I just had a stomach-groping feeling not long ago. I was paying my grosseries with three bills. The girl, however, said it was about ten euros less than I was supposed to give. I looked at the money again; I'm sometimes absent-minded so it's possible, especially since I had just handed in the wrong bonus card. But in my opinion and with my maths I was correct and I said it. She disagreed again. When we disagreed for the third time I was already worried: had I finally lost it? Luckily I hadn't. For some reason she was mistaken.
What I kept wondering on my way home was my own reaction. My first thought was that there must be something biologically wrong with my brain if I'm seeing a 10€ bill in a 5€ bill. It's just so weird that my first potential disease was the worst: "A brain tumor!" Why is it that when something's wrong people tend to assume the worst? Statistically brain tumors are rare and therefore a hallucination is unlikely to be caused by a tumor. In everything else we think according to Occam's razor -the less assumptions an explanation requires, the more likely it is to be the right explanation- but not with illnesses. Brain cancer, bening tumors, haematomas, strokes... it seems that being wrong just isn't an option.
Emphasising universities' life depending on capitalists' sponsoring. Making higher education something to sell. Making education submissive to capitalist rules of making money no matter what the quality of the education.
It seems that all of Kokoomus's attempts (and achievements) to undermine Finnish higher education system are thought stupid in SYL and in every other university than the one I attend to. It is so embarrasing to keep reading all the argumentations against these Kokkari "ideas" but my university's student union embraces all these ideas apparently without the slightest questioning. It makes me SO EMBARRASED to read about the rest of the higher education student unions in the whole fucking country to unite against these things and then read all the statements from the student union saying the exact opposite.
How the fuck do we have such a Kokoomus board running the whole fucking university short-sightedly but according to whatever whims the party comes up with? Do they have any brains of their own to THINK?!
Splenetic
What is it that normal people have?
Where do you find friends? Where do you find spouses?
How can you develop either type of relationship?
How can you understand what other people want or don't want, especially since people don't say it out loud or even say the exact opposite?
How do you understand what they mean?
To what extent can you form a relationship with the assumption that all they've just said might be not true but that the other is just pretending because of the stupid social rules that dictate so?
What are all those important questions you should ask right away so that you wouldn't waste time and energy for something that seems to be going fine and is then demolished by a fundamental characteristic in the other that is something you can't accept?
To what extent can you accept the other's faults?
What do you speak about with a stranger yo want to get to know better?
Why can't those topics be of some importance instead of something completely useless like the weather?
Why do people want to talk about these types of things anyway?
Who cares about a notion of weather you can see for yourself?
How do people meet others?
Techincally speaking the likelihood of encountering someone with similar objects of interest and morals are so small that it would require meeting so many others with utterly incompatible characteristics which in turn would take so much time and energy?
Is finding friends and spouses really worth all that trouble and if so, why?
Why do we have to have cravings for social relations, friends and lovers, when at the same time we have severe incababalities to have and sustain them in the first place?
What is it about people others look for?
If I'm supposed to tolerate others' faults, why are my faults so much worse than theirs?
Why do I even have to have those faults?
What kind of faults are people willing to tolerate better?
What can you talk about with strangers?
How can you ignore the pretentious and lying nature of that very conduct, small talk, that people seem to think is the only way to connect with others?
Why is that worth the lying?
The reason I managed to lock myself out of my own apartment was a film I watched earlier today. You may have heard of it: 'The Stoning of Soraya M.' It brought me in such a rage, hatred, sorrow, loathing, pity, will to kill that I actually forgot my keys. Considering leaving my keys in is a continuing phobia of sorts, it takes much for me to ignore that neurosis.
Anyway, back to the title. What I find unbelievable is what I just encountered. The movie is based on a book of the same name and I was going to get it. Emphasis on the word "was", since I can't find it anywhere. Absolutely nowhere I know to look. Not even AdLibris. That place is the one that has never failed me. It seemed that it made no difference whether it was a bestseller or some obscure and marginal book, it was there.
Until now, of course. Freidoune Sahebjam's book which only has its Danish translation listed. I tried BookPlus, Akateeminen and Suomalainen, I tried Huuto, BookMooch, all I could think of. The only place I found it was Amazon UK. But as I don't do credit cards... yeah, well, unless my sister has one and she orders it for me, I need to find some other place. Any suggestions? Is there some place I've missed?
As for the movie, watch it. That's all I'm capable of phrasing logically at the moment about it. Just watch it. Don't argue with me, watch it. Everyone. No excuses not to, for anyone.
Splenetic
I better enjoy this pizza VERY much. As it so happened, I locked myself out of my apartment. It costs 20 euros to get back in (no wonder at this hour). So: I better enjoy this cold Alla Pollo of mine.
Splenetic
2
After several months of waiting, it finally happened: Tim Burton's latest "Alice in Wonderland" came out. Of course I had to go and see it right away. In fact, twice in a row.
But, oh the disappointment! The movie was alright but it didn't live up to the hype. I did enjoy it as far as escapism went but unfortunately that's it. The bad side of being a genious like Tim Burton is that the bar is pretty fucking high for each movie; what would be amazing by any other director is now quite neutral in his own category. One specific thing that eats me is the use of clichés: I mean, seriously, why use Red Queen's repeated line when decapitating her champion in the final fight? I do think having the head bounce down the stairs to Red Queen's feet would have been fantastic without that patronising cliché that was used. Also, too bad Alan Rickman's face wasn't used in the CGI compilation of the caterpillar in the end.
On positive side, the Hatter was pretty interesting. Not as mad as I expected -although Depp does really nice job with the occasional glimpses of more plain insanity. Luckily we have the Hare! Now that's fantastic! He's hilarious.. "spoon!". While watching I kept wondering just exactly how some of the things were done, like expanding Bonham Carter's head like that. Perhaps the DVD release will have extras in it; I' probably going to get it so I can watch them and the movie in 2D.
Speaking of 2D... I will never again go see two 3D movies in a row. The system does indeed cause headache before long (to me the limit is about three hours).. the question is why? I'll have to see if I can find that out somewhere. Until then I suggest taking the glasses off: you can watch the film without them but the picture will be a bit odd, as if you're seeing in double. The 3D factor wasn't really used in the film much. In some occasions, most notably during the falling sequence (and the poor hedgehog!), it was interesting but most of the time it was just there. I am very much looking forward to seeing the film in the regular way. And I am so not going to go and watch "Avatar" after this. DVDs in waiting again...
Yes, you read the title right. I just finished watching the sixtha nd the final Saw movie. Now, some people mocked it by claiming it's torture porn. I assume that with this the aim is to propose that the sole purpose of Saw movies is to offer people an opportunity to watch others suffer, seriously suffer, both physically and psychologically (and morally in traps involving more than one person), not so much to offer an actual plausible story in which torture is just a way of carrying out the motivations of the characters.
I suppose it all boils down to one question: which came first, the storyline or the traps? I've watched all the extras the DVDs have to offer and it seems it's a bit of a borderline case. I mean, it similar to the cases (in film, music, art etc.) which are provocative and, in fact, require thinking. The first one to come to mind is the art exhibition by some Finnish female artist who criticised child porn through photographs of minors. Another example would be the movie "An American Crime", which has been accused of sensetionalising the events that actually took place, and being blurring about whether the movie is a drama that has violence or violence with celluloid drama. I think the Finnish phrase "mässäillä väkivallalla/seksillä" is quite sufficient.
So basically: is the controversal thing there for its own sake or does it serve a "higher", more abstract purpose? If you look at Saw movies separately, I suppose one could interpret them as torture porn. However, this in turn boils down to another question: the question whether a viewer perceives Jigsaw's logic of the person's crime matching the game they are chained into, so to speak. If the viewer disagrees, and thus is in need of an even higher purpose, they are more likely to view it as torture porn. But if the viewer does agree, they may be more likely to consider the given purpose sufficient and/or is willing to wait and see what the rest of the movie has to explain on the matter (as there always is a plot twist) or perhaps to the rest of the series (Saw VI did wrap up many loose ends). Of course this division isn't infallible as all Saw movies have several traps and thus propose numerous situation, each in which the viewer must take a stand to agree or disagree with Jigsaw's logic of punishment.
The whole concept of porn (torture or regular) is also slightly problematic as there are also different views on that. Is porn for porn's sake okay? I'm sure there are plenty of people more than willing to disagree but I think it is okay. There's an interesting to this attitude within the adult film community, too: (1) Do the writers/directors take porn for porn's sake without making a plot around it to make it perhaps more believable or to point out clearer that the film is indeed fiction? (2) Do the writers/directors make up a sloppy, superficial, a-few-cliché-lines dialogue as if to.. yeah, what? Does someone need that kind of dialogue and unbelievable plot? (3) Or, do the makers, regardless of the genre and therefore, by definition, having sex in it, make a nice and believable background story and characters for the actors (I'd like to refer all lesbian porn fans to Girlfriends Films but I'm pretty sure you're aware of the production already)? Personally, I'm in favour of numbers 1 and 3. Perhaps this is why I don't get passionate over the possibility of Saws as torture porn as they make the storyline plausible enough to fall to the third category.
Apparently there's no clean-cut answer for this question (and my essay writing has clearly left my brain on the academic writing mode...). Below is a link to a YouTuber called Nykytyne2 from whom I got the term torture porn.
Yliopiston lakko ensi viikolta peruttu. Kaikki tahot kuitenkin vain toistavat samaa (luultavasti etukäteen erittäin tarkasti) laadittua tiedotetta asiasta, joka on niin epämääräinen kuin olla ja voi työsopimuksen nykyisistä ehdoista. Palkkakehitys kyllä kuvataan, mutta entäs ne sunnuntain työmääräykset ilman työntekijältä kysymistä? Sairaustapaukset? Jotain epämääräistä jälkimmäisestä on kahden aiemman mallin yhdistämisestä, mutta älkää vain kertoko mikä se uusi malli on saatika mitä ne kaksi edellistä olivat!
Perkele kun voi olla saatanan vaikeaa julkaista suoraselkäistä viestiä, helvetti!!! Pitääkö tässä opiskelijan lähteä soittelemaan Sytyyn ja tenttaamaan niiltä tarkempia tietoja, kun eivät laita niitä itse tiedotteeseen mukaan?!
