I expected. It was very funny as I had predicted, but there was genuine heart to it that made it that much better. It's clear that Will Ferrell can carry a movie. Not bad for $3 at the SUB theatre and they didn't play any trailers too!

Alright, I have to finish marking an assignment.

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A MIGHTY WIND

So I'm expecting to watch a new Letterman tonight, when I see it's a re-run. That's odd since I know he's supposed to have a new show. Drew Barrymore is one of the guests since she's promoting her new 50 First Dates movie.

I go on-line to see if Dave has had another heart attack. Nope. Nothing. It starts me wondering. What happened?

Five minutes ago, I got my answer. Ouch!

Here's another interesting article. Fourteen to twenty-three times a day... 1 to 3 pints of it. That's a lot.

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SCREW IT

I've been thinking about how to do the last question on this assignment for over a day. It's the last question of a really long assignment.

I've put some thought into, I have a few ideas, but it's nothing concrete. In my early days, I'd probably be really bothered that I don't know how to do it. As I grow older though, I'm able to see more of the big picture.

Did I put a reasonable enough effort into answering this question? Sure. Is it really worth my time to continue to bang my head against the wall, for one question out of many assignments during the term? No, of course not.

Sometimes, you've just got to say screw it, I'm running out of time and effort, and just put down what you think is the right answer. It may or may not be the right answer, but at this point there's nothing more I can do about it. The damn thing is due tomorrow.

So, here's to you question number five, I send thee to hell.

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CORN BEEF PATE



Around midnight, I was really hungry. I was out of food and I didn't want to go get some. I remembered I had a can of corned beef left, but no bread to make a sandwich. I had some crackers though.

After adding a hot frying pan and some butter into the mix, I had myself a nice spread. It wasn't bad at all.

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CROSS PROMOTION

I'm ass-deep in a sucky assignment, so I don't have time for the usual Nobel-winning entries you've been accostomed to. As such, I direct you towards some of the sites I read for fun.

www.sarahkidd.com - Ok, maybe that isn't the address, but it looks cool. Sarah is a visiting post-doc from Australia staying here at SJC. She's also a pretty cool lady and the youngest Ph.D that I know.

www.carolynbee.com - Again, that's not the real address, but just click on the link. Carolyn is also another SJC resident. Of all the people I know from Arizona, she's been the most entertaining.

www.natebomb.com - Nate trained me for my first project at EA. We became good friends. He's in Japan now. Follow his exploits there.

www.ryannordman.com - Ryan and I met at EA on NHL 2001 for PSX. We share a common love for pho.

Ok, back to sucky assignment.

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HEY I'M UP LATE!

From about age 16 and on, I've always liked to stay up late. If you're around me for any length of time, you'll find that out very soon.

I used to go to bed at a reasonable hour, back when I was about 14 or younger, I remember some Friday nights I would have trouble staying awake for the entire Letterman show. Back then he was on at 12:30am. I was also in school much longer during the day. Perhaps that tired me out.

During the summers, I'd stay up really late. Each successive year, I'd stay up later and later. By the time I left high school, I'd be pushing the 2am or 3am barrier. I've never thought about why I liked to go to bed so late. I guess it's partly biological and partly social. I'm pretty sure something in my brain is telling me not to feel tired late at night. From a social standpoint, I like being awake at these late hours. It almost feels like the entire world is in bed, but I'm awake and conscious, when everyone else is dreaming.

I've read that teenagers are more apt to staying up late because of biological reasons, but they outgrow that in their 20s. I'm not sure if that will ever happen to me.

I know that I can't work it out of my system. For eleven months, I worked at this horrible place for my first engineering job out of undergrad. I woke up "early" every weekday and went into work around 9:30am. You'd think that after eleven months, my body would maybe become a little more prone to going to bed earlier. After my last day of work after quitting, I stayed up until 2am that night and woke up at 10am the next day. It was the same thing for weeks afterwards.

There's sometimes a latent belief that people who sleep in are lazy. That's because when most people are up in the mornings, they think anyone who is sleeping must not be pulling their weight. Of course, you rarely hear people chatising someone for going to bed early.

Being a night owl in society is very hard. Appointments, classes, meetings, you name it, no one thinks twice about scheduling these things at 7am, 8am, 9am. My neighbour down the hall had a physio appointment at 7am last week. No one would question the physio for doing that. He's just an early riser, a go-getter who gets the worm. What if he had appointments at midnight though? Oh no, he can't do that. That's ridiculous, no one would go then, because everyone would be in bed. I'd go at midnight, but then I below to a very small segment of society.

I've been doing some surfing and I found an interesting site on the Web. It's called the Nocturnal Society. It's a cheezy Geocities site, but it has an interesting theory in their "manifesto". They theorize that in the evolution of human beings, a small percentage of people are genetically prone to staying up late. Why? To tend the fires that humans used to sleep next to. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but they say that early man relied on fire throughout the night for warmth and to keep away predators. If the entire group of people all went to sleep it's possible the fire could go out. Over some unknown length of time, evolution made sure that some people would be predisposed to staying up late.

It's a good theory, but I'd like to see real proof, perhaps a "night owl gene" of some sort.

Well, I better go do some marking. It's been only an ok day in terms of productivity. Here's to the rest of the night and another log on the fire!

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