Hard Candy with Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page. One creepy, intense movie that really got me riled. It's certainly suited to a debate, but not for a blind right/wrong debate with absolutist, sexist arguments. My personal opinion is that the girl is in dire need of a vacation, specifically one to a certain "Hostel" in Slovakia.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Now, the debate is: are the crimes committed by the man sufficiently atrocious to warrant the events in the movie? And are the events in the movie atrocious enough to warrant my suggested punishment? When dealing with this, it is important to only look at what was explicitly proven and stated in the film and not every single claim, allegation or suspicion the girl had. Now, the director is brilliant in only providing just enough solid proof to keep the plot from being completely ambiguous. All that we know about his secrets are from the reactions of a sadistic and legally insane character looking for anything that might prove her right. It's important to look at the movie in retrospect, seeing how carefully orchestrated and planned her whole scheme was and factor that into her character. But also remember that everything we learned at the end she knew for certain all along. That exonerates her only slightly, because it is inferred that she obtained all this information from the guy's friend using similar methods but operating on less than absolute certainty. He was a monster for his actions that were left unseen; she was a monster for her actions both seen and unseen. He deserved punishment, but is a monster who kills a monster any less monstrous?
And I'd also like to add that movies like this are what make being bound a borderline phobia of mine.

Returner with Takeshi Kaneshiro and Anne Suzuki. Pretty much your standard sci-fi movie complete with aliens and time travel, but with some notably cool action scenes. I remember seeing a trailer for this at the Loft a few years back and based solely on some scenes with transforming airplanes I was determined to watch it. I was a little disappointed by the plot, but such things are to be expected with foreign films. Why do the aliens have to be so damn unreasonable? One thing I thought was pretty funny is in the future "flashbacks" there are a lot of Americans. Their lines are so horrible and over the top I'm not sure if it's cuz the actors are so bad they couldn't find work in any English speaking country or if the lines were written in Japanese and translated directly into English. Or both. Lastly, the villain was pretty good too. That is, he's one of those really despicable characters, not just the "I'm a bad guy because the script says I am" types. His mannerisms are quite similar to a bad guy character in another Japanese movie Versus. I wonder if the bug-eyed, tongue flicking psycho is an archetypical Japanese character.

In a remarkable instance of serendipity, my schedule has changed enough to dramatically increase my fun time. It turns out one of the classes I took in Uppsala counts as a GenEd credit here, meaning I can drop one of the ones I'm taking now. I could either drop my first class of the day and sleep in or drop the last one and go home early. I chose the latter, Chinese Civ, since it's boring (but really interesting) and dropping it means I can go to work an hour earlier and work 8 hours every shift. Now I work Monday, Wednesday, Friday and get off work right before the dreaded closing shift. That means I can go to the dojo Tuesdays and Thursdays, just like old times plus have Saturday free for sparring. And in a remarkable coincidence, my high school drama teacher is directing a play at the U of A and an opening for a part appeared. The rehearsal times happen to match my new schedule *exactly*. There's a Swedish word for windfall, but I can't remember what it was. That's how I would best describe this series of developments. Anyway, "Southern Fried Murder", on October 20th, will mark my triumphant return to the stage!

Speaking of Swedish (yeah that's gonna keep popping up. What can I say? It's still fresh in my mind.) the customers at Beyond Bread, interestingly it's often the crabby ones, will ask for wheat bread but always put too much air into the 'wh' producing the Swedish word for 'shit'. It gets me every time, and with some customers I really wish I could give them what they asked for.

And also, after a bit of a break, I now have new Flickr pics.

I think only now am I really getting the reverse culture shock I kept bracing myself for after returning from Sweden. It's not just missing things that made life fun, like the nations (I would kill for a night at the nations, even V-Dala club nights) it's seeing things that are odd in comparison and being reminded of little quirks.
One of the things I think is really bizarre is that when I was at the U of A freshman year, I noticed there were some foreigners, mostly Asian and a few from Africa, but for the most part it was hard to find someone who wasn't American. When I went to Uppsala I was amazed by how many exchange students there were. I'm aware that as an exchange student I was in classes with other foreigners or was in other activities designed with exchange students in mind, but even putting all that aside there still seemed to be more international students than at the U of A. Now I'm back and it seems like while I was gone the number of international students increased tremendously. I'm not sure if I just wasn't actively looking before or if I'm just in the right type of classes; maybe the Theater department wasn't the most popular venue for foreigners.
Another thing I noticed while I was in Uppsala, while there were plenty of exchange students and a fair number of immigrants, the general appearance of the population was pretty homogeneous. Even fashions and hairstyles were pretty uniform, I remember being rather disenchanted with that discovery. But at the U of A there's a paradox; I see the rich ethnic diversity, blending of different peoples, countless subcultures, people of all shapes and sizes. Then I see the sorority girls, all with bug-eye sunglasses, bleach blonde hair, fake tans, and shorts with their sorority written on the ass. They're everywhere and they're all exactly the same. Even their speech and mannerisms are identical; it kinda creeped me out that it seems I see one of the sorority girls I met in Uppsala everywhere here.
I also got in touch with a couple of exchange students from Uppsala that are at the U of A. It's really fun and surreal to be able to talk about Uppsala with someone while they're in Tucson. It's funny, I asked them why they came here of all places and they said it was to get away from the cold. They couldn't imagine why I would leave Tucson to seek out icy weather in Sweden. I also can keep up my Swedish by talking to them; it's embarrassing that I've already started to forget simple words. On the other hand, as a habit for familiarizing myself with the language I would insert Swedish words or phrases in an English conversation with a Swede. I had to wean myself off that habit when I got back to the US since no one would know what the hell I was talking about. But since I met the Swedes it's been popping up every now and then. The other day at work I didn't hear what someone said and instead of saying "What?" I said, "Vad sade du?"

And not really anything new, but I think it's interesting that the English words 'ken', 'canny', 'know' and the Swedish 'känna' are all from the same Germanic word. I was kind of disappointed to not find a link between 'sense' and 'känna' though; they sound similar enough and they do have overlapping meanings.

Blogger ate my draft of this post. I'm very displeased.
Lately I've realized that there's a strange, fine line that seems to separate not being stubborn and bending to other people's views. Surely, allowing one's opinions to be influenced by others is not bad in itself, after all change is a good thing at times. The trick is when to let other people’s ideas affect your own judgment; maybe they’ve figured out something you haven't. Maybe not.
At the same time I also realized that what we believe makes us who we are and changing our way of thinking is essentially making us a slightly different person. Now, yes, every moment of every day we receive new information that alters us slightly making it impossible to have a static "you". It's like the adage of not being able to walk through the same river twice, but I'm driving more at altering the actual path of the river, not just the water flowing in it. So not only are you making a difficult decision when changing your mind on something you always took as an absolute, you’re also in effect actively changing who you are. You might also be concerned about what the new you will be like and if you want to be that new person. Now of course once you are that person all your behaviors and opinions will sound good to you–they’re part of what makes you who you are–but before you become that person, those same traits might actually seem negative.
On a related note, has anyone ever had a series of classes that seemed to address issues in your life with a timing that makes it almost seem like it was planned? It's really helpful, but kinda eerie.

And finally, I think it’s funny that last week while I was having a crummy time, I actually looked forward to going to work to get my mind off my day. Now I’m doing better and so work sucks again.