I caught Once Upon a Time in Mexico last night with my favorite Nordic Stud, and most of the reviews you’ll see at RT are more or less on target. The plot is a big, bloody mess, but not to the point that the movie’s not entertaining in spite of itself. It’s silly, but its two predecessors were silly in the same way - and they didn’t even have Johnny Depp, still looking better than anyone in his forties has any right to look and with more talent in his gaping eye sockets than most people have in all of their orifices combined. He’s perfect for his role, of course, but he’s perfect for nearly any role in which he ends up. Good old Antonio plays good old Antonio, and he does what he’s supposed to do. And Willem Dafoe never fails to remind me of why it is that I like him so much. (And, fantastically, the slutty mariachi dude who had me thinking “Gosh, that slutty mariachi dude looks a lot like Enrique Iglesias after a haircut” turns out to be, in fact, Enrique Iglesias.)

If I may go off on a sort of Johnny Depp fangirl tangent for just a moment, it seems to me that in most of his recent roles, I pick up traces of Raol Duke, and it’s always great. It was more obvious in Pirates than in Mexico, of course, but perceptible nonetheless.

Remember when I indicated that I liked FFTA? Well, I mean, I do like it. But pretend I didn’t say anything about it at all, because I can’t be held responsible for those of you who may unwittingly allow your weekends to be swallowed whole by the GBA’s very own version of crack. I think I probably compared Pokémon Ruby to a viciously addictive drug at one point or another as well, but that’s entirely different: I fully expected to pour hours and hours into a Pokémon game, being the Pikaphile that I am, but I don’t even like most Final Fantasy games. Not the sort of middling-to-recent ones, anyway. I loved FF for NES, and I have to admit that FFX isn’t half bad, but if you’d told me a week ago that I’d spend hours playing FFTA this weekend - well. I wouldn’t have believed you, anyway.

So, yeah. I spent most of yesterday under the impression that I was suffering from a hangover - despite the really quite mild drinking in which I engaged on Friday - but it turns out that it’s either the return of the killer tofu or it’s some sort of stomach thing, becase I spent most of today similarly indisposed. Thankfully, when you’re a philosophy major, there’s not a lot of academic work that requires you to get out of bed (once the relevant books are at hand). And when you’re a philosophy major with a GBA and a stomach bug, all hopes of leaving the house are immediately shattered. But it hasn’t really been as bad as all that. Now that the weather is finally fucking autumnal, my apartment isn’t an entirely unpleasant place to be. In the summer, of course, it’s the Deathly Heat Trap From Hell (or whatever) and in the winter I have to sleep with three layers on, but right now it’s just about perfect.

I watched The Breakfast Club tonight, which is right up there with Dirty Dancing and Heathers when it comes to making me feel like I’m in sixth grade again. Still, I’m always disappointed with the whole Ally Sheedy makeover thing: she was so much cuter as the weird chick with the Robert Smith hair. The same thing has always irritated me about the end of Beetlejuice. I mean, the schoolgirl look is all well and good, but why do the strange girls always have to end up looking normal before there can be a happy ending?

Alas, poor Leisure Town. Where will I get my tales of the Jerking Pig now?

I’d tell you stories about my Java class (for which I thought there was a programming prereq, but judging by the questions that come up in lecture it doesn’t look like anyone else has taken it). I’d tell you stories about the horrible stomach ailment that resulted from some bad tofu last night. I’d tell you all these stories and more, my little buckeroos and buckerettes, except that I’ve just forgotten the oldest proverb of agf, so I have a lot of relacing to do.

I apologize for neglecting to post yesterday. Blame Chris. I apologize, too, for not adding anything to the sidebar links recently. (Blame him for that as well.) I’ve been playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on the train for the past few days, and it’s as addictive as I was promised it would be. The very beginning was as irritating as are the beginnings of most RPGs (although I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many cut scenes in a GBA game before, RPG or otherwise), but now that I’m past the God Damned Snowball Crap it’s all the sort of good clean monster-fighting fun I remember from, say, Final Fantasy (for NES). This sort of game, and others with the same sort of appeal (like Pokémon and Advance Wars), is what really excels when it comes to the GBA - stuff like Super Mario Advance and that horrible Powerpuff Girls game is all well and good, but side scrollers really don’t work as well as I would have expected when it comes to something to be played for twenty minutes on the train or whatever. And it’s not just because I prefer the genre in general - when it comes to PS2 or computer gaming, I’m more interested in things like fighters and racing games (and whatever the hell you’d call GTA).

I haven’t made a habit out of falling asleep during lectures since I first discovered No Doz back in freshman year, but this week I can’t seem to stay awake. I slept through Ancient yesterday, and dozed off among so many others in Java today that the class ended early due to lack of consciousness. And neither of those classes is particularly dull (well - I’ll refrain from comment on Ancient), I just haven’t been sleeping all that well lately. I suppose this, too, could be stress, although I don’t want to be one of those people who blames everything in the world on their busy, busy lives. Broken leg, you say? Tension. Your dog has developed an allergy to oxygen? Must be stress! An electrical fire left you with neither eyebrows nor an apartment? You’re working too hard!

It could be worse, I suppose - I could have perpetual gas caused by a tiny human fucking with my digestive system. But one of these nights I’d like to go home and actually get eight hours of sleep without waking up in a panic at 6am, having forgotten to read another chapter of something or other. Clearly, retail therapy is in order - maybe something along the lines of that new pair of boots I’ve been eyeing at T&V. My battered old 14-eyelet Docs from high school finally gave out (having survived torrential rain in Scotland, perpetual snow in Massachusetts, and the continued growth of my feet over five years). This leaves me with a total of two viable footwear options on any given day, and it seems clear that that’s just not enough.

As part of a continuing effort to Not Go Crazy, I’ve started playing a level or two of JGR for every hour or two that I read or grade or work on a freelance project. Yes, it’s a Dreamcast game - and an old one, even in Dreamcast terms, but until I manage to sufficiently rationalize that refurbished XBox to my own satisfaction, it’s the only crazy Japanese cel-shaded graffiti skating game I’ve got. (The recently-released GBA version has been brought to my attention, but the clips Chris and I saw on X-Play left me underwhelmed - it doesn’t look like it made the transition to the portable format any better than did Tony Hawk 2). It does work awfully well at soothing my poor abused brain after fifty pages of Plato (or whatever) - I seem to remember doing the same thing with SSX Tricky last semester with equally successful results. Only one question remains - where do I draw the line when determining what merits a JGR break? Grading thirty-something quizzes definitely counts, but does taking a shower? Of course it does.

I like being busy. I do, honestly - the months between getting laid off from my glorious bubble-era job in 2001 and going back to NYU in 2002 were awfully dull in retrospect (although at the time I would have called them “relaxing”). The best part about being busy is that I seem to accomplish more in a week than I used to in a month, which I suppose is because I have to, but it’s a nice feeling nonetheless. The worst part about being busy is that I’ve started getting these god-awful skull-splitting headaches - tension headaches, I’m told. And of course the only thing to do for tension headaches apart from gulping Advil in quantities that can’t be entirely healthy is to actually reduce one’s tension, which is easier said than done.

That said, though, I’m definitely digging this semester, as frantic as it is. My classes are (for the most part) challenging enough to be interesting, and after this semester I’ll have finished the philosophy major. Of course, I still have to write my senior thesis next semester - but that’s not quite the same thing as sitting through History of Ancient Philosophy twice a week. Next semester, given that I’ll have finished my major-required classes and I’ve been done with the core curriculum for a year, I’ve really only got to do the one remaining class for my CS minor, and the other three are completely up to me. I haven’t had any space for electives in a long time, although truth be told I’ll probably end up taking more philosophy just for the fun of it.

Of course, part of all this tension is the uncertainty about what I’m doing after graduation in the spring. I go back and forth on it with alarming frequency - I’m more or less set on going for my PhD at this point, but what I’m not at all sure about is whether or not I want to start it next fall. I feel like I need some sort of a break before I launch into another seven years (or so) of school, but at the same time I don’t think there’s any point to working at a job I’m not interested in as just sort of a placeholder. And who knows, maybe the summer is all I need to rest up for whatever’s next. But I certainly haven’t decided yet, although I’ll take the GRE within the next few weeks just to keep my options open either way.

Want more from the Montana Family Coalition? (You remember: “To me, that’s not a reality show about gay people. A really good reality show for gay people would be five gay men dying of AIDS.“) Kottke’s got just what you were looking for - a comment from Julie Millam herself. The entire thread’s here, if you’re interested - although I had to stop reading halfway through, as the kind of bullshit inflammatory non-research the MFC people (or their friends) keep quoting makes me inexpressibly furious. This is exactly the same sort of thing I had to put up with when anti-gay evangelical Christian parents would show up at all the events held by the GSA at my high school - although I’m completely aware of the futility of arguing with people who consider the Bible to be the final word on everything, the logician in me really can’t help it. Which is why I try to sit on my hands to keep from posting long, long replies whenever I read threads like this. Of course I could point out the absurdity of each and every one of these arguments - but it’s not like they’d listen if I did.

Chris and I have our Eddie Izzard tickets for next month, do you? I hope so, because I’m told the NYC shows are sold out. Of course, I’m sure there are other ways one could buy tickets. UK folk, however, should check Eddie’s site - the rest of the seats for the shows in Eastbourne (which will be filmed for the Sexie DVD) are set to go on sale soon. And really, how can you miss seeing an executive transvestite live and on stage - especially one that looks so good in fishnets?

This weekend looks like more of the same - now that the welcome-to-the-semester grace period is over, work is beginning to pile up as it inevitably does. I took a break before class today, however, to wander around the Toys R Us in Times Square. There’s something very satisfying about going to a truly enormous toy store when you’re old enough to buy your own toys. I admit that I didn’t leave without nabbing a big stuffed jaguar, and it’s entirely possible that I’ll go back for the even bigger panther: both would make excellent couch cushions, with a sort of an OS X theme as an added bonus.