And Furthermore
I've been in kind of a weird funk for a month; I'm not sure whether to blame this project at work, my renewed caffeine intake, a thicker TV schedule, bipolar weather, or what have you, but I would love to be snapping out of it soon.

It's like this. I can't concentrate on work, so I just kind of skip around looking at various aspects of it, different other jobs I have to do. And then I take it home because I'm not done. And then at home I ignore it, but since I should be working on it, I can't concentrate on anything else, so four hours later the day is over and I've done absolutely nothing. And it's been like this for a long time.

Whatever.

Instead of going to the cheapies I went to Mike's house to watch A History of Violence which was excellent except for the gratuitously-shown sex and violence. They weren't gratuitous in themselves; it was all intrinsic and important to the characters' relationships, the story, and so on. I just don't need to see a guy with his jaw shot off to know that shooting a man in the head is a horrible act of violence. I don't need a play-by-play visual of a quickie to understand the many conflicting elements that cause it and result from it. (This is the only exception I've seen to the rule that all sex scenes are gratuitous: it was an efficient, powerful way to show the change in the couple's marriage.) It just didn't need to be as graphic as it was.

Presumably it was made that way because someone disagrees with me and wanted it to be as graphic as possible. That's frustrating.

Anyway, if they ever show it edited for TV, it's totally worth watching.