Hell Yes

All the apartment deals fell through, so I'm probably going to be commuting from home for the rest of the summer. This pretty much sucks all around. The gas costs will be lower than renting costs, but the wear and tear on the car and the inconvenience of a two and a half hour drive every day negates any monetary benefit. Damn it all.

The odd thing is, even this can't break the general good mood that I've had since just about the beginning of spring semester. I mean, I've been annoyed, or worried, or slightly sad, but I can't think of a single instance in the past five months where I've been really unhappy. The eternal optimist, that's me.

That brings up a point that I've been debating for some time now. Pretty much everywhere you turn nowadays, you hear someone say "be true to yourself" or "just be yourself" or something along those lines. I've been mulling over this for a bit now, and I've decided that it's actually not good advice. In fact, it is for the most part total bullshit. At least, for some (most? (all?)) people. I'm a perfect example. If I were to just "be myself" all the time, I would probably have very few, if any, friends. I'm an total asshole. Ask some of my closest and oldest friends (especially Welling), or people who have seen me extremely drunk. I can be a complete dick sometimes. That's actually me being true to myself, me saying the first thing that comes to my head. But the me that I try to be, and the me that I am most of the time, is a much nicer and more socially acceptable person. This doesn't mean that my niceness is insincere. What it means is that I have to think about being nice. I know that I ought to do good things. Just because doing them isn't my natural inclination doesn't mean that I'm a fake person when I do do them. The "ought" is just as important as the "is." I know that I ought to be a good person, so I try to be good. If I tried to be true to myself, I would be a bad person. So for anyone who is by nature a bad person (which, according to my particular religious beliefs, is everyone), "being yourself" is actually a very bad idea. Don't be true to yourself. Be true to what is right and good. You will sometimes fail, but occasionally failing at being good is better than succeeding all the time at being an asshole. Of course, now there are all sorts of questions to be asked about what really is "right" and "good." But that is outside the scope of this miniature rant. I'm done with it now.

I've also been thinking about secession of the southern states just before the Civil War, and whether or not they had legal grounds to do it. But I don't feel like typing that one up, mainly because I haven't decided where I stand on it. Of course, typing up the argument would probably clarify the issue in my mind, and lead me to a conclusion, but I simply don't feel like typing any more about philosophical matters.

12 Angry Men is a great movie. Really, I think that the 12 characters are prototypes for just about any other character in any other movie ever made. The blustering smartass, the hateful bigot, the thoughtful quiet type, etc. The screenplay was fantastic. I mean, the entire movie takes place in real time, without any flashbacks or anything, but you still have an incredibly clear picture of what happened the night of the murder, simply through the dialogue (and one diagram). Additionally, the cinematography is top-notch. You can feel the rising heat and temper in the room. I didn't notice it myself, but when it was mentioned to me later I realized that as the movie progresses, the camera moves lower and lower, which added to the tension as #3 got more and more furious. So yeah, go see it.

Touch of Evil was also very good. I don't have as much to say about it, because I just watched it and haven't had a chance to digest it yet, but I was impressed. Go see that too.

That's pretty much it.