(no subject)

I am going to murder the company man who refills the downstairs soda machine when next I see him. Nothing personal, I'll say, but your machine has probably eaten something close to $5 of mine in the past year. Yes, $5 isn't much, but it's an annoyance that compounds my guilt at paying through the nose as it is for chilled Diet Pepsi I shouldn't be drinking anyway.

Today's escapades with said soda machine involved the damn thing not registering when I'd put in a nickel. It got it okay when I put in a $1 coin, but didn't credit me that mysterious missing nickel. I hit the change button to get back the coins, hoping against hope the nickel would be among my change, but alas, no. I steered clear of nickels, and subsequently lost a dime and a quarter, the latter after unsuccessfully jamming it into the machine to try and jar loose my extra change. I wouldn't have tried ever again, but I was mislead by it registering some of my change after it ate the first bits.

I gave up and went and bought my soda from the cafeteria. I am going to murder the man who collects money from that machine.

Saw

Went to the movies last night with feiran for a Halloween showing of Saw 2. Surprisingly good, genuinely disturbing in parts, right from the outset, in fact, seeing as we got there in time for the start and didn't sit through any previews hardly.

It wasn't perfect, but I can say the acting was better this time around. I think the involvement of the police hurt the film, though. The best parts of Saw and Saw 2 were the traps. It's not spoiling to say that the premise of each film is that the killer makes people work to save their own lives, and they have to show some wits, endurance, and high pain threshholds in order to survive most of the time. The most moving part of Saw was the part where a survivor described what she had done in order to live. In her flashback, that creepy-as-fuck doll comes and tells her not to be ashamed because she doesn't take her life for granted any more, and that she's actually lucky in that respect. She even says it herself; about Jigsaw, the killer, she says, "He saved me."

Saw 2 had some traps that were just awful in terms of "What would you be willing to do or to sacrifice in order to live?" There were moments I couldn't look at the screen--and that is saying a lot. As for the rest, there were some of the same, morbidly amusing realizations that, if the people involved would either a) not have acted or b) worked together, they might have survived. But the real "Live or Die?" traps were still the best, and when the movie forgot about making use of them, it faltered. There was a twist (again) at the end that wasn't half so good as the mmphrph hrphmpprh, where both feiran and I were all smiles and giddy.

It was the #1 movie last weekend, making $30 million, and I'd say it earned it. I'll be around for Saw 3. Should be interesting to see how they use hmmmrhph to do the hrmphrhmmph.