Nobody else has updated, so I guess I will.

I've seen Equilibrium three times now. If I keep it up at this rate I'll have to dose tomorrow night at 10:20... just kidding. I find myself relating a bit too much to the Cleric of late, a presently convenient device for analyzing the purpose of the movie. I still can't figure out exactly why it was so good. I leave the theatre feeling fulfilled but I always want to see it again after the fact. Well, less so this time than last, mainly because I got what I needed to out of the costume design. I'm such a geek, I'm already planning my intensely elaborate costume for next halloween. This time, at least, I know I'll be able to play the part.

What else... the writing of my story has fallen temporarily to the back burner once again. I had something great, and then I lost it, and whenever that happens the effect is too devastating to continue. You play a video game for a few hours, then die without saving and have to start over again. You know the level and how to avoid death this time, but you still can't make yourself do it, so you go find something else to do until you aren't frustrated over the lost progress anymore. The difference is surprisingly little; in both cases I am upset because the time I spent was absolutely wasted, but consoled by the fact that the process kept me amused for the time. If I come up with the same idea again, will I remember? Will I keep thinking that I had lost an even better idea long ago and now settled? Eh, writing is a pain.

Thursday, I will hopefully be in Gainesville, rotting my brain (as though it hasn't atrophied enough lately). The fortunate side effect of saving my ass for my French exam has been that it's slowly returning to where, I think, it might once have been. It couldn't have been better timing. Forgive me while I fetch my hat... Seriously though, I'd forgotten how easy it is to stuff my problems into a shoe box, wrap them in packaging tape, and bury them in the back yard of my mind. The benefits... a resurgence of oft-feigned vitality and a well-timed revelation. The price... I pay it gladly.

I wish I could write everything I was thinking in the side margins of some of these posts. Hell, I wish I could record what I'm thinking in the side margins of life. I'd want to compare notes with others. I just realized how much work used to go in to crafting a post like this. I use the term crafting purposefully, not just to avoid repetition. I shape and mold my writing, as best I can, to convey exactly the effect I desire, not necessarily just the objective information. Ironically enough, my diary has become the blank mental commentary that I'm talking about, the place where I truly answer the question "why". It seems silly to write; it's always as though I'm making a report to a superior, explaining that my every action had a purpose for which I may or may not be held accountable. Still, I am reminded when I read it that I had a very valid and purposeful reason for every decision that was made conscious of my own devices. It takes me an hour to write a post like this because I do not make mistakes.

*sigh*

So three hours of sleep last night, what's up with that, eh? It's Wednesday, I believe. Call me if you're bored.

I'm burning some time until P-bomb calls me back about the flick.

So an emotional time bomb exploded in my face again half an hour before my French exam. Don't think that wasn't fun. On the bright side, I saw Equilibrium that night, and it was a really cool movie.

I'll probably be seeing it again tonight if Phil ever calls back.

Deja vu.

So I'm learning to play guitar again, slowly, since my singing ability hinges too strongly on my ability to suppress tension and I'm finding myself overflowing in that particular area. It's kinda fun, and I'm better at it than I remember which is always nice.

Funny thing is, I'm almost always better at something the first time around, or the first time back. I could go to Rocky's five nights in a row and have no luck at a particular song, but when I stumble in after a week off with three hours of sleep and no food that day, I'll see something I hadn't seen before, play a part that much better. And then, of course, I'll collapse, or sit there sucking wind and turning green for fifteen minutes while Brad makes fun of me.

That itself is an interesting topic. Jackie said once that most people are better at climbing a route the first time they tackle it. Do we rise to an unknown challenge more strongly than to that which is familiar to us? In other words, do we go all out when we don't know what we're up against but hold out when we know what to expect? If so, by overcoming that aspect of ourselves we could take great strides towards overcoming other obstacles. If not, then we must accept beginner's luck as a legitimate phenomenon.

If one is not so inclined as to believe in luck, then we can attribute beginner's luck to a temporary superiority of instinct over intellect. If a person with no exposure to a given activity can outperform a person with a moderate degree of exposure, then there must be some substance to the concept, with exceptions. A direct competition between two parties is not applicable. I won't go through the vast discussion on "playing to one's opponent", but I can state with confidence that an expert will not in many cases play to the very best of his abilities when up against a novice, while a novice in the same case will strive to do his or her very best. Rather, in blind competitions, or in such contests where the enemy is the environment or the self, for the novice player to succeed there must be some innate instinctual advantage, or some dumb random luck.

Before proceeding, I must put forth that for every success among novices, could there not be a failure of equal measure? A person behaving randomly, or behaving intuitively based on so little skill that the end result is near random, could do well almost as often in many contests as poorly, and I doubt many stories are told of people who stepped up to the plate for the very first time and sucked it.

So I broke down and called Kevin, and it looks like we're seeing the movie at 10:20 at Winter Park Village... again. Peace and love, punks.