Film star, driving a car, propping up the bar, it looks so easy,
Film star, propping up the bar, driving in a car tonight!
What to believe in it's impossible to say, what to believe in?
When they change your name, wash your brain, play the game again (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Suede, 'Film Star'

Saw The Minority Report last night. Was decent. Tom Cruise was average at best but saved by the minimal requirements of his role (or maybe he just made the requirements appear minimal). The plot was brilliant and twisty (or 'maddeningly convoluted' in the words of anti-intellectual, blinkered and moronic West Australian film reviewer Mark Naglazas) and based on an interesting premise. Film lost its tone a couple of times. In science fiction there is often understated humour of the 'people treating weirdness as normal' variety. Crucial to the success of this humour is that it be played perfectly deadpan - that the characters involved give no sign that they realise they're being watched. In several of the efforts this film made at this sort of humour, it was far too obviously knowing. Special effects were predictably excellent (barring the now-ubiquitous slight failure of the CG in certain scenes), prop design was consistent and stylish and made you crave the material wealth of the future (in the form of noiseless, emissionless sleek cars for example). If anything, the failure of the film was in its desire to be decide what it wanted to be: thinkpiece, love story, spiritual journey or action extravaganza. Plus the ending should have been cut off. Anyway, I won't talk further for fear of heading into annoying spoiler territory. Oh, yes, there were a couple of eye-opening (har-har) plot holes.

Currently playing Tekken like there's no tomorrow. Scarily, if there were no tomorrow I might well spend my last hours playing Tekken. Raised a laugh by saying 'I feel like Tekken tonight' yesterday evening. I'm putting down this extended period of ignoring my vow to mental weakness brought on by the exam period. This excuse is feeble at best but remains kindly unquestioned by those around me. Speaking of which, I suppose I should put in a pleasant word or two of gratitude to recognise the various people who said supportive things to me prior to my exam yesterday. I know I'm not always the most demonstrative person, but I do appreciate it.

When cycling into university today, I ran across an old man on the cemetery side of Loch St station. He was wandering around muttering 'Loch Street' in a thick accent which I later discovered to be Arabic. Stopping to see if he was OK, I engaged him in conversation for about ten minutes by which time it was apparent that he had no idea where he was or where he was going. I eventually dragged his surname out of him, went to the nearest service station and found his address in the phonebook, and took him there (it was about a block and a half away). He was utterly humiliated by the experience, I could see, although I was trying to be nice. It must be awful losing your wits to such an extent. In any case, had a strongly samaritan-esque feeling after this random act of humanity. I could get into this whole 'nice' thing if it didn't always have strings attached.

Huskdom

You are one life older than before, but you can't stop this chill,
Now you're falling in slow motion but the air is still -
If you close your eyes then I will take it (slowly slip away),
Let me close your eyes and I will take it all away ...
Echobelly, 'Dark Therapy'

The last twenty-eight hours or so have been incredibly intense. Nine hours cramming, six hours Tekken, three hours cramming, two hours sleeping, four hours cramming, three hours in my exam, and one hour afterward spiralling around. Truly, I have attained the state of huskdom. The quote is quite apposite, touching as it does on the gulf that exists in my life now that advanced computer architecture has left me. It was a torrid affair, I know I certainly feel at least one lifetime older. At eight o'clock this morning I gave myself no chance. Having left the exam I now think there's a possibility I scraped through by the skin of my gums. I am left hollow, with nothing but conflicting emotions about my present situation. A sense of overwhelming relief that there's even a chance I may have passed, marred by a deep self-interrogative upswell which basically asks 'why do I appear to crave misery?' I could have spent an extra day (out of the six or seven I had available to me) studying and walked out of that exam with no question in my mind that I had passed. I could have actually handed in some of the 30% worth of labs I couldn't be bothered with. I could have used my supposedly functioning brain at any point during this semester, realised I wasn't interested in the subject and withdrawn. Instead I trudged on doggedly through weeks and months of avoidance and procrastination and self-denial, until I reached my current predicament. There is still a very fair chance I will fail. It's enough to make one hate oneself.

As I drove home from university late last night, I was strongly considering driving the car into a tree to see if that would get me a deferred exam. This has certainly been amongst the more tortured braces of days in my life. Now, for better or worse, it's over.

No more apologies, no more, no more apologi-i-ies,
I'm too tired, I'm so sick and tired,
And I'm feeling very sick and ill today ...
The Smiths, 'What Difference Does It Make?'

I am chattering and overheating with stress at the moment.

In other news: playing Go is definitely not a good way for me to relax. Just beat Chris Gorham by 13.5 moku, but now I am completely rigid and heavy-headed, and I feel like I'm about to snap from tension. Still, a satisfying win in a closely fought match. The stress, of course, may possibly have something to do with the fact that my first and hardest exam is on Thursday morning, less than two days away. I'm feeling reasonably confident about it, but it's still a bit backs-against-the-wallish. I hate these times of year. Oh well, at least I can always take guilty consolation from the fact that some people are in more trouble than I am.

I wonder if listening to Just Like Heaven on repeat for half an hour and then working out the melody on guitar makes one a bit of a sap. I hope not. It's a beautiful song though, definitely my high point from the Cure gig last year and probably my favourite Cure song. A lot of people didn't like that concert, but I enjoyed it immensely. You can't expect people to hop on stage and play a backlog of their greatest hits when they've just written new music they're supposed to be proud of. Anyone who says otherwise is a teenybopper. I should get a ticket to see Gomez when they come to town in a couple of months, it's been too long since I saw a decent band play live.

Apparently 13, 000, 000 or so Australians identified as Christian in the recent national census. I find that a little peculiar.

Various people have convinced me I should go to Terracon. I hope I enjoy myself: I went last year and didn't have fun in particular. Something about the atmosphere in the buildup for this year seems to be boding a little better, but only time will tell.

Well, I was right about Spain. Even if they didn't manage to crush the Irish like little green ants. But what an ugly shootout! So, through to the final eight so far: Germany, England, Senegal, Spain. Some of the favourites have fallen but others plow on relentlessly. I seriously hope England beat Brazil (who will almost certainly put Belgium out of their misery tomorrow), it'll keep my interest bubbling over if the English stay in the tournament a little longer.

Played Virtua Fighter 4 for the first time before and after England v. Denmark at Leighton's house last night. It was certainly an all-male affair: soccer, violent computer games and fast food. I was both impressed and slightly disappointed by the game. It was more cartoonish than I expected, and seemed very linear, and the moves just didn't look quite as cool as I was expecting. Ah, nothing quite compares to Tekken, it's true. That said, I'm sure the game's apparent lack of depth was largely due to the ignorance of those of us playing. Also, far too much time spent thinking about the qualities of an ideal 3D fighting game has raised my bar a little too high perhaps. Whatever else it is, this game is certainly superior to Super Smash Bros Melee. I don't care how cute the characters are, what I want is proper, intellectually demanding strategy. Leighton and I were the best out of a bad bunch, with me losing little time working up a line of cheese with Aoi and him exploring some of the rortier aspects of Vanessa. Duncan and Oliver brought up a distant rearguard, both exceedingly lacking in style and technique. But truly, we were a host of scrubs. After exams I may see if I can camp at Leighton's for a while and delve a little into the subtler mysteries of VF4.

Speaking of fighting games, I'm a miserable loser. I broke my Tekken vow again, and played eight straight hours of Tekken starting on Friday afternoon. It was a hell of a way to break a drought. This stint rated a mention in Chris Gorham's livejournal, in which he claimed that he was beating me four-ninths of the time. Well, he did win a few. But I'm fairly confident that when it comes to the crunch I still have a significant edge on him. Dave Thackaberry, on the other hand, would certainly be a danger to me in my present weakened condition. I obviously need to go back into hardcore training. Scary that I should be contemplating anything of the kind in the lead-up to exams, but also scarily predictable in its own way. Still, I will re-renew my Tekken vow in an entirely hopeful manner. I really do not want to get back into that avenue of time-wasting just now.

A new episode of Hikaru No Go has just come out. Suffice it to say (since I don't want to spoil it for you, gentle readers) that it doesn't resolve nearly enough. I want - no, I need - a little closure! It's very frustrating to only see one translated chapter of HNG released each week, and only have a plot point resolved about once every ten chapters! Bah. Also, haven't had a decent game of Go itself in ages. My last was against Chris Grubb, and he conceded about halfway through when it became obvious that despite not having made any glaring errors on the small scale he simply hadn't bothered to claim enough territory. Not very satisfying for me since I couldn't work out whether this was due to me playing well or him playing poorly, or indeed just random chance.

In other news: I really should study more. Nothing is out of hand yet, but it's a hard life when you're this talented at using up time.