As my holiday fast approaches, I've been banking on my person trait of distracting myself with anything I can get my hands on from an impending important event. It happens during assignments, exams, beginning and end of semesters etc. that I find I can write many blog posts without putting much effort into the actual thinking and writing process.

But do you think I could think or write anything for the past few months? Nope.

And I've had a think about this for the past couple of days, being irate at myself for mot being able to churn out a substantial post for quite some time, and I've realised I'm certainly not helping myself in any way to think of a topic. In the (roughly) three months I've had off, I've read one book (American Hoax), am part way through another that really should have only taken three days to read (some religious hokey-crap), watched two seasons of Desperate Housewives, the third season of Arrested Development, played Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth (a P.C. game, which I find is too easy now) and ... that's it.

No, seriously, that's all I've done that has been noteworthy and memorable. Every other hour has been consumed by either mindless employment or sitting staring at one of the following:

• My desktop background;
• My MSN list, trying to figure out who I dislike the most;
• Staring at an empty Blogger posting window or;
• Listening to my music as I do one of the above.

And I've spent three months doing that! God, how the hell have I managed to do that? I have absolutely no idea. At one point in my life I'd have said such boredom would have pushed me over the edge into some sort of crazed state. Now it's just ... normal. Rather strange, I think.

Wait, I thought of some movies I watched. I saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Now that's a movie that deserves more than a simple mentioning. I may return to it at a later date (who am I kidding, I probably won't), but what I'll say here is that it is the perfect, and I mean that, text for Extension 1 English for the Crime Fiction module. Perfect, except that it's rated MA. It's a classic send-up of the crime fiction genre. It's very funny, and very ... poignant. At least to a crime fiction fan.

I re-watched Gangs of New York, which wasn't as good as I remembered, though still quite good.

I also saw, for the second time, and the first time outside of a movie theatre, Troy. I learned much from this historical movie, primarily: Brad Pitt is a bad actor. A very bad actor.

I also saw, for the first time, All The President's Men, and while it suffers from the marks of the era it was made in, it still is something that should be shown, or spoken about, more often. Especially in this day and age. There are significant undertones in this film that I suspect would be very applicable in this day and age, what with C.I.A. wire-tapping, half-truths and secret agendas. Funnily enough, those three listed items both occurred in the movie and right now.

Girl, Interrupted turned out to be a very interesting movie in that it addresses issues of the same type, and in a very similar manner, raised by One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Obviously Cuckoo's Nest addresses some wider social issues under the guise of the personal struggle and journey of McMurphy, but, while looking at the personal plights of Randle and Susanna, that they are both misunderstood by the "norm" of society, while completely understood and, most importantly, accepted by the outcasts and the "misunderstood" (as deemed by the authority figures that are also in stark contrast and intentional opposition to the main characters) that they find themselves surrounded by within the institutes they arrive at, we see that problems (as perceived by the creators of both movies) have hardly been alleviated, with nearly twenty five years of (supposed) social evolution between Cuckoo's Nest and Interrupted.

I feel it worth mentioning about now a rare conversation I had with my father. Our favourite movies came up, and I said I had two different lists of favourite movies. Further in our talk, I was asked why I had two lists, and I said one was favourites and one was recognising the technical aspect of the film. I then made the remark that high school English had destroyed the full enjoyment of a movie for me. I had to explain why. The above few paragraphs probably explain why: I can't actually watch a movie these days without thinking about how Kiss Kiss Bang Bang would fit into the Crime Fiction module, or how Girl, Interrupted shares a surprisingly similar social critique as a movie made twenty five years before it.

Well, looks like I've managed to churn out a post longer than four lines, so I'm happy. I'll return to my comatose state of staring and nothingness now.

Thomas.