I don’t know that I see this in myself. Then again, I’m sure Georgie got rich off all those book deals, so hopefully the same’ll happen for me. Woo!

With the admonishment “be glad you’re not in China”, Geisha sent me this link from MSNBC:

Alarmed by a survey that found that nearly 14 percent of teens in China are vulnerable to becoming addicted to the Internet, the Chinese government has launched a nationwide campaign to stamp out what the Communist Youth League calls “a grave social problem” that threatens the nation.

But no country has gone quite as far as China in embracing the theory and mounting a public crusade against Internet addiction. To skeptics, the campaign dovetails a bit too nicely with China’s broader effort to control what its citizens can see on the Internet. The Communist government runs a massive program that limits Web access, censors sites and seeks to control online political dissent. Internet companies like Google have come under heavy criticism abroad for going along with China’s demands.

Among the milder cases are those of Yu Bo, 21, from Inner Mongolia, and Li Yanjiang, 15, from Hebei province. Both said that they used to spend four to five hours a week online and their daily lives weren’t affected but that their parents wanted them to cut their computer usage to zero so they could study. Yu said he agreed to come because he wanted to train himself. Li said it was because he just wanted to “get away from my parents.”

No one is comfortable talking about the third floor of the clinic, where serious cases — usually two or three at a time — are housed. Most have been addicted to the Internet for five or more years, Tao said, are severely depressed and refuse counseling. One sliced his wrists but survived. These teens are under 24-hour supervision.

Still, for all the high-tech treatments available to Sun at the clinic, the one that he says helped him most was talking. He looks forward to returning to school and getting on with his life.

The first task on his agenda when he gets home: get online. He needs to tell his worried Internet friends where he was these past few weeks.

Five hours a week? I would be in trouble! And while, sure, China’s success in breaking people’s addictions to drugs and alcohol is something to be commended, I don’t know if their methods in doing this — which they seem to be shifting over towards internet addicts (read the whole article) — are. This reminds me of the Stephen King short story where a man signs up for a program to quit smoking only to find out the deterents to smoking include violent assaults on his family.

Gah, China, bad!

Every week for Film & Lit, Dr. W wants a written response to the previous week’s material. Our first actual paper is due next Thursday, and the assignment is a personal definition of a romantic comedy. For my paper, I drew primarily on two romantic comedies I enjoy — The Princess Bride and Kissing Jessica Stein. The first is about, yes, a princess bride, but also rodents of unusual size, and pirates, and swordfights, and lots of other cool stuff. The second is about lesbians.

Since, however, I don’t want Dr. W to think I only watch romantic comedies about monsters and lesbians (or lesbians and monsters), I added a flick called Love Actually to my Netflix queue about two weeks ago. Sure I’d heard of the film before, but my curiousity was piqued about two weeks when this cute chick and I were talking about Shaun of the Dead and our conversation turned to actor Bill Nighy, and from there to his role in Love Actually, where he plays an aging rock star who ends up confessing his love for his manager. He also plays naked at the end of the film, and thank goodness for the careful placement of that guitar, for even though I might express my opinion that a half-naked Diane Krueger would make Troy a more desirable a film to watch (an opinion for which I was roundly criticized on the online discussion board for my ItCM class, and this after all the women in the class were oogling their memories of all the half-naked men), I’m not at the point where full-frontal nudity of Bill Nighy is a draw (yes, I remember that I saw a film with full frontal nudity of Bob Hoskins, but, in my defense, a. I didn’t know there was full frontal Bob Hoskins nudity and b. there was a lot of full frontal hot British chick nudity).

Anyways, so, Love Actually. Since it is a romantic comedy, I wanted to watch it, particularly in light of cute chick’s pimping of it, as well as the possibly value it might add to my paper. The film came Thursday, and I watched it Friday afternoon while at home during my afternoon break from work. The movie has a very Robert Altman feel, with ten story-lines, countless characters, all interweaving together in London during the weeks leading up to Christmas. I found it engaging, hilarious, and sad. Yes, I’ll admit that the end of the movie had me trying — and, dammit, failing — to choke back tears (because I’m a sap).

In fact, I enjoyed it so much, that no sooner did I drop the return-envelope in the mailbox, that I had an instant pang of regret. I want to watch it again! Love. This. Film. It’s now a Snay Classic.