I do, from time to time, deal with insomnia and it's insane-making. 

I go through periods of a few months where I'm sleeping pretty well (for me, lol), which means that I'm only waking up once or twice during the night, and then it creeps up on me, lol. Like, one night I'll have a stupidly hard time getting to sleep and then it'll return to normal, then I'll have a few nights where I wake up repeatedly (about four or five times, but on occasion up to nine times a night). Sometimes everything will be fine again, but if I'm at the point where I'm spending time actively trying to get back to sleep, it usually goes downhill...Can't get to sleep, can't stay asleep, don't feel rested and so forth. No wonder I'm a grouch.

It's always worse when I'm depressed. I when I had a complete break-down, I was awake all night, every night for about four days, at which point I'd pass out for about 24 hours and wake up again feeling disoriented, but not rested.

I don't have any remedies, not really, and nothing that's perfectly helpful. If I have pot (which is pretty rare, lol) I'll toke and then be able to relax enough to just slip into sleep, but more commonly, I sedate myself. Which I'm not proud to admit and have never told anyone before...I use a night time painkiller that I used when I injured my ribs. It contains a hefty amount of codeine and has a decent sedative as well, so that tends to cure what ails me. Not that I feel like I've had a great night's sleep afterward, of course, but I feel like my body's had a chance to get back into a more normal cycle...So I don't use it all the time, but yes, sometimes I do need something to get me to sleep that will help me stay asleep.

Umm...It makes me grouchy and awful to be around. If the insomnia is really bad, then I feel like I'm drunk or I've taken too many painkillers. Speech slurs, motor function goes waaaay downhill etc. 

Fortunately right now I'm sleeping pretty well, so it's not too much of a concern. I do have trouble getting to sleep at the best of times, so that's not a big deal, and I wake up a few times during the night which is fairly normal (whatever that means, lol) too, but it's basically all alright.

Although now I think I've jinxed it. 

P.S. Uni is going well so far. I'm caught up (finally) on my lectures and notes - I think - and I'm working on a few presentations I have to give in my tutorials. Bliss...I really hate speaking in front of other people, but I shall soldier on :) Hope all is well in LJ land and I'll make a proper post a bit later on xox

 

So, I went with some friends to see Burton's Alice in Wonderland today and you know what? Tim Burton still reigns supreme.

I've been reading a few reviews here and there and they've not all been terribly kind, but it's not everyone's cup of tea, so those sorts of reviews are pretty common with a Burton movie. Not everyone gets it.

The cast was amazing with Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts, Helena Bonham Carter as the (evil but not that evil) huge-headed Red Queen, Anne Hathaway as the (weird) White Queen, Mia Wasikowska (resident Aussie, woo!) as Alice, Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat (an amazing character, actually. Stephen was creepy) and the inimitable (not Jeeves, lol) Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter.

The characters were really well formed and not reliant on Lewis Carroll's story. For example, Depp's Mad Hatter was genuinely mad. Like, woah. Because it's fairly common knowledge that hatters (or milliners, if you like) back then genuinely went mad because of mercury poisoning (mercury was in the glue for the hats), Depp's hatter really pushed the envelope there - he'd fly into rages, change his accent and become intensely fearful, as well as have oddly coloured eyes, skin and hands from the mercury. The Cheshire Cat was creepy...Playful, but creepy. Alice was a little wishy-washy in the beginning and held onto this belief that it was all a dream, but when she began to come around she really grew some cajones (not literally, lol) and did what she had to do. The Queens were cool...The Red Queen established dominion over all things living and the White Queen dabbled with the dead which we saw with her wacky potions (a special ingredient being a severed finger). Also the March Hare...Creepy, manic, mangy looking thing. Scottish, too.

We saw it in 3D, so I should comment on that too, I suppose, lol. I like how 3D is becoming the thing where it used to just be something used strictly for effect. I've always kind of wanted to see what Tim Burton would do with the landscape of Wonderland because in the Carroll's book it's a wonderful, unusual place, and Burton does not let us down. There's a lot of scorched land in this adaptation because the Red Queen's gotten a bit...Lax...With the Jabberwocky and has let him burn much of Wonderland to a cinder. It's kind of a weird juxtaposition between the opening scenes (and the book) with a dragonfly (or dragon fly) chasing a rocking horse fly (that always used to make me laugh as a kid...That and the bread-and-butter flies) through roses and flowers and around vividly coloured toadstools. The details were so eye catching, as in most Burton movies, and I kind of want to see it again just for the visuals to check that I didn't miss anything.

It was a good adaptation - Alice coming back to Wonderland (or Underland, as she learns it's really called) because they need a champion - and the characters were well developed. Also, I think there was a potential for a love story of sorts between Alice and the Mad Hatter...Perhaps not a total love story...She just got him, you know? And helped him ground himself during his, er, "moments", and he helped her be what she needed to be in order to save Underland. Also, the female hero is also a good theme...She really got it done. Slaying that Jabberwocky would have been a tough job - he was one scary bastard. Much less scary when Alice cut his slithery tongue off, though.

This might seem like kind of a gleaming review, but you know what? I couldn't give it a bad review even if I wanted to; Tim Burton is magical to me, he hasn't made a movie that I've disliked and I love the way his mind works, and Alice in Wonderland was one of the first books I read by myself as a kid and it was the first book that had a real impact on me - it wasn't entirely linear, there was something going on behind the story, and the characters were never what you expected them to be. I loved all of the clever little things, like the bread-and-butter flies I mentioned, and the Dodo and the Duck (which, if you were up on your Alice info, you might know that they are representative of both Lewis Carroll - whose real surname was Dodgson -  and Robinson Duckworth, the illustrator), then and now...And every time I read the book I see new things, and the movie let me see all of that in a new life.

So, if you like Tim Burton and/or Alice in Wonderland, I would recommend that you check this movie out and never mind what other reviews have said...Not everyone gets it, that's all.

P.S. When is a raven like a writing desk?

 
What ho, poppets. 

Finally, the first week of university is over. I've gotten lost about nine times a day, but I'm starting to find my way around. I like my classes so far, but there's plenty of time for that to change, lol. Some of my lectures are HUGE!! Like, three hundred people, like in my Linguistics class. Though my Jewish Civilisation, Thought and Culture (JCTC) class is small...Like, ten people, which is a bit disappointing because essentially it's a good course, but it's not a "sexy" course, like Psychology, Linguistics, English etc. My lecturers are pretty cool thus far except for my JCTC lecturer who seems nice, definitely well informed (she's Jewish, for Pete's sake), but she's a bit wishy-washy, which I don't like very much.

Tutorials start next week which will take up more time...Which is good, because last week I had a gap of, like, four hours between a couple of lectures. I can't keep myself occupied for that long, lol.

But aside from all of that craziness, nothing much is happening. My mother and Snappy returned from their holiday (they went to Egypt for three weeks, in case I didn't mention it before, lol) this morning laden with souvenirs and photos. 1300 at last count. They got to pass through Israel on their way to Jordan, or something, too, which is something I've always wanted to do...Well, go to Israel, rather than just pass through :P. My mum climbed Mt. Sinai (where she told it on the mountain, lol) and walked in the desert and spoke to some Israeli soldiers and rode a camel....Or at least that's the way she told me. I'm going to wait until she stops being so chuffed about the whole thing and can break it all down into sentences, lol.

On Tuesday I went to the This Is It DVD launch to which I won tickets (first thing I've ever won, mind you). I wasn't sure that I would be able to go, but I managed it. Ah, the miracle of taxis, lol...Getting from anywhere to anywhere else in ten minutes. It was hosted by an Australian TV personality Ian "Molly" Meldrum and there were a few rather special guests....Kenny Ortega (Micahel Jackson's director and producer) who said a few words and seemed like a really lovely guy, Travis Payne (choreographer extraordinaire) also lovely and chatted a bit about what it was like to dance with Michael, "you don't choreograph Michael Jackson, you choreograph with him". Jason Jackson, Australia's foremost MJ impersonator, was there - he's a great dancer, though a little too slight and short for my liking (nothing like Navi). Guy Sebastian and Delta Goodrem (two Aussie singers) did Earth Song together, which made me and everyone else cry, but that song always makes me cry, lol. And, who am I forgetting? Ah, that's right, Jackie Jackson was there. Yeah, you read that right, the oldest Jackson Brother. It was amazing to see and hear him in person...He's so gentle and softly spoken, he started to cry when he was speaking which made everyone else cry harder. Travis and the male principal dancers did some of the routines from This Is It, (Jam, They Don't Care About Us and Earth Song), which was so cool, and you could see that some of them (Travis included) had tears in their eyes when they were dancing...Yeah, I was sitting that damn close. Afterwards, Travis Payne signed my ticket.

I was humming for days afterwards, lol. Still am. Definitely a highlight of my week...I still can't believe that I got the tickets - there were only 50 being given away. 

Man, it's been a big week. I still can't believe that I'm doing the whole university thing, especially at Sydney uni. I think it will all work out just fine if I can stay on track and commit myself to the work. Far out, I'm tired.

Hope all has been well with you guys :) xx 

L.O.V.E.