Crab cakes and Control

I'm loving authors that release their books for free on the internet using a Creative Commons license - I followed a link from another blog to the future of reputation, by Daniel J. Solove, subtitled 'gossip, rumor, and privacy on the internet'. I've only had time to read one chapter but it seems very interesting so far - will probably be read by many people more important than myself, but I found it very accessible.

So big is my desire to not do uni work this afternoon is that I've also been reading a copy of the Nursing Times that the boyfriend left behind. Obviously I don't really know anything about nursing...but it's kind of intriguing to read something that's got nothing to do with me! There's an article on developments in communicating with patients using email and the internet though, which is more my thing. Think I might be looking up the full paper on the internet...

It's been a while since I went on about a book/film that I've just come across, so I thought I'd take a moment to plug the film Control. The official film website is here and the Wikipedia page (because you love it) is here. Wikipedia call it a 'biopic', which apparently is a film "that dramatizes the life of an actual person or people". If you haven't heard about it, it's about Ian Curtis' life, including his rise to fame in the band Joy Division and his eventual suicide when he was just 23. It's based on a book by Curtis' wife. We watched the film last night and I've got to say, I was blown away by it. I knew nothing at all about Joy Division, and even less about Ian Curtis, but it was very moving. It was in black and white, which was different for a start, and seemed to tell a very honest story. It drove me crazy in a way because he really doesn't behave like a very nice person in places, yet you get a sense of how messed up his head is and how he genuinely doesn't seem to be able to understand his own feelings and impulses at times. On top of all the psychological stuff, he ends up on a bunch of different drugs to treat epilepsy which in those days (he died in 1980) definitely involved a very hit-and-miss approach. I didn't know if I'd really enjoy the film, given that I never really watch films of that genre, but I was surprised at how much I got into it. Which is good, given that Ian Curtis is one of the boyfriend's heroes and therefore all talking had to be kept to a minimum during the film!!

So anyway, yeah, watch it if you can!

Not much else to report really...at the risk of making this entirely mundane, I'm experiencing a slight difficulty with a new pair of black jeans which, even after being washed, still get black on my hands when I touch them. (I wore them yesterday without washing them first, as instructed by the label, and had slightly grey legs by the end of it.) Serves me right for buying £10 jeans, I suppose!

Right, I'm actually going to go and do some work now. Though in case you're wondering, before I go, the 'crab cakes' in the title of this post refer to the very nice crab cakes I had in Prezzo the other night. I hadn't been there before but the food was gorgeous! Menus are here if you want to tutor me on how to pronounce the Italian! A big group of Italian blokes arrived there soon after us, presumably in Cardiff for the rugby, which I guess says something about the authenticity of the restaurant. Plus, from where I was sat I could giggle at the chef tossing pizza bases around in the air :)

Stereotyping?

Is it too much of a stereotype to assume that the reason the club I went to last night seemed to have a different, more chavvy (yes, I know, very un-PC of me, tut tut...) atmosphere was because there had been the Liverpool football match on and loads of people had come straight from watching it? I guess so, but my friend and I couldn't help wondering. the funny thing was that the music seemed to change to reflect it - less of the usual cheese/indie/alternative and more unrecognisable stuff that only facilitates dancing like a very repetitive drunk robot. Which, you know, I'm clearly not. But there you go.

I was mostly dropping by here to express my excitement about going to see the third Pirates of the Caribbean film tonight! I really didn't like the second as much as the first, but I still have high hopes. Though I hadn't realised that it's nearly 3 hours long, so I won't be leaving the cinema til after midnight, which'll be a bit weird.

I'll try to sit down and say a few words afterwards though...

* Update: It turns out that the Student Union nights are mostly not happening at the moment because of exams, which explains why the entire student population was trying to fit into the same one or two clubs last night. Which explains the music and the impression we got of the clientele - the union nights by and large subscribe to the idea that everyone present is hideously drunk and therefore won't notice the rubbish music that they're playing.

Put your red dress on

So, what, to get women to take up the opportunity of health screenings it is necessary to entice them with the chance to see pretty dresses? Apparently so.

Riiight.

But on a different note, the Fratellis album is good. I do love a good bit of indie. And kudos goes to Amazon as the CD arrived 4 days after I ordered it, which is unprecedented to my mind, especially considering our mediocre postal service in halls. Nice one.

On another random note - man, I need to work on my coherence! - I watched The Queen last night and was really impressed. I don't know that I would've understood all of the context and background stuff without one of my housemates commentating, but I guess inserting any more info into the actual film would've made it too documentary-like. I thought it portrayed Blair very well, and it got me thinking that 10 years is a very long time to keep working hard at that job. It was quite sad at points, though we were all debating the hype from the public over Diana's death. It's a hard one because she clearly did have a huge impact on the British people, but behind all her stoicism the Queen rightly pointed out that they were grieving for someone they didn't know, not someone that was the mother of their grandchildren. Some interesting points were raised, and I'd like to watch it again!

Feeling warm and Fuzzy

"I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a police officer... except for the summer of 1979, when I wanted to be Kermit The Frog."

So says Nicholas Angel in Hot Fuzz. Just went to see it in the Vue in Cardiff. This is always a weird experience as the cinema is inexplicably designed so that you have to go up 2 escalators to get to the ticket and popcorn bit, then it's a further escalator to get to the screen. There's nothing quite like a few minutes of single file standing in silence to bring you down after a good film!

It was...bizarre. By the end of the film I had decided that it was hilarious, but there was this whole section in the middle where I was thinking "hmm so now another person's been killed - old lady with gardening shears through her neck - and the comedy is where exactly?" But it definitely came through in the end. A big deal's been made of the fact that it's a 'British comedy' and all I can say is that it depicts British comedy as pretty twisted! But there is that traditional sense of irony in there, I suppose.

I don't want to give loads away about the plot but it's pretty much: very talented police officer gets reassigned to the sleepy village of Sandford...thinks nothing is going to happen...people start dying...the officer (named Nicholas Angel) ends up being almost solely responsible for getting things in order etc etc. Simon Pegg plays the whole dry humoured thing well, and writes an interesting article about the film in the Guardian here. One of my favourite scenes is a shoot-out in the local Somerfield. It doesn't get much more British than that!

To be honest, I only really started finding the film funny when it was quite a way through and one of the big plot points was unveiled. It was then that I realised just how ironic everything was. If you've seen the film and know why people were being killed, you'll understand me here. Until then I was feeling rather cheated because I'd heard it was a really good comedy but all I could see was people dying in rather gruesome ways. The fact that my medical student friends were wincing (or rather, hiding behind my shoulder) says something here! I'd recommend it though, if you like that certain painful kind of humour that we British seem to relish.

Mind you, I wouldn't mind having a watch of Charlotte's Web, too. I loved that book when I was a kid. I think I always reckoned I'd be quite good in the role of slightly strange little girl sat in the barn on her own, rescuing the runt of the litter and talking to the animals. I was a tiny baby - I think I empathised with the piglet, or something. Yeah, I was always a cool kid.

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On a different note, I bought this t-shirt today, from Threadless:

Pretty cool, huh? I was indulging my whimsical and mildly feminist side =] I really wanted the "Shakespeare hates your emo poems" t-shirt but it only comes in cream, and frankly I'm so pale that I avoid white/cream clothing like the plague. It just doesn't look right. Bit sad 'bout that though.

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Also, I was very excited today when I discovered that the latest issue of the Cardiff student magazine came out, seeing as I'd contributed to it! It was the 50th issue, so there's 50 different features in it to celebrate. One of them is the Digital section's list of 50 things in the technology world that have changed our lives. The first 10 were revealed today, and I was really pleased to find out that they've used 2 of my 3 contributions. I'm gonna post them here, so I can say that today I blogged about blogging.

Blogs: Whether you’ve experienced them or not, it looks like blogs are here to stay. Many in the communications world realise that they’ve revolutionised how we understand the media and find out about current events. They’ve provided insights into huge corporations: Robert Scoble, for instance, blogged while working at Microsoft. But they’ve also allowed millions of ‘normal’ people to express themselves and connect to like-minded others across the globe - even get married to them, apparently. Now how can that be a bad thing? Well, when your boring work colleague forces you to trawl through their travel blog, for a start…

Email: If you’re looking for dodgy prescription drugs, a fake diploma and a computer virus, look no further than your own email inbox. Filters may be getting more intelligent as time goes on but the fact is that you’re still getting spam. Email is a great tool for keeping in contact with friends, family and colleagues, but it’s hard to remember this when you check your emails on your mobile and spend a ridiculous amount of money downloading numbers of emails offering ‘V14GR4’ before seeing that no one you actually know has emailed you. Shame.

And my third suggestion, which may or may not be published at a later date -
Daytime TV: Once upon a time (1986 to be precise) it dawned on the people over at the BBC that it was time to start showing TV programmes all through the day, as they’d discovered a willing audience of the unemployed, the elderly, and the housewife. And so daytime TV was born – a tepid mix of talk shows, game shows, and the like. But love it or hate it, being a student makes it inevitable that you will one day succumb to its powers. Yes, you too will find yourself running to your room while shrieking “I’ve missed the start of Neighbours!” while your flatmates do the same.

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Eating: Those [insert expletive here] chocolate digestives
Drinking: Regular tea, for once
Listening to: Infinity on High - Fall Out Boy
About to: Flick through the Daily Mail and the Daily Express for hopeful articles for my coursework. Hoping not to encounter any nakedness in these.