Summer Quarter Begins!

It's been a bit of a busy week, summer classes just started at Clark and I've been frantically trying to get back into some sort of a routine. This always takes awhile, I haven't ever scheduled classes at this time of day before (mid afternoon) and so this has messed up my sleeping patterns a bit. This quarter I'm taking four classes, two online, Women's Studies and Intro to Humanities, and two on campus, Intro to Archaeology and Film Study.

Women's studies is definitely...interesting. I found myself reading the material and thinking that the authors were over-analyzing things but as my mother pointed out, I am from a generation that hasn't really had to worry about women's rights, at least not in the way hers did. I should count myself lucky, that I've never really been discriminated against for being a woman. Well I have in WoW but that's a different territory, they can tell me to "Go back to the kitchen" or "Make me a sandwich" but they can't make me do any of that, instead I'll simply tank better than they can or out dps them. This is a new experience and I've decided that while I find it odd, I'll probably be more grateful for what I have after taking this class.

The other class I want to talk about is my film studies class. It's absolutely fascinating, we just watched The Artist, which was a stunning film. Silent films are simply beautiful to me, I love seeing how well people can act without dialogue, it's all about movements, gestures and facial expressions. After watching that, I went and watched a film my teacher had talked about in class, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which was a bit odd but still very good. I won't reveal the ending here but I bet that back when it came out in 1919, everyone was surprised by it. Nowadays, that twist is used more often so I wasn't that phased by it. While watching this film I was amazed with the performance of the actor who played the somnambulist, Cesare. His name was Conrad Veidt and he was a German actor in the early 1900s. People will most likely remember him for this role in Casablanca, as Major Heinrich Strasser, but he was in a lot of other stuff too. I went and watched one of his other silent films, The Man Who Laughs, a film adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel. That was a truely heartbreaking performance, it was a wonderful film and also starred the lovely Mary Philbin (known for the role of Christine Daae in the 1929 silent version of The Phantom of the Opera). The makeup that Conrad wore in the film would eventually be the inspiration for the comic book character, the Joker. I hope to see more of his films soon, along with more silent movies, they are classics for a reason, every time I watch one I'm blown away, they prove that you don't need big explosions and over the top sex scenes to make a good movie.

That's all for now, nothing to update on the summer reading list because I haven't had the time to really sit down and read. I sort of started James Herriot's Dog Stories but that's it. Hopefully once I get into a sort of routine, I'll have more time to do some serious reading.