If You Like Movies That Make You Pessimistic About Humanity

I updated my July books read.

I've also been keeping track of every movie I've watched since January 1st, 2011. I definitely have collector/list-maker proclivities that I need to keep in check, but in this case my listing has helped me to see trends in my own reading/viewing tastes, as well as monitor how much time I’m devoting to each activity. One blemish in the movie-viewing list is that initially I wasn’t recording television series, which was a major oversight. Now I am.

Speaking of movies, Friday night I watched The Devil’s Double, a film about the man forced to be a body double for Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday Hussein. The acting was terrific, but the story was absolutely terrifying, the kind of stuff that will chill you all the way to the bone. I’m glad I saw it alone so I wasn’t trying to gauge the reaction of anyone else. After I left the theater I couldn’t shake it. Granted, it was almost two in the morning, I was tired from sleeping only five odd hours the night before, and I also drank a long island iced tea before the movie, but as I walked the busy streets back to my hotel I kept thinking about how easily power corrupts. Or, more accurately—maybe power doesn’t corrupt, it simply gives people the ability to act on their suppressed corruption. Obviously the [film] example of Uday Hussein is extreme, but even on that short walk men were looking over women, two guys were aggressively bumming cigarettes from a drunk lying at the edge of an alley, and for a few moments in that movie-influenced haze, exhausted and overwhelmed, nothing seemed innocent.

I become quite a moralist when I’m lacking sleep.

Not much writing, as in the creation of material ex nihlo—that should start this weekend—but I made some revisions to poems this afternoon that I’m really happy with. Strange how such a small accomplishment can make the entire day seem a success.