Dreaming Of Electric Sheep: Why Have I Never Watched Blade Runner?

Cyberpunk is perhaps my favorite subgenre of science fiction. It may come as a surprise to you, then, that I haven’t seen Blade Runner, one of the defining works of the genre. Nor have I read Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? the Philip K. Dick novel that the film borrows heavily from. I mean to fix that

So if I’m going to watch Blade Runner, which version do I watch? There are many arguments online about which is the “definitive” cut, but none of them convinced me. So I’ve decided I’m going to watch all of them. I bought the 3-disc collectors edition Blu-ray from Amazon which has 4 complete versions (The 1982 US theatrical cut, the 1982 international theatrical cut, 1991′s director’s cut, and Ridley Scott’s 2007 Final Cut) and the unfinished Workprint version. I’ll watch them all over the upcoming weeks and write what I thought about them here. I’ll start with the US theatrical cut and finish with the Workprint version.

Check back next week for my thoughts on my first viewing of Blade Runner

In which I discuss depression, specifically my own.

Let me preface this post with the fact that I’ve never really been a private person, which I suppose is why I’m writing this. I mean, I tweet mundane stories of my life to 90-some people, three quarters of whom I’ve never met in real life.

Another part of the reason for my writing this is the fact that I didn’t think that always being in not the best of moods was anything to worry about. I mean, I realized that things could be better, but I stuck to cracking a few jokes about it.

That doesn’t tend to work, in case you were wondering.

I figured I wasn’t really depressed, and I’d probably just get over it eventually. That I’d get over whatever it was and start feeling better about myself. A month went by and I still felt the same. Three months. Six.

On my way to work one day I figured I’d at least talk to my doctor, see what he said. I explained to him that I was never really waking up in a good mood; I wasn’t getting much sleep; and I couldn’t see the good side of things, opting for a rather pessimistic world view instead. I told him I didn’t figure I was severely depressed, or even depressed at all.

He diagnosed me with a mild case of depression, and prescribed an antidepressant. It’s worked wonders for me. I’m getting more sleep, I feel better both about myself and in general. I’m starting to look forward to my future, even.

I guess the moral of the story is that if you feel depressed — even if you don’t think it’s that bad — talk to a doctor. It’s a treatable chemical imbalance and it says nothing about you or your character. It can get better.

Relaunching the personal blog.

It’s been almost a year since I’ve updated here. I’ve been doing some things recently which I figure may be worth blogging about. We’ll see if I keep it updated.

I figured I’d make a quick update on important things that have happened since last posting.

I found a part-time job at the movie theatre by me.

I’ve began learning Python by reading Learn Python The Hard Way. It’s coming along pretty well so far.

Restored my Technics SL-23 turntable and put a decent stereo together.

Which is about all of the interesting things which have happened. I’m kind of boring.

A bit about privacy

I wrote a paper on privacy, and I’m quite happy with it. So I decided I’ll post it here.

Privacy is dead. With the advance of technology, there isn’t much that can be kept to oneself. We carry our mobile phones and our laptops around everywhere without giving them as much as a second thought. We drive our cars with our GPS systems expecting nothing except getting to the right coffee shop. But what is lying underneath those devices? Anything we post to websites is stored indefinitely, any email we send is stored on one server or another, and navigation systems have to store our location data somewhere. The only place where privacy exists is in one’s own home. In 1984, George Orwell predicts a world where the government watches the people’s every move. In our case, it’s not necessarily the government, but corporations that are peeking over our shoulders.

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