On All Sides

I've spoken about my impulse to bombard myself with stimulus and my subsequent awareness of how counterproductive that is when I am trying to achieve something. Certainly some stimulation is useful, but only to a point. Well, I have not made it any easier to put the brakes on once I have reached that point. Rather, it remains all too easy to continue taking in when I should be putting out. I'm sure you're bursting into tears over that.

To begin with, there's the one computer that I've had a few years. Some years ago it shared computing duties with my old desktop PC, which now is dead and resides in the closet. It then took sole responsibility before being forced back into a platoon with a laptop. Between the two computers, I can get an awful lot of work done and ignore even more in favor of frivolous videos, socializing and music. There need not be any other apparatus in the room.

The Free Entertainment

When one is prepared to pay, there's no difficulty in being entertained by electronic media. Internet access is swift and reliable. There is a diverse panoply of television offerings which are both fun and indispensable to keeping up with all the things people are talking about. Needless to say, it is only necessary to turn on the tv and make a channel selection before that very thing comes in as clear as day. Those two things- along with the music probably supplied by the same device that delivers the internet- provide all that is needed, and are probably given no real thought or appreciation. I know that has been the case for the most part where I'm concerned.

Those amenities deliver everything into my home and work well- why shouldn't they? In fact, when they don't, it's a travesty of shocking proportions. Minutes after any breakdown manifests itself, I'm outraged and expectant that the scandal must soon encompass the globe. My attitude has been different when, as now, I have not had such luxuries available to me. That sense of entitlement and that lack of thought about what I've got evaporates quickly. Much of the time, I pine fruitlessly for the thing I want and can't have, much as does the quitting smoker. I've often observed that I don't seem to have a very addictive personality, but I believe it's to my credit that I always am sure to add the caveat of television and the internet. It's a hard habit to break even when there's nothing there really to feed the habit.

Adaptations & Sequels

All of us who consume pop culture and media content are faced with the quandary of how to handle the consumption of materials based on or derived from other previously exiting material. That is to say, movies based on books, graphic novels, tv shows, other movies, action figures, and so on. Also, of course, any others of that ilk based another of it.

The most common issue is that books and comic books are adapted into movies, and that movies are remade and made sequels of. Where it's a matter of book being made into movie, some people feel good about having read the book or comic book first. The problem there is that this invariably makes the viewing of the resulting movie less pleasurable, as one is burdened with the expectations rising from knowledge of the source material. I find it difficult to say which way might be better. When a movie is remade or a sequel is made of it, it's more straight forward. You see the original movie first, and then the sequel or remake.

Then, of course there are all the other forms of adaptation. It becomes too much of a mess for my ability to articulate opinions on it.