Ahh, at last, the madness is over, now I have three weeks or so to revel in the beauty of holidays. Three weeks characterized by spending time wondering how to spend time, only to at the end feel a deep sense of remorse and regret, and a loathing of having to go back to the dreaded institution for another semester.

Spider-Man 2 is surprisingly good. I hadn't seen the first movie because I had this idea that it was a typical Hollywood blockbuster film, totally catering for the masses (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that I don't find them particularly interesting). So when I heard that there was a sequel, my initial reaction was that they were trying to squeeze as much money as they can off the concept.

But whaddaya know, it's not some lightweight action/adventure flick, it actually has some depth to it. I saw it mentioned on the net that we can all identify with Peter Parker, and I would tend to agree. The conflict between the choice of a normal life he's always wanted with Mary-Jane and the life of a super-hero who saves the world at the grave cost of forgoing the life he has wanted was done quite well, it really creates this not-so-bright undercurrent that is quite refreshing to see - the hero is fundamentally human, and is far from impervious to even the most basic problems and conflicts we all have.

Gah, I don't like sounding pretentious, and I always do sound pretentious in movie reviews, so I'll stop there.

Another Friday, another Cowboy Bebop, and another mild disappointment. I don't know, it just doesn't click for me, I can't really see why it's all that. Once again, the style is there, but there's no..substance. Why do I keep watching it then, you ask? I don't honestly know, because I want to like it for some reason. On the plus side, the opening music has to be the best opening music for a TV show ever!

Hmm I have been meaning to read books on Lisp and Python, and to revamp my music catalogue program, and of course to redo entirely my tetris/pacman game (whichever I have time for). It's a shame that I never seem to get time anymore during semester to do these things, because in the holidays I end up doing a little bit of each (and that's the best case), and then I keep piling things up ad nauseum. I mean I must've first gotten the Lisp book, what, a year ago!? I have to figure something out, because this just ain't cutting it. I want to do these things, but I can't! Stupid epsilon-delta proofs.

Another characteristic of the holidays is going and buying music CDs. Lots and lots of music CDs. I swear, it's a disease or something, I can't control myself once I start. I have to limit myself from now on though, over the summer break I got far too many, which was probably because I was so bored. Is this materialistic? I suppose it depends on the precise definition of materialism, but it's irrelevant really, because the fundamental issue is that I should not be spending so much on anything. It's all well and good to argue that by only going on a spree a few times a year it's not that bad, but you can't do nothing all year and then spend $10,000 and say "Oh it's ok, I've been good all year"!

It's good that I have this blog, because now my conscience and rational side can express itself in a more concrete form. At the same time, so does my irrational side - after all, I think it was the one that created this blog in the first place!