Hmmm

On Google Buzz when I view a profile, it says of (name redacted) "You are following (name redacted).  Unfollow!!!!!!  (name recacted) is also following you.  Block (name redacted)!!!!!!" (Emphasis and punctuation added ;-).

But seriously, it seems awfully sad that the options to cut someone out of your life are so gleefully supplied next to the indicators that they are important to you.  Like someone who came up to you and said, "Hey, you're friends with (name redacted), right?  Why don't you stop being friends with that loser?"  (chuckling evilly)  "Or perhaps you could stop (name redacted) having contact with you ever and lock (name redacted) in the dungeon of the cold shoulder!!!!!" (full fledged evil laugh represented by some variation on "Muahahahahaha," as my littlest sister likes to do).

(Redactor's note: the author of the above wants to inform the one or two people who are still reading his pathetic ramblings that italics, which the fine redactor of this piece has substituted for the uncouth all caps of his original intent, are not nearly as satisfying to the soul.  The redactor, in all modesty, wishes to note that while italics are indeed less expressive, they are also more specifically less expressive of offensiveness and little wit.  Take that, author of the piece.)

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Challenge

Can you name a movie you enjoyed thoroughly (that's 3-5 on a 5 star scale, with 1 being "hated", 3 being "enjoyable but fluffy/OK", and 5 being "loved deeply and passionately") and would watch again today from the following time frames (movies only, not television movies or miniseries, as much as I love those):

1. the last two yearsf (2008-2010)?

2. five years ago (2001-2005)?

3. ten years ago (1991-2000)?

4. twenty years ago (1981-1990)?

5. thirty years ago (1970-1980)?

6. fifty years ago (1960-1970)?

The point of the challenge will be revealed within a couple of days. :-)

My own answers:

1. Gran Torino (2008)

2. The Incredibles (2004)

3. Twelfth Night (1996)

4. The Princess Bride (1987)

5. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

6. A Man For All Seasons (1966)

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PIZZA!

Tonight: around 8 pizzas were made, four of which I made, two of which I both made the crust and topped it (homemade crust, peppers, onions, and pepperoni, store-bought base, sausage, chicken, and pepperoni, store-bought base, sausage and onions, and pepperoni, and homemade crust and pepperoni).  The others were, as I recall, a pepperoni and onions and garlic and sundried tomatoes on a nonrising homemade crust, a chicken pizza (as in, shaped like a chicken, with chicken, corn, peppers, and who knows what else - oh, and no cheese) on homemade crust (that I made but did not roll), store-bought crust having to be cut in half because it was stretched into the shape of the USA with peppers and onions on one half, the same plus pepperoni on the other, another store-bought crust with pretty much the same on it, and a sad pizza that didn't get taken out in time (sorry, Hannah!) with pepperoni and peppers and maybe onions and garlic.  Let's see, I think that's eight.  There might have been more.

I love making pizza.

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Tell me, Doctor, what ails me

"Well, madam, I'm afraid the news is bad."

"What do I have, Doctor?  Is it serious?"

"What you have is invariably fatal."

"Oh, no!  What is it? Is there any hope?"

"I think not.  You have a serious case of...Victorian Novel Disease.  Your death serves narrative function."

"Noooooooooooooooooooo!"

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A quote I thought was good:

George Bernard Shaw, on Keat's bad lines:

"Even his worst lines...have nothing minor about them; they are not poor would-be lines: they are brazenly infamous, like Shakespear's" (sic).

Seriously?  I want to be brazenly infamous!  Unluckily, I'm most likely to be merely irritatingly pedantic.

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Emma and Gwen (and more of that RL)

  
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The Collapse of Laputa Version 4 - Choir.mp3 (2017 KB)

So, my favorite actress is Romola Garai, who has played both Gwendolen Harleth in Daniel Deronda, and Emma Woodhouse in Emma.  When I first watched Daniel Deronda, I thought "That Gwen would make a fantastic Emma - she's spoiled, beautiful, intelligent, talented but doesn't develop her talent and submit to anything requiring patience or industry, and must mature by the end of the story."  Imagine my delight (no, I really skipped from the computer store in the mall I worked back to my job from which I was on my break the day I found out that she'd been cast) when my fancy proved prophetic, and Romola played Emma absolutely brilliantly in the recent BBC miniseries.  However, despite the fact that those two performances inspired me to do a paper this semester exploring the influence of Austen's Emma on Eliot's Gwen, while rewatching bits of Emma the other night, I realized something.  Romola is a classical English actor - and despite the fact that she doesn't radically change her looks from performance to performance, she creates entirely different characters with subtle facial expressions and all the other aspects that go into making a performance.

I want to take a film class, just so I can use technical terms to talk about what I now only have English terms and my own fumblings about in the field to say.  Even disregarding the manic quality of Romola's performance as Emma contrasted with the reserve in her Gwen, there's a brittleness to Gwen that Emma is totally lacking.  While Gwen shows some moments of pleasure, in singing and hunting, there's always a sense of guilt, or unease, or just plain unhappiness.  Emma, on the other hand, radiates vigor, happiness, fun, joy, purity, and love (even in her most immature, cruel, or foolish moments).  There are expressions Romola has as Gwen you can never see in her Emma, and vice versa.  I desperately want to be able to describe such things in terms that are precise and disciplined - discussing the way director Tom Hooper's use of classical framing, low angles, wide lenses, and set pieces of astonishing splendour and clarity (which would give way to rather annoying handheld jerkiness and muddiness in the later, more acclaimed John Adams), or the actor choices of Romola's posture, body language, positioning, head tilts, and quirks of mouth and eye differentiate the characters. But for now, I just say this:

I am in even more awe of her skill and depth as an actress than ever before.

And now for the RL - a very nice update on that, this time :-)

A nice in my class remembered I loved slippers (and bare feet), and that I had worn a hole in my old pair.  So tonight in class she gave me a nice pair, just because she wanted to!  Normally people are not my favorite thing in the world (actually, normally they're my least favorite thing in the world), but today reminds me that people are sometimes the way God shows love.

And today I woke up at 7:30am and drove out to have free pancakes at IHOP.  Wonderful, tasty, and delicious.

All in all, a good day.

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Addendum to the previous

Just remembered that I can now include musical examples!  So I shall!

First, Carter Burwell's dark indie rock/minimalist score for Twilight.

Second, Alexandre Desplat's lovely romantic flutterings and yearnings for New Moon.

Third, Howard Shore's Hope and Memory, from The Return of the King, showcasing the poignant agitation I think fits the Twilight series, as well as the orchestration he likes to use of coming from a thick orchestral section to a very sparse texture with a solo wind (brass or wood) melodic line over it.

Fourth, Howard Shore's Shelob's Lair, also from The Return of the King, showing the darker horror/action music I think Eclipse will also bring.

Dinner With His Family by Carter Burwell  
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12 Dinner with His Family.mp3 (949 KB)

You're Alive by Alexandre Desplat  
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17 - You're Alive.mp3 (3576 KB)

  
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02 Hope and Memory.wma (1684 KB)

  
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11 Shelob's Lair.wma (3895 KB)

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Twilight: Eclipse score thoughts; RL (I know, I've been doing too many of those)

So, I just did a Twilight blogtrawl, and found out very exciting (for those few people who a) care about Twilight at all; b) care about it in a positive way) new - Howard Shore, of Lord of the Rings most deserved renown, will be scoring the third film of the series, Eclipse, due out July 2 of this year.

As someone who thought Shore's music really outshone the movies they were part of (but then, I have a somewhat dim view of some of those movies...Return of the King, I'm looking at you), I think Shore could really take the music in a good place.  For one thing, I fully expect choral orchestrations (oh, yes, you heard it here first).  I think it will be more similar to Alexandre Desplat's French romanticism approach to New Moon than Carter Burwell's urban, minimalist/rock scoring of Twilight (though I fully expect it to have nothing to do musically with its predecessors, as Desplat deliberately avoided influence, so I think Shore will).  I just think Shore's style is more congruent with Desplat than Burwell - though he did do the dark (and deliberately ugly) scores for such films as Se7en.  I think there will be a combination of the dark fantasy/horror of the type heard in the Shelob's Lair sequences of the Lord of the Rings sequence, especially given the more action/horror elements of the third installment.  However, as Twilight remains at its sentimental heart a deeply mushy love story (not that it's bad, per se, at least in my opinion - but I must call a spade a spade, a sparkly vampire and sparkly vampire, and Twilight a mushy love story), I expect there will be scoring reminiscent of the Aragorn/Arwen scenes (though possibly with a bit less haunting choir - but I do expect that choir to show up somewhere!), or perhaps the rich neoromanticism of "Concerning Hobbits," "Many Meetings," "A Journey in the Dark," "The Breaking of the Fellowship," "The Uruk Hai," "The King of the Golden Hall," "Samwise the Brave," or "Hope and Memory."  Things like a think texture of orchestral sound suddenly dropping out for a vocal or woodwind solo, deeply consonant harmonies, and a deft hand with wistful agitation.

Yes, I'm excited about it.

RL: While I'm glad to be done with Pinter for my C20 British Drama course (ugh, how I detest that man's writing and views), and enjoyed one of the readings for that class, I have to say that my C19 British Lit course reading leaves much to be desired.  While I did get to read Hard Times for my paper last week (and oh, what a lovely book it is - hard to believe I hated Dickens just two years ago), I also had to read Vanity Fair and Waverley.  Cold, bitter, irenic and ironic, acidulous, and cynical satire following hard upon the heels of deeply idiotic writing about romanticizing Scotland and sentimental "love" stories about women so shallow to say they're paper thin is to compliment them - such things are not why I signed up for the class.  At least the history/context/philosophy is interesting, and discussions exciting (even if my prof is overly enamoured of cultural studies jargon, thinkers, and conceptulizations/models).  But George Eliot (Mill on the Floss) and Dickens (though already read - however, I'll probably read North and South for my paper those weeks, since I'm already ahead) are at the end like a brilliant light at the end of a dim and dank tunnel.

I never thought I'd say this, however - reading Jane Eyre after our month of Thackery will be a relief.  Though I'll be watching the film version from 2006 alongside - since I enjoy it more than the book.  Who knows - I might actually like the book better this time through - it's been known to happen - see Austen and Dickens, both of whom I formerly despised.

I have to say, I'm actually rather excited about the new Jane Eyre film set to begin filming next month.  After a rather dry year of films this year, it will hopefully come out next spring (for awards season).  I don't think there's a lot I care about this year - sequels I'm not terribly interested in but will probably see anyway such as Iron Man and Toy Story, things with actors I like but really couldn't care less about the projects themselves.  Even TV is looking a bit dry, with no news yet on what the big costume drama for BBC One in the fall will be (or even if they'll have one at all), and the only thing I know of coming out the Terry Pratchett adaptation (with Claire Foy - which is a double score, at least, but the only one this year that I know of) of Going Postal this Easter on Sky One (and who knows when that will come to the states - I'll just have to keep my eyes peeled on YouTube).

Oh, and I still have to watch Bright Star - which everyone, their sister, and my favorite sci-fi film/book review blog have seen and raved about.

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"The Major won't have forgotten."

From Gaudy Night (1935), by Dorothy Sayers:

Padgett: Wot this country wants is an 'Itler.

Miss Edwards (Tutor in Biology at an Oxford College for women): I suppose they [murderers] ought to be kept in hospitals at vast expense, along with other unfit specimens.  Speaking as a biologist, I must say I think public money might be better employed.  What with the number of imbeciles and physical wrecks we allow to go about and propagate their species, we shall end by devitalizing whole nations.

Dean: Miss Schuster-Slatt would advocate sterilization.

Miss Edwards: They're trying it in Germany, I believe.

Miss Hillyard: Together with the relegation of woman to her proper place in the home.

Lord Peter Wimsey: But they execute people there quite a lot, so Miss Bartyon can't take over their organization lock, stock, and barrel.

Miss Edwards: Bosh!  You can't carry through any principle without doing violence to somebody.  Either directly or indirecectly.  Every time you disturb the balance of nature you let in violence.  And if you leave nature alone you get violence in any case.  I quite agree that murderers shouldn't be hanged - it's wasteful and unkind.  But I don't agree that they should be comfortably fed and housed while decent people go short.  Economically speaking, they should be used for laboratory experiments.

Peter: To assist the further preservation of the unfit?

Miss Edwards: To assist in establishing scientific facts.

Padgett: I says to my wife when I 'eard you was 'ere, 'I'll lay you anything you like,' I says, 'the major won't have forgotten.'

Peter: By jove, no.  Fancy finding you here!  Last time I saw you, I was being carried away on a stretcher.

Padgett: That's right, sir.  I 'ad the pleasure of 'elping to dig you out.

Peter: I know you did.  I'm glad to see you now, but I was a dashed sight gladder to see you then.

Padgett: Yes, sir.  Gorblimey, sir - well, there!  We thought you was gone that time.  I says to Hackett...'Lor' lumme!' I says, 'there's old Winderpane [referring to Peter's monocle] gawn' - excuse me, sir - and he says, ''Ell! wot ruddy luck!' So I says, 'Don't stand there grizzlin' - maybe 'e ain't gawn after all.'  So we-

Peter: No, I fancy I was more frightened than hurt [referring to an incident which, combined with his overall service, left him shell-shocked and catatonic for a year after the war, which recurs frequently under times of stress.]  Unpleasant sensation, being buried alive.

Padgett: Well, sir!  W'en we finds yer there at the bottom o' that there old Boche dug-out with a big beam acrost yer, I says to Hackett, 'Well,' I says, ''e's all 'ere, anyhow.'  And he says, 'Thank gawd for Jerry!' 'e says - meanin', if it 'adn't been for that there dug-out -

Peter: Yes, I had a bit of luck there.  We lost poor Mr. Danbury, though.

Oh!  What a lovely war it was and was again.

I love Gaudy Night with a fiery passion, but it has the ability to horrify me at the way the threats of World War Two were not seen or even encouraged, as seen in the above quotations. The last one, I think, helps show why - after a war which left even the strongest survivors psychologically and/or physically so badly damaged, and took millions of England's men, no one wanted war (and rightly so).  Additionally, many academics and intellectuals in the UK and the US were philosophically sympathetic to the Nazi ideals, if a few questions of method were raised, well, it was only the dissidents who were being quashed.

Oh!  What at lovely...

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Ants and Goodness

So, I had a rotten day tomorrow until 9pm.

I made the mistake of eating normal hours (8ish and 1ish), which meant I was hungry around 4ish, but couldn't eat till 8ish because of class.  Said class was about Pinter and existentialism, and no one else wanted to talk, and I was cranky, so I made a fool of myself and snapped at people.  Then I fell asleep in a class of six people.  Most justly humiliating.

Then I got home, and started cooking my spaghetti.  While the water heated slowly, I took a bite of some cereal I'd left on the floor, closed (I don't have much container space, and no shelves).  I'd noticed last time the cereal tasted a bit like ants...and I knew I had ants, so I really deserved what came next.

The cereal tasted a LOT like ants.  I pulled the bag out.  It was crawling.

I threw the box away, spit spit spit, and ran the bag of ant-cereal outside.  UGH (shivers).

Then I got a call from a buddy.  Said buddy also had a terrible day.  She wanted to meet and eat (I don't know from whence my terseness cometh - I usually hate Hemingway or Fitzgeralesqueness).  We did, and it turned into a three hour talk.  About God (and man, am I glad it's not up to me to make God make sense or convince people about Himself - cause I really am rotten at it - though I hope I'm gaining some grace in living it out - I hope?)  Anyhoo, that talk cheered me up considerably, so I called my mom (something I'd avoided for a while) for the first time in weeks.  And it was excellent.

And my life is better.  Thanks, God. :-)

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You have to go to school

A friend has had their IM status as "You don't have to go to school" for a bit (in this day and age, a bit probably means "between a day and a week").  Being an annoying, overanalytical, no-life English major, I have been puzzling out what that means, exactly.  Because it's not like I have anything better to do, for example, write my papers so I don't have to wake up at 6:30 am to write them (on the plus side, I actually got my 5 pager, 2 pager, 1 pager, and bibliographies all done, starting at 6:30 am, going to work from 10-3, and starting class at 4:30 (and I was on time, too).

Anyway, back to "You don't have to go to school."  1) You are an idiot for complaining about school - after all, university is still mostly a luxury item for the very wealthy, the very bright, the very dumb (i.e. those who rely solely on loans and don't get jobs - me last semester), and the very masochistic.  So suck it up.  2) You can skip class (probably my least favorite interpretation).  3) (My personal favorite, and least likely): School is an addiction, and you need to break it.

Actually, I was thinking about reversing this idea on my walk home from class at 10 tonight (after dodging into the library, riding the elevator up and down from the fourth floor twice because I forgot to check out some other books for my class tomorrow), was the idea that going to school is merely a formal way of achieving disciplined learning (as opposed to desultory learning, as in the horrible horrible novel Waverley I just forced myself to read for class - you think Moby Dick is horrid, try imagining it in Scottish with geneaologies instead of whaling ;-).  So, laziness and desultory studies are the addiction, and going to school is your 12-step (or year/grade) program to avoid it.

I dunno - it just tickled my fancy.

(And yes, I'm doing this just to test out whether my chain-linked blogs will make it to Buzz.  I really, really have no life.)

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The simple joys of life

1) Reading Charles Dickens' Hard Times. A sweet, if terribly one-dimensional portrait of good and evil characters. Not nearly as rich as Little Dorrit or Bleak House, but certainly on the level of Oliver Twist, and, of course, beautifully written.

2) Walking in the snow. Makes you warm if you walk fast enough, feel smart for bringing a neckerchief to keep your neck and chin warm, and keeps you in training.

3) Playing board games, like Clue or Settlers of Cataan. Even if you don't win, it's fun.

4) Watching movies, like Speed Racer. Even if it is an ephemeral bit of candy colored fluff, it is fun.

5) Discussing interesting things, like 1980s Jane Austen movies and how you think they are wretched, agreeing about how excruciatingly bad Gone with the Wind is, and explaining why you like Twilight.

6) Playing Halo 2 with three other people who are about as bad as you are. Getting pwned the first time because the map is nasty, someone is vastly overskilled for the other players, and you don't like the weapons. Then having a new, flat map, which you initially are having trouble with, then you hop in a hovercraft with lasers and proceed to snape, splatter, and otherwise obliterate everyone else. Cars with Guns! Only surpassed by the enormous pleasure of no-scope sniping people at close range, then finding a rocket launcher. There are few things in a gamer's life more satisfying than ambling around with a mini-missile launcher on your shoulder, running across another player, frantically scrambling to get them in your scope, then firing a huge gout of flame at them. Whooo. Verra, verra exciting!

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