Nolan's Journal Thing

Greetings to everyone from my self-imposed exile on the isle of Elba/Corunna, MI. This is just to let people know that I may actually start writing in this thing. Since I now have to log in to read the blog of my favorite Swede (I believe Axel Oxensteirna is Swedish), I figure it'd be a waste of a perfectly good Livejournal account not to. Anyway, I guess that's all I have to say. I'm a pretty boring person, so don't expect wonders out of this thing. Oh yes, I have a request/favor to ask: it appears that to get back into Hitchcock next year, I need to be pulled in and/or manipulate any loopholes in the housing office. If anyone wants to pull me in, knows someone who would pull me in, or knows how to pull strings at the housing office, please let me know and I will be completely indebted to you forever. Thanks
Nolan

So it's currently early Sunday about 12:45 AM. After falling asleep at 4 pm Friday and sleeping until 3Am Saturday and then in turn playing video games until 9AM and then finally sleeping until 5pm, I've decided to chalk Saturday up as a loss and do something productive instead. I've come to the realization that my life will never be remotely exciting enough to merit a decent blog (read: Bruce Arthur is a much much more interesting human being than myself), so I'm going to John Cusack/Nick Hornby on everybody's ass and start listing things that I think merit listing. Since I just finished watching The Departed (which by the way better fucking win some Oscars or else there is no God), we'll start with "The Greatest All-Time Movie Badasses." The criterion I'm using for this list is actors who, to paraphrase the best album titile ever, are not afraid of you and will beat your ass.

1. Jimmy Stewart - If watching Hitchcock movies this past quarter has taught me anything, it's that you simply don't fuck around with Jimmy Stewart in any context.

2. Robert De Niro - Travis Bickle is probably the single biggest badass in the history of cinema to be in a single movie. Jake LaMotta may be a close second.

3. Humphrey Bogart - Look at the guy: He can disrespect Nazis and he can sass concetration camp survivors. Enough said.

4. Jack Nicholson - Mentioning The Shining is entirely unecessary to prove Nicholson's badassery. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Easy Rider are more than enough.

5. Chris Walken - No exposition needed.

6. Harrison Ford - Blade Runner's enough. He likes unicorns and shoots androids.

7. Clint Eastwood - See #5.

8. Marlon Brando

9. Al Pacino

10. Dustin Hoffman - Why Dustin Hoffman instead of say, Sean Connory or Charlton Heston? Answer: Straw Dogs. Sam Peckinpah's bloody little masterpiece is enough to cement Hoffmon's place in the temple of badassery. First of all, he plays a mathematician, which in and of itself merits points from Nolan, himself an aspiring badass mathematician. Secondly, in spite of his nerdy profession, he has a hot young wife who frequently insists on not wearing a bra, which is something Nolan aspires to have one day. Finally, and most of all, he sets a fucking Bear Trap off on a guys head. I will consider my own life to be complete when I accomplish these three things.

Honorable Mentions: Sam Jackson, Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, Ed Norton, Jimmy Cagney, John Wayne, Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, and others who deserve merit but I'm not listing because I'm too lazy and my attention span has evaporated.
Nolan

So yeah, I've finally succumbed to the dark forces and begun my own LiveJournal. This is a rather ill-advised maneuver, as it is currently finals week and I have a shitload of work to do. That said, chances are reasonable that I probably won't bother with this thing after a month or so due to the simple fact that my life is really not that interesting. I'm just a physics/math major at the University of Chicago. My sn was a sort of nickname from highschool when I was smart. I'm already a little peeved at this site; fifteen characters is simply not enough to come up with a decent screen name. With 37 characters to choose from (the latin alphabet, the digits 0-9, and the _ character), that only gives like 9.3 billion possible usernames, which is easily exhaustible in the foreseeable future. Yes, I know I didn't consider sn's under fifteen characters, non-latin characters and the like, but still the point remains that I was unable to use the vast stockade of awesome internet monikers I have built up in my head. I also found it interesting that when I tried to tell Livejournal that I still went to the University of Chicago by typing in "2005 - Now" when asked how long I attended this school that I was informed that the date of my departure could not be earlier than the date of my entry. I mean, aside from not knowing the difference between letters and numbers, who is Livejournal to tell me that I can't time travel or for that matter institute my own scheme for counting time. Yeah, that's a bit of a run-on, but whatever. In all actuality, a good chunk of my motivation in signing up for this thing is my desire to emulate the blogs of Bruce Arthur and Harry Altman, which make for damn good reading, so hats off to you folks. That's all for now. Go away and do something meaningful with your time like I should.