What to do, what to do?

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So, this whole blog thing, for me at least, is kinda weird. Because I’m pretty sure just about no one knows this exists, except maybe one of my friends, and I’m still doubtful about that. So essentially whatever I write here is for my own interest only. So it’s like my journal (which I guess harkens back to the origins of the word ‘blog’ which is a sort of portmanteau/abbreviation thing of web log), but it’s so much more public than my journal, because any fool that’s wandering around the internet (and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. We’re all fools wandering around the internet. Because if we had anything better to do, we would be doing it) can read what I put here. So, I’m almost certain that no one is reading this, but anybody could read this if they wanted to. It’s like leaving my journal on the subway, but it’s a subway that everybody in the world rides. I guess only people who speak English could get anything from this blog, and there is this wonderful shield of anonymity, but still. It’s weird. I can’t decide what I want to write, because I could be all philosophical or something or bear my soul, but I won’t because I don’t want to random internet troll to know my inner workings.

But then again, if I don't write anything interesting, there will be no point to this blog, because I won't get anything out of it (I like talking/writing/thinking/whatever about interesting things) and if my blog is boring, no one will read it (horror upon horror!). No that I really care if anyone reads this (actually, I would probably feel really awkward if people I didn't really know started reading my blog. But then again, I'm like a big bucket of awkward, so moving on).

I don't really know what I was expecting to get out of this post. Because it definitely hasn't changed my mind about anything about my blog. I'm just gonna keep doing what I've been doing, so it doesn't really matter. I guess I just wanted to put my thoughts down or something. Who knows?

Impatience

This always seems to happen. And by 'always', I mean each time I try to start this blog up again, so I guess 'always' can't really apply to a thing that has only happened twice. Well, actually, I guess it can, but it's misleading. But I digress. Whenever I try to do this blog, I post my thing and then immediately afterwards I have a new idea. And I feel weird putting it up right after my other post, so I try to wait a while, but then I don't know how long to wait before I post another thing. This is the whole reason I started writing out my posts out beforehand, because I came up with ideas that I wanted to write about, but I had already posted something and I decided I couldn't do two things a day. Like, what's the etiquette on a blog? I've got no idea. I guess since it's my blog, I could make up the etiquette, but I feel like that would inevitably fail at some point. Like, yeah, sure putting up two posts a day is a faux pas, oh no! Who cares? But if I extend my "It's my blog, I can do what I want" attitude to other things, I could totally get booted off of blogger.

Actually, that's an interesting idea. Because a blog is supposed to be a place where you can share what you want to share with whoever feels like reading it, but there is always a limit. Just like there's always some sort of limit on free speech. And the boundary between what's allowable and what's not seems to be really annoyingly ill-defined. Which brings us (or me, if we want to be realistic) to the idea of where freedom has to end for society to continue as we know it. Because America always touts itself as "The Land Of The Free", and other countries put forward their freedoms as major parts of their society, but in this imperfect world that we live in, no one can be totally free. Because if everyone was totally free, it would be chaos! So even in America (or, depending on your view, especially in America), which has all these claims to freedom, people are restricted in so many ways. And with good reason (in most cases. In some cases I think the government is being ridiculous), because if we weren't limited by laws (because that's what laws are, essentially; things that tell us what we can and can't do, ie. limits to our freedom) people would go around stealing and killing and doing all kinds of horrible things.

Yeah, I'm a liberal, but I'm also an realist! Actually, I'm more of an realist than a liberal, because I'm kind of crap at politics, but I do have an opinion on real world things, where realism is more applicable than liberalism. So, yeah, it would be nice to live in world where everybody can do whatever the fuck they want, but that's not feasible. Because, along with being a liberal and a realist, I'm a cynic and a skeptic and a bit of a misanthrope (I think that, in general, people are stupid and they suck), and I think that people will, in general, do whatever is in their best interest, and if they are allowed to harm others for their own gain, I think a lot of people would choose that path. Not that I'm saying that everybody in the world is a horrible person, just that people in general are horrible. Like, humans have the capacity for great good, and people like to focus on that, and I guess if you were an optimist you would, but I can't. Or, at least, most of the time I can't, because sometimes I'm incredibly optimistic and can think of all the good things that people could do, but those moments are fleeting.

And now I have no idea how to end this post. Because it's really just been me ranting about whatever the hell I feel like talking about, which has been nice for me, but I have no idea what you've thought about it (as if there's anyone reading this). And I feel like if I end with my "I'm a misanthrope and people generally suck" thing, it'll be a downer, and I never really want to end on a downer. Unless it's a well crafter downer, which can actually be really nice. But this isn't one of those. It's just, "people suck and the world sucks, hooray". But, seeing as I can't think of anything, I leave it up to you to lighten your own mood. Go listen to some upbeat music, or watch something funny. Stand-up comedy, a sitcom, whatever you prefer. I always enjoy watching outtakes, because no matter what, they're almost always funny. But yeah, don't focus on the bad things in life. That's just a good way to get depressed.

Holy Crap

So, I just re-discovered this blog, and I figure, why not give it a go again? I'm pretty sure no one was reading this, so it's not like anyone will really notice my long absence. And I've been looking for new and interesting ways to kill time, and who knows, a blog might work. Or I might get bored again, who knows.

So, being my weird sort-of-organized-but-not-really self, I laid out a bunch of things I thought could be good blog posts when I doing this more regularly. And one of those was a huge list of recommendations, because I do love telling people what they should like. Because I think that I like good things, and I just want to spread that goodness around :)

Well, most of those posts that I laid out (including the recommendation one) are out of date, so it was basically a huge waste of time, but whatever, maybe I can rework them and put them up here after all. But anyway, what this meandering rambling was supposed to be was an introduction to some actual recommendations. So here goes.

So, I'm not sure how I found out about Sherlock (I spend too much time wandering around the internet), but when I first heard about it, I knew I had to watch it. Yeah, I know, Sherlock Holmes has been done to death, but this is a little different. It's set in present day, so Sherlock has many more tools at his disposal, and almost always uses his mobile phone to look stuff up. But what drew it to me most was the actor they chose to play John Watson. It's Martin Freeman. I fucking love Martin Freeman! And that's all it took for me to look up this miniseries put out by BBC1, and I'm so glad I did. It's fantastic. It's composed of 3 episodes, each 90 minutes long. Each episode adapts ideas from Doyle's original stories. Some are more obvious than others. For example, the first episode is called "A Study in Pink", and is about a lady found dead in an empty room with "RACHE" scratched into the floor next to her, who was [SPOILER] poisoned (sort of) by a taxi driver. This is based on the story "A Study in Scarlet", where a dead man in found in an empty room with "RACHE" painted in blood on the wall, who was [SPOILER] poisoned by a taxi driver.

I've only very recently gotten into Sherlock Holmes, but I can see why his stories have been so successful. Sherlock Holmes is a fantastic character. It's like he has a super power, but he just know's how to think more efficiently than other people. And even though he is blessed with this "super power", he really isn't a hero. He just solves crimes because he's bored. And that's what I like about Sherlock. It doesn't try to make Holmes into some hero running around the city trying to make it better. It actually shows how out of touch with social conduct he is. This modern Sherlock doesn't know who the prime minister is, and is baffled at the idea that a woman would still be upset years after the loss of her stillborn daughter. And the casting of Martin Freeman was an amazing choice (not simply because I love Martin Freeman). Sherlock Holmes is an almost unbelievable character, but the addition of Martin Freeman as John Watson has a wonderful grounding effect. Freeman is very good at playing a normal person. Even when he's in ridiculous comedies (The Office, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), he plays the straight man who's trapped with all the funny crazy people. And that's sort of his character in Sherlock, except he chooses to stay with Sherlock, and he also gets the chance to save the day every so often.

One thing about Sherlock that makes it stand out (to me, at least) is the humour in it. I think a lot of the time, people think that Sherlock Holmes has to be this very serious character who goes around solving crimes without a sense of humour. But that's not true. Sherlock solves crimes because it's fun (or at least he thinks its fun). And Sherlock shows that. They even lampshade it at the end of "A Study in Pink" where Sherlock and John are bantering and laughing and John says "We can't giggle, it's a crime scene!". And the humour in the show is handled really well, because the show can be really dark, but the humour is woven in so that it's not jarring or annoying. And they worked in funny things from the original stories that most people probably don't know, like that fact that Sherlock Holmes didn't know the Earth went around the Sun. Who'd have thought that the worlds greatest consulting detective wouldn't know how the solar system wan organized?

Well, I think that's enough rambling for now. Go check out Sherlock: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t4pgh