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Saturday, November 10th, 2007
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2:53 am - Ugly bags of mostly water
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I think it will be a major letdown if the first female president of the United States is the wife of a former president.
Blade Runner and Star Trek TNG episode "The Measure of a Man" make for a surprisingly complementary accidental double feature.
Blade Runner director's cut: The unicorn stuff was silly. I did not expect to miss the voice over, but I did. So much for that.
I went to see it in a theatre, and the showing was scheduled for 11:47. I don't know the significance of that number, I didn't pick it up while watching the movie, and it is too late for me to be bothered to google it.
TNG season 2: I forgot how good the good episodes of TNG can be. (I have never forgotten how bad the bad ones can be, though.) Also, I like Dr. Polaski, I don't care what you say, and I have come to realize that I never really gave Johnathan Frakes his due. He adds a lot to the show. But is it just me, or do most of the Enterprise's missions end with either whatever has just been discovered being destroyed or lost, or with Picard going, "We're not ready for this! Turn around and we'll come back later."?
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| Sunday, October 28th, 2007
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2:28 am - Halloween!
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I finally used the Kitty Pryde costume I put together last year and never wore.
I was blue-costumed Excalibur Kitty and I was crazy awesome. My friend who used to work in the costume department made my shirt. My sister made me Lockheed out of foam and fabric and air-dry clay.
I went to the bars that were having Halloween nights and got some minor props for being a young, somewhat shapely woman in tight-fitting things, for being an X-Woman, and for toting around an awesome purple dragon. But only one person immediately knew who I was. And then I went to the comic book store party. Even before I got inside people were ooh-ing and ah-ing over me and Lockheed. And then I got inside and you know who was there?
Nightcrawler.
Somebody took an assload of pictures. I will have to get some of them.
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| Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
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1:20 pm - Which was going to be a general post, but turned into a rant about "Knocked Up"
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( Knocked Up )
On the other hand, The Departed, which I also finally saw, totally rocked. I think I have a have a slight crush on that movie.
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| Monday, June 25th, 2007
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3:41 pm - Working on transcribing an interview with Greg Bear...
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Harry Harrison, if you're not going to enunciate clearly and speak into the recording device, then go away. I have to finish this by tomorrow.
Note to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) skywardprodigal: Bear said "persiflage" again.
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| Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
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12:03 pm - Belated season/series finale thoughts
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( Gilmore Girls )
( Grey's Anatomy )
( Veronica Mars )
But maybe it's just as well everything's over or going to hell in a handbasket because my roommate owned the TV. And she has moved out (not because she hates me--because she's gone to a program in Denver. I think.). I've cobbled together a home of the pieces of furniture that I have left and, you know, it doesn't look like the composed, almost-adult house we had before but I find it far more attractive now, in all its sparseness. Because it's mine.
I miss the microwave something awful, though.
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| Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007
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10:14 pm - I am happy because
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| Friday, May 18th, 2007
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12:51 pm - Lloyd Alexander
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I moved to Turkey when I was 11. I had faced the prospect with relative equanimity up until a couple of weeks before we moved, when everyone started asking me if I was nervous and what I thought about moving to a Muslim country and my father was all, "Don't do this in Turkey, or this or this or this, because it will offend people." Because he was nervous, too.
I didn't know anything about Turkey except what was implied by the questions and the admonitions and the result was that I became absolutely terrified. I cried myself to sleep once or twice just thinking about it, and I'm not a person who minds moving. Before we left Washington DC, I bought some of Lloyd Alexander's Vesper Holly books. I read them on the plane, about this girl who went to all these crazy places and was afraid of nothing, and I felt comforted and saner as I began to remember that this was an adventure, and that I was entitled to think of it as such, no matter what all the adults said about politics and religion. It's a small thing in hindsight, but at the time it was not a small thing to me.
Lloyd Alexander wrote other, more awesome books--my favorites were The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen, which I tried to imitate for years, and The Arkadians--but every book I read of his was important to me.
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| Monday, May 7th, 2007
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9:03 pm - The most important thing you will do this week
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is watch this video of leopard slugs mating.
You think I'm kidding. I'm not. I'm really not.
Better yet, go find a copy of Life in the Undergrowth and watch the first episode. Because some things deserve to be seen in better-than-YouTube quality.
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| Saturday, May 5th, 2007
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12:14 am - NextWave
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| Thursday, May 3rd, 2007
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10:42 am
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I was walking past the (closed) public pool. Ahead of me on the sidewalk, this guy is running straight towards me, yelling what sounds like "Marteen, no!" over and over.
It wasn't a "Wait for me" yell. It was a "Don't turn the key because the car will explode" yell. So I look around for potential exploding cars and I don't see any until I spot a three or four year-old girl making her way up to a tall water slide that goes into the deep end of the empty pool. She's smiling, and climbing upwards faster than you'd expect.
The guy skims over the fence, pausing only to stare at me for a moment, because I'm staring at him dumbly, trying to think if there's anything I can do. And, no, they're really isn't. And then he jumps down on the other side, and runs up the stairs to the top of the slide, still yelling. He arrived at the top seconds after the girl did.
I don't know how she got in. I saw the man hand her over the fence to a woman at the other end of the pool.
So that was fun.
And then I saw my freshman year roommate at the library. Her kid is three. I hadn't seen him before. He's chatty but apparently good-natured.
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| Monday, April 23rd, 2007
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1:33 pm - 300
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My dad called me today and told me he'd seen 300 last night.
I said, "What did you think?"
He said, "I think it could have been shown in Germany in the late 30s without making a single change."
I enjoyed 300 immensely. And I am willing to believe that the filmmakers were possessed of an obliviousness so virulent that it honestly didn't occur to them that it might be a bit icky to make the villians of their piece racially mixed, flamboyant, and deformed while the heroes are a bunch of physically perfect white guys. But, yeah. Somewhere Goebbels is saying dreamily, "That's how it's done."
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| Sunday, April 8th, 2007
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5:10 pm - Things I wouldn't have thought to say before girl-wonder.org
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Today I was at the house of a girl who likes to do DC fanart. She mostly does Robins, but she drew a picture of Wonder Woman while I was there. She commented that her Wonder Woman never turned out as well as her other characters. She showed me the picture -- Diana was kind of at a weird angle, her face hadn't turned out very well, and her neck was all wonky.
I said, "Try drawing her facing forward."
She said, "What do you mean?"
I stood up, and tilted my body, and said, "Artists like to use that angle for women because it shows off their breasts and ass at the same time. You don't have to draw her that way."
She nodded, tried again, and five minutes later showed me a much stronger drawing. And she was definitely more pleased with it. I don't think she'd ever drawn Wonder Woman facing forward before.
* * *
Happy Easter!
Easter is one of my favorite holidays. I like the religious trappings. I like some of the commercial trappings, like nummy nummy Cadbury eggs, and I like that the commercial trappings aren't too financially demanding and are confined to people with children. I adore the seasonal trappings. Everything is in bloom right now.
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| Monday, April 2nd, 2007
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12:15 am - April Fools
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Told boyfriend that I'd spilled mango soda on his $6,000 (or something like that) computer.
My acting was excellent. I am good at pretending to be upset. His reaction was disappointing. He paused to squeeze my arm reassuringly before rushing upstairs to his computer. A proper freak-out would have been much funnier.
God knows, if he told me he'd spilled soda on my $600 computer, all hell would break loose.
...Perhaps I should re-prioritize.
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| Saturday, March 31st, 2007
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7:12 pm - TMNT
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That was much better than I expected and exactly as good as I hoped. Bits of it were even delightful. I have some things I would've done differently, but there was nothing in the movie that violently interfered with my enjoyment.
I found Leonardo a bit too assy. I mean, he's always been obnoxious (and I love him, don't think I don't), but it was really hard trying to find something to respect about him in this movie. Michelangelo was more deeply stupid than he usually is. If he was my favorite, I think I'd be a leetle irritated at his characterization, but ultimately I think he was still endearing. Donatello = Love, now and forever. Raphael, light of my life and joy of my existence, may be getting on my nerves a bit. But I think his pissiness was worth it because it resulted in ( spoiler )
I didn't realize April was Sarah Michelle Gellar until the end of the movie, and this even though a friend had told me ahead of time. So she must have done all right. But why is Zhang Zhiyi being cast as Japanese, again?
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| Thursday, March 29th, 2007
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2:06 pm - Using words
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Twice in the past few weeks I have been the victim of someone's repeated "Uh uh" noise. I've been about to do something I wasn't supposed to do, and the person witnessing made indeterminate, disapproving noises to indicate that I shouldn't do whatever I was doing. Look, it takes more than meaningless sounds to stop someone as thoughtless as me in the middle of an automatic motion. For example, the word "Stop" might be helpful. Or "Don't do that." Or, "You mindless twit, put down the tapes right now before you do something stupid like rubbing them against a giant magnet."
My theory about this tendency is that it starts out in our passive aggressive childhoods, where we delight so much in setting each other up. I know I wasn't the only kid around who would give people vague indications that they shouldn't do something, without telling them what or why, just so when they ignored my advice I could say I told them so. We don't realize we're doing it. I remember feeling very self righteous at the time. And then we get older, and even though the passive aggressive motives are gone, the passive aggressive habit remains.
I am going to teach myself to use words instead of noises. And to speak up instead of assuming that other people have their reasons for doing things.
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| Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
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2:57 pm - This is why I was never a Brownie
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My school's hosting a free one-day Oral History Workshop that looks interesting. I'd attend in a heartbeat except for that one word, "workshop". What does that mean, exactly? The schedule looks like a series of perfectly harmless talks, but the word "workshop" sounds supsiciously like it entails organized group activities. I have a deep-seated antipathy towards organized group activities.
But maybe... maybe it just means they're leaving space for voluntary discussion? Maybe they just thought "workshop" sounded more impressive? Damn it.
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| Tuesday, March 20th, 2007
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1:28 pm
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| Wednesday, March 7th, 2007
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4:14 pm - Hellboy: Sword of Storms, and my ongoing battle with locks of all kinds
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I just saw the animated Hellboy movie, Sword of Storms. They should've gone for a different look for the characters -- especially Liz, who looks about twelve -- and I'm not in love with the casting of Peri Gilpin as Kate. But I really liked it. I may even love it a little. They're are some genuinely creepy moments, some really good character bits, and it made me laugh out loud a couple of times. (Abe returns from checking up on giant monster sea dragon thing. Liz: Anything we can use? Abe: It likes to eat. Liz: That hardly ever helps.) Best of all, there is minimal exposition about Hellboy and the BPRD. If only they'd Mignolized the art a bit.
Doug Jones, who played (but didn't voice) Abe Sapien in the movie, voices Abe here. I don't know why they didn't just use his voice in the movie. It's much more Abe-like than David Hyde Pierce.
* * *
Apparently I missed out on the most important part of American education, learning to open lockers. Yesterday I spent a good half hour, including 20 minutes of my 15 minute break, trying to open the combination padlock on my locker at work. I managed not to burst into tears during the process which I think means I'm growing as a person. Since I've gotten this lock I've asked five people to help me open it -- three of whom succeeded. It's a great way to meet people, at least.
I did open it once. And then I closed it, and realized I'd left my badge in my locker, and had to go get someone to help me.
Anyway, the story has a happy ending. I took it to my sister who taught me how to open it consistently. I am going to be opening my locker like crazy today.
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| Monday, March 5th, 2007
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10:54 am - I feel dizzy.
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I just listened to a woman who's an editor on public radio rip apart a film review I wrote and put it back together. I feel privileged to have the benefit of her talent and know-how. Also, I feel like I was just punched in the stomach.
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| Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
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12:31 pm - Job! Or, ode to working the circulation desk
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Last week I started a part-time job at the public library, two blocks away from me. I feel like something terrible is going to happen because I absolutely love it. And I think it's one of those jobs that, if you love it, you must really love it, because it's a job where you have to remember to do a hundred thousand little things, and if you don't they'll snowball and cause someone major problems down the line. It's really quite frightening, especially for someone like me who phobic of inconveniencing others.
But it's great. I love filling out stuff on the computer and checking stuff in. I love being able to see everyone's library records. I like collecting money for fines, hearing the little ding the cash register makes--it's interesting, and makes sense when you think about it, that the people with the smallest fines are the ones that are most ashamed of their fines. And I love that I get to deal with dozens of different people without ever actually having to talk to them. That's my ideal type of human interaction. I like people but I don't like the pressure to maintain small talk for any length of time. But when I'm working the desk, my favorite conversation-alternative, i.e. a bright smile, is adequate to meet most of my needs.
But I can talk more if I want to. Some kid was checking out some comic books, including Will Eisner and I'm all, "Don't tell anyone, but I've never read any Will Eisner," and he just lights up and goes, "Neither have I!" He was so clearly thrilled to have someone talking comics with him, even for a few seconds. I know how that feels.
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