Whew! I made it! | The Hobbit | Lincoln

As you can imagine, I have been terribly busy with final projects for the winter term of grad school, and I lie not to you when I say that it took every bit of strength I had to complete the four papers and two presentations. I am by all legitimate accounts, fucking exhausted. I'm so tired that my body is aching from the stress and tension, and I haven't slept well in the past week because I tossed and turned at night thinking of my projects. Last night I took a muscle relaxant pill, and tonight I'll take another one to help catch up on sleep and calm the hell down. But with all that said, I strongly believed that my work paid off which will allow me to maintain my perfect 4.0 GPA, a feat I was hesitant to claim possible at the beginning of the semester. I knew as per the syllabus from both classes, I was going to have my work cut out for me, so it pleases me to know that was able to give my all.

In this three week break from school, I need to catch up on watching movies as the Oscar season is upon us. This weekend, I aim to go see The Hobbit and Lincoln! I will also go see Zero Dark Thirty in a couple of weeks. This prime Oscar bait film is so oscar baity that it has already debuted in 'select cities' to qualify for the Oscar nomination process, but the rest of the country will have to wait until Jan 11th. This time of year is when I am at the theater multiple times over a several weeks period. I try to watch all the best picture nominees, but if a particular film does not appeal to me, I won't bother with it, and in this case, it's Les Miserables for this year. I just detest musicals.

Controlled Christmas Shopping

I will do my Christmas shopping this weekend, and as always, I'm on a budget, but I'm halfway done because I bought all the females in my family their stuff from Avon. I will try to do all the dudes shopping at one place to keep my patience under control due to how busy it is at stores this time of year.

Detroit Film Theatre member

When I visited the Detroit Institute of Arts last month for the Faberge Egg exhibit, I paid for a membership with the Detroit Film Theater. As a cinephile, this was something that was long overdue and I'm glad I did it. Especially since I love and have supported the Toronto Int'l Film Festival for nearly 10 years, I also need to support the DFT. I received my membership information in the mail the other day, and it included a movie pass to watch four films at the DFT in 2013. I didn't expect that so I'm doubly excited to be a part of the DFT now!

And lastly...

On Friday, Dec 14th, like many of you, when I learned of the horror of the massacre of those children at Sandy Hook elementary and their brave teachers, I felt like someone kicked me in the stomach. I was in a state of disbelief that I got dizzy and had to sit down. I was watching the news report unfold via cnn.com at my co-worker's computer and we both were just horrified. I then declared that this country is going to hell in a hand basket. How many more innocent people will be murdered by a deranged person with guns that were designed to murder people? Why is this act so prevalent in America? This gun loving society still doesn't get it! Like my professor mentioned in the final class last night is that the president needs to seek out the brightest minds to create a commission that is dedicated to figuring out this problem in our country. There is no quick solution because the gun lovers are holding their guns closer to them now more than ever. They know it was bad what happened at Sandy Hook, and they are even more afraid of laws that will ban the very weapons that they have to use against human beings whom they perceive may bring harm to them. The weapons used to murder those beautiful innocent souls were not designed to kill rabbits or deer, it's military style weaponry that regular gun crazy civilians can buy.  It's just so fucking insane, and it's embarrassing to live in a country where it's ok to possess these type of powerful tools. And in the wrong hands of an insane, chemically unbalanced fuck, the horror is increased five-fold.

American society is sick, we need help, we need a cure in the form of solutions to limit access to these powerful weapons that were made to destroy lives either under the pretense of self-defense, or flat-out murder because of delusional hate, envy, jealousy, or just insanity. More of these types of mass killings by a semi-automatic weapon will occur... it can happen today, tomorrow, on Christmas day, or two months from now. It's going to happen again, and again, and again. So I ask this, what particular situation needs to occur on a more grander scale than Sandy Hook elementary for everyone in this society to proclaim in unison, ok, enough is enough, let's prohibit guns in this country? Let us become a civilized country by reviewing the state of mental health care, and start by banning the guns that were designed to kill dozens of humans all at one.