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I just watched “Am?lie” with some friends in the basement, and though my French is good enough that I would have liked to try it without subtitles, most of the others could not, so we turned them on. The funny thing about subtitles is that you end up reading them no matter what — even if the movie is in English, if there are English subtitles, I bet you’ll end up scanning the lines. I’ve actually had this happen before — on Amtrack they show the movie with subtitles, and though I was sitting underneath the speaker and could hear every word, I also read every word, and I don’t know why exactly. It’s like the brain has two language inputs — visual and auditory — but it can only use one at a time, and the written word beats out the spoken word. It’s no wonder — think of how many words we read every day versus what we hear. This would make for a very interesting psychological study if it hasn’t already been done: have people watch movies with subtitles and audio in the same language, with the subtitles differing very slightly from the spoken words, and see which the brain interprets.

In any case, the movie loses little from being read; Am?lie has a masterful soundtrack by Yann Tiersen which sets the mood perfectly, and just listening to the French is like music, even if it never gets decoded entirely. I think that every nuance of voice and inflection of speech of each character and each emotion still gets through even to those who don’t understand what any of the words mean. Language is such a mysterious thing like that.

Next time, though, I think I’ll watch it without subtitles — just to see what I’m missing.

and I really don’t feel much different. Read previous entry.

Go Bears, we beat the USA, which I didn’t get to watch unfortunately, but I did get to listen to a crappy webcast. Current rankings have us at 14th — in the whole country — which means we get the little (14) next to our name on ESPN. It’s so pretty. I love football season.

Today I was genuinely bored, which led me to think of all the things I actually could have been doing, which led me to think of the nature of boredom itself, which cured my boredom. So you could say I was actually being lazy, except the feeling was actually boredom, which made me think that maybe they’re the same thing, except boredom occurs when there’s nothing to fill the void which laziness causes. And when the analysis of boredom itself fills that void, it’s called something we haven’t invented just yet. Maybe it could be thought of as intellectual boredom.

That is my profound thought of the day. Goodnight, and Go Bears.

Update: Our ranking improved to 12 overnight and I didn’t even notice. Go Bears.