Saturday, September 25, 2004
Uncharacteristic behaviour
I'm blogging 2 days in a row. Amazing. You can tell that I'm bored (though I try not to use that word: it reeks of aimlessness and idleness and other unspeakable sins I try not to admit to myself). Of course there are things to do (aren't there always?), but I've banished them to the edge of my consciousness and silenced my sense of personal responsibility so that I can focus on enjoying my current state of boredom. Amazing, really. Maybe it's a prelim aftershock. Maybe it's some sort of native state, minus external pressures.
Has anyone tried an alcohol-caffeine cocktail masquerading as an 'energy drink'? There was one night when my mother shoved an entire bottle at me and told me to finish it up. Someone had informed her that it was a cure for insomnia. Naturally, I couldn't believe my ears. After all, it went against everything I knew about caffeine and its physiological effects. I warned her - very strongly - against drinking that unholy union of vodka and caffeine
(and lots of sugar to mask the bitterness of alcohol)
. She heeded my warning - which was how I ended up with the duty of finishing the bottle, since it cost quite a bit and it wouldn't do to waste good money.
Anyway, the alcohol takes effect first. The ears turn red, the flush spreads to the rest of your face, and you start feeling extremely warm. Then the caffeine kicks in. I'd fancied myself to have built up a decent level of tolerance, but I hadn't reckoned with the monstrous caffeine concentration of that thing. Either that or the combination of alcohol and caffeine did strange things. And I'm not just talking about central nervous system stimulation, which you can easily get with common coffee. The level of cardiac stimulation went off my charts: heart rate and force of contraction scared me half to death. Slow, regular breathing became tricky. Vision turned funny - think surroundings started to throb a bit, get a little wavy. In the end I felt so wobbly and sick that I decided to sleep it off.
So, in a way, it
was an insomnia cure - although I'd rather brave sleeplessness. Out of curiosity, I'd have liked to see what it would have done to my mother if I hadn't intervened. She's got an entirely different set of tolerance thresholds, for a very different class of pharmaceuticals.
I've catalogued my movie collection, complete with MDA ratings, just to get a kick out of seeing how many mature films I have. After gawking at the tidy collection of reds, blues and greens on MS Word, I proceed to identify the scenes in each movie that justify the rating. Sometimes it takes a bit of effort. Take for example
Starsky and Hutch, ostensibly a buddy-cop comedy - a silly but harmless flick. I was floored when I saw the M18 label and tried - without success - to find the usual accompanying 'consumer advisory' sticker that helpfully summarises the objectionable aspects of the film ('war violence', 'sexual references', 'intimate scene', 'coarse language' etc.).
Sure, there were certain scenes with disturbing undertones/overtones/innuendo and suchlike, but they were played for laughs. Guess MDA wasn't amused (they probably flipped out during the '2 dragons' scene). My sister and I certainly were. Entertainment is served best with a slight hint of scandal. It keeps fangirls excited.
Meanwhile, the slow process of resubmission by distributors and re-rating by MDA continues. I visit Laser Flair regularly to take notes, hoping, for example, to see
Interview with the Vampire in the stores uncut. The clumsily-truncated PG version available here is exasperating and it's too beautiful a film to own as a mere DivX file. The cuts in
Gattaca are even more ridiculous. For years I had to endure that blip in Eugene's wonderful rant and that annoying skip over Vincent's beach scrubbing scene, so this year I finally downloaded the full version and watched the aforementioned scenes to my satisfaction. Broadband is indeed a miracle.
words were spilled on Saturday, September 25, 2004
