The Android's Conundrum

I found this image on PostSecret ages ago and saved it (I guess I was feeling particularly emo at the time). I stumbled upon it again today while looking for another saved image, and it made me think a lot about university and my future plans. When I saved the image (I’m thinking it was well over a year ago) I was struggling though my degree (either in my third year or just starting fourth year) and hating pretty much every minute of it. I loved learning, but the entire four years I spent at university were incredibly stressful for me, as a person who does not do well under pressure, and I often wished I could just drop out (or at least have a personality that allowed me to slack off a bit and be less concerned with doing well).

It’s now been six months since I finished my degree and I’m unemployed and bored out of my mind. Back in May I swore that I was done, that I’d never do another exam, or set foot in a lab again. Now I am starting to apply for Masters degrees and I’m really very jealous of all the people I know who graduated at the same time as me who are currently starting their PhDs, doing Masters courses or working in labs.

I think that as much as I found it difficult, I’m not really the kind of person who can just sit back and do nothing. I’d rather be challenging myself and working hard at something that I find interesting than doing nothing or worse doing something that I see no purpose in. Right now I want nothing more than to go back to studying and learning and thinking, and while I worry that I’ll end up hating it again or regretting the decision, the fact is that I really can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.

Ears!

The Men Who Stare At Goats was not a perfect film but nonetheless I found it to be very entertaining and funny. The film is about a journalist who goes to Iraq but ends up investigating the use of supposedly psychic soldiers by the US army. I liked the way that it told the story with a mixture of present day action, flash backs and narration, and I thought that all the actors (Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges and the always great George Clooney) had some excellent comedic roles here. It’s well worth watching as a rather unbelievable but highly entertaining comedy.

9 is a computer animated film which I described to several people as a post apocalyptic puppet movie. It’s very bleak for an animated film, given that it’s set in a post apocalyptic world after humans have been wiped out by machines, and the main characters in the film are the nine dolls or puppets that were created by a scientist to carry on humanity. It’s a great premise, and visually the film is really impressive, but the plot and the characters are rather predictable and simplistic, and I felt disappointed overall.

(via supersonicelectronic)

This interactive graphic thingy shows how not all groups have felt the recession equally. Apparently I’m in the 6.6% of white woman aged 15-24 with college degrees who are unemployed.

The Emperor’s New Groove is a film that I ordinarily wouldn’t have chosen to watch, but it was part of the movie club, so I watched it, and ended up being pleasantly surprised by it. It’s not like the typical Disney musical type film that I remember from when I was a kid, and it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought there was some nice sarcastic humour in there, and I also really liked the meta humour in it, such as where it broke the fourth wall, like the great joke where two groups chase each other by following dotted lines on a map. I’ve never really been into Disney films, and when it comes to animated movies in general I still think they don’t come close to the likes of Pixar or Studio Ghibli, but it was an enjoyable enough film.

I went to see Up again (this is the third time I’ve seen it) but this time I saw it in standard 2D rather than in 3D. As the movie ended I said, ‘I love everything about this film’, and that statement is absolutely true. Everything about the film, from the animation to the characters to the story to the music is just brilliant. Seeing it without the polarised 3D glasses really made the colours and textures more noticeable, and while I did like the depth added by the 3D, I’d now say that the 2D version was superior. I think that with further viewings, it may actually end up surpassing The Incredibles and Finding Nemo as my favourite Pixar film, and it’s definitely my favourite film of the year so far.

Pacman Om Nom Nom

The Chuckle Brothers have become somewhat of a recurring joke amongst my group of friends, and this is a drawing by one of them of Victorian-era Chuckle Brothers. It’s a joke you probably wouldn’t get unless you grew up watching their appalling television show, but I think it’s pretty awesome.

(Happy()Sad) Diagram