You give me cognitive dissonance

I was going to write a new post about something else awhile ago, but then this just came to mind now. First off, let's take a look at the definition of cognitive dissonance: 
the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes

An (particularly striking) example would be believing that murder is wrong, yet happening to kill someone for some reason that I won't specify in this example. Use your imagination. Maybe it was self defense. Anyways, this person who has murdered someone else is going to have cognitive dissonance because they killed someone, despite believing that murder is wrong. We try to get rid of cognitive dissonance by justifying our actions that were in opposition to what we believe and/or changing our beliefs. The degree to which we experience cognitive dissonance is based on how strong our beliefs are and how much our action is contradictory to our beliefs. As an aside, I'm sure there are people out there who do not believe that murder is wrong. I'll leave it at that for now. This post isn't intended to delve into a discussion about the morality of murder. Maybe some other time in another post. 

So now that I've (hopefully) explained what cognitive dissonance is properly, back to the topic at hand... the "you" referred to in the title is the yet unnamed commentator on CNN with the lovely eyelashes and eyeballs. Seriously, they're brilliant. He is going to remain anonymous because I have the inkling of a suspicion that this whole eyeball/eyelash thing (mind you, the rest of his face is pretty nice too) would be even weirder if I mentioned exactly who he is. I dearly hope he never reads this stuff. 

This brilliantly eyeballed and eyelashed man (you can say things like "pale skinned" or "golden haired" so I'm sort of extending that to the words eyeball and eyelash..) is, (sort of unfortunately, see here, is the source of the COGNITIVE DISSONANCE)... a conservative. (*gasp!*)  

The contradicting beliefs here are: 
a) He is a conservative (I am not. I am a liberal.) 
b) His eyeballs and eyelashes are wonderful. 

Being a liberal, it's... decidedly cognitively dissonant for me to appreciate conservatives for whatever reason. I realize that his political orientation has no (probably? Maybe there's a correlation? Look at all that psychology vocabulary.) bearing on his physical appearance. Yet, it still feels weird (cognitively dissonant) for me to think, wow, his gorgeous eyeballs and eyelashes!! and also (gingerly) he is a conservative. Now, my mother has a conservative friend who I don't really have this problem with. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I've known her for much longer than I've seen this commentator on the news, or that political discussions are not the focus of the friendship. Perhaps it's a combination of both. This commentator, it's literally his job to be on the news and talk about his opinions (as a conservative). So the conservativeness of this guy is a bit more in your face if you will; it's harder to ignore. 

Now, onto how I might resolve this cognitive dissonance. The likelihood of me (or him, for that matter) changing my political beliefs (ie, becoming a conservative) is very low. I guess currently I am justifying my belief about his eyeballs and eyelashes by thinking that his political beliefs are irrelevant to his appearance. It doesn't get rid of the cognitive dissonance entirely though (otherwise I wouldn't be writing this post..), so it would be ideal if he just weren't conservative. But alas, he is, and that's just how it's going to be. 

So there you have it, a personal anecdote about an experience that I am currently experiencing regarding the concept of cognitive dissonance. 

(ps: this post didn't really have anything to do with Vincent! Maybe sort of, tenuously, since Vincent also has nice eyeballs and eyelashes [no, I promise I'm not going to go on about that again here] but it's more about this other guy and the cognitive dissonance that he's causing me.) 

"Nice eyeballs, and eyelids, and eyelashes."

Tonight's post is probably going to be a rather short one, yet the topic is... well, I'd like to think it's interesting. The topic at hand is eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes. And here is where the requisite Vincent D'Onofrio related stuff comes into play. Recently I had been watching some more "vintage" episodes of Criminal Intent. Stuff from season 2 or so. In any case, the second time around I decided to record on the DVR some of the ones I remembered particularly liking in HD (for the first time around, I record them in SD because it takes up less storage space and I can record more episodes. I've kind of gotten used to seeing it in SD.) so that I could get a better look at all the little details and stuff that isn't quite so easily spottable in SD. One of the things I noticed was that Vincent (yes, we are on a first name basis here) had very nice looking eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes. Some would argue that I could just say he had nice eyes, although I like the phrasing of "nice eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes", and plus, that specifies some additional things aside from the eye itself - eyelids and eyelashes. Basically the point here is that I thought those eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes (I wonder how many times I'll use that phrase in this post?) were quite nice looking. Lovely to look at in HD for some portion of about 45 minutes. I just have to hope that for the sake of avoiding the urge to give Vincent a strange compliment on his nice eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes (in that phrasing exactly) that I don't happen to run into him. Which very most likely won't happen, but if it somehow did, I'm not sure I could resist commenting on those nice eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes of his. 

One of my friends thinks that there isn't anything particularly notable about eye shapes, however, there is. Some people have very nicely/interestingly shaped eyes. I have been dabbling in watching SVU, just episodes here and there, and Mariska (as Olivia Benson) also has a very nice eye shape. They really stand out and I can't help but notice them. 

And now, to the focal topic, the thing that compelled me to write up this post here. Tonight I was idly watching the news, on CNN, Don Lemon's program. They were talking about Donald Trump and there were some commentators. One of them, on the right of the screen was particularly fetching to look at. It was his eyeballs. They had such an interesting shape to them, and it showed brilliantly on the screen, in HD, of the pretty big television in the living room. In addition to the shape, they seemed to sparkle. They were quite glowy.. this guy really did have quite nice looking eyes as I watched him on the news. I had to find out who he was so I rewound the program back to the beginning of the segment and it showed his name when he began to offer commentary. It turns out that he is a journalist/political commentator and also author of at least one book. It also turned out that I had looked him up before in the past after seeing him on the news, commentating. His picture on Wikipedia, albeit rather unflattering, was familiar and so then I had to go and search my text messages to find out when I had noticed him previously, since I remembered I had texted someone about seeing this guy on the news. It was Saturday, January 9, at 4:23 pm of this year that I had texted someone about seeing the guy on the news the previous evening. The content of the message was as follows: "This guy was on the news last night. You could really see his eyelashes. [link to Wikipedia page]" In following messages I elaborated that I had noticed his eyelashes although didn't really recall what exactly they had been talking about on the news while he was on. They "might have been talking about Donald Trump" (I like to use the technique of embedding quotes whenever I can.. I'm sure my English teachers would be proud..). After that the conversation went on to a consideration of how strange I am compared to other people. (According to the person I was talking with, I am "probably in the upper middle of strangeness," if it matters). But I digress. Upon further googling (tonight) I came across the knowledge that this guy on the news is a conservative, which, if I'm being completely honest, is kind of a shame. Regardless. I think his eye shape is perhaps somewhat reminiscent of James D'Arcy. In any case, this guy on the news caught my attention not once, but twice because of his eyeballs and eyelashes (not so much the eyelids with this guy, but they certainly weren't ugly eyelids or anything). I think it would be really weird if this guy were to somehow read this blog post, which is why he is going unnamed. Perhaps even if he were named in this post, he wouldn't ever end up coming across it and reading it, but I don't want to take any chances. Anyways, I think keeping him nameless helps keep the focus on those nice eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes of his. 

I do realize this was a strange topic for a post and it ended up being quite a bit longer than I had expected when I initially started typing it up. For entertainment, I'm going to tally up how many times I ended up using the phrase "nice eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes" in this post: 

"eyeballs" = 11 times

"nice eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes" = 6 times

"eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes" = 9 times 

as a little addendum, this guy on the news, his irises were gray. And so very sparkly. They seemed to glow. 

A Law and Order Criminal Intent drinking game

Alas, another post related in some capacity to Vincent D'Onofrio. 3 in the span of one week, or something like that. Maybe some day in the future I'll be over that, but anyways...

Drinking games for SVU seem to abound, but for those whose preferred flavor of Law and Order is CI, not so many. So I've taken it upon myself to create one of my own. Drink at your own risk, and as a side note, if you just play the game using water instead of alcoholic beverages, you'll end up less drunk (which could be a good thing, depending on the circumstances) and probably pretty well hydrated (definitely a good thing), so there's a suggestion to keep in mind.

• when Goren pokes at a dead body - at the crime scene or in the morgue
• at scene cards
• when Eames makes a sarcastic/witty remark
• when Goren has a dazzling insight
• when Goren smells something
• when Eames says "You're under arrest... for murder."
• when Goren mentions some obscure piece of knowledge that he just conveniently happens to know
• when Eames is wearing a tank top
• when they flash their badges at someone
• when Goren leans over someone 
• when Goren is writing something down
• when Goren opens up/takes something out of his portfolio
• when Goren is looking up something in one of his books
• when the detectives are looking over files/other documents
• when Goren helps someone they're interviewing with whatever they happen to be doing - carrying groceries, planting flowers, cooking soup, untangling windchimes, you get the idea
• when Goren shouts at someone
• when the detectives are talking to someone over the phone
• when they're discussing what the suspect will be charged with
• when Goren gets interesting in the interrogation room - interesting is up to the viewer's definition 
• when guns are drawn/fired (by anyone)
• when a suspect tries to get physical and Goren has to grab them 

That's all I can think of for now, but if anything else comes to mind I'll try to add it. I really have to try this now.. next up, Criminal Minds? Maybe. Definitely one of the times to drink for that one would be whenever Reid mentions a statistic/obscure trivia fact.

This sort of turned out to be more like a Detective Goren drinking game, but eh, he's the main character of the show, so it's kind of inevitable. 

An actual movie review: Zodiac (2007 - directed by David Fincher)

This is going to be an actual movie review, unlike the last one because this time I actually paid attention to the movie, even though (spoiler, sort of) it ended up being rather boring. There also ended up being a section at the end of this post, after the main review part, explaining why I decided to watch Zodiac, as well as some other things too. 

Now, I think the concept/premise of this movie, a movie about the Zodiac killer could have been made into a good film, but this one just wasn't. It was worse than I expected it to be. It wasn't a particularly compelling movie; I finished it just for the sake of finishing it and not because it was actually interesting past the 2 hour mark or so. In total, it was nearly 3 hours long. 

For some reason, or perhaps reasons plural, the movie came across to me as boring and I just didn't really feel like there was any element in it that would have made it a good movie. The other movie directed by David Fincher that I've seen was really pretty brilliant - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which he directed 4 years later. I think both source materials are pretty interesting in and of themselves, but with one, the movie was a lot better than the other. I had a hard time seeing some of the actors in Zodiac as their characters and not the actors; this might have been because they're pretty recognizable faces even though I haven't seen any other movies that they've been in (at least that I can remember). I wouldn't exactly say it was because their acting was bad. I would assume they just did the best with the script they were given. Maybe because I was already familiar with the events of the Zodiac case, the events of the movie seemed overly predictable. But on the other hand, I'd already read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before watching that movie and still found that one enjoyable, so perhaps predictability wasn't really the problem. 

Apparently Zodiac got a pretty positive reception when it was released, which I don't really understand... I didn't really think it was particularly good. I'd say it's maybe about a 2 out of 5. Watchable, but not particularly interesting. I was expecting it to be better. Sort of like when I watched The Silence of the Lambs. That one was kind of a letdown too. I didn't really like the portrayal of Hannibal... Mads Mikkelsen did a much better job in the few episodes of NBC Hannibal that I've seen. In Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal almost seemed sort of... caricature like, or something like that. 

And so my not so positive review of a movie that people generally seemed to write positive reviews about is finished, with a bonus not so positive mini review of The Silence of the Lambs for good measure. 

A post-script/addendum explaining my reason for watching Zodiac (and also I end up explaining some other things too, turns out): (incidentally, we are back to the one and only Vincent D'Onofrio. Maybe the next post won't involve him in some capacity. No promises, though.) I watched this movie partly because I had been wanting to watch it for awhile (I thought the subject matter was interesting) and also partly because I wanted to watch the actor Mark Ruffalo acting in a role of some sort, and it turns out that he was in this movie, playing a police officer character investigating the Zodiac killings. I wanted to watch Mark Ruffalo because I wanted to see him acting as well as possibly try to get a feeling for how his voice sounds, which I wanted to know because he sort of looks like Vincent and I was wondering if perhaps they'd end up having similar voices or not (although obviously, looking similar doesn't really have any correlation with having similar sounding voices). I think Mark has a weird sounding voice. For some reason. It just sounds kind of weird to me. Anyways, that was that. It's sort of like how I watched Full Metal Jacket because I wanted to see Vincent in a role other than Detective Goren in Law and Order. Which, incidentally, was... it was a trip. I don't think I really managed to understand the point of that movie. I feel like there probably was one (probably??), but I just can't really seem to figure it out.. suffice to say, it wasn't exactly what I was thinking of when I had the intention of "I want to see Vincent in another role".  A very random addendum to the addendum, but spell check tells me that D'Onofrio and Ruffalo are misspelled words, Interesting, sort of. Italian last names. Both actors are of Italian descent. 

Movie "review": Jurassic World

As with the last post, this one also has a bit (or should I say, a lot) to do with Vincent D'Onofrio. 
If you are going into this expecting an actual, serious movie review, you're in for a surprise. This is a review from the perspective of "I did not actually pay that much attention to the movie", so... you've been warned. Ordinarily, I wouldn't watch movies like this, but the rest of the family wanted to see it and I remembered that it happened to have Vincent D'Onofrio in it, in some capacity, so I figured it was maybe worth a watch. After googling it to get a feeling for how long it was, I noticed that it also had the actor who played the psychiatrist on Law and Order SVU. (all two of your L&O faves in one movie!) 
I didn't really think that Vincent would have a huge role in the movie and I was right. However, I didn't mind half paying attention and trying to see when his character (whose name I did not catch) was on screen. I'm going to write this "review" fresh off of seeing the movie (which as I said, I did not pay much attention to) and before having looked up the summary online so I can see what actually happened. After I do that, I'll write a little bit of my impression after learning what this whole damn thing was actually about. 
Anyways, this definitely was not Law and Order (unsurprisingly), so obviously Vincent's role was different than what I've been used to seeing him as. In this movie, he had some facial hair which I did not like the look of (I'm really not a fan of facial hair, on anyone) and so I kept thinking that I wished his character would shave. From what I gathered, his character was a zookeeper of sorts at the eponymous dinosaur theme park. He said some things here and there, but I was mostly just looking at him and not really paying much attention to the dialogue. Seeing as he was not a main character, there wasn't a ton of him to be seen although there were a few hand-gesturey moments of the kind that we see a lot of in Law and Order. 
I spent a lot of the movie wondering when/if Vincent's character was going to get eaten by the dinosaurs. Towards the end (about 20 mins. before the end) he does seem to get eaten, or at least we see his hand being bitten off by a dinosaur. Since his character does not make an appearance after that, I'm assuming that he may have gotten eaten in full after that. Boo. Poor thing. I kept laughing during this movie because it was just kind of funny, or at least if you don't pay much attention, it is. Also because it was sort of funny to watch Vincent in this role. I kind of would have liked to see him get eaten in full, or perhaps run away from the dinosaur frantically, missing a hand/forearm.. that sounds a little twisted, doesn't it.. in any case. That basically sums up my impression of the movie, having not paid much attention and mostly only looking at Vincent's character. I couldn't really figure out if his character was supposed to be a protagonist or antagonist or something in between. Although he did get punched in the face at one point by the main character. I'm not really sure what that was about (again, going back to the fact that I didn't pay much attention at all...). I probably could have lived without having seen that movie, honestly. Anyways, now to go on and read the summary of what actually happened... the next part of the "review" will be my thoughts after having read said summary. All in all, I thought it was kind of a strange movie (although, that effect can probably be achieved for any movie if you don't pay attention). 

Part 2: post-summary reading...
Apparently Vincent's character was an antagonist. Huh. Maybe that's why he had to get eaten. 
Having now read what actually happened in the movie, I don't really have much to say. Nothing really stuck out to me as anything particularly interesting. Oh well. I'm going to have to watch some other movies that Vincent has been in. Perhaps they'll be more interesting/better. And anyways, there's always Law and Order.. 

Hands: Donald Trump's and others'

Although it has been a little over a year since I've last tended to this blog, I've felt compelled to make a new little post tonight on a topical matter. (even though there are other things I ought to be working on, but no matter..) 

As it's pretty inevitable to be exposed to the... debacle that is the current election season, that's what this about. Recently, people have insulted (although I don't blame them for doing so) Donald Trump's hands. Donald Trump has claimed that his hands are magnificent and not lacking in size, nor is he lacking in size in... other places. He also claims that his hands are beautiful, which I will say they most definitely are not. Really though, what do you expect from an egomaniacal demagogue? (egomanaical I thought of myself, demagogue I got from something I read in the New York Times earlier about him) 

In what world are Donald Trump's hands beautiful?? I'm not sure that they're particularly small, size wise, but they certainly aren't beautiful. His fingers are quite chunky and stubby looking, which is not a characteristic of beautiful hands. Also, his skin is kind of wrinkly and such which doesn't help the appearance of his hands. People who think that his hands are beautiful are deluded (people who support him, I'll venture to say, are also deluded/other similar adjectives). 

Anyways, incidentally, the people whose hands I do think are beautiful are as follows.. (this isn't something I've just thought up today. This is actually something that I've had opinions on for awhile.) 
In no particular order: (I would add pictures but I'm lazy) 

• James D'Arcy (actor)
• Vincent D'Onofrio (actor)
• Anderson Cooper (journalist)
• Brandon Flowers (musician) 

A nice assortment of people, who I also happen to admire for things other than the beauty of their hands. All of these people are decently tall (Anderson is the shortest of the 4, I believe, but not unusually short). James D'Arcy has really nice hands; his fingers are nice and elegant looking and they taper a bit towards the ends which just adds to their appearance. Seriously. Go look up a picture of them. Vincent also has nice hands, which happily appear quite frequently in Law and Order CI, because his character has a tendency to gesture a good amount, so we get to see the hands in action. Really nice. His fingers aren't chunky. His hands are also probably a decent size, not small; he's 6'4". (the aforementioned James D'Arcy is 6'3", so also pretty tall.) I could go on.. Anderson and Flowers I have a little less to say about, since I don't really get as many looks at their hands, but from the pictures I've seen, I can also attest that they have nice hands as well. These are only 4 people here, and I'm sure there are a number of other people who have nicer hands than Donald Trump (honestly, that'd probably be a lot of people), but these 4 people have hands that I've noticed in particular.

This post is probably... a bit out there, I will admit. But hopefully it was amusing, or at the least, vaguely interesting. 

Additional (amusing) reading on this subject:

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/2/11148356/donald-trump-short-fingers-small-hands-vulgarian  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/01/are-donald-trumps-fingers-weirdly-short-an-investigation/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/03/04/fine-donald-trump-lets-measure-the-hands/

http://www.vice.com/read/donald-trump-has-small-hands
And, if you really want to look at them closely... http://www.buzzfeed.com/jamiejones/literally-just-pictures-of-donald-trumps-hands#.dqky8nvxy2     

Art. Featuring my rambling ruminations, as usual.

What exactly art is is a question I've been pondering lately. At first, I had been thinking that art is pleasant to look at, but in many cases that doesn't hold true. In addition, 'pleasant' is subjective regarding art and basically everything else in the world. At the moment, I would say that a tentative definition of art is that it makes you think. Perhaps those are thoughts of appreciation for its aesthetic beauty, or thoughts about what is portrayed by the art, or thoughts of distaste with the art, etc. A friend says that art is created to express something, which is also a valid point regarding what exactly it is. Trying to precisely define art is perhaps impossible, but at least some general statements about its nature can be made.
I am not quite sure what exactly got me thinking about the definition of art, but perhaps it has something to do with how I have begun to keep a written log of theoretical art ideas. It is rather unlikely that I'll actually enact most of these ideas as it is, but they're there, just for the sake of making sure I remember them in case I ever feel like actualizing them.
As a final note, some people argue that modern art is not art, but I say that it is art, regardless if other people are disdainful towards it. Some modern art is quite thought provoking despite how it may seem strange and unconventional/unusual, etc. Just because one disapproves of/disdains certain art (such as modern art) does not necessarily mean it isn't art.
The end.
(I do realize I have neglected this blog. Sometimes that happens. It's a character flaw, I suppose. But here is a short selection of my recent thoughts for your perusal.)