The only good thing about Winter...

The only good thing about winter is that I get to see dawn.

With dawn getting later and later, it's now got to the point where dawn occurs at quarter to nine. This means that I get to stand in Glasgow and watch the predawn light scatter off the clouds, slowly turning them from a dark red colour, through a vivid pink, slowly fading to greyish white as the shadows slide across them.

Almost makes it worthwhile standing at a bus stop at 8:30 for.

What was I thinking???

Today Lord of the Rings comes out.

Today, pretty much everyone I know is going to the cinema.

Tomorrow, a full 24 hours later, I'll be going to se it myself.

Now, sensibly speaking, 24 hours doesn't matter. I've been looking forward to this film for 2 years now anyway, so what difference is one more day going to make.

However, 'sensibly speaking' isn't pulling a lot of weight at the moment. Dammit! I wanna be there tonight!

It, quite literally, feels like the night before Christmas used to when I was a kid. I wasn't even this excited about Star Wars Episode I (probably because I knew it wasn't that great after hearing American's whine about it for weeks). but the only bad reviews I've seen of LOTR are by people saying "It's all very well, but it's still fantasy and therefore inherently bad."

Dammit!!!

Opinions, revisions and feelings

Having been chatting with Gordon, he's helped me clarify my ideas a bit on instincts, intuitions and opinions.

I'm generally unwilling to set my opinion in stone. I'd much rather acknowledge that I'm not perfect and can make mistakes, and therefore I'm happy to take my intuition as a first guess, and think about it further to clarify my opinion and discuss it later to make sure I still feel that way, but I'm not happy saying "I've made my decision and I will not change it" because I don't believe in infallibility, either of myself or of others.

This is why people saying "I always go by my first instinct." annoys me. Not because they use their instincts (I'm wholly in favour of that), but because they believe that their instincts,opinions and feelings are infallible. I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that people can be infallible.

Which would naturally lead me onto my thoughts about recognising that you (and those around you) are human, and thus make mistakes, but alas I have to go and do some actualy work :->

Nick's review of LOTR

"It's a lot like Krull. Or maybe Hawk the Slayer"