I Smell Like Menthol

I am sick. My nose is runny, my head is stuffy, and I’m quickly developing a cough, which of course has the potential to become a sore throat, and then of course there’s the inevitable development downward into the nasty chest cold. It happens every year.

I hate being sick. Besides the fact that I feel bad physically, there’s something about the fatigue (or something) that makes me feel not-quite-here, disembodied somehow, lost in the meanderings of my own mind. Like I’m the main character of a really badly written novel. A stream-of-conscious one at that.

Also, I feel very guilty anytime I’m sick. If I’m coughing in class, sneezing all over the pharmacy counter, or forcing my poor roomate to listen to sniffling and nose-blowing all night long, I’ve effectively become a nuisance to pretty much everyone I come into contact with. (My roomie hasn’t complained yet, I just always feel a little paranoid about such things. I hate being an annoyance.) When I cancel plans with friends in order to stay home and rest, then I become an annoyance to the people I haven’t come into contact with. It’s a good thing most people are sweet and sympathetic toward me at such times, much more so than I have a tendency to be.

But anyway, that’s the story. Yesterday and today I’ve been trying to rest as much as possible, and that’s all very well, but I’m getting bored. I love having a chance to relax, but there’s only so much you can do before you start feeling a teeny bit restless. I’ve been passing the time by watching movies, and perhaps I’d be a little more content if I’d chosen better films. Haha. The one I watched yesterday was Nanny McPhee, a kid’s movie with Emma Thompson and Colin Firth. I’d been wanting to see it because I like those two actors, and it looked cute, but, enh. It wasn’t so great. Mary Poppins is the classic nanny-whips-kids-into-shape-and-then-after-she’s-no-longer-needed-mysteriously-disappears story. This one just feels like a cheesy repeat. And there aren't even any fun songs or chimney sweeps to liven it up! :( So, not terrible, but certainly unexceptional. The kids were adorable, though.

Then today I saw Underworld. I like sci-fi, and action, and all that, so it seemed like it’d be a good choice. And while the script definitely has some interesting possibilities, none of the really interesting things are fleshed out nearly enough, and at the same time there’s way more than enough fighting, shooting, slashing, etc. The special effects are straight from The Matrix, along with the general look in some ways. That would be okay, though, (a good idea can be used more than once) if they hadn’t way overdone it all. This is a common problem with action movies, it seems to me. You have to trust the story to be compelling enough to excite the viewers—if the story needs endless action sequences to be interesting, then it’s probably not a good story. (The same principle applies to songs. A good song should be good even when it’s just a guy playing his guitar—studio magic can be a nice enhancement, but the song has to be a good song to start with.) You should leave the audience wanting more, not less. And in the space where you’re not overwhelming us with shooting, etc., you should develop the characters to the point where we actually care whether or not they get shot. Action’s a bore when you don’t give rip about anyone involved.

So anyway, all this to say I’ve been a completely worthless bum this week. It hasn’t been all bad, but whatever. This is my griping post. :)