And now for something that's already happened: some friends of mine and I went to see Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" at the Globe last week. I highly recommend going to see it if you get the chance! The acting was great, especially the two main characters (played by Paul Hilton and Arthur Darvill), and the sets, costumes, props etc were all just right for the atmosphere. (Hurray for eerie hell-creatures!) I was a bit... not wary exactly, but unsure going in, because although I knew the basic story I had no idea if I'd let myself in for a comedy, a tragedy, or a heavy philosophical treatise. In the end, though, it turned out to be the prefect balance of (generally slapstick) humour and dark creepiness and dread.
And walking out of the theatre we all agreed we wanted a BBC TV series of Faustus and Mephistopheles's wacky adventures.
Chairman Wow: what are you up to? Cubed2D: watching an anime Cubed2D: confusingly called 'i my me strawberry eggs' Chairman Wow: ... Chairman Wow: sounds good Chairman Wow: XD Cubed2D: about a guy who tries to get a job as a sports teacher at a high school, but the head teacher is sexist and will only employ females because males are all savages with no love in their hearts etc etc Cubed2D: so he dresses as a lady to get the job Chairman Wow: awesome Cubed2D: the rules: all female characters cannot trust males. all males are perverts and cannot be trusted. all male character have to be perverts. main character is the only sensible person in the entire world (disregarding the whole I should dress as a lady to get this job bit, rather than you know... finding another job) Chairman Wow: yep, sounds definitely like reality Chairman Wow: what was that about sexism hurting men, too....? :P Cubed2D: heh
While I'm linking, I found a much better website for my math studying than the one I was using previously: Paul's Online Math Notes. The one before was kind of wishy-washy about the right terms and notation, which bothers me. >_> This one is looking much more useful.
I'm home for a day or two, mainly to watch Sherlock, and True Blood with my mum. XD (It's kind of cool watching a show with my mum. We were looking at the True Blood merchandise on the Forbidden Planet website earlier. Maybe I should find her some fanfic to read...)
Second episode of Sherlock was kind of disappointing. Not as much fun banter, and Chinese circus smuggler gangsters? Idk, guys, idk. Quite Holmes-style in a way, but I kept waiting for the opium den to show up. :|
I'm gonna be home again next Monday, because my family and I are going to Vienna for a week from Tuesday, so I may prepare a bit of a picspam entry to post then.
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Sometimes you just have to let the capslock flow, though, you know? It's good for the soul. Also, if anything's going to put me in a capslocking mood it's some good Holmes action.
So, I was on the Isle of Wight this weekend, and it was very nice and I'll post pictures later, but first:
It was SO GOOD. EVEN CAPSLOCK IS INSUFFICIENT TO EXPRESS MY GLEE. SO WELL ADAPTED TO THE PRESENT DAY SETTING. (They use first names all the time, lol.) AND THE WRITING WAS SO GOOD. AND THE ACTING OMG. AND WITH THE TEXT ON THE SCREEN AND STUFF AH I LOVE IT. LOVE IT. I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT SUNDAY FOR THE NEXT ONE? T__________T I'm gonna go find my Complete Sherlock Holmes and re-read the first case later.
I did kind of figure out who the killer was before anyone in the show, which was LAME. Maybe it's just because [SPOILER] those "Don't Take Unlicensed Minicabs" ads creep me the fuck out so I'm distrustful of cab drivers. Sorry cab drivers. >_> [/SPOILER] But really, it was kind of obvious, right? "Who do we trust even though we don't know them?" What else was it going to be.*
BUT I DON'T CARE because the characterisation was THE BEST. AND OMG MARTIN FREEMAN. AND OMG BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH (WHAT KIND OF AMAZING NAME IS THAT ANYWAY) EVEN THOUGH I'D NEVER HEARD OF YOU BEFORE.
And now I should go to bed. Probably hopefully signing the contract for the flat tomorrow! If the estate agent calls me.
*Or maybe I am just really clever. Let's go for that. *nod*
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You know how I think teaching kids history is really important? I read in the Guardian today (and I really tried to find a more neutral source to read up on it on, but no-one but the Guardian and the Daily Mail cares at the moment) that the Tories want an historian called Niall Ferguson to help re-write the history syllabus.
I think getting down a general chronology of what order things happened in is probably a good idea, if that's not being done already, but then there's this:
He said the syllabus was "bound to be Eurocentric" because the world was Eurocentric.
I've heard his name for the first time today, and already I dislike him.
In other historical news, I am totally excited for this on TV tonight:
God. The last two weeks seem to have been entirely me thinking about doing things and then not doing them. What the hell. Lack of mental energy and inexplicable loss of ability to kick myself in the arse and get on with it. Ridiculous.
Anyway.
Anime. Durarara!!, my current favourite anime in the world ever*, has a really rocking opening theme. See how rocking it is?
The rockingest.
I may or may not have been listening to it on repeat endlessly for the last few days.
Durararararararara is a great show, and it has completely captured my heart. Every time I start a new episode I feel like I'm getting a super delicious special treat. They had better keep it up, though, because now I have expectations.
It's one of those stories that's more about a place and the interactions of the people who live in it than about any one character and their mission. Which I like, because people interacting is interesting. I guess it's an... *spins the genre wheel* urban fantasy? It's almost the real world, one or the other urban legend just happens to be true. There's a headless Irish fairie** looking for her head, a guy who can throw around vending machines when he gets angry (my favourite, but I might just be biased because the latest episode focused on him), some internet gangs, and some mysterious mad scientists, because what would life be without those? I presume they will eventually provide the plot that brings all the strands together in the grand finale, as you can't go on telling anecdotes about a vaguely connected group of people forever, unfortunately.The pacing and general storytelling is great, too. You constantly feel like there is a huge, colourful world going on that you're only seeing a small slice of, which is one of my number one things in a story that makes me cream my metaphorical pants.
You can also watch it in a shockingly legal manner (I actually mean that this time) and for free at Crunchyroll, which I still think is a wonderful website. I do quite enjoy giving people their due when I've enjoyed the fruits of their efforts. That is sort of how society functions. I'm trying very hard not to turn this into a rant about the annoying attitudes of internet pirates, especially as that would be a little hypocritical, since I'm evidently still selfish enough to download some things — though I honestly plan to buy DVDs of things like Star Trek or BSG when I can — so I'll shut up now.
Also I can't actually afford a Crunchyroll account at the moment anyway, so I steal Tim's.
Also books. I borrowed The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold from my mum last week, and read it through in one go.
It wasn't very good.
The basic plot is: girl is raped and murdered gruesomely, and watches her family try to cope with it from the afterlife. Woo!
The first half really captivated me, hence deciding to read it all in one go; there were atmospheric and creepy and sad things going on, and it was all quite engrossing. But then after the halfway point it just completely lost it's drive. I was ready for something exciting to happen, and it just... didn't. It continued to be a series of stuff that didn't really flow or seem to signify anything. And when the tragic and creepy atmosphere dissipated, the characters started revealing themselves for the flat clichés they were, and after a while I found myself increasingly tempted to skim forward to the end so I could be done with it.
And when I finally got there, the end turned out to be the worst part of the entire book. -_- First of all there is the utter wtf-ery of the dead girl stealing the body of the gay goth girl who can see ghosts, and using it to have sex with her old crush from before she was killed. Because raping someone else is totally the way to get over being raped, amirite? Apparently neither the goth girl or the crush really mind, either, which is the main thing that makes it as wtf as it is. This is apparently the last thing the dead girl needed to do before she could let go of the world of the living and move on to the permanent afterlife (which is... full of pillows? Something like that. If I had the book with me right now I'd look it up). And then there's a ridiculously saccharine last scene in which her parents have gotten back together despite never actually resolving any of their issues, and her sister is getting married to her middle school crush, and her little brother gets a set of drums for Christmas, which don't actually seem to have any significance at all as far as I can tell, and everyone is happy.
It would have made a pretty good short story, I think, if it was about half as long.
Speaking of disappointing books, I have totally let the internet down re: Colony reviews. I haven't actually finished it yet; I was on the last chapter just before we left for the States, and it was just so boring, even at its climax, that I could not bring myself to go on. It got worse at it went on, not better. Occasionally, at high points, it worked itself up to about as exciting as the baseline of a normal book.
I was trying to figure out why this was, and I think it's the characters. Everyone is so simple. They all have one or two simple motivations, and the book keeps telling us exactly what they are, FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. The same goes for the political factions. In any case, the only things you missed was the sheik ordering someone to be raped to death as a punishment (in case we still hadn't realised he was the bad guy), and all of the "black, brown, and yellow" people in the US mounting a violent pseudo-communist revolution against all of the white people in the US. I don't know what the outcome of that was, because even armed revolution was interesting enough to hold my attention.
There are some good books in my life, too, though! I don't remember if I mentioned it here, but Friendly Fire by Alaa al Aswany was amazing, and at the moment I'm reading an anthology of Sci-Fi and Fantasy stories that my parents got for me in the States, which has yielded nothing but good stories so far. ♥ I might talk about some of my favourites — if I can pick favourites — when I'm finished.
*Though I have just downloaded the first episode of the brilliantly named Mobile Suit Gundam Unicornsubtitle: Just When You Thought We Couldn't Get Any Sillier, so we will see.
**I hope if her head ever shows up, it really is like mouldy cheese with a hideous grin and gigantic, darting eyes. XD
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There hasn't been an opportunity to use my "im lulz" tag in months.
cubed2D: mums watching some award cerimony on tv. its rubbish chairman_wow: yeah, the brits, I think. My mum's watching it, too. And my dad's watching football in my room. XD cubed2D:it basicly goes.... int count = 0; while(moderatlyFamousManIsOnStage) { FamousPerson p = AnnounceFamousPerson(); WalkToStage( p ); Talk(p, "Its lovly to be here, im really famous."); Cards[] cards = ReadFourCards( p ); cards.Sort(); FamousPerson winner = card[0]; Talk(p, "the winner is " + winner.ToString() + "!!!!"); WalkToStage(winner); Talk(winner, "Its lovly to be here, me and " + p.ToString() + "really famous.!!!!"); WalkOffstage( p ); WalkOffstage(winner); count++; if (count > 10) { AdvertBreak(); count = 0; } }
Today I got up past noon and did nothing truly productive (though I did organise a lot of old files on my hard drive and tidy my room a little). Tomorrow I will do better. Maybe I'll even write a proper blog-post or two. :O
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I heard an interview on the radio a few months ago, with a psychologist (I think), who'd dome some research on multi-tasking that indicated two broad types of behaviour: "explorers", who constantly crave new stimulation and jump from task to task, and "exploiters", who concentrate on only one thing and do it thoroughly.
Which is how I'm justifying my wish that I had enough room on my screen to watch a TOS episode and play a single-player game of Solium Infernum at the same time.
In the mean time, the alien fly that invaded the Enterprise has landed in Captain Kirk's coffee, and I think he's about to swallow it.
Oh wait, no, it's not a fly, it's a super-fast space woman who wants to get in his pants.
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[I wrote half of this last night, hence it is a little rambly. But it does have subheadings! 8D]
I miss the times when I'd go to see a film at least twice, with different friends or whatever, and I'd always bring a notebook to the multiple viewings and take notes and write down quotes to use in my LJ review. I think I should start taking notes and writing about TV shows again, too. It’s fun.
2012 I went to see 2012 last weekend. It was pretty cool if you like seeing things fall apart in grandiose and dramatic ways, and I really, really like that. Especially the Earthquake stuff when the ground moves in waves like water; that is so badass.
In terms of the story, though, I pretty much agree with the io9 review. I really just didn't care either way about whether the main characters lived or died. The question of what the various world governments were doing to survive occupied me, and the thing about whether they were going to suck it up and let their full capacity of people on board the ships, but after that I was a lot less engaged. The Eurasian arks got away, so what if the North American one hits Mt Everest? And I guess South America, Australia, and Africa's arks didn't get finished in time? I guess they redistributed the people from that onto the completed arks? Nah, the future of mankind doesn't need any Australians, don't be silly. And don’t even talk to me about Africa. There’s no-one there who’s rich enough to afford a giant Chinese ship anyway, amirite?
Ok, I’ll stop now.
But anyway, the only people I sort of wanted to survive both didn't, the Russian pilot guy because he nobly sacrificed himself to land the plane, and the Russian woman because... she had a boob job, or because of her affair, or some other transgression against movie ethics, idk. Maybe the pilot died because he was sleeping with her, as well. RUSSIAN INFIDELITY DOESN'T PAY. Obviously. I am rambling, because I am quite sleepy. Oh, but the Tibetan(?) family survived. I liked them, too.
ANYWAY. It was a very pretty film. it suffers from that thing that films sometimes have where all the side characters are more interesting than the main ones, but if you're like me you'll spend most of your time enjoying the destruction and fantasising about what you’d do in an apocalypse, anyway, so that's alright.
Doctor Who
I drew this on a train.
I really enjoyed Sunday's Dr Who special thing. I like it when things go wrong for people they usually always work out for. And things went pretty spectacularly wrong this time, I'd say. I really don't pay any attention to Dr Who canon, either (when they mentioned the daleks invading at Christmas, I thought something like: "did that... happen in a previous Christmas special? I vaguely remember... or do I?"), so they can do anything they want, imo, as long as it stays interesting. And if not, I'll just stop watching like I did before, no harm done. I am a very casual Doctor Who watcher.
Tin Man The first half of a film (mini series? idk.) called Tin Man (which I'd heard about. On Fandom Secrets. XD) was on the SciFi channel last night. It's pretty good! Much like Alice in Wonderland, my only knowledge of The Wizard of Oz comes from pop-culture osmosis, so I may be missing the odd reference, but it's fun in any case. Not super amazing, or anything, but fun.
ΠΛΑΝΗΤΕΣ When Tim came over this weekend, he brought a box set of Planetes with him, and we watched it, and I totally thought we had run out, but it turns out that box set was only half of the series, and we're going to watch the other half next weekend. This makes my life a small but statistically significant amount more amazing.
Twilight My mum is suddenly really into the Twilight film, and she really wants me to watch it, too, and I really just have no desire to. I clawed my way through the book, I know what happens, I just don't feel like bringing up the energy to give this a chance. Ok, no, I do sort of want to watch it with Steph and an intoxicating substance of some kind (by which I mean caffeine, because I couldn’t stay awake through a movie if I had alcohol), but that’s a different matter altogether.
I think that's all I had to write about. Now I shall make some tea and write about the next few chapters of Colony. Mustn't let my reading get too far ahead of my writing.
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Look guys, I got my staff badge at school today. \o/ Now I don't look like an impostor sitting in the staffroom being all... young. And stuff. The lesson today went pretty well, though no-one did their homework. -_- I've assigned them something they have to read out loud in front of the class next week in revenge.
Oh hey, it's November now, I guess I should start revising for the JLPT in earnest. get out those past papers I bought and stuff. I also haven't gotten any confirmation from SOAS at all that they got my application for the test, I think I'll call them about it tomorrow. It's still a month until the actual test, but I did send the application ages ago.
At the moment, I am constructing my Christmas list. I really want one of these flannel shirts. ♥ I want to buy a least half of everything Uniqlo sell. UniqLo? UniQlo? UNIQLO?
In other news, I've been watching a cool documentary, called Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo. Rageh Omaar, who is a journalist, I think? Goes around investigating the evidence behind the claim that intelligence is linked to race, going over the flaws in IQ tests, whether race is even a valid biological/genetic factor (not really, big surprise), and so on. The conclusion (SPOILERS! You should go watch it yourself unless you're not in the UK and Channel 4 won't let you) is something pretty cool that I'd never heard about before - since I know little about IQ tests - which is that the IQ test measures a certain kind of conceptual thinking that has been developing as we've adapted to modernity. Someone in the 1900s, for example, would score pretty badly by our current standards*. So, taking that into account, obviously the average score from sub-Saharan Africa would be lower than that from the USA or... I think North East Asia was the term they used.
It was a pretty excellent documentary, which thoroughly confirmed me in all my previous conclusions and offered me even more evidence to back them up with, allowing me to be continue being a smug git until the end of time. (It was quite balanced and objective in tone, though, while still acknowledging how personal and loaded the issue was, which I liked.)
* Also, it is massively biased towards the educated middle class. The one he took asked what an imaginary number was. How is that intelligence as opposed to knowledge?
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I watched the first episode of Season 6 of House just now. I only saw bits and pieces of S5, but this season looks interesting. I think I'll follow it. Following a TV series on actual TV, guys. :O Craziness or what.
The trial at Costa went pretty well, I think. I mainly collected dirty dishes, and washed dishes, and carried clean dishes back downstairs. Also made some coffee, which was actually pretty fun and easy. I'll find out by Friday whether they'll hire me. *crosses fingers*
That's all, really. Everything is covered in dust from the new stairs and floor being put in. It's a really nice staircase, though. I enjoy walking on it. (What? I can enjoy a staircase.)
PS: You guys should totally read Hanjuku Joshi. The beginning is so-so, but it gets better and better as it goes on. Fffff, it's so adorable, it makes me grin like a stupid person.
I have to do that post about the gory, dark (but wonderful ♥) book I'm reading soon now, to balance out the fluffy yuri rec. XD
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I consume visual media.
I miss the times when I'd go to see a film at least twice, with different friends or whatever, and I'd always bring a notebook to the multiple viewings and take notes and write down quotes to use in my LJ review. I think I should start taking notes and writing about TV shows again, too. It’s fun.
2012
I went to see 2012 last weekend. It was pretty cool if you like seeing things fall apart in grandiose and dramatic ways, and I really, really like that. Especially the Earthquake stuff when the ground moves in waves like water; that is so badass.
In terms of the story, though, I pretty much agree with the io9 review. I really just didn't care either way about whether the main characters lived or died. The question of what the various world governments were doing to survive occupied me, and the thing about whether they were going to suck it up and let their full capacity of people on board the ships, but after that I was a lot less engaged. The Eurasian arks got away, so what if the North American one hits Mt Everest? And I guess South America, Australia, and Africa's arks didn't get finished in time? I guess they redistributed the people from that onto the completed arks? Nah, the future of mankind doesn't need any Australians, don't be silly. And don’t even talk to me about Africa. There’s no-one there who’s rich enough to afford a giant Chinese ship anyway, amirite?
Ok, I’ll stop now.
But anyway, the only people I sort of wanted to survive both didn't, the Russian pilot guy because he nobly sacrificed himself to land the plane, and the Russian woman because... she had a boob job, or because of her affair, or some other transgression against movie ethics, idk. Maybe the pilot died because he was sleeping with her, as well. RUSSIAN INFIDELITY DOESN'T PAY. Obviously. I am rambling, because I am quite sleepy. Oh, but the Tibetan(?) family survived. I liked them, too.
ANYWAY. It was a very pretty film. it suffers from that thing that films sometimes have where all the side characters are more interesting than the main ones, but if you're like me you'll spend most of your time enjoying the destruction and fantasising about what you’d do in an apocalypse, anyway, so that's alright.
Doctor Who
I drew this on a train.
I really enjoyed Sunday's Dr Who special thing. I like it when things go wrong for people they usually always work out for. And things went pretty spectacularly wrong this time, I'd say. I really don't pay any attention to Dr Who canon, either (when they mentioned the daleks invading at Christmas, I thought something like: "did that... happen in a previous Christmas special? I vaguely remember... or do I?"), so they can do anything they want, imo, as long as it stays interesting. And if not, I'll just stop watching like I did before, no harm done. I am a very casual Doctor Who watcher.
Tin Man
The first half of a film (mini series? idk.) called Tin Man (which I'd heard about. On Fandom Secrets. XD) was on the SciFi channel last night. It's pretty good! Much like Alice in Wonderland, my only knowledge of The Wizard of Oz comes from pop-culture osmosis, so I may be missing the odd reference, but it's fun in any case. Not super amazing, or anything, but fun.
ΠΛΑΝΗΤΕΣ
When Tim came over this weekend, he brought a box set of Planetes with him, and we watched it, and I totally thought we had run out, but it turns out that box set was only half of the series, and we're going to watch the other half next weekend. This makes my life a small but statistically significant amount more amazing.
Twilight
My mum is suddenly really into the Twilight film, and she really wants me to watch it, too, and I really just have no desire to. I clawed my way through the book, I know what happens, I just don't feel like bringing up the energy to give this a chance. Ok, no, I do sort of want to watch it with Steph and an intoxicating substance of some kind (by which I mean caffeine, because I couldn’t stay awake through a movie if I had alcohol), but that’s a different matter altogether.
I think that's all I had to write about. Now I shall make some tea and write about the next few chapters of Colony. Mustn't let my reading get too far ahead of my writing.
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