Aboot yesterday. If you ever end up in a room with only Kristen, Julia and Marianna, and Mrs. Goetz you will end up with strange discussion topics.
-Pierced nipples ("What would happen if you were trying to breastfeed? Would milk like, come out of two holes?"), pierced toes, pierced.. that flap of skin between your thumb and forefinger.. tongue piercings. ("His mom thought it was like, self-mutilation, so she was like, 'Oh my god! What's wrong???' ") Tatooed eyeliner. ("What happens if the needle like, misses?")
-What happens if you stick a needle in your eye? ("Does it like, pop?" "..No, I think it's like, jello, inside, so it'd only, like, ooze..")
-Mrs. Goetz's belly piercing. ("I went to get a belly piercing with my daughter when she was a freshman. It was such a bonding experience.".. "It hurt! And I've had five children, so I know some serious pain!")
-Mrs. Goetz's reason for naming all her children with D names.
-Julia's desire to get a nifty lizard tattoo on her hip, her cool new belly button frog (You should get one, Alex), how she convinced a boy for a year that she'd gotten a nipple ring by wearing a bra with a bell on it.
-People at the tattoo parlour's screams of agony. (".. he was popping pills the whole time.. his tattoo was so big.. all down his leg and intricate.. that he couldn't get it all done at the same time because of the pain..")
-Sherry's desire to get a breast reduction. ("..That girl with big boobs..")
-Breast implants ("...they cut off your nipple! Ew... I mean, they put it back on, but still.."), Breast Implants Gone Bad ("...and her boobs were like, mushrooms! It was so gross.")
-Julia getting her belly ring pulled at a rock concert ("... so when I lifted my shirt it was halfway out and there was blood coming out of..")
-The one amazing day where Julia was wearing clothes that actually matched, and everyone commented in amazement. ("... Let's see... Herschel.. Jesse K..." "Right, then I came in and was like, 'Hey, you match!' " "... and Andrew P. You know there's something wrong with how you dress when Andrew... it was so sad..")
-Andrew's infamous sex joke. (".. I don't remember why, but he was talking in TOK and he said, '... And she sunk down on her knees in front of him.. if you know what I mean.' And we were all like, totally shocked!")
-Ms. Kavanaugh sleeping with a senior.
-Ms. Kavanaugh proposititioning every single male teacher on faculty and getting turned down.
-"Is Mr. Willard scared of girls?" debate.
-Mrs. Kellinger. ("It's pretty funny because I hear she's been pretty judgmental of everyone else these days.")
-How, while they were dating, the administration gave Mr. and Mrs. Goetz a good talking to for 'unprofessional conduct.' (".. you know, because we'd arrive at school together and everything." "That's so cute!" "So they gave us this talk and said, 'You know your son goes to this school' and about keeping a 'professional distance' and I said, 'Get out of my business!' ")
-One of Mrs. Goetz' students' tongue rings, which he kept clicking against his teeth. A student who painted his hair red white and blue for the 1996 Olympics with oil-based paints and had to shave it all off afterwards.
In that order.
Thursday, May 30, 2002
I registered Time and Again and Dragonshadow on Book Crossing. It's not that I'm particularly generous, it's just that they're not books I want to keep, and as Nick has proved, who on ebay wants them? Even my local library probably doesn't want them.
I feel sorry for Czar Alexander II. Try have a grain of human decency, and end up getting killed. He didn't have to stop and help innocent people wounded in the first attempt on his life. He could have just driven past, and that would have been the smart thing to do, but he chose to be a decent human being. And for that he ends up getting blown up to itty bitty pieces.
What sort of world is this? That people can think they can save the world by chucking a bomb at someone? At least if you're killing someone, have the decency to shoot him, and leave people who didn't have any political affiliations until you blew their legs off out of it.
What sort of world is this? That people can think they can save the world by chucking a bomb at someone? At least if you're killing someone, have the decency to shoot him, and leave people who didn't have any political affiliations until you blew their legs off out of it.
Wednesday, May 29, 2002
"Real" science fiction is too brainy for me. It sort of requires a certain type of upbringing, so that basically only scientifically educated Europeans can understand it. Fantasy is universal. Though while sci fi suffers from being too techy, fantasy can suffer from being too hammy, and you have dudes who say things like, "Lo! Hail the Dread Lord Hrothgar, for he hath arrived at our humble kingdom!" Lord help me.
Part of The anime Hamlet. Good when it sticks to the Hamlet- the 'get thee to a nunnery' and 'to be or not to be' scenes are really dramatic and powerful. Bad when it goes with the anime plotline- the jokes give me a rash. More Hamlet, damn you, and less anime slapstick! I also have to note that in the earlier acts, the facial expressions of actors are so off what their lines are supposed to be, and the narrator is incredibly annoying. She gets less annoying later because by then the plot is on so many tangents ("I'm Rosencranz!" "No, I'm Rosencranz!") you actually need a narrator.
(Yes, whoever's going to be flaming me now, I have seen Slayers. Yes, it is funny. NO, Hamlet should not be funny! I actually contend that both Shakespeare and anime are far better when they're serious. Especially the anime, because you start having trite romantic comedies based on crossdressing guys and alien cat girls.)
Tuesday, May 28, 2002
I think it's hilarious that people all have their panties in a bunch over the "racism" in Attack of the Clones. Obviously George Lucas must be racist because he depicts a clone army of Latinos invading the Grand Old Republic!!!! Nevermind that the guy who plays Jango isn't even Latino... OOH! He looks Latino! Obviously, George Lucas should have had the foresight not to hire this man because he looks Latino! Which would be totally unracist, correct? What the hell??
I saw "Pearl Harbor" over Memorial Day weekend (and I'm really not used to spelling harbour without a u). It was so bad, except for the war scenes, which were disturbing. Hell, the romance was worse than Episode 2 because they were pompously trying to hammer a certain emotion into your head.. it was sort of like during every scene, you could imagine a guy standing in front with flashcards reading, "Heart-wrenching Romance" or "Comical Interlude" or "Ominous Foreshadowing" or "Delightful Irony."
For a war movie, it depicted the Japanese pretty well, unlike quiet a few low budget Chinese war movies I've seen ("The Japs are killing grandpa! Nooo!"). I'm surmising that a lot of the Japanese actors were actually American-born, so that they spoke real Japanese but badly. :) I know this from watching tv shows where they'll hire American-born Chinese to play Chinese Government Agents or whatnot, and they'll be speaking Chinese, but so badly you know they were born here. Or they'll say that the Chinese people are speaking Cantonese when they're actually speaking Mandarin. And sometimes they'll fake their lines because nobody actually understands them, so they'll say things like, "The coconut is on fire, fool!" dramatically and to the uninitiated it'll still sound like they're discussing important military secrets. I've heard that Lucy Liu does this a lot on Aly McBeal. Though a lot of the Japanese soldiers in Pearl Harbor (the ones that had no speaking lines) were played by Chinese people, which my mom said wasn't surprising because many self-respecting Japanese people wouldn't want to be in that movie. I wondered if Chinese people might be uncomfortable playing Evil Japanese Soldiers (tm) sort of like it might be discomfitting for Jews to be playing Nazis, but she said that they'd probably enjoy the opportunity to play the part as villainously as possible. Hell, we all look alike. Which brings me to this discussion.
Me: Hey mom, in Chinese war movies, are the Japanese people played by Chinese actors?
Mom: Yes.
Me: Then how do they distinguish between the Chinese soldiers and the Japanese soldiers?
Mom: For the Japanese soldiers, they paint on an evil mustache.
I suppose if you were really low budget you could hire the same actors for each side, so you'd have one shot of a trench where all the Chinese soldiers are, then stop shooting, have all the actors change uniforms, paint on evil mustaches and run over to a different trench, and then start filming the scenes with the "Japanese" soldiers. God, that'd be ghetto.
I thought it was hilariously funny when Alec Baldwin teaches the pilots to say, "Wo shi mei guo ren." ("I am an American" in Mandarin) NO! Ya think??? And what else could you think the blonde guy waving frantically and yelling in really bad Chinese is supposed to be?
Anyhow. For Pearl Harbor, the "Let's kill them all!" mentality was rather disturbing, because it was such a double standard. You've all see then trailer as little kids play baseball and the women are hanging up their laundry to dry and stop to watch the Mitsubishi Zeroes fly in low over Pearl harbor to prepare to slaughter their innocent fathers and husbands and whatnot.. but then it's like, "Whee! Let's bomb TOKYO!" I think it'd have been more interesting if they'd done parallel structure with the Japanese army.. I mean, it's not a Japanese story, obviously, but just little things. Like you'd see a shot of the interior of.. Rafe.. what's his face (Maybe they just said Rafe as a pronunciation of the R.A.F, but I got the impression that was the name of the guy Ben Affleck was playing) 's airplane, and you'd see a picture of his girlfriend on the dashboard, and then you'd see a shot of the inside of the Miscellanious Japanese Pilot Who's Trying to Shoot Him Down's airplane. I think it would have been a good touch for there to be a picture of a random Japanese chick inside his plane too.
But I guess only America has happy-go-lucky hotshot pilots with loving girlfriends. Because everyone knows that all Japanese are homicidal war machines with no personalities or social lives. I don't know how much retribution the Japanese "deserved," but I'd say they got more than enough with Nagasaki and Hiroshima. This whole killing thing sucks, no matter who does it to who.
Actually, I think it was Red that had a picture of his girlfriend and Rafe had a little oragami bird. Which makes me wonder, Hey dude, if you hate Japanese people so much, where'd you learn to fold oragami?? Eh????
For a war movie, it depicted the Japanese pretty well, unlike quiet a few low budget Chinese war movies I've seen ("The Japs are killing grandpa! Nooo!"). I'm surmising that a lot of the Japanese actors were actually American-born, so that they spoke real Japanese but badly. :) I know this from watching tv shows where they'll hire American-born Chinese to play Chinese Government Agents or whatnot, and they'll be speaking Chinese, but so badly you know they were born here. Or they'll say that the Chinese people are speaking Cantonese when they're actually speaking Mandarin. And sometimes they'll fake their lines because nobody actually understands them, so they'll say things like, "The coconut is on fire, fool!" dramatically and to the uninitiated it'll still sound like they're discussing important military secrets. I've heard that Lucy Liu does this a lot on Aly McBeal. Though a lot of the Japanese soldiers in Pearl Harbor (the ones that had no speaking lines) were played by Chinese people, which my mom said wasn't surprising because many self-respecting Japanese people wouldn't want to be in that movie. I wondered if Chinese people might be uncomfortable playing Evil Japanese Soldiers (tm) sort of like it might be discomfitting for Jews to be playing Nazis, but she said that they'd probably enjoy the opportunity to play the part as villainously as possible. Hell, we all look alike. Which brings me to this discussion.
Me: Hey mom, in Chinese war movies, are the Japanese people played by Chinese actors?
Mom: Yes.
Me: Then how do they distinguish between the Chinese soldiers and the Japanese soldiers?
Mom: For the Japanese soldiers, they paint on an evil mustache.
I suppose if you were really low budget you could hire the same actors for each side, so you'd have one shot of a trench where all the Chinese soldiers are, then stop shooting, have all the actors change uniforms, paint on evil mustaches and run over to a different trench, and then start filming the scenes with the "Japanese" soldiers. God, that'd be ghetto.
I thought it was hilariously funny when Alec Baldwin teaches the pilots to say, "Wo shi mei guo ren." ("I am an American" in Mandarin) NO! Ya think??? And what else could you think the blonde guy waving frantically and yelling in really bad Chinese is supposed to be?
Anyhow. For Pearl Harbor, the "Let's kill them all!" mentality was rather disturbing, because it was such a double standard. You've all see then trailer as little kids play baseball and the women are hanging up their laundry to dry and stop to watch the Mitsubishi Zeroes fly in low over Pearl harbor to prepare to slaughter their innocent fathers and husbands and whatnot.. but then it's like, "Whee! Let's bomb TOKYO!" I think it'd have been more interesting if they'd done parallel structure with the Japanese army.. I mean, it's not a Japanese story, obviously, but just little things. Like you'd see a shot of the interior of.. Rafe.. what's his face (Maybe they just said Rafe as a pronunciation of the R.A.F, but I got the impression that was the name of the guy Ben Affleck was playing) 's airplane, and you'd see a picture of his girlfriend on the dashboard, and then you'd see a shot of the inside of the Miscellanious Japanese Pilot Who's Trying to Shoot Him Down's airplane. I think it would have been a good touch for there to be a picture of a random Japanese chick inside his plane too.
But I guess only America has happy-go-lucky hotshot pilots with loving girlfriends. Because everyone knows that all Japanese are homicidal war machines with no personalities or social lives. I don't know how much retribution the Japanese "deserved," but I'd say they got more than enough with Nagasaki and Hiroshima. This whole killing thing sucks, no matter who does it to who.
Actually, I think it was Red that had a picture of his girlfriend and Rafe had a little oragami bird. Which makes me wonder, Hey dude, if you hate Japanese people so much, where'd you learn to fold oragami?? Eh????
Dyson Spheres!
Something that probably belongs on Puffy's Blog, but actually I just came on the website because I'm reading Larry Niven's "Ringworld" (since I'm suffering from "Discworld" withdrawal) and I wanted to know what Dyson spheres are. So. I can be dorky too. BTW, I have to note that every post I put on Puffy's blog is actually a quote from Puffy. This is more than can be said for the things that Nick and Alex post.
Something that probably belongs on Puffy's Blog, but actually I just came on the website because I'm reading Larry Niven's "Ringworld" (since I'm suffering from "Discworld" withdrawal) and I wanted to know what Dyson spheres are. So. I can be dorky too. BTW, I have to note that every post I put on Puffy's blog is actually a quote from Puffy. This is more than can be said for the things that Nick and Alex post.
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