I’ll Get Round to It…Eventually

Say what you like, but procrastination is, in itself, a fine art.

It’s not mere laziness. Anyone can be lazy. It’s not that hard to get up in the morning and say, “Today, I will do nothing constructive”. Or even fail to get up at all.

Procrastination is not the absence of accomplishment or the drive to perform like laziness is. It is all this, plus the astonishing ability to convince yourself that there is nothing so drastically important that needs to be done today that can’t be done, say, tomorrow. Or next week.

After all, if there’s one person in the world who will be the hardest to convince, it’s yourself. You already know all of your own dirty tricks, you know when you’re lying, and you alone know the complete list of your own dirty laundry.

And yet we still get away with it. “Those cupboards aren’t that untidy. I’m sure they can wait until Spring”. Which is fine, except that by the time Spring comes, the dust will have evolved into a higher life-form and will have taken over the underwear drawer.

“I still have a week to complete that English essay on Spoonerisms, and besides, with the internet, finding information should be a snap.” True, but the student often forgets the deviousness of teachers who gang up and decide to issue homework in metric tonnages about a day before the essay is due. Also, the stars align to give your teacher a horrible disease which leads to her wanting the work a day early. Oh, yes, and the internet breaks down. Along with the printer.

Procrastination must also be the only form of suffering outside of sadomasochism that is regularly self-inflicted. Students the world over have stayed up until one in the morning completing something that should have been done that previous Monday afternoon. They’ve done it a million times, but invite them for a quick visit to the mall a week before a maths test and watch the eyes glaze over as the Procrastination Node (Avoidus Workus) takes control of the brain functions.

It’s like having a small and incredibly svelte devil on your shoulder. “Don’t worry Dave. I’m sure it’ll be easier this time. I’m sure that Mrs McGregor won’t come down with Bronchitis this time. Go on. It’s just one movie. It’ll all be over in two hours and you’ll be right back.” And then it’s gone midnight, you’re still staring at a woefully empty page, and there’s a horrible cackling in the vicinity of your left ear.

The trick is, of course, to force yourself to get started. You’ll find things being miraculously easy compared to those horrible early-morning slogs, and you’ll be done in minutes, and can enjoy yourself without that nagging feeling of guilt.

As the bungee-jumper motto goes, “The first steps always the hardest”.

Coming again tomorrow Tuesday next week when I’m ready, okay?

Bontage

A(n)d Another Thing

It’s a sad and terrible truth, but the highlight of my Sunday is South Africa’s esteemed publication, the Sunday Times newspaper. I’m an informational addict (something I’m convinced I inherited from my father), and if I’m deprived of my daily dose of news I begin to froth at the mouth. Sunday is merely my biggest high.

But I have noticed a disturbing trend in my Sunday fix, and that is the increasing prevalence of advertising material. Pamphlets, circulars and other gaudily-coloured pages of plastic death abound in between the print. I turned the paper upside down prior to reading it and ten variously sized ads fell out, for a collective weight of 750g. Two more (both full page spreads inviting me to purchase electronics for Christmas) were discovered later, presumably not falling out because they were marginally larger than the newspaper sections enclosing them.

Turning to the Sunday Times Magazine (again, a refreshing weekly addiction), I noticed with a sigh of relief that the printers hadn’t (this week) placed a second faux cover over the original advertising some travel destination. Curious as to why they had done this, I decided to survey the magazine itself.

Out of 46 pages, 23 were full-page advertisements. Not, you’ll note, pages with adverts on them (only twelve of the remainder managed that distinction), but whole A4 sized spaces devoted to getting me to buy a product. 6 were two-page spreads, meaning that three times I turned the page without gaining any meaningful information from what was on the other side. Towards the back exists the cartoon section, which hosts the worst of the lot, Supa Strikas, a cartoon which consists of three seconds of actual, angsty action (per week), and yet manages to squeeze an ad for a sponsor into nearly every panel.

Now, I realise that ad revenue forms a major part of any newspaper’s earnings,  but surely we are approaching the point where we will have more ads in our newspapers than actual articles (not counting, obviously, the Classifieds). I mean, we already suffer from those ridiculous ads masquerading as articles labelled “A Commercial Feature”. Isn’t this enough?

Advertising is beginning to dominate everything we do in these modern times. Actually, that’s a lie. They already do. Electronic games, movies and music videos are already mired in product placement. Whole megabytes of my internet quota are being swallowed by the animated (and, quite frankly, intrusive) ads that appear on every page.

I used to rush to the cinema, not just to watch a movie, but to spend a good quater of an hour watching cinematic trailers, but now I’m subjected to the Vodacom meerkat and Heineken. No matter how funny, interesting or thought-provoking these ads may be (and they’re generally not), they’re no substitute for watching the trailer for Harry Potter Thirteen: Everyone Dies, or whatever.

Of course, they’re nowhere near as bad as the paper wastage that occurs in the Property Guides every Saturday.

Rent-free,

Bontage.

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Cynicmatography

As regular readers will know, there is nothing as subjective as an opinion. It’s most probably statistically impossible that anyone two people in existence will have precisely the same views on a host of subjects. They might agree on cars, cooking and Captain America (for or against), but one thing they certainly won’t agree on is cinematography.

Movies, like songs, are highly sensitive objects, mainly because they’re made up of so many elements. The plot, the dialogue, the characters and the visuals are all areas in which a film can fall flat on its face. It might be Hemingway and full to the brim of Oscar winners and Dames, but if the camera moves around like someone with Muscular Dystrophy and the sets look as if cardboard would be a step up, you can count on the fact that a movie will be a failure.

Even if a movie manages to pull the above off, the fact that two people look for different things in a film will result in two different opinions of the finished piece. When you go to the movies, what do you look for in a film? Presumably your expectations are tempered by the genre of the film it is you’re going to. If the film is Random Explosions of Death, and stars Governor Swarzenegger,   I don’t think you’re looking for any particular deep meaning. Likewise, if you’re going to Cinema Nouveau or other Art Houses, don’t expect car chases and sultry women.

Even then, we still want certain things from certain films. Above all, we wish to be entertained. We don’t want to spend an increasingly large amount of cash and waste two hours of our life feeling dissatisfied. The problem, again, is that the concept of “entertainment” is a personal one.

For that reason, I treat movie reviews very carefully. Movie reviewers are expected (I assume) to have some form of Classical training (i.e. they can tell a close-up from an establishing shot), which is more than Joe Public has ever had, so already the gap is widening. Roger and Ebert, those American Dons of film, occasionally lambaste teen movies for containing crude and unfunny toilet humour, failing to understand that this is what 99.9% of teenagers look for in a movie. Again, our local Father Cinematography, Barry Ronge, waxes lyrical about the type of movies that send me into a deep slumber.

However, the good reviewers (like all the above) have sense to review the basic elements of any film that appeal to the lowest common denominator (like the acting), telling us what we should be looking for in a particular film. They know, like we should, that watching a film is different, not only for different people, but for the same person at different times. Try watching Big Fish, and you;ll see what I mean.

In the end, the best reviewer of movies is undoubtedly oneself. Don’t like Mrs Pitt? Well, then don’t go and watch her movies, then. If you’re not a fan of blood and gore, then Saw 5 is not the best film to take those kiddies, is it? Of course, you could always wait for the DVD…

Two-thumbs up,

Bontage