Oct. 3rd, 2012
Machete is hilarious. It's obviously gory and violent, a bit too much for me, and much too much for many people, although not as gory and violent as it might have been. But it embraces larger-than-life characters, plot and action and is generally fun to watch if you don't mind the schlockness.
It's also obviously not very politically correct in lots of ways, although it does better than many films: it even passes the Bechdel test, and several of the female characters are decisive and proactive a lot of the time. And although lots of people are killed, they're generally killed by bad people, or only when it's actually necessary.
( Minor spoilers, unicode )
It's also obviously not very politically correct in lots of ways, although it does better than many films: it even passes the Bechdel test, and several of the female characters are decisive and proactive a lot of the time. And although lots of people are killed, they're generally killed by bad people, or only when it's actually necessary.
( Minor spoilers, unicode )
Climbing Mount "Do ALL of the things!"
Oct. 3rd, 2012 01:12 pmThere's a classic cartoon, "clean ALL of the things", from Hyperbole and a Half.
My life is not specifically centred around cleaning, but it very much feels like trying to ascend Mount "Do ALL of the things" or "Code ALL of the things".
However, I think I noticed a problem. You climb to the top of one of the foothills, and when you're nearly there, you can't see the main peak, so all your energy is focused on getting to the top of the foothill. Then you feel flush with success for about half a second, and then look up and see the main peak rising dozens of times higher in front of you, get dispirited, and start to roll back down again.
Whenever I do achieve something, I'm scared to get overconfident, but that means I get very little thrill of achievement, as I'm concentrating too much on what I haven't done yet, which is rather counterproductive to going on achieving awesome things.
Although I think having noticed that lets you plan more sensibly, expecting to have to gather your breath a bit before going on, rather than just constantly hoping you're nearly at the peak, and giving up when you're not!
My life is not specifically centred around cleaning, but it very much feels like trying to ascend Mount "Do ALL of the things" or "Code ALL of the things".
However, I think I noticed a problem. You climb to the top of one of the foothills, and when you're nearly there, you can't see the main peak, so all your energy is focused on getting to the top of the foothill. Then you feel flush with success for about half a second, and then look up and see the main peak rising dozens of times higher in front of you, get dispirited, and start to roll back down again.
Whenever I do achieve something, I'm scared to get overconfident, but that means I get very little thrill of achievement, as I'm concentrating too much on what I haven't done yet, which is rather counterproductive to going on achieving awesome things.
Although I think having noticed that lets you plan more sensibly, expecting to have to gather your breath a bit before going on, rather than just constantly hoping you're nearly at the peak, and giving up when you're not!
Broken Windows Theory of Housework
Oct. 3rd, 2012 03:06 pmThe broken windows theory of civil order says that if an area looks run down, people don't have much interest in maintaining it, and are prone to graffiti, litter, breaking windows, etc, but if it looks nice, people are surprisingly inhibited to damage it.
Apparently there's a reasonable amount of truth in the theory, but whether there is or not, it's a useful to have a label for the idea.
Exactly the same applies when I do housework. If my kitchen is clean, every little crumb on the surface offends my sense of perfection. It would be so easy to fix it -- why not just quickly wipe it up before I leave?
But if it's already messy, I think "oh, I need to clean this", but that translates to "I need to give this a good going-over, so I'll allocate a few hours tonight, there's no point doing five minutes now", and then it never happens. Whereas, actually, a few five minutes would have made it a lot better, even if not perfect.
Possibly I could have saved a lot of time by listening to people who said "just always keep your kitchen perfect and don't worry your head about why". But having an explanation makes me feel a lot happier about it, and to see an upside in getting things up to spec, and recognise when it might be useful to have a standard less than "it'll never be perfect so I won't try" because if I have a standard I can actually aim for, I can try to keep it there and worry about improving it later.
Apparently there's a reasonable amount of truth in the theory, but whether there is or not, it's a useful to have a label for the idea.
Exactly the same applies when I do housework. If my kitchen is clean, every little crumb on the surface offends my sense of perfection. It would be so easy to fix it -- why not just quickly wipe it up before I leave?
But if it's already messy, I think "oh, I need to clean this", but that translates to "I need to give this a good going-over, so I'll allocate a few hours tonight, there's no point doing five minutes now", and then it never happens. Whereas, actually, a few five minutes would have made it a lot better, even if not perfect.
Possibly I could have saved a lot of time by listening to people who said "just always keep your kitchen perfect and don't worry your head about why". But having an explanation makes me feel a lot happier about it, and to see an upside in getting things up to spec, and recognise when it might be useful to have a standard less than "it'll never be perfect so I won't try" because if I have a standard I can actually aim for, I can try to keep it there and worry about improving it later.