I feel I should apologise for the Football posts that I have put on here recently as it's been quite a lot. I'm not saying that there won't be more as Football is important to me, but I will try to blend it in with all the other posts that I do.
I have been planning my long awaited first foray into book writing, the more that I planned it the more I was worrying about if I could actually write the book. Lots of people had suggested to me about writing it as a screenplay maybe first and I was thinking that maybe this would be best. In a blog post by Stephen Fry he was talking about writing, and mentioned that it is difficult to overcome the fears of writing a book, mainly worrying about how difficult it sounds rather than actually trying to write one. If you understand how difficult it is, it becomes easier to understand the theory (apparently). I admit I haven't actually ever started to write a book, so this much is true, I am only imagining how difficult it must be to write one. I hope that I can write it as a book but will just see what happens with it I guess, I feel putting myself under pressure of doing it will not make it any easier to happen.
This being said someone I know has just finished their first book and I have been asked to proof read his book. I personally see this as a great honour to him, I know nothing about the story and should be receiving the first few chapters this week. I'm quite excited by it and cannot wait to see what he's done. At college we wrote a script together for a project we were doing and I remember him coming up with lots of weird and wonderful ideas and always knew he would get into writing of some kind. He has since been working as a low paid journalist and this could be his big break. I will also pick his brain on how he started writing his book too, hopefully he might have some tips to share. Are any of you trying to write a book?
This week I also have my first Tai Chi class, I have been VERY lapse on the Wii Fit and must also get back into the habit of using that too.
I have also decided after buying many different styles of notepads that I am going to get a little creative and decorate my own. I'll let you know how I get on.
As for TV programmes, The re-runs of The Wire and ER are now over. I still have a few more episodes of House until that Season ends (Season 6 is apparently due to start in October with my other favourite Lie To Me returning also), this is by far the best Season of House and I think this Season end could be particularly interesting if it's headed where I think it is.
I'm watching The Unit (Season Two will start in two weeks time on Five) and Without A Trace (Season Six, on Channel 4) is now on and is a welcome addition to my week's TV viewing. Of course there is still One Tree Hill (Season 6 on e4) and I still love Economy Gastronomy (BBC2).
A little while ago I posted about my favourite character from ER, the Aussie hunk Doctor Simon Brenner and it has been noted by some friends that there is someone I know who is not totally unlike to the actor David Lyons (sadly without the accent). Make of that what you will...
I will end this post with the below image that got sent to me in an email from a friend this week. it is pretty widely available and used, but came at a time when I needed a little pick-me-up, hope it does the same to someone else!
Sky One's latest TV series "Lie To Me" has intrigued me ever since the first episode was shown. This American TV series with British actor Tim Roth who plays Dr. Cal Lightman, an expert on body language whose firm (The Lightman Group) assist local and federal law enforcement organisations in crime investigations.
In Thursday night's episode "Depraved Heart", viewers were given their first insight into what made Lightman go into this line of work. On taking his daughter to school, they are stalled by a traffic jam which on closer inspection is the scene of a suicide. The police investigator admits that surprisingly this woman of Indian background had a sister who jumped to her death from the same bridge two days earlier, but tells Lightman there is no reason for him to get involved.
However Lightman is determined to be involved and when his daughter Emily asks him “Didn’t you used to study suicides?” Lightman replies “Still do”.
We see Lightman watching an old film tape of a woman telling someone off camera how fine she feels and how much she wants to be able to go home for the weekend to visit her family. It’s clear she’s a patient of some kind talking to her psychiatrist. Lightman’s colleague Ria Torres walks in, she makes a simple remark about the lady on film looking very sad. Lightman’s quiet response of “Yeah”, along with his quick shutting off the projector, alerts her that Lightman’s emotions are involved.
We know that Torres was abused by her father as a child and that's where she started reading faces. She would remember the looks on his face before he hurt her and she learned to expect when he would do it again.
Lightman's reaction to Torres' natural ability has been a continuing theme since she was hired. He has been mentoring her but also at the same time has shown himself a little touchy about her own natural ability vs. his learnt skills. He pokes at her background trying to understand her natural ability, which has had a side effect that he’s not happy with – Torres is now equally interested in why Lightman studied lie detection. This suicide case raises questions in her mind about the nature of Lightman’s interest, and Loker (Eli Loker, researcher at the Lightman Group) tells her that Lightman has been obsessed with the woman on tape – Louise Mason – for years. Loker thinks that the woman was a patient of Lightman’s professor in his university days and she was the reason Lightman discovered micro-expressions. The woman had passed this interview based on this interview based on this tape but had killed herself over the weekend. Lightman had the idea to slow down the tape and when he did, he noticed the signs of agony everyone had missed.
Foster (Dr. Gillian Foster, psychologist at the Lightman Group) who has been working on a separate case, offers to delay her own case and help Lightman. She is clearly worried about him but he won’t let her in. When Lightman’s daughter comes to have dinner with him and she wants to talk about suicide as someone in her school had committed suicide, he tells her she shouldn’t be thinking of things like that. He seems to be protecting her. Foster tells him that no matter how many times he finds an answer for why someone committed suicide, nothing will change. And it will still not be his fault. Foster is sure he is projecting his own guilt issues on this case, leaving us again to wonder who is Louise Mason?
Torres is certainly wondering, and she speaks to Foster, telling her she saw guilt on Lightman's face and wonders who Louise really was. Foster abruptly blocks her questions telling her "Just because you see everything doesn't mean you understand it". Foster is protecting him, but the question of understanding is taken up by Lightman later on. In Louise's time, no one knew about micro-expressions, so trained researchers had no way to pick up her despair. But Torres is not a trained researcher. Lightman asks her if she can see the agony on Louise's face and she admits she can. She says she's sorry, and Lightman tells her never to be sorry for something she sees. We see that Lightman is aware that a natural would have caught Louise's agony even in her time period. This case helps reveal the source of Lightman's tension over Torres' natural abilities and his own trained skills.
In the case, with a third suicide body found, the three girls are connected as they were all working as surrogates in terrible underground conditions for an immigration official. He is determined to get away with his crime but Lightman is adamant that he will pay for it. Lightman again reveals how far he will go to make a man pay as he pretends a friend of his is one of the dead girl's father who knows that his daughter called the immigration official shortly before she jumped. Lightman pushes the situation and the immigration official cracks and admits she did call him. He is charged with a "depraved heart" crime, which is an American legal term for a callous disregard for human life.
At the end of the episode we see Lightman at home with his daughter, he puts on the Louise Mason film and he remains serious as Emily recognises the woman to be her grandmother, his mother. He decides that keeping the suicide a secret is not actually helping his daughter, and she will come into contact with the issue whether he likes it or not. Of course, it also helps Emily to understand her father, something he is less comfortable with.
So we have more of an insight into Lightman, wonder if we will find out if he and Foster have a past?
