Monday, July 21, 2008

The Joy of Silliness

It hasn't been the best of weekends. The working week ended with a rather nasty shock regarding my role (still have a job, but possibly not the one I really wanted). And then I slept, all day Saturday, all day Sunday.

So in contrast to that, I thought I'd write about the joy of silliness, particularly silliness in films. Tonight on Film4 there is Dodgball, tomorrow Zoolander, and I've just bought Snakes on a Plane on Ebay. Let the silliness run free.

I know some people may dismiss these films, and I myself make a distinction between the "gross out" comedy of Dumb and Dumber, American Pie and the like, and films that are truly just plain silly. So if you haven't watched any of these films just by accident, or you dismissed them as "low culture" that was beneath you, I say look again, look a little lower, and be prepared to be silly and check out those mentioned above plus:

Dukes of Hazzard . Groundhog Day . The Man with Two Brains . Cry Baby . Bruce Almighty . Anchorman . Clerks & Clerks II (warning very silly, but very, very rude) . Little Nicky . Airplane . Spaceballs . Mars Attacks! . Princess Bride .... what are your favourite silly movies?

Monday, July 14, 2008

The way to end a crappy-ish day

... is with “buy one book get another half price” in WH Smith. We’re at the thin end of the month but I was blue so £12 for two paperbacks didn’t seem too much of a price to pay to cheer myself up. I bought “The Last Empress” and “Becoming Madame Mao” by Anchee Min. I read “Empress Orchid” during and after my trip to China, “The Last Empress” is the sequel. At the moment I like the window into the world feeling that these books give, taking me away from myself and putting me in a world that is so different to mine. When you’ve had a crappy-ish day, it’s where you need to be.

So why crappy-ish? Well it wasn’t full blown crappy, nothing bad happened, I was declared to have normal blood pressure for the first time in 6 months by my doctor, so that wasn’t bad. I had a comedy moment in a sandwich shop where my “cheddar and cucumber” baguette somehow became just cucumber – I didn’t realise this until I had walked down the street, and the baguette was still warm, so just cucumber was okay.

The crappy-ish came this afternoon in a meeting with one of the “middle managers” of the academic type at my University. You really couldn’t get much wetter than him, I had more enthusiasm out of my mother when I told her I wanted to do a PhD on witchcraft. After about 10 minutes I was looking around for the arsenic – for him or me, I wasn’t sure. He’s been in post now for about four years, no wonder his department is withering underneath him. He isn’t a bad man, just a man who shouldn’t be within five miles of a position which requires enthusiasm and leadership skills. He typifies what is worst about my University – slightly depressed, sleepy, totally unaware of so much of what happens in the Institution and the world around him.

So that meeting depressed me, it probably depressed him poor sod. But now I have two new books, a naughty bottle of Coca Cola, and I’m sitting on the train with my laptop out so I can look important, so life is getting better.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Wish I knew...

...why I'm still up at 23:06 despite having no sleep last night and feeling tired
...why I'm so scatter brain at the moment when I'm usually so organised about that sort of thing
...why I can't seem to keep my mouth shut at work
...why I just can't seem to let it lie
...why I haven't gotten around to telling anyone important that something I did at work made it into the national press (don't worry, in a good way)