i'm going to whine for a moment.

WHINE #1: I'm not going to be able to see The Last Winter in theaters.  It's probably never going to come out in Australia, either never come out or come out after I leave.  By the time I make it back to the States, it'll be gone for sure.  And no surprise, it's gotten great reviews: "It’s amazing what you can do with a low budget, an expansive imagination and a smooth-moving camera. (A fine cast helps.) An heir to the Val Lewton school of elegantly restrained horror, wherein an atmosphere of dread counts far more than a bucket of blood and some slippery entrails, the director Larry Fessenden is among the most thoughtful Americans working on the lower-budget end of this oft-abused and mindlessly corrupted genre."

WHINE #2:  Why does everybody in the world like Stardust?  It's like all the people that had to go along with the pimply nerds and praise Lord of the Rings are in full swing now, saying "thank God, not another doom-and-gloom fantasy movie about weird species where we have to drool over a fucking elf!  finally, youthful, well-scrubbed stars in nice dresses!  recognizable names!  romance!  a chick flick!  no, wait, a swashbuckler!  ah, well, at least it's not depressing!"  They say, oh, this is real fantasy, fantasy from the good ol' days of The Princess Bride.  Now, The Princess Bride is amusing, but I wouldn't watch it again, and I wouldn't own it, and I wouldn't classify it anywhere near the best fantasy movies ever made.  You know what the problem is with a lot of fantasy?  It spends so much goddamn energy worldbuilding, costume-designing, people-naming - in making itself non-real, in other words - that the plot itself, and the characters themselves, become hopelessly contrived stereotypes, as if the creators just ran out of gas.  And a Mary Sue quirk like, "oh, but here the heroine isn't a princess, she's a falling star!" is not any reasonable character development.  Even movies that I feel should be good, because their designs are so good and so imaginative - Edward Scissorhands, Pan's Labyrinth - have disappointed me because the storyline, when stripped bare of the scissorhands and the talking faun, is so simple and stupid.  And if that's the case with your story - if, with all the fantasy gimmicks removed, it doesn't say anything larger than "good vs. evil" or "listen to your heart", then it sucks.  Science fiction seems to have less of this problem, and although it shames me to say so, maybe it's because sci-fi writers are somewhat smarter and actually use their milieus to discuss actual concepts, actual unsolvable problems of humankind.  Fantasy always comes back to a one-line wrap-up: "true love prevails", and conceptually, that's all it has to say.  Some exceptions are: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Akira, Constantine, Gozu, Being John Malkovich, Juliet of the Spirits, The Langoliers (a great example of a movie where the CG is shit but the plot is incredible), and (I'm serious!)  Galaxy Quest.  Once again, I want to get out of this genre.  Maybe I'll just say I do horror from now on. 

WHINE #3:  I really don't feel like doing ANY work at all.  I got my period on the trip but really didn't have enough chocolate to compensate for it, and even though my period is now over, I think the chocolate craving has remained.  I wouldn't mind a nice huge creamy chocolate slab, you know, Cadbury or Dove or whatever... maybe the rum-raisin one...

holy shit! read this book!

Susan Faludi's Terror Dream:

Ms. Faludi, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of two previous books, was perplexed by the cultural fallout from that day. What she found, she says, was a powerful resurgence in traditional sex roles and a glorification of he-man virility as embodied by Wayne, the ur-savior of virtuous but helpless damsels in distress. The prefeminist thinking was everywhere, Ms. Faludi said: in the media, where female commentators were suddenly scarce after 9/11 and specious trend reports appeared about women nesting and baking; in depictions of that day’s heroes as male and victims as female; and in movies like the 2005 “War of the Worlds,” Ms. Faludi said, with Tom Cruise as a “deadbeat divorced dad emasculated by his wife, reclaiming his manhood by saving their little girl.”

At the end of that movie, Mr. Cruise’s character cradles his daughter in his arms, an echo of the final scene in John Ford’s classic 1956 film “The Searchers,” when John Wayne carries home his young niece, who was captured by Indians years before. “It’s some bizarre, weirdly out-of-proportion fixation,” Ms. Faludi said, “an exaltation of American masculinity in an intergalactic crisis.”

Those who did not conform to this story line, she added — like female rescuers on 9/11 and widows who refused to remain piously grief-stricken or who scrutinized intelligence failures — were treated with contempt.

the internet makes you stupid.

We saw Rush Hour 3 tonight.  It was stupid, but entirely good.  There was popcorn and much race-based laughter that goes over well in the urban but unpretentious crowd of downtown Melbourne.  My favorite character was the supposedly anti-American cab driver, Georg, who when confronted with the adrenaline rush of driving Lee and Carter around Paris realizes that he wants to be American after all, to "kill somebody for no reason". 
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According to a quiz I took, I'm 63% Geek, 63% Goth, and 63% Loner.  That's actually surprisingly accurate.  I'm also 31% Punk/Rebel, 19% Ghetto Gangsta, 19% Drama Nerd, 13% Stoner, and 0% Prep Jock/Cheerleader. 

I made a country.  It's a little bit fucked up, but not too bad, considering.  At least it's in the South Pacific.  I aim to take care of it.  I just made voting compulsory, so we'll see how that goes. 

According to Googlism, I am based loosely on the works of jules verne, silent once again, good, bound by river hooghly in the west, one of the finest examples of multi, the sweetest cat you've ever met, at walking distance from all sights, improving a little, back on the case in this kinky adventure, being held in syria, comprised of a gloriously excellent storyline that runs a full 39 episodes full of passion, anxious about the plane's punctuality, supposed to speak english, half, and a cleric of the frostmaiden. 

I think I'd make a good cleric.  If it isn't obvious, I've been stalking someone who is also interested in objectifying men and getting all these quizzes from her.  We differ on some things, although we agree on others.  For example, I think Slaughterhouse Five is one of the most overrated books in the whole emporium. Oh dear, the popcorn I've been dutifully finishing is starting to catch up to me.  Ugh.  Damn.