|
[27 Aug 2007|10:36pm] |
I was browsing Craigslist and found Pygora Goats.
1) Awesome.
2) A "rehoming fee"? I think you may find that you mean "for sale for the price of".
|
|
|
[19 Aug 2007|05:20pm] |
Having finished the previous book, and considering that I'm still working on Self-Made Man (Fascinating, but depressing! Also, the cause of a mild disagreement with my friend J., who said "Well, I just don't think that men and women are that different!" and then I had to really bite my tongue so as not to say "WHAT A RIDICULOUS THING TO BELIEVE! ON THE ORDER OF THE MOON LANDING DIDN'T HAPPEN!!!!") and The Alchemist (which I'm actually enjoying a lot more than I thought I would, considering the terrible anxiety I have about new-age/magical realism novels.) I have moved on to The Religion by Tim Willocks. It's about Hospitallers in the 1560s. Or. Something. I haven't gotten very far yet. It's set on Malta.
The Amazon reviews worry me a little, as the user comments are split about 50/50 between "TERRIBLE!" and "BETTER THAN JAMES CLAVELL!"
And, you know, not being a huuuuuuuge Clavell fan, I worry that I may have made a poor choice. Hmmm.
|
|
| This is xposted to LJ and JF because I must spread the gospel: |
[18 Aug 2007|11:06pm] |
A History Of Violence is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE MOVIE.
Look. I get that you can argue that it was going for "based on a graphic novel", and that some of the clunkiness could come from there, but be intentional, so I should STFU.
BUT NO.
Because Road to Perdition had some intentionally stylized stuff because it was based on a graphic novel.
Or. Like. What else? 300. Batman Begins.
(I don't read comics, so if those were not actually graphic novels, forgive me. I AM ARGUING A POINT HERE.)
ANYWAY, it is entirely possible to do BOMBASTIC-BASED-ON-GRAPHIC-NOVEL without resorting to sucking really hard. This movie, however, was unable to pull it off.
![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) jesshelga said that the final DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE warning came, for her, when her roommates explained that William Hurt played the heavy. And indeed. His performance was from some kind of manual of acting for silent films, circa 1921. Basically, when he and Viggo - ( Spoilers for a deeply sucky film )
In sum. I thought this movie was going to be sort of great. And it was not. And I disapprove of that.
|
|
| OKAY, so is this movie a giant PRANK maybe? |
[18 Aug 2007|09:28pm] |
...
This is one of the worst movies I HAVE EVER SEEN! The writing is HORRENDOUS. The acting! The direction!
IT IS SO BAD!
What exactly did people like about this?
(Because it's... terrible.)
(I am switching my updates on the badness of this film back and forth between lj and jf so as not to, you know, have nine hundred posts in a row on how bad A History of Violence is. HAH.)
ETA: WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!? This ...HORROR was nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay?!?
UNPOSSIBLE.
(The writing is PARTICULARLY egregious, and contains such stinkers as Viggo's family walking into the house after Viggo was just interviewed by an eager beaver journalist about defending his diner against intruders (NOT A SPOILER IF IT'S ON THE BACK OF THE DVD, guys) and Viggo going "SIGH. Man, it's good to be home. I hope there won't be too much more of that!" and his teenage son going "They all just wanna interview you because you're a HERO! You're a HERO, dad!" and then Viggo goes "No! I'm not. I just got lucky. Verrrrrry lucky."
...
WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?
THIS IS TERRIBLE.
|
|
|
[18 Aug 2007|09:03pm] |
I am watching this movie A History of Violence.
Um.
Did I get, like, THE BAD CUT?
Because I'm only 15 minutes in, and so far I'm like "..."
IT IS NOT VERY GOOD. REALLY. AND-- geez. It just has a lot of badness. And I realize that it's based on a graphic novel, but this is VERY cartoony, to the point where I keep getting embarrassed and need to stop the movie so I can cringe for a moment. (It has taken me 30+ minutes to watch the first 15. SIGH.)
Does it get better? IT BETTER GET BETTER.
|
|
|
[18 Aug 2007|03:01pm] |
Uch, it's so hot! I'm seriously considering taking myself to a COOLING CENTER (ie, ...a mall of some kind) but that would involve getting in my car. And.
TOO HOT.
Last night, I read "The Other Wind" by Ursula Le Guin. I just like her so much, you guys. I went and read the Wiki recap of "Tehanu" (the previous in the EARTHSEA novels) to refresh my memory, and it was full of whiny crap like "GED WAS TOTALLY EMASCULATED AND IT'S BECAUSE URSULA LE GUIN IS A FEMINIST" and it made me cranky.
She's the only writer where I feel like she's this really wise person, and I admire her so much as a writer and a thinker and I think maybe she's the answer to the question I always draw a blank on ("Who are your heroes?") and-- anyway. I just think she's GREAT.
(Also, she's really good at writing men! She doesn't emasculate them at all, THANK YOU, STUPID WIKIPEDIA PERSON, she lets them have inner emotional lives, and still understands that they're not women with penises.)
And I really like that in this book, Tenar and Ged are both old. And they're-- PEOPLE. MARRIED OLD PEOPLE. And it's so rare to have books where the elders get to be the protagonists, and-- I just liked it a lot. OBVIOUSLY.
Here is a line I thought was extremely great:
He followed the Doorkeeper out into the night, through the streets, past the walls of the School, across fields under a high round hill, and along a stream singing its water music softly in the darkness of its banks.
Isn't that lovely?
Also. I really like - I'm sorry, I'm still blabbering - that in Le Guin's writing, the alternate worlds she creates are just vehicles for talking about people.
I don't understand why anyone would go "OH, she's a FEMINIST writer", either. What does that even MEAN? FRANKLY, I feel like that's just a way MEN (sorry) sideline really smart female writers. Because I would really question the thought that her work is in any way "feminist", in the sense that it advocates for a particular perspective. It's just about people.
*hates everyone*
I cried a lot at the end. Not because it was so tragic! (It wasn't. So I'm not spoiling anything. Hush.) But because I think that Le Guin (I feel like I should call her Miss Le Guin, hee!) is coming into the twilight of her own life, and a lot of the themes of this book had to do with people growing older, and preparing to go through the shift out of this life and into the next, which can be a joyous thing for the person transitioning, but is I think always a little sad for the people staying behind. Part of my weepiness, I know, was my sadness that we won't have this author for ever and ever.
Anyway, I think she's wonderful. And she's basically the only living author where if I met her I would get stuttery and starstruck and say things like "I THINK YOU'RE MAGNIFICENT. PLEASE, BLESS MY BABY." or something.
SO THERE.
|
|
|
[16 Aug 2007|10:13pm] |
|
Why do people obsess over the director Roland Joffe so much? Is it just the people I know? Because people are not-infrequently going "OH, and Roland Joffe--" to me (SERIOUSLY, like at least five or six times a year) and then when I look him up, I'm like "This man has directed basically a handful of totally crappy movies and then one that was good."
|
|
|
[16 Aug 2007|05:46pm] |
1) It is so hot.
2) ...what?
It's so mysterious over here on JF. It's like "hilarious! boring. earnest. hilarious! NO WAIT THESE PEOPLE ARE MORTAL ENEMIES. Awkward."
|
|
|
[15 Aug 2007|09:14pm] |
Ahahahaha.
OH MAN.
Sometimes the thing fandom people do where they're like "I JUDGE NOTHING. NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!" makes me want to mock them loudly. So I'm going to. Just a little.
A thread in a fandom_wank post about... okay, the original is about... something. THE POINT IS, there's a guy in there who's married and 37, and he once ill-advisedly told his wife that he found his cousin's stepdaughter, who is 16, totally HAWT.
I FEEL PRETTY MUCH OKAY JUDGING THAT AS UNCOOL. In VARIOUS ways even!
And then of course - because fandom has the I JUDGE NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!! contingent - a girl appears to grandly explain that she and her boyfriend totally talk about who they find hot, like, ALL THE TIME.
SIGH.
Also, a few other people tried to break it by being earnest. COME ON YOU GUYS, it was a pullquote about a wife telling her husband that she thought the waiter was hot, but maybe too young for her, and also, would she really want to date a waiter? OR LIVE IN THAT AREA?!?
Why are you even commenting if your comment is going to be a boring screed on age of consent laws? SIGH.
SIGH.
TOOTHY GRINNING DOG ICON GRIMACES IN YOUR DIRECTION.
|
|
|
[15 Aug 2007|03:09pm] |
Sigh.
Fandom_wank is less fun than I was hoping. Instead of people being delighted by how ridiculous humanity in general is, it's full of people going "Actually, I agree with that person who said that it's impossible to put a number on psychological maturity--" and/or "Well, *I* wear a nun's habit and enjoy a spot of porn, so--"
It's like a little funsuck, over and over.
:(
|
|
|
[14 Aug 2007|04:00pm] |
HELLO WANKY PEOPLE.
I am forced to issue a moratorium on the following:
Any variant of "I FIND IT EXTREMELY AMUSING THAT YOU ARE SO STUPID/HYPOCRITICAL/WRONG."
You don't find it amusing. "Amusing" is a warm, relaxed, pleasant feeling: it sometimes makes you giggle. The word you're looking for is probably "Infuriating".
Frankly, people! You're ruining a lot of potentially high-grade entertainment with this bullshit, and it doesn't fool anyone into thinking that you're of an Oscar Wilde-like wit, so KNOCK IT OFF.
|
|
|
[13 Aug 2007|05:15pm] |
Wow, JournalFen has a weird aspect I hadn't considered.
Over on fandom_wank, someone was, you know, being wanky. In her LJ. And it was the particular kind of silliness I find really lame, where the person talks about how you are retarded, and only she knows how RIGHT SHE IS blah blah blah. And then she shows up in the fandom_wank post, telling them to remove the link to her journal, because she's underage.
And then on her personal JF journal, she laughs - OH HOW SHE LAUGHS!!!!!!! HA HA HA!!!!!! - that people thought she was serious. And they're all jerks.
...
Sometimes I feel like people in fandom are huge assholes. Not even interesting assholes.
Just. Holy shit, you're both a prick, and kind of weirdly dull.
That is all.
PS: in general, I tend to think that women who go around spouting complete horseshit about how they TELL IT LIKE IT IS and could GIVE A FUCK what you think about them and are totally not behaving so vilely for the attention, NO SIR are lame and should be kicked out of the sisterhood.
Being a dick doesn't make you cool. Unless, you know, you're a brilliant Beat novelist who's also an alcoholic-- but you're not, of course. You're just being a bitch about nonsense things like your incest fiction. feeling THRILLED by the attention you get when you yell and are grouchy in public. Mmmmm, attention.
PPS: I saw a HORRID fanmix over on LJ today that totally upset me. It was something like "SAM AND DEAN ZOMG SO HOT: MUSIC TO COMMIT INCEST TO."
I hope the person was being funny. REALLY.
|
|
|
[09 Aug 2007|10:58pm] |
I finally finished Crown of Stars, the last volume in the, um, Crown of Stars...series (I was thinking "What's the word for 'series of seven books?'" and coming up with nothing.)
1) By the end I had totally lost track of who was who. I admit it. So I would go "What? Who just died? WHO got married? I don't even know who that is!"
2) Overall, I really liked this series. I thought the writing was really competent, and that is not always (ever) a feeling I have about fantasy novels. If I have a gripe, it's that the last book didn't seem to have a plot. It was almost like a very extended epilogue, and I last week found myself thinking "I should finish that" and then thinking "I wonder when the plot gets going" and then I looked at where I was, and I was 2/3 of the way through. The other books had been fairly tightly plotted, so that stood out a little. But it wasn't BAD or anything.
( And now, spoilery things. )
BONUS JF-ONLY CONTENT:
You know that icon that has an American flag on it, and the test reads: "Book 7 spoiler: American wizards show up and kick everyone's butts, America: FUCK YEAH!"?
That icon makes me laugh so hard.
Every single time.
It's pretty embarrassing. It's similar to my reaction to the Pride & Prejudice icon where Darcy is glaring at Elizabeth and going "DAMN, get off my case woman!"
I'm such a dumbass. But SO FUNNY.
PS: EXTRA bonus content: my friend just signed up for eHarmony, and was trying to convince me that it was awesome, and I was all "BUT WAIT, what you're describing sounds like they match you to someone who's LIKE you. And. NOTHING COULD BE WORSE THAN DATING SOMEONE WHO IS LIKE ME. NOTHING."
|
|
|
[08 Aug 2007|11:44pm] |
I rewatched The Bourne Identity to feed my sudden obsession.
1) Man, Julia Stiles is so BORING. SO INCREDIBLY BORING. And so outclassed by all the other actors in these movies. I think it's because they're all adults, and she's like "Hi! Did you see my movie where I was a rebellious teenager?" and it's just an unfortunate contrast.
2) Jason Bourne really looked a LOT younger in the first one. It took me ten or fifteen minutes to settle into what a baby he was.
3) MR. EKO. He has a LOT of babies in this movie.
4) I really like how the assassins, when they're not working, apparently just lie on their beds and stare at the ceiling. I know other people have wondered about this, but I feel like it makes total sense. They don't really have personalities or inner lives anymore! They just hang out and wait.
5) Why would you hire Clive Owen to be a CIA assassin based in Spain?
6) I only now realize that they brought a lot of stuff back from the first one to the last one. I'm totally impressed. And I feel sort of like a dumbass for not realizing this before. BUT OH WELL.
|
|
|
[06 Aug 2007|09:42pm] |
HI GUYS.
So I'm going around here friending everyone who looks familiar from LJ. If I am totally unfamiliar and I got your username wrong and I do not in fact know you from LJ and you'd like me to go away, just let me know and I will vamoose! I'm trying to keep track of who's who here vs. OVER THERE, and not friend TOTAL STRANGERS but you know how that goes. (Maybe you don't, but it's a little... confuzzling.)
|
|
| My first-ever JF post. bwahahaha. |
[06 Aug 2007|05:10pm] |
THIS PART POSTED ALSO TO LJ:
(YES, I am talking about JASON BOURNE again.)
Co-star Joan Allen, reprising her "Bourne Supremacy" role as a CIA spymaster sympathetic to Bourne, said Damon packs as much conflict into the character as the movie packs action.
"When I look at some of the moments that he has, I can't believe the number of things he has going on simultaneously," Allen said.
"Here's a character that has these super powers, he's very smart, he doesn't really understand, he's confused and he's tortured. And sometimes, I see all that in Matt in just a look. ...
"I think he's also very sexy as he does it. Even though there's very little overt sexuality, these are very sexy films, and he is very sexy in them."
I feel EMBARRASSED that Joan Allen totally saw through me.
THIS PART EXCLUSIVE JF CONTENT: (ahahahahahahhaha)
I overheard someone talking about how she went to a RICK SPRINGFIELD concert last week. And how she rushed the stage to touch him. And his guitar. It's so amazing what people are not embarrassed by. Me: embarrassed that Jason Bourne's violence turns me on. Other ladies: totally cool about wanting to make it with Rick Springfield.
Does JF have tags? Are there no tags here?
|
|
